Last season on 24, which seems like so long ago thanks to the writer’s strike, one of Jack Bauer’s chief antagonists was his father Philip Bauer, played by James Cameron Cromwell. While Cameron Cromwell played the role well, there were those, myself included, who wondered why they didn’t just cast Jack Bauer’s real father, specifically the actor Donald Sutherland.
In an interview with the BBC, Keifer’s father provides the answer:
Donald also revealed how he turned down the chance to appear on 24 as Jack Bauer’s father.
“We had a long dinner and he asked me to play his dad in 24,” he explained.
“I said OK but on one condition, the relationship has to be the same sort of relationship Sean Connery had with Harrison Ford (in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade).
“He said, ‘I’ll go back and see what the writers have in mind’. He came back and said, ‘No dad, they want you to try and kill me’. I said, ‘No way, that’s not going to work’. So they hired James Cromwell instead.”
The actor did say that he tried persuade the writers to bring him in during a later season though.
He added: “I said, ‘Maybe you could have me at the very end, rescuing you from some place and I could look at you and you could look at me and I say ‘He (Phillip Bauer) was your mother’s husband but I’m your biological dad’. But I don’t think they’ll ever do that.”
It would’ve have been very cool, and entirely natural, to have Donald and Keifer on the screen together as father and son — perhaps fighting together in the Indiana Jones analogy that Donald makes. In the end, I frankly thought that the whole Philip Bauer subplot fell pretty flat during Season Six, so the alternative that Donald Sutherland suggests might have been a lot more interesting.
H/T: Amy Vernon
April 1st, 2008 at 10:23 pm
James CAMERON, Doug? Check your introductory comments.