It comes 23 minutes into the season-three premiere of Dark Winds, and it lasts about 30 seconds. But the scene in which some guy named Robert Redford and some other guy named George R.R. Martin pop up onscreen has been in the making for years.
“It was in the air since the first season,” says Chris Eyre, the director of season three’s premiere, “Ye’iitsoh (Big Monster).” But it took three seasons to actually film a scene that included the author of A Game of Thrones and the star and director of some of the greatest movies ever made, both of whom are executive producers on AMC’s spiritual procedural about Navajo tribal police officers in the 1970s.
When a potential appearance in the season-two finale was scrapped, Martin approached showrunner John Wirth ahead of season three with an idea for a scene featuring him and Redford as prisoners playing chess within a small cell inside the police department. Last year, the pair shot a brief back-and-forth, which also gave Dark Winds star and executive producer Zahn McClarnon — Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn in the world of the series — the opportunity to act alongside two friends who also happen to be cultural idols. (Leaphorn’s contribution to the conversation is to suggest the move that leads to Martin’s character checkmating Redford’s.)
“I never thought I could get to a place in my life where I would actually know Robert Redford, let alone be in a scene with him,” McClarnon says. Getting to that moment, however, was complicated. “I was never really sure it was going to happen until it happened,” adds Wirth.
Take One: Men in Black
Tina Elmo, a Dark Winds EP who’s close to Redford, was the first person to approach Wirth about concocting a cameo for Redford and Martin. “He really wants to do this,” Wirth recalls her saying during the second season, “and he wants to do it with George.” Wirth came up with a concept. “In season two, there was a little bit of talk about somebody having seen UFOs and this crazy, five-horned sheep being this alien on earth,” he says. “So the idea for these guys was a Men in Black thing. They would show up in suits in this black truck looking for the sheep. Steven Paul Judd and I wrote up a couple-page scene and we sent it to Bob and George.”
It seemed like the cameos were a go … until, by happenstance, Redford and Martin visited production on the same day earlier in the season and Martin backed out. “Bob was trying to talk George into it on set,” Wirth recalls. “He said, ‘I’ll do it if George does it.’ Then Zahn McClarnon and me, executive producer Jim Chory, star Kiowa Gordon, we were all there trying to convince George to say yes. And George would not say yes.”
“We had already gone quite a ways downstream on this,” Wirth continues. “We were building the Men in Black suits for each of these guys. That ended up being fairly costly. We were getting the Men in Black truck. We had the sheep. Then there was some panic because the sheep had been attacked by coyotes and very nearly died, so they could not appear on-camera. It just got nuts.”
Word got back to Wirth that Martin may have backed out because of a line he had inserted into the scene. “I had seen George on some late-night talk show and they had done a skit about him being unable to finish the most recent Game of Throne books,” Wirth says. “It was a very funny bit. So I had written a line in this little scene about that, just an allusion to finishing something. I guess George had taken it to be making fun of his inability to finish this novel, so he said no.”
Martin had also joked with Wirth that he was reluctant to appear onscreen opposite “the handsomest man who’d ever been on-camera,” which: fair. “I can relate,” Wirth says. “It’s always rough for a writer to be onstage with actors, because they look beautiful and we usually don’t.”
Take Two: Checkmate
Martin changed his mind by the time season three rolled around and brought the chess-game idea to Wirth. The showrunner liked it, even if it was a bit of a non sequitur. “You have to ask yourself, What are two old white men doing in a Navajo tribal police jail cell? But if you squint a little bit, you don’t think too much about that. You could probably get past it.”
Director Eyre came up with a backstory for the actors. “They were roustabouts that had gotten drunk and disorderly in a neighboring town like Flagstaff, Arizona, and then hitchhiked when they got released and sent to the Navajo Nation,” he explains. “They were picked up there by one of Leaphorn’s deputies.” Turns out the backstory wasn’t exactly necessary, Eyre admits: “They never asked me,” he says with a smile, “but I was ready.”
The scene was shot on a closed set at the request of Redford, who last appeared onscreen in Avengers: Endgame, a cameo he shot after announcing his retirement from acting in 2016. There was palpable excitement among the crew but also some anxiety. “I’ve known Bob for decades, and just to be sitting there going, Oh, I’m gonna direct Robert Redford, struck fear in me,” says Eyre. “Bob is so kind and he was so nice on the day, and so was George. But I remember Zahn turning to me when we were about to start shooting and he goes, ‘You’re doing a scene with Robert Redford, that’s incredible,’ and I said, ‘Zahn, will you be quiet? You’re making me nervous.’”
“I was giddy, but I was a nervous giddy,” says McClarnon. “My demeanor on set, and in real life, I guess — I don’t speak a lot. I’m a bit on the shy side. It looks like I’m brooding, but I’m really not. I’m just focusing on what I need to do. That day, I couldn’t take the smile off my face. Tina Elmo came up and said, ‘Oh my God, I’ve never seen you smile so much.’”
Originally, the scene was not going to involve dialogue. In the script, the characters weren’t even given specific names. “Then I heard that Bob wanted to say something and he would be calling George ‘Gene,’” says Wirth. “I was like, ‘Okay, fair enough.’” The Gene reference didn’t stay — Redford refers to his scene partner as George — but some dialogue did, including, ironically, an ad lib from Redford about Martin taking too long to make his next chess move. “George, the whole world is waiting,” Redford says, a comment that could be interpreted as a sly reference to the fact that Martin still hasn’t delivered the final two volumes in his Song of Ice and Fire series.
“It’s one thing if I write a line and George perceives me as making fun of him — even though I wasn’t and I never would,” says Wirth. “It’s another thing if Redford does it.”
More ‘Dark Winds’
- The Dark Winds Cast Agrees With George R. R. Martin
- Where Does Dark Winds Go From Here?
- 15 Emmy-Worthy Performances That Shouldn’t Be Overlooked