Scoot McNairy on Man on Fire's Twists, His Character's Fate
Scoot McNairy as Henry Tappan in episode 101 of 'Man on Fire.'
Juan Rosas/Netflix © 2024
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[This story contains MAJOR spoilers for season one of Netflix’s Man on Fire, including the season finale.]
As John Creasy, the bedeviled main character in Netflix’s new series Man on Fire, says, he’s a solo act.
The former Special Forces operative, played by Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, trusts no one until he can be certain they aren’t involved in the terrorist explosion that occurs at the end of the first episode — and that means no one. It’s a strategy that ensures the safety of Poe Rayburn (Billie Boullet), the surviving daughter of his colleague Paul Rayburn (Bobby Cannavale) who died in an explosion. But it’s bad news for Creasy’s contact in the CIA, Henry Tappan (Scoot McNairy), who, in a plot twist, turns out to have been a driving force behind the murders of the Rayburns and everyone living in their high-rise condominium building.
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After Creasy uncovers all the layers of the international conspiracy, while combating Tappan’s accomplices’ efforts to kill the girl, a lethal confrontation occurs in episode seven, when Tappan hunts down Creasy. A bone-wrenching fight occurs before Creasy snatches a scalpel and severs Tappan’s femoral artery in the season’s biggest “hoorah moment,” as McNairy puts it. The Hollywood Reporter recently chatted with McNairy over Zoom to learn about what drew him to the role, the highlights of filming in South America and what occurred behind the scenes as they filmed that epic showdown.
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I last saw you in A Complete Unknown, in which you played Woody Guthrie. Of course, that’s an entirely different type of project than Man on Fire.
Absolutely it was, completely different ends of the spectrum. Look, any time you head down to Brazil or Mexico to go to work, it’s always a pleasure to be in the environment with those different communities of people. There’s just something fun about making movies down in South America.
One of the things I love about the show is how they go into the favela and you get to know the people there. Did you feel like you really got to experience that?
That’s really what they were going after. There was a lot of talk before the show to really get that culture and the music and really thrust you into that, as well as the action and all those things. Absolutely, when we were down in Brazil, Alice Braga [who plays Melo], that’s her world, you know? There were so many interesting things that we did outside of work to see that culture, but the filmmakers did an incredible job at capturing it on the screen, as well.
Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as John Creasy and Alice Braga as Valeria Melo in episode 105 of Man on Fire.
Courtesy of Netflix © 2025
Your character, Henry Tappan, is not what he initially seems to be. What drew you to that part?
Initially, I didn’t really know where his character went toward the end. They had said that they wanted it to be a surprise, that you don’t see this coming. Part of it was they had written a really great pilot, as well as I had worked with [executive producer and director] Steven Caple Jr. before and I’m just such a big fan of his. He’s so great at storytelling and action, and also just a lovely person to work with, as well as Stacy Perskie who was [executive] producing it, and who I had worked with on Narcos down in Mexico. Part of it was just the team, and Netflix, I love working with them. And after working on Narcos — you just don’t know what to expect when you get down there, and I think that’s probably the most exciting thing about it.
Was it fun to play that character with that kind of twist? It sounds like you didn’t even know what to expect until you really got into it.
I kind of knew, but [the surprise came more from] the filmmakers and the process that really leads you into that, so it wasn’t necessarily something I was doing. But as a viewer, I do like a surprise. I do like when there’s a twist at the end and so yes, it was fun to lean into that. And the character as a whole, playing a CIA guy, all of it was interesting based on all the factors involved.
The battle of wits between Tappan and Creasy is one of the big dynamics in the show. Early on, there doesn’t seem to be any reason for Creasy not to trus