USA TODAY International Edition
‘ 24’ has new cast, timely new threat
Ex- Ranger Eric Carter races the clock and terrorists
The new hero of 24 will need some on- the- job training.
Unlike the iconic Jack Bauer, Eric Carter ( Corey Hawkins), the leading man of Fox thriller 24:
Legacy ( Sunday, approx. 10: 30 ET/ PT after the Super Bowl, then Mondays, 9 ET/ PT), is new to fighting bad guys at home.
Carter has impressive skills: He led an Army Ranger team that killed a terror mastermind in Yemen, eerily echoing last week’s Navy SEAL raid on al- Qaeda militants there. But he’s thrust into the urgency of 24’ s signature ticking clock after he learns his colleagues are being killed to avenge the death, and sleeper- cell terror attacks are planned for U. S. soil.
“With Jack Bauer, you knew you could count on him to get the job done, no matter what. With Eric, you don’t know if you can,” Hawkins says. “You know he’s physically capable, but is he making the right choice by going against this person or that person?”
As the series opens, Carter and his wife, Nicole ( Anna Diop), are living under assumed identities, worrying about whether to have a baby. But the new threat forces him to turn to his estranged drugdealing brother ( Ashley Thomas) as he confronts a different kind of warfare.
“He’s entering this 24 universe where the enemy might be one of us. It’s a gray area. It’s no longer just a battlefield,” says executive producer Evan Katz, who also worked on the original series, which premiered eight weeks after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and ran for nine seasons.
Katz and executive producers Manny Coto and Howard Gordon thought they were finished with 24 when Kiefer Sutherland retired after 2014’ s 24: Live Another Day. But a film idea inspired by the real- life raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound evolved into a new edition of 24 that could extend for multiple seasons.
Carter has the help of departing Counter- Terrorist Unit chief Rebecca Ingram ( Miranda Otto), who’s now supporting the presidential campaign of her husband, Sen. John Donovan ( Jimmy Smits).
CTU simmers in its own secrecy, as Ingram works with analyst Andy Shalowitz ( Dan Bucatinsky), and is suspicious of the new CTU director ( Teddy Sears). Jack’s onetime colleague Tony Almeida ( Carlos Bernard) is the lone returning character.
Allies of the Middle Eastern terrorist are behind the Ranger killings, but the terrorist threat extends elsewhere.
The series has been the subject of real- world commentary over the years, especially about its use of torture to get results, but Katz says it’s not making a political statement. “We had as many religiously inspired terrorists as white men in boardrooms behind things. We don’t want people to think we’re making a statement about a candidate or political party,” he says. “The show is about individuals faced with troubling moral choices and the costs those choices have.”
Hawkins, 28, says he didn’t see a lot of TV and film heroes who looked like him when he was growing up. “I want people who don’t look like who we’ve been seeing to know this is possible,” he says.
Smits likes how Hawkins is handling the spotlight. “His head is in the right place,” he says. “He realizes we’re all spokes in the wheel and dependent on each other.”
Hawkins has another supporter: Sutherland, a Legacy executive producer now starring in ABC’s Designated Survivor. They spoke after Hawkins had a few episodes under his belt. “The thing I keyed in on is to know that I own it and that I know this character better than anyone else.” Sutherland has “given me great information about standing up for Eric in a smart, good way.”