[Warning: General spoilers ahead.]
We’re less than a week out from the return of Hell on Wheels (yay!), and AMC has released character portraits of some of our favorites–Bohannon, Durant, The Swede, Eva, Psalms, Mickey, Louise, and Huntington–and the newbies who come on the scene as the action shifts West. Enjoy!
Old friends
Here’s what to expect this season: Cullen Bohannon finds himself a stranger in a strange land–the mountain town of Truckee, California, home to the Central Pacific Railroad. This rough railroad town teems with thousands of Chinese workers, foreign in language, culture and traditions. Despite the challenges of corralling his new workforce, Cullen leads the herculean effort to tunnel through the Sierra Nevada Mountains, sometimes achieving only inches a day in the race to complete the first Transcontinental Railroad.
New faces
Chang (Byron Mann)
You might recognize Mann from his role as Yao Fei on Arrow. He plays Chang, the primary labor contractor for the Central Pacific Railroad, who runs a small empire in Truckee’s Chinatown, providing food, sundries, opium, and whores to the Chinese workers he’s contracted to the railroad. A former rebel who fought in the Taiping Rebellion, Chang’s caught between the peasant Chinese workers and the railroad’s white overlords, whose racist attitudes keep him in his place.
Tao (Tzi Ma)
Ma who, recently had a recurring role on USA’s Satisfaction, plays Tao, the head man for a group of Chinese railroad workers on the Central Pacific who came from a village in Guangdong in Southern China. A former scholar and graduate of a British engineering school in China, his natural leadership abilities and facility with the English language make him essential to Cullen’s work on the Central Pacific. He’s a highly capable man, but harbors a secret, and goes out of his way to avoid attention.
Fong (A. Zhou)
Newcomer Zhou plays Tao’s son, Fong, a strong, independent, capable railroad worker, who fights to leave the old ways of the traditional Chinese behind and embrace the new world customs of California. One of the few Chinese who speak English well enough to work as a translator, Fong becomes important to Cullen Bohannon as a key player in blasting through the tunnels of the High Sierras.
James Storbridge (Reg Rogers)
Rogers has been a familiar face for years, most recently appearing on Showtime’s The Knick. He plays Strobridge, a tough-as-nails construction superintendent for the Central Pacific Railroad. Losing an eye to a blasting accident hasn’t quieted his temper or tempered his sense of humor. His attitude toward the Chinese workforce is typical for a 19th-Century man, but he’s more moderate when it comes to his wife and six adopted children, who live with him in a train car at the end of the rails.
Check back later this week for our exclusive interview with executive producer John Wirth, and a preview of the season premiere, “Chinatown.” Here’s a sneak peek of season 5, which begins Saturday at 9/8c on AMC.
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