24's Finest Hours
Season 5 rocked our world ( and Emmy's). Now. Kiefer Sutherland puts Jack Bauer on the couch-and reveals what's next for TV's most pulse-pounding show.
Kiefer Sutherland can't pinpoint the exact moment Jack Bauer became a living, breathing creature, but he thinks it happened sometime around Day 4.
"Before that, people would come up and say, 'I love this movie you did' or ' I love you work,' but suddenly I was getting, ' I love Jack Bauer,'" he says during an interview in Hollywood.
Dressed in expensive-looking jeans and a white T-shirt, Sutherland looks happier and better rested than the counterterrorism agent he plays on 24, but then again, who doesn't? It probably helps that the show, coming off its most succesful ratings season yet, is up for 12 Emmys, the most nominations for any TV series. Sutherland landed his fifth straight nomination for lead actor in a drama, a feat he insists he's only partly responsible for. " Sometimes it's like I have nothing to do with Jack Bauer anymore," he says with a most un-Bauerlike grin. " It's almost like I've become a coduit or his brother or something."
After five sleepless seasons spent averting Armageddon after sweaty Armageddon, Jack Bauer has secured his place in the panheon of TV characters whose influence extends beyond prime time. In a post 9-11 age, Jack is a new archetype of American fearlessness, an unwavering force for unsettled times, a guy you want to be ( or be with) when the Homeland Security level turns bloodred. As 24 Exec Producer Howard Gordon says, without irony. " Jack suffers to save the rest of us, and that makes him a hero to all mankind." Or as Sutherland puts it, " When the NY Times starts talking about what Jack Bauer would do, you know you're in a very weird territory."
Fresh from his first script meeting for the sixth season, which premieres on FOX in Jan., Sutherland, 39, kicks up his snakeskin cowboy boots and lights a cigarette before tackling a mission even CTU might shy away from-figuring out what makes Jack tick.
The analysis begins with a confession: "I'm terrifed to get back into Jack Bauer's world again. I could never do what he does, not even close," Sutherland says. " Sometimes I think, 'Thank God I'm not the one running around trying to save the world." And yet, Sutherland says he has grown "increasingly connected to Jack" emotionally, even as nearly every other character on 24 has betrayed him, drifted away, or died.
Day 5 in particular seperated Jack from the corps of humanity. Beginning the season under an alias as an oil rig day laborer outside LA, Jack would soon say adios to three of the four people who knew he was alive, including former president David Palmer and perhaps his most loyal CTU ally, Tony Almeida. As 24 director Jon Cassar says, " Last season was a process of slowly eliminating everyone close to Jack." Jokes Sutherland," The actors realized they shouldn't stand too close to me for a long period of time because it would mean they're probably going to get it."
Jack also wound up killing his mentor, Christopher Henderson, after Henderson went renegade. Then, with another international crisis seemingly over, Jack had a passionate reunion-lingering kiss and all-with superdevoted DOD liaison Audrey Raines, only to disappear at days end into Chinese custody.
Where does that leave 24? " Well start with Jack next season at the lowest point anybody's ever seen him," Sutherland says, explaining that Day 6 opens two months into his Chinese incarceration. " Jack has always dealt with situations where other people's lives are in danger. Now it's all about saving his own butt, and there's a lot of " I don't care about me. Do what you will.'"
Sometimes it shocks Sutherland how grim and isolated Jack's existence has become. " We watched a retrospective clip around the time of the 100th episode and there was a scene from one of the first 24 episodes that showed a lightness in Jack's eyes, his voice, that you don't see now," he says. Back then, " Jack still had hope for a life, not just catching the bad guys. As an actor and as a fan of Jack's, you have to believe-despite the terror and the evil that men do-that he can have his family and love and his life back one day. That's the real push and pull in the context of this character for me."
Nowhere is that push and pull better illustrated than in Jack's tortured relationship with Audrey. " Jack's burning desire to be with her is counterbalanced by the reality that he's about to go away again," Sutherland says. So in their big kissing scene, Sutherland played it two steps forward, one giant leap back. As he puts it " For Jack, it was, ' I want you, I want you...no-o-o." Then there was Jack's Day 5 battle with Henderson, another emotional seesaw. " Jack had this incredible respect for their history together but it was combined with absolute hatred for what Henderson was doing," he says. " Jack was on the fence psychologically every scene they had together."
All of which results in a multilayered character that never loses its freshness for Sutherland, who was initially skeptical about committing to series television after years as a film actor. " I found something in Jack that pushes me to be a better actor, maybe even a better person," he says. " I'm embarased to think I once said I wouldn't want to play the same character for five years."
The power of being Jack Bauer hits Sutherland in the unlikliest places. He was skiing once in British Columbia when a stranger on his chairlift saw past Sutherland's goggles, hat and scarf.
" The guy whispers to me, 'I know who you are,'" Sutherland says, 'and I don't ever tell anybody this, but I'm in counter-terrorism, too. And one day you're going to have to call my mother, who always says, ' Why can't you work as fast as Jack Bauer and get home for the holidays?'" Sutherland took it as 'a really polite way of saying, " I love your show but you have no idea what it's like to do this for a living."
Sutherland keeps the pin the man gave him as a reminded that Jack is, above all, a flawed hero, a character as much in search for himself as he is on a quest to keep the world safe. Altough some have argued that Jack is a Machiavellian personality willing to do anything-decieve, cheat, even murder-to achieve his objectives, it's those moments of unthinkable action that Sutherland says showcase Jacks superior set of values.
Take the situation in Season 2 when Jack ordered his own daughter to murder the pyscho father of the kid she was nannying as a lesson in self defense. Or the following season when Jack killed one of his CTU higher ups to stop the spead of a deadly virus. Or, near the end of Day 4, when Jack let his then-girlfriend Audrey's estranged husband die in order to save a witness who had vital information about an imminent terrorist strike. Sutherland cites those as among his favorite Jack Bauer moments because they 'cut to the heart of his convictions, of sacrificing ten to save a hundred" while also defining Jack as a character riddled with questions about his decesions. " Jack will never reconcile with the things he has done, the mistakes he has made, the cruely he has to impose," Sutherland says, really thinking about it. "But what's so cool is the way he keeps going."
Occasionally, Sutherland imagines himself meeting up with Bauer somewhere, and he doesn't exactly relish the idea. " I think if Jack took a vacation, he'd immediately have the sort of meltdown we see Martin Sheen having at the start of 'Apocalyspe Now.' The only thing that keeps Jack from being a total sociopath is that he doesn't stop."
What Sutherland would like to see is a slow return to the lightness Jack exhibited in that first season. As an actor he says, he has to believe Jack will eventually "stop running, stop working so hard and maybe fall in love."
Whoa! Jack Bauer settling down? What would that look like? Jack and Audrey can't seem to keep things going. And while his CTU pal Chloe seemingly has the hots for Jack, they just aren't compatible. " If it weren't for her incredible loyalty, not to mention truly gifted computer skills, Jack wouldn't give her the time of day," Sutherland says.
So what kind of woman would be right for Jack Bauer?
Sutherland lets out a long stream of cigarette smoke and smiles.
" A really fast one," he says. "Whoever Jack ends up with, she'll have to be a really quick runner."
