In Season 2 of “The Old Man,” Jeff Bridges and John Lithgow address aging: NPR

In The old manJeff Bridges plays Dan Chase and John Lithgow plays Harold Harper.

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About the series from FX The old manIn “The 40 Fingers,” Jeff Bridges and John Lithgow play a kind of “frenemies” – men who worked together and clashed in the world of intelligence, but were eventually forced to join forces.

But in real life, the chemistry of their friendship is palpable, watching the two actors sit next to each other, making witty remarks and swapping stories – especially when Bridges describes how, after a cancer and COVID diagnosis a few years ago, he wondered if he would live long enough to finish filming the show's first season.

“I didn't think I could do it,” Bridges says, his typically light-hearted demeanor turning serious for a moment. “Slowly but surely, I started setting small goals for myself… walking my daughter Hayley was a big goal. along the wedding aisle [in 2022]…I trained as if it were almost a sporting event.”

Lithgow says Bridges' email updates during this time weren't so encouraging, but he always had faith that his co-star would find a way back.

“Something inside me thought this show was exactly what he needed,” Lithgow adds. “He needs the 'hay in the barn.' He needs something to really work and fight for, because he really loves this show.”

Lithgow also admits there's a slightly selfish reason he wants Bridges back to finish work on the first season and start a second. “If you remember, he and I could barely work together. [in the first season]”, says Lithgow. “I thought, ‘Damn it, Bridges, you’re coming back here and playing with me. You’re the reason I wanted to do this show.'”

A buddy drama about fatherhood

In fact, the show's second season is something of a quirky buddy drama in which Bridges' Dan Chase – a retired CIA agent – discovers that an old ally turned enemy has kidnapped his adult daughter Emily, played by Alia Shawkat.

Chase must team up with Harold Harper, Lithgow's former FBI Assistant Director, who was once Emily's mentor – even though Harper tried to hunt down and kill Chase in season 1. These uneasy allies travel to Afghanistan to rescue Emily, and must confront their own troubled pasts along the way.

“What comes to mind is love,” Bridges says. “You think of fathers who love their daughters. Love isn't just cupcakes and Valentine's Day and stuff. There's a dark side to love…interestingly woven into the story.”

Alia Shawkat as Emily, Dan Chase's daughter.

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Lithgow sounds like the greatest theater kid in the world and compares Emily's divided loyalties to storylines in the musical Mummy Mia!but admits that her show features some of the most dysfunctional father figures on television.

“One of them was planning to murder the other, the other found out, realized why it had to happen and basically said, let's move on,” Lithgow says, laughing. “They both know what each of them is capable of because they're in this hair-raising profession.”

Bridges sees it as a balancing act for men who are dedicated to a cause and willing to do anything to achieve it. “You're talking about extreme characters… To be a spy and to work in this business, you have to be ruthless on the one hand, but you also have to be empathetic on the other. And I think that's something we can all relate to. We all have egos and we all have compassion – and how we balance the two… that's fascinating.”

Exploring and redefining the figure of the “old man”

Watching Bridges maneuver through fight scenes, The old manit's hard to imagine he was ever ill during filming. Chase takes on assassins and spies half his age with skill and ferocity, showing that age doesn't necessarily mean weakness or passivity.

One reason the show resonates differently: While each of its characters could be seen as the titular “old man” – figures who struggle in different ways with regret, aging, fatherhood and family – in real life, Bridges and Lithgow also seem to embody the freedom and challenges some artists have experienced in embracing their age in Hollywood.

But to the suggestion that they might determine how to age gracefully in show business, Lithgow, 78, disagrees. “You'd be surprised how few decisions are required in an actor's career,” he adds. “You wait for people to want you, and … they have to want you for very specific reasons. Well, they wanted me to play a bunch of old men … It turns out they need a lot of old men, and there aren't a lot of old men.”

Over the years, Lithgow has shown a wide range: from the role of a transsexual ex-football player in the Oscar-nominated film The world from Garp's perspective to the inhabitation of an undercover alien in the sitcom Just behind the moonBut more recently he has gained recognition for portraying older figures such as Winston Churchill in The CrownFox News' Roger Ailes in the film bomb And King Lear on stage.

“You spend a lot of your career hoping people don't notice that you're getting older or trying to look younger,” he says. “And now half the roles I've played are men older than I am because I still have the strength to do it.”

Jeff Bridges as Dan Chase.

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At 74, Bridges is a little more philosophical, saying there's a bright side to the memory problems that can come with age. “There's something fresh about age, a kind of 'how do I do this?'” he says, a hint of wonder in his voice. “You don't really know what you're capable of until you're tested. If life calls you to do it, let's find out… let's go.”

And has that sense of being tested impacted Bridges' survival of COVID and cancer? “The gift of all the things you're afraid of that could happen to you… they're gifts, and you don't realize it until you experience it,” he says, noting that he was surprised by his own reaction to the diagnosis when it was still bad.

“When someone told me, 'I don't know if you can do it' or something like that, I wasn't that scared,” Bridges adds. “I think I would be more scared of doing a scene and not being able to pull it off.”