When you tune in to an episode of Leverage and the sequel Redemption, you know you’re in for an entertaining 40-something minutes. The crew of bad guys will take down the corrupt and powerful, and along the way, the heist of it will provide some solid entertainment. Fifteen years ago, during the original run on TNT, “The Rashomon Job” aired, and it is not only one of the best episodes of the franchise but also just so quintessentially Leverage.
At the time, the crew — mastermind Nate (Timothy Hutton), grifter Sophie (Gina Bellman), hitter Eliot (Christian Kane), thief Parker (Beth Riesgraf), and hacker Hardison (Aldis Hodge) — are three seasons into working together. But in that episode, they discover that they actually crossed paths five years earlier when Sophie, Eliot, Parker, and Hardison were all trying to steal the Dagger of Aqu’abi and Nate still worked at IYS, the company that insured the artifacts in the museum. Each person tells their side of the story, with Nate the one to put the pieces together to form a complete picture, and that means we see how they all view each other … to hilarious results.
When TV Insider spoke with Beth Riesgraf, Christian Kane, Gina Bellman, and executive producers Dean Devlin and John Rogers (who wrote the episode) during Leverage: Redemption Season 3, we had them reflect on this outstanding episode.
“I think that may have been the greatest piece of writing we ever did. John Rogers did it, and it nearly put him in a hospital, it was so difficult,” shared Devlin. “But what I love about that episode and the original Rashomon is by telling the story several times from different points of view, you really get to see how the characters view each other. And it’s done as a joke. But I love in that episode how everyone hears Sophie’s accent completely differently, and it tells you a lot about who they are by the way they perceive the others around them.”
Rogers agreed with Devlin’s assessment. “It nearly killed me writing it,” he said “There’s actually a photo you can find online of me at the table with three shot glasses with the character names on them as I explained to the room exactly how, who, and what object. What it does is it allows — in a way very few episodes are structured — each character to take the showcase fully. And so you get a full dose of each one of them, and you get their own impression, and each actor reveled in both playing the best version of themselves and then in the other people’s versions, the worst version of themselves. So it’s one of the few episodes where all five of them just get to bang it off the guardrails both sides, of being hyper competent and cool and being goofy and useless and bad, and actors revel in it.”
He continued, “It comes across in their performances, and I think all of the performances elevated it well beyond the script. There’s a moment where Sophie is doing her horrible British accents because that’s the viewpoint of everybody. When it comes to Parker’s, all it says is in the script is ‘indecipherable British gibberish,’ and so everything Gina does after that is her interpreting that one line read. I didn’t write anything. Gina knows, Gina’s a great comedic actor, she’ll get this. And she does. It’s hilarious every time she talks for that entire act. It’s a real actor showcase. I think that’s what makes it stand out.”
Bellman, Riesgraf, and Kane also pointed to Sophie’s accents, with the women admitting they got the giggles.
“I had to make up that language and she kept laughing and every time she laughed, she set me off, and then we were so tired and we just couldn’t recover,” Bellman recalled of Riesgraf. “It was such a complex episode. I think we were all feeling the strain of that. We had to hit so many comedy notes. We had to hit so many action notes. We had to hit so many character notes. And we all were playing multiple characters.”
Added Riesgraf, “It’s quintessential because it’s all of us getting to be campy and funny and silly and goofy and nonsensical at the same time. Gina’s speaking in a language that doesn’t even make sense. The comedy between Aldis and Christian, Eliot and Hardison, it’s all of it wrapped in there. It was just letting us run with the imagination in a great way while keeping the thread of a flashback con vibe, right? It just shows this chemistry in the characters and also cast. It was just so iconic. It was so great.”
Kane agreed, “It’s the best episode. It’s so much fun.”
Watch the video interview above for more from Gina Bellman, Christian Kane, and Beth Riesgraf about this episode.
Leverage, Streaming Now, Prime Video
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