According to ’The Lowdown’s Tracy Letts, Swimming With Sharks Sealed Frank Martin’s Fate

[Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers for The Lowdown.]

From creator/writer/director/EP Sterlin Harjo (Reservation Dogs), the FX series The Lowdown follows citizen journalist Lee Raybon (Ethan Hawke, who’s also an EP), a self-proclaimed truthstorian in Tulsa that dives into an exposé focused on the Washberg family when things start to spiral out of control. Donald Washberg (Kyle MacLachlan) doesn’t want Lee sticking his nose into the mysterious death of his brother Dale (Tim Blake Nelson), as he positions himself to become the next governor of Oklahoma. Whether it’s his relationship with Dale’s widow Betty Jo (Jeanne Tripplehorn), the private investigator (Keith David) he hired to tail Lee, or Akron Construction owner Frank Martin (Tracy Letts), who he brokers a shady political deal with, Donald can’t seem to do anything without Lee all up in his business. And when Frank goes further than even he thought he would, it seals his fate in a way that seemed inevitable.

During this one-on-one interview with Collider, Letts discussed reaching out to Harjo to see if he could be involved with The Lowdown in any way, why he was such a fan of Rez Dogs, wanting to work in worlds that have a clear point of view, playing a character that’s just a clear son of a bitch, how much he adored working with the late Graham Greene, and Frank’s ultimate fate. He also talked about working with director Kathryn Bigelow on A House of Dynamite and why he was attracted to the upcoming East of Eden TV series.

Tracy Letts Pursued a Meeting With Creator Sterlin Harjo So That He Could Be in ‘The Lowdown’

“I never sign onto a thing before I read the script, but this was an instance where I just so believed in Sterlin.”

Image via FX

Collider: I love this show and everything about it, but it also feels specific and hard to summarize. When this job came your way, what exactly were you told about it? What hooked you on it? Were you immediately on board?

TRACY LETTS: I will tell you that I didn’t know much about it at all. In fact, it went the reverse of the way it normally does. As opposed to them coming to me and saying, “We have something we’d like for you to do,” I asked my agents to put me on a call with (creator) Sterlin when I read about the show. When I heard that Sterlin Harjo was making a detective show in Tulsa with Ethan Hawke, that’s all I knew. I got on a call with Sterlin and I said, “I will do anything you want me to do. I will help in any way I can. Please let me help. If you don’t have a part for me to play in the show, I’m going to come to Oklahoma and get a food truck and get food for the cast and crew. I’m going to help in some way.” Sterlin very generously sent me a copy of the script and said, “What do you want to do?” And I said, “Nope, I’m not doing it that way. You tell me what you want me to do.” And he gave me the role of Frank Martin, and I was thrilled to have it. I never sign onto a thing before I read the script, but this was an instance where I just so believed in Sterlin and this project that I wanted to be part of it.

Had you been a fan of Reservation Dogs?

LETTS: Yes, I just adored it. It’s one of my favorite TV shows that I’ve ever watched in my life. Because I’m from Oklahoma, because I’m from Tulsa, I watched Reservation Dogs with an awe and a bit of anger that I had never seen a show about these characters before. I said to Sterlin on the call, “How many fucking cop shows have I watched in my life? Why have I never been given the opportunity to see these kids before, who should have been given a show a long time ago.” I just wanted to be a part of whatever Sterlin was cooking.

This show feels like a blend of worlds. It feels like a blend of what he established on Rez Dogs with all these other wacky, eccentric characters thrown into the mix?

LETTS: Yeah. It’s everything I hoped it would be and suspected it would be, and more. I gambled a little bit with that phone call, but it totally paid off. I’m really delighted to be a part of it.

My favorite TV series of all time is Twin Peaks, and that’s a show that nobody but David Lynch could have made it. It was very singular to who he was. And as I was watching The Lowdown, I kept seeing the similarities of this story that starts with somebody who dies mysteriously and you have people trying to figure out what happened, you have a town full of eccentric characters, and you have a diner that people are hanging out at. There were a lot of similar touchstones there, but it was also very representative of who Sterlin is and I can’t imagine anybody else making the show.

LETTS: First of all, Sterlin would be flattered to hear you make that comparison. I know that he’s a Twin Peaks fan, himself. But beyond that, I have to say that, at this point, Carrie [Coon] and I both look for those works that are being steered by somebody with a personal point of view. We try to steer away from some larger corporate or IP ideas. They just start to seem a little soulless and a little sterile. We really look for those artists and storytellers who are trying to do something that displays a personal vision and some of their own insight. Those are the things we really value in the works that we’re choosing. I talked about this on set with Jeanne Tripplehorn and Paul Sparks and Kyle [MacLachlan]. We’re always out there looking for the best people to work with. Being from Tulsa, at some point Jeanne said to Sterlin, “If you don’t put me in the show, my feelings are going to be hurt,” which I totally appreciated.

Tracy Letts Understood Exactly Who Frank Martin Was in ‘The Lowdown’

“The nice thing about Frank is that he doesn’t have any ideology.”

Image via FX

What made this character interesting to you? Do you have to find ways to identify with a character? Do you enjoy playing someone who’s just a total challenge because you don’t identify with them at all?

LETTS: He’s just a venal son of a bitch. The nice thing about Frank is that, as opposed to the money behind him and the money in front of him, and the ideology on both sides, he doesn’t have any ideology. Frank is just trying to make a score, and he pays the price for that. When you swim with sharks, this is what you get. I was able to totally embrace that. The fact that it’s in the guise of a civic-minded guy with a normal white collar job, that’s something I recognize very well from not only life in Oklahoma, but just life out in the American wild. I don’t need to have any special identification with a guy like that. He’s a son of a bitch. I get it. I can play that.

Frank is someone where you wonder if he has power, if he’s convinced he has power, or if he’s just convinced everybody he has power.

LETTS: And after he kills Graham [Greene], there’s such vulnerability. He may be a guy who’ll push a button on somebody else, but he’s not a guy who’s used to getting his hands dirty himself. He didn’t go in there with the thought that he was going to kill anybody, and he’s really rattled by having done so. I love that. It just seemed very human and real to me.

What was the experience like working with Graham Greene and sharing scenes together? As far as I’m concerned, the man was a legend, so what was it like to work with him?

LETTS: Oh, I adored him. He was such a lovely gentleman. He was a cantankerous old dude who was hilarious. I have a great memory of riding in a van with Graham and Keith [David] on our way to set, and they started trading some Shakespeare back and forth. They’re both hams, so they both wanted to show off a little Shakespeare knowledge, so they started trading some Shakespeare licks. That was great fun. I adored working with him. We had a great time together. He was such a great actor and an important actor in my life. I was really sad to hear about Graham’s death. It was so soon after we had worked together, so it was really surprising and upsetting to me. He was a lovely guy.

It’s so interesting to watch those scenes with the two of you together because you’re not really sure how your character is going to react. He’s dealing with this guy whose his memory isn’t all there and you can tell that your character is getting frustrated by it, but also probably knows that pushing him isn’t really going to help. What was it like to find all those level in such a short amount of time that you had together?

LETTS: That was the fun of the scene. That was the dynamic of the scene. The fun of it for us was just playing that back and forth, with the various levels of the clouds that he would drift off into, and me trying to bring him back to the present and the frustration of that. That was the great fun of playing that scene with him. I have very clear memories of that day. It was a great day, working with Graham and it became all the more precious to me, since I heard the news of his death.

Your character is essentially surprised that things ended up the way that they did, but that evolves even further with a very tense moment in the church when Lee comes in and everyone draws their guns. What was that moment like to shoot?

LETTS: That was great fun. They were dealing with about a hundred background players there, and they don’t necessarily know the whole story of the show, so they don’t quite know what they’re into. They do realize that our pastor seems to have some white supremacist leanings, and then this Black man comes crashing into the church. I think our background players were having a grand time with it, too. It was great fun. That was a great illustration of the kind of time we were having on set. That was a day that was so hot. It was unbelievably hot in Oklahoma, and I had gotten an ice cream truck for the camera and crew. We had some soft serve that day, and then Sterlin had his guitar. Between takes, Sterlin would play his guitar and sing songs to the background players in the church. There was a really jubilant atmosphere on the set, most days that we worked. Everybody was working hard, but everybody was having fun working hard. It was a great set to be on.

Tracy Letts Knew That Frank Martin Wouldn’t Have Much of a Future in ‘The Lowdown’

“It was fine for me to go out when I did.”

Image via FX

How did you feel about your character’s fate? That fate might not have been the biggest leap, but it feels like any number of people could have been responsible. How did you feel about who ended up being the one responsible?

LETTS: I’m proud that Dale [Dickey] was the one who did me in. And I’m also proud that, apparently, Walter Mosley was the one who made the decision to kill me off. I was like, “Well, if anybody is going to kill you off, Walter Mosley would be a good one to do it.” Shooting that scene was fun. They had some good make-up effects. When you swim with sharks, that’s what you get. I didn’t really know that there was a big future life for Frank in Season 2 anyway, so it was fine for me to go out when I did.

It feels like saying yes to a Kathryn Bigelow project is a no-brainer. Was that the case with A House of Dynamite? Would you have wanted to work with her, no matter what it ended up being?

LETTS: Yeah. You get a call that says, “Kathryn Bigelow is interested in talking to you about her new project,” that’s like, “I’m in.” You look for those artists who are singular and who are bringing a personal vision to their work. And in both instances, it was a complete win for me. Those are the kinds of artists I want to work with, over and over and over. If you told me that, for the rest of my career, I’d be working with Sterlin Harjo and Kathryn Bigelow, I’d be very, very happy with that.

You’ve also done a TV series adaptation of East of Eden. That seems like a project anybody would be intimidated by, at least a little bit. What attracted you to that? What impressed you about Zoe Kazan deciding to write that, after her grandfather directed the movie?

LETTS: John Steinbeck is certainly one of my favorite writers. The Grapes of Wrath is my favorite book of all time. Being from Oklahoma, it’s an important book in my life. And East of Eden is a piece that I know very, very well. When I heard that Zoe was doing it, and I know Zoe a little bit from the theater here in New York, I was intrigued by that, given her grandfather’s original film based on that material. And then, I read the scripts that Zoe had created. Zoe’s done such a marvelous job of translating the novel into a TV language and landscape. That was an easy call to make. Here’s an instance where I didn’t know the director I was going to be working with, but it was so clearly on the page. It’s a classic literary property, adapted so beautifully by somebody who’s very passionate about bringing that work to the screen.

The truth is that when Elia Kazan made that movie 70 years ago and he brought that to the screen, the possibility of bringing the whole book, the breadth and scope of that, to the screen just wasn’t even remotely possible. I grew up in the time of the miniseries and remember the East of Eden with the Bottoms boys pretty well from my youth and remembered liking that. Warren Oates played the part (Cyrus Trask) that I was asked to play in Zoe’s version, and I love Warren Oates.

All those things combined, I was like, “Oh, yeah, I want to be a part of this, too.” It was hard because I was in New Zealand and I was away from my family during the time we were making that. It had a real professional crew and was a tough job. I could tell it was quality work. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to work with Florence [Pugh]. My part of the storyline doesn’t intersect with Florence or with Christopher [Abbott]. I got to work with Mike Faist a bit. You could just tell it was a quality thing I was involved in. I’m a vital part of the very beginning of it and then am seen no more, but I was happy to be part of it. I have no idea when we’re going to see it. It might be a while. I’m not sure exactly what’s going on with the scheduling of that, but I’m looking forward to it.

Release Date

September 23, 2025

Directors

Sterlin Harjo

Writers

Duffy Boudreau, Scott Teems, Sneha Koorse

The Lowdown airs on FX and is available to stream on Hulu. Check out the trailer: