The LEVERAGE: REDEMPTION Team on the Ambitious Season 3 Opening

[Warning: This post contains spoilers for the season premiere of LEVERAGE: REDEMPTION.]

LEVERAGE: REDEMPTION’s third season kicked off with an intentionally epic opening: With the team in a Parisian auction house, as they worked together to steal a golden owl—and the sequence told through an action-packed one-shot.

“[Showrunner] John [Rogers] and I had a long conversation about how to kick off the season,” executive producer Dean Devlin shares with Give Me My Remote in the video below. “Originally, we were going to [open up] with rescuing Aldis [Hodge’s Hardison] out of the satellite that he was stuck in at the end of the previous season. But we talked about it, and because of this unique opportunity of having the show [be] the first time we’re on Amazon Prime as a Prime show, John had this concept—and I loved it—’Let’s do an episode that, if you’re a fan, literally feels like this is the best of the best. Like we took all the best stuff from every LEVERAGE episode and crammed it into one episode…And if you’ve never seen the show before, let’s knock it out of the park. Let’s give an ultimate LEVERAGE episode.’”

“And I think he really did,” he continues. “I mean, the fact that it opens with a five-minute single camera shot, goes to credits, comes back, and it’s our biggest action scene ever that we shot in Europe—it’s just crazy. I feel like it was just the perfect way to kick it off and to get all of our long-term characters, side-by-side, doing the thing that they do best. It really is a statement of, ‘This is what classic LEVERAGE is.’”

Part of that decision was focusing the action on the four actors who starred in the original run of LEVERAGE, and have continued on with the REDEMPTION world: Hodge, Gina Bellman (who plays ​​Sophie), Christian Kane (who plays Eliot), and Beth Riesgraf (who plays thief Parker).

In addition to it being special for fans, the actors admit it gives them an extra thrill, too, after spending more than 15 years working together.

“I wish I could tell you some great stories, like, ‘It was different!’…[but] It’s just family,” Kane says. “It’s just family. It’s almost a little bit sad because those years have not [felt like they] passed. They have in our lives, in our faces, in this and that. But not with us. It’s just family.”

“We’ve been so fortunate to play with each other for so many years. When we get back together, it’s a high five and they say, ‘roll camera,’ and it’s like that,” he continues with a snap.

“And the dynamics between us just haven’t changed over time,” Bellman adds. “I guess one of the reasons the show has been such a success is that we have that rhythm, that it just seems to be natural between the four of us. And so you do get a kind of a high when you feel that click again. I do always get, like, a little rush when it’s the four of us. Of course, we’d all love Aldis to be around all the time, but even like three of us, there’s just a little bit of a frisson that’s that’s different. Even as much as we love working with other actors, it’s always going to be a little bit extra [with the original cast].”

RELATED:

• The LEVERAGE: REDEMPTION Team on the Show’s Future and a Surprising Season 3
• LEVERAGE: REDEMPTION: Prime Video Sets April Season 3 Premiere
• LEVERAGE: REDEMPTION Renewed, Moving to Prime Video
• IMDb TV Renews LEVERAGE: REDEMPTION
• LEVERAGE: REDEMPTION: IMDb TV Sets October Return for Second Half of Season 1
• LEVERAGE: REDEMPTION Post-Mortem: Dean Devlin Shares Why Nate Was Written Out That Way
• LEVERAGE: REDEMPTION: Aleyse Shannon on Breanna Finding Her Place in the Team
• LEVERAGE: REDEMPTION: Dean Devlin on Finding the ‘Perfect’ Home for the Revival, and How the New Characters Influence the OG Team
• LEVERAGE: REDEMPTION: Noah Wyle Previews the Team’s New ‘Utility Player’
• LEVERAGE: REDEMPTION: Gina Bellman Previews Sophie’s Evolution in the IMDb TV Revival
• LEVERAGE Revival Ordered at IMDb TV
• LEVERAGE: Dean Devlin on the Series Finale, That Final Scene, Sophie’s Real Name, and More
• LEVERAGE: Aldis Hodge Talks About the Show’s Final Season

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