LOS ANGELES _ The chance to star in the new AT&T Audience Network series, "Mr. Mercedes," was a great opportunity for Brendan Gleeson. Although the Irish actor has been working professionally for almost three decades, he's best known for playing Alastor "Mad-Eye" Moody, a supporting character in the "Harry Potter" films.
The role of Bill Hodges in "Mr. Mercedes," the series based on the book by Stephen King that launches 8 p.m. Wednesday, on the streaming service, would give him the chance to play a retired police detective haunted by one of the last cases in his long career. He was never able to figure out the identity of a man who called himself Mr. Mercedes, a reference to the car he stole to drive through a crowd at a job fair, killing 16.
There's a tight race going on as to whether the ex-detective's excessive weight, endless drinking or the taunting by the killer will be the chief cause of his death. The only thing keeping him going is a lustful neighbor (Holland Taylor) and a caring client (Mary Louise-Parker).
It's a very deep and complicated starring role. All that was holding Gleeson back was the part of the story about how the people were killed. The actor feared that by showing the incident on screen, it might give someone an idea to commit a real-life version of the story King wrote.
It wasn't until Gleeson got to talk to King that he felt a bit of relief about taking on the role. Gleeson says King told him he the idea for the sequence in the book was based on a real incident where someone had driven into a line of people.
"So it has been taken from life into art. And I was uneasy about the notion of putting this out there as I said, 'Well, anybody can get into a car.' But actually, it already has existed and has been out there," Gleeson says. "All of this has been happening."
The King discussion was comforting but it was a talk Gleeson had with Jack Bender _ an executive producer of the short series along with David E. Kelly _ that convinced Gleeson it would be OK to take on the role. From the start, Bender was certain Gleeson was the perfect person to play the burned out detective and King fully agreed.
"Mr. Mercedes" starts with the horrific act but quickly shifts to looking at a group of emotional damaged people brought together around this incident. During their conversation, Bender assured Gleeson that any violence in the production would not be done for titillation.
"This darkness is there, if we want to embrace it. This terror is there. The horror is there, if you want to embrace it. Hodges is very tempted to embrace it and to go into that dark place. Mary Louise's character is one of the people who is hugely instrumental in taking him out and breathing hope and all of that positivity," Gleeson says.
Everything is set in motion by Brady Hartsfield (Harry Treadaway), a demented killer who splits his time between taunting the retired detective with letters and messages through his computer and working as both a computer technician and operator of an ice cream truck. Both jobs give him access to the people he targets. The work also gets him away from home where his lives with his mother (Kelly Lynch) who shows an unnatural attraction for her son.
Treadaway, who portrayed Dr. Victor Frankenstein in "Penny Dreadful," calls the character of Brady Hartsfield the creepiest character he had read in a long time.
"Reading the book, I did have to pinch myself at times to believe that, A, I was going to be involved in bringing it to life and also to be able to play such a deliciously disturbed character as Brady," Treadaway says. "It was fascinating and sad and weird reading about all the children who kill and people who have no empathy. To try and do a two-month crash course on psychopathy and try and watch as many documentaries and try and get under the skin of someone like that and not to judge in a weird way, which was a tricky element of that because, obviously, he does some heinous things, but to try and understand the roots and the anchors of that and to try and justify it to myself.
"But it was wildly fun and slightly strange, and I found myself watching TV shows in the evening which had no empathy to keep me on a sort of even simmer."
Those shows included "Shark Tank," "Fox News" and "UFC."
Gleeson applauds the work Treadaway and the rest of the cast has done with the very emotional charged story.
"There's a certain amount of the fearlessness that's in the whole project, about going to look at the protagonist, the person who is causing the mayhem. Not only are you looking at the effect of what his actions are, but also, you have to go back into how they came about," Gleeson says. "And you kind of really feel as if you are looking at stuff that's really important, that has ramifications in the world.
"It's wonderful to know that from the effect side of it, that the causal side of it is dealt with equal humanity and that you are suddenly brought into a place where you empathize with people who do horrible deeds. The very first step to a solution is where you empathize with the person who does the horrible deed and try and figure it out. And what's great, gives the show real importance, is that we are looking at the hard stuff. It's not just the victims. It's everybody is a victim. It's the beginning, I think, of understanding. Which is a truly artistic pursuit."
It's an artistic approach that Gleeson could face at least two more times. If "Mr. Mercedes" gets enough viewers, the streaming services would adapt the other two books in the trilogy series that King calls his first attempt at writing about a hardboiled detective.
The Audience Network can be seen through DirecTV, AT&T U-verse and DirecTV Now.
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
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