When I met Chris Morgan earlier this year, he didn’t have any real update for me on Fast and Furious 7. Now we know that the movie is finishing up with Paul Walker’s brothers doubling for his remaining scenes.
At the time of the interview after his session for the Television Critics Association, we already knew that “Gang Related” wouldn’t premiere until May. Ramon Rodriguez stars as undercover cop Ryan Lopez with an ensemble cast that includes Cliff Curtis, Terry O’Quinn and RZA. Morgan was super excited to talk about exploring the world of gangs and cops in a new way for television.
CraveOnline: I’m so impressed with the mythology you built into the Fast & Furious movies from Tokyo Drift on. Are you able to do that in a TV series, and presumably multiple seasons?
Chris Morgan: I think so. That’s one of the difficulties about the feature side is you do your one film and then you have to wait two years for audiences to jump into the next plot twist, character turn, how those characters evolve. Here it’s been the biggest experience for me that I can do it on a week to week basis. The gymnastics that I can get characters to do in our season, it’s incredible. There’s a lot of joy I have going into work and being in the writers room because there is nothing off limits. We get to do a lot of fun stuff with these guys.
Can you jump back in time like you did in the Fast and the Furious movies?
There are no rules. Have we gone there yet? Not really, but can you? Maybe.
Was TV always something you wanted to get into?
Yeah. I was always interested in really being able to explore character on a deeper level than plot. Look, frankly that’s the thing about movies. We’ve been fortunate in Fast in that we have such a long run that the actors bring things to the characters. The audience feels like you know these guys, and the truth is you do. What you see up there, that is those guys. They get in there and they just, that’s them.
In terms of wanting to be in TV, to be able to have a character and run him through permutations of a really complex and dangerous life, yeah, definitely but I’ve had to wait until the right moment for a show like this and I’ve been so surprised, pleasantly surprised that Fox has embraced it 100%. They are jumping in and going very daring on every aspect of the show, from shooting in L.A. to the action and violence. God, the fact that we can do such a great ethnically diverse cast is a dream. That’s something that you don’t get to see a lot on network TV.
What I love about TV is you can do entire episodes on characters who would never get their own movie.
Absolutely.
Like on “Star Trek,” Worf would never get a whole movie, but he can get his own whole episode.
That’s the great thing about, I think particularly recently with cable, the fact that they have been killing it and doing such good stories, such rich characters, it’s made the film side step up. If you think about it, the threshold to get someone to go to the movie theater is really high. It’s however much money, they’ve got to set aside that time. They’ve got to drive down there, they’ve got to get a babysitter, they’ve got to pay for a Coke and food. What’s the threshold on TV? You’ve got to hit the remote.That’s one of the obligations for features now is providing something that you can’t get or won’t get in the level of spectacle that you’re seeing now.
What I worry about short cable series is they become so plot centric that they don’t take the diversions into characters that I like. Do you have time to do that?
Well, we are. We’ve been allowed such freedom with the show and the characters and the storyline. Look, as long as the audience is going to be interested in it, they let us go. So we’re able to take those strange left turns. We’re able to delve into characters that you normally wouldn’t. We’re able to present characters you wouldn’t see on TV somewhere else. Seriously, it’s crazy. It’s very fun.
I’m certainly not accusing you of copying anything. I only bring up The Departed because it’s now a classic example of undercover stories.
Great example.
Are you able to get into some of those themes that that movie and Infernal Affairs explored?
Definitely, and by the way, I think as a comparison, I’ll take it as a flattering one. You look at Scorsese, great. Not that I’m saying that, but if anyone’s going to make a comparison for the show to something like that, that’s a great one because it’s a great movie. I would say the distinction between that and ours is a couple of things. One is that, whereas The Departed is really about one particular segment of culture in Boston and the mob, ours is about the Latino community in the gang, the Korean community in the gang, the Russian community in the gang.
So we have a more global approach to it and on top of it, there’s a difference between our characters journeys which is in The Departed, the main character made his decision long ago about who he’s loyal to and what his job is. It’s very different for us. We are, say, five years before in that journey. We’re at the place where our character’s just now deciding who am I? Am I that guy? Am I that guy who’s going to be loyal to these guys all the way? Or, there’s this other family.
You join gangs historically for a good reason, which is to support a community or a family or to get a fair shake. Sometimes it takes violence or bad things to do it. Of course, there’s incredible excesses as we all know. What’s interesting about it is you join for protection, for love, for family and for community. That’s why you stay with this dangerous element of society. Now we have a character who is raised in that secretly and now he’s in with the cops that he was put under to go there to inform for the gang.
But while he’s there, he sees these people that will die for him. He sees these people that look out for each other for nothing, for free because they’re brothers and they’re bonded. Now he’s pulled. Who am I really? Am I this guy working for this organization and doing these things that I’m starting to feel bad about? Or am I this guy who’s a cop who’s doing good for the community that people are thanking me for? Where am I? Our pilot picks him up when he’s starting to ask that question and the series goes really deep, dark into that.
If somebody joins a gang for those ideal reasons, wouldn’t they be better off joining a charity group?
Maybe, but historically, think back to the gangs during the formation of the country. People who have no money, they’re not allowed to gather in places, they can’t feed their family. What charity group do you join? There is none so what do you do? You create a social group of yourself and others and you, through politics or extortion or violence or whatever it is, you get your fair shake, you take it. Traditionally it was violence to do that.
By the way, what I love about this too is especially with our character Javier who runs the gang, Los Angelicos, The Angelic Ones, the Latino gang, we get to pick him up in an interesting place too. He started that gang to get a leg up for his community, for his people, for his family. And, that’s happened. He’s at a place now where they’ve got money, they’ve got respect, they have a community, they have a voice.
And now what does he want? He wants to get out. He wants to get them out and go legit. They have bought enough to where they’re at a cusp here. There’s this event horizon that he can go legit and he can get these people out and give them a better life than the gang was started for, but to do it, there’s some dark sh** that Ryan has to do.
What’s episode two?
Episode two is a direct pickup off of episode one and the fallout from the pilot. Where that leads and I don’t want to ruin it for you, there’s a great twist. I’m frankly incredibly excited for people to watch that episode because I think it’s going to be one of those “what???” moments in TV.
