[IMG:L]Damian Lewis may have bright red hair and the devil’s name, but rather than be typecast, he has opted to play the ultimate underdog in this fall’s new TV line up. Starring in Life, Lewis plays Charlie Crews a cop falsely imprisoned for life who is granted release thanks to his lawyer’s efforts, and rejoins the force to find the real conspirators.
This new lease on life isn’t quite so easy. A settlement gives Crews vast resources, but his devil-may-care attitude rubs many people the wrong way. He is obsessed with his wife’s new husband, even taking side tracks from his legal mission to harass him.
With a new cop drama each week and larger character arcs to play over the run of the series, Lewis has plenty to work with.
Hollywood.com: With Charlie’s attitude, is this House with a badge?
Damian Lewis: I’ve seen House and I think Hugh [Laurie] does an extraordinary job in it. I think they’ve been on a formula for them which is extraordinary because it’s so contained each week, but it’s still compelling each week. I don’t know how they do it. So what I would say is that this has the potential for broader scope. It has a broader cinematic scope to it, this story, than House does.
HW: How do you like playing a cop?
DL: I love playing a cop because I go to the shooting range and I get to drive around in that fast car. It’s wish fulfillment. It’s the same way that James Bond is the guy that all the guys want to be and all the girls want to go to bed with. There should be an element of that with Charlie Crews. I say that hesitantly because I’m now playing him, but there should be an element of that.
HW: Did you spend any time with American cops? They’re so different from the police in England.
DL: They’re very different. They had some bad experiences having placements going around in patrol cars. They’re very reluctant now, but I was able to speak to LAPD officers directly. I’ve read a lot of Joseph Wambaugh and I’d read and looked at video footage. The History Channel has a thing called The History of the LAPD, and that kind of stuff. It’s secondhand stuff, but you get a good sense of it and then it’s your imagination that kicks in.
HW: It seems like your character is always eating. Did you come up with that?
DL: It was scripted, and I think that comes from there’s no fruit in prison. The slop that you get fed is terrible. It’s been almost 12 years and he hasn’t had any real nutrition. He’s desperate for a nice crunchy apple or a piece of grapefruit. I also think that symbolically fruit is sunny and upbeat. It’s great fun peeling an orange.
HW: How do you research a role like this? Can you draw on any part of your own life to play a guy who’s been in jail for 10 years?
DL: I did 10 years of boarding school. That was my incarceration!
HW: What are you looking forward to playing in the early part of the series?
DL: A lot of people have picked up on the idea of this quirky character and whether we’re seeing a lot of that on TV. It’s the same archetype as the cowboy. It’s basically the loner. The loner has overcome something. He has his own secret and he has an altered reality. He has a different view of the world and he can behave accordingly. It’s a godless world. He is his own God. There are no hierarchies. He doesn’t look for significance and meaning in everything the way that we live our lives, which in turn makes us anxious and neurotic. I think that is a fantasy state for a lot of us that we would love to be in, just to be free of the bullshit. I think what’s crucially important is that everything I do in the character and the way that he’s written continue to be firmly rooted in reality, in his reality.
HW: How far ahead have you thought of this character?
DL: I’ve thought far ahead. I was reading another article with Glenn Close, who’s doing her show for FX, and it was about how she likes to be in control of her material. She’s a classically trained actress and she likes to know her character arc–and she’s got no idea where her character is going. [She] said that she’s had to just give herself over to the writers and it’s been quite liberating. The writers don’t know where they’re going either. So actually, if you wanted me to tell you how the first season is going to end, no one could tell you, but do we know what’s going on in the next six or seven episodes? Do we know where that could then possibly take us? The answer is yes.
Life premieres Sept. 26, 2007 on NBC
