Actor Enrico Colantoni has risen through the television ranks playing a variety of characters on both sides of the law. After beginning his career on a cop series back in 1987, Colantoni has appeared on some of the most popular shows on TV, most recently his long-running regular gig on Just Shoot Me and as Keith Mars on the teen detective series Veronica Mars. Now Enrico returns to the law enforcement universe for his starring role in CBS's explosive new series Flashpoint, about an ETF tactical team that takes on gangs, rescues hostages, diffuses bombs, and keeps the city streets safe from big time crime.

As Flashpoint inches closer to its July 11 premiere on CBS, we tracked down Enrico Colatoni to talks tactics, special criminal units, and what sets Flashpoint apart from other cop shows.

THE DEADBOLT: What can you tell me about Gregory Parker?

ENRICO COLANTONI: He’s a leader, he’s emotionally intelligent, and he’s the lead negotiator of this team of elite police. They’re the S.W.A.T. equivalent, but they operate much more like a platoon. He’s a sergeant, but he’s the officer in charge. There’s actually a team leader, so he oversees the whole team. But there’s an actual tactical leader of the team. And everybody cross-trains, so everybody knows all of the positions. It’s actually modeled from the Emergency Task Force, which is a Toronto version of S.W.A.T.

THE DEADBOLT: I hear it went through a few name changes.

COLANTONI: It was Critical Incident, it was Sniper at one point, and now it’s Flashpoint.

THE DEADBOLT: It's interesting that one of your first credits was Night Heat, the old Toronto cop show.

COLANTONI: [laughs] Did you watch it?

THE DEADBOLT: Yeah, Detective Giambone and the rest of them.

COLANTONI: That’s so funny. I ended up breaking Jeffrey Wincott’s ankle on a show called Top Cops a few years after that. It was an accident, but they ended up having to replace him. Then we would always run into each other in L.A. and now we can laugh about it.

THE DEADBOLT: How does it feel to start out on a cop show in Toronto and come back full circle to Toronto on a another?

COLANTONI: It’s so awesome. [laughs] I’m coming home. I get to walk down Yonge Street. Just last week they shut down Yonge Street and it’s like, "Here we are in really cool cop gear."

THE DEADBOLT: Was it the Toronto connection that attracted you to the project?

COLANTONI: It started off as the Toronto connection and the character wasn’t really that prominent when I did the pilot. But then they enticed me by making it a bigger character, a more important character. And this was before CBS even came on board.

THE DEADBOLT: You’ve appeared in a lot of cop shows over the years. What sets Flashpoint apart from the others?

COLANTONI: Well, nothing compares to NYPD Blue, so we won’t even talk about that. But it has all of the flash-bang of CSI and it has the procedure. It’s filmed in 35mm, so it’s going to look gorgeous and epic. But what makes it unique is that it’s about ETF and it takes place in Toronto. It’s not doubling for another city. This is our homage to the ETF. We’re not disguising Toronto for anything other than Toronto. The CN Tower is in the background, sometimes in the foreground, and that makes it really special.

THE DEADBOLT: Was there anything that surprised you about the ETF?

COLANTONI: Well, the most moving thing about them is how they function as a team. They come to work together and then they leave. They just function as a singular unit and we had the opportunity to watch them do their training, because they do so much training every year. We got to play emotionally disturbed people. So we got to role play with them and, as actors, we gave them great stuff. At the same time, we’re watching them just move as this single entity, like a team of seven or eight men moving as one. It’s so haunting. And how slow they move and how efficient they move and how they talk to you and negotiate with you, it’s almost enough to disarm you. Not like they’re trying to overpower you with speed and surprise, they’re right there. They make no pretense about coming to the door and announce themselves clearly and plainly and then they’re right there. Every time you make a move and you look up again, they’re one step closer, one step closer, then one step closer until they’re literally right on top of you. You don’t even see it. It’s so disarming because you’re looking at them going, "What are you guys doing here? You’re talking to me like a human being. You’re being very calm, rational, and you’re just having this conversation while everybody else is getting ready to pounce." It’s beautiful to watch.

THE DEADBOLT: Do you have an ETF consultant on set?

COLANTONI: We do. We got to hang out with the real team one. And, of course, they understand this is entertainment, so we apologized beforehand. [laughs] We make it look a little more glamorous than it actually is.

THE DEADBOLT: What’s it like to work with Hugh Dillon?

COLANTONI: I didn’t know who he was before I met him. I didn’t know who The Headstones were. He’s from Kingston [Ontario], now I know all about him. I adore him. He’s actually turning into a real good buddy. We were talking about that and I go, "What? You did what? You were what?"

THE DEADBOLT: You're also in another project outside of television. What is My Beautiful Mistake about?

COLANTONI: My Beautiful Mistake is a George Gallo story. It’s about a lawyer and a mob guy. We haven’t even started it yet. In fact, I don’t know why it’s on IMDB. I just know George has been talking to me about it for about a year and he’s just waiting to get around to it, I suppose. George wrote it and we had just finished doing My Mom’s New Boyfriend with Antonio Banderas, Meg Ryan, and Colin Hanks. That’s where I met George and he said, "You have to do this other thing with me." And I was like, "Okay," and that was like a year and a half ago.

THE DEADBOLT: What's the format of Flashpoint? Are we going to see a lot of gunplay or is it more negotiation type stuff?

COLANTONI: That’s what makes it special, it’s got both of them. So you have the human element, you’re watching good people doing bad things, and you’ve got a guy like Parker, my character, the compassionate organism of this unit. And you see the human element through that. You have other policemen jumping through windows and shooting off guns, so it’s much more balanced than your typical break and enter sort of scenario, because there is a lot of negotiation. Every week there’s a critical incident and we deal with that.