Following the downfall of the Russian mafia and the shocking prison warden murder, the fourth season of Mayor of Kingstown, which premieres today on Paramount+, thrusts Mike McLusky (Jeremy Renner) into chaos as a new power vacuum leaves the city vulnerable to threats. Mike’s grip on Kingstown is slipping as new gangs move in and tensions escalate, especially within the prison walls, where a hardened new warden (Edie Falco) makes her presence felt and confronts Mike’s established system. Mike faces a new challenge with his brother Kyle (Taylor Handley) now in trapped in the dangerous prison environment for making a controversial decision in last season’s violent climax, and the arrival of Frank Moses (Lennie James) brings unflinching brutality to the city.

Recently, SciFi Vision spoke with Hugh Dillon, who plays Ian, now under scrutiny for his possible role in a past murder, and Laura Benanti, who joins the series this season as the compassionate corrections officer Cindy Stephens.

You can stream the first episode of season four now on Paramount+. Watch the interview and read the transcript below.



SCIFI VISION:  To start off, why don't you both talk about what fans can expect from your characters this season?

HUGH DILLON:   My character, Ian, has no respect for accountability. He just kind of lives within his own world, but everyone knows him there. And really, it's just such an unpredictable but exciting season. I really want people to absorb it, because it's the kind of season you could put in the last three seasons into chat GPT, and in fact, somebody has. And this is nothing like what would come out. You can't see any of it coming. And we were lucky enough to devise this character for Laura, Cindy Stephens. And you want to take it?

LAURA BENANTI:   Yeah, my character, she's a single mom of three kids. She's had a challenging life, a challenging road that sort of led her to the dead end that is Kingstown. And she got there to give her children a more stable life through a job that is actually, for somebody who grew up like her, a great job. She's got benefits. She's got health care. She's got flexibility. And what looked like a good job on paper, immediately becomes unimaginable, but she's committed to this, and so she does it. And she witnesses and does things I think she never in a million years thought she would even be that close to.

SCIFI VISION:   What has this experience taught you guys? What have you learned, either just about yourselves or as actors?

HUGH DILLON:   Well, I think we both, because we've been talking a lot recently, it's just the proximity to Jeremy Renner. It's like he's one of us. He's an actor, but just what he's been through is so inspiring, and you feel it on set. And what's come up a lot today is, yes, the subject matter of our show is very dark, and we get into the intricacies of human emotion and how they navigate in the world, but what we do, Laura and I and Jeremy, is spend most of our time laughing and telling stories. And that is just such a great community to be a part of. And Jeremy is just such a great, to have a dude like that and lead the show but really lead in just such a great sense of humanity, because he gives. He shares. He's present.

LAURA BENANTI:   And also, like, anybody on set who's like, “I'm tired,” he's like, “I died. My eyeball came out.” So, you know, like, what?!

SCIFI VISION:   Yeah, you can't say anything after that, right?

LAURA BENANTI:   No, I think for me, it gave me so much perspective, where I was like, I have literally zero things to complain about at all, because this dude is outside in a peacoat, and it's negative minus 0 degrees, and he's 70% titanium.

SCIFI VISION:   All right. Since I don't live too far, I'm going to ask you both really quickly. Since you've been filming in Pittsburgh, [do you have any] favorite places that you’ve been to?

HUGH DILLON:   I love the Strip District. I spent all my time down there. The studio's not far. There's, you know, a bunch of great restaurants. There's a Starbucks that I had issues with, but I just, you know, we shot the first season in Canada, and we scouted Pittsburgh, and I fell in love with it, and I continue to fall in love with it. The people are great. The crews are great. The locations are great. We find more things to shoot that mimic the town that I'm from in Canada that had the nine penitentiaries. So, there's just a lot of similarities. And I just really, I really lean into that, real people kind of blue-collar aesthetic. And I love it. I love it on screen, and I love it in reality.

LAURA BENANTI:   Don't forget the Heinz Museum.

HUGH DILLON:   And the Heinz Museum.

LAURA BENANTI:   And the Andy Warhol Museum. That one, that's actually great. There are some really good museums there, actually.