Jeremy Renner on Mayor of Kingstown return: “Do I want to go tell fictional stories? I’m worried about real life”

Last Updated on May 28, 2024

After Jeremy Renner was involved in a horrific accident in January 2023, many doubted that the actor would recover, let alone be able to return to work on his Paramount+ series Mayor of Kingstown. Renner had suffered blunt chest trauma and 30 broken bones after being hit and run over by a snowplow on his property. He told Good Morning America that he was too “worried about real life” to think about working on the series but explained that there was a “perspective I had to shift” to make it happen.

“I had to cross the threshold of, ‘Do I want to go tell fictional stories?’ I’m worried about real life — putting a foot in front of another to walk,” Renner said. “I think what happened is we just switched the thinking of the whole thing. I didn’t go to Pittsburgh to film Mayor of Kingstown, I went to go in my recovery and then Kingstown was kind of on the side.“

Renner added that the third season of Mayor of Kingstown will have “more emotional, intimate” moments that offer the actor a “reprieve” from the intensity of past seasons. “There’s more sentiment to it, because I think I sort of had to bring it in a little bit, just because of where I was at in my life,” Renner explained. “Mike McLusky is still pretty aggro, but I think he’s a little softer as well, just sort of ’cause I had to play him.” The actor did admit that he had to change his approach to the series. “My mind thinks I’m like, perfect. My body is saying, ‘Dude, you’re a hot mess! Chill out, pump the breaks, man!’,” Renner said. “But again, nothing is wrong with my brain, even though it got crushed.“

The official synopsis for the third season of Mayor of Kingstown: “A series of explosions rock Kingstown and its citizens, as a new face of the Russian mob sets up shop in the city, and a drug war rages inside and outside prison walls. The pressure is on Mike McLusky (Renner) to end the war but things get complicated when a familiar face from his incarcerated past threatens to undermine the Mayor’s attempts to keep the peace among all factions.” The new season will debut on Paramount+ on June 2nd.