Jackson Brooks

Your character is holding in a massive amount of trauma from a brief time in his childhood. How did that influence your portrayal of him?

It very much influences every character in the show. There are four boys that went to the juvenile detention facility and what I found fascinating is that different things happened to different kids in that moment...but they all went through a trauma and suffered in various ways from PTSD. So my character...has the effect of that PTSD and the effect of that trauma and him getting over it has meant that he has compartmentalized it...and pushed it down to his very core...His entire M.O. is about removing himself from every aspect that might create a trigger for what he's been through...So he spends a lot of that time in the pilot and throughout the season trying desperately to push these elements of trauma back into his bedrock so that he can function.

The big elephant in the room is sexual abuse, which plays a major part of this story. It seems like the show's policy is to address it but not make it the main part of the story.

Exactly, you don't want to make it the main point of the show. The essence of great storytelling, in my opinion, is to not show what it is the person actually went through--Because the imagination of the human is so much more violent than than any picture you can paint...And with this story...we leave it very much in the hands of the actors to portray the results the abuse as opposed to the abuse itself. And in doing so we allow the audience the ability to come with us on a story that...might get them to think about something which they might might not otherwise have thought about but not doing so in a way that is going to make it grotesque or too confronting.

[From HERE]

“So, let’s make it right. Those kids in that video back there….we were fearless…Plan’s back on. I say we take the warden down, every son of a bitch that hurt us, hurts Boots. We don’t stop ‘til it’s done.”

It’s been growing for two days. The seeds were there before, but they got stunted by silence, frozen by fear. The pictures Terry had dropped off, the implicit threat—Jackson let it get to him. Marina didn’t deserve this, didn’t deserve to be in danger because of what he’d done and what he was doing. But then the warden came in, made his threats.

He should be terrified (he is terrified, if he’s honest), but his anger is stronger.

Talking to Marina about them, telling her about his friends, if not their secrets, was like opening a dam. He told her about the memories he held on to, shared them and let them live again. Taking her with him to see Boots’ newborn son, to introduce her to the friends and let the two parts of his lives merge scared him almost as much as the warden’s visit, but he shouldn’t have been worried. They might’ve been awkward, but she wasn’t—she was gracious and warm, so happy to be included, to get this glimpse of his past, to meet his friends instead of just hers and theirs. Times like this, he doesn’t know how he got to be so lucky. God knows doesn’t deserve it.

The night’s a whirlwind of memory, a meshing of past and future in the present, barely able to hold it all. New life, telling Gil and Shawn about the death he’d caused (he leaves Jessie out, doesn’t understand how she can even have to ask why he takes the blame), videos of their innocent selves back when life made sense and all they wanted was to be the next Bon Jovi (with a female member, of course), and then the plan. Boots is never gonna get to hold his son. They are all that’s left of the kid he’d been, the ones who’ll have to pass it along to the boy, to paint him a picture of his father, because of men who cared only for their own pleasure and nothing for others’ pain.

That isn’t something Jackson can let stand, refuse to do something about because he’s scared. He loves these people. He’s missed them. Had let himself pull away and only when he’d been telling Marina the stories had he found the words for the void they’d left. He doesn’t want to feel it again, doesn’t want to pull away. But he knows, too, none of them will be able to look that baby boy in the eyes if they let what happened to his father stand.

“We’re gonna make every single one of them pay.” The conviction running through him is absolute, the purest thing he’s felt in a very long time. He sees Gil’s eyes light up, then settle, hope followed by his own resolve as the other man stands and meets him.

“Damn right.”

They look to Shawn, who moves to them with a nod. “All in.”

A terrifying statement, one he’s been running from, vacillating about since Boots’ death, but Jackson feels it settle in his core, solid and steadying. All the strength he needs is right here in this yard, and in that house. Reaching for his brothers, he feels Boots’ presence in the embrace, as he echoes Shawn, making an apology for the past and promise for the future in those two words. “All in.”

He isn’t running anymore.

[ooc: Dialogue from ep 01x04]