MICHAEL CUDLITZ and BEN McKENZIE Interview
“Officer John Cooper” and “Officer Ben Sherman”
SouthLAnd Tuesday nights at 10 PM EST on TNT
March 7, 2011
By Lena Lamoray
About Southland
From Emmy Award winners John Wells, Ann Biderman and Chris Chulack comes a raw and authentic look at a police unit in Los Angeles. From the beaches of Malibu to the streets of East Los Angeles, "Southland" is a fast-moving drama that will take viewers inside the lives of cops, criminals, victims and their families. Michael Cudlitz ("A River Runs Through It") plays John Cooper a seasoned Los Angeles cop, assigned to train young rookie Ben Sherman (Ben McKenzie, "The O.C."). Cooper's honest, no-nonsense approach to the job leaves Sherman questioning whether or not he has what it takes to become a police officer. Cudlitz and McKenzie are joined by other cast members, including Regina King ("Ray," “Jerry Maguire”), who plays Detective Lydia Adams. Adams lives with and is the primary caregiver of her mother. Her partner, Detective Russell Clarke (Tom Everett Scott, "Boiler Room") is an unhappily married father of three. Michael McGrady ("The Thin Red Line") plays Detective Daniel "Sal" Salinger. Sal oversees fellow gang detectives Nate Moretta (Kevin Alejandro, "Drive," "Ugly Betty") and Sammy Bryant (Shawn Hatosy, "Alpha Dog"). Arija Bareikis (“Crossing Jordan”) plays patrol officer Chickie Brown, a single mom who dreams of being the first woman accepted into SWAT.
I spoke with MICHAEL CUDLITZ and BEN McKENZIE about their characters John Cooper and Ben Sherman in SOUTHLAND. SouthLAnd is such an incredible series and it was an honor to speak with both of these charming gentlemen. Michael plays my favorite character, John Cooper in the show and he made me cry in the finale. You can see the genuine pain in his eyes and it’s heartbreaking. Michael really does a phenomenal job portraying Cooper. Ben will win you over with his stunning fight scenes and his facial expression in the last scene is just absolute perfection. Watch the season three finale of SouthLAnd Tuesday night at 10 PM EST on TNT.
Lena Lamoray: How would you describe John and Ben and how do they compare to you in real life?
Michael Cudlitz: Take it away.
Ben McKenzie: I think that - the way I would compare the two is I actually think they are two sides of the same coin in a lot (facts). So far as different as they may appear to be, I will pay for this, well an older arguably jaded and bitter veteran officer who has a lot of personal demons that he’s fighting. And, you know, decisions he’s making that are probably not the correct ones versus a young fresh naive idealistic (rookie) who has a lot to learn but is very sort of Type A personality. As far as they appear to be they are actually quite similar. They both chose law enforcement for personal reasons that have to do with from a sort of personal level they both feel passionately what they - the line of work chosen. And they’re both working very, very hard to kind of keep their various demons at bay. I think Ben Sherman has more than he lets on so I actually think they are closer than they appear to be. And that’s the genius of the pairing of the two of them out of a sense of knowing that you have two guys who couldn’t be more different on the face of it but are actually more similar than either of them realize and they start to sort of understand that as the series progresses.
More Conference Call Interview Highlights:
Q: Ben when you jumped over that building was there a wire on you that got erased and I assume the same for the guy who didn’t make the jump?
Ben McKenzie: They all used wires but I just said, you know what, man just do it by myself. No, that’s not true.
Michael Cudlitz: I threw him over.
Ben McKenzie: He threw him over. That was the wire, yeah there was nothing - there was no netting or anything below but there was a wire there was a - about 130 feet up so there was a crane a 150 foot crane that had a wire attached to it that was hooked to my back and a couple of guys on a pulley. There was no one, you know, pushing me over or catching me on the other side but there was a pulley there was a wire on my back so I was safe. Even doing that was a bit of a battle with the Warner Brothers safety officers who were none to pleased that an actor would actually do this but it was actually - it was a hell of a lot of fun.
Q: Have the producers talked to you guys in hopes there will be another season on what directions your characters are going to go in particularly since it doesn’t appear they are paired up anymore.
Ben McKenzie: Michael?
Michael Cudlitz: Well they haven’t really gone into any specifics. I think they - they’re not sure yet a lot of that is going to have to do with the success of how many they just picked up for and those things. I think they’ll go back in and decide all of that later, but I think that door has been left open for many, many changes including and not limited to the ones that you see at the end of the episode.
Ben McKenzie: I think that is a perfect (answer).
Q: We really see your character’s partnership evolve over the course of the season so how has the relationship between the two of you evolved over the course of the season?
Michael Cudlitz: Probably a lot more positive than our characters.
Ben McKenzie: Probably. It’s actually great to work with, you know, you have fun doing stuff like that is so intense as ((inaudible)). You are not worried about anybody’s stuff. You’re kind of doing it together even though you’re acting out material that is about as real as it can get between two people who are still in a friendship to back it all up on so, you know, we’re not worried that’s a safety net for you.
Michael Cudlitz: Yeah its - and on my end it’s obviously the same thing. It’s just been getting to know Ben, you know, the actor and working together has just been - it’s been a highlight of my career absolutely. I feel safe when we work together and I think safety is the key for any performer to go places they’re not comfortable with going. You feel safe in that environment you feel safe enough to take those risks. And I think for both of us have done things in the show that we’ve never done before in our careers and it’s just been a pleasure.
Ben McKenzie: Amen to that.
Q: What excites you guys about playing your characters Ben and John? Are there any challenges you guys face?
Ben McKenzie: Well we face a variety of challenges on a daily basis. I mean that’s - in a good way that’s the wonderful thing about the way we shoot the show, on location all over LA, practical locations using the real equipment the LAPD uses from the uniforms to the guns to the hand cuffs, the radios, the cars. All those provide great challenges just they’re practical challenges working out a scene in which, you know, we may be in a car chase that leads to a foot chase that leads to a cuffing. All of those things, you know, challenge us as actors to perform, you know, dialogue as well as, you know, engage in some more, you know, physical and visceral things like driving a car really fast through oncoming traffic, safely of course. And chasing down a suspect and handcuffing him all that stuff so this challenges us on a daily basis and that’s what makes the show so much fun for all of us as actors. We’re not sitting in a studio, you know, rehashing the same sort of plot lines over and over and over again. We’re out on the streets just like the LAPD is, you know, solving problems that are immediate and visceral so it’s a hell of a lot of fun.
Michael Cudlitz: I’d say that all of the things that make, you know, make this job a challenge most people don’t like challenges at work. I would say actors love challenges at work so everything that is challenging and exciting about this show. I would speak for all of the actors and I feel comfortable speaking for all of them. The things that challenge us are the things that excite us so we hope to be challenged every week and the show delivers.
Q: Michael if the show doesn’t come back, I hope it comes back, but if it doesn’t come back it strikes me that this is a pretty good wrap up episode. What are your feelings overall about this episode and just the experience if it doesn’t come back?
Michael Cudlitz: I would just say that, you know, we have produced the television series that we set out to produce and TNT has given us the opportunity to do that, you know, unflinchingly. And we’re very proud of the ten hours that we have done as well as the, you know, the 13 previous hours that we produced. But more so specifically though the past 10 hours, but we will not be discussing not being picked up anymore.
Q: Ben, you had a lot of fist fights in OC and they were just kind of your regular Hollywood fist fights. This fight you had on the roof top it was just brutal. I thought you guys were both going to kill each other before it was done. What’s it like to film a scene like that? How hard is it to get it right? What’s it like overall?
Ben McKenzie: So that’s ((inaudible)) I haven’t actually seen it yet but I know what it was like to do obviously. When we shot it basically, you know, we had a stunt coordinator but he was also an actor who - I’m hearing a lot feedback, is anyone hearing that. All right let me try and move a little bit, sorry, maybe this will make it better. The stunt coordinator who had choreographed the whole thing without my being there was kind of elaborate perhaps sort of standard thing ((inaudible)) a little too choreographed felt way too choreographed for my taste. So I just said, you know, said to Chris why don’t I just roll around with this guy who is when he’s not acting and being a stunt guy he’s a MMA fighter so he’s used to wrestling. In real life he would totally kick my ass but we can roll around and fight each other without - as long as you don’t punch or kick each other particularly to the face you’ll be fine. So we basically, you know, we sort of rehearsed a little bit but we pretty much rolled around and it was fantastic. You know, I really think it’s a real credit to him as a performer that he was able to go for it and make it look realistic without destroying me. And I think that - I’m excited to see it. I think that’s more realistic to the way fights go down certainly every fight I’ve ever been in in my own personal life is not a choreographed, you know, I throw a left jab and the guy throws a right cross back at me and then we, you know, fall to the ground or whatever. It’s messy and that’s the way a lot of fights are messy so I’m excited to see it. Thanks for the compliment.
Q: Living in the area where most of this action takes place on the show, how do you guys feel you’re changing just average people’s perceptions of the police officers that are on duty and on the streets daily?
Michael Cudlitz: Well I think...
Ben McKenzie: Go ahead.
Michael Cudlitz: Well I think for one the people are getting a, you know, people around the country are getting a really great look at the city and the vastness of the city and the sort of, you know, the challenges that do present themselves with policing something that is so vast and not as condense as say New York City where everything is really, you know, tight and compacted on itself. And, you know, inside of apartment buildings and, you know, those perceptions that we have of New York whereas Los Angeles is much more sprawling and it’s much more, you know, that these pockets of affluence, you know, amongst poverty. There’s these wonderful iconic images but there’s an openness to the city and there’s an openness to the policing and I think that, you know, hopefully we’re giving you, you know, an actual view of what it would be like to be in this city. You know, if you were to come as a visitor not just sort of a situation where it’s like, you know, Hollywood Boulevard or, you know, the walk of fame. You know, Los Angeles is made up of a lot of, you know, really diverse communities and hopefully we’re giving people a little bit of introduction to that.
Q: Are you guys responsible for the new booths they put over at el Siete Mares where you guys eat on the shows all the time?
Michael Cudlitz: I have no idea maybe they did that after we left.
Ben McKenzie: That’s awesome though. I hope so. Wow, I guess I hope so I kind of liked the way it was if they’re nice then yes. If not then no.
Michael Cudlitz: We changed the location that’s one of the things that Chris Chulack is extremely adamant about is that the locations be shot at the locations. We don’t need to change something to make it look nicer, it looks the way it looks. You know, Filipes looks the way it looks. It’s, you know, it’s arguable looks atrocious but that’s what Filipes is and that’s the charm of it, you know, we don’t go in and repaint Filipes because it didn’t look the way we wanted it to look. We shoot things, you know, found objects the way in society the way they exist in these officer’s lives and consequently being in that environment affects us as actors and that’s kind of the design the show from, you know, from the ground up.
Q: Hey guys, the intensity of the show as you’re watching it on the screen, I mean it has a lot to do with the directors and the camera block and everything like that, but I’m sure there are moments where you have to stop and reset. How do you get back into that intense moment when there are those sort of abrupt interruptions because it relates on the screen to the fact where, you know, you’re watching it with your heart in your chest and you’re wondering if it’s going to honestly pull through. But I mean just watching Ben run down the street I know I’m sure you’ve done it like 12 times just for that one shot.
Ben McKenzie: Well actually no. That’s the beauty of the way we do this is that we don’t run down the street 12 times. We might run down the street three times maybe but usually we run down it once or twice. You know, the seemingly un-choreographed fights that I engage in with the guy that I’m chasing on the roof top we did that - we only did it twice where the part where we’re rolling around on the ground we went about three minutes at a time and they just would use whatever they could use off of it. But what we prefer to do is well what we sort of have to do given how quickly we’re shooting and how low the budget is we need to go quickly we need to go fast, it fits the aesthetic of the show, its very natural very ((inaudible)) but we just get in the rotation and we suit up and we roll. And the brilliant thing about the show is that the analogies the digital cameras that we use allow us to go with this sort of breakneck speed and if the actor shows up prepared which we all do there isn’t a lot of sort of fussing around and arguing over script changes and, you know, all of the usual kind of rigmarole that accompanies a television show. The lighting set up and, you know, this and that moving the equipment around you basically show up in the DP puts the camera on his shoulder or on one of his camera operators and we roll and we only do it a couple of times and that allows you to keep your energy very high. And I think it shows on the scene so I think that’s my answer is that we don’t do it 12 times, we do it twice.
Q: What are your Vegas odds in your head about getting picked up for another season and where you would like to see your characters go?
Michael Cudlitz: Well I think the show is getting picked up. I think it’s a matter of how many.
Ben McKenzie: If it’s three to one I’ll still put money on it. I’ll bet you 100 bucks. You pick the odds and I’ll bet you 100 bucks, how about that.
Michael Cudlitz: There you go.
Ben McKenzie: Well I think, you know, I think - well Mike will answer for his own character but in terms of my character I think the phrase that this finale up this season really completes the journey for my character literally and metaphorically of being a rookie. So he is, you know, he’s finally done with his probationary period. He’s grown up - he’s become a confident officer in his own right, more than competent and he’s also had to face down his returning officer and tell him some hard truth. So he’s ready to go out into the world so I think the gloves are off for Ben Sherman and the world is wide open and he can go in any number of directions which I think is very exciting. It is very exciting for both me and I think for the producers and writers as well so, you know, he could go in any number of directions. I kind of think...
Michael Cudlitz: Yeah I think that the really great thing about, you know, for every great character in the show the future of the characters is that everything is moving forward. Everything is moving forward, everybody is moving forward.
Q: Shawn Ryan, who produced The Shield talked about how the Los Angeles cops really hated the show and didn’t give any cooperation and you were talking about how you get quite a bit of cooperation and it sounds like you’re using the actual equipment they use and so forth and you do okay from them and you do have good cops and bad cops in your show. How much cooperation do you get from LA and do they ever object when you have the bad cops?
Ben McKenzie: Really the LAPD hated a show that was entirely based on police officers being corrupt? That’s so odd, that’s so strange that you would say that. Go ahead Mike.
Mike Cudlitz: No you go ahead.
Ben McKenzie: We get a ton of cooperation. We have, you know, we have cops on our set literally every day who are off duty and who want to, you know, hang around and watch us film and play parts in the background. And, you know, we get enormous amount of cooperation with the LAPD and particularly as we have gone on in the series the nice thing is, you know, I think cops are rightly suspicious of any show that comes on that’s going to portray them specifically in a specific police department like we are doing with the LAPD because Hollywood is known for a lot of things for being truthful and honest and in their portrayals with police officers and also being positive in their treatment of them its not one of the things its generally known for. So they are completely on our side and I think what we are trying to do on the show is not is portray them realistically and honestly, you know, I think The Shield is a great series, it had a certain conceit which is that, you know, you’re dealing with corrupt cops, your dealing with corruption on almost all levels and that’s just the heart of the show and that’s what the show was - that show was obsessed about. Our show is looking at the profession in terms of what (hold) does it exact on specific members of the profession. How they go about waking up in the morning and working in a field that is incredibly hard on them both physically and emotionally and psychologically. So there are going to be cops who are going to fall apart get torn apart at the seams from working at a hard job. You see cops like Dewey who, you know, go in and out of being able to hold it together. And, you know, Michael’s character ultimately has to, you know, get some of his problems fixed but we also have many other cops who are dealing with it and handling it the best that they can and they’re good people who happen to be police officers. There will occasionally be plot lines where officers will screw up and make mistakes and usually not - there’s not some grand conspiracy it’s a failure of their character often but that is a failure that is not unique to them but is inside all of us. We’re all challenged maybe not as often as these guys are but we’re all challenged on a regular basis to maintain a certain amount moral integrity and sometimes we fail and we’re not going to say oh well these officers are perfect they never fail. Part of what’s interesting about it is that they do fail, there’s just no grand conspiracy they’re good people doing a hard job sometimes they’re going to screw up.
Michael Cudlitz: And usually in our show when people screw up they, you know, they have the actual consequences that would happen in that situation. Dewey doesn’t search for a gun in the pilot episode and gets shot, you know, there are people who say oh, you know, a season cop would never not search, you know, a gang banger and you go oh why what would happen if he didn’t do that, well he gets shot. You know, (Russell) steals the photos and it takes some time but he gets caught. You know, there are usually typically consequences for improper actions and that I would say is actually more of a positive than showing somebody who is, you know, doing something, you know, negative or inappropriate because there are consequences for bad behavior and obviously for TV shows sometimes those things are drawn out which I would argue that, you know, we handle it in a much more accurate way than, you know, has been handled in the past on television.
