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“Bill has always lived with me,” he says of Hank Hill’s lonely neighbor. “Even though we took this little 10-year hiatus, he has always been there. I think you’ll find with a lot of character actors, they have some guys in their pocket they can always bring out.”

New life for “King of the Hill” was always on a back burner when Fox canceled the series in 2010. Producers were determined to bring it back and, when Disney acquired the rights, a home on Hulu made the possibility a reality. Now with a time jump (and some PG-13-rated language), “King of the Hill” can bring the characters into the 21st century.

“I do feel the difference,” Root says of the change. “What’s good about it is you can be a little freer in how people act and how different the world is 10 years after we stopped doing the classic show.”

Time never stood still for Root during the break. Several series, guest shots and a Coen Brothers film filled in the schedule. And, in 2026, a supporting role on “Widow’s Bay” (as Wyck Crawford, the true believer of a town curse) landed him an Emmy nomination.

“It’s nice to be recognized,” he says of the honor. “It’s just been astonishing. We’ve been officially picked up and we’re hoping to work a little earlier than we did last year.”

The key to that flurry of activity is embracing the life of a character actor.

“I never wanted to be anything else,” the Florida native says. “You can come in and not steal the show but make it better. That’s what all the character actors in the ‘30s, ‘40s and ‘50s did with these great movies. When you watch them again, you’re watching the character actors that you love, not necessarily Jimmy Stewart.”

The trick to landing big jobs lies in risk-taking, Root says. When he auditioned for the Coens in “O Brother, Where Art Thou?”, he drew on his Southern past, conjured some of his friends and projected confidence. “Do you know what you want to do?” the directors asked. “And I said, ‘Yeah,’ and I went like this,” he says, crossing his eyes, “and I think I just scared them into giving me that role.”

Roles in their films, “The Ladykillers,” “No Country for Old Men,” “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs” and “The Tragedy of Macbeth,” followed.

“It’s been an honor to work in as many films with them as I did,” Root says. Meanwhile, he has four films in the can, and “King of the Hill” and “Widow’s Bay” on the agenda.

“Since I’ve gotten into my 60s and 70s, I’ve only gotten more work," Root says. "I think it helps to become a more mature human being and you can do more with your art by having more life experiences.”

Moments in the new “King of the Hill” resonate because, yes, they’ve happened to him, too.

“I got suckered into one of those scams and was going down to buy gift cards (to send the scammers) and I called my business manager and he said, ‘What are you doing? Are you insane?’" Root recalls. "But that’s what happens in the real world now. There’s a lot of it going on and ‘King of the Hill’ is reflecting a lot more real life than it ever has.”

In the first seasons of the animated series, actors recorded episodes together, “like an old radio show," Root says. "You’d get a little more oomph out of the performance because of that. But after COVID, it’s pretty much recording by yourself. But I do still have the ‘sense’ memory of us all being together and it’s never going to go away.”