Dave Callaham, the creator and showrunner, and a longtime aficionado of Mr. Van Damme’s work, leapt when he heard, in 2014, that Scott Free Productions, Ridley Scott’s company behind TV shows like “The Good Wife” and “The Man in the High Castle” (and films like “Blade Runner 2049,” “Murder on the Orient Express” and “The Martian”), was trying to come up with a TV series for the action star. A writer on “Godzilla” and “The Expendables,” Mr. Callaham knew action, but he had more than just another Van Damme martial arts flick in mind. He envisioned something high-concept, like the critically acclaimed 2008 Belgian film “JCVD,” which starred Mr. Van Damme playing himself as an unwitting participant in a post office robbery.

“I told them I’d like to play with the notions of who he is and what he represents in the culture,” Mr. Callaham said. “He was my favorite actor growing up, so I wanted to talk about the ups and downs of his career, and to do something that involved all those different worlds. And they said, great, we don’t know what you’re talking about.”

But Mr. Callaham was very apprehensive about how Mr. Van Damme would react when he pitched the show. “I didn’t know J.C. personally, and I didn’t know what his appetite would be for making fun of himself,” he said. “A lot of those guys, those ’80s guys especially, are not open to that.”

And the treatment he created for Scott Free was, as he recalled, “insane.” (It opened with Mr. Van Damme as a forgotten sad sack who played Frisbee golf to stay in shape.) Without Mr. Callaham’s knowledge, the folks at Scott Free sent the treatment to Mr. Van Damme, who loved it.