The spaghetti Western is back with the launch of That Dirty Black Bag on AMC+, which premiered today. Harkening back to classic Clint Eastwood movies, this new series is the next evolution of a genre defined by Sergio Leone. “Where our trailers were and actually where we shot in Fort Bravo, a lot of the Leone movies were shot there,” actor Douglas Booth revealed during a TCA press conference. “When we were doing our horse training, we could ride from one classic film set to another. You would be in a Western town and the next minute, you'd be outside a little church in Mexico. So that was quite fun. You'd watch the movie the night before and then doing the horse training the next day, you'd be riding around the sets.”
(Stefano C. Montesi/AMC+)
Dominic Cooper plays Arthur McCoy, fulfilling a childhood dream that he and Douglas Booth shared. “Doug and I knew each other since nursery school, so we're the same age,” Dominic revealed, sharing that the two used to pretend to be cowboys. “So we used to play together as kids, the same thing. So we were just doing it in adult form.” The project also gave Cooper the chance to revisit some classic westerns that the series emulates. “It obviously felt quite daunting sometimes to see all the classics and the actors that we respected and the work and the director's work we respected… You want to emulate, but you don't want to impersonate other people's performances from the past.”
“The genre is very beautiful,” shared Niv Sultran, an Israeli actress who plays Eve. She was aware of westerns growing up, but never dreamed she’d get the opportunity to act in one. “It was a very beautiful background for the main story and the characters,” she added about the incredible filming locations in Italy, Spain, and Morocco. “Every character deals with bigger than life story and so many timeless and touching and humane issues, and I think that every audience could relate to everything, to every story.”
“It was extraordinarily difficult to shoot this, and we shot a lot in a very short space of time,” Dominic Cooper explained. “The geography, getting everyone together, just making it work on time, the logistics of the entire thing, and we managed it… I knew we were making something that we were going to be proud of, and we worked extraordinarily hard, and I think it’s come out so wonderfully, and sometimes you get lost in it, and you can think you don’t know where it’s going to end up, or how it’s going to end up… I think this show is very different from anything.”
You can celebrate the return of the spaghetti western with That Dirty Black Bag, now streaming on AMC+.