Special Report: The Deputy (2026)

First-time feature director Matt Sukkar cold-approached William H. Macy with a letter to land his Sheriff Krueger, then built The Deputy's tone around Scorsese's After Hours: "one bad decision leading you on the course of a night where the protagonist is trying to get things back to normal, and reality is becoming increasingly absurd the whole time." Adapted from Victor Gischler's novel — relocated from Oklahoma to Natchez, Mississippi, where Sukkar did a full dialect-and-reference pass on Carlo Bernard's long-dormant script — the film follows rookie deputy Toby Sawyer (Duke Nicholson) through one disastrous overnight shift, flanked by an ensemble Sukkar calls "eccentric, weird, but real": Macy, Tiffany Haddish, Stephen Dorff, Billie Lourd, and Julia Fox among them.

Sukkar tells Mike White about matching Natchez's genuinely low-budget sheriff's station — a converted mechanic shop dressed by production designer Julie Tosh with taxidermy and desk-drawer trinkets — to the film's own scrappiness, shooting nights capped by hours limits for underage cast, and editing across four cities (Mississippi, New York, Mexico City, and LA) with editor Javier Velasco, chasing a different room each time to keep the same footage feeling fresh. He also talks about living with his real-life close friend and star, Duke Nicholson, for the length of the shoot, and the nationwide theater tour and Q&A run following the film's September 25 release.


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