The Terminal List: Dark Wolf Brings Taylor Kitsch Front And Centre ‘With No Leash’

“I need a fucking rom-com tomorrow,” Taylor Kitsch tells Empire. The actor is not one to shy away from roles that push him to the edge. The Friday Night Lights alumnus has built a career on playing men who more often than not have been through the wars, whether it’s an ill-fated Navy SEAL in Peter Berg’s tense war movie Lone Survivor, a veteran-turned-cop in True Detective Season 2 or another tormented SEAL, Ben, in Prime Video’s conspiracy-thriller series The Terminal List.

Kitsch now returns to his character for The Terminal List: Dark Wolf, a prequel spin-off that sees him take over the lead role from co-star Chris Pratt. It’s a transition that required him to go through his own personal war, during a particularly intense period which saw him go from playing a mountain man in the brutal, 1850s-set western series American Primeval to returning to Ben in just a matter of days. “I broke my foot and got a bone cut out on Primeval — it just beat the shit out of me,” he recalls. “Then I had ten days off [before shooting Dark Wolf], so I was trying to gain weight and prep. Luckily I had played Ben before and I helped to write [the new show], so I knew where we were going.”

"Let's see what we're capable of doing with no leash."

Where they were going was back to the events leading up to The Terminal List, which initially follows an ambushed Navy SEAL platoon lead by Pratt’s Lieutenant Commander James Reece, and his consequent mission for revenge and justice. Pratt joins Kitsch in the prequel, which sees Ben stripped of his trident after a split-second decision, and forced to join CIA Special Operations. His new secret espionage missions lead him into the criminal underbelly of warfare.

Terminal List introduced Ben as a morally complicated character with some murky motives hidden up his sleeve as he works with Pratt’s character to uncover what happened to their fallen friends. It paved the way for a backstory that, for Kitsch, was ripe for exploring further. “I love living in that grey [area],” he summarises. That mentality helped to drive the new story when cooking up the spin-off with Pratt and the show’s showrunner David DiGilio. “We would always say, ‘We’ve got to Ben-ify this. What would Ben do?’” The result is a series that sees his trigger-happy SEAL go to extreme lengths with less authority types keeping him in-check. “He's got a line in [the series], where he wants to know the rules of engagement. And they say, ‘flexible’,” Kitsch says. “To him, that means: ‘Let's see what we're capable of doing with no leash.’”

Less red tape means more room to play in Dark Wolf. “[It’s] a fucking gong show,” laughs Kitsch, deploying some native Canadian slang to describe the series’ high-octane chaos, which involves slick nightclub showdowns and explosive city set pieces. It feels like a project that has been a career-in-the-making, with the actor continuing his journey with a tight-night community of vets that he’s accumulated along the way. He names Ray Mendoza – the former Navy SEAL who recently co-wrote and directed Warfare with Alex Garland – as a long-time influence on his performances, including Ben. “He trained me for Lone Survivor, True Detective, and four other projects, and was on [Terminal List] Season 1,” Kitsch explains. “He’s a brother of mine, [as is] Marcus Luttrell, the lone survivor. I think there’s so much more to be said, and for me to shine a light on the dark side of service is important.” Given the mission that this man is on, that rom-com may have to wait.

The Terminal List: Dark Wolf comes to Prime Video from 27 August