'Smoke' Lights Up Apple TV+ With Emotional Chaos, Says Writer Dennis Lehane

Newsweek

5 hours ago

Fire is at the center of Smoke, Apple TV+'s searing new crime drama, but the blaze that matters most is internal. Created by bestselling author and screenwriter Dennis Lehane (Black Bird, Mystic River), the show sets an arson investigator, a troubled detective and two elusive firebugs on a collision course with their pasts—and themselves.
Premiering June 27 with a two-episode drop, it follows Dave Gudsen (Taron Egerton) reluctantly working alongside recently demoted detective Michelle Calderone (Jurnee Smollett) to track two serial arsonists in the Pacific Northwest town of Umberland. The deeper they dig, the more combustible everything becomes—in the case and their psyches. Strong performances from John Leguizamo, Greg Kinnear and Anna Chlumsky add layers of tension, charm or unease. "I told the writers from the jump, 'Let's blow the doors off this,'" Lehane tells Newsweek.
"This show is about chaos—emotional chaos, psychological chaos, world chaos. We're living in a very chaotic era. So, why pretend otherwise?"
Smoke
Smoke
Apple TV+
Smoke refuses to offer easy heroes or stock villains; the characters live in the murky, morally compromised middle. "Every now and then, you meet a saint. Every now and then, you meet a villain," Lehane says. "But most of us? We're just trying to figure it out. And that's who I write."
Michelle is brilliant and intuitive but brimming with anger and childhood trauma. Charismatic Dave is hiding something dark. Freddy Fasano (Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine), who works quietly in fast food, reveals a pain so raw it hums under every scene he's in.
"You are the sum total of your childhood," Lehane says. "That's really what we all are. Freddy? Take what Michelle went through and magnify it by a million."
Unsettling Yet Insightful
Freddy has an unsettling presence yet is tragically insightful. Life spent in 27 foster homes results in a desperate search for meaning, connection and power. "Dennis described Freddy as the loneliest man on the planet, and that was my springboard," says Mwine. "There was nothing I could draw on personally, so I leaned on my imagination—and the incredible transformation the hair and makeup team gave me. That's where I found him." Freddy has an uncanny ability to read people. In one intense confrontation, he strips Dave bare with a single look. "He undresses the emperor," Mwine says. "He has a skill, but it's not one he can translate into a productive life. It leads to destruction." He adds: "Every character is reaching for something they can't quite have. And in trying to fix it, they only make it worse."
Rafe Spall stars as Captain Steven Burke, who embodies how easily power and ego can turn toxic. He shifts Michelle to arson duty—punishment, it seems, for rejecting him. Spall is quick to reject one-dimensional takes. "Terrible people don't know they're terrible," he says. "They think they're doing the right thing. And I think Smoke is populated with people like that." Spall adds: "[Burke's] madly in love. And he does very questionable things. But he's also a dad going through a divorce. He's not used to not getting what he wants."
"There's this alpha male exterior, but what's underneath is soft—and scared," he says. "Men don't cry, they shout. That's anger as grief. And I was keen to lean into that." His scenes with Smollett crackle with energy. "We'd throw things out and just surprise each other," Spall says. "It's that chemistry that jumps out from the screen that keeps us invested, and it's what you can't really account for. I felt that with Jurnee, and I hope the audience feels it."
Viewers of Lehane's work know he doesn't traffic in easy wins, and Smoke is no exception. "In editing, I'd find myself rooting for Dave," Lehane says, laughing. "We're wired to connect with characters who want something—even if what they want is selfish or dark."
"He's carrying around some secrets," Egerton says of Dave." There's something in him that I was very drawn to. It was completely unlike anything I've ever done before, and I was a little bit frightened of the challenge."
Egerton, who also executive produces the series, praises Lehane's refusal to give characters neat archetypes. "The moment you think you've got a secure sense of the character, he'll do something that pulls the rug out from underneath you," he says. "That's when I know I'm in." As for Michelle, Lehane says: "She commits a few heinous acts and [yet] you're rooting for her."
John Leguizamo and Anna Chlumsky in "Smoke," premiering 27 June 2025 on Apple TV+.
John Leguizamo and Anna Chlumsky in "Smoke," premiering 27 June 2025 on Apple TV+.
Apple TV+
Fueled by Risk
Smoke, inspired by the real-life Firebug podcast, is a character study. "I didn't care about arson," Lehane says. "What hooked me was the idea of doing what you love until it kills you." In many of the fire sequences, actors were surrounded by real heat, embers and smoke. That danger was part of the storytelling. "There's nothing like the truth," Smollett has said of those scenes. And in Smoke, the truth hurts.
At the show's core is denial: what we hide from others and refuse to see in ourselves. It's about the identities we perform, the traumas we carry and the ways we try to outrun them. Much like its title suggests, Smoke lingers—both in the choices the characters make and the ones they can't take back.