For Jeremy Renner, returning to his Paramount+ series Mayor of Kingstown after a devastating snowplow accident in January 2023 was an important step in his recovery – literally.
“I knew how exhausting it is, even when I’m perfectly healthy,” he told Yahoo Entertainment about starring in and executive producing the series, which launches its third season on June 2. “Maybe I can walk 100 meters normally. But what is my resistance? My stamina was rubbish.”
On January 1, 2023, the Mayor of Kingstown star, 53, who is also known for his role as Hawkeye in Marvel’s Avengers franchise, was overwhelmed by his 14,000 lbs. snowplows at his Nevada home.
Renner was airlifted to the hospital and suffered multiple broken bones, chest trauma and a collapsed lung. Getting back on my feet on my own would be a long road.
After a solid year of physical therapy and recovery, the Oscar-nominated actor and father of one began producing the Kingstown crime drama, which concerns a family of powerful people in Michigan who work as mediators between the local prison, law enforcement and gangs.
Asking himself “How do I come back” a year after the accident, Renner said he realized the show itself could be a motivator.
“This is my ‘out the front gate,’” he said. “To stop just doing recovery and just going out and living life, doing life things. And let this be part of the recovery.”
In January 2024, Renner returned to production and is now ready to release Season 3 just five months later. He credits the show itself and his devotion to the character Mike McLusky, aka the titular mayor, for helping him through this journey.
“You just need to take off the band-aid… and move on.”
Although he admits that his work on the program requires a lot of effort and that there is a lot that he has to shoulder, Renner also said that he has had a lot of support from his team.
“I had a lot of people helping, listening to my body as much as I had to listen to my body. And we did it as a unit. It took all of us to overcome this,” he said.
“You just need to take the Band-Aid off, okay, and go for it,” he added. “Like anything, you have to be brave enough. What am I going to do, just fail?”
Failure, for Renner, was not an option. He knew the program — and its future — would affect more people than just him.
“So everyone becomes unemployed. This sucks,” he said. “And we’re not going to allow that to happen either, especially after the long break that a lot of people had with the strikes – the writers’ strike, the actors’ strike – and there are a lot of people unemployed for a long time. So that was also very important to me – getting people back to work. And it’s important for me to get back on my feet.”
A “safe landing spot”
The show itself, which doesn’t shy away from violence, was called “dark” by critics.
“I wouldn’t disagree,” Renner said. “I like the dark. But my argument is always the safe landing point for our audience. For me, when I watch it, I think, I need some time to breathe away from the chaos – the death, the destruction, the fires, the explosions, all that stuff, right? Give us a reason to care more, to fall more in love with our characters, or to feel more for our main characters. Well, in season three, I think we’re going to get a lot more of that.”
So how is the actor feeling now?
“Feeling strong, happy,” he said, “and proud.”
Mayor of Kingstown Season 3 begins streaming on Paramount+ on June 2.
