The Ben Mulroney Show - For All Mankind's Joel Kinnaman on the end of the groundbreaking series

Episode Date: April 17, 2026

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This podcast is brought to you by the National Payroll Institute, the leader for the payroll profession in Canada, setting the standard of professional excellence, delivering critical expertise, and providing resources that over 45,000 payroll professionals rely on. All right, listen, I love talking to newsmakers, I love talking to politicians, I love talking to people who make decisions or who analyze decisions that affect our lives and your lives. This next interview that we are going to share with you, this one just affects me. This is one of those gimmies. All right. It's the Ben Mulroney show. And Ben Mulroney said, I want to do this. And I did it.

And you're going to, I'm, what's the line in, in the wedding singer? I have the microphone. So you're going to listen to everything I have to say. And, but this, this is a show that when it premiered on Apple TV was the moment I heard about it, I knew it was going to be spectacular. And it's, for all mankind, this massive sweeping, alternative history epic that asks the question, how would the world history be different? How would space-faring culture, society? How would our technology be changed if the Russians had landed

on the moon first? And every season there is a time jump. And we are finally at this point arriving at the fifth and final chapter of the show, which takes them to present day. And one constant in the show has been Joel Kinneman. You may know him from a number of shows. He was in the city of Toronto, he was the remake of Robocop. But every woman that I've talked to, including Amy Siegel today, she was the fifth person. The women in my life, I said, oh, I'm interviewing Joel Kinneman. And he's a very good looking man, which I say, I know.

I'm comfortable enough to say, I know. But I was so excited to talk to him because this show gives me everything I want. It's well written. It feels authentic. the acting is good, the drama is fantastic. I love living in alternative worlds. And it captures that feeling of possibility that has existed in the past and exists again today with the Artemis program, the real space program that we have today. And I was just so thankful to talk to him at the end of this show.

So please enjoy my conversation with Joel Kinneman, the star for All Mankind on Apple TV. Hey, Joel. Hey, Ben. How you doing? My first question is, how often do people start these interviews by saying, hi, Bob? Quite often, quite often. Yeah, that's what I thought. But, you know, hi, Bob.

Now, from the start of this show, and I heard it was happening, it just grabbed me. This idea, this concept, this bifurcation of history. And I just, it immediately became, and still is today, my favorite, show in the history of anything I've ever watched on television. Oh, man. And you've been part of some great projects. Where does this rank for you as an actor? It ranks really, really high.

It's really right up there. I can't, you know, I have something on stage that I did in Sweden was also really important to me. It's really up there in the top three for me, for sure. And it's by far the thing that I've done the longest. without a question the one that I was most emotional about saying goodbye to

like on a different level and look five seasons but your character goes from what he's in his late 20s or early 30s at the beginning 40s yeah yeah until until the you know he's near in the end of his life

it's not just a story arc it's a life arc and and at the beginning of every season there's a time jump and so how do you and how do the writers give you the information you need to get in Ed Baldwin's new frame of mind or where he is in his life at that point?

Yeah, I mean, they would fill in some of the blanks, you know, for example, oh, we've been married for two years or, you know, you guys have been together for two, you know, in season three, for example, we were, you know, there was a new lady and there was season four. Yeah, there were some blanks we had to fill. Lynn. And then, of course, I went off and did my work, you know, before we shot of how the body had changed and what the difference was. And that, it was tricky around, you know, 60 and 70 I found

was tricky. Yeah. Yeah. When you first started this show, did you know that it would resonate with fans the way it has? Because people, listen, they either don't know the show exists. There's two types of people. They don't know the show exists or they love it. Yeah. Yeah. And like, honestly, you have in me somebody who I cannot get enough. I can't get enough of going online. What did I miss in the episode? Oh, there's a channel devoted to that. What are the little pieces of history that are the same but different?

That's the fan base of this show. Yeah, I love that. It makes me so happy that it really clicked in. And, you know, it was funny because when we started the show, we were in the first batch of the first four shows that were released on Apple TV. a completely new platform. And they really leaned heavily into promoting, like, the morning show. So they never promoted, really, for all mankind.

And so, and when we, and it was really hard to talk about the show, too, because the show doesn't really reveal itself to what it truly is until maybe season three. Yeah. And so I told everyone, it's going to be really hard to, like, make, you got it. But it was a lot of people that was like, oh, okay, it's a kind of madman in NASA, you know. Yeah.

And it's like, no, wait, we're going tomorrow. Yeah. If you're a student of history, and I was a history major in college, and then you watch this show, what's come to the forefront for me is that even though the histories diverge, the human conflicts are the same. You know, we're always fighting with the other, or what? but we don't understand. And even though, you know, the Equal Rights Amendment was brought forth,

there are still those conflicts that we rest with. Is the world for all mankind a better world than the one we're living in? I think, you know, what I've always loved about the show, and it really made me feel like we need a lot more of this kind of storytelling is that, you know, without losing its ground, grounding and and sort of and really rooted in reality that there is an element to this show that has optimism in it there is there is like an ethos of this show where it's like this is if we just let some of our better angels guide us then our society could you know drift into this realm

where where we're focusing a lot more on reaching out into space than you know bombing school. But we are getting, you said we need more of this storytelling and there is Star City coming. Does Ed Baldwin have a role to play in that? No, I don't think so. You never know.

You never know. Can I ask what you're working on now that you're closing this book for All Mankind? Yeah, I'm, well, I have a couple of things that are coming out. I have a I have a movie called For Good that we shot in Vancouver and in Block Island outside of Rhode Island that I'm really excited about.

And then I'm about to go do another show in Montreal. That's my hometown. No way. Oh, yeah. Oh, no. Are you doing it this summer? Because if you're there in the summer and the fall, you're going to love it. It's just, it stands in for San Francisco.

So we're only, we were shooting May to October. Oh, you're going to have a great time. They're going to treat you so well. I hope you like going out to good restaurants. You're going to have a wonderful time. Oh, I can't wait. Yeah, awesome. Hey, thank you so much.

Really, to be able to talk to you at the end of this journey, like you've given me a gift that I'm going to carry on. I'm going to watch this show forever, man. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Take care. Bye-bye.

Yeah, look, you can take the guy out of entertainment, but you can't take the entertainment of the guy. And I still, I love, love, love. that I love great content I love great TV shows I love great movies I love great performance I love great books I love great music and I love the fact that every now and then

we get to dip our toes back in that world on the Ben Mulroney show because that's never gonna change for me and by the way we got a text from Amy Siegel who pointed out visually how just good looking that man is for those of you listening on radio

it was a picture of him and all she wrote was dear God yeah There's a, he's good looking enough that you can probably feel it just from, just through radio, right? I think so. I think so. Anyway, that was Joel Kitteman. Seems like yesterday when we arrived here. Hi.

The story we know. You of all people know what secrets have done at this family. Is just the beginning. We've been to the 90s. The 70s? Even the 1800s. I think it was our last goodbye. So where will the pond take us next?

What? You need to let me go. The hit Hallmark Original Series. The Way Home Final Season. Sundays only on W. Stream on Stack TV.