Haysbert didn’t seem to mind the attention. After all, promotion was part of the deal: He was in town to talk about his show, “The Unit,” which after a short stretch of reruns begins airing fresh episodes 8 p.m.
Tuesday on WBBM-Ch. “For entertainment value alone people should watch it, but [also] for the content,” Haysbert said. “It’s very rare that you come up with a show that has such a spine of truth running through it.
And it offers our troops, and even our elite troops, some empathy and understanding.” That’s not to say that “The Unit” could necessarily serve as a recruitment tool for the Army. Though Blane and his team of Special Forces operatives see plenty of action and adventure as they undertake military missions around the world, the show is remarkably willing to depict the pressures the men deal with on and off the job.
“When we go on missions that are questionable, [the men] pay for it - morally, physically, emotionally,” Haysbert says. “People don’t seem to understand sometimes - the military doesn’t force policy, administrations do. And [the Unit works] at the behest of those administrations, and sometimes even corporations.
So to say that we’re pro-war or anything like that is really an error.” An episode in which the Unit had to face off against hundreds of armed locals in a foreign country - and didn’t complete their mission - demonstrated the show’s unpredictable storytelling. “There was a lot of wonderful action and compelling drama,” Haysbert said, “but it was probably the best anti-war statement you could make, by virtue of the fact that the guy that we were supposed to bring back to the United States gets killed.
So all the lives that were lost, all the fighting, everything we did that night, was basically for nothing.” That’s not to take away from Haysbert’s palpable admiration for those in uniform and especially for members of the Special Forces, whom he calls “the ultimate patriots.” “They’re willing to go out and sacrifice their lives in order to protect us,” Haysbert said.
“And it’s not just going to Afghanistan and Iraq - they protect ambassadors, they defuse bombs, they engage in a measure of espionage. I mean, these guys are like James Bond. And they don’t want any fanfare.
” What’s most surprising about “The Unit” is not the fact that it gives equal attention to the wives of these elite military men, or that it treats each Unit mission as a compelling morality play. It’s the fact that those somewhat unconventional elements don’t prevent the CBS series from holding on to a more-than-respectable 12 million viewers a week, despite fierce competition from “House,” “Dancing With the Stars” and, on occasion, “American Idol.” Still, Haysbert would like to see that number go higher.
“I think this is a show that should have 22 million viewers,” he said. But that kind of breakthrough has been elusive for the series, which has regularly landed in the Nielsen top 20 since its debut a year ago but has mostly flown under the media’s radar. “We’ve gone out of our way to have an anti-cool vibe,” executive producer Shawn Ryan told the Tribune last November, in reference to the show’s lack of buzz.
“These guys committed themselves to the life of a professional soldier, they’re risking life and limb for not a lot of money, they’re selfless. It’s not the most 21st Century, ‘cool’ concept.” There were also some growing pains that may have affected the show’s initial reception.
When “The Unit” premiered, there was an awkward disconnect between the home-front stories and the men’s missions, but the show’s executive producers, Ryan (creator of “The Shield”) and director and playwright David Mamet, have done an admirable job of knitting the two halves of the show together and filling out the women’s roles. Now the wives’ “missions,” whether it’s using unconventional means to help out the fiancé of a soldier killed in the line of duty or one wife taking a job recruiting for a private security firm - a controversial career to some people on the base - are every bit as knotty and intriguing as what the guys are up to. And the cast, including Haysbert, Regina Taylor as Blane’s wife, Molly, and the live wire Robert Patrick as Col.
Tom Ryan, is certainly one of the least hyped but most subtle and skilled on the small screen. Still, shooting the show can be quite intense, according to Haysbert. He recalled an episode in which his character had to lie in order to complete a mission in a foreign country: A local boy was told he’d be brought back to America if he helped Blane and his team, but the young character wasn’t.
“It just really destroyed me for a number of weeks, I’m still not over it,” Haysbert said. The sort of emotionally fraught, morally ambiguous storytelling on the show “takes its toll,” he added, and said with a rueful laugh, “Fortunately for me I’m not married right now. Sometimes I just have to come home, sit out and lie down my hammock and have a drink.
I’ve got to clear the energy of each episode. It’s very palpable, what we go through.” It makes him all the more appreciative of what people like Eric L.
Haney, a founding member of the Delta Force and one of the show’s writer/producers, have gone through, he says. And Haysbert’s quietly expressive face lets some pride shine through when he talks about the reaction that “The Unit” has gotten from members of the armed forces. “Military people say, ‘Thank you, thank you for showing what our men go through, and what the moms and the sisters and the brothers and the children go though.
’ That aspect [of military life] - television never covers that.” in The Unit | Permalink | Comments (7) He had the time to spare. This was long before he created the critically acclaimed FX drama “The Shield,” and more than a decade before he helped create the successful CBS military series “The Unit” (left).
Back then, the Rockford native was just another struggling writer, one who hadn’t actually landed a paid writing gig in years. One day, an on-court acquaintance named George stopped showing up. “He was gone for three months,” Ryan recalled in a November interview.
“He came back and I was like, ‘Where’ve you been?’ And he said, ‘I made this pilot for NBC. I don’t know any more, but I actually think it might be pretty good.
’.” The fellow player was George Clooney, the show was the runaway hit “ER,” and if nothing else, Clooney’s wild success after years of bad gigs and failed pilots made Ryan realize that success in the entertainment industry was indeed possible. Ryan’s start in Los Angeles was promising enough.
On his second day in L.A., where he had moved after graduating from Middlebury College, he was in the writers’ room at the sitcom “My Two Dads.
” Ryan had won a national award for the best comedy play written by a college student, and the reward was a glimpse at the inner workings of the TV industry. Things looked good back in 1990. Then he began penning spec scripts (scripts that TV writers use to get hired) and looking for steady work.
He ended up waiting five years - seven, if you count how long it took him to land a staff job on “Nash Bridges.” “It’s one of those seven-year overnight successes,” Ryan says with a laugh. But Ryan, who turned 40 in October, says that time of struggle was invaluable.
“It was the best thing in the world that could have happened to me,” he said. I was, like, technically a good writer, I could write funny dialogue and I could be clever, but my writing wasn’t deep and human. I just needed to grow up.
” In 2002, when Ryan finally debuted his own show, “The Shield,” the writing skills he’d honed during those scuffling years were blazingly apparent. The fierce, magnetic police drama starring Michael Chiklis quickly won the actor both an Emmy and a Golden Globe for his portrayal of rogue cop Vic Mackey. And in its most recent seasons, the drama, which has only grown in complexity and depth, has garnered even more praise for sensational guest stints from Forest Whitaker and Glenn Close.
But here’s the thing: Ryan has not only created a buzzworthy, edgy cable drama that keeps getting better, he also helped develop a major 2006 hit for CBS, the most mainstream of networks. When filmmaker and playwright David Mamet began developing the special-forces drama “The Unit,” the first person he turned to was Ryan. “He’s vastly respected in television by people at every level, significantly in this case, by people at the highest levels.
They trust him, as they should. He’s a great producer,” says Mamet, who calls Ryan “a great credit to the Midwest.” Well before he met Ryan, Mamet was a fan of “The Shield,” so much so that he directed an episode of the FX show.
“I’m sure I like what everyone else likes about it. “One finds oneself saying time after time, `You can’t do that.’” “If there’s something I’ve done well, it’s that I think I’ve been good at hiring a lot of really fantastic people around me,” says Ryan.
“I hire people who will challenge me.” “One of the marks of someone who’s obviously great in this business is that you can’t scare them,” Mamet says. “Anyone who’s yelling on a set - they don’t know what they’re doing and they’re yelling because they’re frightened.
Shawn is always calm, he’s always thinking of what the other person needs.” Indeed, the self-deprecating, articulate Ryan remains a down-to-earth Rockford guy at heart. And 16 years in L.
A. haven’t made him complacent. “The pitfalls are constantly around you,” says Ryan, a father of two who’s married to actress Cathy Cahlin Ryan.
“The pitfalls are repeating yourself. One of the big pitfalls is that you get good enough at your job that you know there’s an easy way out to something that will allow you to get home and have dinner with your kids. But deep in your heart you know it’s not the best artistic solution.
” Ryan, a die-hard Bears and Cubs fan, says his philosophy is, in sports parlance, “to leave it all on the field.” “I always believe that you shouldn’t oversell your work, and that you should let it speak for itself,” Ryan says. “And when you know the work’s going to speak for itself, it has to be as good as it can possibly be.
” Continue reading "Chicagoan of the year in television: Shawn Ryan of 'The Shield' and 'The Unit'" in An interview with...
, The Shield, The Unit | Permalink | Comments (6) “These military guys, in real life, they’re not the guy at the bar puffing out his chest and saying, ‘I can whip any [guy] in the bar.’ They can do that, they don’t need to say it. These guys committed themselves to the life of a professional soldier, they’re risking life and limb for not a lot of money, they’re selfless.
It’s not the most 21st Century, ‘cool’ concept. It’s such an old-fashioned idea of what these men and these women should be like. It’s not post-anything - it’s not post-modern, it’s not post-9/11.
” Ryan shared some casting news for “The Unit”: Ed O’Neill will guest on the show on Dec. 12 as a man flying in a private plane - and the pilot dies. When the show returns from its holiday break on Jan.
Macy will play the president of the United States. “The president calls [‘Unit’ leader] Jonas in and has a special one-man mission for him,” Ryan says. “It involves Jonas making contact with a rebel leader who wants to stage a coup and who wants American support.
The president wants Jonas to look him in the eye and see if this is a guy we want in charge of the country.” “That’s the benefit of working with David Mamet,” Ryan adds. “Ed and William, who’ve both worked with David a lot, will come and do the show for him.
” The downside of the show’s post-Christmas return is that it will be airing against the Fox heavyweight “American Idol.” Still, the show succeeded last spring, despite airing on “Idol”-dominated Tuesdays. “We did all right against ‘American Idol,’.
” he said. “I think anyone who wasn’t watching ‘Idol’ was watching our show.” Ryan also talked about the return of “The Shield,” which will come back in the first quarter of 2007, most likely around March.
“I liked how we ended [last season] with Vic [Mackey] determined to find the killer of one of his best friends,” fellow cop Curtis “Lem” Lemansky, Ryan says. “What will he do if he finds out that it was [fellow cop] Shane? Will Shane be able to distract him and convince Vic it was somebody else?
” Ryan adds that Forest Whitaker, who had an astonishingly powerful guest arc last season, will be back - “he’ll be in more than just the first episode, but he won’t be in the whole season.” Other guest stars include Franke Potente, who plays the daughter of an ailing Armenian crime boss toward the end of the 10-episode season, and Australian actor Alex O’Loughlin, who plays a cop who join the Strike Team in Episode 4 (“He’s hired to fill Lem’s spot, but there’s more to it than that,” Ryan adds cryptically). Shane Vendrell (Walton Goggins) will struggle with the fact that he killed Lem when he thought Lem might turn to the authorities and give evidence that would bring down the whole Strike Team.
“He learns that Lem wasn’t going to turn,” Ryan says. “It’s one thing to kill one to save the other three, but to learn that his friend wasn’t going to turn and it was a mistake - that exacts a heavy price.” In fact, the hunt for Lem’s killer takes up “so much oxygen” in Season 6’s 10 episodes that Ryan thought that the show needed one more season, which will air in late 2007 or early 2008, to wrap things up satisfactorily for all the characters.
“I feel very strongly about the 10 episodes that have been made” for Season 6, Ryan says, and he promises even more good stuff in the 13 episodes that will close out the series. “A lot of great shows stumble across the finish line near the end of their run,” he notes, “and we’re trying very hard to make sure that doesn’t happen with the show.” Photo: Dennis Haysbert as Jonas Blane on The Unit.
in The Shield, The Unit | Permalink | Comments (2) Continue reading "Three black men take the lead in hourlong dramas. Progress or coincidence?" in An interview with.
.., General television, The Shield, The Unit | Permalink | Comments (15) | TrackBack (0) Haysbert didn’t seem to mind the attention.
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