Jeremy Renner on channelling Hawkeye’s archery skills for Mayor Of Kingstown
The Marvel vet says he's back to his old bow tricks on his new Paramount+ series
TV Features Jeremy Renner
Though Jeremy Renner has been a hard-working and lauded actor for years, for a lot of Marvel stans, he’ll always be the Avengers’ Hawkeye. That’s why it’s pretty funny that, within the first few episodes of Renner’s dark new Paramount Plus series, Mayor Of Kingstown, he somehow manages to pick up a bow.
Renner says the irony wasn’t lost on him, either. As he told us in a recent video interview, he was so concerned with the Hawkeye connections that he asked the show’s creators “Do you really need me to have a bow? How about a crossbow instead?”
Renner says part of his anti-bow argument came from that fact that his character, Mike McLusky, is a sort of fixer working to connect incarcerated people with those on the outside. An ex-con himself, he has always lived and worked in the fictional Michigan city of Kingstown, which doesn’t have a whole lot of wildlife. He has a cabin in the woods, but that doesn’t mean he’s a big outdoors guy.
As Renner explains, he made the case for the crossbow because, “This guy’s a city guy. He’s out there living in the woods for peace. He’s probably not very good with this kind of stuff, anyway.” Renner also says, to the show’s credit, that the props department made the gesture of offering to show him how to shoot a bow, though he kindly declined because, duh, he’s Hawkeye.
One other perk of working on Mayor Of Kingstown, Renner says, was the fact that the show only just finished shooting its first season a month or so ago, meaning Renner won’t have to wait months and months for material he’s shot to see the light of day—unlike with some of his other more “heroic” parts. “It’s exciting,” he says, saying the show is still fresh in his brain.
He continues, “It’s exciting also because the Hawkeye show will be coming out as well. So it’s just it’s just a really good time.”
Mayor Of Kingstown premieres November 14 on Paramount Plus and will drop new episodes every Sunday. The first two episodes of Hawkeye hit Disney Plus on November 24, with an episode dropping weekly for the four weeks following.
11 Comments
I feel like they’ve made a rod for their own backs with that title, when every conversation about the show has to start with: “No, not Mare of Easttown, that critically-acclaimed show that everyone loved last year. No, it’s not related to it. No, we don’t have Jean Smart…”
Wait, so this isn’t in the MCU (Mare Cinematic Universe)?
HAWK GUY
Does he know this site has been using him as a punching bag the past couple years?
He’s laughing all the way to the bank.
BRING BACK THE JEREMY RENNER APP YOU COWARDS!
Hey whatever Renner, just please for the love of all that is holy, no singing !
Does anyone other than me remember the TV series he did with Amber Tamblyn where he played a cop? It only lasted one season, but I developed a bit of a crush on him from that.
the TV series he did with Amber Tamblyn It was called The Unusuals, I think. It was quite good. Had a kind of Hooperman vibe to it: A cop show with humor, but not completely a comedy.And now I want to figure out how to watch Hooperman somehow. Well, I guess it’s on DVD and probably some library in the country has it. I hope it’s as good as I remember.
I’m glad you liked it too. If we find one more, we can organize a club.
Hopefully, he got some archery lessons for the Hawkeye show.