Robert Redford returned to the small screen for a rare acting appearance after a six-year hiatus, making a cameo in the season 3 Dark Winds premiere.
The 88-year-old film legend, who serves as an executive producer of the hit series alongside Game of Thrones author George R. R. Martin, made an appearance for the show’s highly anticipated return on Sunday, March 9.
Robert and George portrayed incarcerated men playing a game of chess in the scene which showed Navajo Tribal Police Officer Joe Leaphorn, portrayed by Zahn McClarnon, intervening to help George’s character, fittingly named George, secure a checkmate while behind bars.
Once he sealed the deal, Robert’s character looked over at Joe as he quipped, “Thanks a lot.”
Season 3 premiere director Chris Eyre dished to Vulture that a potential Robert cameo had been “in the air” for quite some time, as they formerly had plans for him to appear in the season 2 finale but ultimately decided to save his cameo for the season 3 premiere.
“I never thought I could get to a place in my life where I would know Robert Redford, let alone be in a scene with him,” Zahn said about the honor.
Dark Winds follows characters Joe Leaphorn, Jim Chee and Bernadette Manuelito as the Navajo Tribal Police work tirelessly to solve mysteries and serve justice as their reservation is besieged by a series of increasingly violent crimes in the 1970s, per the series description.
Robert, for his part, last made a screen appearance in 2019’s Avengers: Endgame when he reprised his role as Alexander Pierce, a former S.H.I.E.L.D. director-turned-HYDRA traitor, from Captain America: The Winter Soldier.
The Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid star previously announced that his starring role in 2018’s The Old Man & The Gun would likely be his final screen appearance after a long and illustrious career.
In recent years, Robert voiced a character in Omniboat: A Fast Boat Fantasia and narrated wife Sibylle Szaggars Redford‘s 2024 performance art project, The Way of the Rain – Hope for Earth. He also used his vocal talents for HBO’s White House Plumbers.
“I’ve known Bob for decades, and just to be sitting there going, Oh, I’m gonna direct Robert Redford, struck fear in me,” Chris told Vulture about directing the Dark Winds season 3 scene.
“Bob is so kind and he was so nice on the day, and so was George. But I remember Zahn turning to me when we were about to start shooting and he goes, ‘You’re doing a scene with Robert Redford, that’s incredible,’ and I said, ‘Zahn, will you be quiet? You’re making me nervous.’”
Chris said he even prepared a backstory for Robert and George’s characters before filming. “They were roustabouts that had gotten drunk and disorderly in a neighboring town like Flagstaff, Arizona, and then hitchhiked when they got released and sent to the Navajo Nation,” he explained to Vulture. “They were picked up there by one of Leaphorn’s deputies.”
“They never asked me,” he quipped of the backstory, “but I was ready.”
