‘Tulsa King’: Robert Patrick on Why Dunmire May Be Willing to Sacrifice His Son for the Bourbon

[Warning: The following post contains spoilers for Tulsa King Season 3 Episode 4, “Staring Down the Barrel.”]

The Fifty has been a bit of a hot potato on Tulsa King. First, it belonged to the Montagues and stayed hidden in their cellars for almost half a century. Then Dwight Manfredi (Sylvester Stallone) and his crew took possession of the valuable bourbon stockade, before Cole Dunmire (Beau Knapp) swiped it for his father, Jeremiah (Robert Patrick). Then, in Sunday’s (October 12) new episode, Dwight came to reclaim it … at gunpoint.

After the booze, so named for its 50-year age, was stolen from Tyson (Jay Will), who’d been entrapped in a compromising position by an adult dancer in Cole’s employ, the doting son was all too happy to show off his achievement to his father. As ignoble as Cole might be, watching him desperately hope that his father might give him an ounce of acknowledgement, only for Jeremiah’s gratitude to go to “the Lord” instead, was still a bit sad. Worse, when Dwight held Cole up at gunpoint and threatened to end his life if his dad didn’t turn over the goods, Jeremiah hesitated.

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“As the season builds, their relationship just gets darker and darker…. He’s willing to sacrifice Cole for the booze, so we can see where his father’s just lost, in a way. He doesn’t care about him. He doesn’t care about his future or his dreams or anything like that,” Beau Knapp explained to TV Insider. “This is supposed to be the greatest accomplishment of his life. It’s heartbreaking.”

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As a result, viewers might wonder whether Jeremiah might’ve been serious when he said, while Cole was still held up under threat of immediate death, that the only son he worshipped was Jesus Christ. Was he really willing to lose his son over the liquid gold? According to the actor portraying him, maybe so.

“In a way, I think that Jeremiah might have been willing to sacrifice his son for that,” Robert Patrick mused. “And that’s biblical…. Obviously, the Lord is first with Jeremiah, and if the Lord told him to sacrifice his son, he would. So maybe, in his warped sort of perception, he would very well sacrifice Cole. Hard to believe.”

As for why Jeremiah continues to treat Cole like a pariah, rather than his only living heir, well, Patrick’s perception of it is that it’s a family tradition in the Dunmire brood.

Of the character’s backstory, he guessed, “I think it’s a combination of the way Jeremiah was raised by his father and his grandfather, and that’s the situation. I always go back to this. This is a passed-on, generation to generation … And now that’s transferring on to Cole. And Cole, you’ll see [throughout] the season, it progresses, it gets worse. The disciplinarian actions that I put on him, thrust on him, are pretty severe. And you have to kind of assume that Jeremiah went through these same punishments. And I don’t think that he invented him himself for Cole. So Cole’s in a tough spot. He’s trying to win that approval from his dad, and he’s not going to get it. He’s a disappointment every step of the way.”

In the end, Jeremiah did relent, but this clash with Dwight over the Montague haul is far from over on Tulsa King.

Tulsa King, Sundays, Paramount+