LaToya Morgan remembers the day J.J. Abrams came up with the first scene of Duster, their new ‘70s-set crime drama co-created for HBO Max. They’d sat down to review a couple of scripts Morgan had written, and he described to her an image that he couldn’t get out of his head: a muscle car drives up to a lone phone booth in the middle of the desert, and out steps Josh Holloway to answer the ringing phone. Except that Abrams hadn’t just come up with that image — he’d had it in his head for 20 years. And it wasn’t until Morgan showed him her script for a neo-western crime thriller that Abrams found the perfect outlet.
“He was like, ‘That’s all I got. I don't know what's going on. What else? Anything else in there?" Morgan says. So they got to work building a concept for a show. Once they figured out a premise — a criminal getaway driver “on a collision course with this really tenacious up-and-coming FBI agent fresh out of Quantico” — they knew there was only one choice for the star: Lost star Josh Holloway.
“We wrote the show from the beginning with Josh in mind. There was no other person. It was always Josh,” Morgan tells Inverse.
Casting Holloway was a “no-brainer” for Morgan because, with his flowing hair and rugged good looks, he felt like he belonged in the ‘70s. And for Holloway, the prospect of working with Abrams again, 21 years after they’d first worked on the Lost pilot, was similarly a no-brainer.
“[Abrams] called me out of the blue, and before he could even finish his name, I was like, ‘Yes, J.J., yes. What are we doing?’” Holloway tells Inverse. “It was immediate, I wanted to do whatever he was pitching. And that was it.”
“He gets to run the gamut and do a lot of things that people have been wanting to see him do.”
Though it had been more than two decades since Holloway and Abrams had worked together, they immediately fell into their old rapport, Morgan says. “[They had] their shorthands, and that very easily translated over to me as well. Josh was very welcoming.”
Holloway hasn’t had a lead TV role since 2018, when the USA Network’s sci-fi series Colony ended. But anyone who’s seen Holloway in Lost, or in brief supporting roles in Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol and Yellowstone, knows he’s a charismatic actor who’s long deserved his own starring vehicle. Morgan is confident Duster is that vehicle.
“He was very excited to be in the show where he's going to get to drive fast, he's going to get to shoot guns, he's going to get to also be vulnerable with his family,” Morgan says. “He gets to run the gamut and do a lot of things that people have been wanting to see him do.”
Holloway, for his part, was excited to do his own driving. As soon as he learned about the role from Abrams, he enrolled in stunt driving school online, and “proceeded to teach for myself or be taught every trick in the book that they would allow me to do,” he says. Holloway is clearly proud of some of the stunts he gets to pull off in Duster; one required him to spin the car after the tires were blown up in the back, sweeping dust all around him. “The fact they let me do that is insane,” Holloway beams.
Equally as important to Duster is Holloway’s co-lead, the first Black female FBI agent, who seeks to bring down a powerful crime syndicate in the Southwest with the help of Holloway’s troubled getaway driver. Abrams and Morgan had Holloway in mind from the get-go, but the challenge was finding his perfect counterpart. The part of Nina ultimately went to Rachel Hilson, best known for Hulu’s Love, Victor.
“We sort of blended them all together and added our own wild, insane, crazy ideas and just came up with this new thing.”
“We had to see hundreds of actresses, and we finally got a chance to see Rachel,” Morgan says. “And she just brought all this strength, and intelligence, and warmth, and that toughness that we needed for her character. She really shines in the show.”
Hilson dove into the role by researching the actual first Black FBI agent, Sylvia Mathis, with the help of the show’s FBI consultant, who was an agent in the ‘80s. But most important to Hilson was making the role her own.
“We did take some creative liberties there in pushing up the time when Black women could join,” Hilson tells Inverse. “But I think that Nina represents just the first of many Black women in a lot of different fields, in a lot of different predominantly white male fields. And that was cool to represent.”
Holloway and Hilson, and their crackling chemistry, are just part of the concoction that makes Duster such an engaging, stylish watch. The show oozes ‘70s style, with the influences of classic movies like The Godfather, Parallax View, Paper Moon, Sugarland Express, and Vanishing Point, all of which Morgan cites as inspirations for the show’s tone, apparent from every frame.
“There are so many great movies from that era, and we sort of blended them all together and added our own wild, insane, crazy ideas and just came up with this new thing, which hopefully people will enjoy,” Morgan says.
If enough people enjoy it, Duster could see a second season. “That is the hope!” Morgan says. “We hope that people dig this show and they want to see more. We definitely have a lot more that we planned out.”
