Wyatt Russell was sitting in a tiny donut shop about a mile from the beach, looking slightly wonderstruck at the steady stream of adults buying themselves a treat in the middle of an L.A. summer day. None of the patrons so much as glanced as Russell, who’s hunched over a table near the door in a baseball cap and a gray Sturgill Simpson T-shirt. There was no reason for them to guess that this jovial, pale-bearded dude was the star of a new television show, AMC’s charmingly eccentric dramedy Lodge 49, which premieres August 6. Nor was there a clue that he is the nexus of prime celebrity D.N.A., the child of Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell.

But then, Wyatt Russell has spent practically his whole life trying not to be recognized—or, at least, not to be recognized in that way. From a young age, he threw himself into hockey, spending after-school hours practicing in working-class Long Beach, where Lodge 49 is set. “I saw a really different type of L.A.,” he said. “A lot of the people who lived there had a trade—carpentry, plumbing, construction.” Although he attended private school by day, hockey allowed him entrée to a wider, “realer” world beyond Hollywood.

His movie-star parents “were both raised lower-middle class/middle class in the 50s and 60s. They didn’t let us forget those values . . . it’s just the way they were,” he said. Hawn and Russell encouraged their son’s interest in hockey. And that, he continued with a goofy little laugh, “made me feel normal. When you are 12, that’s all you want: to be more normal. It’s weird when people are looking at your parents and stuff. These friends didn’t care. They were doing the daily grind and figuring out how to be good people.”

These are exactly the kind of people who populate Lodge 49, a darkly whimsical series about the aptly named Dud (Russell), a down-on-his-luck ex-surfer and pool cleaner who stumbles upon a fraternal lodge brimming with secrets. Its members are ordinary men and women like Ernie (Brent Jennings), a struggling plumbing salesman, and Blaise (David Pasquesi), a pot dealer, who live in Long Beach, where the industry is contracting and working folks are barely getting by. [Source]