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‘Smoke’ series finale — Jurnee Smollett and Dennis Lehane talk about the show’s fiery ending
“Smoke” joined a long line of thrilling Apple TV Plus miniseries when it debuted back in June. Now, after nine episodes, the show has come to its end with the series finale “Mirror Mirror,” and much like other episodes in the crime drama, it didn’t lack for shocking moments and surprising twists.
Earlier in the year, I sat down with both show star Jurnee Smollett and showrunner Dennis Lehane to discuss the nine-episode miniseries and its explosive conclusion, and now I can finally reveal what we discussed. Obviously, there are some major spoilers ahead. So if you haven’t seen the show or its series finale yet, boot up Apple TV Plus and come back once you’ve finished “Smoke.”
‘I thought it was such a cool twist’
If you’ve seen the entire nine-episode run of “Smoke,” then you know that the show kicks off with a twist. At the end of the two-episode premiere, it’s revealed that Taron Egerton’s Dave Gudsen is not only chasing the show’s serial arsonist — he is the serial arsonist.
I thought it was such a cool twist. An unexpected twist. I immediately had all the questions — and Dennis Lehane had all the answers for it. And then to see the transformation — the hair and makeup team did such a phenomenal job.
Jurnee Smollett
It’s not long before his partner, Calderone (Smollett), discovers Gudsen is her suspect, and by the end of a fiery showdown in a raging forest fire, she’s got her man. But in the subsequent interrogation, we learn that Gudsen doesn’t look like Egerton — he’s projected a heroic persona onto himself, and we only get a brief look at his real appearance before the mask comes back on.
“I thought it was such a cool twist,” Smollett told me when I asked her about the reveal of Gudsen’s true appearance. “An unexpected twist. [I] immediately had all the questions — and Dennis [Lehane] had all the answers for it. And then to see the transformation — the hair and makeup team did such a phenomenal job. It didn’t feel like makeup. It felt very real.”
Like us, she didn’t know to expect this shocking reveal right away. “I learned it maybe like midway through shooting the show,” she told me when I asked her about it. So it wasn’t just us that got a shocking reveal.
This wasn’t the only shocking twist over the nine episodes that had Smollett excited, though. When I asked her about killing her boss in the penultimate episode, she lit up.
“I was shocked! I was shocked,” she told me, so excited about her character’s big moment she couldn’t help but laugh. “I was so excited. [Laughs] Maybe that says a little too much about me, but I thought it was a real cool idea and shocking. My jaw was on the floor.”
This twist, admittedly, she knew early on in filming, as opposed to Gudsen’s physical transformation. “I knew it pretty early on. Dennis told me before we even started shooting — where the show was heading. And I loved it. Because it’s so unexpected, but not, because they’re in such a toxic relationship and such a toxic dynamic.”
Dennis Lehane reveals the inspiration behind the dueling arsonists in ‘Smoke’
When I asked showrunner Dennis Lehane about his decision to give Gudsen a split personality in “Smoke,” he pushed back on the use of that specific descriptor.
“I don’t know if I’d call that split personality,” he clarified. “I would call that projection. He sees himself one way and the world sees him another way. It’s all about running from yourself. That’s one of the big things about Dave from the beginning: You put the proof in front of me, I’m not going to see it. You put the mirror in front of me, I’m going to see what I project onto it.”
But it’s not just Dave that’s being held up to a mirror — he’s also a mirror for a real-life serial arsonist, John Leonard Orr, perhaps the most prolific serial arsonist in U.S. history.
“Orr had plenty of the characteristics that Dave Gudsen has,” Lehane explained to me. “And he was so completely in denial of who he was. Just 100%. He literally took it so far as to write a book, (Gudsen is also writing a book in “Smoke”) in which he — in some ways — confessed to a whole bunch of crimes. And yet he [Orr] said, ‘No, that was just fiction.’”
Gudsen’s not the show’s only serial arsonist that Calderone and Gudsen are tracking, though. Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine plays Freddy Fasano, another serial arsonist operating in Umberland, and he’s not based on someone that was inherently a rival of Orr’s, so I wanted to ask Lehane about the choice to give Gudsen a foil.
“One of the things you see in Dave Gudsen and in John Orr is this white victimization complex,” Lehane explained when I asked about Freddy. “This ‘Oh, they’ve given everything to the special interests’ and ‘White people have no more advantages in society.’ Which is just complete and utter horseshit.”
The real-life inspiration for Freddy immediately jumped out at Lehane as a counternarrative to the “white victimization complex” he associates with Orr and Gudsen. “When I read about the actual arsonist that inspired Freddy, he continued, “I said ‘Wow.’ That’s somebody who literally has no education, no family, he’s the wrong color in the wrong country at the wrong time. His education was shit. So he’s foisted out into society at 18 years old and he’s expected to function. And it didn’t work out well for the real guy, and it doesn’t work out real well for Freddy.”
If you haven’t already seen how it doesn’t work out for Freddy — or Gudsen, for that matter — go check out all nine episodes of “Smoke” on Apple TV Plus now. Then, check out our guide to the 31 best Apple TV Plus shows to stream on the streaming service right now.
Stream “Smoke” on Apple TV Plus
Malcolm McMillan
Malcolm has been with Tom’s Guide since 2022, and has been covering the latest in streaming shows and movies since 2023. He’s not one to shy away from a hot take, including that “John Wick” is one of the four greatest films ever made.
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