Kyle Chandler on playing grouchy Hal Jordan in HBO's 'Lanterns' and that shocking premiere ending

Kyle Chandler sits down in West Hollywood on a morning in mid-August, and within minutes of the conversation beginning, he's already deflecting—joking that he's not sure he has enough material to fill the scheduled time, as if he hasn't spent decades accumulating stories from sets and soundstages across the country. But he's also the kind of person who remembers names. He mentions his manager, his agent, the costume designer, a fellow actor who's become a friend. He thanks the crew as much as the cast. He still prefers physical scripts in his hands.

He's here to talk about "Lanterns," HBO's new series set in the DC universe, where he plays Hal Jordan—a veteran Green Lantern who is, by his own description, a talker and a bullshitter with far more on his mind than what comes out of his mouth. Jordan is a former military test pilot turned intergalactic cop, confident in his abilities and deeply resistant to the idea that he needs to train anyone. When a new recruit named John Stewart arrives—Aaron Pierre in the role—Jordan makes his displeasure known. He's inconvenienced. He's skeptical. He's grouchy.

That grouchiness is precisely what drew Chandler to the part. "I love the old grouchy characters," he says. "They always try to do bad but it always falls on top of them. Then, when they do good, it's heartwarming. You get to play all these colors inside of these guys." The character allows him to explore something different from the roles he's known for—particularly Eric Taylor, the earnest, full-hearted coach he played on "Friday Night Lights," a performance that won him an Emmy in 2011 and, as he says, changed the way he understood acting itself.

But what really sealed the deal was the ending of the first episode. Ten years forward in time, the audience sees Jordan sitting alone in the snowy stands of a rural high school football field. He's dead. The ring that powers him is gone. "That might have been another reason why I said, 'I want to do this,'" Chandler says. "That sets into the tone of the show." The mystery of how he gets there, what happens in the intervening years, and what his relationship with Stewart becomes—these are the questions the remaining seven episodes will answer.

Chandler didn't come to the role as a Green Lantern expert. He admits he knew nothing about the character before reading the script. What caught his attention was the writing itself—the humor, the self-deprecation, the texture of a man aging into mortality and afraid of losing his power and relevance. Creator Chris Mundy, working alongside Damon Lindelof and Tom King, had envisioned Jordan as a Chuck Yeager type: cool, confident, skilled. Mundy, who had worked with Chandler before on "Bloodline," knew the actor could pull off the necessary contradiction—playing a character who's genuinely difficult while remaining fundamentally likable. "Kyle, just as a person, is so likable and it's real," Mundy says. "So it allows you to push the character to be even more of a jerk to John because you know it's going to fall back on, 'Oh yeah, it's Kyle doing it.' So it can land a little bit softer, and people can tolerate a little bit more."

The relationship between Jordan and Stewart forms the emotional core of the series. On camera, they clash. Off camera, Chandler and Pierre developed something genuine. "I'd never worked with Aaron before," Chandler says, "but once we're acting, it gets very intimate." Pierre describes the experience as joyful, nourishing, collaborative—and notes that genuine friendship between collaborators isn't guaranteed. "I was blessed with the gift of developing a genuine, sincere friendship with Kyle that exists outside of the context of work." When they filmed that final scene of the first episode—Jordan frozen in the stands—Pierre felt the weight of it. "I felt really emotional on the day and I totally just allowed that to present itself on camera."

Chandler's life outside the show centers on family and, increasingly, on work with his wife Kathryn through Patriots' Hall of Dripping Springs, a resource center for veterans and their families in their Texas community. He lights up talking about it—the Taco Tuesdays, the job sourcing, the way the space has become a gathering place for people navigating the VA and rebuilding their lives. It's the kind of work that matters to him in a way that feels as real as anything he does on screen.

As for Jordan and Stewart, Chandler is clear about where their arc is headed. They don't like each other at the start. By the end, something has shifted—a friendship has formed, built on mutual respect and trust. But Jordan won't say it out loud. "He's a friend. I'm not gonna tell him that, but he's a friend, and I'd do anything for him." That's the kind of character Chandler loves to play: someone whose actions eventually speak louder than his resistance.