Wilson Bethel‘s character on Untamed plays a huge role in the show’s big mystery —but even he didn’t know about the big twist when joining the project.
“When I first started auditioning for the character, I didn’t know the full extent of his motivations and what was guiding him,” Bethel explained to Us Weekly about his new Netflix show, which premiered Thursday, July 17. “In that stage where I’m initially putting together the character and figuring out who he is, I’m making some educated guesses that weren’t entirely accurate.”
Bethel noted that he enjoyed the mystery surrounding the role.
“One of the things that I think is fascinating about this show in general is how deftly they tease out the information to really keep it obviously twisty and in line with what this kind of genre of show should be,” he said. “But they do it in a really graceful and interesting way.”
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While reflecting on the limited series, Bethel teased how it “really culminates” with the big reveal, adding, “It’s a huge payoff as a viewer. It’s a huge payoff in character terms. We’ve been getting these really interesting dynamic performances from all these different actors in the show. Suddenly that one little twitch that one character did in this previous episode or that one look that was shared by another character [becomes], ‘Oh, that’s what that meant.’”
He continued: “If you go back and watch it a second time, what a cool thing to be part of one of those shows that potentially rewards rewatching certain moments. You can see those things with different eyes on that second watch.”
Untamed, which also stars Eric Bana, Sam Neill, Lily Santiago and Rosemarie DeWitt, is set in Yosemite National Park where a woman’s death draws a federal agent into lawless terrain, where nature obeys no rules but its own.
“One of the amazing things about doing a show on location, it just deepens the value of everything in the show,” Bethel shared. “Shows [usually] shoot on windowless soundstages in very safe places because you can control everything. But when a production is willing to take the risk of confronting some of those challenges — whether they be weather or insects or bears — there are benefits of really setting a show in a place and especially a place that is so beautiful and so wild.”
Throughout the season, Kyle (Bana) investigates a death that leads him to secrets he didn’t know existed in Yosemite. All signs pointed at Bethel’s character, Shane, being at fault after he previously helped Kyle’s now-ex-wife Jill (DeWitt) by killing the man who murdered their son.
Shane ultimately dies in a shootout with Kyle, but it isn’t until the finale that Kyle realizes his coworker Paul (Neill) was the one responsible for the woman’s death. Though Shane wasn’t at fault, Bethel doesn’t think his innocence will change how the audience sees his character.
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“One of the things that I think I love about this character is that I don’t think he would give a s*** if he felt like he was misunderstood or not. He completely inhabits his own moral universe, and I really truly don’t think he gives a f*** what other people think about him,” he quipped. “That’s pretty cool. I am not sure that I played that kind of character before who lives in the world in that way.”
In fact, Bethel isn’t sure Shane has any regrets about the last moments of his life.
“I don’t think it’s a matter of being misunderstood. He was going to kill Kyle because that’s what he had to do because things had gone pear-shaped and that’s the way the cards fell, and then he got killed instead,” he continued. ”There are other aspects as morally questionable or as weird as this Shane McGuire character is on Untamed. There are other aspects of this character that made a lot of sense to me too.”
Bethel concluded: “Obviously any role requires you to do a lot of thinking about where this character is coming from. But it wasn’t some crazy reach to me because I did feel like I knew who this guy was from some combination of things that live inside me and just observations about the world. Additionally, as it happens, I also am a lifelong backpacker and I love the idea of being deeply immersed in nature, and having that be a fundamental part of your life is not scary or weird to me at all. That’s something I totally understand.”
Untamed is now streaming on Netflix.
