Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as John Creasy in 'Man on Fire.'

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But there’s a difference between Man on Fire’s John Creasy and his peers like Reacher or Ryan, and that difference goes to the heart of what Caple and Abdul-Mateen wanted to accomplish with the show in the first place. Creasy, as adapted from A.J. Quinnell’s book series and previously played by Denzel Washington in a 2004 movie of the same name, is working through a messy reality that’s far from the traditional hero’s journey.

“We were purposefully trying to create our own lane with the John Creasy character, who is very much layered, very nuanced in the way he’s dealing with some trauma,” Caple says.

The trauma he’s referring to is severe PTSD, whose origins are explored in the pilot: A Special Forces mission Creasy is running in Mexico City unexpectedly goes south, resulting in the violent deaths of several of his friends and colleagues. Creasy is the only one to make it out alive, and the disaster — and the psychological scars it leaves on him — derail his military career.

Only four years later, in the wake of a desperate suicide attempt, does he have an opportunity to try and get his life back on track, when an old friend (Paul Rayburn, played by Bobby Cannavale) offers him a private security job in Rio de Janeiro. Then, when terrorists blow up the entire high rise where the Rayburn family lives, Creasy is the only one left to protect his friend’s surviving daughter (Billie Boullet) — that is, if he can overcome the PTSD that is so closely tied to violent tragedy.

Bobby Canavale as Paul Rayburn with Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as John Creasy at the start of Man on Fire.

“There are a lot of things to explore with the character, and trying to connect that to the journey itself — which makes the overall IP interesting to me, which is the reason I’m even here — because of the layer of depth added to the character,” Caple says. “It’s wish fulfillment, finding yourself in an exotic place, by yourself, with no one else to help. What would you do? How would you step up to the plate, especially when you have to save someone you care about?”

Abdul-Mateen says that his character’s emotional and psychological struggles were a big part of what interested him in the role. “Actors love that stuff. You know what I mean? I want to feel, I want to feel,” he says. “Honestly, I really love the complexity of Creasy.”

He adds, “Steven and I had a conversation very early on in the process where we said, ‘If we’re going to do this, then we want to do it a certain way.’ One of the things was to try to stay as close to the truth as possible. I had a ball trying to figure out, ‘What would be true in this scenario?’ It’s very tempting when you have a character as potentially cool as Creasy, to do what is ‘cool.’ It took a lot of faith on the director’s part to allow me to not think about what’s cool but try to investigate what is true, and then from there we can say, ‘Now what if we did it with this type of attitude?’ But we were always working from a place of truth, which was a very exciting opportunity because it also felt a little bit dangerous. As an actor, I’m attracted to the dangerous opportunities, because they make my brain tick.”

The goal was to find out what would happen when Creasy, who used to excel in harrowing situations, is confronted with th

How Netflix's 'Man on Fire' Creates Its Own John Creasy