I have to be honest here: because I was so nervous to be talking to the man, the Voice, the bad-ass behind the Awesome Hawkins, I sort of freaked and forgot to turn on my recorder after he called me. Don't worry -- it was only for part of the first question, which was: "Before the Nuts campaign, were you aware that this sort of Save-Our-Show campaign existed?" Lenny James addressed this Jericho-specifically first. He said he knew that there were places on the 'net that were getting organized, but he never went to any of those sites. He didn't want to know either the good or the bad, because he needed to just focus on what he was doing on the show. However, he had no idea that so much save-our-show organization was happening and said that if anyone else says they did, they're not being completely truthful.
Lennie James: ...but I wasn't, in any way, shape or form, aware that they were as dedicated as they turned out to be, and I think anyone who says they were isn't quite telling the truth, really, I think it took us all by surprise.
Keckler: Really? This sort of save-our-show doesn't really exist in England at all, does it?
LJ: No, but there hasn't really been that sort of dedicated save-our-show campaign over here. I mean, there's been attempts, I've now learned, whether it was Roswell or whether it was Star Trek or whether it was Cagney and Lacy or Family Guy, but they haven't really been -- you know, when the fans set out on their campaign, they no more had a sense that they were going to win than any of these other people. I mean, I think it took everyone by surprise, not least our fans, truth be told. But I think that's a measure of the amazing job they did, really, is that they were kind of flying blind but they still went for it, and I think it was a measure of their passion for the show.
K: One thing that a lot of our Jericho posters seem to have in common is that we are completely obsessed with the show, but part of us is still wondering, "Why? What is it about this show that is so compelling?" Recently, I was at a grocery store -- I don't even know how this came up, I think I made a joke about growing beets in my bathtub -- and the checker said, "Do you watch that show, Jericho? I think it's the most important show on television!" So, what do you think it is about this show that has the power to compel and excite?
LJ: If I'm absolutely honest, I think I'm as kind of cynical about TV as you are. Also -- this was my first show in the states -- so I was also in kind of blissful ignorance about the way television works here. One of the things everybody says to you when you first arrive is that it can be really good, you have to sign up for five years (that's a little bit scary) -- all of those kinds of things. But also that it can get to the point where you really do feel like -- regardless of whether your show is good or not good -- it is just about the fact that people are tuning in, and then it can get to the point where you really are just selling soap.
I was dreading all of the ghost stories of working on American television, not in the least, the length. In Britain, a series is six episodes of an hour drama, maybe sometimes eight, but never twenty-two, so I was petrified of that. So, I came into it with a sense of blissful ignorance, but wanting all of it to be an adventure for me. And in all honesty, in order to answer your question: I don't know why Jericho seems to have hooked people the way it has hooked people and created the passion the way that it has. But I'm not sure that I want to know. I'm not absolutely sure it's my job to be that knowing or that aware. Whatever we've been doing individually or collectively -- as writers, or actors, or producers, or set, or anybody involved in the process of Jericho -- whatever we've been doing, I think us knowing what we're doing isn't necessarily going to help us.
Somebody else said to me the other day -- in trying to answer the same question about what is it about Jericho -- they said that the thing that comes off is that, as a cast and a company, we all look like we're having fun. We all look like we're enjoying each other's company and enjoying being together. I think that may well be -- if there is a secret to Jericho -- that may well be it. For whatever reason and for whoever takes responsibility for it, the gang that has been put together on Jericho is a gang that all are pulling in the same direction, and that may well be it. I'm sure it's more complicated than that but as I said, I don't want to know.
K: I'm so enthralled with the complications that have been brought up in the new episodes -- it just is so fascinating. And frankly, I have to tell you, if this show doesn't get a Season Three, I think I'm going to be more heartbroken than I ever have been for any show I've seen.
LJ: [laughs] That's very nice of you to say. I mean, you've hit on it really, but I think one of the big hooks of Jericho is that whole kind of "What if?" scenario, and the fact that people do have their own ideas of what will happen. And I'm not setting Jericho up to be anything other than what it is, which is, you know, a piece of good, well thought-out, well put-together TV and entertainment.
I think one of the brilliances of Jericho is that it's not the town that was hit. It's the town that is cut off from the places that were hit by the bombs, so there's a safety distance. You're not watching people's skin fall off, so there's a comfortability there, but once we've got that area of comfortability for everybody, then we start playing on the "what if," and the fears, and the hopes. At the heart of Jericho, it is about people trying to survive for all the right reasons. Once you remove people of all the status symbols of your car, of your house, of your iPod, of what telephone you have, of what your job is, who are we? Given this scenario, who would we be? And I think that's what's at the heart of Jericho. I mean, for me, that's how it is. That's how I approach my character: if this is the true scenario, who are you frightened you might be, and who do you hope you would be? And I think that's one of the questions people are asking themselves when they watch: if I'm in Jericho, I would really, really hope that I'm Robert Hawkins, but I'm really, really scared that I'd be the guy running down the street going, "It's all over! It's all over! We're all going to die" and would need a slap. And I think that's sort of the bottom line of what goes on when you watch Jericho.
K: For me, Hawkins and Jake are the entire show. The two of you as characters -- and also how you work together as actors -- it's amazing, the chemistry you have. There are so many times I'm yelling, "You need to team up! You need to team up!"
LJ: [laughs]
K: Did you know from the get-go that Hawkins would become, arguably, the most interesting character on the show?
LJ: No, I didn't. Like I said, I'm new to American drama. My thing is, I like playing guys who have a really interesting internal monologue. I don't usually like talking about acting or what my process is, and all those kinds of things, because I don't necessarily think it's helpful to talk about how I do my job. I'm just appreciative of people if they like the job that I do -- that's absolutely fantastic, and that's all the praise and all recognition I need. But I did arrive, not just as the new boy on the show, but also kind of new to the whole game. The parts that I'm known for playing back home -- and the parts I enjoy playing -- are the guys with a really good, or interesting internal monologue. Guys, who are not just at war or in conflict with people outside of themselves, but are also in conflict with themselves. When I arrived and I did all of my meetings, I was offered two pilots, and I had to make a decision between the two of them. On the page, the role in the pilot that I didn't take was much more fleshed out. In the pilot, you had a very, very clear sense of who this particular guy is, and what he could become. Although when the [Jericho] pilot was finally put together, I think you saw Hawkins in about six or seven scenes, in the script I got, he was in three scenes. But what really interested me about him is that he was not completely formed, and that meant that I would have some kind of role in creating his internal monologue. So that was the reason why I chose Hawkins.
Did I know that he was going to end up being what he ended up being? No, but for example, with the writers, one of my big conversations was about Hawkins's family. When we first arrived on the set to start filming the series of Jericho, after the pilot was picked up, the only set they had built for Hawkins was his basement -- they had nothing else built for him. So, when they started bringing in his family, I suddenly realized that this is not just an interesting backstory, this is a potential future story for him. Here's a guy, who five years ago walked out on his family to do the job that he had been trained to do. He left his wife, he left a son, who was eight years old, and he left a daughter, who was twelve years old, and he disappeared from their life. And he just went away. He's a single-minded guy on a mission and then, four years later, he turns up on their doorstep and he says to his wife, "I have my kids in the van and I'm taking them out of the city. You can come with me or you can't but I'm taking my kids" and then he takes them and he takes them to Jericho and he tells them, "We have to pretend like it's all happy family." And I said to the writers, "You've created that scenario. The scenario you've created is incredibly fertile, let's explore that." And to their credit, they started to explore it, and in exploring it, one of the things that it meant is that the Hawkins house, not only had to be built as a set, but until it was built as a set, we had about seven or eight different locations -- depending on where we were filming -- as to what was the Hawkins' house. The front room, at one point, was up in Studio City; when you walk out into the garden, you're on a lot at Warner Brothers; and when you go into the front garden, it's a house around the corner from our lot in Van Nuys. And it was spread out all over the place.
My journey for Hawkins is: keep making him more complicated, because once we got past the whole notion of, "Is he a goodie?" or "Is he a baddie?" -- which is the whole journey of the first season -- we're still left with this guy and what would he do next. And, "Who is this guy and what would he do next?" is still the interesting journey for me.
K: That's just it --we don't necessarily know everything there is to know about Hawkins, I mean, could he still go darker? Do you think Hawkins would have tortured the guy in "Casus Belli" if Jake hadn't stopped him?
LJ: Yeah, I do. I think that if he wouldn't have done, it's not a clever bluff, particularly. I think in those particular situations he would prefer not to torture the guy, but if he has to, then he will. I think that is Hawkins's dilemma and the interesting journey of him as a character. You know, he's in a situation -- particularly in the second season -- where he's now having to, not just risk his own life in order to fulfill his new mission, he's having to risk the lives of people that are not as well-trained as him but also that he cares about in a way that he would prefer not to care about. He's having to use his wife, but he would prefer not to use his wife.
In all that they went through in the first season, he has a kind of an awkward respect and camaraderie with Jake. But that doesn't mean, if needs be, that he wouldn't cut Jake to pieces. And that's his dilemma. It's about what he wants to do versus what he has to do. He's aware of what he is capable of and, to a greater or lesser extent on one side of his character, he's protecting everybody else from himself.
K: In one of the episodes of the new season when Jake and his brother are planning on assassinating Constantino and Hawkins gets wind of it...I was expecting Hawkins to play almost the father figure to Jake, but instead he says, "Yeah, go ahead and kill him, but be smart about it."
LJ: Yeah, exactly. I really liked that scene, and I like the way it turned out, and I liked the way I played it, because you know, we did different versions on it where he was softer on Jake, but we finally went for the one that was much more of a conflict. In a way, Hawkins was kind of like, "I'm disappointed in you, man -- I thought you understood." He's not interested in making Jake in his protégé. He's not interested in being that kind of Yoda. Because the thing is [as Hawkins], I completely understand revenge, I completely understand that this man may well deserve to die. I've met people who deserve to die, and I've killed people that deserve to die. But if you're going to do it -- because it's just about them being dead -- walk up to them quietly when they're at their ease and they're comfortable, because that's what his training tells him. His training is, "I don't want to make a show about it. I don't want it on the front page of any newspapers." When I -- when Hawkins has taken people out, he's walked up to them in the quiet of their everyday and he's slipped something in their drink, or he's walked up to them in the quiet of the day and he's done something to their car, or he's walked up to them in the quiet of their day and he's just put something sharp in the back of their neck. His mission is to do it, but his mission doesn't finish there. His mission is to get out without being discovered. What Jake wants to do is he wants everybody to know what he did, and as far as Hawkins is concerned, "That's not how I get the job done. But if you're going to get the job done in that way because this is your town, I can't be a part of it." And I think that line when he walks away from Jake and says, "I can't be a part of this," is really telling. Not just about where their relationship is, but possibly where their relationship is going to go.
K: In the torture scene, a couple of us became obsessed with the line, "Hold his knees." Now, his ankles were already taped and we're thinking, "What is he going to do to his knees?"
LJ: Yeah, not to get gruesome, but it's a thing that he says later to Jake -- and it was partly that there was the whole thing about torture and everybody's dealing with the waterboarding -- but it's something Hawkins says to Jake when they go outside. That it's the fear of torture that gets the job done, it's not necessarily the torture itself -- because once you've received the pain, you've gone past the fear of the pain. And therefore, once you've gone past the fear of the pain, you kind of go, "You did that to my leg and I'm still here, so unless you keep ranking it up..." On some levels, once you've inflicted the pain you're on a losing streak. So it can't really be about what Hawkins was going to do, it's more about building up the fear for Ned (who plays the police officer), the fear of what he could do. Now, if I then say to Jake or to anybody, "Hold his knees," the person who is being tortured is going, "Oh, my god -- what's he going to do now? Why does he need to hold my knees?" That's exactly what I want that guy to be thinking. It's the reason why I go and I look in his, uh --
K: In the drawers for all the stuff.
LJ: Right, in the drawers and closet, and I'm picking stuff out. And in the original scene when we were filming it, I was pulling out all kinds of things and sort of testing them.
K: Yeah, that was great because you pulled out the grater and then there's the Drano, and that's when I realized that it's the anticipation, it's the unknown. So I joked that Hawkins could pull out a peppermill and the guy would be saying, "Oh my god, what the hell is he going to do with the peppermill?"
LJ: Yeah, this guy needs to know that, a) I have done this before; b) I'm good at it; and c) that I intend to carry it out. Those are the things he needs to know.
K: Now, you and Jake are the bad-asses of the show; do you and Skeet -- or does anyone else on the set -- have any inside jokes about how you guys are sort of like the Dynamic Duo? Do you get ribbed about that?
LJ: [laughs] Yeah, sometimes they start singing the theme song to Batman or Superman when we come on, or they kind of play us off as I, Spy, and that kind of stuff. Or they joke about a spin-off show about Hawkins and Jake -- we get quite a lot of that. But also, we enjoy -- once we play out the scene -- we do the kind of joking of blowing the smoke off the end of our pistols and walking with our legs wide apart, we do all that stuff.
K: [laughs]
LJ: It is a lot of fun, but the other thing that's really good about working on Jericho is that Skeet could have been a whole other kind of animal, and we still would have got the job done, but it wouldn't necessarily have played out in the way that it has. Whatever Hawkins has turned out to be, in large part, it has been because of the encouragement and the cooperation of Skeet. He has been really forward in going, "Hawkins and Jake need to get together." Skeet still is the guy of the show, and he's kind of created the working environment -- it really does go from the top down -- and he's created a working environment where it's incredibly open, and his phrase, which I think is the most beautiful phrase about how we all work, is that we have a lot of fun taking what we do seriously. And that's how the job gets done. We take it all seriously, but we have a lot of fun.
We're very open. People are open to comments, not just about the journey of their character, but about other people's characters. Not in a threatening way, and not in a dominating way, but in an open, friendly, but serious way. And Skeet, more than anybody else, takes a real responsibility, not just for the journey of his character, but also for the journey of the show, and he has allowed people to follow that on. I love going to work on Jericho because it's a fantastic bunch of people to go and work with, but also, I really do love days when me and Skeet get to play the full potential of our characters.
K: And do you have some of the best lines of the show.
LJ: [laughs]
K: In that time between cancellation and the show being brought back, obviously we, the fans, were very invested, but how did you guys feel when it was cancelled? Did you go to the production staff and try and find out what they had planned for your characters if there had been another season?
LJ: The way the things played out chronologically is that, long before the season is nearing episode twenty-two, the writers, and the producers, and the creators are already having conversations about what the next season could possibly be. So, the writers are getting excited about it, and having to come up with storylines for the network, so they're talking to you about them, because they're excited. So, they'll go, "In the next season we're going to this," and you're having ideas about it as well, and you're going to the writers and saying, "Listen, if we get another season, I think we should explore this part," so everybody's kind of got a sense about what the next season could possibly be.
K: That's fantastic.
LJ: But what's also happening is that you're also aware, because of the way it all plays out -- and again, this was new to me, so I was learning as it kind of goes along -- that there are rumors and whispers about how it looks like you're coming back, or how it looks like you're not coming back.
I finished filming the season at the end of April, or something like that, and I went back to London while the rest of it played out. So, back in London, you start getting whispers from everybody -- you know, your agent or manager, or other castmembers, from their agents and managers -- about, "Oh, it's not looking good," or "It's looking good," and all that kind of stuff, and we finally got the decision on something like the seventeenth of May, the day for the upfronts, and that's the day when you know whether or not you're going to be back. So, on the seventeenth of May, I get the telephone call from my manager going, "What we thought was going to happen has happened, and you guys have been cancelled," so you're kind of prepared for the cancellation and, of course, I was disappointed and upset. I had conversations with cast members and friends, and I really was kind of gutted, you know? And of course you have feelings like, "I think this is a mistake. I think that they should have let it run more," because you know about the stories, and the way you were going to take it, and the job you were doing on the set, and the feelings you were getting from people.
Now, what was utterly amazing about the job that our fans did was that they, too, were hearing the rumors and whispers about what was happening, so they were planning to mount the early stages of their campaign, even if it was just, "What are we going to do if Jericho is cancelled?" They were putting things in sight to talk about it weeks before we were canceled, so once we were canceled, they were off and running. And what was utterly staggering, the most phenomenal thing about the job that they had done, was that from cancellation to being picked up, it was three weeks. It was just three weeks of the most well-thought-out, well-organized, beautifully-executed, polite, and classy campaign that you could have possibly imagined. On one day, they would jam the fax machine of the top executive at CBS with faxes demanding the return of Jericho. The next day, they would send a bunch of flowers apologizing for jamming their fax, but at the end of the note saying, "We're sorry we jammed your fax, here's a bunch of flowers," they said, "but remember, the reason why we jammed the fax is because we want Jericho back." And it was just beautiful and classy and well-mannered and just gorgeously put together -- it was a campaign that I doubt Hawkins could have orchestrated, but it would be one that he would have been deeply proud of doing, had he had the chance.
K: They're going to love to hear that! Now, you mentioned being back in London, and obviously you're British. Amazingly, you're British. What was your inspiration for the particular American accent you have on the show?
LJ: One of the things that's important to know about me is that I grew up, like most people in Britain, watching American television and listening to American music, so even at even a very jokey level -- all the people I know in England -- everybody has a different degree, whether good or bad, of a jokey American accent that they can kind of do.
One of the things that happened for me is, when I left drama school and started acting professionally, I would say out of my first seven jobs -- three of them, maybe four of them -- required an American accent, so I was kind of used to doing American accents on British stage. I did a number of August Wilson plays, and the last play I did before I left to come out to America was "A Raisin in the Sun." My first professional job was a play called "Short Eyes," which was set in an American prison, so I've played American quite a few times back home.
That being said, playing an American back home and playing an American here are two very different things. I worked with a dialect coach -- a fantastic dialect coach that was recommended to me and has not only become my coach but also a very good friend, a guy called Shawn Melton -- and we took what was the truth that Hawkins states when he first arrives to be the truth. When he first arrives, he says, "I am an ex-police officer from St. Louis," so we were on a kind of generic St. Louis accent. But because we were aware that this guy was kind of military or special services, it was the accent of a guy who may well have had his roots in St. Louis, but also was a guy who had traveled, and also was a guy who was used to working undercover -- so who are those people? Those are the people who don't want to stand out, those are people who just want to blend into the background, so we took his accent to be one that was basically from St. Louis, but -- over time and necessity -- had become kind of generic, had become kind of bland. He could be from anywhere.
Occasionally, what would happen is in scenes with his family, you got more of the sense that he was from St. Louis with southern roots, but when he was doing his job, he could be from anywhere. And we took examples of guys who grew up in army families. You know kids of army families, a lot of the time because they're traveling all over the place, their accent becomes, like I say, just kind of generic. It's from somewhere in America.
And I have to say, my first day filming the pilot -- and at that time, I wasn't working with a dialect coach -- but my first day at filming the pilot, I don't think in my whole career I've ever been as nervous as I was at that particular time. But again, friendly crew, friendly cast, and very inviting and supportive, and it was made very easy for me. One of the things I'm most proud of -- or the one I think I get the most kick out of -- is when people either come to visit the set or people stop me in the street and are very complimentary of Jericho or of my role in it, and when I start speaking, are surprised that I'm English.
That, to a greater or lesser extent, is a high compliment indeed, because they wouldn't be shy in saying it if I hadn't nailed the accent, and I'm glad that I have because that was my responsibility. I don't think of it as putting on an accent, I think about it as with any of my characters: how does this guy speak? So when I put on his jeans and his shoes and put on his gun, I also think about how I have to put on this guy's mentality and I have to think, "How does the guy speak?" and that's how I tackle it.
K: I don't know if this is just the phone line, but I note as Hawkins, your voice is comes out so incredibly deep, and sonorous, and soulful. And for a while they were running the "previouslies on Jericho" and Hawkins was always saying "the rain's going to come down on Jericho," and it was the way you said "Jericho," that sounded almost like gospel choir-y. The difference is amazing.
LJ: [Laughing] Well, thank you very much.
K: Do you think the strike and the dearth of new scripted episodes had any hand in getting Jericho aired sooner in the season, rather than later?
LJ: I don't know -- it's not something I'm aware of. What I do know is that we finished filming Jericho in September, and CBS released me to do a movie back home straight after, with one of the provisos being that I was back over here no later than the middle of November. So, from that, I would guess that there were thoughts that Jericho could be screened as early as November of last year, but to say that the writers' strike had no influence on it would almost certainly not be true. But what influence it had on it, I don't think anybody knows. And some people are saying that the strike could be of benefit to Jericho, and that could be a possibility, but equally, one of the things I have learned even on my short time over here is all things are possible and nothing is, so you can't really tell. We'll just have to wait and see how it plays out and hope that people come to Jericho, so that we get the chance to continue telling the story.
K: Yeah, I really hope that with reality shows and reruns being the only options that this will help drive people to the show.
LJ: Hope so, and I think that the way that they have Skeet's recap at the beginning of the first two episodes, leading you into it -- I've spoken to a few people who hadn't necessarily watched any or all of the first season and they've said that of the last seven that they could pick up and start watching from there, so I hope that that's true. By all accounts, people have been catching up in order to be ready for the new season, so that's good.
K: What was the movie you went back to the U.K. to work on?
LJ: It was a movie called Fallout, strangely enough, and it was a film version of a play I did at the Royal Court Theatre years ago. It was a character that I kind of helped create for the play, and when the movie came 'round, I got the chance to return to a character, which is something I've never really done, and also to do it in a different medium of movies. I think that's out spring of this year.
K: When you're in L.A., are there any particular foods you miss from back home?
LJ: My family are from the Caribbean, and I miss good West Indian cooking. And I cook mostly for the family and make as close to the food as possible. I'm finding places where you can get it in L.A., and even though it's not quite like home because the West Indian-Caribbean community here is not as large as it is back home, but it's getting there.
K: There are certain food things I miss about England but it's mainly junk food like Cadbury Swiss Rolls and Battenberg.
LJ: Yeah, I've got a friend in tomorrow who's coming over for a couple of days and he's bringing a kind of care package of stuff like that, but it's quite straightforward food-wise. Outside of family and friends and my football team -- my soccer team -- what I miss most is the Caribbean food.
K: Who is your football team?
LJ: My football team are Tottenham Hotspur, and I'm a season ticket holder. In London, I went every other week to the ground to see them play, and I miss that almost as much as family. But luckily a lot of the games have now got screened over here, so I don't miss it as much, but I do miss the live atmosphere of being in the ground and watching the guys run around.
K: Thank you so much, you've been incredibly generous with your time. Good luck, we're going to be pulling for you guys.
LJ: Thank you very much for your support of the show! Cheers, bye-bye.