Pop culture’s graveyard is littered with the corpses of many fine television shows that were cancelled too soon, shows that couldn’t find an audience quickly enough to hold off twitchy executives who lacked patience and vision. Occasionally, there are series that manage to survive if not quite thrive in terms of bigtime ratings. Two from the 1990s that come to mind are Homicide: Life on the Street, a stone-cold classic cop drama that was universally praised but criminally under-viewed, and NewsRadio, a daring comedy that had the misfortune of being in the same era as Seinfeld and Friends.
Bosch shares many qualities with those two shows.
Amazon Prime’s longest-running series is well regarded for its crime noir aesthetic as well as its attention to detail regarding police work. It’s also adored by a passionate fanbase for its thoughtful characterization. Bosch may be a crime drama on the surface, but at its core, it’s a show about family and friendship and the difficulty in maintaining such bonds while keeping up with the demands of police work. It’s also a series that goes to extraordinary lengths to show a side of Los Angeles rarely seen in TV or film. Also, the food. So much great food!
Watch an exclusive clip from the new season of Bosch right here:
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Now, after six years of being one of the best-kept secrets on television, Bosch is ready to tackle one final case. The seventh and final eight-episode season debuted on Prime on June 25.
Much like previous years, this season is based on Michael Connelly’s bestselling Bosch novels, specifically 2014’s The Burning Room. It’s a case that pushes all the most painful buttons for legendary LAPD homicide detective Harry Bosch (Titus Welliver), and it once again puts him at odds with the feds and the top echelons of the LAPD, including Chief Irvin Irving (Lance Reddick). Meanwhile, the other key figures in Harry’s universe, including his daughter Maddie (Madison Lintz), his partner J. Edgar (Jamie Hector) and his friend and commanding officer Lt. Grace Billets (Amy Aquino), all face their own personal crises.
If you haven't seen Bosch, the title character is cantankerous, infuriating and monumentally single-minded. Over the course of the series, Harry Bosch has endured great tragedy, survived shootouts, serial killers, military assassins, and nearly being thrown out of a plane. He’s been the subject of lawsuits, Internal Affairs probes and a lengthy suspension, all of which can be traced back to his unwavering commitment to a single principle - the pursuit of justice for all.
Bosch has never been the trendiest show or the one with the most buzz, as executive producer Henrik Bastin can attest. He recalls after the first season walking around L.A. with a Bosch crew baseball cap and people thinking he was promoting the dishwasher brand. “Now I get so many people coming up to me to say, ‘I love that show. It's the best,’” he says.
That passion is one reason why Amazon gave the greenlight for a Bosch spinoff series that will debut on the ad-supported IMDB TV streaming service. Welliver, Lintz and Mimi Rogers, who plays Bosch’s frenemy, ace attorney Honey Chandler, are reprising their roles for the show, which remains untitled. “I found out on set [about the spinoff],” Lintz recalls. “Titus pulled me aside, and I thought I was getting fired, or I had COVID, or I had done something horrible. He's never done that before. He said, ‘You, Mimi, and I are getting a spin-off.’ That's all it took for me to burst into tears. That's how I found out, right before I had to film a scene. So I had to pull myself together really fast, because it was top secret. Nobody could know, not even my family. So I had to just pull it together and do this scene. But it was a very special moment.”
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We talked with the show’s main actors and executive producers to crack the case on Bosch and provide snapshots of each of the principal characters as the final season arrives. From the relationships on- and off-screen that formed over seven years to memorable moments and where their characters stand as the show comes to an end, they each shared their personal insights. We even got a few of them to confess which stop along the Bosch L.A. food tour - seriously, this show loves its food - would be their top choice.
Titus Welliver’s performance as the intense, laconic Harry Bosch has been the driving force behind the show from the beginning. His portrayal has been as true in spirit to the character as any fan of the Bosch novels could have hoped for. Harry is always close to the edge because all of his cases are personal, and the way Welliver has portrayed that imminent combustibility has been a master class in restraint. When you talk to Welliver, it becomes clear immediately how invested in and how protective he is of the character.
Titus Welliver, “Harry Bosch”: Bosch has been, and continues to be, the greatest experience that I've ever had as an actor.
After years of compiling a laundry list of memorable supporting roles on one great series after another - The Man in Black on Lost, Jimmy O’Phelan on Sons of Anarchy, Silas Adams on Deadwood, to name just a few - the actor got the role of his career at age 52. When the auditions for Bosch were happening, it was the author Michael Connelly who suggested him. He had been impressed by Welliver’s guest-starring role as a traumatized firefighter on the Kiefer Sutherland drama Touch.
Michael Connelly, executive producer and author of the Bosch book series: He just played it so well, he didn't have to say he had [PTSD], you could just tell by his haunted eyes. The lead character is always the biggest choice to make, but it was more difficult than usual because Harry Bosch is a very internal guy. He's not going to talk a lot about what's going on inside. So you have to find an actor who can show that he's carrying something inside, some baggage or trauma or something.
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But even though they were interested, he proved hard to find. At the time, Welliver was in China shooting Transformers: Age of Extinction. The production finally got hold of him and he flew in to meet with the team on a Saturday.
Michael Connelly: I was there with a few people who were involved in that choice. And he practiced a scene and he did it really well. And we just kind of knew it was him right away. We thanked him and he left and then very quickly, everyone said, “That's him, that’s Bosch.” So somebody ran out into the parking lot to grab him and bring him back.
Gregory Scott Cummins, “Crate”: Titus worked his way up in the business, paid his dues. As the lead character who's on set every day, it's just amazing how hard he works. And he always, always keeps it light and in between shots he's just nice to people and funny. The creative process of making a show can be hard, but you want it to be enjoyable and he made the experience better for us.
The heartbeat of the show lies within the relationships between Harry and the most important people in his world, beginning with his daughter Madeline. In one sense, Bosch is as much a low-key “dad show” as it is a detective series because of Harry’s ongoing and often clumsy attempts at figuring out how to be a parent to Maddie. Their relationship is informed by the strong bond Welliver and Lintz have formed off-camera. In the final season, both are trying to figure out their next steps when Maddie’s job at Honey Chandler’s law firm unexpectedly puts her in danger.
Titus Welliver: When the shit hits the fan, Maddie is compromised. It becomes one of those things where Harry, he's always kind of waiting for the other shoe to drop, and then it becomes a kind of “I told you so.”
Madison Lintz, “Madeline Bosch”: They’ve become equals for sure. And I think as Maddie aged and grew... Well, there was a lot about her father that she didn't really understand. In Season 3, she has a line that's something like, "You're like a turtle. Your shell is where you're safe, but nobody gets in there with you. Not really, not even me." So, he had these emotional walls up that Maddie didn't really understand. She is her father's daughter. As she got older and was forced to deal with these traumatic situations and these hardships, she starts compartmentalizing them and dealing with them in the same way and putting up emotional walls. And I think this [final] season and the last season as well, there were moments where she would look at her father and think, "Oh, I get it now. I do that. I understand that because I do that." And I think in understanding herself as she aged, she also understood her father.
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Madison Lintz as Madeline Bosch[/caption]
Titus Welliver: The relationship has evolved in a really beautiful way that feels real to me rather than being kind of contrived. It's a more adult relationship now. I mean, [Maddie] is literally an adult. And I think the beauty of that relationship is that Harry is still kind of evolving. He's still trying to learn how to be a parent. Something that we have always focused on was to keep that relationship firmly planted on the ground and to not make it saccharin… to depict the relationship between a father and the daughter accurately, warts and all, with all the awkward moments, and also with moments of great levity and joy.
Michael Connelly: I think the key to the show is Maddie. She wasn't even living with him, wasn't even in the same city when we begin. And then a couple of seasons in, she's in his house and he's raising her. I think that it helped him as a human being. And we see that he kind of goes from more of a black and white view of the world to knowing it's a gray area and that there are reasons for people doing bad things, stupid things.
Henrik Bastin, executive producer: Too often on a cop show, their relationship with the kids is always about the kids being mad at them and stuff like that. I don't think that's very realistic. I think we all have our ups and downs with kids, but these two have a true love. Harry is a great father, even with all his flaws, and Maddie is a great daughter.
Tragedy brought them closer together. One of the most powerful episodes was Season 4, Episode 4, when Maddie’s mom (Sarah Clarke) was murdered in front of Harry. It led to a sequence that both Welliver and Lintz remember vividly, when Harry goes to Maddie’s school to break the news.
Titus Welliver: They did a fantastic job of editing that scene because if you watch it, they cut out of that moment where he stops at the car to sort of collect himself before he gets in the car. They go to another scene with Irvin, and then they cut back to Harry putting his jacket on and picking her up from the school.
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Madison Lintz: I do remember filming that scene. It was really, really heavy. Obviously as the actors we strive to create power in our scenes, and that was definitely one of them.
Titus Welliver: I improvised dialogue with her, knowing that… we were going to be backlit and somewhat silhouetted in that sequence where he stops and tells her that her mom has been killed. That entire scene is also a testament to Madison's gift as an actor, her body language, her complete collapse of her body. It's its own kind of primal howl without any sound.
Madison Lintz: Titus has done this since the beginning of the show. He's really given me the environment to grow as an actress. And as number one on the call sheet, as the star of the show, he doesn't have to do that. And the fact that he has afforded me that privilege, the show has become one of the most invaluable experiences of my whole life. So just in regards to that scene specifically, I don't know when I'll ever be able to do a scene so powerful again.
Lintz was just a teenager when she started Bosch. Her biggest role before landing Maddie was as Sophia in the early years of The Walking Dead. The producers quickly realized they had found an actress that could allow them to explore Harry’s relationship with his daughter much deeper than they expected.
Henrik Bastin: We knew she was a good actress, but she was just a kid. So you always take a bit of a shot with that. I think if you speak to Eric [Overmeyer, the series showrunner] and with Michael, they will agree we were surprised how good she was. We could start writing bigger storylines for her, because she could hold her own. If she hadn't done that, she would have become much more of a side character that we would have used just to drive home some plot points or some emotional beat for Harry. But she was so good that we could create kind of a world for [the character].
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Madison Lintz: I'm sure 20, 30, 40 years down the line when I've had much more experience, there will be moments where I'm like, "Oh yeah, I know who this character is. I'm comfortable as this character. I can do anything as this character." But with Maddie, I feel like as she grew, I grew. And so I was always striving for that next step. Now, last season and [Season 7], I definitely feel more comfortable than I did in the first season, but I don't know if there'll ever come a time with her where I will be like, "Oh yeah, I'm chill. I've got this. Just another day on set." I always want to try to bring it.
Maddie’s world grew richer and more complex when she went to work for high-powered attorney Honey “Money” Chandler, played by Mimi Rogers. Chandler and Harry have a long, and often contentious history. In the first season, she exposed in court that his mother was a prostitute. Over time, the bitterness between the two turned into a mutual respect. They worked together in Season 4’s “Angel’s Flight” case, and in the fifth season Harry hired Chandler to represent him against charges that he fabricated evidence. Chandler became as much a mother figure to Maddie as a role model, which bothers Harry at times.
Mimi Rogers, “Honey Chandler”: Maddie has literally grown up on this show. I think she was 15 when it started. And she and I have become quite close. She's a really bright, really talented, really, really decent person, and she's clearly got the acting chops. To have the Maddie character also grow up and experience endless freaking trauma but maintain a quiet strength of character that constantly reminds you that she's Harry's daughter… the stubbornness, the intelligence, the fierceness, the persistence. She's Harry's daughter and she's embodied that incredibly well. I think it's been one of the better-portrayed father daughter relationships in a television show, because they don't resort to easy fixes or easy answers. It’s a really complicated, beautifully realized relationship. And I think Madison is a huge reason why.
Madison Lintz: I love the relationship with the mother figure that Maddie has found in Honey. And I've also found a mother figure in Mimi. She would e-mail me recipes because I like to cook. And she would tell me about her kids, and she helped me find a good brand of zinc on Amazon that I ordered that I still use. And she helped me figure out my mail-in ballot so I could vote. It was really comforting having her there and knowing if I ever needed anything, and I'm speaking as Madison, I could call her. And I think Maddie has found something very, very similar in Honey Chandler.
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Mimi Rogers as Honey Chandler[/caption]
Mimi Rogers: I think what we've seen over the seasons… the dance of [Honey and Harry’s] relationship has been so many different things, confrontational, adversarial, working together well, having to represent him. I think over time, both of them have kind of recognized that they're kindred souls. It’s also great that Harry has an individual in his life who he can't run roughshod over. He's met his match with her. And not only has he accepted it, but I think he kind of liked it. That explains why, even though it was a humiliating moment for him, when [Harry] needed legal help in Season 5, there was one person that he was going to entrust with the situation, and of course it's Honey. And did he have to eat crow and tolerate me making fun of him? Yeah. But he also knew this person would get the job done.
Titus Welliver: That's the dance that they do. They respect each other and they've kind of buried the hatchet with what went down at the Flores trial [in Season 1]. But it's the relationship between Honey and Maddie and how she treats Maddie which I think has softened Harry.
“Everybody counts or nobody counts” is the motto that Harry Bosch lives by and which drives him to pursue every homicide case with equal determination. That phrase also describes how the series has approached its character development. Because while the show may be called Bosch, it’s an ensemble in many ways. From Hollywood Division’s commanding officer Lt. Grace Billets to veteran detectives Johnson and Moore, aka “Crate” and “Barrel,” to Police Chief Irving and Harry’s partner Jerry Edgar, these characters have all navigated their own complicated journeys.
One thing that was clear from the start of the series is that being Harry Bosch’s partner is a monumental challenge. J. Edgar has been unyieldingly loyal, and has often been the anchor who has helped keep Harry from being swallowed up by the darkness that always seems to be encroaching on him. But at the start of the final season, it is Jerry who finds himself in dire straits. The aftermath of the deadly shooting at the end of Season 6 has Jerry at his lowest point. Despondent and unreliable, he makes several lapses in judgement that has Harry wondering if he can still trust his partner to have his back.
Jamie Hector, “J. Edgar”: The inconsolable consequences, the thing that put them in a bad spot, is knowing that he did something wrong. J. Edgar is grappling with what it means to kill someone, even though the person was on the other side of the law. And it's very difficult for him to wrap his mind around it. So you shut your eyes at night and there's the image of this guy standing in front of you and you wake up in the morning and there he is again, which causes you not to sleep. So he tries to drown it out with so many other things and it just creates a deeper hole.
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Jamie Hector as J. Edgar[/caption]
I was excited but I was also grateful because I watched Eric Overmyer and his writing team create a whole life for Jerry Edgar. He is a flawed man who really tries to land on his feet when it comes down to being a moral compass and hold everybody accountable when it comes to work. Even though his house is in shambles, even though his home front might be a little shaky, but this season shows a person who has lost control and is in pain, and not knowing how to deal with it. I was very happy to see what [the writers] actually created for J. Edgar.
Titus Welliver: There is a paternal thing Harry has with J. Edgar, but he also respects him. But what I think more than anything is that there's a big role reversal [in Season 7] and he recognizes J. Edgar's pain and his moral struggle to resolve what he's done. Harry knows what he's done and he takes it as being his fault in an odd way. He thinks Jerry learned it from him, even though Harry would not do what J. Edgar did. But Harry feels responsible and he tries to cover and carry J. Edgar.
Jamie Hector: We hit the ground running from day one [in Season 1]. We had respect for each other and respect for the work. I loved his respect for the work.
Titus Welliver: It's one of those things where you get lucky. Jamie and I had never worked together. We were on such a fast track when we started shooting the pilot that we literally had no time to spend together at all to get to know each other. I was just back from shooting the Transformers movie in Hong Kong… and then we did a table read and then we were on set the next day… We just met and we just liked each other. I mean, we're both New Yorkers, so I think there's that common thread there, but of course, lots of New Yorkers don't like each other [laughs]. But we just had a rapport right away. And the relationship [between Harry and J. Edgar] was really well-realized on the page.
Jamie Hector: I tell Titus all the time, “You need to get on stage, man. I want to give you a microphone, put you in a comedy club and sit in the back and just laugh.” I want people to see that other side of him, that he is a comedian, because he is. He's hilarious.
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Lt. Grace Billets isn’t just the boss of the detectives bureau, the “L-T.” She’s also one of the few people Harry Bosch considers a friend. This season, the career-minded Grace finds her livelihood in jeopardy with a storyline that addresses some of the challenges women face in law enforcement with regards to harassment.
Amy Aquino, “Lt. Grace Billets”: Last year, when we were promoting Season 6, someone asked me a question about what I would like to see in Season 7. And I said, “Justice.” And then I read the scripts for the last season. It was really rich and Grace got to go to a lot of different places she hadn't ever been to. And I think seeing her romantic relationship, the most serious one she’s had on the show, I really appreciated having it in there, and having it be messy the way relationships are.
Billets turns to an unlikely source for help in clearing her name: Detective Vega (Jacqueline Obradors), who inadvertently sparked a sexual harassment probe against Billets in Season 6.
Amy Aquino: You get to see Grace doing an investigation as she used to do. And the person that she uses as her partner is the other significant woman in the division. And that was kind of great. And we did it without getting mushy and beating anybody over the head with a message, “I am woman, hear me roar,” or anything. It was just [two women] saying, “I've been through this, you've been through it. Now we're going to do something about it.”
I love working with Jackie and I love the scene with Vega in the bathroom where she doesn't pull any punches. She tells Grace, “I can't do anything about it, but you can,” because she’s a lieutenant. She doesn't say outright that Grace is a chicken shit if she doesn’t take this on. But she does say it would be nice if somebody who's in a position to do something about it actually did something. And if you don't, then it's on you. I thought it was really subtly done in the writing and by Jackie; she was just wonderful. It was a great season for me to be able to work with a bunch of people in ways that I hadn't been able to before.
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Amy Aquino as Lt. Grace Billets[/caption]
Lt. Billets and Harry go way back, and that connection allows Harry to confide in her in ways he does with almost no one else. But Aquino says her character benefited from the decision by the writers early on in the show to untether her from Harry.
Amy Aquino: When I signed on to the show, I knew from the start that she was there to stay and be mainly Bosch’s friend. The big limitation for her is that Harry is not somebody who really depends on friends. Also, she's really stuck in the station; she's not out in the field and she's not solving crimes. So the more they developed the people inside the Hollywood station and the relationships within the station, the deeper and broader we could go with Grace. And I appreciated that we did more and more of that as time went on.
No one has had a more complicated relationship with Bosch than Chief Irvin Irving. There have been times where the two have been allied by circumstance. Despite that, and despite the grudging respect they have for each other, they are fundamentally different people. Irving can't abide Bosch's disregard for authority and protocol in search of justice, while Bosch thinks Irving prioritizes politics over police work. That's never more apparent than in Season 7. Irving makes a decision to aid the FBI that ultimately helps him gain leverage against the mayor, who’s out for his job, but that also kneecaps Bosch’s murder investigation.
Lance Reddick, “Chief Irvin Irving”: I feel like he's been a political animal from the start. So the thing that I found interesting about Season 7 is not the compromise that he makes, but how much he hates to do it. [There’s a scene] with FBI special agent Brenner [Adam J. Harrington] where you can see how much he hates it, but this is one where his hands really are tied. And by the same token it really is kind of the greater good kind of thing, if you believe in that.
Michael Connelly: Irving really is swallowed up by the job. But he also believes he is the good guy because he sees his position [as Chief of Police] is… to safeguard the department so it can continue to function. Bosch sees the abandonment of justice in his case and Irving sees it as hard choices that had to be made for the greater good. They both think they're right. I think that's one of the things that makes it interesting.
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Lance Reddick as Chief Irvin Irving[/caption]
Henrik Bastin: Irving and Bosch are completely different. Irving is a political animal. Bosch is the opposite. They have joined forces when it was mutually beneficial for both of them or where they needed each other. They are enemies, not mortal enemies, but they are different. They see the world fundamentally different. So this was always [destined] to happen.
Titus Welliver: They are the yin and yang of the series. I think that there's a part of Harry that really respects or respected the cop that he knew Irving to be. But he saw that Irving was willing to compromise things. I think Harry struggles with that.
Lance Reddick: Something that I learned when I initially was doing research for The Wire was that basically, in terms of prestige, there are two tracks [for police officers]: There's the command track, and there's the detective track. The detective tracks sees the command track as a necessary evil and the command track views the detective track as “you’re my soldiers.” It's a fundamental difference in how they see priorities in the world. Bosch’s famous line is “everybody counts or nobody counts.” For him, the most important thing in the world is the case he’s working right now. For Irving, any particular case is just part of a bigger puzzle of trying to do a greater good, and compromise is just part of the game.
Back in Season 5, while fighting to clear his name against allegations that he planted evidence in the Preston Borders case, Bosch discovered then-Lieutenant Irving had actually falsified evidence that helped convict Borders.
Titus Welliver: [Harry] wanted that guy to go down for the murder, but he always wants those things to go down for the right reasons, because he’s not dirty. Harry would never plant evidence on someone. So after that, Harry sees more than ever the chinks in Irving's armor. He helped Irving solve the murder of his son. But even then, there were other things that were being done, but Harry kind of went, “Well, I'm all in.” So there was always a mutual respect, but I think that's gone. And what we're seeing more and more of in this final season is Irving’s moral compass is so beyond magnetized with the political implications that there is no return for him. And Harry sees this. And I think Harry sees that the machine itself is so broken and corrupted that there's no workaround. And that's where we find Harry struggling throughout this season to say, you know what, I can't do my job when I've got people out there constantly undermining truth and justice. It’s kind of the Dutch boy thing. He’s running around and sticking his fingers in to keep the dam from breaking apart. And Harry's all out of digits.
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One of the most intense moments in the final season occurs in the Chief’s office when Bosch pushes Irving to demand help from the feds. He makes a comment that infuriates Irving, who tells Harry, and we quote, “Motherfucker, get out.” Reddick recalls the scene was changed the day of filming after both actors felt it wasn’t quite working.
Lance Reddick: We had to tweak and finesse it because Titus and I both agreed that the way it was originally written, even though what ends up on the screen still looks like [Bosch] went too far, we felt the original version went way too far. Titus’ line was worse than my line was and my response was tamer. So on that day I said, “I want to try it this way.”
That scene reminded me of a moment in Season 1 where I'm at the crime scene after the serial killer escapes. And there's a moment where it looks like Harry's going to hit me. And I feel like this is kind of a mirror image to that one. Because if I wasn’t behind the desk, I might try to put my hands on him.
Offscreen, Reddick and Welliver get along much better than their small-screen alter egos. They also happen to be the biggest comics geeks on the Bosch set. One mention of comics to Welliver, for instance, will trigger a conversation that will bounce from an appreciation of Gene Colan-drawn Captain America stories to the late-’70s Godzilla Marvel series penciled by Herb Trimpe.
Titus Welliver: People may think Lance is this deadly serious guy, but it could not be farther from the truth. He is hysterically funny, has a marvelous sense of humor and one of the most beautiful smiles in the world. And he is a monster comic book fan, huge comics, sci-fi nerd. So he and I literally would sit in the makeup chair in the morning and talk Shang-Chi [comics] ad nauseum to the point where the poor people in the makeup trailer were like, “Do you guys talk about anything that’s real?!” [laughs] Jamie Hector would just look at the two of us and be like, “You guys are nerds.”
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Titus Welliver and Lance Reddick[/caption]
Lance Reddick: Titus out-nerds me though in both memorabilia and comics. He knows artists that I don't know and which artists drew a run of what comic book, which decade. I mean, he leaves me in the dust. And particularly about American cinema too. I'm fairly well-versed. But Titus knows American cinema like nobody’s business.
Reddick also happens to be a major Star Trek fan. That came to light when Jeri Ryan, a.k.a. Seven of Nine from Star Trek: Voyager, joined the Bosch cast in Season 3.
Lance Reddick: Star Trek: Voyager was my show! I would not miss an episode. Like I would like try to make sure the kids were in bed by nine so I could be hunkered down to see what they're doing.
Titus Welliver: Lance knocked on my trailer door. He's like, “Did you know that Jeri Ryan is here?” I was like, “Yeah, she's a friend of mine. I did Star Trek with her.” “You did? How did I not know that?” He says, “She's in the makeup trailer.” It's the only time I've ever seen Lance tongue-tied. We go over to the trailer and I tell him I’ll introduce them, and it turns out she's a huge fan of Lance. But he can't put a sentence together… His hands were trembling. He's that deep. And it's not just because she's a beautiful woman. It was the Seven of Nine thing. He was completely gobsmacked. It was hilarious.
On a lesser show, Crate and Barrel would be relegated to strictly comic relief duty. On Bosch, even though they may lighten the mood with their deadpan banter and classic movie references, their abilities as detectives remain rock solid. Actors Gregory Scott Cummins [Crate] and Troy Evans [Barrel] discovered an instant chemistry from almost day one.
Troy Evans, “Barrel”: When Bosch started, I'd been retired for three years. And then Eric Overmyer, who I had known for 40 years now, [called]. I met Eric when he was a young playwright and I was working in the little theater in Santa Maria, California. That was 1976. Jump ahead 40 years and there I am working on his TV show. And because of the continuity in that writer's room, the characters just steadily built and built and you didn't have to come in and reinvent yourself in Season 4, Season 5. Look, when you're on a show called Bosch, either you’re Bosch or you’re not Bosch. But within those parameters, all the other characters were real characters. They were real people and they mattered in the stories.
Amy Aquino: I treasure all the moments that I had with them. I looked forward to those scenes and the ones with Scott Klace [who plays Sgt. Mankiewicz]. They were my favorite moments in the show because they're consummate, wonderful actors.
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Gregory Scott Cummins (Crate) and Troy Evans (Barrel)... and friends[/caption]
Titus Welliver: It all comes down obviously to the talent of Troy and Greg. They're great people and they're great together. They are hilarious on and off screen. And it would be very easy to kind of trivialize those characters and use them just for comic relief and, while they are funny, both of those characters have had their own kind of trajectory and have really served the show well. And the thing with Harry is, he's kind of a dinosaur in a way. There are qualities about him that only exist in certain generations. That’s why he's a guy who expresses respect and affection for those characters. And it's nice because typically that stuff just gets kind of skipped over [on cop shows], but they’ve allowed us to kind of find those moments and utilize them well. And our audience, the fan base of the show, just loves Crate and Barrel. I honestly believe that if there was ever an idea to give them a show of their own, that it would absolutely succeed.
Troy Evans: There’s a moment from the first season when the serial killer [played by Jason Gedrick] gets pulled over and he's got a body in the back of his van and Crate and I are interviewing him after he’s arrested. It is so clean, just three good solid actors and it's not over the top heavy; we're kind of conversational about it. We're talking about a hideous murder and it's just plays through, has a really nice button on it. When we were done, it happened that other cast members were there watching. And Jamie Hector came up to Greg and I, and said, “How long have you guys known each other? My God you could see that years of friendship there.” But we didn't know each other. We didn't know each other at all [laughs]. And he said, “Well, how many times did you rehearse it?” We said we just did the camera rehearsal and Jamie, who is a very good actor, was stunned. I just loved that scene and I'm very, very proud of it. If somebody said what's the one scene that sums up your career, it would be that scene.
Gregory Scott Cummins: It was immediate. We just started playing off each other and it just clicked from the very beginning. Then we got to know each other better and became friends. He's a lifelong friend now for me.
Part of the mission statement of the show has always been to provide an accurate representation of the job police officers do in real life. That dedication to detail begins with the LAPD detectives who have helped the show get it right. Tim Marcia and Mitzi Roberts served as consultants on Bosch when they weren’t busy working actual cases as homicide detectives.
Michael Connelly: That has been our goal from the very beginning, to reflect this world as accurately as we can. We don't have cases solved in an hour and things like that. And we also are cognizant that it's a big police department and… there's a lot of people involved.
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Amy Aquino: I think the authenticity of Bosch is what sets us apart from other shows that involve police. The greatest compliment that we can get and do get often from law enforcement is, “Wow, you just get it right.” It's the good, the bad, and the boring of police work.
Gregory Scott Cummins: I've had police officers say to me, “We've got a Crate and Barrel in our department.” Being a cop is a very difficult job. It's a high stress job. They need relief from the stress of the daily job. And that's the way I think of these characters, not as comic relief, but it's just that when they have a chance to, they play practical jokes and act goofy because you know what, it's a hard, tedious, difficult job. Every police officer that I've gotten to know who followed the series say this is the closest show they've ever seen to the way it is in real life for them… I think for me, that's what I'm most proud of just to be a part of it.
Lance Reddick: I'm not going to say who said it, but one of the detectives who's been a consultant to the show for years… they work robbery homicide, which is the elite of the elites of the detectives in Los Angeles. I asked this person just conversationally about wanting to move up to lieutenant and getting promoted up the ranks. This person said to me without missing a beat, “Fuck no. I'm not a kiss-ass. In order to rise up the ranks, you have to be a kiss-ass and you have to be a politician. But if you want to actually do police work, then you want to be a homicide detective.”
Gregory Scott Cummins: The writing is incredible, but the knowledge from the on-set advisors, Tim Marcia and Mitzi Roberts, they just keep us on point. They say, this is what a police officer would do. This is what a detective would do. This is not what a detective would do. That's appreciated not only by the fans, but members of law enforcement.
Amy Aquino: My first costume fitting, they had pulled flats for me. And I said, “No, I need to have a heel.” Because I had just met Mitzi, and she was wearing heels, so I needed to wear heels. Mitzi told me that a woman in law enforcement, a plain clothes detective, is going to wear heels because you want to look bigger. I also asked her this: I'm playing a lieutenant, I'm sitting at my desk all day. I'm not out in the field. I'm not arresting people. Why am I wearing this uncomfortable gun? She said, if you were a male lieutenant, you wouldn't bother wearing a gun in the station, in your office. If you're a female lieutenant, you wear the gun all the time. Again, just to reinforce the fact that you mean business and nobody mistakes you for the secretary… She told me all this early on, these little things that get in your head and you go, “Oh, okay.” It means that as a woman, in this particular profession, you have to be constantly thinking about how to proceed and overcompensating.
For me, certainly in the first four years, I didn’t make a move without calling Mitzi, and Tim was great too. But having a woman with 24 years in the LAPD there for me was crucial to help me create [this] character.
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Bosch working the crime scene.[/caption]
The eating habits of Harry Bosch have inspired fans to break decades of ingrained behavior by putting the syrup on the plate first, then the pancakes. There are also interactive maps to Bosch’s favorite eateries and bars. Dozens of L.A. establishments have made cameos on the show, and each actor had several favorites during the show’s run, but one iconic place was the easy winner in our survey of Favorite Bosch joint.
Titus Welliver: We've always talking about In & Out and a burger with animal fries. But I think Musso & Franks is really his favorite place to go. Because Harry likes his cocktails too. Although he's not like the boozy cop, but he does like to go and have martinis there. I would imagine he likes the iceberg wedge salad with the Roquefort cheese and the bacon bits.
Madison Lintz: I feel like it has to be Du-par's, because I do love a good pancake. And of course, I do [put the syrup first]. That's the only way to do it. It allows for the most even spread of syrup. People can deny it and deny it all they want, but that's the truth.
Amy Aquino: Musso & Franks is so iconic. And it's close to where I live because I live in the Hollywood precinct area. Oh, El Compadre, of course. El Compadre is around the corner where I live. That's actually where we went after my first ride-along with Mitzi and Tim. So that is probably at the top of the list.
Note: Jamie Hector changed his answer multiple times before ultimately texting that his choice would be Musso & Franks as well!
As the show comes to an end, many of the principal figures in Bosch have become understandably reflective of their time on the series. For some, specific memories rose to the surface as particularly special moments. For others, it was an appreciation for a set that was uncommonly close-knit, with remarkably little turnover in the behind-the-scenes production crew.
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Titus Welliver and Madison Lintz[/caption]
Troy Evans: ER was beautifully run. It was a smooth-running machine. You never had these things where you go to work at six in the morning and you'd still be there for the next morning. That didn't happen on ER. I expected a much rougher ride on Bosch because a small studio, the whole new thing going on and all that. But in fact it was very, very similar to working on ER. The scheduling was slick and everything worked. It was as happy a time as I've ever, ever had on set.
Madison Lintz: There were no horrible moments on set. I can't pick one moment. I mean, I guess when we were wrapping out people, there was one day where we were at Musso & Franks, and that was a very, very special moment, especially because it's not often that I crossed paths with some of those actors and got to work with them. And it's not often we're all on set altogether at the same time. So we just sat in the back of the restaurant where they weren't filming and chatted and took pictures and shared memories. And they made sure everyone stuck around, and we clapped for everybody and played videos and cried. So that was a really special day.
Lance Reddick: I had a lot of buyer's remorse afterwards after I agreed to do the show. I was hesitant because I'd already played a commanding officer in law enforcement, but then Eric Overmyer, who I knew, sent me a personal note and then we talked on the phone [about the role]. Because it was Eric, I made the leap. I started the show so worried that I made a huge mistake in my career. And then it ended up not only being one of the highlights of my career, but I feel like it's some of the finest work I've ever done. And to say I did it with people of this caliber makes me proud.
Michael Connelly: A scene that means the world to me is from the very beginning of the third season. That season opens with the kid, Sharkey, doing graffiti on a wall and he's basically the only witness to a murder. That is the first scene of the very first book I wrote that was published. When I wrote that back in the late 1980s, I never thought it would ever be filmed or anything like that. And so to be out there that night and see that happening was pretty amazing. It was an amazing night and still an amazing moment for me. Even though Harry Bosch is not in that scene, it stands out to me as the high point of this whole experience.
Henrik Bastin: What I think I’m proudest off is when people come up and say, it's such a good show, and it's the best adaptation of a book series that I’ve seen. I think that's because that's the one thing I promised Michael in the beginning, that I would try everything I could to not fuck up the adaptation of books that I personally love. So every time I hear that, I feel that we succeeded in that and we created a show that has been really entertaining to a lot of people. I thought we didn't reinvent the wheel or anything like that, but we took a well-established genre and we did it as good as the best ones that have come before us.
Continue reading...
Bosch shares many qualities with those two shows.
Amazon Prime’s longest-running series is well regarded for its crime noir aesthetic as well as its attention to detail regarding police work. It’s also adored by a passionate fanbase for its thoughtful characterization. Bosch may be a crime drama on the surface, but at its core, it’s a show about family and friendship and the difficulty in maintaining such bonds while keeping up with the demands of police work. It’s also a series that goes to extraordinary lengths to show a side of Los Angeles rarely seen in TV or film. Also, the food. So much great food!
Watch an exclusive clip from the new season of Bosch right here:
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Now, after six years of being one of the best-kept secrets on television, Bosch is ready to tackle one final case. The seventh and final eight-episode season debuted on Prime on June 25.
Much like previous years, this season is based on Michael Connelly’s bestselling Bosch novels, specifically 2014’s The Burning Room. It’s a case that pushes all the most painful buttons for legendary LAPD homicide detective Harry Bosch (Titus Welliver), and it once again puts him at odds with the feds and the top echelons of the LAPD, including Chief Irvin Irving (Lance Reddick). Meanwhile, the other key figures in Harry’s universe, including his daughter Maddie (Madison Lintz), his partner J. Edgar (Jamie Hector) and his friend and commanding officer Lt. Grace Billets (Amy Aquino), all face their own personal crises.
If you haven't seen Bosch, the title character is cantankerous, infuriating and monumentally single-minded. Over the course of the series, Harry Bosch has endured great tragedy, survived shootouts, serial killers, military assassins, and nearly being thrown out of a plane. He’s been the subject of lawsuits, Internal Affairs probes and a lengthy suspension, all of which can be traced back to his unwavering commitment to a single principle - the pursuit of justice for all.
Bosch has never been the trendiest show or the one with the most buzz, as executive producer Henrik Bastin can attest. He recalls after the first season walking around L.A. with a Bosch crew baseball cap and people thinking he was promoting the dishwasher brand. “Now I get so many people coming up to me to say, ‘I love that show. It's the best,’” he says.
That passion is one reason why Amazon gave the greenlight for a Bosch spinoff series that will debut on the ad-supported IMDB TV streaming service. Welliver, Lintz and Mimi Rogers, who plays Bosch’s frenemy, ace attorney Honey Chandler, are reprising their roles for the show, which remains untitled. “I found out on set [about the spinoff],” Lintz recalls. “Titus pulled me aside, and I thought I was getting fired, or I had COVID, or I had done something horrible. He's never done that before. He said, ‘You, Mimi, and I are getting a spin-off.’ That's all it took for me to burst into tears. That's how I found out, right before I had to film a scene. So I had to pull myself together really fast, because it was top secret. Nobody could know, not even my family. So I had to just pull it together and do this scene. But it was a very special moment.”
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We talked with the show’s main actors and executive producers to crack the case on Bosch and provide snapshots of each of the principal characters as the final season arrives. From the relationships on- and off-screen that formed over seven years to memorable moments and where their characters stand as the show comes to an end, they each shared their personal insights. We even got a few of them to confess which stop along the Bosch L.A. food tour - seriously, this show loves its food - would be their top choice.
Finding Bosch
Titus Welliver’s performance as the intense, laconic Harry Bosch has been the driving force behind the show from the beginning. His portrayal has been as true in spirit to the character as any fan of the Bosch novels could have hoped for. Harry is always close to the edge because all of his cases are personal, and the way Welliver has portrayed that imminent combustibility has been a master class in restraint. When you talk to Welliver, it becomes clear immediately how invested in and how protective he is of the character.
Titus Welliver, “Harry Bosch”: Bosch has been, and continues to be, the greatest experience that I've ever had as an actor.
After years of compiling a laundry list of memorable supporting roles on one great series after another - The Man in Black on Lost, Jimmy O’Phelan on Sons of Anarchy, Silas Adams on Deadwood, to name just a few - the actor got the role of his career at age 52. When the auditions for Bosch were happening, it was the author Michael Connelly who suggested him. He had been impressed by Welliver’s guest-starring role as a traumatized firefighter on the Kiefer Sutherland drama Touch.
Michael Connelly, executive producer and author of the Bosch book series: He just played it so well, he didn't have to say he had [PTSD], you could just tell by his haunted eyes. The lead character is always the biggest choice to make, but it was more difficult than usual because Harry Bosch is a very internal guy. He's not going to talk a lot about what's going on inside. So you have to find an actor who can show that he's carrying something inside, some baggage or trauma or something.
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But even though they were interested, he proved hard to find. At the time, Welliver was in China shooting Transformers: Age of Extinction. The production finally got hold of him and he flew in to meet with the team on a Saturday.
Michael Connelly: I was there with a few people who were involved in that choice. And he practiced a scene and he did it really well. And we just kind of knew it was him right away. We thanked him and he left and then very quickly, everyone said, “That's him, that’s Bosch.” So somebody ran out into the parking lot to grab him and bring him back.
Gregory Scott Cummins, “Crate”: Titus worked his way up in the business, paid his dues. As the lead character who's on set every day, it's just amazing how hard he works. And he always, always keeps it light and in between shots he's just nice to people and funny. The creative process of making a show can be hard, but you want it to be enjoyable and he made the experience better for us.
Understanding Bosch
The heartbeat of the show lies within the relationships between Harry and the most important people in his world, beginning with his daughter Madeline. In one sense, Bosch is as much a low-key “dad show” as it is a detective series because of Harry’s ongoing and often clumsy attempts at figuring out how to be a parent to Maddie. Their relationship is informed by the strong bond Welliver and Lintz have formed off-camera. In the final season, both are trying to figure out their next steps when Maddie’s job at Honey Chandler’s law firm unexpectedly puts her in danger.
Titus Welliver: When the shit hits the fan, Maddie is compromised. It becomes one of those things where Harry, he's always kind of waiting for the other shoe to drop, and then it becomes a kind of “I told you so.”
Madison Lintz, “Madeline Bosch”: They’ve become equals for sure. And I think as Maddie aged and grew... Well, there was a lot about her father that she didn't really understand. In Season 3, she has a line that's something like, "You're like a turtle. Your shell is where you're safe, but nobody gets in there with you. Not really, not even me." So, he had these emotional walls up that Maddie didn't really understand. She is her father's daughter. As she got older and was forced to deal with these traumatic situations and these hardships, she starts compartmentalizing them and dealing with them in the same way and putting up emotional walls. And I think this [final] season and the last season as well, there were moments where she would look at her father and think, "Oh, I get it now. I do that. I understand that because I do that." And I think in understanding herself as she aged, she also understood her father.
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Madison Lintz as Madeline Bosch[/caption]Titus Welliver: The relationship has evolved in a really beautiful way that feels real to me rather than being kind of contrived. It's a more adult relationship now. I mean, [Maddie] is literally an adult. And I think the beauty of that relationship is that Harry is still kind of evolving. He's still trying to learn how to be a parent. Something that we have always focused on was to keep that relationship firmly planted on the ground and to not make it saccharin… to depict the relationship between a father and the daughter accurately, warts and all, with all the awkward moments, and also with moments of great levity and joy.
Michael Connelly: I think the key to the show is Maddie. She wasn't even living with him, wasn't even in the same city when we begin. And then a couple of seasons in, she's in his house and he's raising her. I think that it helped him as a human being. And we see that he kind of goes from more of a black and white view of the world to knowing it's a gray area and that there are reasons for people doing bad things, stupid things.
Henrik Bastin, executive producer: Too often on a cop show, their relationship with the kids is always about the kids being mad at them and stuff like that. I don't think that's very realistic. I think we all have our ups and downs with kids, but these two have a true love. Harry is a great father, even with all his flaws, and Maddie is a great daughter.
Tragedy brought them closer together. One of the most powerful episodes was Season 4, Episode 4, when Maddie’s mom (Sarah Clarke) was murdered in front of Harry. It led to a sequence that both Welliver and Lintz remember vividly, when Harry goes to Maddie’s school to break the news.
Titus Welliver: They did a fantastic job of editing that scene because if you watch it, they cut out of that moment where he stops at the car to sort of collect himself before he gets in the car. They go to another scene with Irvin, and then they cut back to Harry putting his jacket on and picking her up from the school.
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Madison Lintz: I do remember filming that scene. It was really, really heavy. Obviously as the actors we strive to create power in our scenes, and that was definitely one of them.
Titus Welliver: I improvised dialogue with her, knowing that… we were going to be backlit and somewhat silhouetted in that sequence where he stops and tells her that her mom has been killed. That entire scene is also a testament to Madison's gift as an actor, her body language, her complete collapse of her body. It's its own kind of primal howl without any sound.
Madison Lintz: Titus has done this since the beginning of the show. He's really given me the environment to grow as an actress. And as number one on the call sheet, as the star of the show, he doesn't have to do that. And the fact that he has afforded me that privilege, the show has become one of the most invaluable experiences of my whole life. So just in regards to that scene specifically, I don't know when I'll ever be able to do a scene so powerful again.
Lintz was just a teenager when she started Bosch. Her biggest role before landing Maddie was as Sophia in the early years of The Walking Dead. The producers quickly realized they had found an actress that could allow them to explore Harry’s relationship with his daughter much deeper than they expected.
Henrik Bastin: We knew she was a good actress, but she was just a kid. So you always take a bit of a shot with that. I think if you speak to Eric [Overmeyer, the series showrunner] and with Michael, they will agree we were surprised how good she was. We could start writing bigger storylines for her, because she could hold her own. If she hadn't done that, she would have become much more of a side character that we would have used just to drive home some plot points or some emotional beat for Harry. But she was so good that we could create kind of a world for [the character].
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Madison Lintz: I'm sure 20, 30, 40 years down the line when I've had much more experience, there will be moments where I'm like, "Oh yeah, I know who this character is. I'm comfortable as this character. I can do anything as this character." But with Maddie, I feel like as she grew, I grew. And so I was always striving for that next step. Now, last season and [Season 7], I definitely feel more comfortable than I did in the first season, but I don't know if there'll ever come a time with her where I will be like, "Oh yeah, I'm chill. I've got this. Just another day on set." I always want to try to bring it.
Maddie’s world grew richer and more complex when she went to work for high-powered attorney Honey “Money” Chandler, played by Mimi Rogers. Chandler and Harry have a long, and often contentious history. In the first season, she exposed in court that his mother was a prostitute. Over time, the bitterness between the two turned into a mutual respect. They worked together in Season 4’s “Angel’s Flight” case, and in the fifth season Harry hired Chandler to represent him against charges that he fabricated evidence. Chandler became as much a mother figure to Maddie as a role model, which bothers Harry at times.
Mimi Rogers, “Honey Chandler”: Maddie has literally grown up on this show. I think she was 15 when it started. And she and I have become quite close. She's a really bright, really talented, really, really decent person, and she's clearly got the acting chops. To have the Maddie character also grow up and experience endless freaking trauma but maintain a quiet strength of character that constantly reminds you that she's Harry's daughter… the stubbornness, the intelligence, the fierceness, the persistence. She's Harry's daughter and she's embodied that incredibly well. I think it's been one of the better-portrayed father daughter relationships in a television show, because they don't resort to easy fixes or easy answers. It’s a really complicated, beautifully realized relationship. And I think Madison is a huge reason why.
Madison Lintz: I love the relationship with the mother figure that Maddie has found in Honey. And I've also found a mother figure in Mimi. She would e-mail me recipes because I like to cook. And she would tell me about her kids, and she helped me find a good brand of zinc on Amazon that I ordered that I still use. And she helped me figure out my mail-in ballot so I could vote. It was really comforting having her there and knowing if I ever needed anything, and I'm speaking as Madison, I could call her. And I think Maddie has found something very, very similar in Honey Chandler.
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Mimi Rogers as Honey Chandler[/caption]Mimi Rogers: I think what we've seen over the seasons… the dance of [Honey and Harry’s] relationship has been so many different things, confrontational, adversarial, working together well, having to represent him. I think over time, both of them have kind of recognized that they're kindred souls. It’s also great that Harry has an individual in his life who he can't run roughshod over. He's met his match with her. And not only has he accepted it, but I think he kind of liked it. That explains why, even though it was a humiliating moment for him, when [Harry] needed legal help in Season 5, there was one person that he was going to entrust with the situation, and of course it's Honey. And did he have to eat crow and tolerate me making fun of him? Yeah. But he also knew this person would get the job done.
Titus Welliver: That's the dance that they do. They respect each other and they've kind of buried the hatchet with what went down at the Flores trial [in Season 1]. But it's the relationship between Honey and Maddie and how she treats Maddie which I think has softened Harry.
Everybody Counts or Nobody Counts
“Everybody counts or nobody counts” is the motto that Harry Bosch lives by and which drives him to pursue every homicide case with equal determination. That phrase also describes how the series has approached its character development. Because while the show may be called Bosch, it’s an ensemble in many ways. From Hollywood Division’s commanding officer Lt. Grace Billets to veteran detectives Johnson and Moore, aka “Crate” and “Barrel,” to Police Chief Irving and Harry’s partner Jerry Edgar, these characters have all navigated their own complicated journeys.
One thing that was clear from the start of the series is that being Harry Bosch’s partner is a monumental challenge. J. Edgar has been unyieldingly loyal, and has often been the anchor who has helped keep Harry from being swallowed up by the darkness that always seems to be encroaching on him. But at the start of the final season, it is Jerry who finds himself in dire straits. The aftermath of the deadly shooting at the end of Season 6 has Jerry at his lowest point. Despondent and unreliable, he makes several lapses in judgement that has Harry wondering if he can still trust his partner to have his back.
Jamie Hector, “J. Edgar”: The inconsolable consequences, the thing that put them in a bad spot, is knowing that he did something wrong. J. Edgar is grappling with what it means to kill someone, even though the person was on the other side of the law. And it's very difficult for him to wrap his mind around it. So you shut your eyes at night and there's the image of this guy standing in front of you and you wake up in the morning and there he is again, which causes you not to sleep. So he tries to drown it out with so many other things and it just creates a deeper hole.
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Jamie Hector as J. Edgar[/caption]I was excited but I was also grateful because I watched Eric Overmyer and his writing team create a whole life for Jerry Edgar. He is a flawed man who really tries to land on his feet when it comes down to being a moral compass and hold everybody accountable when it comes to work. Even though his house is in shambles, even though his home front might be a little shaky, but this season shows a person who has lost control and is in pain, and not knowing how to deal with it. I was very happy to see what [the writers] actually created for J. Edgar.
Titus Welliver: There is a paternal thing Harry has with J. Edgar, but he also respects him. But what I think more than anything is that there's a big role reversal [in Season 7] and he recognizes J. Edgar's pain and his moral struggle to resolve what he's done. Harry knows what he's done and he takes it as being his fault in an odd way. He thinks Jerry learned it from him, even though Harry would not do what J. Edgar did. But Harry feels responsible and he tries to cover and carry J. Edgar.
Jamie Hector: We hit the ground running from day one [in Season 1]. We had respect for each other and respect for the work. I loved his respect for the work.
Titus Welliver: It's one of those things where you get lucky. Jamie and I had never worked together. We were on such a fast track when we started shooting the pilot that we literally had no time to spend together at all to get to know each other. I was just back from shooting the Transformers movie in Hong Kong… and then we did a table read and then we were on set the next day… We just met and we just liked each other. I mean, we're both New Yorkers, so I think there's that common thread there, but of course, lots of New Yorkers don't like each other [laughs]. But we just had a rapport right away. And the relationship [between Harry and J. Edgar] was really well-realized on the page.
Jamie Hector: I tell Titus all the time, “You need to get on stage, man. I want to give you a microphone, put you in a comedy club and sit in the back and just laugh.” I want people to see that other side of him, that he is a comedian, because he is. He's hilarious.
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Lt. Grace Billets isn’t just the boss of the detectives bureau, the “L-T.” She’s also one of the few people Harry Bosch considers a friend. This season, the career-minded Grace finds her livelihood in jeopardy with a storyline that addresses some of the challenges women face in law enforcement with regards to harassment.
Amy Aquino, “Lt. Grace Billets”: Last year, when we were promoting Season 6, someone asked me a question about what I would like to see in Season 7. And I said, “Justice.” And then I read the scripts for the last season. It was really rich and Grace got to go to a lot of different places she hadn't ever been to. And I think seeing her romantic relationship, the most serious one she’s had on the show, I really appreciated having it in there, and having it be messy the way relationships are.
Billets turns to an unlikely source for help in clearing her name: Detective Vega (Jacqueline Obradors), who inadvertently sparked a sexual harassment probe against Billets in Season 6.
Amy Aquino: You get to see Grace doing an investigation as she used to do. And the person that she uses as her partner is the other significant woman in the division. And that was kind of great. And we did it without getting mushy and beating anybody over the head with a message, “I am woman, hear me roar,” or anything. It was just [two women] saying, “I've been through this, you've been through it. Now we're going to do something about it.”
I love working with Jackie and I love the scene with Vega in the bathroom where she doesn't pull any punches. She tells Grace, “I can't do anything about it, but you can,” because she’s a lieutenant. She doesn't say outright that Grace is a chicken shit if she doesn’t take this on. But she does say it would be nice if somebody who's in a position to do something about it actually did something. And if you don't, then it's on you. I thought it was really subtly done in the writing and by Jackie; she was just wonderful. It was a great season for me to be able to work with a bunch of people in ways that I hadn't been able to before.
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Amy Aquino as Lt. Grace Billets[/caption]Lt. Billets and Harry go way back, and that connection allows Harry to confide in her in ways he does with almost no one else. But Aquino says her character benefited from the decision by the writers early on in the show to untether her from Harry.
Amy Aquino: When I signed on to the show, I knew from the start that she was there to stay and be mainly Bosch’s friend. The big limitation for her is that Harry is not somebody who really depends on friends. Also, she's really stuck in the station; she's not out in the field and she's not solving crimes. So the more they developed the people inside the Hollywood station and the relationships within the station, the deeper and broader we could go with Grace. And I appreciated that we did more and more of that as time went on.
No one has had a more complicated relationship with Bosch than Chief Irvin Irving. There have been times where the two have been allied by circumstance. Despite that, and despite the grudging respect they have for each other, they are fundamentally different people. Irving can't abide Bosch's disregard for authority and protocol in search of justice, while Bosch thinks Irving prioritizes politics over police work. That's never more apparent than in Season 7. Irving makes a decision to aid the FBI that ultimately helps him gain leverage against the mayor, who’s out for his job, but that also kneecaps Bosch’s murder investigation.
Lance Reddick, “Chief Irvin Irving”: I feel like he's been a political animal from the start. So the thing that I found interesting about Season 7 is not the compromise that he makes, but how much he hates to do it. [There’s a scene] with FBI special agent Brenner [Adam J. Harrington] where you can see how much he hates it, but this is one where his hands really are tied. And by the same token it really is kind of the greater good kind of thing, if you believe in that.
Michael Connelly: Irving really is swallowed up by the job. But he also believes he is the good guy because he sees his position [as Chief of Police] is… to safeguard the department so it can continue to function. Bosch sees the abandonment of justice in his case and Irving sees it as hard choices that had to be made for the greater good. They both think they're right. I think that's one of the things that makes it interesting.
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Lance Reddick as Chief Irvin Irving[/caption]Henrik Bastin: Irving and Bosch are completely different. Irving is a political animal. Bosch is the opposite. They have joined forces when it was mutually beneficial for both of them or where they needed each other. They are enemies, not mortal enemies, but they are different. They see the world fundamentally different. So this was always [destined] to happen.
Titus Welliver: They are the yin and yang of the series. I think that there's a part of Harry that really respects or respected the cop that he knew Irving to be. But he saw that Irving was willing to compromise things. I think Harry struggles with that.
Lance Reddick: Something that I learned when I initially was doing research for The Wire was that basically, in terms of prestige, there are two tracks [for police officers]: There's the command track, and there's the detective track. The detective tracks sees the command track as a necessary evil and the command track views the detective track as “you’re my soldiers.” It's a fundamental difference in how they see priorities in the world. Bosch’s famous line is “everybody counts or nobody counts.” For him, the most important thing in the world is the case he’s working right now. For Irving, any particular case is just part of a bigger puzzle of trying to do a greater good, and compromise is just part of the game.
Back in Season 5, while fighting to clear his name against allegations that he planted evidence in the Preston Borders case, Bosch discovered then-Lieutenant Irving had actually falsified evidence that helped convict Borders.
Titus Welliver: [Harry] wanted that guy to go down for the murder, but he always wants those things to go down for the right reasons, because he’s not dirty. Harry would never plant evidence on someone. So after that, Harry sees more than ever the chinks in Irving's armor. He helped Irving solve the murder of his son. But even then, there were other things that were being done, but Harry kind of went, “Well, I'm all in.” So there was always a mutual respect, but I think that's gone. And what we're seeing more and more of in this final season is Irving’s moral compass is so beyond magnetized with the political implications that there is no return for him. And Harry sees this. And I think Harry sees that the machine itself is so broken and corrupted that there's no workaround. And that's where we find Harry struggling throughout this season to say, you know what, I can't do my job when I've got people out there constantly undermining truth and justice. It’s kind of the Dutch boy thing. He’s running around and sticking his fingers in to keep the dam from breaking apart. And Harry's all out of digits.
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One of the most intense moments in the final season occurs in the Chief’s office when Bosch pushes Irving to demand help from the feds. He makes a comment that infuriates Irving, who tells Harry, and we quote, “Motherfucker, get out.” Reddick recalls the scene was changed the day of filming after both actors felt it wasn’t quite working.
Lance Reddick: We had to tweak and finesse it because Titus and I both agreed that the way it was originally written, even though what ends up on the screen still looks like [Bosch] went too far, we felt the original version went way too far. Titus’ line was worse than my line was and my response was tamer. So on that day I said, “I want to try it this way.”
That scene reminded me of a moment in Season 1 where I'm at the crime scene after the serial killer escapes. And there's a moment where it looks like Harry's going to hit me. And I feel like this is kind of a mirror image to that one. Because if I wasn’t behind the desk, I might try to put my hands on him.
Offscreen, Reddick and Welliver get along much better than their small-screen alter egos. They also happen to be the biggest comics geeks on the Bosch set. One mention of comics to Welliver, for instance, will trigger a conversation that will bounce from an appreciation of Gene Colan-drawn Captain America stories to the late-’70s Godzilla Marvel series penciled by Herb Trimpe.
Titus Welliver: People may think Lance is this deadly serious guy, but it could not be farther from the truth. He is hysterically funny, has a marvelous sense of humor and one of the most beautiful smiles in the world. And he is a monster comic book fan, huge comics, sci-fi nerd. So he and I literally would sit in the makeup chair in the morning and talk Shang-Chi [comics] ad nauseum to the point where the poor people in the makeup trailer were like, “Do you guys talk about anything that’s real?!” [laughs] Jamie Hector would just look at the two of us and be like, “You guys are nerds.”
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Titus Welliver and Lance Reddick[/caption]Lance Reddick: Titus out-nerds me though in both memorabilia and comics. He knows artists that I don't know and which artists drew a run of what comic book, which decade. I mean, he leaves me in the dust. And particularly about American cinema too. I'm fairly well-versed. But Titus knows American cinema like nobody’s business.
Reddick also happens to be a major Star Trek fan. That came to light when Jeri Ryan, a.k.a. Seven of Nine from Star Trek: Voyager, joined the Bosch cast in Season 3.
Lance Reddick: Star Trek: Voyager was my show! I would not miss an episode. Like I would like try to make sure the kids were in bed by nine so I could be hunkered down to see what they're doing.
Titus Welliver: Lance knocked on my trailer door. He's like, “Did you know that Jeri Ryan is here?” I was like, “Yeah, she's a friend of mine. I did Star Trek with her.” “You did? How did I not know that?” He says, “She's in the makeup trailer.” It's the only time I've ever seen Lance tongue-tied. We go over to the trailer and I tell him I’ll introduce them, and it turns out she's a huge fan of Lance. But he can't put a sentence together… His hands were trembling. He's that deep. And it's not just because she's a beautiful woman. It was the Seven of Nine thing. He was completely gobsmacked. It was hilarious.
On a lesser show, Crate and Barrel would be relegated to strictly comic relief duty. On Bosch, even though they may lighten the mood with their deadpan banter and classic movie references, their abilities as detectives remain rock solid. Actors Gregory Scott Cummins [Crate] and Troy Evans [Barrel] discovered an instant chemistry from almost day one.
Troy Evans, “Barrel”: When Bosch started, I'd been retired for three years. And then Eric Overmyer, who I had known for 40 years now, [called]. I met Eric when he was a young playwright and I was working in the little theater in Santa Maria, California. That was 1976. Jump ahead 40 years and there I am working on his TV show. And because of the continuity in that writer's room, the characters just steadily built and built and you didn't have to come in and reinvent yourself in Season 4, Season 5. Look, when you're on a show called Bosch, either you’re Bosch or you’re not Bosch. But within those parameters, all the other characters were real characters. They were real people and they mattered in the stories.
Amy Aquino: I treasure all the moments that I had with them. I looked forward to those scenes and the ones with Scott Klace [who plays Sgt. Mankiewicz]. They were my favorite moments in the show because they're consummate, wonderful actors.
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Gregory Scott Cummins (Crate) and Troy Evans (Barrel)... and friends[/caption]Titus Welliver: It all comes down obviously to the talent of Troy and Greg. They're great people and they're great together. They are hilarious on and off screen. And it would be very easy to kind of trivialize those characters and use them just for comic relief and, while they are funny, both of those characters have had their own kind of trajectory and have really served the show well. And the thing with Harry is, he's kind of a dinosaur in a way. There are qualities about him that only exist in certain generations. That’s why he's a guy who expresses respect and affection for those characters. And it's nice because typically that stuff just gets kind of skipped over [on cop shows], but they’ve allowed us to kind of find those moments and utilize them well. And our audience, the fan base of the show, just loves Crate and Barrel. I honestly believe that if there was ever an idea to give them a show of their own, that it would absolutely succeed.
Troy Evans: There’s a moment from the first season when the serial killer [played by Jason Gedrick] gets pulled over and he's got a body in the back of his van and Crate and I are interviewing him after he’s arrested. It is so clean, just three good solid actors and it's not over the top heavy; we're kind of conversational about it. We're talking about a hideous murder and it's just plays through, has a really nice button on it. When we were done, it happened that other cast members were there watching. And Jamie Hector came up to Greg and I, and said, “How long have you guys known each other? My God you could see that years of friendship there.” But we didn't know each other. We didn't know each other at all [laughs]. And he said, “Well, how many times did you rehearse it?” We said we just did the camera rehearsal and Jamie, who is a very good actor, was stunned. I just loved that scene and I'm very, very proud of it. If somebody said what's the one scene that sums up your career, it would be that scene.
Gregory Scott Cummins: It was immediate. We just started playing off each other and it just clicked from the very beginning. Then we got to know each other better and became friends. He's a lifelong friend now for me.
Pay Attention to the Details
Part of the mission statement of the show has always been to provide an accurate representation of the job police officers do in real life. That dedication to detail begins with the LAPD detectives who have helped the show get it right. Tim Marcia and Mitzi Roberts served as consultants on Bosch when they weren’t busy working actual cases as homicide detectives.
Michael Connelly: That has been our goal from the very beginning, to reflect this world as accurately as we can. We don't have cases solved in an hour and things like that. And we also are cognizant that it's a big police department and… there's a lot of people involved.
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Amy Aquino: I think the authenticity of Bosch is what sets us apart from other shows that involve police. The greatest compliment that we can get and do get often from law enforcement is, “Wow, you just get it right.” It's the good, the bad, and the boring of police work.
Gregory Scott Cummins: I've had police officers say to me, “We've got a Crate and Barrel in our department.” Being a cop is a very difficult job. It's a high stress job. They need relief from the stress of the daily job. And that's the way I think of these characters, not as comic relief, but it's just that when they have a chance to, they play practical jokes and act goofy because you know what, it's a hard, tedious, difficult job. Every police officer that I've gotten to know who followed the series say this is the closest show they've ever seen to the way it is in real life for them… I think for me, that's what I'm most proud of just to be a part of it.
Lance Reddick: I'm not going to say who said it, but one of the detectives who's been a consultant to the show for years… they work robbery homicide, which is the elite of the elites of the detectives in Los Angeles. I asked this person just conversationally about wanting to move up to lieutenant and getting promoted up the ranks. This person said to me without missing a beat, “Fuck no. I'm not a kiss-ass. In order to rise up the ranks, you have to be a kiss-ass and you have to be a politician. But if you want to actually do police work, then you want to be a homicide detective.”
Gregory Scott Cummins: The writing is incredible, but the knowledge from the on-set advisors, Tim Marcia and Mitzi Roberts, they just keep us on point. They say, this is what a police officer would do. This is what a detective would do. This is not what a detective would do. That's appreciated not only by the fans, but members of law enforcement.
Amy Aquino: My first costume fitting, they had pulled flats for me. And I said, “No, I need to have a heel.” Because I had just met Mitzi, and she was wearing heels, so I needed to wear heels. Mitzi told me that a woman in law enforcement, a plain clothes detective, is going to wear heels because you want to look bigger. I also asked her this: I'm playing a lieutenant, I'm sitting at my desk all day. I'm not out in the field. I'm not arresting people. Why am I wearing this uncomfortable gun? She said, if you were a male lieutenant, you wouldn't bother wearing a gun in the station, in your office. If you're a female lieutenant, you wear the gun all the time. Again, just to reinforce the fact that you mean business and nobody mistakes you for the secretary… She told me all this early on, these little things that get in your head and you go, “Oh, okay.” It means that as a woman, in this particular profession, you have to be constantly thinking about how to proceed and overcompensating.
For me, certainly in the first four years, I didn’t make a move without calling Mitzi, and Tim was great too. But having a woman with 24 years in the LAPD there for me was crucial to help me create [this] character.
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Bosch working the crime scene.[/caption]Bosch Loves L.A. - and Its Food
The eating habits of Harry Bosch have inspired fans to break decades of ingrained behavior by putting the syrup on the plate first, then the pancakes. There are also interactive maps to Bosch’s favorite eateries and bars. Dozens of L.A. establishments have made cameos on the show, and each actor had several favorites during the show’s run, but one iconic place was the easy winner in our survey of Favorite Bosch joint.
Titus Welliver: We've always talking about In & Out and a burger with animal fries. But I think Musso & Franks is really his favorite place to go. Because Harry likes his cocktails too. Although he's not like the boozy cop, but he does like to go and have martinis there. I would imagine he likes the iceberg wedge salad with the Roquefort cheese and the bacon bits.
Madison Lintz: I feel like it has to be Du-par's, because I do love a good pancake. And of course, I do [put the syrup first]. That's the only way to do it. It allows for the most even spread of syrup. People can deny it and deny it all they want, but that's the truth.
Amy Aquino: Musso & Franks is so iconic. And it's close to where I live because I live in the Hollywood precinct area. Oh, El Compadre, of course. El Compadre is around the corner where I live. That's actually where we went after my first ride-along with Mitzi and Tim. So that is probably at the top of the list.
Note: Jamie Hector changed his answer multiple times before ultimately texting that his choice would be Musso & Franks as well!
Thanks for the Memories
As the show comes to an end, many of the principal figures in Bosch have become understandably reflective of their time on the series. For some, specific memories rose to the surface as particularly special moments. For others, it was an appreciation for a set that was uncommonly close-knit, with remarkably little turnover in the behind-the-scenes production crew.
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Titus Welliver and Madison Lintz[/caption]Troy Evans: ER was beautifully run. It was a smooth-running machine. You never had these things where you go to work at six in the morning and you'd still be there for the next morning. That didn't happen on ER. I expected a much rougher ride on Bosch because a small studio, the whole new thing going on and all that. But in fact it was very, very similar to working on ER. The scheduling was slick and everything worked. It was as happy a time as I've ever, ever had on set.
Madison Lintz: There were no horrible moments on set. I can't pick one moment. I mean, I guess when we were wrapping out people, there was one day where we were at Musso & Franks, and that was a very, very special moment, especially because it's not often that I crossed paths with some of those actors and got to work with them. And it's not often we're all on set altogether at the same time. So we just sat in the back of the restaurant where they weren't filming and chatted and took pictures and shared memories. And they made sure everyone stuck around, and we clapped for everybody and played videos and cried. So that was a really special day.
Lance Reddick: I had a lot of buyer's remorse afterwards after I agreed to do the show. I was hesitant because I'd already played a commanding officer in law enforcement, but then Eric Overmyer, who I knew, sent me a personal note and then we talked on the phone [about the role]. Because it was Eric, I made the leap. I started the show so worried that I made a huge mistake in my career. And then it ended up not only being one of the highlights of my career, but I feel like it's some of the finest work I've ever done. And to say I did it with people of this caliber makes me proud.
Michael Connelly: A scene that means the world to me is from the very beginning of the third season. That season opens with the kid, Sharkey, doing graffiti on a wall and he's basically the only witness to a murder. That is the first scene of the very first book I wrote that was published. When I wrote that back in the late 1980s, I never thought it would ever be filmed or anything like that. And so to be out there that night and see that happening was pretty amazing. It was an amazing night and still an amazing moment for me. Even though Harry Bosch is not in that scene, it stands out to me as the high point of this whole experience.
Henrik Bastin: What I think I’m proudest off is when people come up and say, it's such a good show, and it's the best adaptation of a book series that I’ve seen. I think that's because that's the one thing I promised Michael in the beginning, that I would try everything I could to not fuck up the adaptation of books that I personally love. So every time I hear that, I feel that we succeeded in that and we created a show that has been really entertaining to a lot of people. I thought we didn't reinvent the wheel or anything like that, but we took a well-established genre and we did it as good as the best ones that have come before us.
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