NEW YORK (AP) — Author and screenwriter Dennis Lehane has a healthy respect for the power of fire. He learned that the hard way — surviving a house fire in Boston in his 30s.
Lehane was living on the top floor of an apartment building when a propane tank on the roof exploded and started a blaze. The landlord was replacing the building’s smoke detectors at the time so none were working. Lehane is lucky to be alive and he credits, in part, the flames.
“If you’re trapped in fire — if you wake up and the building you’re in is on fire — it’s up to the fire at that point. It’s really up to whims of the fire, whatever’s going to happen to you. And I find that lack of control fascinating.”
Lehane, whose literary canon includes the novels-turned-movie hits “Gone, Baby, Gone” and “Mystic River,” has turned to fire for his latest project — Apple TV+’s new nine-episode crime drama “Smoke.” It debuts Friday.
The story of ‘Smoke’
It’s based on the true story of a former arson investigator who was convicted in 1998 of serial arson, captured in part after he wrote a novel about a firefighter who was a serial arsonist. The case — chronicled in the 2021 podcast Firebug — sparked something in Lehane.
“I just thought, that’s just the height of craziness. Like, you’re not only in denial about who you are, you’re so far in denial you’re going to write a book about what a great guy you are and then use the fires that you set as the models for the fires in your book?” he says. “I can get in the zip code of that mindset; I cannot land on the street, though.”
The show marks a reunion between Lehane, Greg Kinnear and Taron Egerton, who previously worked together on the 2022 Apple TV+ series “Black Bird.” It also stars Jurnee Smollett, Anna Chlumsky and John Leguizamo, and boasts an original, eerie song by Radiohead’s Thom Yorke called “Dialing In.”
Egerton plays Dave Gudsen, an arson investigator in Umberland, a fictional town in the Pacific Northwest, who is chasing two separate firebugs. He’s teamed up with a smart but troubled detective played by Smollett, who begin a game of cat and mouse.
If the setup sounds like it leads to a typical TV procedural, viewers who stick around get rewarded by a show that gets weirder and more complex, infused by Lehane’s attraction to moral ambiguity.
“We walk with contradictions and I think that’s the dramatic irony that Dennis is exploring.” says Smollett. “These people are saying they’re fighting to do the right thing and yet they’re morally questionable. I think that’s very relevant today.”
Goofy and frightening
Egerton in a scene from “Smoke.” (Apple TV+ via AP)
Edgerton’s Dave, it’s soon clear, is not who he appears to be and has an almost superhuman ability to compartmentalize aspects of his personal and private lives. He is both bombastic and insecure, goofy and frightening.
“Taron has endless reservoirs of talent to draw on. He’s an extremely inspired actor,” says Lehane. “He comes at it from the same place I come at it, which is Taron won’t take a role unless some part of it scares him. I won’t tell a story unless some of it scares me.”
Egerton said he relished a chance to show a different side of himself, rebelling a little at his safe, good-guy public persona after the success of his heroic turn in 2024’s “Carry-On.”
“You know what? I’m not that affable. I am sometimes, but I’m not some of the time,” he says, laughing. “I think the thing I love about Dave is there is a tension between what the perception of him is and who he really is. And how can you ever really know who a person is?”
Adding to the series’ allure is some of Lehane’s street poetry, like the line: “Whatever you do, whatever you know, however much lifetime wisdom you’ve accrued, fire puts a lie to it all.”
Playing with fire
Egerton and Smollett in a scene from “Smoke.” (Apple TV+ via AP)
Smollett was onboard after an initial conversation with Lehane in which he said: “So many of us say we want to be happy and yet we are drawn to the very thing that will destroy us.” That was Smollett’s entry point to her gloriously messy character.
Smollett’s detective, a former Marine, refuses to be vulnerable, is excellent at her job, traumatized by a past experience with arson and not afraid to mess with anyone. Early on, she is shown using a sledgehammer to her own home.
“She plays with fire,” says Smollett. “She’s living on the edge and has this mask and this guard up and walks around as if she’s invincible because she’s really just afraid.”
Lehane says with “Smoke” he’s drawn to people who invest in a narrative of who they choose to be rather than be true to who they really are.
“You don’t know who they are because they don’t know who they are,” he says. “They’re running from themselves, they’re running from their true selves. And I felt like that’s the interesting story here I’m trying to tell.”
