Kiefer Sutherland on His New Show, 'Rabbit Hole,' and the Odds of a '24' Revival

The actor gives Jack Bauer fans reason to hope.

Kiefer Sutherland, 56, goes down the Rabbit Hole (March 26 on Paramount+) in the new conspiracy thriller where nothing is what it seems to be. John Weir (Sutherland), a master of deception in the world of corporate espionage, is framed for murder by a shadowy cabal with the power to influence and control populations in this story that keeps the players on their toes with its constant twists and turns.

24 and Rabbit Hole are completely different shows, but do you think there’s a common thread between Jack Bauer and John Weir in that they both want to save the world? 

They have it in common but for different reasons and on very different levels. Jack Bauer is a character that literally wanted to serve. He didn't want to save the world. It was a situation that was put into his lap on his watch and he felt a great sense of duty and responsibility to go forward and do what he could to prevent these very big catastrophic situations from happening. John Weir wants to save himself, and only over time does he even begin to understand that by saving himself, there's an opportunity to do a greater good, and he tries to do both.

I think John Weir is much more of a rascal than Jack Bauer, which was a lot of fun to play, so he probably doesn't have Jack Bauer's nobility, but he's a lot funnier.

What made you say yes to John Weir and Rabbit Hole? 

It was a combination of things. John [Requa] and Glenn [Ficarra] are two of my favorite writers and their work is extraordinary. I was also really intrigued with the idea of working with two people as a directing unit. I've never had that experience. It's really beautiful.

And this is a thriller that harkens back to amazing films I absolutely admired and loved, like Three Days of the Condor and Marathon Man. What I found fascinating about this was that even in the context of the storytelling between the four people that are the nucleus of this cast, there are moments when no one can trust anybody. If we don't understand how to harness technology so that it cannot be manipulated and used in this way, then we're going to create a world where literally the person you're sitting across from…you're not going to really be able to trust anything that they're saying or doing.

This is beautifully juxtaposed against the fact that John Weir is falling in love with a woman who he knows he should not be falling in love with, and he can't help himself, which is so beautifully human. It's those contradictions in the storytelling, and in the context of the character, that I think they do so well, and I wanted to try it.

Related: Kiefer Sutherland's Strategy for Success

Rabbit Hole exists in this world where deception and manipulation are the everyday reality. Are there any conspiracy theories in real life that you don’t necessarily subscribe to but find fascinating?

I've always been amazed with the fact that if the mafia killed Jimmy Hoffa, we'd know by now because those guys can't keep a secret for anything. Prison will show you that. That one I've always found amusing; that everybody thinks it was the mob, but there's no way the five people that had to keep that a secret did. That's always been fascinating that no one's been able to solve that crime.

And, obviously, the Kennedy assassination and this idea that every person who becomes president finds out the truth. That, to me, is as humorous as anything I've seen in a long time. I've seen our presidents and there's no way they could keep that a secret either.

I think the biggest conspiracy, which is not even a conspiracy, that I find kind of funny and potentially alarming is the algorithms that are created by Netflix, Paramount+ and all of the streaming services that based on what you watch, start to target what they think you will watch. This idea that artificial intelligence is somehow going to replace the vast variety of interests that I might have, I think that's a potentially very dangerous thing when other humans start to look at the data from AI and think they have an insight into another human being more than they do. I think that's when mistakes will potentially get made. And that's not even a conspiracy—that's just a reality of an opinion, which…that and a quarter will get you a cup of coffee, but not at Starbucks.

You’re an action icon, but it’s a dozen or so years since 24 ended. How did you deal with that aspect of Rabbit Hole? Do you rely more on your stuntman than previously? 

No. I wish I did. They were all like, “Yeah, I heard you do your own stuff. Good, do it,” and I was like, “OK.” The big difference, which is actually really funny and it's more technical than anything, is that Jack Bauer usually threw the first punch and he usually won the fight. This is very different. I don't win any fights. I lose them all and I don't throw the first punch. The reason why that matters, and it's technical, is because normally the person who's getting hit first doesn't see it coming. That’s the point. If you're going to attack someone, you don't want to see it coming.

Related: Kiefer Sutherland: 'It's Amazing I'm Still Alive'

So, you have to anticipate being hit because you have to deal with it, but you [have to act as if you] can't see it coming and embarrassingly flinch. So, I had to teach myself not to flinch even though I knew I was going to get hit in the back of the head with a skateboard. There's nothing that really prepares you or trains you how to not flinch, so some of the takes took a little longer than I had hoped.

Do you have a sense of humor about the Jack Bauer jokes? Do you have a favorite? 

There was one [joke] that I saw on a T-shirt that made me laugh. It said: “If Jack Bauer was stuck in a room with Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin and Nina Myers [of 24’s Counter Terrorist Unit] and he only had two bullets, who would he shoot?” Then on the back it said: “Nina Myers. Twice.” I can't say politically I align myself with that, but I thought in the context, the joke was pretty funny.

Related: Kiefer Sutherland Talks '24' Movie

Has there been any talk about getting Jack Bauer out of China? 

A lot of talk for 10 years. [Executive producer] Howard Gordon and I are still very good friends, so are [creator] Joel Surnow and I. We talk regularly. It always sounds so much easier over a beer, right? “We should bring it back.” Then someone starts to write one episode and they realize they’ve got 23 more to go just to finish the first season, and they're like, “Yeah, maybe we shouldn't do it right now.” So, we always talk about it and I make a joke: “If you want me to be able to walk and run at all, you better do it soon.” But it never seems to get to that stage.

People are used to watching shows with eight to 10 episodes as opposed to 24 episodes now, aren’t they? They’d have to change the title and the format of the show, which I thought was the real star of the show, which was that everything was done in real time. It's a complicated idea if you want to stay true to the show, but you never know. I've always said I would go back because I just enjoyed it so much and I love the people that I worked with on it, so we'll see.

You’re also heading out on the “So Full of Love” tour. What do you love about singing live that maybe you don’t get as an actor? 

Well, I wrote the songs. I didn't write 24, The Caine Mutiny or Rabbit Hole. That's me playing a character in an effort to tell a story that was created by somebody else. The songs are little stories, too, but they're mine. I wrote them and they’re of a personal nature.

I wrote a song about the loss of my mom called “Saskatchewan,” and I can play that song and, invariably in the first three rows, there’s always someone that you can find that's lost either a parent or someone that they're very close to. You can tell by the person next to them holding them, because that song resonates with them and then, all of a sudden, I've made a connection with someone that's gone through something like I have, which is the loss of my parent and the loss of their parent and now we have something in common. You connect enough of those dots and, by the end of the night, whether it's 500 people or 2,000 people, you realize that we all have a little more in common, or think we have more in common, with each other than when it started.

I started playing music because I love playing, and I started playing because I love the people that I was playing with. That whole audience thing that I just described was something I didn't count on and had no reason to understand or know about, but that's the thing that's made me keep doing it.

Your website features a few cooking videos. Who taught you how to cook? Did you have to do that because you were a single dad?

Yes, it was completely because I was a single dad, and I didn't want to kill my children. I had seen in the movie The Accidental Tourist, where the sister slow roasted a turkey for 14 hours and they're all scared to get food poisoning. I was like, I didn't even know you could slow roast a turkey for 14 hours and potentially kill someone, I better go to cooking school, and so I did. I guess I hit it at the right age because it was the first thing that I ever did from all those years of schooling where I followed the directions from beginning to the end. I started making food that I really, really enjoyed.

So, I started making these videos because I kept running into people, especially on the road with music and other actor friends of mine, that didn't know how to cook. One woman in particular said the sweetest thing—and she was a really physical actor—she was like, “Yeah, I can beat you three different ways with this broom handle, but I couldn't cook eggs for my kid. Can you show me that?” I was like, “Yeah, OK.” I just enjoyed it and made a couple of videos more as a joke, but people seem to enjoy them.