‘Tulsa King’: Gretchen Mol Reveals Amanda’s True Intentions With Dwight Manfredi

The latest episode of Tulsa King revealed what’s next in Amanda Clark’s (Gretchen Mol) cold war with Dwight Manfredi (Sylvester Stallone): She’s going to take over his ranch, which used to belong to Margaret Devereaux (Dana Delany), by eminent domain to put one of Bradley Van Heusen’s (Flula Borg) new data centers there.

This is just the latest in her series of attacks against the General’s enterprises after she sent goons to take down Higher Plane and got the Fifty dumped using her immense power as governor. Ostensibly, her goal is to send Dwight packing back to New York, but is there more to it than that?

To break down Amanda’s mindset, plans, and how she really felt about being confronted by Dwight in front of everyone at her big gala, TV Insider caught up with Gretchen Mol.

Amanda isn’t altogether a villain. On paper, she’s standing up against corruption and crime, taking on Dwight, who’s a criminal. But her reasons for doing so are twisted. So, how did you thread the needle in your performance where, on the surface, outside of this world, people would see her as a positive force?

Gretchen Mol: Yeah, honestly, that was my approach. You kind of have to be on the side of your character anyway. I think that you have to empathize and sympathize with them as much as you can in order to play them. So, even if someone turns out to be a villain or turns out to have moral ambiguity — not that she does, I’m not saying that she does — I think approaching her with this clarity of her intention, which is to get rid of the crime in Tulsa, that was really important, and that’s very clear to her. And that sort of becomes your guiding light, as they say, for the whole performance and the whole season, and then within that, sure, things happen, and decisions have to be made, and sometimes you sidestep or whatever, but that, to me, was where I started, and I kept my eye on that.

The data farming stuff is very, very topical right now!

Yes, how did he know!?

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It does seem a little bit prophetic that it would be such a hot issue. It also exposes the bit of corruption that she does have with Van Heusen with this pay-for-play moment. Can you just talk about her morals there? Because it seems like she’s at once going along with it, but also wants this to discontinue eventually.

Well, I do think that it’s just she has her eye on bringing down Dwight Manfredi. That’s where you start to see these decisions becoming more personal, kind of sticking it to him. It’s not just [business]. That’s where you start to see this little personal vendetta, a little bit, I think, in those decisions, in the way she’s handling that, which doesn’t feel entirely without emotion, let’s say. I think it’s easy enough [to succeed], if you’re rising above something and really trying, and I think that’s how she seemed at first. “We’re gonna get rid of the corruption.” Now, it feels like, “Oh, well, look, if I do this, then it’s sort of moving around the chess pieces to just turn the screw a little bit harder,” or get to him in an emotional way. Because of what the Fennario Ranch represents for him, to see her taking a little bit of pleasure in that just shows you another side of Amanda.

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We recently got to see him take a stand against her at the event for Van Heesen. Do you think she saw that coming, and when he left and said she had his full attention, do you think she was scared?

I think Amanda may underestimate who Dwight Manfred is. I’m not sure that she has the full picture of who he is. She didn’t watch Seasons 1 through 3, right? [Laughs] So she maybe thinks this will be easier and quicker than it turns out to be, and that also, seeing him get the works of the room, being able to sway the room a little bit with his confrontation, I don’t think she was expecting that at all. That really took her off guard. Yeah, I think that really rocked her.

It also turned the whole thing a little bit more personal because I think for someone like her, who was lieutenant governor, to then be put in this position — she steps into the role of governor, not expecting it at all — I imagine she’s been in many rooms where she was underestimated, not listened to. Now she’s got the full [command]. It’s kind of her moment, and so for someone to stand up and poke holes in it in public, it did become a little bit personal there, I think.

You mentioned that she didn’t see it coming. It seemed like she, in the first episode when Cal [Neal McDonough] turned her down on the data farming issue, had a plan. Do you think that’s true? To make it happen anyway?

I don’t think she knew that she would have the opportunity to. I think she was kind of ushering this in. I don’t know that she expected the cards or the dominoes to fall the way they have. But I think this relationship was already forming a little bit with Van Heusen, but I don’t think intentionally that she’s been in that much control of how things were going to turn out.

Yeah, in your imagination, if she hadn’t become governor, do you think she would have been dutiful to Cal, or do you think she would have kind of tried to run things behind the scenes? 

I think she was pretty judgmental about the way things were being run. I think she was really questioning that, and I think that frustrated her. But I think so. I think she would have gone along with it dutifully for some amount of time. But at the same time, I think she had her eyes wide open, and she was looking and could be looking for those kinds of opportunities to have to effect change.

Now, she’s going after the ranch that used to be owned by Margaret. What can you tease about that storyline and where we’re headed in the back half?

Only to say, well, it’s gonna get crazier. It’s gonna get wild…. There’s not too much more I can say about that. But it just opens up more opportunity for more conflict and confrontations.

Tulsa King, Fridays, Paramount+