If there’s one thing that Mayor of Kingstown has in common with Game of Thrones, it’s to never get attached to a character. So far, each season has had a death or two that no one saw coming. For example, Mariam McLusky (the season 2 finale) was killed in a shootout, and Iris' death came out of nowhere after she overdosed (the season 3 finale). We’re only two episodes into the fourth season, and fans have already seen the death of a character.
WARNING! SPOILERS FOR SEASON 4, EPISODE 2 OF MAYOR OF KINGSTOWN!
The sign of a good character is how people react to their death. In this case, we have Carney played by Lane Garrison. In the final moments of season 4, episode 2, Carney is leaving his house and is shot by someone Ian and Stevie let out of police custody. It came out of nowhere and led to a heck of a cliffhanger.
The funny thing is, Carney started as someone you wanted to hate. This is something Garrison admitted, noting that it was easy to hate Carney in the beginning.
“When you first meet this character, you're thinking, 'oh, dude, this dude's a racist, horrible human being.' Just… the way he interacts with Bunny.” Then, he notes something important to the story, and maybe in life in general, that everything isn’t exactly black and white. “...no matter skin color, he (Carney) started to realize that he was in prison, too, and it started to humanize him.”
"When I first saw it, Carney, I was like, I'mma hate this dude, I'm not gonna like this dude, but then as it goes on, you're like, okay, okay, he's… like, he's got Kareem';s back, he's legitimately, like, doing the best he can, and then, like, the first episode of season 4, I'm like. Yes! He's about, like, he's about to be the game changer, and all this other stuff," Garrison reflected.
Sadly, this wasn’t meant to be. Garrison recalled getting the phone call from one of the executive producers of Mayor of Kingstown over the summer which broke the news about his character's fate.
"'I’ve got good news, I've got bad news.' And it's like, 'The bad news is we're killing you.' And I'm like, f***, so what's the good news to that?”
While we can’t mention the good news, we can tease that Garrison could be seen in a future project unrelated to Mayor of Kingstown soon...
While Garrison was hoping to see Carney get some brevity and light-hearted moments, he's grateful for the opportunity he received through the character.
“I want this character to have some brevity, just because the show's so intense. I want to find light-hearted moments where the audience can laugh, have a chuckle for a minute. But I feel like, had they played me out a little bit longer, we could have got more of those moments," Garrison noted, adding, "I'm really happy with how the show's been, and, you know, Taylor Sheridan and Hugh Dillon have, I mean, Taylor's crushing it, and Hugh's great.”
Our interview ended with Garrison talking about his disappointment in leaving the show, but we did have a good laugh at the end when I mentioned that maybe we can get a Carney spin-off as an origin story.
“Maybe we'll start a website. Carney's Revenge comes back from the dead. It was all a setup to get the Colombians," Garrison joked.
Thanks for reading. Stay tuned to Show Snob for more Mayor of Kingstown news, opinions, interviews, and rumors as they come out.