Does Darabont have a way of pulling the performance out of you?
Sometimes. He’s very literal and he tells you what he wants. If he wants more of a certain color, more of a certain kind of temperature, he talks to you. I’ve been really blessed in the last few years. I’ve gotten to work with Martin Scorsese and Roman Polanski and Frank Darabont and David Ayer and Oren Moverman, these great Oscar nominated, Oscar winning directors. They’re all great, they’re all so different but the thing that makes them similar is they know how to get what they want.
Whereas Oliver Stone who I worked with who sort of orchestrates an atmosphere and sort of gets it out of you that way, I think Frank very much says, “Hey pal, on this part right now, I think this is what you’re going through and I want to see that.” There’s something really refreshing about that. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t but he knows what he wants and he’s very, very direct.
In this era all the cars were stick shift. Has there been any practical difficulty?
Oh, my dad always told me, “You’ve got to learn how to drive stick shift.” I grew up on stick shift so I love driving the old cars. It’s a blast.
Does number 7167 mean anything?
It does. That’s just his badge number, but I will say walking around, we were shooting in downtown yesterday, walking around with the badge and the gun and no jacket on with this face, it’s quite sort of a walking story, what happened to this cop.
Was police procedure a lot different back then?
It was and one of the really cool things is two of my dear, dear friends here are career police officers down at the Newton Division. I’ve done many ride-alongs with them and I’ve gotten to know them and their procedures very, very well. But, you know, you go down there and you hang out with cops now, they all have stories about what it was like back in the day and the different set of rules and the fluidity of the rules.
The line between good and bad and the line between bad guys and cops and the procedures in which you go after what you need were very blurred. These guys ran the city in a lot of ways and I think Joe Teague especially, he’s a guy who doesn’t operate by the cops’ rules, he doesn’t operate by the bad guys’ rules. He operates by his own set of rules and he’s got a very, very specific mission in mind. The crux of the first season is really about him trying to complete that mission and he encounters hell on his way.
Was this before Miranda rights?
It is before and I’m not sure historically, but I know in just these guys’ mindset, there’s not people pulling out cell phones every five seconds. Especially I think one of the really cool things about this series that hasn’t been touched on in many historical L.A. pieces is L.A. was looked at as this sort of Lily white city. It was sort of advertised to the rest of the world, “Come here, sunny California” and it’s all a bunch of homogeneous happy white people.
I think what the book really shows is it was one of the most racially and culturally diverse cities in the country. It was just unbelievably segregated. I think this series really gets into the different cultures and the different races that were at play and that were going on. A huge African-American community on Central Ave, huge Asian-American community, huge Mexican-American community. One of the cool things I love about Joe Teague is he’s the kind of character that sort of goes in and out of all these different communities with no preconceived [notions]. He’s just on his own wherever her is.
Did you go see Gangster Squad when it came out?
I’m probably not supposed to say this, but Frank specifically said do not see that movie. I’ll tell you, when I was shooting a movie down in New Orleans called Grudge Match with Robert DeNiro, he and I were in the trailer and it actually came on. I watched the first 10 or 15 minutes.
Who do you play in Grudge Match?
I play DeNiro’s son. It’s about two ex-boxers in the ‘70s and I play DeNiro’s estranged son. One of the main story points in the movie is about us coming together. It’s coming out Christmas Day.
Did you do a lot of boxing training for that?
I did. I used to box. I was briefly in boxing for years, about six days a week. My best friend’s a pro fighter. I’ve been sparring with him since I was a kid so I actually play DeNiro’s son in the movie but in the flashback scenes, for all the boxing, I actually play the young DeNiro as well and do all the boxing for him.
