Meet Netflix's new bad boy: 'Bloodline's' Owen Teague
Think your family is dramatic? Even Grandpa Joe’s uncensored offenses are probably nothing compared to the Rayburn family of Netflix’s Bloodline. When we left off at the end of season one, Coach Taylor John Rayburn (Kyle Chandler) killed his brother Danny (Ben Mendelsohn), who was running massive amounts of drugs through their family’s historic inn in the Keys, and got his two other siblings, Meg (Linda Cardellini) and Kevin (Norbert Leo Butz) in on the cover up.
Oh and then decided to run for sheriff because that sounded like a good idea.
Cue Nolan, who showed up just before the closing credits to drop the bomb that he’s the son that Danny forgot to inform everyone he had.
If Nolan, played by the lovely Owen Teague, looks familiar, there’s a reason. Teague played young Danny in flashback scenes during the first season. A part that he mysteriously saw an advertisement to fill one day while he was currently filming the role.
“They were casting other roles and it was like, a young Danny role and I saw it and said ‘wait, what?’ That’s what I’m playing…” he told us ahead of the drop of season two. Nothing like seeing an advertisement for your job.
“So I got a call from the casting director and she explained they are casting this son role and they’d like for me to read for it.”
His uncanny resemblance to Mendelsohn was not an oversight. Nolan’s presence through the first several episodes of season 2 is a haunting reminder of what happened to Danny. Especially his little acts of rebellion like smoking, which Teague says he learned from Mendelsohn himself.
“At one point in an episode, I was with Ben and he was sitting outside taking a smoke break and I went out and asked him to teach me and he did,” he said. “So I learned from dad.”
As for Teague’s real parents, they’ve gotten used to the snake bite piercings and scandalous scenes he’s been a part of. Though with slight bemusement, perhaps because Teague is nothing like the role. He’s finishing high school, a public magnet school where he’s an acting major, which he says has been fairly normal though he’s out a lot. And hopes to continue acting -- he has a part in the thriller Cell alongside Samuel L. Jackson and John Cusack coming in July.
So what did he learn from playing a bad boy? That most, Nolan especially, are covering some deeper issues.
“The thing about Nolan is, he makes himself seem like a bad boy character. That is really a mask for a lot of vulnerability and shame that he has about his past and things that he’s done. So he kind of wears this tough, smoking, asking for tequila persona to cover up all that pain that he has.”
And that he’s not likely taking up smoking anytime soon.
“Herbal cigarettes are terrible.”