BY JUDY SLOANE

Front Row Features

HOLLYWOOD-The second season of FX’s “The Lowdown” continues to follow Lee Raybon (Ethan Hawke,) citizen journalist living in Tulsa who is committed to exposing corruption, even when it puts his life in danger, while also trying to find more time to spend with his daughter Francis, (Ryan Kiera Armstrong.) Things get even further complicated when Lee’s estranged grifter father, Lee Raybon Sr. (Tommy Lee Jones) turns up on the scene.

Creator, writer, director Sterlin Harjo and stars Ethan Hawke and Tommy Lee Jones spoke with TV journalists about the new season which premieres on Wednesday, October 14, at 9 pm ET and 6 pm PT on FX and Hulu. All subsequent episodes will air at 9 pm ET/PT on FX and 9 pm on Hulu.

Q: Ethan, you play a truthstorian in the show, but you’re also in a truthstorian show. How do you think about “The Lowdown” in terms of its legacy and impact on our perspectives on American history and culture?

Ethan Hawke: Wow, that’s a big question to get us started off.

I think it’s a perfect time for a character like Lee Raybon. It does feel often like we’re living in the Tower of Babel and who gets heard is whoever shouts the loudest. And that’s a difficult ground to walk on if you can’t feel the truth. And so, this is a character I feel like we can do a lot with. The state of journalism has changed so much since I was a kid that it’s a deep well to explore a character from.

Q: Sterlin, Season 2 introduces major new dynamics with an elite conspiracy and an estranged father. How does the scale of the season’s mystery compare to the Washberg investigation from Season 1?

Sterlin Harjo: I think that with Season 1, we were doing a bit of world building. And because of that, we had less time to really dive into the plot. This one we jump right in on an emotional level and also in the plot. It’s really just about raising the stakes and throwing some new ingredients into the stew, which would be Tommy Lee Jones. It’s Season 1 on steroids and we like to have a lot of fun with it.

Q: Tommy, as a seasoned writer, producer, director, and actor, what was the creative process like on “The Lowdown” for you?

Tommy Lee Jones: It’s very simple. Sterlin’s writing is brilliant and [I] had brilliant people to work with. Everybody knew each other and what to do pretty much automatically.

Ethan Hawke: Sterlin had this idea of what if we brought Tommy Lee Jones in to be your father? And it seemed to me like the perfect way to up the stakes, because I’m asking myself the whole of Season 1, what drives this person? What made them this way? What is behind this chaos? And getting to do a deep dive into a father-son relationship allowed me to reveal a lot of what I was feeling and thinking about him and ask the right questions about Lee to bring to the audience.

I see a direct relationship to a kid who might have been raised by a grifter, to somebody who was obsessed with telling the truth, but incapable of really doing it themselves, which just makes for a really complex human being.

Q: Sterlin, adding a massive talent like Tommy Lee Jones completely shifts the show’s energy. What was it like integrating this powerhouse into the established rhythm of the returning cast?

Sterlin Harjo: We’re still making the same show, but how do we introduce elements to Lee’s life that disrupts everything and hijacks the course of his life and heightens everything and gets Ethan into a couple of situations?

If the first season was about being a father, the second season’s about being a son.

Q: Tommy, it’s such a fraught father-son relationship. Did you and Ethan come up with a backstory beyond what was on the page?

Tommy Lee Jones: No, we played every moment for its own value, trying to make every moment something that hasn’t been seen before. We didn’t do a lot of research. What was your childhood like? We reminisced about his mother, some. But those reminiscences tell a story. Every story tells a picture.

Q: Sterlin, how do you select the music for the series which seems to so perfectly match every scene?

Sterlin Harjo: I essentially find a lot of music that I love. When I start writing a season, I will have a playlist, and I’ll start sending it to people. I start sending it to production people. Then I’ll send it to [the] editors. They know that there is the vibe that I’m going for. I work with a great person, Tiffany Anders, who helps. If I don’t have something coming through that I can’t think of something for a moment, Tiffany will help me find a track that usually works 9 times out of 10. She’s a great music supervisor.

Q: Tommy, the scenes where we see Lee Sr. getting to know his granddaughter were so poignant. What was it like working with Ryan Kiera Armstrong?

Tommy Lee Jones: She’s a fine young actor. And it was just a joy. We didn’t have to do a lot of so-called preparation or rehearsal. As with most actors, starting with him (Ethan,) the work has just become automatic. In a real way, these scripts perform themselves, you just have to stay out of the way.

Q: Tommy, it’s been a while since you’ve been part of a TV show. What was it like coming back to television since starring and directing in “The Good Old Boys?”

Tommy Lee Jones: There are fewer and fewer differences between movies and TV. We use the same equipment, the same lights, we’ve got the same call sheet. The process is becoming the same. The experience of the product is becoming more and more homogenized. There’s practically no transition between cinema and television today.