By Jay BobbinZAP2IT
This season on “24,” Jon Voight is bad to the bone—and loving it.
The “Coming Home” Oscar winner has done the occasional television project (“Return to Lonesome Dove,” “The Five People You Meet in Heaven”), but he’s a series regular for the first time as Jonas Hodges, the rogue security-force bigwig now giving counterterrorism agent Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) a tough time on Fox’s suspense drama, airing at 9 p. m. Monday.
And for those awaiting Hodges and Bauer face to face, it happens in this week’s episode.
“People are telling me they don’t want this character to have his demise, and I don’t know what to say to them,” said the soft-spoken Voight, who knows anything can happen to anyone at any time on “24.” “I had seen a couple of episodes in its first season, and I was very impressed with it — and with Kiefer’s work in it.
“I had occasion to meet him then at a charity event. I didn’t know him real well, but I went up to him and said, ‘This is going to be a wonderful thing for you, and I wish you the best with it.’ Then, when they asked if I would do this, I thought, ‘That’s interesting. That almost brings it full circle.’ The first day I started work on it, Kiefer showed up at my camper to welcome me, even though he wasn’t working that day. It was such a nice thing.”
“Nice” does not apply to Voight’s “24” alter ego, since Hodges masterminded a temporary takeover of the White House, steered biological weapons into the United States and turned murderous. “You can’t figure out who this guy is,” Voight said, “and even as I was doing it, I didn’t know the whole story. It was kind of fun to get the next script, to see who he’d be then. I got to work with the writers on that.”
Starkwood, the fictional organization Hodges heads, has clear parallels to the controversial Blackwater security operation. “There are corrupt guys in every aspect of life,” Voight reasons, “and especially when you get into a situation that involves power, there’s always the opportunity for people to turn. I think that’s what makes ‘24’ interesting; you never know who’s the good guy and who’s the bad guy.”
Because of the way the seventh season of “24” was done, Hodges hadn’t been created yet when production began. The first eight hours were filmed in 2007, before the writers strike; then, Voight-as-Hodges was introduced briefly in “24: Redemption,” the TV movie made later and aired as a prequel to the series’ current year.
“I kind of liked that,” Voight says of disappearing from the “24” world for a while, then resurfacing in a big way. “I think it was all to the positive. I must say it was an adventure to do this, but of course, you want the audience to be satisfied. With each episode, you try to top the previous one, and it’s really been quite fun. This guy takes a lot of turns.”
The father of actress Angelina Jolie, Voight has stayed active in a career marked by such big-screen classics as “Midnight Cowboy” and “Deliverance.” More-recent credits include “Transformers,” “Four Christmases” and “National Treasure,” and Voight is grateful to continue work that began with series guest shots (“Gunsmoke,” “Naked City”) and New York stage jobs in the 1960s.
“Listen, I’m very happy to be working at this time and to still have that sort of celebrity. It helps me a lot if I’m doing charity work. I just like to be in touch with the public.”
The Buffalo News
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