‘Leverage: Redemption’: Christian Kane Explains Why Eliot Can Never Be Redeemed
Q&A
After the Leverage: Redemption Season 2 finale, executive producer Dean Devlin told us that Christian Kane would say that his character, hitter Eliot Spencer, could never be redeemed. He was right.
While the last episode we saw of the Freevee series (in January) saw grifter Sophie (Gina Bellman) face her past and let go of her guilt, Eliot didn’t think he’d ever get to that point, not with what he’s done. And Kane agrees. When TV Insider spoke with Kane recently, we asked him about that, the future of the show (it has yet to be renewed or canceled), and much more.
Is there any word on a Season 3 of Leverage: Redemption?
Christian Kane: We have no idea. The writers’ strike has really put us — there’s nothing anybody can do right now, you know what I mean? Everybody’s hands are sort of tied with this thing. So we’re still sort of waiting to hear what’s going to go on with that.
At the end of Season 2, Eliot didn’t think he’d ever be redeemed. What would it take to change his mind about that?
I’m so glad you asked that question. People don’t realize it — you’d have to go back pretty deep — but he used to work for a company pretty much like Blackwater. He also worked for Damien Moreau [Goran Visnjic]. Eliot’s a serial killer. He’s killed a lot of people — sometimes for money, sometimes because they deserved it, but he’s killed a lot of people — and there’s no way that he’s ever going to be able to redeem himself for that. I mean, those were lives he took. And we don’t really get that dark on Leverage because we love our fans and we have adults, we have kids, and we have a lot of families that watch this show together as a family. So you never want to get that deep into his story. But if you add it all up and you actually listen to the dialogue and pick pieces out of it all, Eliot’s a serial killer. He’s killed a lot of people and there’s just no way to he’ll ever be redeemed for that.
Yeah, because he tells Parker (Beth Riesgraf) not to ask what he did for Damien Moreau.
Yeah, and he [told her], “Don’t ask me because if you do, I’m going to tell you.” That’s basically taking care of our fans so that they don’t absolutely hate Eliot, but at the same time, letting them know we were all bad guys, but he might have been one of the worst. So there is no redemption for him.
Sam Lothridge/Amazon Freevee
Can Eliot ever make a relationship work?
I don’t know. Honestly, I don’t know if Eliot’s ever going to be able to make a relationship work with someone because he’s never — you know what? It would be fun. It would be so much fun for the writers to try to put that together with someone that actually is worth his salt in history. Because at some point for him to ever make anything work, he would have to tell them the true story, otherwise, he’s never going to get to be himself. And I don’t think anything would ever work unless he was able to be himself. And so it would take a very, very special person to come in. You’d have to hire Maggie Q or somebody like that. So there you go. [Laughs]
If there is a third season of Leverage: Redemption, what would you like to explore with Eliot?
I really like where they went this year. They did a really lot of good stuff. That would be something that would be fun is if he could ever actually open up and tell someone about his past. And that’s great about being on Freevee and Amazon, is that we have a little bit more, well, leverage, pun intended and no pun intended, to where we could get a little bit deeper and maybe get a little bit darker with what really happened with Eliot. We know his backstory with his father now, but we don’t know what he was like in the war. We know that he went to war. The one thing we’ve never touched on, not once, except for little snippets with the Moreau story, is what he did in between the war and when you saw him in the pilot.
Speaking of his father, talk about finally getting to explore that relationship with his dad. Because you and Keith David were so good together.
Well, it’s really funny because we had come up with this idea literally in the first season. We always thought it would be funny if Eliot was adopted because Dean loves — we’re all broken toys, you know what I mean? And I think why you rooted for it so hard right off the bat is because we’re all broken toys and we’re looking to get fixed. And so we were always thinking that Eliot was adopted, his mom had probably passed. But we thought it’d be really great if we had a Black actor come in and play this role. We thought Hardison’s [Aldis Hodge] eyes would just bug out if he ever saw that, you know what I mean? And the years went by and the years went by and we kept it. I kept it as a backstory and I’d always bring it up.
I was talking about maybe Mr. T, something like that, which would’ve been fun. But I saw Keith David at an award show, and I walked up to him, I said, “Do you have a second?” And he goes, “You!” And I was like, “What?” And I just gave him a hug and I didn’t even realize what was going on. We just both ended up hugging each other. And I said, “I just want to tell you what a huge fan I am.” He goes, “Dude, I’m a huge fan.” Turns out he is a huge Leverage fan. And I couldn’t say much about it at the time, but I said, “Dude, I have something for you. I cannot tell you what it is, but if I call you, would you be interested?” He said, “Call me.”
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So me and Dean hashed it out. We talked about it. The storyline was absolutely perfect. Dean wrote it. It was great. Dean directed it. And I made the call, and listen, is he worth more money than we paid him? 100 percent. But he came in and he did me a favor, and I couldn’t thank him enough the whole time. I said, “I’ve been working on this backstory in my head for over 10 years, man, way over 10 years. And you came in and just put everything together for me, man. And it was just perfect.”
It was so much fun because a lot of that emotional stuff, my dad had recently passed, and I wasn’t going to get that emotional when I saw him, but he got emotional, and everybody thought that it was because of my dad. It really honestly wasn’t. It was because I was acting with him and he was giving me what I needed, and I really wanted to show Eliot in such a different light that we had never seen him. It was important to me, and it was strange. I was literally embarrassed on set because of the emotions that we had, which was right on the money of what I wanted to do.
And it made for such a great episode.
Yeah. I mean, if it’s Christian Kane, I’m giving Keith David a hug, I’ll probably tear up a little bit right now. I don’t care about that crap. But as playing a character, as Eliot, when I turned around to them, I was literally embarrassed. And I just thought, if I’m embarrassed right now, that means I did it right.
You brought up Damien Moreau, and when I spoke with Dean about the Season 2 finale, I told him I want to see Damien again if there’s a third season. And you talking about seeing Eliot possibly opening up to someone, I feel like that would be the worst time for Damien to come back into his life, which would make for great television…
You know what? That’s fantastic. Goran is such a good actor. He’s such a nice guy in real life, but he’s actually menacing on screen if he’s playing a bad guy. That would be fantastic. The wrong time to come back, I love that. And now Eliot has to explain everything…
Leverage: Redemption, Seasons 1 and 2, Streaming Now, Freevee
