AMERICAN RUST: BROKEN JUSTICE key art | ©2024 Amazon
AMERICAN RUST: BROKEN JUSTICE is the second season of AMERICAN RUST. All episodes are now streaming on Amazon Prime; Amazon Studios produced the new season.
This is a bit surprising, as the first season of AMERICAN RUST ran on Showtime in 2021 and was canceled thereafter. While streamers are known to pick up shows that were canceled on broadcast – Amazon took on THE EXPANSE, Netflix made more seasons of LUCIFER – this is generally right after the series end their network runs, rather than several years later. Both seasons were shot at the 31st Street Studios in Pittsburgh and nearby locations.
Created by Dan Futterman, AMERICAN RUST focuses on the small town of Buell, Pennsylvania. In Season 1, Buell was rocked by a murder that saw former high school football star Billy Poe, played by Alex Neustaedter, sentenced to prison for the crime. In fact, although Billy was there, the act of self-defense was actually committed by Billy’s best friend Isaac (David Alvarez). Since the town’s police chief Del Harris (Jeff Daniels) is in love with Billy’s mom Grace (Maura Tierney), he attempts to cover up Billy’s involvement in the crime.
Season 1 ended with Billy exonerated but beaten into a coma by fellow prison inmates and Grace, in a fit of fury and despair, burning down their house.
In Season 2, it’s four months later. Billy has emerged from his coma and is offered a place to live and recuperate by Isaac. Billy accepts, even though Isaac’s sister Lee (Julia Mayorga) has also come back to her family’s home. This is awkward, as Billy and Lee have been lovers.
Meanwhile, Del has a job with the Pittsburgh police, where he’s getting into fresh trouble, and Grace may create controversy by opening her property up to fracking.
Neustaedter (pronounced NEW-sted-er) is originally from Kansas City, Missouri. He was previously a series regular on COLONY. His feature film work includes ITHACA, THINGS HEARD & SEEN, JOSIE & JACK, and THE TRIBES OF PALOS VERDES. He gets on a Zoom call to talk about the resurrection of AMERICAN RUST.
“It came a bit out of the blue for me,” Neustaedter acknowledges of Season 2. “I think there were two months or so when we were canceled with Showtime that I was looking for another project. I had heard that they were going to try and pitch to other studios, potentially, but that I’ve never seen really happen, so, I had low expectations. And then I got a call from [executive producer] Adam Rapp, telling us that Amazon was really excited about it, and wanted to give us a new platform. And so, it was a huge shock, and incredibly exciting to be able to finish this story, because it left off on such a cliffhanger. It felt like we needed to do it justice, and at least let the audience know what happens to these characters.”
There was not, however, a lot of the actors phoning each other with the good news, Neustaedter reports. “It was very exciting, but in the first season, with how it was structured, and how separate everybody was, in a lot of ways, that’s kind of been the motto, is, we’re very separate, we have our own things that we’re doing, and then we all come together, and then we click. So, there wasn’t a lot of outside chatter. I know I talked to David about it, and Maura, and I think maybe Rob [Yang, who plays Police Chief Park] and Mark [Pellegrino, who plays Billy’s father Virgil] as well, but it wasn’t something that everybody hopped on a Zoom and we started talking right away.”
Neustaedter says he found it “pretty easy” to reconnect with Billy. “I think the difference this season is, we see the polar opposite side of him from the beginning of last season, where he’s this large football player. At the beginning of Season 2, he’s frail and injured and has nerve damage and is skinny. It was something that was exciting to be able to act, and it was really fun. And then I read [more] scripts – they put more comedy in, and where Billy [goes] emotionally, and I was really excited to see this new version of Billy.
Actor ALEX NEUSTAEDTER | ©2024 and photo by StormSantos
In an instance of art imitating life, Neustaedter had suffered an injury very similar to the one Billy suffered in Season 1. “I don’t know if Dan Futterman knew that, or if anyone knew that, but I actually broke my back as well, at the same spot, L-5, S-1. Now, he had a full spinal fusion surgery, but I had the same injuries, so it wasn’t as dramatic for me.”
What happened to Neustaedter in real life? “A combination of two things. I played tackle football a lot growing up, and what the doctors told me was, I [impacted] my L-5 S-1 right at the bottom of the tailbone and the spine didn’t fully fuse, so it was a weak link anyway. A lot of times, playing tackle football at a young age, there are little fragments of injuries that can happen.
“And then, it happened weight-lifting, of all things. I was squatting, I was being too ambitious, it was my last rep of my last set, I went all the way down, felt like a shot go up my spine and into my head, my head rang, and I somehow thought it was a good idea to re-rack it, which is crazy. I re-racked it, and I knew in that moment, when it happened, I couldn’t walk, I couldn’t even move my body. I literally had to lay down and was in excruciating pain. It took thirty minutes for someone to come up to me in the gym, like, ‘Yo, are you good? Are you just resting?’ I was like, ‘I actually can’t move. This is a problem.’
“It took a while to recover. I now take care of my body way better, and I’m way more aware, and I listen to my body way more, and I know what to do, muscularly, to keep everything strong, because I refused to have the surgery. So, I actually look at it now as a good thing, but at the time, it was pretty scary, and it also directly connected with Billy.”
Fortunately, Neustaedter never endured a coma, so he researched that aspect of Billy’s experience, “the rehab process of what it is to come back from that, and especially what it is to go through a coma. I think that was the other thing that I was really fascinated with. My teacher in high school went through a coma when he was young, and I talked to him quite a bit about it, and was picking his brain about the flashes that he had, pre and after, and also, who’s there when you recover, and the emotional toll that that has, when certain people that you love in your life may be there or may not be there, and what that is like, with a rebirth, and not having the ones you love there. So, I was weighing all of those.”
Neustaedter also did research on PTSD, “which happens later on in the season, was about PTSD, and the triggers, and tying that in with the environment that Billy finds himself in when he does get triggered, and why these things are happening. I think that was really interesting, because of all the different nuances that a trauma could come out, and how it can affect somebody.”
Despite Billy’s new physical challenges, he begins Season 2 in a better psychological space, Neustaedter notes. “I feel like, in Season 1, Billy doesn’t have a purpose at the beginning of the show. And then he finds a purpose through [claiming to be] a murderer and taking the blame and sacrificing himself for someone else. And then, in Season 2, we see him with this new lease on life, and his past seemingly feeling to him like it’s over, like that traumatic experience is over, and he’s somehow survived it, and in a way, that comforts him, because he’s found a purpose, and he’s found something that he’s resonated with now, which is making things right with the people that he loves, and getting his life back on track, and taking his life back into his own control, which it wasn’t in his control the whole time.
“I think that was something that ended up terrifying him in prison, and something that he just had to release. But once he has this new perspective on life, this awakening, it totally changes his perspective, at least, at the start of the season. And then, we see as the season goes on, that the further he’s running into the future, and the faster he’s going into the future, the more the past keeps following him, and the PTSD and the trauma from what he had experienced, and who handed him those cards, especially in prison and what he went through, that continuously starts to follow him and haunt him. So, kind of like the physicality of how he starts so frail in the second season, he’s emotionally, I feel, very strong in a way, and very excited, and optimistic. And it’s very interesting how, as he gets stronger physically, his mental side really starts to deteriorate.”
Neustaedter likes the authenticity of Billy’s room within Isaac and Lee’s house. “I have a very similar set-up where I always try and have weights or kettle bells or clubs or a pull-up bar in any of my places I’m staying, if I’m renting or if I’m traveling around. So, it felt really comfortable. And we did try and find things that would make him feel more comfortable. Billy’s a football player at heart. He’s lived in the locker room since seventh grade. I think that was the really beautiful part of Isaac and Lee doing that for him, dressing [the room] up and giving him things that he needed for rehab, but also, he needed to get the sense of himself again. As an actor, I connected to that personally, but also, we were re-using the same sets from last year, so I already had the comfortability, and we were on the same location. So, that helped as well.”
Billy’s mom Grace is in the midst of a divorce from Billy’s dad, who is extorting money from her in exchange for signing the papers. How aware is Billy of what’s going with between his parents, individually and with one another?
Neustaedter relates, “I don’t think he’s fully looped in until a little bit later in the season, especially when he sees Maura’s character interacting with people, and talking about [the energy/fracking company] Landwill and talking about this energy opportunity, and people letting fracking happen on their properties. I don’t think he is aware of it, and I don’t think he’s really too concerned about it at first, and then he starts to see how [the Landwill money is] improving her life, and then she starts becoming more generous towards him, to repay him for buying off the land for her.
“I think she was there for him the most out of anybody. So, he always feels indebted to her, and always is close with her, but he needed to get out of the nest and move away from her. They still have a little bit of distance together, because she’s at Del’s cabin, and Billy’s living at Isaac’s house. And also, the divorce has been something continuously ongoing, and it eventually turns into a really amazing episode, where there’s a proper divorce party, and a lot of things come to a head in that moment, and in that sequence of how Billy’s truly feeling about this celebration of divorce, as ironic as that sounds.”
In Season 1, Billy and Isaac had problems with each other, largely stemming from the fact that Isaac was in love with Billy, who loves Isaac as a friend, but didn’t reciprocate romantically. Now that Isaac is out of the closet and seems to be finding new love, does Neustaedter think the friends are on firmer footing again?
“Definitely. Isaac is trying to show how much he cares, and appreciates what Billy did for him in the first season, but I think there is a mutual understanding, kind of from the get-go, an unspoken understanding of what the sacrifices were being made. More than anything, they’re just very excited to be back in each other’s lives, and have each other again, and have the full squad again, because [Isaac] was gone for most of Season 1.”
The relationship between Billy and Lee is more complicated. “With Lee, it’s a fine line of how much you want to hold something over somebody. I don’t think Billy has any ill feelings towards her, but I think he definitely has questions of why she didn’t show up [when he was in prison and in the hospital]. I think he’s going to make every possible excuse to make sense for himself as to why she didn’t do that. Ultimately does hurt him a little bit, but he’s very in love with her, and he’ll do anything for her, and I think he just wants to find the best way for all of them to move on, and start with a clean slate and move forward.”
Neustaedter also costars in the feature IT ENDS WITH US, due in theatres June 21. “I play Young Atlas. My character, when we find him, he’s homeless, and he finds refuge falling in love for the first time with a girl, and they try and help each other out, because they’re both dealing with different forms of abuse in their households. So, that was a really powerful and great project that I’m excited for people to see.”
What would Neustaedter most like people to know about AMERICAN RUST: BROKEN JUSTICE?
“I think one thing that really resonated this season is, all these characters have flaws on the outside, and it’s quite a bit like the name AMERICAN RUST itself. You have the rust on the outside, and the weathering of life and your traumas and your past, and the things that are weighing on you, but deep down, when you scratch off the rust, you get to steel, and you get to iron, and you see what’s the foundation of these characters, and the foundation of these characters are good people, trying their best. That’s something that’s really relatable, because you see the flaws, but at the same time, you see how they’re always trying to be better people, and trying to make a difference.”
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Article: Exclusive Interview: AMERICAN RUST: BROKEN JUSTICE actor Alex Neustaedter on Season 2 of the Amazon thriller series
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