On Sunday, Kiefer Sutherland returns to TV with Paramount+’s new thriller series Rabbit Hole. The 24 veteran executive produces and stars as John Weir, an expert in corporate espionage, who takes on a routine job that lands him in the middle of a deadly conspiracy.
The show touches on some ripped-from-the-headlines topics, from fragile digital banking systems to an omnipresent security state and deepfake tech. Sutherland tells ABC Audio, “It’s alarming. But the truth is we’re in the middle of a technological revolution … our capabilities of manipulating information, manipulating other people’s images and voice imaging is changing dynamically by the week.”
He adds, “And, you know, and some of it can be used for good and some of it can be used for bad. We do a bit of both in the context of our show.”
His character is a master of this bleeding edge tech and its uses, but Sutherland explains even he gets in over his head. “The duality of that is what really attracted me to the character. He’s incredibly smart, easy, he’s sophisticated, he’s witty … he’s got a sense of humor, but he’s also incredibly vulnerable.”
Kiefer continues, “With every gift comes, you know, your Achilles heel. And he has a … finite gift with numbers where he can use numbers very fast in his brain to predict probabilities and likely outcomes. But if he runs into a situation that’s so complicated that he can’t round out that number, he starts to go down what we call the proverbial rabbit hole and starts to emotionally come undone.”
The series kicks off Sunday night on Paramount+.
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