Tag Archives: FBI

Life on set

STAR POWER, , , , , ,

Stars from US series including FBI, Grey’s Anatomy, The 100 and NCIS offer a glimpse into what life is like working on a year-long network drama.

FBI
From Dick Wolf, the creator of the Law & Order series, comes this insight into the life of FBI agents. The second season began on CBS this fall.

Missy Peregrym (above left), who plays special agent Maggie Bell: “It’s at least 14 or 15 hours every day. Sometimes you’re outside all week and it’s freezing, so it just doesn’t stop. It sucks. It’s just long, and season one is always really hard because you’re not just going to work and saying the words, you’re also having to coordinate and figure out who the characters are and the look of the show.

“It’s such a development and a collaboration between so many different people that it’s such a win when you get picked up for season two. I knew that it was picked up for season one when I did the pilot, but getting season two was a big deal and everybody’s hoping it will be less of a grind, that we will have found our rhythm. It usually gets a little bit easier as you go along.”

Zeeko Zaki (above right), who plays special agent Omar Adom ‘OA’ Zidan: “The schedule for season one was nuts. It was 10 months, filming 22 episodes, so every scene was intense. My days would consist of getting up two hours before the call time, training for 30 to 45 minutes and then going to work. And then you crash and lunch and sleep and get up and it all blends into a parallel of how intense the reality of the actual job of an FBI agent is, as those people don’t sleep or eat because of the intensity of the crimes they’re dealing with.

“Sometimes we’ll be in the interrogation room and we’ll shoot three scenes with the cameras facing one way and then flip them and film it again. The best advice I got for that was from our showrunner, Rick Eid, who said, ‘Look, you’ll drive yourself crazy if you try to connect every day. Just be present in whatever moment you’re handling.’ It’s been a massive learning curve.

“There’s no work and no home, it’s all one thing. You’re working when you’re not at work, you’re learning your lines and then trying to get to sleep as fast as possible to get up the next day.

“But my favourite part about it is, for me in my first lead role, I’m trying to earn it to be able to call my dad, who’s been standing on his feet since he was 11 years old cutting hair every day, and say ‘Hey, I’m working,’ because I’m coming off the past eight years where I had three months of work each year. It’s really intense, but I’m an all-or-nothing person. I’m in for this.”

Station 19
Jaina Lee Ortiz stars as Station 19 lieutenant Andrea ‘Andy’ Herrera in the Seattle-based firefighter series, a spin-off from Grey’s Anatomy. Season three will air on ABC in 2020.

Jaina Lee Ortiz (above): “The schedule varies. We shoot a little bit on stage and then we shoot on location. It’s half and half.

“When we have to wear the firefighter uniform in the summer, I drink two gallons of water because we are sweating – we are drenched and it is uncomfortable. You don’t really know how physical it is until you’re doing it.”

The 100
This sci-fi drama has aired on The CW since 2014, following a group of survivors – mainly young criminals – who are among the first people to return to Earth after a devastating nuclear apocalypse. It has been renewed for a seventh and final season.

Lindsey Morgan (above), who plays Raven Reyes: “The elements play a big part in making the show because we film out in the rain and the snow and we film all night. It’s long hours, so we don’t really catch a break on that.

“But also, creativity-wise, [the tough conditions help because] my character has been driven mad and gone insane, and I’ve lost my mind so many times I can’t even count. I always feel pushed as an actor to be better and to explore things within myself emotionally, physically and spiritually so that it’s always entertaining as hell.”

Richard Harmon, who plays John Murphy: “I love the physical aspects of the show. It’s definitely a show that will ask you to do things that acting class never prepared you for.

“‘Have you ever sat in front of someone who you thought was one of your best friends but, secretly, someone else was in their body and they’re about to put you in a situation that will probably kill you?’ ‘No, I’ve never done that before, and I’ll probably never do it again.’ Everything else will be easy. Make me a cop!”

Magnum PI
The reboot of the classic 1980s Hawaii-set crime drama landed on CBS in 2018, with a second season now on air.

Jay Hernandez (above right), who plays Thomas Magnum: “It’s a marathon filming 20 episodes in eight months. For the first season, we were sometimes shooting six days a week, 14 hours a day – it was unbelievable.

“I’ve never worked more in my entire life. It was crazy, and it’s such an ambitious show. But honestly, I don’t know how I got through it.”

Perdita Weeks (above left), who plays Juliet Higgins: “My schedule is considerably better but it is quite gruelling, especially for the crew. Sometimes on a Friday night you can finish past midnight, and the crew work so hard that they’re dead on their feet by Friday. It’s a slog but it’s rewarding.”

New Amsterdam
This New York-set medical drama, based on former medical director Eric Manheimer’s memoir Twelve Patients: Life and Death at Bellevue Hospital, charts the events at one of the US’s oldest public hospitals. The series is now in its second season on NBC.

Ryan Eggold (above), who plays Dr Max Goodwin: “At one point, Jocko [Sims, who plays Dr Floyd Reynolds] was chasing me around with a fake bloody heart.

“There are days like that, because if you embraced the weight of it all the time, you would go home and collapse. So you have to lighten it up sometimes.

“But working the long hours, the only thing that’s beneficial about it is that I imagine what Manheimer’s life must have been like managing a whole hospital, which was 10 times harder, much faster, much higher stakes and affecting real lives. We’re managing a TV show.”

Freema Agyeman, who plays Dr Helen Sharpe: “We are embodying these characters for a long time. If we show a real interest in what we are bringing to the table, to the job, what we feel about these characters and how we respond to what we’re doing and how we portray what we’re doing, the creators give us respect and freedom to have our own input.

“Some days are so emotionally draining. The storylines can be so harrowing sometimes and, because the performers are so brilliant, you’re zapped at the end of the day.
“Then, on other days, there’s so much laughter and hope. It’s a great place to work and it seems to be resonating with the audience.”

NCIS
Best known for roles in films such as Coyote Ugly and A History of Violence, as well as a stint on long-running medical drama ER, Maria Bello joined the cast of evergreen crime drama NCIS as Jack Sloane in season 15. It returned to CBS for season 17 in September.

Maria Bello (above): “We’re very fortunate that NCIS runs like clockwork because the same crew has been working together for 16 years.

“We rarely work more than 12-hour days. If we shoot an episode across eight days, maybe I shoot three or four days out of that. So I have some time to be and breathe and work on other creative projects I have. I am producing a movie that Viola Davis is starring in called The Woman King in April, so we’re excited about that. I get to pursue other things because of my schedule.

“Speaking to other actors, their schedules are much more gruelling than ours. We don’t go on location a lot, maybe two days per episode. We have our own sound stage; it’s like a college campus where they’ve been for 16 years. It’s pretty easeful.”

Grey’s Anatomy
Since 2014, Kelly McCreary has starred as Dr Maggie Pearce in Shonda Rhimes’ all-conquering ABC medical drama. It is now in its 16th year on air.

Kelly McCreary (above right): “We usually shoot for nine months. Every episode takes nine days to film, sometimes 10 if it has big set pieces or location stuff. But because it’s an ensemble show and the storylines are so well distributed through the 24 episodes, none of us are there all day long, every single day. Sometimes we are when our story is really taking centre stage, so you’ll have a few weeks while your character is going on this three-episode arc, but then you’ll have three weeks of coming in once or twice a week.

“In that intervening time, we hang out with our families and work on other little projects because everyone is still creative and productive, even outside of work. Almost everyone on the set has other interests and projects they’re pursuing.

“A job like this is extremely rare. Prior to being on this show, every few months you’d be auditioning for something new. While you’re in one job, you’re looking for the next, and I actually miss that hustle. It’s very energising to be thinking of building your career and growing in a specific way, but we can still do that on Grey’s Anatomy, for sure. We think of it a little bit less than every three months, and it takes the pressure off in an incredibly luxurious way.

tagged in: , , , , , ,

Wolf’s pack

In production, , , ,

With six series on air, veteran writer and producer Dick Wolf talks to DQ about the changing television industry and reveals why he would tell aspiring producers to go into a different line of work.

For someone who currently has six series on air, Dick Wolf is remarkably modest. With a screen career spanning four decades, the esteemed writer and producer created the long-running Law & Order series and has had a hand in developing the ever-expanding Chicago franchise. He has also won numerous awards, including an Emmy, and has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Dick Wolf

Yet Wolf describes himself as “the luckiest guy in the lower 48 states of the US,” believing his success has been as much about good fortune and timing as his continued backing of evergreen network procedurals at a time when streaming platforms and serialised storytelling are hogging the limelight.

“My timing was very fortunate. I got the best of it,” he says, speaking to DQ at the Monte Carlo Television Festival. “It sounds terrible, but the crumbs are left. They don’t want anybody to make money but them, which is understandable but not invigorating.”

Wolf is referring to the on-demand giants that are busy signing up some of the biggest and brightest talents in television. Netflix has snared Ryan Murphy (American Horror Story), Shonda Rhimes (Grey’s Anatomy) and David Benioff and DB Weiss (Game of Thrones), while Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan (Westworld), Lena Waithe (The Chi) and Sharon Horgan (Catastrophe) have moved in with Amazon Prime Video. But though these overall deals pay big up front, there’s little reward further down the line.

That doesn’t sit easily with Wolf, who has been rewarded over the years for the longevity of his series and their repeatability in US syndication and overseas.

“My advice [to a young producer] would be, ‘Do you have anything else you want to do?’ This business is essentially over in terms of people being able to come in, make a hit show and make a lot of money,” he says. “The streaming services want to know exactly how much [a show] is going to cost forever. So far, the deals are pretty uninteresting. So to give people advice, I’d tell them that to go and do something where there is a concrete ceiling, rather than a glass ceiling, is difficult now.”

Not tempted to move online, where a season of a network show that clocks in at between 22-25 episodes a year could mark the lifespan of a single series on Netflix or Amazon, Wolf is doubling down on his commitment to network drama.

Law & Order: SVU,  the longest-running live-action series in the US

Heading into its 21st season, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (SVU) is now the longest-running live-action series in the history of US TV, while Wolf’s other series on air include Chicago Fire, Chicago PD and Chicago Med, plus FBI (pictured top) and its new spin-off FBI: Most Wanted. He is also hopeful a reboot of his 1990s crime drama New York Undercover will get picked up this year.

Wolf says there’s no secret formula behind his work, noting that Law & Order was taken from the headlines while FBI is much more “ripped from the zeitgeist.” The series – which centres on the unique work undertaken by the agency’s New York field office and returns to CBS for its second season this month – comes from Universal Television in association with CBS Television Studios and is distributed by CBS Studios International.

“It’s about what’s going on in the world, rather than a specific case. That’s the biggest difference between them,” Wolf continues. “Law & Order truly was ripped from the headlines. When I sold it to NBC, [then network president] Brandon Tartikoff said, ‘What’s the pitch?’ I said, ‘The front page of the New York Post.’”

Whatever his method, viewers certainly approve. “The numbers are ludicrous,” he says of the viewing figures his shows attract. “SVU, off network, draws 93 million people on the various reruns, and the reason to me is pretty apparent: closed-ended stories. We have serialised elements but the secret of the success we’ve had is audiences know you can tune in and get a complete story with a beginning, a middle and an end and know the bad guy is probably going to get caught. It’s going to be emotionally satisfying.”

Chicago Fire is one of three shows in Wolf’s Chicago franchise

Strong writing has also been key, Wolf notes. “It’s always the writing. It doesn’t matter if you’ve got Laurence Olivier [in the cast]. If the words aren’t good, the show isn’t going to work. It really is the overwhelming element of success.”

Another reason Wolf’s shows work so well are the ensemble casts that lead them – and the opportunity to continually refresh them by introducing new characters.

“Law & Order was a six-person ensemble and, for the 20 years it was on, there were 29 actors who were regulars,” he says. “On SVU, the only one who was in the original cast that’s still there is Mariska [Hargitay, who plays Detective Olivia Benson]. So I usually see recasting as an opportunity, not a burden. But it’s never easy. People aren’t thrilled by the news [they’re being written out].”

Speaking to Wolf, it’s apparent that he plans to be in the TV business for many more years, if only to clear his head. “There are so many shows bouncing around in there,” he adds. “There could be a third FBI show that is totally different, and bringing back New York Undercover is going to be a lot of fun. I only do things I like watching.”

tagged in: , , , ,

Heroes without capes

STAR POWER, , , , , , ,

Missy Peregrym and Zeeko Zaki tell DQ about starring in Dick Wolf’s CBS procedural FBI and explain why they’re keen to represent the often hidden work of the law enforcement agency.

After six seasons starring in Canadian police drama Rookie Blue, Missy Peregrym was looking for a change of scenery – and uniform. Reading scripts, she found herself turning away from procedurals and even looking to try her hand at comedy.

Cameos in series such as Motive, Hawaii Five-0, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and Saving Hope followed, before Peregrym landed recurring roles in mystery drama Ten Days in the Valley and sci-fi fantasy Van Helsing.

But the lure of law enforcement – and working with Law & Order creator Dick Wolf – saw the actor return to the front line in the veteran producer’s latest series, FBI.

“Clearly I’m attracted to crime shows because I said yes,” she tells DQ at the Monte Carlo TV Festival, “and I care to represent the FBI. I take that as a great responsibility to do that properly, because we never hear about them unless something terrible has happened. They save us from so much stuff, things that I’d rather not know about. But I do know and I have to be positive about that. We’re dealing with really heavy content – sex trafficking, terrorist attacks, bomb threats, shootings – the threats are never just going to go away. So we need these people to protect us from this stuff happening, and I’m proud to represent that as closely as possible because I think it’s a really hard job.”

FBI, which launched on CBS last September and will return for a second season this autumn, is described as a fast-paced drama about the inner workings of the New York office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. It is produced by Universal Television in association with CBS Television Studios and distributed by CBS Studios International.

CBS drama FBI stars Missy Peregrym and Zeeko Zaki as a pair of the bureau’s special agents

Peregrym plays Special Agent Maggie Bell, who is deeply committed to the people she works with and protects. Her partner is Special Agent Omar Adom ‘OA’ Zidan, a graduate from West Point Military Academy who spent two years undercover for the Drug Enforcement Agency before being cherry-picked by the FBI. Working with a crack team of analysts and investigators, they face down all manner of threats, from terrorism and organised crime to counterintelligence.

Peregrym says it was a “big deal” to take on the role, noting the real-world parallels to the show’s stories and situations and the people she would be portraying.

“It’s not a sci-fi show. It’s not weird and made up. These things happen. That’s why I have to be careful even reading the news because I see things and I can’t stop thinking about them,” she explains. “Obviously, a death of a child is such an intense thing to start a show. It’s so heavy.

“As a cop, you don’t really know what you’re walking into. You get a call but you don’t know what you’re really going to meet. As an FBI agent, you’ve been doing so much research, you know exactly who you’re chasing. So to live with that information is a very different thing, to know that these [criminals] are out there.”

With the series filmed in New York, the first episode was particularly poignant as the opening scene sees a child die when a building is blown up in a cloud of dust, echoing the still-startling images of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the city.

Peregrym is known for TV roles in shows such as Reaper and Rookie Blue

“All I could think about was 9/11 or people around the world who are in devastating situations like this,” Peregrym says of filming the scene, “and this [filming a TV show] is this is nothing compared with the trauma other people have gone through. There was a woman who was there, she was really upset. She lost somebody on 9/11 and this brought up some things for her. I was like, ‘You can cry. It’s OK.’ I got her some tissues and I was like, ‘If you need a minute, no problem. That is so much more important than what this is right now.’

“That’s why I think there’s a huge responsibility that, when we do things like that, we do it correctly and we’re not glamorising it, because these experiences are too close to home for a lot of people. It’s good to talk about, but what’s the end narrative? For us, I hope it’s hope, and that we believe in these people looking after us.”

Peregrym says she is particularly proud to be playing a character that can inspire viewers, having previously received letters from women who joined the police after watching her in Rookie Blue.

“I just want young girls to be really proud of who they are because, no matter what, we’re gonna have to deal with the bullshit. Everybody deals with bullshit,” she says. “Everybody deals with insecurity. Everybody deals with rejection. It’s everybody’s own personal work to find their worth, and if I can help anybody do that then I’m so happy. I also hope I can be a teammate and inspire somebody else to be their best self and feel like they’re worth exactly what they are.”

Peregrym’s co-star Zaki landed the role of Zidan at a time when he had less than US$200 in his bank account and was looking at taking real-estate classes to help him get a job that could supplement his acting career. Until that point, he had scored recurring parts in action series 24: Legacy, Six and Valor, but FBI represents the actor’s breakout role.

Zaki landed his part in FBI when he had just $200 in his bank account

The show, he says, takes Wolf’s tried and tested case-of-the-week format but sets it within an organisation that takes a path with which viewers are less familiar.

“It’s just really exciting to see what goes on behind that veil,” he says of opening up the inner workings of the FBI. “We get to bring that to light. It’s nice and important to give these people some representation – and hopefully we get to represent them in a positive light. We get to see why these people are superheroes in the real world and they sacrifice what they sacrifice – family time and relationships and everything. Our job is to bring that to the people.”

The actor admits some of the storylines used in the series are “terrifying” because they are based on or inspired by real-life incidents. But he also takes pride in the fact that people can see an Egyptian American leading a US network primetime drama.

“It’s just been crazy to be able to have a kid see himself in a hero on a TV show, and think, ‘Oh, I can do that. I can be that,’” he adds. “It’s kind of like when Black Panther came out and how African Americans finally had a superhero they could become, because otherwise you had to be the black Superman or the black Batman. With that sort of shift in the representation narrative that’s happening in today’s world, it’s an honour to be at the forefront of it and I’m really excited about being a part of it.”

tagged in: , , , , , , ,