This season on “24,” Jon Voight is bad to the bone&mdashand loving it.
The “Coming Home” Oscar winner has done the occasional television project (“Return to Lonesome Dove,” “The Five People You Meet in Heaven”), but he’s a series regular for the first time as Jonas Hodges, the rogue security-force bigwig now giving counterterrorism agent Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) a tough time on Fox’s suspense drama, airing at 9 p. m. Monday. And for those awaiting Hodges and Bauer face to face, it happens in this week’s episode. “People are telling me they don’t want this character to have his demise, and I don’t know what to say to them,” said the soft-spoken Voight, who knows anything can happen to anyone at any time on “24.” “I had seen a couple of episodes in its first season, and I was very impressed with it &mdash and with Kiefer’s work in it. “I had occasion to meet him then at a charity event. I didn’t know him real well, but I went up to him and said, ‘This is going to be a wonderful thing for you, and I wish you the best with it.’ Then, when they asked if I would do this, I thought, ‘That’s interesting. That almost brings it full circle.’ The first day I started work on it, Kiefer showed up at my camper to welcome me, even though he wasn’t working that day. It was such a nice thing.” “Nice” does not apply to Voight’s “24” alter ego, since Hodges masterminded a temporary takeover of the White House, steered biological weapons into the United States and turned murderous. “You can’t figure out who this guy is,” Voight said, “and even as I was doing it, I didn’t know the whole story. It was kind of fun to get the next script, to see who he’d be then. I got to work with the writers on that.” Starkwood, the fictional organization Hodges heads, has clear parallels to the controversial Blackwater security operation. “There are corrupt guys in every aspect of life,” Voight reasons, “and especially when you get into a situation that involves power, there’s always the opportunity for people to turn. I think that’s what makes ‘24’ interesting you never know who’s the good guy and who’s the bad guy.”
Because of the way the seventh season of “24” was done, Hodges hadn’t been created yet when production began. The first eight hours were filmed in 2007, before the writers strike then, Voight-as-Hodges was introduced briefly in “24: Redemption,” the TV movie made later and aired as a prequel to the series’ current year.