Pierce Brosnan returns to TV in AMC's Texas-set 'The Son'

If you've never envisioned Pierce Brosnan as a Texan, get ready to have your image of him altered.

After his runs as suave sleuths James Bond and Remington Steele, the native Irishman adopts a new character - and accent - by returning to series television in AMC's 10-episode version of the Philipp Meyer best-seller "The Son," premiering Saturday, April 8. Brosnan actually shares the saga's central character, power-driven cattle rancher and oil-dynasty patriarch Eli McCullough, who's embodied in younger years by co-star Jacob Lofland as the drama covers three generations over 150 years.

"I came to the project late in the proceedings," Brosnan reflects of succeeding the originally cast Sam Neill on location in Austin, "so this gang of beautiful actors and producers and writers had all their ducks in a row. I had no say in where we should shoot this, I just got the job and was extremely happy to play this role ... but it was darned hot, that's for sure. When you wake up at 5 in the morning and there's a heat advisory saying, 'Do not go out,' and you're on a hot horse on hot land at 9, it can be a long day. But, again, the story and the cast were just amazing."

Brosnan admits the Texas "sound" was a challenge. "I gave myself the grace to let the Irish burr come in from time to time," he says. "And for me, it was more important to connect to the emotionality of the man and the circumstances around him."

While he credits dialect coach Melissa Grogan for her help, Brosnan adds, "I listened to various people, from (former Texas Governor and current U.S. Secretary of Energy) Rick Perry to Waylon Jennings and congressman Ted Poe, and then these great farmers and cowboys."

Among other principals in the cast of "The Son": Zahn McClarnon as a Comanche chief, Elizabeth Frances as the Indian woman who becomes Eli's first love, Henry Garrett and David Wilson Barnes as Eli's sons Pete and Phineas, Jess Weixler as Pete's aspirational wife, Sally, Sydney Lucas as Eli's highly favored granddaughter Jeannie, Carlos Bardem as tentative McCullough ally Pedro Garcia, and James Parks as a bar owner and member of a group that will evolve into the Ku Klux Klan.

Noting that "it's been a while since I've been on TV," Brosnan says, "I had been looking for something like this for the last four or five years. I really had a yen to go back to TV. I was watching all these great shows appear on the horizon season after season, and this one came to me, graciously and gloriously, out of left field.

"The writing is so fertile and robust now for writers and directors and actors, it's a different landscape than when you joined TV back in the early '80s," reasons Brosnan. "... It's exhilarating."