Special Report: The Deputy (2026)

0:00People pay good money to see this movie. When they go out to a theater, they want cold sodas, hot popcorn, and no monsters in the projection booth. Everyone pretend podcasting is boring. Go to the office. Don't get too many bodies out here. We sure don't. I notify the family. Toby, you watch the body. Somebody shot Luke Jordan. Dad? Yeah? Why aren't you watching the body? Sheriff's gonna be pissed.

1:01Oh, you think? You dumb. I know how bad you want to get put on salary full time. I just need you to show me a little more. Riga, you understand? Yes, sir. You do? Yep. All right. Thank you, Sheriff. Jordan's body's just gone. That's what you're saying to me. Maybe you need to find something different. You have a family. You ever see that car before? No, why? No luck tonight? Oh, Lord. Why are you even going out again? Every time you go out, it just gets worse. There's some strange activity going on. Put that away. You're not smoking in here. I don't care what you've been through.

2:01Do your job, because that's all you can do right now. Watch about you, Steph. Son, you're a piece of work. I'm a police officer. You're a part-time deputy. Damn it. Hey, folks. I'm your host, Mike White. And today, I'm talking with writer director Matt Sucar about his debut feature, The Deputy. Shot on location in Nacha as Mississippi and led by Duke Nicholson as a small town cop, having the worst night of his life, the film also stars William H. Macy, Stephen Dorf, and Tiffany Haddish. The deputy hit limited release in VOD on September 25th, 2026, with Matt now taking it on a Q&A tour from LA to New York. Visit Wellgoosa.com slash film slash deputy for more information

3:01and to find out where the movie is playing near you. I had a great time talking with Matt, and I hope you have a great time listening. Enjoy. So I want to talk to you about the deputy, of course, but I wanted to a little bit more about you and how you got involved in filmmaking. I was a kid with a video camera for my childhood, and when I was 14, I made a movie at summer camp. And after that, decided I'd be a director, or I was a director, and started out with music videos for friends of mine, who were singers or whatever, and then did commercials and shorts and documentaries, and now my first film comes out next week. How did you run across the story of the deputy? The deputy was sent to me by my manager in 2022, November 2022, for me to read. And yeah, pretty soon after reading, like I picked it up,

4:04and as soon as I was reading it, I was like, yeah, I want to do this one. I loved the story, I loved the character. That really is what drew me to it, is this unique character that's not one that you see very frequently. It felt very original and cool, and I knew Duke would do a great job with him. And so that was kind of the early, in particular, to get it going. And did you work much with Carlo Bernard on the adaptation or the script once it was handed to you? So Carlo had written this film years prior. And I guess the film industry, like these stories, will have their moment you don't know when. And by the time I got it, he, I think, was busy doing other things. And so it gave me a lot of freedom to do my own past, and was super chill about whatever I wanted to make with it. And so I actually did a lot of work.

5:06My approach was, as I would cast characters, I would rewrite the characters to adapt them to the actors to try to highlight their skills as performers. Yeah, that was kind of how I got through the writing process early on. What were kind of the factors that allowed this to actually happen? I mean, because you have been making shorts and music videos, documentaries for years. But obviously there has to be something that pushes you into this whole feature world of it. Yeah, I mean, I had been trying to make a different feature for a while. And then for a myriad of reasons that didn't happen. And this one kind of came my way. And the factors that kind of moved it along were just like, like relentless drive and pursued in the tunnel vision. Like I said, Was there anything you had to do differently to prep for something like this versus prepping for a shorter film?

6:06Yeah, absolutely. Like, you know, it's like making a film where you know, like no matter what it has an audience, like I've made so many little films that I've just like never even released. But knowing that you have an audience and knowing that like now there's like real professional people involved that are taking it seriously. And then I'm really really, really, really impressed with all these people and building these jobs and all these people that are now passionate about it. Create a collective drive to get something done. And for everyone to, you know, build build on it through teamwork is a rewarding experience. Well how was it getting your cast in place? Because this cast list is amazing. I love, I appreciate that. I love the cast as well. The goal there, or the vision behind it was to kind of create this town that was full of these eccentric, weird, but real, feeling and characters that each have distinct energies that are like a little bit dialed up from, you know, your baseline human. And I thought that the Toby.

7:22would always maintain this kind of like the unusual like kind of like dumb, sloppy, straight man that kind of passes through, but, but what I really like about how we approached it was that like everyone else was always giving this high level or turned up energy and Toby always kind of stays the same up against all them, which, which creates a nice consistency that helps us ride his journey through the film. But yeah, the assembly of of Macy and Haddish and Dorf and Billy Lord and Julia was was really like cold approaching. I mean, I wrote Bill Macy a letter pretty shortly after getting formally attached to the film. He was my first choice for the for the role. I thought that he would play an unexpected. Sheriff Kruger that you know wouldn't wouldn't feel one way in the beginning and then a different way at the end. Everybody else, I kind of just started to assemble one by one by like asking for favors trying to get them to meet with me and trust me to take on the project.

8:36What was the biggest surprise for you making this movie. Every day there would be like 20 surprises, but I would say like the biggest would be just like the overall of like really understanding how much goes into the process of making a movie because you know there are a few people who really know what it feels like and I have a lot of gratitude to that, but the amount of work and the amount of people that it takes is just like an unbelievable experience. You know, it's like you have to get so many people on board and so many people excited and passionate and I have so much gratitude for that experience. Where did you actually film this? This just filmed in matches, Mississippi. Once we decided it would be filmed in matches. I did like a Mississippi pass of the script so that I wouldn't have to be thinking about like it was originally the book was written for Oklahoma Victor Dish or novels or in for a comma, but I didn't want to be like does this look like Oklahoma every time we're setting up a scene.

9:43So we we change it to Mississippi and the city of matches was super film friendly and we worked with their local stage for our holding but everything else with a shot on location like that we didn't have like many builds the police station was a mechanic shop that we built into a police station. I thought that the building looked cool. So we built that but everything else was like just straight up whenever we're whatever was going to be those interiors for the sheriff's department are great. It just you can feel how cheap some of that paper the paneling and things like that. It just feels like okay, this is the perfect environment for these guys to be living in. Totally like our low budget film matched their low budget town police. Share stations, I was a great and my production designer Julie toche was such a she like really got how to make it look kind of nasty but still cool and bring some some fun to it with the taxidermy or with train gets on the desk she did an amazing job.

10:57Curious what kind of films you like and what kind of films might have helped inspire this. Yeah, I can't going back to American crime movies from the 70s where like a movie that's the genre movie can still be a character movie and I think that's what makes this feel really distinct but something that's not really what we're used to these days. Action stars are action stars now and I feel like I was really drawn to this because Kobe feels like an anti hero and and fresh approach to that so I was referencing or watching a lot of the long goodbye. I'm one to three the brings job assault on precinct 13 after hours courses after hours was like maybe our biggest inspiration because it's like just one night structure bad decision leading 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 entire time.

12:01So that was like my favorite reference for it but of course it's a different genre but to me the deputy is a character study above everything else you're not making it easy on yourself I mean you've got. Scads of characters that you have to balance and work with all of these different actors I know you've worked with actors before but this is a lot of actors and then you're doing all these night shoots that is never an easy thing. I think what was so funny about it was like we were going through this intense brewing experience in on the filmmaking side and that was mirrored by the character of Toby you know having this one night of hell I think over the course of the filmmaking process the crew was starting to relate to have more and more and this unique energy was created through that experience where everybody was like yeah that guy I get it. Like this is like life is tough right now but we were all in pursuit of a shared goal of making a cool film and and the experience was wonderful.

13:06Well how was it working with your main actor because he's he's on screen so much in the movie I mean trying to even think of scenes where he's not in there. No there aren't any he was the dream due because it's a close friend mine has been for a long time and getting to do this side by side was amazing you know we had we had the best time we were constantly having fun we lived in the same house while we were making it there was like no no separation we were like totally in it together from from the start so that was. It was honestly really helpful to like have each other to support one another as we embarked on these new bigger chapters in our careers how was the post process for you post was cool so this movie was edited in Mississippi New York Mexican city and LA and that was just based on like the schedule the unique schedules that have you have Alaska my editor and I had we kind of like.

14:11Built out this plan that we could keep editing and like still be in different places that we had to be in but what I would say about that experience is that you know you're sitting there watching the same footage every day and all you can really change about that experiences your environment and so by doing that I like jumping through cities it felt fresh every time we sat down in a different room and I think that like building off of that actually help. Actually helped us keep it exciting and not like dip into. You know just exhaustion from from watching the same stuff over and over and then the post sound process and the color was really awesome you know like just kind of tying up the bow on something that I spent so much time on was really really rewarding. What's kind of the story with the movie now so the movie now comes out on September 25th in a limited release and on VOD and then I'm going on tour with it I'm going like a road trip from LA to New York and stopping in different cities and doing special screenings and Q&As and that it will come out on streaming in a couple months I don't know if that's the amount yet but it's coming.

15:37Is there a good place for people to keep up with you in the film yeah you can follow the deputy movie on Instagram or me on Instagram Matt super fantastic well Matt thank you so much for your time and this was great talking with you it was awesome talk to you to Mike nice to meet you. Yeah. All around in my home town. Yeah. Yeah.

16:58Yeah. Yeah.

17:58Yeah. Yeah.

18:58Yeah. Yeah.