The role Wyatt Russell played to prove the doubters wrong: “His dad is Snake Plissken”
In the past 15 years, Wyatt Russell has built an impressively eclectic filmography. The son of Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn has never used his parents’ fame to juice publicity for himself, instead preferring to quietly furrow a path in the movie business by demonstrating his versatility in roles both big and small, indie and studio blockbuster alike.
After catching the eye with minor parts in 2011’s Cowboys & Aliens and 2012’s This is 40, Wyatt’s first brush with fame was a well-received supporting turn in 22 Jump Street in 2014. However, movie superstardom didn’t follow that role, potentially because unique, unusual choices defined his next several years.
For example, it took him until 2018 to play a standard heroic lead in the World War II horror movie Overlord, but he counterbalanced this with an intense, villainous turn in FX’s Under the Banner of Heaven and, most importantly, an existential exploration of one man’s quest to rebuild his life after disaster strikes in AMC’s Lodge 49.
In 2025, Wyatt admitted to The Hollywood Reporter that his unpredictable career has been great for him creatively, but has potentially contributed to audiences struggling to get a handle on him. “I get a lot of people who are like, ‘Wait — you were the surfer dude from Lodge 49 and also the Mormon baby killer from Under the Banner of Heaven?'” he chuckled. “I’ve always looked to do something completely different than I did on the last thing, which maybe isn’t the greatest way to get people to, in this day and age, understand somebody.”
However, for Wyatt, there was a worse eventuality than viewers not knowing what to expect from him: Hollywood executives felt the same. He revealed that, when he auditioned for Lodge 49, a little-seen but very fondly remembered show that withstood every attempt to be safely placed in one genre, the studio suits didn’t know if the son of Kurt freakin’ Russell could play vulnerability on screen. After all, his dad was one of Hollywood’s most beloved action/comedy stars, but he didn’t often play characters experiencing emotional crises, and they (mistakenly) wondered if Wyatt was cut from a similar cloth.
“I mean, literally right before I was auditioning, it was like, ‘Well, can he be vulnerable? His dad is Snake Plissken,'” Wyatt explained with a wry smile. “Hollywood isn’t filled with the most creative people, for the most part. They kind of just go off of what they saw you last in.”
So, once again, Wyatt took it upon himself to push back against this depressingly common Hollywood perception that actors can only play characters similar to their previous roles. He pursued Lodge 49 and the character of unusually optimistic surfer Sean ‘Dud’ Dudley with gusto, determined to prove to any doubters that he was much, much more than Snake Plissken’s son.
To his delight, the show developed a dedicated core fanbase that helped it last for two seasons and 20 episodes, which could be seen as a victory for such an introspective, philosophical show. “The writing was fantastic,” Wyatt gushed. “It was an existential show and way more than meets the eye. I loved it, and critics loved it. But it was on at an odd time and wasn’t promoted effectively.”
After proving he had the chops to dig deep into a man’s soul, though, Wyatt’s next move after finishing Lodge 49 was perfectly in keeping with his determination to zig when people think he’s going to zag. In 2021, he joined the Marvel Cinematic Universe as John Walker, a dark Captain America analogue, in the Disney+ show The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, and ended up reprising the role in 2025’s Thunderbolts.
Incredibly, that blockbuster was directed by Jake Schreier, who helmed several episodes of Lodge 49. This prompted Wyatt to joke that most people who have seen the show would be astounded that “these two guys were going to be making a Marvel movie together!”
