Actor taps Georgia roots for drama 'Rectify'

When actor Aden Young entered a New York City hotel last year for an audition, he ran into a strange-looking fellow in the lobby.

“He looked a bit homeless,” Young said.

Then he realized the shaggy, bearded man was Ray McKinnon, a Georgia native producing the new six-episode Sundance Channel series “Rectify,” which debuts April 22.

“I smiled,” Young said. “I recognized him from ‘Deadwood.’ I reached out to shake his hand. He embraced me with this gargantuan bear hug.”

McKinnon, who grew up in Adel and found his acting chops in Atlanta theater stages in the 1980s and 1990s, is a bear-hugging sort of guy, utterly disarming for an actor who spent years in Hollywood building up an impressive resume. Among his credits: HBO’s “Deadwood,” the film “The Blind Side” and FX’s “Sons of Anarchy.”

“I immediately wanted to spend time with him,” said Young, who ultimately spent plenty of time with him as the star of “Rectify.” “He has this spirit in him, a spirit of humanity.”

McKinnon’s work, as a film producer and actor, blends pathos with dark comedy. “Rectify,” which was shot last year in Griffin, follows that path.

In “Rectify,” Daniel Holden (played by Young) returns to his fictional hometown of Paulie, Ga., from death row 19 years after being accused of murder. But he was freed on a technicality, not necessarily because he was innocent. The six episodes chronicle Holden’s first week out of prison, dazed and lost in a town whose denizens view him with a mix of curiosity and wariness.

“The audience never fully knows who he is,” said McKinnon, 55, scarfing down tater tots and a chicken club sandwich at the W Hotel in Midtown last month before an appearance at the Atlanta Film Festival.

“That makes it more challenging for the audience. He’s not a traditional protagonist. We’re ambivalent. He’s not someone we can necessarily identify with.”

Young plays Holden “vulnerable at times but otherworldly, too. He needs to be dangerous. He needs to be scary. It’s a lot to ask from an actor.”

McKinnon said spending years away from the Deep South gave him deeper perspective on a culture that built him: “I’ve been able to really tell the truth as I see it, to be fearless.”

He has deep Atlanta ties. After graduating Valdosta State University with a degree in theater in the early 1980s, he moved to an apartment in Virginia-Highland when that neighborhood was much rougher and gruffer. “I was within stumbling distance of the Plaza Theatre and the Majestic Diner,” he said. “My early 20s, I had no game plan. It was about self-destructive behavior.”

He recalled drinking — a lot. “I was democratic. I often said I’d do anything twice. I liked the brown liquors, the bourbon and scotch. I’m from the South and I’m Scottish, I would say.”

McKinnon nabbed an internship at the Alliance Theatre and began doing plays at the Theatrical Outfit and Theatre in the Square. But he credited Lisa and Jeff Adler — who operate the Horizon Theatre — with helping him break into the business. “I wasn’t your traditional lead guy,” he said. “They were a big confidence booster for me as an actor.”

He also began writing short stories, plays and “long, bad psychedelic poems. I’d write about the South, about families. I’ve always been interested in the dynamic of families.”

After a few TV gigs in Atlanta such as “In the Heat of the Night,” he moved to Hollywood in the mid-1990s. While there, he landed roles on “Designing Women,” “Matlock,” “NYPD Blue,” the Stephen King miniseries “The Stand” and in 2000, the film “O Brother, Where Art Thou.”

Actor Walton Goggins, who grew up in Lithia Springs and plays the shifty Boyd Crowder on FX’s current hit drama “Justified,” considers McKinnon a mentor and friend going back more than two decades. They met while playing father and son in the 1990 TV film “Murder in Mississippi.” There, Goggins watched another actor fake tears, then received a tidbit of advice from the elder McKinnon.

“Ray told me the difference between me and that guy is that my tears have to be real. I have to feel the moment. That really, really affected me as an actor,” Goggins said.

McKinnon, who was married to actress Lisa Blount by 2000, was finally able to convert one of his short stories into a film, “The Accountant,” starring Goggins and McKinnon.

His prior work as an auditor inspired the story. “You find out things through numbers,” he said. “That was one of the themes that ran through that story.” It won an Oscar for live action short film in 2002.

McKinnon, Blount and Goggins started the production company Ginny Mule Pictures, which created three more successful independent films.

The genesis of “Rectify” was not inspired by any particular event. “I kept seeing these DNA death penalty cases around the country where death row inmates are found innocent and released,” McKinnon said. “I just started imagining what it must be like coming back into society.”

He wrote a script but had no clue if there was a market for it. Then in 2007, he watched AMC’s “Mad Men,” a slow-paced, cerebral drama, which inspired him to pitch “Rectify” to that network with Goggins playing the death row inmate.

But AMC didn’t pick it up. The script sat and Goggins moved on to “Justified.”

Then last year, Sundance — a sister station to AMC with that indie film festival imprimatur — considered the script and came back to McKinnon.

Sundance wanted to enter the original series game carved out by many of its larger brethren.

“ ‘Rectify’ to me was a no-brainer,” said Sarah Barnett, president and general manager at Sundance. “The script was exquisitely written. It has a real singular vision. It has fresh subject matter, psychological layers and a fresh approach to storytelling that felt real and authentic.”

The series moves at a modest gait. Characters rarely get histrionic. McKinnon wanted the show to capture a certain poetic quality.

“It’s an examination of private lives,” McKinnon said. “I don’t know if you’d call it indie or artful. It’s strange, possibly magical at times. It’s not hyper reality a lot of networks air. You need a little patience.”