VIDEO EXCLUSIVE: Hugh Dillon & Tobi Bamtefa On Working With Jeremy Renner On ‘Mayor Of Kingstown’

Hugh Dillon and Tobi Bamtefa revealed their favorite moments working with the star-studded cast of Mayor of Kingstown.

The show follows Mike McLusky (played by Jeremy Renner), a power broker who lives in Kingstown, Michigan, a town surrounded by several local prisons. The show deals with relevant topics, including systemic racism and the prison industrial complex. The show was co-created by Dillon and Taylor Sheridan. Dillon also plays a police officer, Ian Ferguson. Bamtefa plays Deverin ‘Bunny’ Washington, a drug dealer, leader of the Crips, and a friend of Mike’s.

“If you watch the trailer, I think the trailer opens with Mitch [Kyle Chandler] and Mike standing by the water discussing, right?” Bamtefa said to uInterview Founder Erik Meers. “That was, I actually went to visit, I think I just come out of quarantine, and I just gotten to go do a costume consultancy with the costume department and I went to go visit Hugh and Taylor and the rest of the crew on set. And that scene, I watched that scene on the monitors, and I just remember being immediately drawn in. It was the subtlety of that moment that got me hooked because I got the sense that what they were saying had such impact that literally the hairs on the back of my neck were standing up. And I was like wow this is insane.”

“Hugh was kind enough to bring, he brought me a chair that had my name on it,” Bamtefa said. “I already knew, I was nervous about meeting him and stuff, you know, cause this is Hugh Dillon we’re talking about right? But, this guy, you know, somebody of that stature just humbly comes and you know offers me something. Me. I’m nobody in this right? Offers me something, offers me a chair of all things, with my name on it. I’ve never felt so welcome in my life.”

“Taylor and I co-created this so many years ago, to see it come to fruition, and you know to speak to what Tobi said, Taylor makes us all feel like we can do it,” Dillon said. “This was a dream for me, and I persevered, and he just taught me to be patient. And for me as an actor, I know what it’s like to show up and you get your chair and yeah sit over there, and you’re on some production. And Taylor enabled all of us to feel empowered and feel like a family, and you feel like you’re doing something.”

“I just loved Tobi,” Dillon said. “I loved his performance, I saw what he brought to the table, I saw the skillset of this actor… Renner brought in extra gear, Dianne Wiest brought this whole other gear, Taylor Sheridan set the table.”

“For me, to see the whole crew come back to this prison that when I grew up it was a maximum security prison and then it had been decommissioned,” Dillon said, “and I would send pictures to Taylor, you know, as we’re shooting Wind River and as we’re shooting Yellowstone, going ‘Dude this has opened it’s now decommissioned, we can shoot here.’ And it was always such a dream.”

Mayor of Kingstown is available on Paramount+.