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Walking the 'Southland' Beat with Actors Ben McKenzie and Regina King
by Troy Rogers
 When it comes to gritty, emotional drama on TV, not many have done it better than executive producer, writer, director, and show creator, John Wells, who was the leading force behind shows as The West Wing, Third Watch, China Beach, and the recently departed and long running medical drama ER. With ER closing its doors forever, John Wells is back in the executive producer's saddle for NBC's new crime drama Southland, which delves into the dynamics between the criminal element and law enforcement in Los Angeles. Starring Michael Cudlitz, Benjamin McKenzie, Regina King, Tom Everett Scott, Michael McGrady and more, Southland gives viewers an inside look at the lives of cops, criminals, victims and their families within the unpredictable and gritty streets of L.A. and beyond to the city's surrounding beaches.
Making its debut on Thursday, April 9 at 10pm on NBC, Southland sees a young rookie (Ben McKenzie) get an eye-opening lesson in on-the-job training when a no-nonsense street seasoned veteran (Michael Cudlitz) becomes his partner, forcing the fresh-to-the-department cop to question his abilities to handle being a cop in L.A. Also in the Southland mix is Detective Lydia Adams (Regina King), a cop who's the primary caregiver of her mother and her unhappily married partner Detective Russell Clarke (Tom Everett Scott) who share the department with the gang unit and a single mom patrol officer with aspirations to become the first female SWAT member.
 Can John Wells and his elite TV task force strike gold with Southland and lay a new foundation to fill the void left behind by ER with a fresh new series? Judging by the previews of Southland, Wells could very well have another hit on his hands. Leading up to the premiere of Southland, we joined a number of outlets for a conference call with new Southland stars Ben McKenzie and Regina King to find how they prepped with the real L.A.P.D., what they think the real guys in blue on the streets of Los Angeles will feel about the show, and whether Southland can be compared to the gritty and explosive 2001 film Training day.
THE DEADBOLT: Did you guys get to hang out with real L.A.P.D. officers?
BEN MCKENZIE: We’ve hung out a lot. We’ve hung out a lot with cops. Our technical advisor, Chick Daniel, is ex-L.A.P.D., ex-SWAT. His wife is also ex-L.A.P.D. She actually used to teach classes at the police academy in the L.A.P.D. So both of them - Chick is on set all the time, every day, to answer any questions we have at the moment.
Chick and his wife, Sheila, put us through a week-long boot-camp before shooting the pilot and then another week-long boot-camp before shooting the series, and walked us through all sorts of things - handcuffing, we went to the gun range, fired the weapons that are appropriate for our characters. And we’ve also had the opportunity to do as many ride-alongs with cops as we want, basically, and all over L.A., from the Valley to Hollywood to Southeast and South-metro L.A. So we’ve had a lot of interaction with cops.
Another nice aspect is that any extras, any cops who are in the background, are real cops. They are constantly on set. I mean, at this point, I’ve met dozens of cops. And again, it helps. For me it helps [to] relax me into the part, because I think one of the things that is kind of obvious in retrospect, but kind of surprised me, is that cops are just like regular people.
 There’s a broad, broad range of personality types, of educational levels, of all kinds of things, of physical sizes. I mean, they’re just regular people; there are 10,000 of them [and] they’ve all got to be different. So you don’t have to pretend to just be the macho, cowboy stereotype cop, you can feel free to alter it and change it to who you are or who you think the character is. You don’t have to sort paint. Not all characters are painted with the same brush. So I’ve had a great time spending time with cops, and they tell phenomenal stories. It’s been a real treat to get to see what they do on a daily basis.
THE DEADBOLT: Regina, how do you think the show will be received by the L.A.P.D.? Do you think they’ll like it or ...
REGINA KING: Well, we’re hoping that they do. We’re hoping that they feel that we’re giving an honest portrayal. But what I will say is that I think they’re anticipating it to be something that they’ll be proud of, because the support that they’ve given us has been just absolutely amazing. You know, they really are embracing us. And I think part of it is because when we talk about the other cop dramas that are on TV - I mean, and I could be wrong, but the last time there was a law enforcement show that took place in L.A. was like CHiPs. So they’re like the L.A.P.D. is just ready for us to be represented, and for them to be represented well.
 The fact that the L.A.P.D. is probably one of the best - I could have the statistic wrong, but I’m going to say one of, if not number one as far as a first response team. It’s absolutely amazing that they can carry that title in a city that - compared to other cities - excuse me - a pretty broad - it’s a wide city that the square mile radius of L.A. city is much bigger than a lot of other cities, and we have less cops to cover more space. And with that we still have the best first response team in the country. That’s pretty amazing. And I think as officers they’re very proud of having that title. So they feel like, "Okay, well now we should be represented." And hopefully we do them well.
THE DEADBOLT: Ben, how would you describe the relationship between Cooper and Ben? It’s not like Training Day for TV is it?
MCKENZIE: I mean, it is and it isn’t. It’s not in the sense that he is not some corrupt, evil cop. It’s only similar to Training Day in the sense that it does take place on that first day and it is the newbie being schooled by the older, more seasoned veteran. But after that I think the comparisons sort of start to fall away.
And I think, actually, the comparisons are somewhat illuminating, because, like Regina was sort of mentioning, there hasn’t been a show set in L.A. about cops since CHiPs. And I think we’re doing a little different show than CHiPs ...
KING: Yeah.
MCKENZIE: ... slightly grittier. Although, let’s see, maybe where we’re in the short pants on the beach in Malibu. I look forward to that.
KING: I do too.
MCKENZIE: Reno 911, baby, we can do this. But there hasn’t been a show set in L.A. about cops in a long time, except maybe something like The Shield, which is kind of similar to Training Day in that it’s exploring the corruption in the police department.
 Well, we’re not making that show, you know? That is a terrific show, but we are making a show that is much more, I think, sympathetic to the turmoil that officers experience on a daily basis, the way that they’re tested on a daily basis ... We don’t want to make it sappy, we want to make it as realistic as we can. But we also want to acknowledge the fact that, fundamentally, the vast majority of these people are good people put in extremely trying situations all the time.
I think that will help us be embraced by the L.A.P.D. Hopefully they will realize that we can’t do a completely realistic examination of cop lives because it’d be a documentary; you have to amp the stakes up a little bit more to keep it an entertaining TV show.
But we can look at them with a sympathetic eye and try to understand what make them tick, and understand their faults as sometimes relating to the terrible stuff that they have to see on the job. They are affected by it in many ways because what they see is so troubling.
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