March 15 (UPI) — British actor James Purefoy says Wednesday’s Season 2 premiere of Hap and Leonard will pick up a few weeks after the death of Hap’s beguiling, havoc-wreaking ex-wife.
“The end of the first season, we find that Trudy has died, the Christina Hendricks character, and we pick it up at the beginning of the second season with Hap going to pick up her ashes from the local crematorium,” Purefoy told UPI in a phone interview Monday.
“So, it’s really not very long in terms of a time jump. So, he is in mourning, really, at that stage, but, also, there is a sense that this chapter of his life has finally come to an end. That Trudy has dropped in and out of his life over the past 20 years — pretty much always to negative effect — and that’s now not going to happen anymore. But she was somebody that he did profoundly love and was deeply in love with, so with her gone, he has now really only got Leonard. And, in the new season, Leonard and I find ourselves in the middle of an investigation about child murder, with the discovery of a skeleton underneath Leonard’s house and it soon becomes apparent that Leonard is going to be the chief suspect, so what we need to do is we need to find a way to make sure that doesn’t happen and that Leonard is given freedom again,” the actor explained.
Acknowledging that Michael K. Williams’ Leonard “is leading the story in many ways” in the six, new episodes, Purefoy emphasized Hap also taps into talents he didn’t really know he had in an effort to save his lifelong friend.
“Hap, in this season, finds that he’s really good at being a part-time investigator or an amateur investigator and, for the first time in his life, he’s actually got his mojo, really got his mojo back… because he suddenly realizes he’s good at this,” Purefoy said. “He’s good at trying to bring all these bits of information together, these strands of information together and he is passionate about it because the person who he may lose if he fails is the only other person left in his life, which is Leonard and that is really important.”
Based on the popular stories by Joe R. Lansdale, the small-screen series is set in 1980s Texas. It airs on SundanceTV.
In honor of tonight’s #MuchoMojo premiere, we asked the #HapAndLeonard cast… What is “MOJO?” pic.twitter.com/w9b32DqcjQ— Hap and Leonard (@HapAndLeonard) March 15, 2017