Michael Cudlitz takes on idiots in TNT's 'SouthLAnd'
Curt Wagner on 01.11.11 at 3:51 PM
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| Michael Cudlitz plays Officer John Cooper in TNT's "SouthLAnd." |
In "Punching Water," premiering at 9 p.m. Jan. 11, the no-nonsense officer played by Michael Cudlitz will suffer a big fool--fellow LA cop Billy Dewey (C. Thomas Howell), who returns to the force after spending time in rehab for alcoholism. Cooper is told to partner up with Dewey while his regular partner, Ben Sherman (Ben McKenzie) works with Officer Chickie Brown (Arija Bareikis).
It's not going to be pretty, Cudlitz told me.
"Everybody knows that I'm not going to take any shit from him," Cudlitz said, apparently channeling Cooper. "I reluctantly take him and this dude just will not shut up about rehab. He has seen the light, he has been inspired, he is everything that you could possibly list that could be bad about somebody who's just gone through rehab."
Cooper and his disdain for people he finds irritating remains one of my favorite things about "SouthLAnd." For such a serious, raw police drama, it's a whole lot of fun thanks to Cudlitz's take on Cooper. He just doesn't like stupid people.
"At all, at all," Cudlitz said, laughing. He obviously enjoys this particular personality trait of his character as well, which, after talking to Cudlitz awhile, one might believe he also shares.
Cudlitz definitely calls them like he sees them, but, he said, "I think I'm goofier than Cooper and a lot less confrontational." Cooper carries a lot more snarkiness and sarcasm, and it comes from a dark place, Cudlitz said.
"I just think there's a lot of pain," he said. "It comes from a lot of pain that he doesn't want anyone to know about."
McKenzie agrees that his co-star is not as angry as Cooper is, but "he does have a little bit of that in him just naturally, which is just 'Why would these [bleeping] jack-offs with this [bleeping] stupid [bleep]...'
"Yeah, he's pretty funny. He's a pretty funny guy."
Case in point: When I asked Cudlitz if Dewey helps Cooper realize his own substance abuse problems in "Punching Water," he gave me a very Cooper-like answer.
"Not at all, not at all. Dewey's just a piece of shit that won't keep his mouth shut at this point."
Cudlitz and I talked more about Cooper, his drug problem, his love life (oh yeah, he's gay!) and what we can expect this season.
MORE FROM CUDLITZ AND MCKENZIE
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| Officer Billy Dewey (C. Thomas Howell) tries the patience of John Cooper (Michael Cudlitz). (TNT Photos) |
And they just keep getting better.
Oh yeah?
Absolutely. It's been insane. Everything about the show keeps getting tighter and better in the way they shoot it and the way that we're all clicking together and the stories. It's just very, very exciting.
This is the first season under TNT's watch. Has it been any different?
From our end, I would say no. From a creative standpoint with the scripts and stuff, I'd have to say absolutely--but that's just the difference between the big networks and the cable networks. The cable networks fall in love with something and they embrace it and they cultivate it and they let it run. The [broadcast] networks tend to try to--it's like politics, they try to guess what people are thinking next and they very much get in there and mess with the creative process: "Oh, let's swap this out, let's change that." "Hey, is this working?" "Is that working?"
From my understanding, John Wells and Chris Chulack were given the opportunity to go off and tell 10 stories this season. They submitted the scripts, there were very little notes early on and then they get to go off and write the scripts. There aren't too many fingers in the pie. [TNT] loved the voice of the show, what the show had to say and they wanted the people who created the show to go off and write it and that's what happens.
But from that end it changes, because they get a lot more creative freedom. On our end, we do whatever scripts we're handed. I would say that the scripts are much more focused now and the story telling's tighter, but part of that is because we've been doing it a little longer now so.
Do you feel it's even more daring than before or is that just the result of the evolution of...
I think it's just the evolution of the show. It's more aggressive in its tone but I think that's the story that John and Chris have been wanting to tell from the beginning. So we've always heard that from them, so to see things that are that are coming out story wise, none of it's a surprise to me because these are the kinds of stories that they always talked about telling and hoped the show could go in that direction. We were always trying to push it in that direction. So, no, all that seems to be as doctor ordered.
There's a scene in the premiere that renews my love for Cooper. He is in the toy store and the women are arguing over a small amount of money and it's all he can do not to yell at them. Awesome. I was dying laughing.
I haven't seen it yet so I don't know what cut they used because we did a lot of the scripted stuff and then we did a couple where we just kind of let loose. I'm not exactly sure which version wound up in the cut that you saw. So I'm excited to see that myself but they were all pretty aggressively fools.
And your face, your reactions are just like the best.
Awesome. Thank you; I appreciate that.
Also that really crazy, intense bank robbery scene, how was that shooting that? Is that difficult?
Those are some of my favorite things to do because we are in the middle of everything like that. You know, we shut down Hollywood Boulevard. When you talk about a dream job: You're an actor on a TV show in Hollywood, on Hollywood Boulevard, shutting it down, filming a scene. There are tourists around, there's people who live there, who live on the streets, who work there. It's just this crazy, crazy environment and you're there doing what Hollywood is known for, which is making movies and you're out there shooting something. It doesn't get any better than that.
You don't have problems with people trying to get in the middle of it?
[Laughs.] Sure we do. It happens all the time and some of it you'll actually see in some episodes further down the line. We don't shut much down unless it's a public safety issue, but if it's not, if it's somebody running down the street or this and that, those are all real people who just happen to be on the sidewalk.
But you guys have security, right?
Ish. [Laughs.] All of our background officers are current or retired Los Angeles Police Department officers. There are a lot of officers on the set on any given day. So there's not really a security issue.
Tell me what were going to see with John this year.
Well we're going to see sort of the evolution of his back issues and his addiction issues. And we're going to, I think, kind of blur the line as to which is which. I think he has trouble separating it at one point so far as when does the medication take over when it's not needed, or is it really being used to manage this really bad injury he has. The audience is going to come with him on that journey. And he's going to be dealing with some really, really intense personal issues, events that I would argue shaped who he is as a person today.
Like from far in his past?
From far in his past, yeah, from prior to being an officer. Issues with his dad, issues with his family. You're going to get more of an insight as to what really makes him tick as an officer and why he's so passionate about the job he does as a training officer. I think a lot of it's going to be very, very satisfying, but also told in a way that "SouthLAnd" tells its stories and reveals its characters. It's going to go down very slowly, over time and it's going to be shown through sort of these pressure cooker events that expose weaknesses. That's how we learn about people.
That's another thing I really like about the show, we learn about these people like they would learn about each other, with slow reveals as something happens. Like you would get to know any co-worker in real life. And there's not just one big download of "here's my past."
No, it's not. And nothing is cut and dry. People say and do one thing one day and then say do something completely different the next day and you're like, "Well wait a minute, you said this." "Well yeah, I said that a week ago. And now these are the circumstances and this is what I'm saying now." People change their minds, people lie to cover things. People tell truths, they tell non-truths. It really is a situation where you're deciding as you go what you feel about these people.
Are we going to see more of his personal life, as in his love life?
Yes, yeah. A little later on in the season, not right away. I spoke to Michael Jenson at "The Advocate" about this, everyone's personal life has been--not toned down--but we're not really dealing with that as much. We're dealing with more of the interdepartmental relationship stuff early on. I think part of that is the sort of resetting the show for TNT where things have been scaled down financially a little bit.
What we've done is we still have all the characters that we've grown to love and all the relationship stuff that's going on, but it's happening a little closer to home in the sense of the department. It's happening in the cars. The relationship stuff is happening between myself and Ben. I actually have scenes with Regina [King] this year and Shawn [Hatosy] and those worlds are all coming closer together so we can experience what everyone's going through with characters that we know.
But that's not to say that they're pulling away from anything. Ben is not even really in a relationship and he had been in relationships throughout the season last year. There is a little hint at something with him early on but nothing is any kind of major relationship. But there is reinforcement of who these people are throughout.
So if anyone's expecting to see John in bed with somebody in the first couple of episodes, it's not going to happen. But that's not to say that it is not going to happen at all. They're just going to have to wait a little longer, but it's coming.
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| Officers Ben Sherman (Ben McKenzie) and John Cooper (Michael Cudlitz) experience some ups and downs in Season 3 of "SouthLAnd." |
It's good. He's got some stuff to juggle. He's in a position where he has to do what he's told. He has to sort of toe the company line and I'm asking a lot of him. Cooper has exposed himself to Ben and he now has information on him that he has to trust that he's not going to abuse that information.
Cooper is also in a situation where he doesn't realize how bad his problem is yet. As any addict, he's convinced he's got it under control. He can handle it, he's not that guy. And we're going to see as the season goes that that sort of starts to unravel a little bit. We're going to see how Ben handles that. Does he respond to it as a friend or does he respond to it just as someone in the department who has information that has to be passed along to the authorities?
I think you'll see their relationship evolve and the scales kind of tip, the more Ben becomes less of a trainee and more of a peer and more of an active duty police officer. And that's going to be fun to watch as the audience sees the shift. They need each other for very different but similar reasons. They're very much a sort of a yin and yang relationship. We're on Episode 5 and I think the audience is going to be very, very satisfied with what they see.
Can you give me a little non-spoilery preview to "Punching Water," which it looks like it's going to be interesting because you saddle up with Dewey.
No one wants to ride with [Dewey]--so no surprise there. And I am told that he's going to be riding with me because I'm considered the best training officer ... This dude just will not shut up about rehab. He has seen the light, he has been inspired, he is everything that you could possibly list that could be bad about somebody who's just gone through rehab is Dewey at this moment in his life. And that's where he has to be. He has swung completely in the opposite direction and John takes it for a while and then Johns' had it ... Ben actually gets put into a car with Chickie, because she's in our world. She's the next sort of senior officer and she's also a trainer at times.
So it's actually a really fun episode. There's a lot of fun, funny stuff in it. But it's really balanced by really hard-core detective story that's going on at the same time with some gang murders. ... We all wind up at the same crime scene, which, I think, is going to be a lot of fun for the audience because it's not this sort of contrived thing. It's actually done really, really well and it's a really, really explosive emotional scene and it's one of the things I think that makes our show different than other shows.
And that answer brings me to my next question: How much of Michael is in Cooper? I get the idea you don't suffer fools gladly either.
I don't but I think I'm goofier than Cooper and a lot less confrontational. My wife says I'm nothing like Cooper, and she's seen me do a lot of stuff. I've been told I move completely different when I'm Cooper. I've had friends who've come on set and they were just, like, "I didn't even want to talk to you, you're like in cop mode."
So I don't know. I think I can be very sarcastic and I like to have fun, but Cooper is darker just in general. There's a lot behind the snarkiness and the sarcasm a lot more than I carry. There's this sort of darkness to his--I don't want to say his soul because that makes him almost like he's evil or arch--but I just think there's a lot of pain. It comes from a lot of pain that he doesn't want anyone to know about. So there's the intelligence and the knowledge of his job, but it's also masking something that's going on that he really, really needs to deal with and he has no one in his life that he can share it with.
Right.
Hopefully we're moving in a direction where we may realize that actually somebody close in his life now is the person that he can actually share this with. So, it's very close to me, yet I don't know who this guy is at all.
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