[Warning: The following post contains minor spoilers for Tulsa King Season 3 Episode 3, “The G and the OG.”]
Ahead of Tulsa King Season 3’s premiere, Sylvester Stallone warned us that Dwight Manfredi would finally meet someone that he truly feared in Robert Patrick‘s Jeremiah Dunmire, and the first three episodes of the season show us exactly why that is. The character is unapologetically ruthless and will do anything to exact revenge on those he believes have wronged him. Number one on his current hit list is the General, who bought a rival bourbon distillery out from underneath him and plans to make a go of it… until the Dunmires step in, of course.
Patrick is no stranger to playing iconic villains, and this role joins the pantheon of his most fearsome screen roles.
“It really was basically just showing up, to be honest with you,” he said of crafting his character’s mean streak. “They wrote the character so well, and they’re helping me out so much with the cinematography and the way they’re shooting the character, the way they introduced the character, even my theme music they gave me. They really set me up to shine. So I’ve got so much help from the cast, crew, writers, everybody, the directors. So they just kind of laid it all out there for me, and I just have to inhabit the character, drawing on a lot of past work and just people I know, or people I’ve seen, and people that carry themselves a certain way. I just drew on it all, and I’m letting it go, having fun.”
In addition to Jeremiah ordering his long-abused son Cole (played by Beau Knapp) to take out the former competitor who sold the business to Dwight by burning the house down with him inside of it, he also refuses to back down in a face-to-face with Dwight in Episode 2. And although Dwight has tried to size Jeremiah up to say that the Tulsa native is actually afraid of the former New York City mafioso, Patrick doesn’t think that’s true at all.
The actor explained, “I’ve said oftentimes, ‘I’ll burn you and your house down,’ but I didn’t literally do it. This guy’s another whole level, right?… When he actually meets me, and I do give him that, and I let him know my intent: ‘Listen, you’re intruding in my life, intruding in my business like this, I’m obligated now with what I have to do? These are the next steps, and I will destroy you.’ And then I think he’s trying to work himself out of being fearful of Jeremiah by saying to him, literally, ‘You’re afraid.’ And that’s how I saw it when I read the scene: He’s trying to make me afraid, when actually, he’s really met a formidable adversary.”
Indeed, in Episode 3, despite Dwight’s warnings, Cole manages to steal back the valuable barrels of “Fifty” from Tyson (Jay Will) in a moment of weakness, setting up a potentially major clash ahead as Dwight promises to end Jeremiah Dunmire.
Still, Patrick warns that his character isn’t the new Terminator. “I think you’ll start to see me unraveling, and then I do have some nicks in my armor that are going to be exposed, and you will start to see me be a little bit more vulnerable,” he teased. “But I think in the first maybe [Episodes] 1 through 6, I think I’m still pretty headstrong, that I’ve got this handled.”
Tulsa King, Sundays, Paramount+