Ozark | Trailer Park | Film News, Buzz & Rumours
NETFLIX’S UNFLINCHINGLY BLEAK CRIME DRAMA OZARK is returning for a second season, and with it comes more white-knuckle tension as we watch money launderer Marty Byrde and his family try to survive as white-collar criminals in the midst of the Missouri wilderness.
Jason Bateman stars as Byrde, but he’s also an executive producer and directed six episodes. That said, the show’s tone — which ingeniously pairs violence and mayhem with nuanced family drama — is a group effort. “I have an appetite for following the money, following the gun — I’m a typical caveman,” Bateman says. “I think more traditionally, the other sex will tolerate more heart and more character connection, and I kind of go numb to that stuff. But our head writer Chris Mundy is very disciplined about going, ‘You’re not really going to care who that gun kills if you don’t have a connection to that character and there isn’t an emotional investment made.’”
Laura Linney sees Ozark as a sandbox to explore the emotional depths of Marty’s wife Wendy. “She’s not a terribly mature human being,” she says. “She’s smart and she’s shrewd, but she’s reactive. And she’s impulsive. And she has very little control of herself…. And that’s fun to play.”
Although it’s not overtly political, Ozark exists in an era when many are reconsidering the so-called “flyover states” of America. “Marty Byrde came to the Ozarks from Chicago thinking he was going to ‘big city’ these guys, and he dangerously underestimated them,” Bateman says. “There is a parallel to that in our political climate right now.”
“I think how our country has shifted so drastically, politically, and the issues that have come up with people misunderstanding each other, and an adversarial sense of this country in a much more blatant way than it has been before, and how it’s used against each other as a weapon,” Linney adds. “I think it gives a different sort of lens through which to see the show.”
Ultimately, that lens informs how Linney views her character. “I can tell you what I’m interested in, and what’s in the zeitgeist and what I’ve been thinking about, is the question for Americans — who are you? Who are we? Really, who are we? What do we believe, how do we behave, what are we capable of?”