We scored a video chat with Jon Bokenkamp (The Blacklist) — co-creator, showrunner, executive producer and writer of Apple TV action-thriller The Last Frontier — and you can watch it above. The series premieres October 10.
The Last Frontier follows Frank Remnick (Jason Clarke — watch our interview with the star right HERE), the lone U.S. marshal in Alaska whose world flips when a prison transport plane crashes in the wilderness, unleashing violent inmates as part of a bigger, orchestrated plan. The ensemble includes Dominic Cooper, Haley Bennett, Simone Kessell, Dallas Goldtooth, Tait Blum and Alfre Woodard.
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Bokenkamp took us through the show’s spark and thriller DNA. As he put it, “Well, I think it just started with the idea or almost the visual of a sort of a Conair type plane crash in the middle of nowhere. But then where does that go, right?” The point, he said, was to start with a propulsive image and then move quickly into fresh territory.
Coming from fast-turnaround network television, he’s eager for audiences to finally dive in. “My background is in network TV where you’re writing an episode and a couple weeks later it’s airing and you’re sort of you’re not watching it with the audience, but you’re you’re seeing what works, what doesn’t. And this has been a little bit in a vacuum. This one’s taken a while. We’ve had more time to work on scripts. We’ve had more time for production value and VFX and little tweaks like that. But yeah, I’m super excited to share it with the world. I can’t wait for people to see it.”
On tone and pacing, Bokenkamp emphasised momentum anchored to character: “I love a frenetic, muscular, ambitious plotline.” Yet the fireworks aren’t empty noise — they’re placed with purpose: “you want to checkerboard it. If it’s just straight ahead action were sort of nauseated by it and fatigued.”
Across the season, those set pieces act as story beats: “each of those action set pieces I hope reflect upon the people that we’re ultimately super invested in.”
The Last Frontier kicks off globally with two episodes on October 10, with a new episode weekly through December 5 on Apple TV.
