Spoilers for HBO Max’s Duster
It’s flown a little bit under the radar, but J.J. Abrams has a new 70s crime drama out called Duster. He co-created it with writer/producer LaToya Morgan, and it airs weekly on HBO Max. It stars Josh Holloway, Rachel Hilson, and Keith David. Mr. Rosie and I have been watching it, and we are enjoying it a lot! On last week’s episode, Rachel’s character had to speak fluent Russian in order to infiltrate her way into a meeting with an American mob boss and his Russian counterparts. Hilson nailed it. This week, Josh and Rachel did an interview with Variety where they broke down just how much work they put into making the episode realistic and suspenseful.
“I think the stakes were always high, but they were completely upped in this episode,” Hilson tells Variety. “This episode has a huge arc because they are butting heads in the beginning, but by the end, we feel more like pals and allies than we ever have been.”
“Like real partners,” Holloway jumps in to say. “Up to that point, it was kind of like rehearsal, and they even say that. But this is not rehearsal anymore; she’s entering into my world now. There’s a whole new level of trust that has to be there –– or not. But after this deal, I think they do have a mutual trust for each other that is deepened through this experience.”
“For that day, at least,” Hilson adds, cracking both of them up.
[In regards to] Hilson’s [perfect] Russian [during that episode], even Holloway was impressed as he watched her deliver it during filming. “You spoke so much Russian,” he says to her. “I could not believe she was able to pull that off. All I was thinking was, ‘Thank God they didn’t ask me to do that.’”
Hilson doesn’t remember when in the audition process Morgan and Abrams told her that Russian would be part of the character’s skill set, but when she learned about it, she immediately began working with a tutor.
“I knew she had to be fluent,” she says. “Not only be able to say these lines, but also sound like she really knew what she was saying and be able to ad lib here and there. I wanted to really get that right. So I started that pretty soon, and then we had a dialect coach on set who was amazing.”
All that preparation led to this deal, which Hilson had to play with confidence and a touch of fear when the Russian initially interrogated her about why she knew Russian. It rattles Nina for a moment, before she finds her footing.
“That was so fun to film, but it was even more fun to finally have that come to fruition and kind of be done with it,” she says.
Russian is a really hard language for nativevEnglish speakers to learn, so I have to give mad props to Rachel for being able to master it as well as she did. She spoke it so well that while Mr. Rosie and I were watching the episode, I googled to see if she was fluent in Russian prior to being cast in the role. I know that he was totally joking, but I don’t blame Josh for feeling relieved that he didn’t also have to learn it!
The interview also talks about a possible romance between Josh and Rachel’s characters. I think that the show is entertaining, but also fairly predictable in terms of plot beats. Feel free to disagree with me here, but I think it would be nice if they didn’t try to force a romance between the two characters. There’s nothing wrong with keeping the CIA handler and asset relationship as professionals or even just friendly. That said, I’m looking forward to seeing how the rest of the season plays out. I’m also really happy to have many of those actors back on my screen.
Photos credit: Nicky Nelson/Wenn/Avalon and Getty
