Robert Redford made an unexpected return to acting after a six-year hiatus.
Redford, 88, briefly appeared in Western thriller Dark Winds‘ season 3 premiere on Sunday, March 9, alongside Game of Thrones author George R. R. Martin. The duo, who are both Dark Winds executive producers, played incarcerated men engaged in a high-stakes game of chess behind bars.
The scene, which was shot on a closed set at Redford’s request, involved Navajo Tribal Police Officer Joe Leaphorn (Zahn McClarnon) intervening in the game to help Martin’s character put Redford in checkmate.
With the chess match effectively over, Redford’s character shot an annoyed glance at Leaphorn as he quipped: “Thanks a lot.”
Chris Eyre, Dark Winds‘ season 3 premiere director, subsequently told Vulture that a potential Redford cameo had been “in the air since the first season.” There were initial plans for Redford to appear in Dark Winds‘ second season finale, but his guest role was eventually saved for the season 3 opener instead.
“I never thought I could get to a place in my life where I would know Robert Redford, let alone be in a scene with him,” Dark Winds star and executive producer McClarnon said.
Dark Winds showrunner John Wirth confirmed that there were complications up until the very moment the cameo was filmed.
“I was never really sure it was going to happen until it happened,” Wirth admitted.
Before Sunday’s cameo in Dark Winds, Redford’s last screen appearance was in 2019’s Avengers: Endgame, in which he reprised his Captain America: The Winter Soldier role as former S.H.I.E.L.D. director-turned-HYDRA traitor Alexander Pierce.
Redford previously announced that his starring role in 2018’s The Old Man & The Gun would likely be his final screen appearance after a 60-year career.
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“Never say never, but I pretty well concluded that this would be it for me in terms of acting, and [I’ll] move towards retirement after this ’cause I’ve been doing it since I was 21,” Redford told Entertainment Weekly at the time. “I thought, ‘Well, that’s enough.’ And why not go out with something that’s very upbeat and positive?”
However, Redford reversed course one month later in September 2018 when he told Variety it “was a mistake” to announce he was retiring.
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“I should never have said that,” he admitted. “If I’m going to retire, I should just slip quietly away from acting, but I shouldn’t be talking about it because I think it draws too much attention in the wrong way. I want to be focused on this film and the cast.”
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Since then, Redford has continued working behind the cameras, including executive producing the 2019 Sundance Film Festival hit The Mustang, about the rehabilitation of wild horses. He lent his voice to the 2020 anthology movie Omniboat: A Fast Boat Fantasia and even reprised his All the President’s Men role as Watergate journalist Bob Woodward in an uncredited vocal cameo in the HBO series White House Plumbers.
Throughout his esteemed career, Redford won a Best Director Oscar for 1980’s Ordinary People and received the prestigious Cecil B. DeMille Award from the Golden Globes in 1994. He was the recipient of a career tribute at the Kennedy Center Honors in 2005 and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by former President Barack Obama in 2016.