Lucky for fans of Michael Beach, the prolific actor is constantly working, so the sting of losing his prison warden character Kareem Morris in Mayor of Kingstown Season 3 at the end of the summer was healed a bit quicker by his turn as Nantucket Police Officer Dan Carter in The Perfect Couple shortly thereafter.
Oh, and it’s great to see Beach back as Tyson Mitchell’s (Jay Will) dad, Mark, too, opposite Sylvester Stallone in Tulsa King season 2.
Picking up the mantle of the late, great James Brown, Beach may be the new “hardest working man in show business.” After all, Mayor of Kingstown, The Perfect Couple and Tulsa King are merely the last three of Beach’s 170 screen roles dating back to 1986—and there’s more on the way.
Mayor of Kingstown, of course, is one of writer-director-producer Taylor Sheridan’s most shocking series, considering that Sheridan and co-creator Hugh Dillon surprisingly killed off a main character, Mitch McLusky (Kyle Chandler) in the show’s pilot episode.
Narratively, of course, it cleared the way for Mitch’s younger brother, Mike (Jeremy Renner) to become the new “mayor” of Kingstown, Michigan—a fixer who acts as a power broker between prisoners and guards within the walls of the town’s prison system and law enforcement and criminals on the outside.
Mitch’s death in the first also served a major purpose for Mayor of Kingstown as a whole: a bellwether that no character was safe, including Kareem, who met a brutal fate in the Season 3 finale.
In a recent Zoom conversation, Beach told me that he’ll not only miss playing Kareem on Mayor of Kingstown should there be more seasons of the Paramount+ series, he’ll miss the camaraderie that he had on set with Renner, Dillon and many others.
I was on the show for three years, since the very beginning,” Beach said. “The first season wasn’t as busy as I didn’t have as much to do, but I was still there, among the cast and the crew and the vibe … it tough moving from stuff that is quality, where the acting, the writing and the directing is top notch. That’s, that’s the stuff that I’ll miss—it was a special project for me.”
The role of Kareem certainly provided a harrowing character arc for Beach. Kareem was a guard captain when Mayor of Kingstown got underway, and the character changed dramatically following a prison riot scene when we learned he was sexually brutalized by some inmates.
In the episodes that follow, Kareem is struggling to deal with the trauma of the assault, all while he’s trying to hold his delicate family life together. And while Beach mentioned that Season 1 was the least busy of his seasons on Mayor of Kingstown, he found out that much more was in store for him when he ventured into the dark storyline of Kareem’s life after the prison riot.
“One of the directors who was an EP [executive producer] on the first and the second season told me that Taylor Sheridan was asking him, ‘Did you kill Kareem in the riots? Don’t don’t kill him. Because I have this great idea for Season 2,’” Beach recalled. “We are going to focus in on his character and what the riots have done to the guards.”
As such, Beach said it felt great knowing Sheridan had plans for a storyline that examined the prison guards’ point of view.
“That’s Kareem represents—a side of the guards,” Beach said. “Obviously, there’s a few different types of guards, you know? But he represented the ones that are really that are trying to uphold the whole idea of the penal system, so that was a real treat for me.”
Beach work as Kareem continued to expand from there, as Kareem went to become Kingstown Prison’s warden. In a cruel twist of fate, however—as his family life continued to fall apart and he was being railroaded out of the job by the government system—Kareem became a tragic character when he walked alone and unarmed into the prison yard knowing he would be murdered.
Beach Plays A Key Role In ‘A Perfect Couple’
Following his character’s tragic demise in Mayor of Kingstown, Michael Beach had the good fortune of being in the ensemble cast of Netflix’s limited series The Perfect Couple.
The series stars Nicole Kidman and Liev Schreiber as Greer Garrison Winbury and Tag Winbury, a wealthy couple whose seemingly perfect lives are upended when one of their guests is found dead near the shore of their extravagant compound on Nantucket Island.
Making matters worse, is that is the drowning happens on the eve of what was supposed to be their son Benji’s (Billy Howlie) marriage to his fiancée Amelia (Eve Hewson)—and Officer Dan Carter (Beach) and Detective Nikki Henry (Donna Lynne Champlin) suspect the guest was murdered.
Thanks to their affable demeanors and working-class backgrounds, Dan and Nikki are easily the most likable characters in The Perfect Couple since all of the Winburys, their family members and inner circle of close friends are highfalutin snobs who act as though they are above the law.
On the flip side, thanks to Dan and Nikki’s relatability to audiences, Beach said he’s heard some positive rumblings about how audiences feel about their characters.
“They are very popular characters from what we’ve been told and in fact, some people some people say, ‘Oh maybe we might see a little spinoff [series] if we go back to Nantucket,’” Beach enthused. “I had so much fun on that project working with Donna Lynn. We worked so differently and have done so many different things because she comes from a comedy and musical background. Her world and the one I come from are the exact opposite.”
While Beach’s character appears in plenty of scenes featuring Greer, Tag and their ilk in The Perfect Couple, he was thrilled by the opportunity to share a couple of solo scenes with Kidman. Their pivotal scenes are set in a bar, where Greer appears to let her guard down a bit in front of Dan.
“I hadn’t worked with Nicole met her before, and I really like those scenes with her in the bar,” Beach said. “I thought the chemistry was good and with the little banter [we had between us] I think you could not only see the difference in who those people are, where she’s from and where he’s from, but how they still had this little chemistry. That was one of the things I wanted to play with a little bit, that Dan was kind of enamored by her.”
Making the scenes even more enjoyable to film was the fact that Kidman was “a very sweet person,” Beach said.
“She’s such a warm person that the scenes were just easy for me,” Beach recalled. “That’s what happens when I’m working with people who have a strong personality. I just allow myself to get sucked into it and try to just have natural reactions to what’s coming at me.”
Beach Is Back For ‘Tulsa King’ Season 2
Although his character isn’t as prominent on Taylor Sheridan’s Tulsa King as it was on Mayor of Kingstown, Michael Beach said he’s thoroughly enjoying his time on the series.
Tulsa King stars Sylvester Stallone as Dwight Manfredi—a New York mobster who sets up a new operation in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Beach plays Rick Mitchell in Tulsa King, who is weary of the association his son, Tyson (Jay Will), has with Dwight since he’s mobster’s driver and assistant.
And while Rick only appears in a few scenes so far this season on Tulsa King, the character’s concern for the well-being of his son can be felt throughout.
“That is Mark’s fear—that once Tyson gets into this world then you’re gonna be lost in there and you won’t be able to get out,” Beach said. “Dwight spent 25 years in prison and Mark’s fear is that Tyson is going to follow him into prison or maybe into the grave.”
While Tulsa King has hard-hitting crime elements akin to Mayor of Kingstown, there’s no question that Tulsa King—largely because of Stallone—is much lighter at times since it is loaded with comedic moments.
Beach said he loves not only the way Stallone delivers his humor in Tulsa King, but the way he gives other characters chances to be funny, too.
“He’s always trying to spread the love in terms of in terms of giving people opportunities to stand out, even if it’s if it’s just a line here and there,” Beach said. “He’s pretty magnanimous about it. It’s one of the great things I found out about him when working with him.”
Mayor of Kingstown and Tulsa King are both streaming on Paramount+, while The Perfect Couple is streaming on Netflix.
Note: Some quotes in this interview were edited or condensed for clarity.