Robert Patrick Has Lived a Thousand Lives, but Tulsa King Let Him Burn the Rulebook

Robert Patrick has lived a career most actors can only dream about, and yet when he sits down to talk about it, he brings the same grounded, curious energy that has carried him through every universe he’s entered. 

We connected on Zoom to talk about Tulsa King’s fiery finale, and it immediately felt less like an interview and more like a conversation with someone who genuinely enjoys following the threads of his own career — wherever they lead.

He had just come back from a HorrorCon in Philly, laughing about the eclectic mix of fans he meets now — Terminator die-hards, X-Files loyalists, Peacemaker obsessives, and people rediscovering Fire in the Sky. 

At one point, almost casually, he said of John Doggett, “Oh yeah, that’s my favorite character,” which both surprised me and made perfect sense. 

When Fire in the Sky came up, he shook his head at its renewed popularity, saying, “That movie is having a moment again. I didn’t expect that.” 

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Then he mentioned one of the strangest coincidences of his career — he eventually learned he was related by marriage to one of the real men involved in the Travis Walton abduction case, the true story behind the film. 

And somehow that tracks perfectly for Robert Patrick. Of course he ends up connected, however distantly, to a UFO story. Doggett — “my favorite character” — would be proud.

When we turned to Tulsa King, he didn’t frame Jeremiah as a villain, nor did he try to soften him. Instead, he talked about him like a man whose worldview made sense to him, even if it made chaos for everyone around him. 

The way he described Jeremiah made it clear he approached the character seriously — a man shaped by shame, loss, and an almost suffocating sense of legacy. 

Jeremiah’s entire identity is built around the heroic son he lost, and the complicated relationship with the son he has, Cole. 

Cole isn’t a bad man, but he isn’t the golden child Jeremiah built his entire myth around, and that disappointment seeps into everything Jeremiah touches. He put himself squarely in Jeremiah’s shoes to explain.

“I didn’t really see Cole as my legacy. To be honest with you, he was such a disappointment, and the good son had died, sacrificed himself for this great country, and what are you doing? 

“You walk around in those shirts, and you wear camo. You don’t deserve to wear camo. You know, the other thing was, we never do address my wife, how disappointed she would be with me.”

And then, because Tulsa King practically dares you to look at its moral mirror, we found ourselves comparing Jeremiah’s violence with Dwight Manfredi’s. 

When we talked about Dwight, Robert was direct. “He’s dangerous… He’s a brutal dude,” he said, as if stating a simple truth people often overlook. 

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It reframed Dwight instantly. The charm, the humor, the swagger — none of that erases what he’s capable of when he decides violence is the answer.

That brought us to the subject of fire, which has become the series’ recurring punctuation mark. I mentioned Dwight’s original backstory — finding a man handcuffed to a radiator in a burning house and shooting him because he couldn’t stand to let him suffer. 

Robert paused for a moment and said, “Yeah… yeah, that’s interesting. Because he won’t spare Jeremiah. That’s brutal. That’s… that’s something.” 

And that’s when he laughed and asked, “How do you remember all this stuff?” with that delighted disbelief that only shows up when a conversation hits an honest nerve.

From there, we drifted into the craft of acting, the part he talks about with obvious satisfaction. He laughed about his memorization methods, joking that he stores lines “in a tiny part of the brain” until filming ends — “and then it’s gone.” 

What matters to him is the seriousness of the work, no matter how heightened the world around it is. And that’s part of what makes him a stabilizing force in even the most chaotic material.

Near the end, I asked if there was a line of dialogue he never forgot, one that lodged itself permanently in his mind. Without hesitation, he laughed, “Ching chong chickety chopsticks,” his favorite line from Peacemaker, written by James Gunn. 

Robert’s character, Auggie, delivered the line with such confidence that it became the perfect meme — absurd, a tinge delusional, and exactly the kind of thing only Robert Patrick could deliver.

As they nudged us to wrap, he thanked me warmly. “This was great. Really great,” he said — not out of politeness, but with that engaged, present tone he carried the whole time. And it felt true.

Robert Patrick has lived a thousand lives on screen, but Tulsa King let him burn the rulebook. 

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Jeremiah, as he played him, wasn’t a villain; he was a man shaped by legacy, shame, faith, fury, and the belief that he was doing what needed to be done. 

Robert grounded him with the same honesty he has brought to every role — whether he’s a relentless machine, a weary FBI agent, or a man consumed by the fire he thought he controlled.

Talking to him made one thing obvious: he approaches every character with the same seriousness and curiosity, no matter how unhinged the world around them becomes.

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