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TNT's ‘Wanted' puts human
touch on relationships between cops
Associated Press
LOS ANGELES -- Wanted: a distinctive cop show. In a summer of usual
suspects, Jorge Zamacona is on the case.
The creator of TNT's "Wanted" isn't trying to "reinvent the cop wheel."
But he thinks his new Sunday series (airing at 10 p.m.) about an elite
unit that tracks down the baddest guys in L.A., humanizes the
relationships between cops.
Armed with producing credentials that include the tough-minded "Homicide:
Life on the Street" and the gritty prison drama "Oz," Zamacona says his
latest premise is "pretty simple, which I like: There's a bad guy. We are
going to get him!"
"Wanted's" cop squad, which is drawn from various enforcement agencies and
assigned to nab the city's 100 worst criminals, legally or otherwise, is
headed by no-nonsense L.A. police SWAT officer Conrad Rose, played by Gary
Cole.
Cole, who starred in "Midnight Caller" from 1988-91 as a cop turned late
night radio host, says he was attracted to the show's "almost
schizophrenic quality going between this real brutality and glimpses of my
character's domestic life."
He adds that later episodes also are exploring "some of the other
characters' personal lives, attitudes and values."
Cole credits Zamacona for setting the series apart.
"It's always all about writing and it just seemed these characters were
very distinct," he says. "Jorge is one of those guys who has an ear for
dialogue that seems to be coming out of people's mouths, as opposed to out
of a typewriter."
Cole is waiting to shoot a scene in a seedy downtown alley for an upcoming
episode called "Click, Click, Boom." Working alongside his character are
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms officer Jimmy McGloin (Ryan Hurst), FBI
agent Tommy Rodriguez (Benjamin Benitez), LAPD
high-tech expert Rodney Gronbeck (Josey Scott), and Carla Merced (Rashida
Jones), a former Naval Intelligence officer who's an expert hostage
negotiator.
Killed off in the July 31 premiere episode was Drug Enforcement Agency
officer Joe Vacco, played by Brendan Kelly.
His death in the line of duty was something Zamacona says he planned from
the first draft of the script, "not for shock value, only because it's a
dangerous job these guys do. And I want it to be that from episode to
episode -- you don't know what might happen."
The demise allowed room, beginning on next Sunday's episode, for Lee
Tergesen to join on as the anarchic Eddie Drake, a U.S. Marshal Service
veteran who just happens to have had an affair with Rose's estranged wife.
Zamacona has been interested from the first in writing a role for Tergesen,
memorable as abused and abusive inmate Tobias Beecher in "Oz." But the
actor was doing a play on Broadway when the pilot was being shot.
"I needed a more sort of laconic, sarcastic, pain-in-the-arse guy, who
could just upset the chemistry of everybody," says Zamacona -- referring
to the character, not the actor.
"Eddie Drake is sort of this loose cannon, funny, edgy guy, who has this
really foolish, foolish mustache," Tergesen grins, as he waits in his
trailer for his day's work to begin.
He says his Fu Manchu-style facial hair was Zamacona's idea -- "and one of
my rules is if you can't act it, grow it."
Having worked on HBO's rough and raw "Oz," Tergesen admits that doing
anything else on TV does feel a bit constricted. "That was really pushing
things and outrageous. I'll never get a script that will shock me the way
those 'Oz' scripts used to shock me."
But he likes the "loose, seat-of-the-pants" methods of the "Wanted,"
squad, and the cable series does give him some artistic latitude with its
TV-MA rating for language, sex and violence.
Zacamona was challenged at a recent news conference about TV's escalating
gruesomeness, and he says the question was upsetting.
"I'm not after just sort of exploiting the misery of others to sell this
show, or sell this team," he says. "There is a violent world out there."
© 2005 The Associated Press
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