Jason Bateman Reflects on Robert Redford’s Legacy: ‘One of Our Greats’ (Exclusive)

Jason Bateman hit the red carpet for the NYC premiere of “Black Rabbit.”

“Extra” spoke with Jason, who reflected on Robert Redford’s legacy after his passing.

Bateman commented, “I’ve never met Mr. Redford, but I would have loved to. Of my three favorite films, ‘All the President’s Men’ is one of them… and ‘Ordinary People,’ you know, him directing that film, you know, I saw that when I was a really young kid and it was the possibility of, you know, an actor being a director too. He’s a one of our greats and I’m glad we got him for as long as we did.”

Jason added, “Nice long life. I hear he died in his sleep too, which is like, you know, he’s not dead, he’s just still dreaming, which is kind of nice.”

As for his new limited series, Jude Law plays a rising-star New York restaurateur who gets dragged by his chaotic brother (Bateman) into the city’s criminal underworld.

Bateman dished on meeting Jude for the first time on the project (and their shirtless fight scene!).

Jason admitted that he was “dreading” that scene, saying, “We’re going to have to get into a fist fight on the asphalt... with no clothes on. That sounds painful, but it just turned into one point and on a pretty warm night there, out there on the highway, it ended up being a really great scene and I didn’t hurt my soft little actor scene.”

As for meeting Jude, he revealed that it happened “a couple of weeks before” shooting. He explained, “We’d done a bunch of phone calls, a bunch of Zooms, and stuff, but he was busy working, I think in Australia, and I was busy doing pre-production.”

On the project, Jason reunited with his “Ozark” co-star Laura Linney, who directed two episodes.

He quipped, “She only lives a couple of blocks from the studio where we worked and she could have just stayed in her PJs and, you know, hanging out with her cool family, but I twisted her arm again and told her how great she was when she directed.”

Jason also talked about having his oldest daughter on the set and bonding over her directing ambitions. He commented, ‘My eldest… she got the director bug a couple of years ago and so I made sure she was on the set and did some PA work and just to see how, you know, the sausage is made a little bit. She just absolutely loves it.”