S1 Ep11: Melissa Leo, Detective and then Sergeant Kay Howard

[00:00:15] Welcome to Homicide Life On The Set, a podcast about the Emmy Award winning television show Homicide Life On The Street, with myself Chris Carr and Susan Ingram. Today we're joined by Melissa Leo, who played Detective and then Sergeant Kay Howard.

[00:01:11] Hello everybody and welcome back to Homicide Life On The Set. Today we're going to be joined by Melissa Leo, which is super exciting. Before we do that, Susan, how are you doing?

[00:01:21] Hey Chris, good, good. I'm also very excited about this because she obviously was, you know, one of the original cast members and yeah, great. So what were you going to say?

[00:01:33] Oh, I was going to say was we've been trying to get her on for a while. I'm so glad we managed to do it because I was worried at one point that we might not achieve it, but we've done it and I'm really, really pleased. And it's a very honest and sort of frank conversation. And it was, then I really enjoyed editing this one. I was just listening back and there were so many more things I was sort of picking up from.

[00:01:51] From, you know, because sometimes when you do a chat, you could have, especially for me, I'm like half running everything. So my mind sometimes moves away from what's going on just to check technical stuff. But I felt like when I was listening back to his edit, it was even more I was picking up than before. But no, I thought it was a really great conversation.

[00:02:07] I felt the same way. So she was, she was in 77 episodes from seasons one through five, 1993 to 97. And I do also want to thank her like you just did. Thanks Melissa for being, she was so candid and spent so much time with us. Really appreciate that.

[00:02:26] And also, I just want to say that as I listen, like you were talking about listening to our conversations, as I listen to our conversations, I know I say terrific and interesting too much, but please listeners stay tuned because this is a terrifically interesting chat with Melissa. It is really, it's really, it's good, entertaining and informative and interesting and personal.

[00:02:54] Yeah, yeah. And you learn a lot about, I think we learn a lot about her process as well as an actor. So if there's anybody out there who has aspirations to act and things, I think you'll get a lot from this as well.

[00:03:05] Yes, the whole craft discussion, a lot of craft discussion for sure.

[00:03:08] Well, without further ado, let's go into the interview and we'll join you on the other side.

[00:03:35] Hey Susan, so good to make contact with you again through the machines and apparatus.

[00:03:41] Great to see you. Yeah. So yeah, so let's just jump, jump into it. What led you to acting? And then how did you land on homicide?

[00:03:52] Well, one of the reasons I like to do an interview about my work is it makes me think about things.

[00:03:58] And so having been interviewed in the last 10, 12 years more than ever before really, I realized I was four years old, 1964.

[00:04:12] And in the last 10, 12 years later, the city of New York had rented what is now the public theater in New York City to a man and his wife, Peter and Elka Schumann that had the bread and puppet theater.

[00:04:24] And my brother and I went to puppet workshops and played with clay and paper mache and built anything we could dream of.

[00:04:32] And then they said, do you want to come be a part of the play?

[00:04:35] Well, I didn't know what a play was, but I was really excited and I practiced with these grownups.

[00:04:42] It wasn't children's theater. It was very serious political theater.

[00:04:48] I was really excited to play with these grownups and this master conducting all of us so seriously, like it mattered.

[00:05:03] You had to be the puppet.

[00:05:05] I thought, oh my God, that's so comfortable.

[00:05:07] I don't have to be myself anymore.

[00:05:11] As a small child, eventually I found out it was called acting.

[00:05:15] And that some people could get paid to do it.

[00:05:18] If you put yourself through hell and remain there, regardless, you could make a living doing that.

[00:05:26] Did you say four years old or fourth grade?

[00:05:29] Four years old.

[00:05:30] Wow.

[00:05:31] And you had a taskmaster directing you at four.

[00:05:35] Well, Peter was and people will talk about, I don't know, harsh, critical, exacting.

[00:05:44] It's actually a quality that a director has to have.

[00:05:48] And I love being told what to do.

[00:05:50] Everybody's always surprised to hear that about me.

[00:05:54] Just not by an idiot.

[00:05:57] And sometimes to get the whole company to do what you have to do, you have to fucking get hard.

[00:06:09] Because people listen to that.

[00:06:12] It's a quality in making art that's forgivable and is different than polite society.

[00:06:21] Do you remember the first character you really connected with as you were learning and even learning what acting was?

[00:06:27] Everyone I've ever played, they're all me.

[00:06:30] I'm there.

[00:06:31] It's different parts.

[00:06:32] I'm there.

[00:06:34] Not so much different parts of me.

[00:06:36] I show up regardless.

[00:06:37] All the molecules, maybe in different places.

[00:06:42] And the character comes in with the costume designer.

[00:06:47] Huge part of Kay Howard.

[00:06:49] Yeah.

[00:06:50] The original costume designer, Van.

[00:06:52] Huge part of who she was.

[00:06:53] Yeah.

[00:06:54] We got to talk about that.

[00:06:55] So what was your connection?

[00:06:56] Did you know Tom or Barry or?

[00:06:59] I knew nobody.

[00:07:00] Yeah.

[00:07:00] How did you get there?

[00:07:01] I was super surprised to hear Kyle talk about knowing where the show was going to go.

[00:07:07] And knowing Tom.

[00:07:10] This is such a wonderful podcast.

[00:07:12] I've learned so many things.

[00:07:14] I have a few more episodes to listen to.

[00:07:16] It's just delightful.

[00:07:17] It's fascinating.

[00:07:17] It's interesting.

[00:07:19] It's great, Susan, that it's you that's leading it because the technical aspect of it is so much a part of.

[00:07:26] Anyway.

[00:07:27] No, I knew nobody.

[00:07:29] I went to a dollar a day audition.

[00:07:34] And by that, I mean, you know, you'd go someplace sometimes at that point in my life with pennies in my pocket.

[00:07:42] Get myself to the audition.

[00:07:43] The audition was in Lou DeGyma's New York office.

[00:07:49] And as I left, I saw Clark Johnson, who had also been called in sort of last minute.

[00:07:54] Little did we know we were the last two to be cast in a show that had been building for some time.

[00:08:00] Yes.

[00:08:01] Wow.

[00:08:02] And at the 11th hour, somebody, I think Barry and Tom together, but I wasn't there, said, why don't we make one of them a girl?

[00:08:11] Right.

[00:08:12] And I went in and read for Kay with a script written for a guy.

[00:08:17] Oh, interesting.

[00:08:18] Okay.

[00:08:19] No change.

[00:08:21] What changed in Kay from the time I concepted her as a character with the various departments and where it led to, I'm learning so much about those steps through the seasons listening to the podcast, too.

[00:08:38] So you didn't have, and I know a lot of people are like, I don't remember, that was 30 years ago.

[00:08:43] It's like, I know, I have that problem, too.

[00:08:45] But when you went in, was there anything to hold on to as far as character description in the sides or in the script or, you know, in the parts you were reading?

[00:08:54] Yeah, like any other character.

[00:08:56] The thing about it is, is men and women are a people, all of us.

[00:09:01] And women get written as women, by and large.

[00:09:06] And men get written like all kinds of people.

[00:09:11] Good point.

[00:09:13] Good point.

[00:09:14] And so was there the description of the male cop that you were going to play?

[00:09:21] Was it sort of like all business, straight ahead?

[00:09:23] You know, do you remember?

[00:09:25] There's two things that I can answer the question with.

[00:09:29] One is the creative side of it.

[00:09:30] And inventing her with Tom and Barry and the rest of the actors and the costumes and Betty and artists and in the hair and makeup trailer.

[00:09:43] Inventing her for that first episode.

[00:09:47] So Kay Harrod's hair, which is just a little much, in my opinion.

[00:09:53] From you it's much.

[00:09:55] It's because I said, oh, we never, you know, whatever.

[00:09:59] We have a lot of comments about our own work, I hope.

[00:10:02] But I said to Barry, I said, what do I do with my hair?

[00:10:06] And Levinson looked at me and said, if I had a head of hair like that, I'd have it out all the time.

[00:10:13] He was my first director.

[00:10:15] He's not an idiot.

[00:10:16] Yeah.

[00:10:16] And I did what he said.

[00:10:17] Yeah, it became very iconic in many ways, that look she had.

[00:10:20] Yeah.

[00:10:20] I guess so.

[00:10:22] I guess so.

[00:10:22] I love it when I watch it and at some points you just like, you get tired of it and you tie it in a knot or you put it back.

[00:10:28] And, you know, it's like, yeah, I feel that.

[00:10:32] I totally understand what you do when you have hair.

[00:10:34] You've always worn it long.

[00:10:36] Let me get it out of the way.

[00:10:37] Right now it's getting out of the way.

[00:10:39] No.

[00:10:39] And there's rules about hair for police.

[00:10:44] Right?

[00:10:46] Like the military?

[00:10:47] Yeah.

[00:10:48] Yeah.

[00:10:49] So for beat cop, she's got to have her hair up above her collar, just like a boy.

[00:10:54] In Baltimore, in 19, but about that it was we started, in the guidebook, the guideline, the rules of being an officer of any rank in the Baltimore PD, there were dress codes.

[00:11:15] And so eventually I did shave the back of my head.

[00:11:22] So when Kay would pull up her hair, she'd have her hair.

[00:11:26] She could have her hair above her collar easily and just tie it.

[00:11:31] It was long enough I could just tie it in a knot.

[00:11:32] And you don't want it all over the place when you're running into any kind of action, which is not likely for the homicide cops.

[00:11:39] But they had us do it more and more.

[00:11:41] Then I would have Kay tie her hair up when she'd go out.

[00:11:45] And I learned to play with it and not just follow that one direction, which is so darling of very to say.

[00:11:52] But in the end, I'm glad I found different ways of using it as a woman in her position.

[00:11:59] There never had been before Kay Howard a female homicide detective in the history of the Baltimore PD.

[00:12:08] It's a dark history of the police department.

[00:12:12] There is not equality there.

[00:12:16] The ERA has not passed.

[00:12:20] And so there's all kinds of things.

[00:12:23] So that was something Van pointed out to me in the beginning of creating the costume for her.

[00:12:29] So I could fly in the face of the dudes and get all tight sweatered on it.

[00:12:35] Or I could wear blue jeans, which a lot of the actual detectives said they wish they could wear blue jeans to work.

[00:12:41] But slacks and a jacket was what the real book said.

[00:12:47] And so I wore what they wore.

[00:12:50] Yeah.

[00:12:51] Not because it was her choice, but because she's working with all these dudes.

[00:12:55] And it's funny, in re-watching a bunch of episodes, well, I'm re-watching everything all the time,

[00:13:00] but I'm re-watching many of your sort of specific episodes.

[00:13:04] And I was sitting there the other night thinking, I wonder who came up with the suit and tie thing.

[00:13:08] It never occurred to me you didn't have to come up with it because that was the rule for the men.

[00:13:13] Suit and tie was the rule.

[00:13:14] So you got a suit and tie.

[00:13:16] Yeah, it wasn't a suit.

[00:13:17] You didn't have to have matching pants and jacket.

[00:13:19] It was a jacket and slacks.

[00:13:22] Right, this sport jacket and the slacks.

[00:13:25] Because there were no women, that was the dress code for the men, so that became your dress code.

[00:13:30] That had literally never occurred to me.

[00:13:32] I think a lot of people didn't.

[00:13:33] I think a lot of people assumed it had something to do with Kay's sexuality.

[00:13:37] Oh, that never occurred to me.

[00:13:38] Which I never thought of.

[00:13:39] The one thing I asked them was that we not investigate the one female sexuality in the show.

[00:13:46] Let me be a police.

[00:13:47] We all got conversations with Barry and Tom in the very beginning.

[00:13:52] It was a really beautiful thing that they did.

[00:13:54] And each of us, together with the partner we'd been assigned, went in and talked to them and gave suggestions about the backstory and things like that.

[00:14:05] And that was a very interesting part of it.

[00:14:08] And sometimes in television, the story would meet up with where we had thought it was going and sometimes not.

[00:14:15] I was just saying to Susan off air just before we started about one of the interesting things about your relationship with Bo is it was very platonic, which was quite refreshing because a lot of TV shows, there's a pressure that the male and female have to kind of get together at some point.

[00:14:32] And it was really nice that amazing relationship you had with Bo on screen.

[00:14:36] Tom Fontana did everything in his power to keep Kay Howard on television in spite of my desire to work with them to tell a different story.

[00:14:50] And I became, it was, you know, it became, yeah.

[00:14:56] It's how I left in the end.

[00:14:58] I didn't leave.

[00:14:59] I was raising a child.

[00:15:00] I couldn't walk away from work.

[00:15:02] Didn't matter what the work was.

[00:15:07] They cut the cord and then reported to the press that I had left the show.

[00:15:13] I never would have left the show.

[00:15:14] Best thing I ever did.

[00:15:17] Interesting.

[00:15:18] But being the woman, just like Susan must have experienced, I was so excited to talk about this with her.

[00:15:24] You know, I mean, what was the script supervisor?

[00:15:27] I kept on trying to remember her name.

[00:15:29] Lee.

[00:15:29] Lee Bigelow.

[00:15:30] Lee Bigelow.

[00:15:31] How could you forget Bigelow?

[00:15:32] Oh, my God.

[00:15:34] Yeah.

[00:15:35] That was, and the, just a brief moment of eye contact passing one another in our various jobs would be soul saving.

[00:15:49] It's difficult to work around a bunch of guys when you bring your vagina to work.

[00:15:55] I try to leave her at home.

[00:15:57] But along she comes, and people make judgment when you have an opinion.

[00:16:03] So you can stand in the room and not have an opinion.

[00:16:07] But where's the fun in that?

[00:16:08] Yeah.

[00:16:09] It was, yeah.

[00:16:11] Through my whole career, it was always an issue.

[00:16:16] So you have to be, you know, I ended up with a mouth like a teamster, like a trucker, you know?

[00:16:22] And I had to stand toe to toe and defend myself in certain situations.

[00:16:27] And, but you also have to have, I mean, I had to have a sense of humor about it.

[00:16:33] Otherwise, I would have killed somebody.

[00:16:35] So, so, so, so, you know, let's backtrack a little to, yes, there weren't any women homicide detectives in Baltimore at the time.

[00:16:44] I think they, I think David Simon mentioned in his book there was one detective, but I want to say she was in another division.

[00:16:50] She wasn't in homicide.

[00:16:52] Another shift, I think.

[00:16:53] Yeah.

[00:16:53] And yes, perhaps not homicide detective.

[00:16:56] Perhaps it's different, maybe?

[00:16:58] I don't know.

[00:16:59] Yeah.

[00:16:59] We think a different division or different shifts.

[00:17:01] I have to go back and look at the books.

[00:17:03] Yeah.

[00:17:04] So your, so your character is written for a man.

[00:17:06] You come in, you put on a suit because that was the rule book for the male detectives.

[00:17:11] How do you pull out?

[00:17:13] Because you're not a male detective, right?

[00:17:16] You have to come at it with your suit, but as a female detective in the, you know, in a 999% male dominated, not just society, but job.

[00:17:29] How do you pull her?

[00:17:31] Where does she come from?

[00:17:32] Where does she come from?

[00:17:33] You know?

[00:17:34] Well, yeah, I, I have some problems with Kay as I go back and watch her now.

[00:17:45] Things that I, 30 years later, are, are learning about how to be heard in the world.

[00:17:58] And I am who I am and I'm pretty happy with who I am.

[00:18:04] And I also, I think we're here to find our best selves.

[00:18:09] I think Kay makes a mistake that I made.

[00:18:11] And when I did Frozen River with Courtney Hunt.

[00:18:15] Great movie.

[00:18:16] Great film.

[00:18:16] First we did a short.

[00:18:16] Everybody to watch that film.

[00:18:17] Great film.

[00:18:19] Oh my God.

[00:18:20] Amazing film.

[00:18:21] And we did a short nobody's ever seen on the same subject.

[00:18:24] The marvelous, amazing Misty Upham, myself and Courtney.

[00:18:29] And she said to me two brilliant directions and all the wonderful, amazing things Courtney accomplished with that work.

[00:18:38] And one of them was when we did the feature.

[00:18:42] But when we did the short, she said, Melissa, you keep on walking around like you have to be this tiny little woman.

[00:18:47] And you keep on walking around.

[00:18:49] Just, just be there.

[00:18:55] And Kay's trying too hard to meet them.

[00:18:59] Interesting.

[00:18:59] Yeah.

[00:19:01] And it's not working for her.

[00:19:04] And it didn't work for me in the show.

[00:19:07] And it's an interesting tale in that way.

[00:19:11] It's not the tale that's being told.

[00:19:13] But it is the tale that can be seen in hindsight.

[00:19:16] Interesting.

[00:19:17] So as yourself and as the character, you were, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but trying too hard.

[00:19:24] I took on this, I'm a little sister.

[00:19:26] Right.

[00:19:28] Yeah.

[00:19:28] In life.

[00:19:29] Melissa is a little sister.

[00:19:30] And that thing of trying to keep up with, right?

[00:19:33] Yeah.

[00:19:35] To hear the guys talk about getting together at the waterfront.

[00:19:38] I had a three-year-old child back at the hotel.

[00:19:44] I did not go to the waterfront.

[00:19:46] The couple of times I tried to, I don't do that.

[00:19:51] I never have.

[00:19:52] I don't know how to do that.

[00:19:53] And to be with it, you have to keep up with it.

[00:19:58] And so pretty early on, it was pretty clear that Kay and Melissa would have a pretty isolated life in homicide.

[00:20:11] Interesting.

[00:20:11] And my memories of it are memories of the crew, of being there on that set and working in that way.

[00:20:24] In the early shows, I keep on seeing everybody way at the back of the room doing their business because of this shooting all around.

[00:20:34] And so we'd be there.

[00:20:36] We wouldn't be asked to go sit in a trailer and wonder what was going on on the set.

[00:20:39] Yeah.

[00:20:40] Anyway, I digress to other parts of the chat.

[00:20:44] How do I go there?

[00:20:46] Like any character, I take what's given to me.

[00:20:49] I work with those departments.

[00:20:50] We got dressed.

[00:20:51] I'm wearing slacks.

[00:20:53] Nobody ever came to me and said, hey, Melissa, let's change these clothing.

[00:20:57] I said, come in and tell us what you want to do in the show.

[00:20:59] And I said, well, I want a woman on television who doesn't go to bed with every other boy because she's the one girl on the set.

[00:21:06] I want it to be about her doing her work.

[00:21:09] What her sexuality is or any of that is just, you know, it's nobody's business.

[00:21:14] Just, you know, if what we're seeing is these people doing that.

[00:21:18] Anyway, and then eventually as we went along, I can't remember if it was the second or the third season, that I realized the guys were going upstairs without any makeup on.

[00:21:30] I think it was the second.

[00:21:32] You were very, very, very short time did you have a little makeup on.

[00:21:36] Very first season a little.

[00:21:38] Yeah.

[00:21:38] And then by the second season that was gone.

[00:21:40] What's this difference?

[00:21:42] Yeah.

[00:21:42] And when's she getting her lipstick on again?

[00:21:44] I keep wondering in the early shows.

[00:21:46] Like what it, they softened it.

[00:21:49] The first show is she's got much too much makeup on, but bless Bebe's heart, she's the only girl to do.

[00:21:56] So why not have a party?

[00:21:58] But that softens.

[00:22:00] And she does actually a great job in the, in when she did put the makeup on.

[00:22:04] I adored those people.

[00:22:06] I think they're marvelous, marvelous artists in their field.

[00:22:11] But I just felt it was an opportunity in the United States of America to go in front of, you know, a television audience, network television audience and be a human being.

[00:22:22] And look like a real person, right?

[00:22:24] Not look like a model, right?

[00:22:26] Yeah.

[00:22:26] There's a standard for, there's a standard for women.

[00:22:29] And very clearly, the powers that be, we're asking for that.

[00:22:33] And Tom, bless his heart, he fought and fought for Kay.

[00:22:38] Yeah.

[00:22:38] And I'm just, just a personal, thinking the same thing, you know, working as a woman in a man's world, there was always the feeling that, you know, you talk about Kay, you know, being the little sister and trying hard or trying to be, trying to be as good as or better than them.

[00:22:54] But, but really, as a woman in a man's world, especially in those situations where you're the only one, you have to be twice as good to be just as good.

[00:23:03] I mean, you just do.

[00:23:05] You have to be twice, for me, twice as much of a hard ass, twice as much of being able, yes, I can pick the camera up.

[00:23:11] This was on shows where I had these ginormous cameras.

[00:23:14] Yes, I can pick the camera up on the sticks and take it across the freaking prairie.

[00:23:17] You know, I mean, I can do that.

[00:23:20] Um, so it, it, it, it does become trying to balance.

[00:23:24] I'm just doing my job, but I also have to prove over and over and over again, I can do my job.

[00:23:30] Did, did, did you feel like Kay Howard had to do that?

[00:23:33] And that that came through in the acting?

[00:23:35] I have to prove over and over again, I can do this job.

[00:23:38] Or did you just sort of settle into being, just being a homicide detective?

[00:23:42] I don't know.

[00:23:44] I, I'm not sure.

[00:23:45] I, I, I'm not sure.

[00:23:46] Cause there's a difference in, in the work of it.

[00:23:51] Right.

[00:23:52] Cause you can't really compare the things you're doing in the camera department to the things that actors do for work.

[00:23:58] Right.

[00:23:59] Right.

[00:23:59] It's a weird notion about it.

[00:24:02] But, um, because it opened it up in the beginning to us to invent our own backgrounds, I kept on thinking I was invited to continue the conversation.

[00:24:15] But that's not how television in the United States of America works.

[00:24:19] There's just too many people involved in the decision making.

[00:24:23] So, you know, when I use the F word on the Academy Awards, I have to immediately apologize to everybody because I know what the rules are on network television.

[00:24:35] And I learned what those rules are in part because I lost my job on homicide.

[00:24:41] And, you know, if I'd have been smart enough to go to them and say, oh, you know, I think Kay should wear a little makeup.

[00:24:47] You know, like maybe Russert's an influence turn out.

[00:24:49] Mm-hmm.

[00:24:50] But that's just not, I wasn't thinking in that direction.

[00:24:53] You get the scripts on this fifth or sixth or seventh day of a seven-day shoot for the next episode.

[00:25:02] I'm not included in meetings.

[00:25:05] It's very interesting to hear that Andre and Kyle knew that the box episode was coming to them, or at least Kyle did.

[00:25:16] I heard him say that in the interview.

[00:25:21] And so I was totally in the dark, you know, just trying to keep up with the learning my words and showing up and taking care of my kid.

[00:25:35] And I understand the details of the cases better now re-watching the show than I really did in doing it.

[00:25:45] You know, you just, it's acting is a very odd kind of a creature of, you know, and you get, and in television acting, when you play the same character over a series of years, I grow and change.

[00:26:04] Melissa grows and changes, has better and worse her experience, right?

[00:26:10] And often in television, once they find the gadget, the rooftop for the romantic emotional scenes, they use the rooftop.

[00:26:18] Immediately when you read the header in the, you know, by the third, fourth season, you read the header of the rooftop, you know you're going up for the emotional scene.

[00:26:27] Oh, out on the pier, the rooftop on the pier.

[00:26:29] That's where people want to confront each other about things.

[00:26:32] Is that what you mean?

[00:26:32] The rooftop of our set.

[00:26:34] Yeah.

[00:26:35] Interesting.

[00:26:36] Chris, go ahead.

[00:26:36] I feel like I'm monopolizing the question.

[00:26:38] Not at all.

[00:26:39] You talk, maybe it might be interesting to chat about what it's like sort of being a working actor on Hummer's Eye in terms of like, what's the day-to-day like?

[00:26:50] So you mentioned just earlier, you've got a script for next week's episode whilst you're using the previous episode, which obviously for quite a few people listening who don't do acting, that's probably kind of a mind-blowing idea because you've got to learn a lot of stuff.

[00:27:01] So maybe you could talk a little bit about what was a typical day or week on an episode like on Hummer's Eye, if there was a typical week.

[00:27:09] Well, there was the really exciting thing when we knew that the next episode was going to be published.

[00:27:43] Right.

[00:27:45] And then, of course, I think it was a little bit more of a script for the producers, which is not exactly a script read for actors.

[00:27:54] We could talk about that.

[00:27:55] But we never did any of that in it.

[00:27:57] We'd just get them or read them ourselves, you know, and begin to get familiar with what the dialogue was going to be, how much of it, how many days we would be working in the coming episode, all of those kinds of things.

[00:28:11] And, of course, what the case was and who would be working with them.

[00:28:41] And, of course, DP's cinematographer operators, there was a different kind of a beast.

[00:28:49] And there's something so almost like Bread and Puppet with Peter Schumann, working with Wayne Ewing, you know, like just be there.

[00:29:00] And the thrill and excitement of that and Alex kind of balancing between that and Jean, as everybody's talked about, including Jean speaking of his own intention, the smoothness with which Jean could then accomplish.

[00:29:17] And then the beauty of being directed by him while he was shooting us.

[00:29:22] It was really almost all we needed.

[00:29:25] The directors.

[00:29:26] The directors.

[00:29:27] Oh, my God.

[00:29:27] The people that we got an opportunity to work with that had worked, that had not worked much, that were just beginning, that had established beautifully.

[00:29:38] I've been trying to remember the wonderful image.

[00:29:41] He came back a few times.

[00:29:42] The first few years, people didn't come back.

[00:29:44] They did one episode and that was it.

[00:29:47] But there was one director who would not sit by the monitor.

[00:29:50] He wanted to be in the room with all of us in the squad room and would hide underneath desks and stuff because he had worked long enough that there weren't monitors when he started.

[00:30:01] And he wanted to see what the camera wasn't seeing.

[00:30:04] What the camera was seeing, he would see.

[00:30:06] He wanted to see what else he did.

[00:30:08] Was it Peter Medak, by any chance?

[00:30:11] The Hungarian?

[00:30:12] Yes.

[00:30:12] Yeah.

[00:30:13] Yes.

[00:30:14] Exactly who it was.

[00:30:15] Yeah.

[00:30:16] Medak.

[00:30:16] Exactly.

[00:30:17] Amazing.

[00:30:18] Sweet man to work with.

[00:30:19] He's terrific.

[00:30:21] Yeah.

[00:30:21] Yeah.

[00:30:21] He was one.

[00:30:22] I commented when we talked to him.

[00:30:24] He was definitely a crew favorite.

[00:30:27] He was just a delightful.

[00:30:30] And he just brought sort of a very authoritative but calm.

[00:30:35] Did you get that sense?

[00:30:36] He had sort of a calming influence, I think, somehow.

[00:30:40] Because he never got ramped up, you know?

[00:30:42] He never got, you know, he was great.

[00:30:45] Yeah.

[00:30:46] Yeah.

[00:30:46] And he's also working with so many, I can see better now, working with even more directors over the years.

[00:30:53] You know, that influence of the person in that seat is often unrecognized by the person in that seat, especially nowadays.

[00:31:06] And Peter had done enough of it that he knew what his seat was, what his place in it was.

[00:31:11] He wasn't, you know, overly excited about things.

[00:31:14] And some of the young people we worked with, it was great to work with their overexcitement about things, too.

[00:31:20] But that sure, steady hand then makes everyone else assume that they're a sure, steady hand.

[00:31:27] Right.

[00:31:27] And we all worked together then in that way.

[00:31:31] Having the different directors, geez, what a lesson in that.

[00:31:33] What a lesson, finally.

[00:31:35] What a cavalcade of amazing talent.

[00:31:37] It was just amazing.

[00:31:39] Out of interest, just because I direct a little bit myself and have aspirations to do more of it.

[00:31:43] Obviously, it's difficult for directors coming into a show of an established cast to, you know, have established their characters and things.

[00:31:50] So what is it that's good or bad for a director to do when working with established cast on a show like Humicide?

[00:31:56] What would be a good thing and what would be terrible?

[00:31:59] The terrible thing, fairly obviously, would be to try and reinvent the thing.

[00:32:05] And the good way to work with it, we work with any actor in any circumstance, I think, is you want to make observation of what the actor is bringing.

[00:32:13] The director has worked inside their head and with the viewer, the cinematographer, about what it will be.

[00:32:23] The conversation with the actor is sometimes non-existent or too many words, but to observe what the actor is bringing, which is what we were doing because we had to shoot so quickly.

[00:32:44] I love shooting quickly like that.

[00:32:47] I can move a set along like nobody's business because of homicide.

[00:32:51] To my detriment also, I'm like, no, let's move along.

[00:32:54] You know, I'm like another, one more, one more.

[00:32:57] My hair wasn't quite, you know, but whatever.

[00:33:02] Yeah, yeah, there's a lot of, that's very sticky conversation do's and don'ts because there's also, there's a school that says there is no don't.

[00:33:12] And there's a truth in that.

[00:33:13] It depends on if you're working with idiots or you're working with competent players.

[00:33:18] And it's really in the end, maybe in anything, you know, if the, if the, I don't know why I always bring this one up, but the dental hygienist doesn't have a good somebody there sucking the, you know, it's what it's leave the room.

[00:33:34] I'll do it myself.

[00:33:37] It brings back memories out of tooth extracted recently.

[00:33:40] I actually just went to the dentist.

[00:33:42] I actually was just at the dentist yesterday.

[00:33:46] Maybe it's why I bring up the hygienist because it's, it takes acting from this.

[00:33:52] And it's like, we all experienced the dental hygienist.

[00:33:57] So, so, so, so I'm going to back up a little bit again, because we haven't talked about that.

[00:34:01] How different or challenging was it for you?

[00:34:05] And have you ever worked in environment, you know, with cameramen and I'm going to say men, because they were all men, Wayne Ewing and John Saganczak and Alex Akashevsky and the style that had been developed for the way they wanted the show to look, which ended up being very, many people have said very freeing for the actors.

[00:34:24] But also, you were always had to be on because you never knew when that camera was going to swing around at the end of the scene with, even if it was just the two people or six people or all eight people.

[00:34:38] How, how, how was that?

[00:34:40] Did you like it?

[00:34:41] Did it take getting used to?

[00:34:43] It's how you act on stage.

[00:34:45] Right.

[00:34:46] And one of the things I've noticed in my working with cameras over the years and various sizes and kinds of cameras doing various different sizes and kinds of films is that there are actors who do better when the camera comes on them.

[00:35:07] There's actors who don't act when the camera's not on them.

[00:35:11] Sometimes that's better.

[00:35:15] I get so little practice on any scene I'm shooting.

[00:35:21] I use every inch of practice that I can.

[00:35:25] And for me, it was a joy.

[00:35:27] I'd rather be on the set shuffling through Howard's papers in the background than in a trailer eating Tootsie Pops.

[00:35:37] I, I, I'm there to do my work.

[00:35:39] I think it's interesting.

[00:35:40] I think it adds a texture.

[00:35:42] There's this, there's this thing, you know, all these shots where the other people in the room end up not being in the room and it feels different.

[00:35:51] And there's something about that squad room.

[00:35:53] And there's, you know, there was one shot in one of the first of the three episodes where it was just amazing how it held that these fuckers work.

[00:36:05] Hmm.

[00:36:06] Yeah.

[00:36:07] There's the Christmas episode and they're all sitting around all the time.

[00:36:10] But there's a, there's something going on that's not just.

[00:36:15] Yeah.

[00:36:16] Yeah.

[00:36:17] And that's exciting.

[00:36:19] That's an exciting, interesting way to work.

[00:36:21] That's one of the things I guess in a way I bring along with myself.

[00:36:25] And, and terms, terms of what did John used to say about shwank, shwank, shwink, shwinking?

[00:36:34] I think the shwanking came with Alex, but obviously John did the same thing, but the calling it the shwanking, which was swinging, swinging back and forth.

[00:36:42] That whole thing.

[00:36:43] Oh, is that swinging singles?

[00:36:44] I think I've heard that one.

[00:36:45] Yeah.

[00:36:46] Yeah.

[00:36:46] Yeah.

[00:36:47] And the things that get used on sets today, de rigueur, I will not let the skate wheels come on the set without saying, I know the kids who thought of that.

[00:36:57] Good for you.

[00:36:58] Give them some credit.

[00:37:00] And to hear, to hear Josh and Joe talk about it and be reminded that I am not wrong in that.

[00:37:08] I remember even at the time, because they're both such humble guys in so many ways.

[00:37:13] I remember even at the time they were like, well, no, not really.

[00:37:16] This other kid I know, he thought of blah, blah, blah.

[00:37:19] And you know, the way things happen in the world.

[00:37:23] But they made it happen on that set in the way that that butt dolly, man, they should have patented that shit.

[00:37:32] Just so brilliant in how you can solve problems.

[00:37:37] One of the grooviest DPs I worked with, a European cat who came into I'm dying up here.

[00:37:44] Oh, his name might come to me if I think really hard.

[00:37:48] He got them to build a circular butt dolly track.

[00:37:53] And I was like, oh my God, you know.

[00:37:56] And he's probably half the age of Josh and Joe.

[00:38:01] And he's now carrying on that.

[00:38:03] I think it's a wonderful, exciting way to work.

[00:38:07] It's an inclusive way to work.

[00:38:09] It's a quick way to work.

[00:38:10] It's a kind of way to work that can be sustained, to hear everybody talk about Jim Finnerty.

[00:38:20] What you said, Susan, of how you just loved him.

[00:38:22] You knew he was protecting and you scared the shit out of you.

[00:38:26] Everybody talks about how great he was.

[00:38:28] And I'm like, and he scared the shit out of people too.

[00:38:30] Like, let's talk about that part.

[00:38:32] But it's how he did that job.

[00:38:34] He was iconic for sure, man.

[00:38:38] Iconic in every kind of a way.

[00:38:40] And to be reminded that he came up, as we all did back in the day, from the ground up.

[00:38:51] And yeah, no, oh, such times.

[00:38:54] And such fun shooting in that way and shooting with all of you.

[00:38:58] I talk about Boots all the time.

[00:38:59] We got to get Boots on here.

[00:39:00] I've tried to, I have to get a better contact for him.

[00:39:03] Boots, hopefully Boots is having a,

[00:39:07] maybe he's getting some rest.

[00:39:09] He, I remember him going from, somebody was talking about not using marks and not measuring.

[00:39:16] And I watched Boots from episode one with a tape, trying to get things, realizing into it,

[00:39:25] there was only so much taping he was going to be able to actually do,

[00:39:29] to being able to eyeball, to move with the whip.

[00:39:34] Sometimes with these out of the room monitor focus things.

[00:39:38] I'm like, where's the whip?

[00:39:40] Get the whip!

[00:39:41] Yeah, let me explain.

[00:39:42] The whip for people.

[00:39:43] Get the focus bullet in the room!

[00:39:44] Yeah, exactly.

[00:39:46] Let me explain to people.

[00:39:46] The whip was an extension that hooked into the camera focus knob.

[00:39:53] And if you had one, it was maybe a foot long extension.

[00:39:58] And it was flexible because it was made with a heavy cable with a knob on the end of it.

[00:40:02] You could actually attach two or three if you needed to.

[00:40:05] So he would have the whip and often having to stand almost behind John,

[00:40:10] but definitely was a way for him to stay moving.

[00:40:15] But yeah, the whip.

[00:40:16] Yeah.

[00:40:16] And now, like you said, a lot of the focus is done with a wireless system.

[00:40:23] Yeah, that's what the system is pretty cool.

[00:40:25] And the camera system uses a wireless instead of being attached to the camera.

[00:40:28] But yeah, the whip.

[00:40:29] That's what the whip was.

[00:40:30] And the focus knob extension.

[00:40:33] And it was very clever when they brought the automatic, whatever you call it, focus,

[00:40:41] unconnected focus.

[00:40:42] It was brilliant and whatever, blah, blah, blah.

[00:40:44] Okay, get all kinds of things you couldn't get before.

[00:40:46] And then they took the wire off the boom.

[00:40:49] And when they first started doing it, and I would be where I am, not behind the camera,

[00:40:55] but, and I would see the wireless boom and the didgeridoo without, with all of its wireless

[00:41:05] apparati.

[00:41:07] And something would cut out and they'd have to cut.

[00:41:10] And I don't see it happening as much anymore.

[00:41:13] Maybe people have learned it really is a thing.

[00:41:15] There's only so much wireless space.

[00:41:18] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:41:19] The frequencies and things is a real problem.

[00:41:21] And when those things would cross, there would be either a sound or a picture issue arise.

[00:41:28] Yeah, yeah.

[00:41:29] And when I first started saying it, people were like,

[00:41:32] We had transmitters on the camera to transmit the image to the video village.

[00:41:38] If the director was often, like you said, directors didn't go back and watch it.

[00:41:41] If they watched it on the set, if they could stay out of the way.

[00:41:44] And then also, obviously, the mics had transmitters on them.

[00:41:49] But there was also way more airspace then for transmission before cell phones, before

[00:41:54] pagers, before any of that stuff.

[00:41:57] So, yeah.

[00:41:59] Yeah, it worked pretty well, though.

[00:42:01] The transmitters in both directions worked fairly consistently, for sure.

[00:42:08] Being part of this ensemble cast, do you have any sort of memories you can share with us?

[00:42:14] Well, that brings up such a difficult thing, I realized.

[00:42:18] In watching last night and seeing Yafet and Ned and Bell's Andre.

[00:42:33] That's hard.

[00:42:34] That's hard to see that, to see what fun we were having.

[00:42:43] Yeah.

[00:42:45] Yeah.

[00:42:45] It's some of the best people I've ever worked with, people who have stories behind them and

[00:42:54] legacies left.

[00:42:59] But on the other hand, just so much fun that I got to do all that teasing Ned to go and

[00:43:08] call the medical examiner.

[00:43:12] And then I kept on wishing they'd give me more things than Ned again.

[00:43:15] And I don't know that we ever did that much together again, ever.

[00:43:19] You know?

[00:43:22] And, yeah.

[00:43:22] Yeah.

[00:43:24] Yeah.

[00:43:24] Yeah.

[00:43:24] No, it's hard.

[00:43:24] It's a hard one because there are so many of those really talented thespians that are

[00:43:32] no longer with us.

[00:43:51] Mm-hmm.

[00:43:52] And I was not brought to the set.

[00:43:54] And that was a huge mistake I made.

[00:43:57] And I offer my apology to all the workers, to the kinds of upset my personal business brought.

[00:44:06] But that's another thing that comes back.

[00:44:08] I was in some pretty hard times in a custodial battle.

[00:44:13] And I don't know.

[00:44:15] Maybe.

[00:44:17] Yeah.

[00:44:18] Because custodial issues should not be in U.S. courts because attorneys can earn a lot of money

[00:44:28] with upset parents on the telephone.

[00:44:32] Yeah.

[00:44:32] And there was a lot of that going on while we were shooting.

[00:44:36] My memories of you are not that that was brought to the set.

[00:44:41] I don't remember that about you.

[00:44:43] Yeah.

[00:44:43] Like, you know?

[00:44:44] I'm very pleased to hear you were there every day.

[00:44:47] But speaking of Yafit, I was watching, not to make you cry more, but was watching the

[00:44:52] wedding last night.

[00:44:53] And there was just such a really sweet stuff between you and Yafit in that episode because

[00:44:58] you were off working on a case while the wedding was being put together.

[00:45:02] And there was a great scene with you in the car with him while you're just sort of talking

[00:45:07] about life.

[00:45:09] And it was just also because you throughout your character arc obviously got to show your soft

[00:45:17] side.

[00:45:18] You got to show it with your loyalty to Bo.

[00:45:20] And then when you got shot in the hospital, some absolutely beautiful stuff with you

[00:45:24] and Bo in the hospital.

[00:45:26] But we often also didn't see, he got his moments, but Yafit also didn't get a chance often to

[00:45:32] show his soft side.

[00:45:33] And there was some just absolutely terrific stuff with you and him.

[00:45:38] And you and him often had adversarial roles, you know, where you go in and you yelled about

[00:45:43] the, in his office with him about the double standard when you and Megan are taken off

[00:45:49] the case when Bo, you know, initially they think it was a suicide and then ends up a murder.

[00:45:56] But that was just, in the wedding, that was, there was just absolutely terrific stuff with

[00:46:01] you and Yafit.

[00:46:02] It was really, it was nice to see that they brought that in, in that situation.

[00:46:08] Yeah, there was, yeah, he was this sweet, tender, in a very odd, strange way, shy, gigantic

[00:46:24] human being.

[00:46:27] And yeah, to play opposite him was easy.

[00:46:39] And very grateful that that kind of work was written for us to, to, to be able to do together.

[00:46:47] When we would go up from, if we got released, you know, for hours or something from the,

[00:46:53] from the set and could, you know, walk down to the other end of Fell's Point and maybe

[00:46:58] get a bite to eat around the corner at Jimmy's or something, right?

[00:47:02] And you'd walk with Yafit on those streets.

[00:47:04] There would be people from across on the other side, Yafit!

[00:47:11] Like a god.

[00:47:13] And, you know, on the set, everybody thought he was kind of a goofball and a blah, blah,

[00:47:17] blah.

[00:47:18] But he was, he was a prince.

[00:47:21] True prince.

[00:47:21] He was actually, wasn't he?

[00:47:23] Didn't he trace his ancestry?

[00:47:24] Actually, truly.

[00:47:25] I don't use, I don't use the word lightly.

[00:47:28] Yeah, he actually traced his ancestry.

[00:47:29] I don't use the word lightly.

[00:47:31] It's a, it's a, which the show also happens to touch upon.

[00:47:36] I mean, some of the racial things that get said, both slurs and then the response to the slurs

[00:47:42] and the, you know, all of it brought into history, U.S. history and the lies told to children in,

[00:47:50] in schools and the stories told to children in schools.

[00:47:54] And, and, and, uh, yeah, it's so the subject matter of the show.

[00:48:01] Jeez, what a thing to be a part of getting out on television.

[00:48:05] Yeah, they, they absolutely went deep on the social issues on that show, which was just,

[00:48:10] when you watch it now, it's such a contrast to many things that are on TV now.

[00:48:16] I mean, they, they, they made no apologies for the way they, they hit issues head on, you know,

[00:48:23] but I mean, really, um, it is, it is, you know,

[00:48:27] and I'm sorry to say this over and over again in every episode,

[00:48:31] but it is, it is, uh, it's quite amazing to go back and look at, at, at, at the way they wrote about the times.

[00:48:40] It feels rewatching.

[00:48:41] It feels groundbreaking now because there's so many things that people would run away from,

[00:48:45] from dealing with.

[00:48:47] And, um, you know, homicide really, you know, it was a pioneer in that.

[00:48:50] And I think that's why it's such a revisiting it many a times I've watched.

[00:48:54] I'm on my third rewatch of it now and it still feels very fresh.

[00:48:57] You know, it's yeah.

[00:48:58] Yeah.

[00:48:58] You say a pioneer in that.

[00:49:00] And I want to say about television in the United States.

[00:49:03] Yeah.

[00:49:04] It has been one of the places where those of us who feel a little subversive about the way things are as business as usual can slip things in.

[00:49:15] And I would suggest that from the beginning of time on television, there have been these brilliant writers, performers, directors, producers,

[00:49:25] who have told the American public things they need to hear in the form of a story.

[00:49:32] Yeah.

[00:49:33] Yeah.

[00:49:33] Twilight Zone, Star Trek, those kinds of shows.

[00:49:35] Yeah.

[00:49:35] Absolutely.

[00:49:36] And those are the two I was just thinking of.

[00:49:38] Rod Serling and Gene Roddenberry hitting it on the head.

[00:49:42] And some of it's Bushet and some of it's joining a great tradition of subversive U.S. television.

[00:49:51] Absolutely.

[00:49:52] And such great storytelling.

[00:49:54] Yeah.

[00:49:54] I mean, some of the Twilight Zone episodes, it just knocks your socks off what they're getting at and how they get at it with a really interesting story.

[00:50:04] Yeah.

[00:50:04] Yeah.

[00:50:05] And the history of the creators, too, when you look into Rod Serling and Gene Roddenberry as well, so fascinating.

[00:50:11] So, yeah.

[00:50:12] Yeah.

[00:50:12] You can sort of see where that all comes from because some of them, like with Rod Serling, experienced war firsthand, you know, experienced violence and all sorts of things.

[00:50:21] And, yeah.

[00:50:21] Yeah.

[00:50:22] Perfect.

[00:50:23] And so cool that so much of that is available on television really easily to get to now, whereas for many years, like with Homicide, you couldn't find things.

[00:50:31] And now it's everything sort of on a plate, although you have to pay for a lot of it.

[00:50:35] So, had you been to Baltimore before?

[00:50:39] Had you worked in Baltimore?

[00:50:41] I mean, it became, well, it didn't become from the get-go, obviously.

[00:50:44] It was one of the characters.

[00:50:47] And people talk about what a great backlot we had.

[00:50:50] I mean, this amazing city with all its levels of, with just all its different levels and looks that was there.

[00:51:00] Especially, I mean, the fact that they used the wreck pier in one of the most, you know, interesting historic areas in Baltimore.

[00:51:10] That was, you walk out that door and there you are on the Belgian block and cobblestone streets, you know.

[00:51:16] Wow. So, had you worked there before?

[00:51:19] Did you have first impressions or things you think about now about the city and working in the city?

[00:51:23] I do not think I had ever been to Baltimore before.

[00:51:28] I would say that one of the joys of doing the show was Baltimore.

[00:51:34] We were pretty much reprimanded to Baltimore for shooting convenience, weather and cover and stuff like that.

[00:51:45] We had a fair amount of irresponsible young men involved in the cast.

[00:51:51] And we were, I don't see how they can tell you to do this, but we were told we stay in town.

[00:52:01] So, making use of Baltimore, bringing my son down to Baltimore to go to school in Baltimore, finding things to do there myself, places to go and get things to eat from Cafe Hawn to other places, you know.

[00:52:17] Which has gone down, unfortunately.

[00:52:19] Oh, my God.

[00:52:20] Just recently.

[00:52:21] So sad.

[00:52:22] What was Cafe Hawn?

[00:52:23] It was a mid-city restaurant, really.

[00:52:26] Up in Hamden, yeah.

[00:52:27] About five minutes north.

[00:52:28] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:52:29] Yeah, just a coffee shop.

[00:52:31] Cafe H-O-N.

[00:52:33] Cafe Hawn, which is a Baltimore city.

[00:52:34] That's how they say it down there.

[00:52:36] And Margaret's Cafe Open.

[00:52:38] Right.

[00:52:38] Margaret's, which was around the corner.

[00:52:39] Do you remember Margaret's Cafe Open?

[00:52:40] I didn't go there very often.

[00:52:41] I don't know why.

[00:52:42] That was on Ann Street, right?

[00:52:43] It was an expensive little dinner meal, you know.

[00:52:46] And probably if you got off early enough for dinner, you'd want to go home.

[00:52:49] Yeah.

[00:52:50] And Cafe Hawn, Chris, had a gigantic two-story high flamingo.

[00:52:55] Oh, wow.

[00:52:56] Oh, cool.

[00:52:56] And then from that developed the Hun Fest, where people would dress up.

[00:53:01] It was a, you know, a festival, a weekend festival, usually in the summer, I guess it was summer.

[00:53:05] Yeah, yeah.

[00:53:05] People would, they would have Hun contests where people would wear their beehive hairdos and their 50s outfits.

[00:53:11] Did you do that, Melissa?

[00:53:13] No, I don't like getting dressed up because I do that for work.

[00:53:17] Okay, fair.

[00:53:18] I don't do costuming except for work.

[00:53:21] And then I love a costume.

[00:53:24] Yeah.

[00:53:24] No, it was.

[00:53:26] So, yeah.

[00:53:26] I hadn't thought about the fact that you're, I mean, I obviously thought about the fact that the actors live there, but I hadn't thought about you with a kid and putting him in school and then finding things to do on the weekends.

[00:53:39] Yeah, I hadn't thought about that.

[00:53:41] Well, and during the week a lot of the time, too.

[00:53:43] When you weren't working on the stuff.

[00:53:44] Unfortunately, being cast as this female detective, they didn't really know what to do with me.

[00:53:52] And it's why I have, you know, I hear things from dead people in my dreams and, you know, kind of sillier stories in a way.

[00:54:03] Not always, but sort of trying to figure out what to do with the girl in the room.

[00:54:09] And so then I also just didn't work that much, maybe a day or two a week.

[00:54:16] So not just on the weekend, finding things to do.

[00:54:19] And there was, oh, what was that place that had been some kind of a factory?

[00:54:25] And they turned it into art studios.

[00:54:28] And there was a clay studio over there.

[00:54:32] And I'd always liked working with clay.

[00:54:33] And so I spent a lot of time at this pottery co-op.

[00:54:38] Oh, cool.

[00:54:38] Oh, cool.

[00:54:39] Oh, I didn't know that.

[00:54:40] Yeah.

[00:54:40] You take some home with you?

[00:54:42] Some pots?

[00:54:43] Oh, I still have lots of pots.

[00:54:45] I'm back at Pottery now here.

[00:54:46] Oh, great.

[00:54:47] Where I live in upstate New York.

[00:54:48] Is that the first time you had done it in Baltimore?

[00:54:51] No, I had done it as a kid.

[00:54:52] I had done it as a kid.

[00:54:54] That's why I sort of thought, oh, let me go see if I can remember any of that.

[00:54:57] And it was really fun, really fun, sweet.

[00:55:00] And very Baltimore feel of this sort of shared space and people working together to make community.

[00:55:08] Was that the place in Mount Washington?

[00:55:11] What is the name of scape school?

[00:55:13] Gosh, it's been so long since being Mount Washington.

[00:55:16] Like it was kind of a beautiful brick buildings that had been factories.

[00:55:19] And I think Mount Washington sounds about right.

[00:55:22] Yeah, I actually just parked Baltimore Clayworks.

[00:55:28] Was it at Baltimore Clayworks?

[00:55:30] Yeah, I think so.

[00:55:31] I just parked it.

[00:55:33] Oh, and there was a yoga studio there that Kyle took me to.

[00:55:36] Oh, wow.

[00:55:37] And I'd never done yoga before.

[00:55:40] And that began an on-again, off-again relationship with yoga that Kyle introduced me to.

[00:55:46] At that same brick.

[00:55:48] Beautiful old building, the Clayworks building.

[00:55:51] Beautiful old buildings, yeah.

[00:55:53] Oh, that's so cool.

[00:55:56] Get busy where you can.

[00:55:57] Yeah, yeah.

[00:56:00] With the show, are there any episodes that still stay with you now?

[00:56:06] Are there episodes you're really sort of proud of or really enjoy sort of memories of shooting?

[00:56:13] I mean, there's episodes that have been spoken of and so like that.

[00:56:21] And there's the episode that when Henry Brummel first came along, there's another loss.

[00:56:30] I was caught in a bind when Henry wrote The Waterman, which is a fun episode.

[00:56:42] People all around the world quite enjoy it, see a whole other side of Maryland.

[00:56:47] And my dad is a Bayman, as they call them, up on Long Island.

[00:56:55] Really?

[00:56:56] And when Barry and Tom and me and Danny all sat in the room, I said, I think Kay Howard

[00:57:03] grew up as the only child of a waterman.

[00:57:08] And he brought her out on the water from a little girl.

[00:57:12] And when she was graduating from high school, she was like, yeah, Dad, I'm going to get my

[00:57:17] own boat and he was like, girls aren't watermen.

[00:57:23] And he threw me off the boat.

[00:57:24] I came to Baltimore and took the police test.

[00:57:29] She had to have started at an incredibly young age.

[00:57:33] To the age I was, be a detective.

[00:57:36] That's unlikely.

[00:57:39] But anyway, so it was a story that meant a lot to me personally.

[00:57:46] And when Henry came in, he was new to the show.

[00:57:50] And any time the new thing came, we all got a little like, oh no, because we loved it so much.

[00:58:00] And it just felt like it was off the mark.

[00:58:03] And it had to do with an old boyfriend, don't you know?

[00:58:08] And it's not, for me, it's a little bit of a murder she wrote episode of Homicide.

[00:58:16] And that's unfortunate.

[00:58:18] Because I should have taken Romel's episode and I should have embraced it as he had written it.

[00:58:28] And that's what I'm trying to learn how to do with that kind of situation.

[00:58:33] I'm not the storyteller.

[00:58:34] I'm just a part of how that storytelling goes.

[00:58:37] But you know, what I thought held together really well with that was, of course, the episode

[00:58:42] starts with you and Bo going to the scene of the murder where the grandmother's tongue

[00:58:47] was cut out.

[00:58:48] And that scene where you sort of snap and you're like, because I'm sure that didn't

[00:58:53] just happen once for Homicide Detectives.

[00:58:55] It probably happened over and over again where they were just like, I cannot believe what I'm

[00:59:00] seeing or I cannot believe people can do that.

[00:59:02] So the fact that you snap and I love there's one part in that scene I love where, you know,

[00:59:09] you're telling him I have vacation time.

[00:59:11] Everybody else took their vacation.

[00:59:12] And that speaks to your character, too, where it's like, you know, you didn't take your

[00:59:17] vacation yet because you're the woman homicide detective that's got to be better than everybody.

[00:59:22] Right.

[00:59:23] So you had let your vacation go.

[00:59:25] So you say, I've got vacation.

[00:59:26] I'm getting out of here.

[00:59:27] And you walk away from him.

[00:59:29] You walk away from the Cavalier and you're going up the alley and you stop and you turn

[00:59:34] around almost as if you're about to change your mind, because I'm sure, you know, Kay in her

[00:59:40] head is like, you can't go.

[00:59:41] You got to go.

[00:59:42] You can't go.

[00:59:43] You got to go.

[00:59:43] You turn around and then you keep going.

[00:59:47] And I thought that was brilliant.

[00:59:49] I don't know if that was directed, if that just came from you as as as as conflicted as

[00:59:54] she was.

[00:59:55] But the other thing that was I thought and I understand what you're saying about it being

[00:59:59] a murder.

[00:59:59] She wrote sort of episode, but it wasn't because I worked on murder.

[01:00:03] She wrote.

[01:00:03] Yeah, and that was not a murder.

[01:00:06] But the thing that was no, no, no, not by a long shot.

[01:00:10] Exactly.

[01:00:10] That's why I kept the thing that was exactly great about it was you had you snapped.

[01:00:15] You had this, you know, this.

[01:00:16] I got to get away from this.

[01:00:19] And then you go to the home, the safe place, and it's not safe.

[01:00:23] You go to the safe place and there's another body.

[01:00:27] It's almost like I can't even get away with it, you know, in, you know, in the comfort

[01:00:32] of my own home.

[01:00:35] So so I actually and the whole thing with the boyfriend, I liked it because you were already

[01:00:41] involved with with Danvers.

[01:00:42] So it also brought a conflict within you with like this really sweet guy that you grew up

[01:00:49] with who was probably your first love.

[01:00:52] And then you have this other guy, super professional, you know, intellectual, intelligent, hardworking,

[01:00:59] dedicated guy, you know, back back at, you know, in Baltimore.

[01:01:03] But but anyway, I think that that show showed an interesting layers to you that we had never

[01:01:11] seen and the family stuff.

[01:01:14] And I also loved at the end when you're trying to make your peace with your brother who's pissed

[01:01:19] off at you and pissed off at himself because he turns in the guy that did it right at the

[01:01:24] end.

[01:01:24] And he and there isn't a me there isn't, you know, you love him and you say goodbye to

[01:01:29] him, but he's still pissed off about it.

[01:01:31] And he's he puts his headphones on and he's not talking to you.

[01:01:35] So I think there were and I can see how, you know, you know, you may have at the time,

[01:01:42] you know, thought of compromise you a little bit.

[01:01:44] But I actually it's a terrific episode because of all the different layers that you had to

[01:01:50] go through, I think, in it.

[01:01:51] Yeah.

[01:01:52] Wow, that is really good to hear your view on it, because it's I realize, as you say

[01:01:59] all that, that it's very different being the actor inside of it.

[01:02:03] Sure.

[01:02:04] With my own life going on and the rest of it.

[01:02:09] And when you ask about the shows, I think, well, I remember making them.

[01:02:14] I don't remember the shows, the stories, the amazing guest people that came in, right?

[01:02:23] That's, you know, I have vague recollects of if I got to work with them, right?

[01:02:28] And I learned on your podcast, I'm shocked I didn't know this.

[01:02:35] But when I listened to Simon's episode, I learned that David Mills, another lost one, wrote Bob

[01:02:49] Gunn with him.

[01:02:50] Yeah.

[01:02:51] Yeah.

[01:02:51] I had no idea.

[01:02:54] I was on Treme when David Mills fell out of the director's chair.

[01:02:59] My goodness, I didn't know that.

[01:03:01] Oh, God.

[01:03:03] And we lost him.

[01:03:05] And that changed that show forever and always.

[01:03:09] He was amazing.

[01:03:12] So to be reminded that there was a reason I felt such connection to him.

[01:03:18] And that was because of that episode, that opportunity to work with Robin Williams.

[01:03:25] I worked with him two other times in my career.

[01:03:28] I am blessed with those opportunities and opportunities like that.

[01:03:34] Yeah.

[01:03:36] Great story.

[01:03:36] So Bob Gunn, I remember that.

[01:03:38] I remember working with Robin and how beautifully acted that dramatic role.

[01:03:48] Yeah, he was amazing.

[01:03:49] There's some good stories.

[01:03:51] We just dropped the AD's episode yesterday.

[01:03:55] And there's a good story with Miles where he talks about being behind the scenes in sort

[01:04:00] of a green room with a number.

[01:04:02] I think he said, didn't he say Chris with Barry and then a number of the actors?

[01:04:06] And I don't remember what the situation while they were all together.

[01:04:09] And that Robin just did this five-minute roasted everybody in the room.

[01:04:16] Yes, yes.

[01:04:17] Completely spontaneous.

[01:04:19] You don't have to talk about his spontaneous energy.

[01:04:23] But then Frank also talked about him.

[01:04:26] And I remember this too, his cracking jokes.

[01:04:28] And then turning it off and doing those incredibly dramatic scenes about his wife that had been

[01:04:35] murdered.

[01:04:36] But yeah, that was definitely interesting.

[01:04:40] It's a comic thing I learned doing I'm Dying Up Here.

[01:04:42] Because Bells used to do that too.

[01:04:45] Remember when Bells would flub a line or something like that?

[01:04:48] And he'd start screaming.

[01:04:50] And then he'd start again.

[01:04:54] Or he'd start riffing on it.

[01:04:56] I love that man.

[01:04:56] He'd start riffing on something.

[01:04:57] Oh my God.

[01:04:59] Those comics.

[01:05:01] Genius, genius minds.

[01:05:03] Oh my God.

[01:05:04] I love Munch.

[01:05:05] What was it like working with Richard Bells?

[01:05:07] Because Munch is such a character.

[01:05:09] It's brilliant.

[01:05:10] Yeah, but Richard Bells is one of the best human beings you ever could hope to meet.

[01:05:14] Ever in the whole wide world.

[01:05:16] He's a beautiful, beautiful man.

[01:05:19] And he's one of the most beautiful things about Bells I think is that he be he and you be you.

[01:05:25] And he was very much like the character.

[01:05:29] Especially with his dry sense of humor.

[01:05:32] Super dry.

[01:05:34] On a certain level very much.

[01:05:36] But he also, he had his beloved wife Harley and a very beautiful, solid relationship.

[01:05:44] And I learned by observation of the two of them what a healthy adult relationship might look like in the world.

[01:05:51] Mm-hmm.

[01:05:52] So yes, like Munch, but on the other hand.

[01:05:55] Right, right.

[01:05:55] Not for free marriages.

[01:05:58] Did you ever go to his house in France?

[01:06:00] No.

[01:06:01] Invited, but stupidly never.

[01:06:03] Yeah.

[01:06:04] Yeah.

[01:06:04] I really, the socializing aspect of the work we do with the kinds of folks I've had an opportunity to socialize with and have not, I don't really know how to do that.

[01:06:15] Fair enough.

[01:06:15] I'm not good at it.

[01:06:17] I am, like many an actor before me, actually kind of uncomfortable being a human being.

[01:06:23] So I stick to myself a lot.

[01:06:26] I should have known better because, like I say, you know, it would have been nothing but comfortable to be there at his house.

[01:06:31] I know that.

[01:06:33] He talked about wanting to live there because he liked the way they treated the old people and the dogs as opposed to how they're treated in this country.

[01:06:41] Rings a bell with me.

[01:06:43] I feel like I remember him saying that, but I don't know that I did.

[01:06:46] It was one of his tunes.

[01:06:48] Yeah.

[01:06:48] Huh.

[01:06:49] Interesting.

[01:06:50] Yeah.

[01:06:50] So I'm dropping back a little bit on the questions too, because, and we don't like to get off topic with homicide, but because I watched The Fighter last night, I had also watched many of your episodes, including The Wedding, where you play your own sister, which is, who is 180 degree opposite in many ways from Kay.

[01:07:15] But watching all those very close together really demonstrates your range, you know, really demonstrates your range.

[01:07:24] But what was it like when you first got the, or if you knew it was coming down the pike, but when you first got the wedding script, which was the same one that put the focus of you and Yafa together.

[01:07:38] But then your sister from Italy shows up, who is all the things that Kay is not in many ways.

[01:07:47] Did you welcome that?

[01:07:49] Was it weird to you?

[01:07:50] Did you think, did you have any memories of that?

[01:07:53] When I read the script, I said, oh, Jesus, who are they going to get to play her?

[01:07:59] Right.

[01:07:59] Because I've already talked about how married through and through with every molecule I was to who this character was, right?

[01:08:09] I'd been invited to identify her.

[01:08:13] Now they were going to give some Hollywood chica the job of being her sister.

[01:08:21] And they'd get it wrong.

[01:08:25] That was what I thought.

[01:08:28] So I went to them and said, I'd like to play the sister Carrie.

[01:08:34] And they said, no, thank you.

[01:08:36] And I said, I'll audition.

[01:08:39] And I went down to the trailer and I talked to artists and Bebe.

[01:08:42] Betty Bebe, that is for people listening.

[01:08:44] Our wonderful makeup artist.

[01:08:47] And artist cone, hair department.

[01:08:50] And I got a wig, lots of makeup, costume from the costume department.

[01:08:56] And I got the job.

[01:08:58] You mentioned earlier how much wardrobe and makeup created the character for you.

[01:09:03] Did you sort of like step out of the makeup and wardrobe trailer feeling Carrie?

[01:09:09] Yeah, you do.

[01:09:10] That's a part of what that process is.

[01:09:12] I mean, try it.

[01:09:14] Chris, later this afternoon, go find somebody's lipstick and put some lipstick on.

[01:09:19] Let's see what it makes you do.

[01:09:21] Right?

[01:09:22] 100%.

[01:09:23] Susan, you wear your jeans and the rest of it, but you put a dress on.

[01:09:28] It makes you feel like a different, you know, uncomfortable feeling that way.

[01:09:32] That's how I get.

[01:09:33] But as a character, you can just, right?

[01:09:37] So you put on, it's just another acting job.

[01:09:41] And in truth, Carrie is as close to me as Kay is.

[01:09:46] Neither character is further from me, not really.

[01:09:51] The assumption Kay is more like me because of the bare face and no hairdo, just my hair.

[01:10:02] The assumption then is that she's closer to me.

[01:10:06] But I'll tell you, first of all, I knew from the get-go, I've known all along, Kay Howard is a thousand times smarter than I'll ever hope to be.

[01:10:17] We share a street smart, but her intellect is, sometimes I didn't even know what they were having her say.

[01:10:27] But I'd learn it and say it, and I'm a good actor, so you'd believe it.

[01:10:32] Interesting.

[01:10:33] That's interesting.

[01:10:34] I like that insight.

[01:10:35] What was the process like, jumping from Kay Howard to then being Carrie?

[01:10:39] Because it is edited so well.

[01:10:41] It's edited beautifully.

[01:10:42] It really is amazingly done.

[01:10:45] It made them talk to me more about how we were doing it, which was fun for me, now that you bring it up and ask, right?

[01:10:52] And so that sense of figuring out how to do it.

[01:10:56] Now, there was a lovely stand-in.

[01:10:58] And was she Jim Finnerty's girlfriend?

[01:11:01] Oh, that beautiful blonde woman.

[01:11:05] Did he actually marry her one day finally at long last?

[01:11:08] I think so, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[01:11:09] Anyway, I think she might have been standing in when we would do, she'd put the wig on.

[01:11:16] Joanie was her name.

[01:11:17] She'd put the wig on and be the back of Carrie's head.

[01:11:21] She'd put another wig on and be the back of.

[01:11:23] But we didn't want to do too much of that.

[01:11:27] And what Tom Fontana said to me is, Melissa, we don't want to do Gidget.

[01:11:31] Mm-hmm.

[01:11:32] Right.

[01:11:33] So I don't get two credits.

[01:11:35] I get a credit, and I have a pseudonym.

[01:11:37] Yes, you did.

[01:11:38] Margaret May.

[01:11:39] Margaret May.

[01:11:40] Yeah, I was wondering if there was a story by this.

[01:11:41] Margaret is my mother's name.

[01:11:43] Oh, really?

[01:11:44] My mother's name, too.

[01:11:46] And May is her sister's name.

[01:11:48] Oh, sweet.

[01:11:50] And that was a tribute I played to my mother and my Auntie May.

[01:11:55] Amazing.

[01:11:55] Well, yeah, but it would be nice if people understood that that was Melissa Leo, and I have that range.

[01:12:05] Susan, highest compliment you could play this act.

[01:12:08] Oh, people knew it was you, for sure.

[01:12:10] My father didn't.

[01:12:12] Oh, didn't he?

[01:12:12] No way.

[01:12:15] My father said, Melissa.

[01:12:18] I tell people this all the time because it's the truth.

[01:12:21] He said, Melissa, where did they get that actress?

[01:12:24] She was so good.

[01:12:25] She even had some of your mannerisms, which, oddly enough, are his mannerisms.

[01:12:32] That's so funny.

[01:12:33] Wow.

[01:12:34] I was like, Dad?

[01:12:35] Wow.

[01:12:36] That's Paris.

[01:12:37] Makeup is an amazing tool that is so vastly misused because it's something that women must have before they leave the house.

[01:12:52] Mm-hmm.

[01:12:53] And it's just not.

[01:12:54] It's a more interesting thing than that.

[01:12:58] Yeah.

[01:12:59] All of her affect.

[01:13:00] I mean, the way she walked, her affect, everything was just so different.

[01:13:07] I mean, it just is really interesting to watch.

[01:13:10] It's really interesting to watch.

[01:13:12] Really fun.

[01:13:12] As far as the editing, I had to rewind.

[01:13:15] Well, what do you call it when it's on Peacock?

[01:13:17] It's not rewinding because it's not a tape.

[01:13:19] But I had to go back and watch the first scene where you come off the elevator and she's here.

[01:13:25] And then you guys are in together.

[01:13:28] And I'm like, how did they do that?

[01:13:29] And it was they had a wipe.

[01:13:30] They had somebody walk across the screen, which they used to cut.

[01:13:34] Really.

[01:13:34] Super simple.

[01:13:37] Invisible editing.

[01:13:38] Amazing.

[01:13:38] Yep.

[01:13:38] The way they put it together.

[01:13:40] Yeah.

[01:13:40] Yeah.

[01:13:40] And in a super simple, non-technical way.

[01:13:45] Because.

[01:13:46] In a non-technical way.

[01:13:46] Exactly.

[01:13:47] We were already shooting.

[01:13:48] We were already shooting in this way where we could make anything happen.

[01:13:52] Yeah.

[01:13:53] No special effects.

[01:13:53] We didn't want to have to go back in the footage and put something together.

[01:13:59] And I did.

[01:14:00] I know this much is true.

[01:14:01] And they did all kinds of complicated things to get the mark to play both of the characters.

[01:14:07] It just was.

[01:14:08] It was invisible.

[01:14:09] And how it also struck me while I was watching it.

[01:14:12] And this may have been a question if we have them on again with Reed and Kyle, where they played against you with a completely different character.

[01:14:23] How weird was that or not?

[01:14:26] For you.

[01:14:27] Yeah, we do.

[01:14:28] That's what we do.

[01:14:29] Yeah, for you.

[01:14:29] That's what we do.

[01:14:30] We're not the characters.

[01:14:31] They're all of a sudden playing against you as a romantic interest, which was zero happening as Kay.

[01:14:39] Was that fun?

[01:14:40] Was it fun to do that?

[01:14:42] Totally.

[01:14:42] Completely.

[01:14:43] Totally.

[01:14:43] Totally fun.

[01:14:44] Completely.

[01:14:46] And just another aspect of what acting is.

[01:14:50] Like I said, I worked with Robin three times.

[01:14:53] I was a detective on the most difficult day in that man's existence.

[01:14:59] I was Mamie Eisenhower, although I'm largely cut out of the butler opposite his.

[01:15:04] Oh, gosh.

[01:15:04] President Eisenhower.

[01:15:06] You can see my elbows in the film.

[01:15:08] But we shot that at the same time as we were shooting The Angriest Man in Brooklyn, in which I played his wife of many, many years.

[01:15:15] I used to go watch that.

[01:15:16] Wow.

[01:15:17] That's fascinating.

[01:15:18] And so we could take the other episodes and bring it into Angriest Man in Brooklyn.

[01:15:22] We had time together.

[01:15:24] We had knowledge.

[01:15:24] We could use that.

[01:15:26] But we were also different characters now.

[01:15:29] It's a delightful thing about acting when you get to meet someone you've worked with before, somebody whose techniques and rhythms and styles you've met.

[01:15:42] And now you're different people together.

[01:15:44] It's a fascinating part of it.

[01:15:46] There was a question I forgot to ask you earlier about with the creation of Kay Howard.

[01:15:52] Did you spend any time with any sort of real detectives?

[01:15:55] Oh, good.

[01:15:56] I'm glad you remember to ask about that, Chris, because the answer is no.

[01:16:02] Again, for two reasons.

[01:16:04] Because of this thing, I'm not hanging out with them.

[01:16:09] The guys were drinking with these guys, too.

[01:16:11] Again, just not a recreation I have any propensity for.

[01:16:16] So, and when I first came on, the script I read in Lou DeGyma's office on the west side of New York, it was Detective Harvey.

[01:16:31] And Detective Harvey had been based on Detective Garvey in the books.

[01:16:37] Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[01:16:38] The year David spent with them, Garvey had this remarkable, unprecedented, unexplainable black names under his 100% clearance.

[01:16:50] And they took that aspect of Garvey, and they wrote Detective Harvey, who, like I said, they auditioned many a boy for.

[01:16:58] I landed the part.

[01:17:01] Garvey, who they're very close with now because they've been advisors.

[01:17:05] Tom's been getting to know these guys that David had spent time with.

[01:17:08] They're around.

[01:17:09] They know the TV show's been making.

[01:17:10] They know Andre Brower is playing that one, and that ba-ba-ba-ba-ba.

[01:17:14] So, oh, ba-ba-ba-ba.

[01:17:16] Garvey finds out, and so does the rest of the squad.

[01:17:20] They got a girl to play Garvey!

[01:17:23] They had to go home from work that day, apparently.

[01:17:25] Oh.

[01:17:29] Tom Fontana, bless his heart, understood.

[01:17:32] That wasn't going to fly.

[01:17:34] And he changed the name to another name that he wanted to sound like a guy's name, Harvey.

[01:17:41] Howard.

[01:17:42] So that they would, which again, also influenced how I played the character.

[01:17:47] The squad was going to call me not Kay.

[01:17:49] The squad was going to call me Howard.

[01:17:52] Interesting.

[01:17:53] That's interesting.

[01:17:53] I never thought about that.

[01:17:55] Right?

[01:17:56] They're calling you by the surname, but that's a man's name.

[01:17:59] That wasn't just a name.

[01:18:00] A man's name.

[01:18:01] A man's name.

[01:18:01] Yeah.

[01:18:02] Interesting.

[01:18:02] And Tom must have spot that when Detective Harvey, oh, he liked that.

[01:18:09] Now he had to change the name.

[01:18:10] What could he change it to that would keep it a boy's name?

[01:18:14] Thank you, Matt.

[01:18:15] Yeah.

[01:18:16] I guess it was early on when the bride along with David Simon in the van, you were home with

[01:18:25] the kid at that point, right?

[01:18:26] You didn't get a chance to go do that and go to all those seedy signs.

[01:18:30] I met the fellows.

[01:18:31] You would see all those places later.

[01:18:32] It just wouldn't be in the van with David Simon.

[01:18:35] In all honesty, Kay went out on some, but there came a time, especially once they made

[01:18:43] me sergeant and really was such a demotion in so many ways.

[01:18:49] I stopped going out in the street.

[01:18:52] And I really didn't get to do as much of the out and about in Baltimore as I really would have loved to do.

[01:18:59] I was mostly back at the squad room, which perhaps they were also feeling was easier for me with my family and family complications going on.

[01:19:07] But I met the guys that had, I think in the very beginning, we actually, all of them were on set.

[01:19:14] They were all going to be the advisors.

[01:19:16] And very quickly, that was like just not going to work.

[01:19:20] And we got D'Addario, who was there keeping an eye, keeping it real.

[01:19:24] But that, I see what you mean about the demotion when she became sergeant.

[01:19:30] But also it set up, again, the conflict of, oh, my boss is now a woman, you know, which became an issue,

[01:19:40] which was a very real life, real time, real life issue, you know.

[01:19:46] Yeah, but I know police.

[01:19:49] One of my very closest friends, a husband comes from a long line of police.

[01:19:56] And everybody hates the sergeant.

[01:19:59] It doesn't matter.

[01:20:01] Yeah.

[01:20:01] Because the sergeant's not out doing the work.

[01:20:03] Oh, interesting.

[01:20:04] Interesting.

[01:20:05] So you feel like that's not a gender, not gender directed.

[01:20:08] The sergeant's the middleman between the bosses.

[01:20:11] Yeah.

[01:20:11] Gotcha.

[01:20:12] It's not, it's.

[01:20:14] It's more like, how dare you tell me what to do when you were my colleague yesterday.

[01:20:17] And it makes no sense.

[01:20:20] It's 100% clearance.

[01:20:23] Call it luck, call it whatever you want.

[01:20:25] She's doing a better job than anybody else.

[01:20:27] So put her in a position where she can no longer do that job.

[01:20:31] It seems an odd choice.

[01:20:33] I understand why, because of the logistics of making television in the United States.

[01:20:37] It's in America.

[01:20:38] Interesting.

[01:20:39] I understand.

[01:20:40] I understand why.

[01:20:42] Go ahead, Chris.

[01:20:43] Did I cut you off?

[01:20:44] Go ahead.

[01:20:44] Oh, you just mentioned Gary Daddario.

[01:20:47] And I was wondering if you had any memories of him, because he's such, because he plays

[01:20:50] Jasper, doesn't he?

[01:20:51] And he's obviously the real G.

[01:20:52] He's a lot of guys.

[01:20:53] He's such a fascinating character.

[01:20:54] It was nice to have him there.

[01:20:55] You know, there is something that's really fun in acting, where if you are in real situations,

[01:21:00] where you can keep it real somehow, and you can look to somebody and say, you dig that,

[01:21:05] or, you know, is that making your stomach crawl?

[01:21:09] I think that I would stand correct in saying, you will never see Howard in the squad room

[01:21:20] with her gun in its holster.

[01:21:22] Yes.

[01:21:23] Unless she is removing it and putting it in the locker or is doing the opposite with it,

[01:21:31] because that was back to when those guys were there.

[01:21:34] And the reasons why are so obvious.

[01:21:38] You're in a house full of popo, and that's a criminal's.

[01:21:43] Mm-hmm.

[01:21:44] So anything happens, you've got your backup, and you don't want a gun out with the criminals

[01:21:51] that are going to come through.

[01:21:54] Absolutely.

[01:21:54] So in Baltimore, at the time, that was in the rule books.

[01:22:00] Gun in the locker.

[01:22:01] Mm-hmm.

[01:22:02] And it was visible.

[01:22:03] In the couple of the episodes I watched in the last two days, there you went.

[01:22:09] Went to the locker.

[01:22:10] Yeah.

[01:22:10] Yeah, you're putting it in.

[01:22:11] Very visible.

[01:22:12] The directors got a little bored with it eventually and didn't as much want to, you know, so they'd

[01:22:17] sort of go, okay, whatever.

[01:22:18] And then Howard leaves the room.

[01:22:20] But again, it's me being difficult about shit and getting me less time on screen.

[01:22:25] But whatever.

[01:22:26] I had a good time.

[01:22:30] It makes sense.

[01:22:31] It makes sense.

[01:22:32] And it's good that you're sticking to kind of the real thing.

[01:22:35] And we talked about this a little bit when we had Isabella on, the idea that, you know,

[01:22:41] you guys had a very prickly relationship, Megan and Kay.

[01:22:47] Really up until the episode where Bo is found dead and you have to put the funeral together and you both have emotional relationships with him from different directions, obviously.

[01:23:03] And there's sort of a meeting of the minds, maybe, you know, put the guns away.

[01:23:11] Was that prickly relationship?

[01:23:14] Did you appreciate that?

[01:23:16] Did it make sense to you in the world or of the unit?

[01:23:21] You know, it's hard.

[01:23:27] I long to see more solid relationships between professional women than I see on any medium.

[01:23:40] And I feel that more often what gets written primarily by men, although we had a couple of lovely female writers,

[01:23:49] that you have won in a room versus five, she's going to write the script they want to see, you know.

[01:23:58] And thank God we have the voice in the room and then the voice gets louder and the voice is more listened to.

[01:24:03] And those women, both of them, incredibly successful in their careers as writers.

[01:24:08] So there you go.

[01:24:13] But what was I going to say about all that?

[01:24:17] Well, did that prickly relationship, I mean, in some ways, I think it's stereotypical to expect women to get along all the time.

[01:24:27] It also, I guess the flip side is sometimes stereotypical for women to not help each other and not, you know,

[01:24:34] and to be in these adversarial relationships.

[01:24:37] I know when I was on a set with women, it was always like, thank God there's other women here.

[01:24:42] Right?

[01:24:46] But for you and the character, did it work?

[01:24:50] Yeah.

[01:24:50] And then there are those other...

[01:24:51] Both your characterizations and then the fact that eventually you guys, you know, put the guns away and had a collegial relationship.

[01:25:02] Listen, man, homicide was cutting edge in the writing, in the things they were doing, in allowing me to play that detective come sergeant.

[01:25:14] A hundred percent.

[01:25:15] Amazing.

[01:25:16] Remarkable things.

[01:25:17] But this is a...

[01:25:20] I'm hell-bent on this for the last chapter of my life, be it however long I have now.

[01:25:26] Right?

[01:25:27] I can look back on the work that I've done and know I have done womankind few services.

[01:25:35] And interesting things, interesting notes, blah, blah, blah, blah.

[01:25:41] But how can we tell our stories more fully, more 360?

[01:25:54] I think that relationships between human beings are complicated.

[01:25:58] And if in a room of 20, only two of them are females, that's an interesting dynamic to examine and explore.

[01:26:08] But when it's being seen still through male gaze...

[01:26:14] They either get along or they don't get along.

[01:26:18] And when you keep repeating this story of what the story is between them and that they come together over this dude.

[01:26:27] Because every woman I have ever been asked to play is somebody's.

[01:26:33] I was Danny's partner.

[01:26:37] Was he my partner?

[01:26:40] Maybe, but that's not how it's percepted.

[01:26:45] It's deep.

[01:26:46] I mean, no diss to anybody because it was groundbreaking what we were doing.

[01:26:51] And how much ground can you break in a day?

[01:26:53] Those are these shovels.

[01:26:55] Can you get out?

[01:26:56] You know?

[01:26:57] But part of it is the freedom I had on homicide allows me to know I have the license to be responsible for the women I play.

[01:27:08] I am responsible.

[01:27:12] So I take that responsibility very seriously.

[01:27:14] And if they were going to do something with the wonderful Isabella Hoffman and I, I wish they'd just done more.

[01:27:20] But at least they went soup to nuts.

[01:27:22] And I would say from a woman's perspective and a woman who worked in a man's world that I didn't see it that way as you were Danny's partner.

[01:27:33] Because you were absolutely unique in that setting and in the times.

[01:27:44] And still, that character still is.

[01:27:46] And when I watch you as that character, I feel part of me in that.

[01:27:51] Because that's somebody who always pushed being herself.

[01:27:59] Being herself always pushed outside the social norms.

[01:28:05] And although she got pushed back for it, she didn't give a fuck.

[01:28:10] Because she had to be who she was.

[01:28:13] And I still absolutely appreciate that portrayal for that.

[01:28:18] And I wouldn't denigrate yourself by saying you are only Danny's partner.

[01:28:22] Well, I appreciate your...

[01:28:23] Because in many ways, that relationship between the two of you, you were the more responsible.

[01:28:32] You were, obviously, I mean, they made him irresponsible in some ways, obviously also a good guy.

[01:28:37] But, you know, yeah, I think you were sort of the top side of that partnership in many ways because of, you know, what your responsibilities were, you know, as a sergeant.

[01:28:48] But before that, but also interesting the way they always put between the partners, every partner, partnership in that squad were opposites.

[01:28:58] Which really made for just absolutely great relationships and great dialogue and great, you know, scenarios.

[01:29:06] Good stuff.

[01:29:08] Yeah, that's super true.

[01:29:10] And I really appreciate hearing the way you make some identification with her.

[01:29:14] Because it's the most important thing about this silly old job of acting.

[01:29:21] Is the, you know, acting is an ancient art and film and television.

[01:29:29] Well, television even younger.

[01:29:30] Film, you know, 120 years old, maybe.

[01:29:34] And the ancient art of acting, not to get too hoi polloi on it, but it matters.

[01:29:40] And there were some great actors on the show.

[01:29:43] Great actors.

[01:29:46] Acting is an ancient healing art.

[01:29:49] Where it was practiced at Epideros in Greece.

[01:29:53] Which was like a hospital, think a fancy spa for wealthy Athenians to go and see drama and comedy and see themselves reflected to be better human beings.

[01:30:10] Have water therapies, talking therapies, and to watch theatrics.

[01:30:17] To have that kind of experience of identification and in that sense of identification.

[01:30:23] And feel a sense of belonging.

[01:30:26] And that is a goal of mine, Susan.

[01:30:28] And you've said that I've met that 30 years ago.

[01:30:31] So thank you.

[01:30:33] That really means so much to me.

[01:30:35] Thank you.

[01:30:36] That's what I mean to do with it.

[01:30:38] That's why I give the bosses a hard time.

[01:30:41] So some of us who have not yet been identified can identify.

[01:30:45] Yeah, I mean, it still drives me nuts today if I watch a cop drama and there's a woman running down an alley with a gun and a pair of high heels.

[01:30:52] I mean, it's better than it was.

[01:30:55] There's less of that.

[01:30:57] But it still is like, come on already with the high heel of a cop running in high heels.

[01:31:03] Come on, can we get rid of that?

[01:31:05] So, sorry.

[01:31:05] Chris, go ahead.

[01:31:09] I have one off the cuff question.

[01:31:11] It's totally unrelated to this.

[01:31:13] But just going off what you were saying about Baltimore.

[01:31:17] Were there any delicacies that you'd like to enjoy whilst you're at Baltimore?

[01:31:21] Because we had gizzards and scrapple and various other things.

[01:31:26] So are there any delicacies you enjoy?

[01:31:28] The crab cakes, yeah.

[01:31:29] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[01:31:30] I don't know.

[01:31:31] The crabs always have that.

[01:31:32] They season on them and it's a little too spicy for me.

[01:31:35] So that wasn't a thing.

[01:31:36] And, you know, if you're having some beers, I bet they're yummy.

[01:31:39] But, you know.

[01:31:40] So the thing that comes to my mind when you ask that is indeed Margaret's Cafe Open.

[01:31:45] It was literally right around the corner from the set.

[01:31:51] And she had a dessert there.

[01:31:52] And I know it so well because I worked as a waitress at Margaret's Cafe while I was shooting Homicide.

[01:32:04] Because I was working so little, I lived in Fells Point.

[01:32:07] I had found a place nearby so I could pop back and forth with my son.

[01:32:14] And sometimes he would actually be up north getting his education.

[01:32:19] And I would be down there.

[01:32:21] And Margaret, I'd go there often for dinner.

[01:32:24] It was a delicious home-cooked meal but like really amazing delicious foods she would make.

[01:32:30] And with a changing menu all the time according to what was in season.

[01:32:34] And this chocolate something delicious dessert thing that she made.

[01:32:40] And she lost a waitress at one point and was like, I don't know what I'm going to do.

[01:32:44] Because we sort of became pally.

[01:32:46] And I said, well, I'm not doing anything tomorrow.

[01:32:49] I'll come in.

[01:32:50] And I would do it from time to time.

[01:32:53] And people would be down looking at the menu.

[01:32:55] And they'd look up and go, oh, my God, what are you doing here?

[01:32:59] Is this a son-team?

[01:33:01] That's funny.

[01:33:02] That's like a camera episode right there.

[01:33:05] It's fun.

[01:33:06] I had good fun doing it.

[01:33:07] It was a really sweet little restaurant with about six tables in it.

[01:33:11] And it wasn't too wild.

[01:33:13] Yeah.

[01:33:14] Yeah.

[01:33:14] That's a food memory I have for sure.

[01:33:17] No.

[01:33:17] Happy times in Baltimore.

[01:33:18] And that crew, man.

[01:33:20] I just, all you people.

[01:33:21] I thought of, I think about you so much.

[01:33:23] I talk about all of you all the time.

[01:33:26] The inventions we invented.

[01:33:28] You could just get that shot if you just, you know, some DPs won't have that.

[01:33:34] They won't send that to the editor.

[01:33:37] Because God forbid the editor uses that.

[01:33:40] Well, if the movie doesn't include that, just fucking shrank over there and get the shot and go home.

[01:33:46] Yeah.

[01:33:46] I have such an impatience with a big, slow-moving machine.

[01:33:50] So when I'm asked, was it hard to work in that way?

[01:33:53] And all.

[01:33:53] No.

[01:33:54] Oh, no.

[01:33:54] Oh, my God.

[01:33:55] No.

[01:33:55] This is so much fun.

[01:33:57] So much fun.

[01:33:58] And I remember all those people super well.

[01:34:00] As a matter of fact, not that long ago, I called Frank Farrow.

[01:34:03] Oh, would you come be our first AD?

[01:34:05] And he said, well, I'm kind of busy right now.

[01:34:06] Oh, did you really?

[01:34:07] Oh, and on The Fighter.

[01:34:08] God.

[01:34:08] Who was our first AD on The Fighter?

[01:34:10] Yeah.

[01:34:11] And I just watched it last night, Chris, Shelly Ziegler, who was the first AD for the first.

[01:34:18] So I wasn't on the first season, but she was the first season.

[01:34:23] And I started on the second season, and she was the first AD.

[01:34:26] I don't know if it was for the whole second season or part of the second season.

[01:34:29] But, man, she went on to do amazing, gigantic work.

[01:34:34] And I was watching it because I always watch the credits.

[01:34:36] Everybody out there that listens to this, if you don't watch the credits of the movie or the TV show you just watched,

[01:34:43] please turn off the auto thing where it spins to the next episode before the credits finish.

[01:34:50] Please watch the credits.

[01:34:52] But so I'm watching the credits last night, but also not just Shelly, but Alex Appelfeld, who was the video assist person.

[01:34:59] He was also on The Fighter.

[01:35:02] Alex was there.

[01:35:03] I was like, it must have been nice for you to have a couple of familiar faces, was it?

[01:35:07] I can't say that I'm remembering Alex.

[01:35:09] I feel terrible about that.

[01:35:11] But I was...

[01:35:12] I just see a picture of you, remember.

[01:35:13] To have Shelly there.

[01:35:15] Oh, my God.

[01:35:17] That was not an easy shoot for me.

[01:35:46] Mm-hmm.

[01:35:49] Also, the sense of caring about the work, that it mattered to everybody involved doing it.

[01:35:55] That's why Susan is saying to all y'all, watch the credits.

[01:35:58] Because everybody there, the people that you're not seeing, man, it matters to everybody.

[01:36:03] And that's the cruise we love the most.

[01:36:07] If you don't care whether somebody sees your name at the end of the movie or not, well, just go on home.

[01:36:13] I know.

[01:36:14] I'm always amazed when people...

[01:36:15] The second is a hint of a credit.

[01:36:17] People get their coats on and want to get out.

[01:36:18] And it's just like...

[01:36:19] I need to decompress from the movie, especially if it's a good one.

[01:36:23] I need some time just to absorb it and come out.

[01:36:25] And I love the credits and the music that usually goes to the credits as well.

[01:36:29] It's just, yeah.

[01:36:29] It's part of the experience.

[01:36:36] To do this one thing that you just sat through for 45 minutes or an hour or two hours.

[01:36:42] There were...

[01:36:43] And it's even more, I think, way more people now than obviously than we're on Homicide.

[01:36:48] Because we had a sort of scaled down camera crew and stuff.

[01:36:52] But how many people have to work together to produce something like that?

[01:37:00] And yeah, I just...

[01:37:02] Yeah, that's why I love doing this podcast.

[01:37:04] Because I want people to understand more what it takes to put together a show.

[01:37:09] And how many crew people.

[01:37:11] And that we had to get along.

[01:37:14] You know, even if there were sparks here and there.

[01:37:16] You have to work like a well-oiled machine.

[01:37:19] Even though when you're on a set like that, people that come visit sets,

[01:37:23] it just looks like controlled...

[01:37:25] Maybe not controlled.

[01:37:27] Controlled chaos.

[01:37:29] Because everybody is doing their very specific job in their own specific way.

[01:37:33] But everybody is like...

[01:37:35] There's like a hundred voices and things going on.

[01:37:38] It's crazy.

[01:37:39] But if you're focused on your department and your department ed and what you're supposed to be doing,

[01:37:45] it's very...

[01:37:47] It is an absolutely well-oiled machine.

[01:37:49] And amazing from that controlled chaos.

[01:37:52] The kind of art that comes out of it.

[01:37:56] Right?

[01:37:56] Like, it was fun talking to the ADs because they go through the whole process.

[01:38:02] Pre-production, production, and post-production.

[01:38:05] So we heard from them a lot more of sort of the aspect of the production than we have with people like me.

[01:38:11] Who were just on the production side.

[01:38:13] Just, you know, on the set at the time.

[01:38:15] But yeah, I hope this gives people a deeper look into...

[01:38:20] Wow.

[01:38:21] You know?

[01:38:21] And when I just turn my TV on, this amazing thing happens in front of me.

[01:38:26] Look what the hell it took to get that on the screen.

[01:38:29] It's a gigantic effort.

[01:38:31] And a gigantic team effort.

[01:38:34] You know?

[01:38:36] Okay, I'll shut up.

[01:38:37] I'll get off my soapbox.

[01:38:38] No, I've had so much fun listening to the episodes that I've listened to.

[01:38:45] And I'll continue now listening to the rest of them, you know, and hearing about the things that I thought were so.

[01:38:52] And find out, oh, indeed, I was remembering.

[01:38:54] And to be reminded by David Simon, particularly, about affinity and the ways in which that the day would be this 12-hour day and would be out of there.

[01:39:07] That he would bring things in under budget so that they could get the budget for the next one.

[01:39:14] And this sense of overspending.

[01:39:17] I didn't know where I had such an acute sensitivity to that.

[01:39:22] But it doesn't matter if it's a huge production that I'm shooting with Anton Fuqua or it's a, you know, $250,000 thing I'm shooting in my backyard.

[01:39:33] There's this sense of it's a word we don't use anymore.

[01:39:37] We used to talk about being conservationists, you know, like taking care of the environment, like taking care of things, sustainability in film.

[01:39:46] And listening to the podcast, I realized, oh, my God, homicide was all about sustainability.

[01:39:54] Not overages.

[01:39:55] You know, I wasn't aware of that either.

[01:39:58] I just knew that, you know, we were under the gun to get done in 12 hours.

[01:40:04] And I also didn't know the incredible effort it was.

[01:40:08] One of the ways to keep it on budget was to hire all of us local people and to have this amazing, you know, 90% local crew.

[01:40:18] I didn't know that was a function of the budget.

[01:40:22] And I've worked on location in various places.

[01:40:26] And I've also worked on location down in New Orleans with David Simon and Nina producing.

[01:40:32] And where do you think they learned everything that they were, you know, and how they could do that down there and keep it in under budget and do the thing.

[01:40:45] And the local hires and you're working with local people.

[01:40:49] And down in New Orleans, I would say we had to grow some of that crew.

[01:40:53] And so we did by bringing people down from Baltimore, actually.

[01:40:58] But that established a whole base of a crew down there in New Orleans.

[01:41:03] That's just an extraordinary local bunch.

[01:41:05] And people can come in from Los Angeles and other places and work down there.

[01:41:10] Still shooting goes on in Baltimore in a rampant way or not so much?

[01:41:16] You know, I think a lot of things are unfortunately affected by the strikes.

[01:41:21] And some of the guys and women on the show have talked about, you know, the work being less right now.

[01:41:27] But I think that's for everybody, not just Baltimore.

[01:41:30] But, you know, that was the last thing I did.

[01:41:32] Homicide was the last thing I did.

[01:41:34] It just blows my mind when I talk to people like Frank and everybody that worked another 30 plus years in the business.

[01:41:42] And I went on to do something else.

[01:41:44] So I'm not as keyed in to what's happening here.

[01:41:47] But I think there's enough, you know, people work in D.C., people work in Philly.

[01:41:55] And probably, I don't know, you know, do people migrate still to North Carolina?

[01:41:59] I don't know.

[01:42:00] Some of the people on the crew moved to Atlanta.

[01:42:04] Some people moved to North Carolina.

[01:42:06] You know, so there were some migration for work from Baltimore.

[01:42:11] But that's a good question.

[01:42:12] That's a good question if we're still, I mean, that was unprecedented.

[01:42:16] A seven-year network television show shot all here.

[01:42:21] That had not happened before.

[01:42:23] We certainly have had our share of really good films.

[01:42:26] And certainly John Waters is his own industry here.

[01:42:29] And always use local talent and local crew.

[01:42:34] And that kept a lot of people working.

[01:42:34] I was so excited.

[01:42:35] I just watched Serial Mom.

[01:42:37] I don't know why.

[01:42:37] Looking for something.

[01:42:38] Looking for something.

[01:42:39] Oh, oh, I never saw that.

[01:42:41] And I watched the credits.

[01:42:43] And I was like, oh, my God.

[01:42:44] I know.

[01:42:44] I know.

[01:42:44] I know.

[01:42:45] I know.

[01:42:45] I know.

[01:42:46] I know.

[01:42:46] Yeah.

[01:42:47] Just about.

[01:42:48] Just about everybody.

[01:42:49] Yeah.

[01:42:50] Yeah.

[01:42:50] Yeah.

[01:42:50] I worked on that and also Pecker.

[01:42:53] And I can't remember if I left Homicide to work on both of those or just one of them.

[01:42:59] It must have been both of them because I was done at the end of Homicide.

[01:43:05] So to be able to, that was absolutely wonderful to be able to jump off and do a feature and come back to the television.

[01:43:17] So have you been back since?

[01:43:19] Have you been back to work on anything or?

[01:43:21] Not to work on anything.

[01:43:23] I've been through.

[01:43:25] I was on my way somewhere and I stopped in Baltimore.

[01:43:29] And mostly I sort of thought, oh, gosh, I don't know if I remember anything.

[01:43:34] And then I probably, because I didn't have enough time and I am thrilled that something is bubbling up about this and that it's streaming now and that will help the podcast and the podcast will help the streaming getting watched.

[01:43:49] And it feels like a really good time.

[01:43:52] Well, Melissa, do you have any, are there any final thoughts, anything we've missed that's important to you that you want to add before we sort of wrap up today?

[01:44:00] I have a film that's out, coming out right now.

[01:44:03] It's getting a European release for sure.

[01:44:06] And I'm pretty sure it'll get a release in the U.S.

[01:44:08] It's called King Ivory about this dreadful fentanyl epidemic.

[01:44:13] I just read a long interview with you.

[01:44:15] And I think the director, I think it was about this film you're talking about.

[01:44:19] It might very well be.

[01:44:20] John Schwab.

[01:44:20] I've made a couple of films with him.

[01:44:23] I really, really admire him and what he does.

[01:44:27] And when's that coming out?

[01:44:28] What's the projected?

[01:44:29] I don't know what the plan is because the last I had spoken to them, we were in Venice at the film festival there with the film.

[01:44:36] And I know that they have a distribution in Europe with Universal, but they were working on the U.S. distribution.

[01:44:46] And I think it's something that's going to, you see, happen more and more.

[01:44:49] Even U.S. films being released in Europe, building a name, building a name.

[01:44:54] Another film that I have that's coming out, we don't know when yet, also because it's looking to get picked up for distribution.

[01:45:02] And very successful run at Tribeca Film Festival.

[01:45:06] My DP got Best Cinematography, Alejandro Mejo.

[01:45:13] And my director got also awarded at Tribeca.

[01:45:18] And then awarded again over at Deauville, France for a film called The Knife.

[01:45:24] The Knife.

[01:45:25] In which I play a detective.

[01:45:28] Hey.

[01:45:29] Full circle, Melissa.

[01:45:31] Felt that way to me.

[01:45:33] Felt that way to me.

[01:45:34] I brought in all my know-how and knowledge.

[01:45:36] Wow, how much fun.

[01:45:37] All my years on the force.

[01:45:39] Yeah, your years on the force.

[01:45:41] Exactly.

[01:45:41] You were a veteran.

[01:45:42] Yeah, what's that like playing a detective again?

[01:45:44] That must be interesting.

[01:45:46] It's very interesting.

[01:45:47] It's a very, very different film.

[01:45:48] Very different film than anything anybody's ever seen before.

[01:45:51] Special, beautiful film in which a white detective is making investigation into an incident in a black family home.

[01:45:59] Okay.

[01:46:00] Wow.

[01:46:01] I can't wait to see that.

[01:46:02] Wow, cool.

[01:46:03] Yeah, I was looking on IMDb now.

[01:46:04] It looks really interesting.

[01:46:05] And I just have to say, the fighter.

[01:46:07] I mean, your work in that was just off the charts.

[01:46:12] Amazing.

[01:46:12] Well, all credit there goes to the woman I played, Alice Ward.

[01:46:16] She was a remarkable woman.

[01:46:18] She lived a remarkable life.

[01:46:21] When I met her feeling, I was much too young to play the part opposite, you know, a bunch of actors who were about my age.

[01:46:29] I just felt, you know, I just, anyway, I got strong-armed into playing the part.

[01:46:35] But it was Alice that let me know that I had permission to play her and that she appreciated what I had done.

[01:46:45] It was terrific.

[01:46:47] Terrific film all around.

[01:46:49] That's brilliant.

[01:46:50] Well, I wonder if you know down there in Baltimore if Pat Moran's still around.

[01:46:55] Yes, she's still around.

[01:46:56] And, you know, whether she's still casting or not, I don't know because I'm out of the loop here.

[01:47:01] I would think yes, but, yeah, I don't know.

[01:47:04] I would think yes, but I have to look into that.

[01:47:07] Because the Moran family was a dear part of the show.

[01:47:12] Lou DeGymo had done the original casting, but Pat was our caster down there in Baltimore and local.

[01:47:18] And her son was our property master.

[01:47:20] And her daughter was in the office.

[01:47:24] Amanda?

[01:47:25] Yeah.

[01:47:27] No, that's not it.

[01:47:28] No, that's not it.

[01:47:29] I'm trying to remember Brooke's sister's name.

[01:47:32] Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[01:47:33] Yes.

[01:47:35] It'll come to us.

[01:47:36] It'll come to us an hour and a half from now.

[01:47:38] Yes.

[01:47:39] But I thought about them and just so many people.

[01:47:43] My serious grip and electric shirt, which I wore for years and years and years.

[01:47:47] My son came home from his longtime stay in Germany.

[01:47:51] He's now 37 years old.

[01:47:54] Wow.

[01:47:55] He was a tiny little boy when we shot the show.

[01:47:59] But he saw the serious grip and electric shirt, and I no longer have it.

[01:48:02] He has it.

[01:48:04] Oh.

[01:48:06] And just what a brilliant thing for you guys to do and pull people in and talk about it.

[01:48:14] I think it'll only keep growing from this.

[01:48:17] There's so much to talk about about the show and episode by episode even.

[01:48:21] And all those amazing directors and amazing guest people who came in too.

[01:48:26] I mean, I think there's something people will say to me.

[01:48:30] Oh, yeah, no, I was in Homicide.

[01:48:31] And I was like, oh, you were?

[01:48:33] And if I didn't have a scene with them, it didn't really happen.

[01:48:37] Yeah.

[01:48:38] Yeah.

[01:48:39] Greer.

[01:48:39] Thank you guys so much for doing this.

[01:48:42] Greer.

[01:48:43] Greer.

[01:48:43] Thank you.

[01:48:44] Sorry, Greer.

[01:48:45] Yes.

[01:48:46] We remember you dearly.

[01:48:48] Yes.

[01:48:50] I couldn't pull it up easy because I knew it wasn't like Amy or Susan or Melissa or Chris,

[01:48:56] for that matter.

[01:48:57] It was something all her own.

[01:49:00] Well, this has been terrific.

[01:49:01] Thank you so much for spending so much time with us.

[01:49:04] Yeah, thank you, Melissa.

[01:49:04] It's just really been fun catching up on all your insights.

[01:49:07] Thank you so much.

[01:49:27] So that was Melissa Leo.

[01:49:29] And honestly, that was a really interesting conversation.

[01:49:32] And as I was saying earlier, I felt a very sort of honest and frank conversation.

[01:49:36] And obviously, her experience on Homicide was a mixed one.

[01:49:40] She loved the show.

[01:49:42] You know, she really loved the material.

[01:49:44] But obviously, there were certain aspects, the practicalities of it that didn't quite work out in the end.

[01:49:50] And so, yeah, I don't know what your thoughts were with that conversation.

[01:49:54] Because, yeah, I was really blown away by it.

[01:49:56] Yeah.

[01:49:56] Yeah, me too.

[01:49:58] Wow.

[01:49:59] It was great.

[01:50:00] I really enjoyed it.

[01:50:02] But one of the things that struck me was there, and this is probably more about me than about her,

[01:50:08] but so many things, you know, in my tunnel vision, working on the set that I did not know.

[01:50:15] You know, I think also when Isabella talked, and there were things that I don't know.

[01:50:20] I'm just in my mode.

[01:50:21] I get to work.

[01:50:22] I work on the set.

[01:50:24] But, you know, I didn't know.

[01:50:25] There's so many things.

[01:50:26] And I thank her for being open about how it felt for her not only being, you know, the only woman detective when she started before Isabella came in, but also the challenges of being a mother.

[01:50:42] Yeah.

[01:50:42] And, you know, and working, you know, on episodic television and your own location and not being able to hang out with the guys.

[01:50:51] Not that she would have if she's not a drinker.

[01:50:53] You know, that sometimes becomes a barrier for people.

[01:50:55] But not being able to hang out with the guys.

[01:50:57] And then looking for things to do with her son.

[01:50:59] You know, it never occurred to me, like, these people have another life, right?

[01:51:03] She had a whole other life off the set where she's trying to make a life for herself there in Baltimore with her son while she's working.

[01:51:11] You know, sometimes ridiculous hours.

[01:51:14] So I really appreciated that.

[01:51:16] That was an insight that, you know, never occurred to me because I wasn't living her life.

[01:51:22] I was living my life.

[01:51:23] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[01:51:24] And on the flip side as well, there were times where she was very underused as well.

[01:51:27] She was saying that she helped out in a friend's cafe kind of almost just to occupy her time and to help her friend out.

[01:51:34] And that must have been, you know, as you put it, like a candid camera moment where, you know, in the middle of the 90s, there you are in this cafe and suddenly, you know, Detective Kay Howe is serving you a salad or something.

[01:51:45] Like, wow, you know.

[01:51:46] Kind of mad, isn't it?

[01:51:48] Yeah.

[01:51:48] And I thought all the talk, we mentioned this a little in the intro, but all the talk about craft was really interesting.

[01:51:54] And it shows you, you know, you hang out on the set with actors and, you know, it can be very jocular at times and loose and things.

[01:52:02] But, you know, you don't go deep into why they do what they do or how they feel about what they do.

[01:52:10] And her getting into that, how serious she takes her craft really came through and her love of acting.

[01:52:17] And also the idea of the collective creative process that, you know, how many people it takes to put a show like Homicide or any show or movie, you know, movies would be bigger.

[01:52:31] But when I look through the list on IMDB of who worked on that show over those seven years, it is almost infinite.

[01:52:38] It is an amazing number of people.

[01:52:41] So that was cool.

[01:52:43] We were talking about the craft and I love that little history lesson.

[01:52:46] All right.

[01:52:47] Going back to the Greeks.

[01:52:48] Yes.

[01:52:49] And the Greek spas and that performance and acting was part of...

[01:52:55] The ancient healing practice.

[01:52:56] Yeah.

[01:52:57] Helping the audience relate to someone that can help you heal or feel better about yourself.

[01:53:03] I thought that was something I certainly don't think I'd ever heard before.

[01:53:07] Yeah.

[01:53:08] Yeah.

[01:53:08] Well, that's the thing.

[01:53:09] I think, you know, I reflect on my limited experience of acting and studying it at senior high and stuff.

[01:53:17] There's something about you just get a weird way of understanding people.

[01:53:22] By stepping in someone else's shoes, it forces you to think differently and approach things differently.

[01:53:28] And I think that's a very healthy experience for a lot of people to try and do.

[01:53:33] Because I think empathy in particular is a very, very important skill in life.

[01:53:37] And, you know, and it's not easy for actors either.

[01:53:40] Because obviously they've got to be very vulnerable on screen.

[01:53:43] And the camera, I call the camera a bit of a lie detector.

[01:53:46] It can tell when you're being phony.

[01:53:49] And it can just, it's a very unforgiving format.

[01:53:52] And so actors, you know, every time you see an emotional screen, they've got to live it.

[01:53:57] They've got to feel it.

[01:53:58] There are little techniques you can do here or there to like bring on tears and things.

[01:54:01] But you've got to dig deep into yourself to kind of pull those emotions out convincingly and be thinking as the character does.

[01:54:09] And it's not easy.

[01:54:10] It's not easy at all.

[01:54:11] But actors make it look easy.

[01:54:13] They're good at it.

[01:54:14] Right.

[01:54:14] That's the thing.

[01:54:15] Yeah.

[01:54:16] That idea of, you know, walking a mile in someone else's shoes, you have to do as an actor.

[01:54:24] But, you know, not be self-conscious about it for sure.

[01:54:27] And I think for Homicide, that also extended to the crew.

[01:54:30] I mean, most people, you know, we all live in our little silos.

[01:54:34] We stay in our neighborhoods.

[01:54:35] We hang out with the same people, you know, that kind of thing.

[01:54:39] But Homicide forced us, at least the crew and the cast too, to go into neighborhoods and areas that, and ways of living that we normally wouldn't have experienced if we hadn't been on that show.

[01:54:52] And so I think that was valuable.

[01:54:55] You know, and I hope a lot of people took that with them because I certainly took it with me.

[01:55:00] Getting a close-up look that you never, ever would have been privileged to see, you know, unless you were in that kind of situation.

[01:55:09] Yeah.

[01:55:09] Yeah, that's one of the amazing things about filming on location is that you really get to go to places that you wouldn't normally be invited to.

[01:55:18] And that could be both good and bad.

[01:55:22] And I remember our interview with Isabella, and she was talking about, like, one of the houses that they were filming in that cockroaches sort of just came out.

[01:55:30] And also she noted that the kids were sleeping, I think, on mattresses without bed covers and things, and it really affected her.

[01:55:37] And that's some of the things that you do see.

[01:55:39] And for some people, that's their lived reality.

[01:55:43] And, you know, with the poverty and things that exist in our world, and sadly, certainly in certain parts of Baltimore, that seems to be a very real thing.

[01:55:51] So it's, yeah, it must be quite an eye-opener for you, for anybody really on the cast and crew when you kind of go into these situations that are kind of completely different to your lived experience.

[01:56:03] And I would say, like you just mentioned, on both ends of the spectrum, and we also shot in mansions, you know, mansions that had, you know, servant quarters up in the attic, you know?

[01:56:16] And, you know, you go in there and it's like, wow.

[01:56:20] And I know that there are people lose perspective.

[01:56:24] There are people that live in neighborhoods like that where every house is, to me, from my perspective, every house is a mansion.

[01:56:32] And then you realize that to them, that's like what they consider like their normal middle-class life.

[01:56:38] It's like, no, it's not.

[01:56:41] Yeah, yeah.

[01:56:43] That's a mansion.

[01:56:44] I don't care how many ways you cut it.

[01:56:46] So, yeah, we got to see that whole spectrum in Baltimore, for sure.

[01:56:51] Yeah, yeah.

[01:56:52] And another interesting thing that Melissa brought up was playing her on-screen sister.

[01:56:59] And I originally thought the character had been written with Melissa in mind to play it.

[01:57:05] But it sounds like, from the interview, that that wasn't the case at all.

[01:57:08] Melissa actually had to audition for that.

[01:57:09] And I'm really blown away by that.

[01:57:12] And it's such a good episode, as we were talking about earlier, about it so well edited and acted.

[01:57:17] And, yeah, I was just really blown away by that.

[01:57:20] Yeah, it brought to mind, I guess, was when we interviewed Tom Fontana and the writers.

[01:57:27] And they talked about, and I don't know her name, the actress in Law & Order who had the twin sister that they were able to use.

[01:57:35] Oh, yes, yes.

[01:57:37] I remember now in the court scene.

[01:57:38] Yeah, I can't remember who that is now.

[01:57:39] But yes, yes.

[01:57:40] Yeah, the court scene.

[01:57:42] So they had her sit in because the sister who was the main actress that is in the show.

[01:57:50] And so they didn't have that privilege when they got down to Melissa and her sister.

[01:57:55] And I bet that conversation came up, like, what are we going to do?

[01:57:58] We don't have a twin sister now to work with.

[01:58:01] So the idea that they would have gotten someone else is kind of interesting.

[01:58:05] And it may have been their first thought.

[01:58:08] And who knows, we'd have to talk to Tom or Barry or somebody to tell us what they were thinking.

[01:58:13] But it may have been their first thought was, we can't use her in both parts because it will be like Patty Duke in,

[01:58:21] because they're cousins, two of a kind.

[01:58:24] You know, that kind of thing where Patty Duke played two characters.

[01:58:27] That's a reference that's over my head there.

[01:58:29] But in a similar manner, the sort of free, it was probably just called the Patty Duke show.

[01:58:35] That is it?

[01:58:36] Yeah, that's it.

[01:58:37] I was just looking at it quickly on the internet.

[01:58:39] It was Patty Duke as the sort of freewheeling high school.

[01:58:43] And then her British cousin or somebody, British cousin, who was a total uptight, opposite personality.

[01:58:51] And they were probably worried it would get too kitschy.

[01:58:55] But I thought she did a fabulous job.

[01:58:57] And like we said in the episode, the editors who, hello, editors, we will be trying to find you.

[01:59:05] The editors did not just an amazing, they did an amazing job cutting it together.

[01:59:10] But they would have had to pre-think.

[01:59:11] They would have had to pre-think how to make invisible cuts like they did with that.

[01:59:17] That scene coming off the elevator where they use a body as a wipe to change to the next shot was really well done.

[01:59:26] Really just absolutely elegantly put together.

[01:59:29] The wedding really, really well edited, well directed and well acted episode.

[01:59:33] Because, yeah, it would have been very easy for that to have, I think, yeah, it's a bit of a knife edge, isn't it?

[01:59:40] For the believability of that.

[01:59:41] And with hair and makeup and everything, they made, you know, and obviously her performance, she made that character a complete opposite of Kay.

[01:59:51] And it did work.

[01:59:54] Because I remember when I was rereading about that episode before watching it, I was a bit skeptical.

[01:59:59] But I watched it and I was like, wow, this is really good.

[02:00:01] This actually works really well.

[02:00:02] And I love the way, not only was she opposite from Kay, but she was, and I know we all know people like this in our lives, people that attract trouble.

[02:00:10] Yeah.

[02:00:11] You know, people that consciously or unconsciously create trouble, which is exactly what she did while she was there and ends up with a fist fight with Kyle and Reed, you know.

[02:00:24] And interesting, we didn't get too deep into that, but she did talk about how different it was to relate and to act with your fellow colleagues who you've been working with for four years as a completely different character all of a sudden.

[02:00:43] All of a sudden, I'm not Kay Howard.

[02:00:46] You know, I'm sort of this crazy pants, you know, exuding sexuality person with my acting colleagues.

[02:00:54] So that must have been fun.

[02:00:55] I think she did say it was fun.

[02:00:57] And for her, it was just part of what an actor's range is.

[02:01:03] No, no, it was really good.

[02:01:05] And one other note as well, Cafe Hon came up, which used to be a Baltimore institution.

[02:01:11] It's sadly no longer there.

[02:01:14] And Melissa used to like going there.

[02:01:16] And apparently Honfest does still continue, I read on the website.

[02:01:21] So there's something there.

[02:01:23] But Cafe Hon sounded fantastic.

[02:01:24] I saw some pictures of like the big pink flamingo and everything, and it looked really cool.

[02:01:28] Yeah.

[02:01:29] I don't really know what the demise ultimately was.

[02:01:32] Yeah.

[02:01:32] No, it's sad.

[02:01:33] It sounded like it was quite a cool place and looked kind of fun.

[02:01:37] And, you know, maybe just a victim of post-COVID, et cetera, of a lot of businesses today, sadly.

[02:01:43] Yeah.

[02:01:43] And I don't even know.

[02:01:44] I hate to say this, Baltimoreans, but I don't even know what's...

[02:01:48] Something's there now, but I haven't been up there.

[02:01:50] I mean, I've been in Hamden, but I haven't been to the former Cafe Hon.

[02:01:55] Back to Melissa's multiple characters.

[02:01:59] The other thing I thought was interesting, not just in her talking about how, you know,

[02:02:04] when she said she was going to audition for the Carrie part and went down and worked with hair,

[02:02:10] makeup, and wardrobe to create the character, that how much Kay Howard's character was developed

[02:02:18] through the idea of the wardrobe.

[02:02:21] Yeah.

[02:02:21] And it never occurred to me, once again, in my tunnel vision as a camera assistant, you know,

[02:02:26] it never occurred to me that the reason why she had a suit and tie on was because the Baltimore

[02:02:33] Homicide Department's, you know, dress code was a suit and tie.

[02:02:37] Yeah.

[02:02:38] Yeah.

[02:02:38] The regulations.

[02:02:39] Yeah.

[02:02:39] And, you know, there was not a dress code for women.

[02:02:43] Just like there also probably, to be honest, there probably...

[02:02:46] And I should have asked somebody this, and maybe David mentioned in his book, there probably

[02:02:50] also wasn't a women's room in that office.

[02:02:53] And when I used to go in to prep camera equipment at Panavision in Los Angeles, and when I started

[02:03:00] as a trainee back in 1982, you'd go into the Panavision.

[02:03:08] It's a beautiful facility, and there'd be two bathroom doors.

[02:03:12] One said men, and the other one said men.

[02:03:15] Wow.

[02:03:15] Wow.

[02:03:16] Yeah.

[02:03:20] I think they eventually changed that, but yeah, you'd go, it didn't matter.

[02:03:24] As a woman, I'd go and like, yeah, let me go in there where the, you know, the men's

[02:03:28] equipment was.

[02:03:31] But anyway, that whole idea of the, you know, the suit and tie being a dress code, so that

[02:03:35] became her thing.

[02:03:37] I also love that she talked about, you know, she didn't want, and you mentioned this too,

[02:03:42] that many shows, and one of the things I thought about was the show Castle, which was

[02:03:46] a little, was obviously much lighter than Homicide.

[02:03:50] Nevertheless, it was a cop show, and, you know, with the author following the cops around,

[02:03:58] you know, and they developed, and they had to, you know, at a certain level develop, you

[02:04:02] know, a relationship between the two of them.

[02:04:04] Castle, you know, they had to develop, but it also happened with, what was the one with

[02:04:10] Bruce Willis and...

[02:04:11] Oh, Moonlightings, yeah.

[02:04:13] Moonlighting.

[02:04:13] Everybody complained, because what happens is, if you don't have a relationship, you

[02:04:19] constantly have the conflict, right?

[02:04:21] Yeah.

[02:04:22] If you give in to the relationship, then you have to start another conflict, and they

[02:04:26] have to break up, you know?

[02:04:27] So it becomes this thing, and I know people were disappointed that they, and I think it

[02:04:32] ended the show where they finally got together on Moonlight.

[02:04:36] But I like the fact that she said, you know, I didn't want that to happen with Kay, and

[02:04:41] she did mention, she thought that people thought that, you know, her wearing a suit and tie had

[02:04:48] to do with her sexuality.

[02:04:49] But, I mean, she did have a relationship with...

[02:04:51] Danvers, yeah.

[02:04:53] Yeah.

[02:04:53] So, but yeah, I thought that was, you know, once again, something I didn't know the backstory

[02:04:58] of.

[02:04:59] So that's why this is so much fun, too, for us, is that we find out backstory, you know,

[02:05:03] that we didn't know.

[02:05:04] Well, yeah, yeah, indeed.

[02:05:05] Well, yeah, I was pleased that they didn't try and hint at a romance between her and Daniel

[02:05:11] Baldwin, because as you have been saying, it's like, you know, unfortunately, it's sort of

[02:05:16] the go-to in TV writing, and to me, it's the obvious choice, and I mean that in a bad way,

[02:05:21] because so many shows, there's this expectation that the man and the woman, they can't just be

[02:05:29] colleagues, they have to secretly want to be with each other romantically, or develop

[02:05:33] that, and it's...

[02:05:34] And there are so many other dynamics you can play with, and also with...

[02:05:39] We talked also with Melissa about her conflict with Isabella's character as well, and there

[02:05:45] is a bit of a thing in TV as well, where women have to hate each other, which is another kind

[02:05:51] of cliche, and, you know, she felt that certainly some aspects of her relationship with Isabella

[02:05:56] kind of fell into that territory, and I know what she means there, and certainly, it's...

[02:06:01] Yeah, it's a very bizarre thing, sometimes writing for TV, where they do sometimes kind of just go

[02:06:07] for these shorthands, because I guess it saves a bit of... It creates conflict, and it saves,

[02:06:14] I don't know, on complexity and screen time, maybe. I don't know. Sometimes there's just

[02:06:19] some very obvious choices you see, and you're like, wow, why did they go there with that?

[02:06:23] Yeah, and I actually had a feeling also the opposite way, that when Isabella became a large

[02:06:34] part of the show, that she and Kay, being the only women in the unit, would have an affinity

[02:06:41] for each other, and I liked the fact that they didn't, you know, that there was this...

[02:06:46] There was a tension between them, but, you know, when they had... You know, in the Danny

[02:06:52] murder-slash-suicide episode, you know, I think came to an understanding at some level with each

[02:07:00] other. You know, it's just that whole idea of humanity. It's like, it doesn't matter what

[02:07:04] we're doing. The humanity eventually comes into it.

[02:07:08] Definitely. Well, I think homicide was a bit ahead of the game on it, because I think it's

[02:07:12] become the cliche now that women on screen don't get on, because I think with Reese's regards

[02:07:18] to Isabella and Melissa's characters, I think that was... I could be wrong here, but I feel

[02:07:24] that was a very early version of that. But now it's sort of become the norm in television

[02:07:28] where the women generally don't get on.

[02:07:30] Yeah, and then, of course, the women that they brought in later, when Michael Michelle

[02:07:34] and Callie Thorne came in, they just come in and, you know, there's a little... not so much

[02:07:39] tension between them, but I think there's a little skepticism maybe between them and maybe

[02:07:45] Callie's character felt a little intimidated because, of course, Michael Michelle comes

[02:07:50] in very serious and, you know, very serious actor, but also comes in looking like a supermodel.

[02:07:57] I mean, you can't deny that, right?

[02:07:58] And her character apparently was a model in the show or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,

[02:08:03] And they worked with that sort of... that little bit of standoffishness maybe Callie had about,

[02:08:09] you know, feeling like she was being overlooked. But then that was also when they were all playing

[02:08:16] with relationship stuff, which they did not do in the first four or five seasons.

[02:08:21] Yeah, season seven just does sort of have a lot of more relationship dynamics, which they

[02:08:25] didn't quite have before in that way. So it's, yeah.

[02:08:27] So another thing I really enjoyed her talking about was what it feels like to look back. I think she

[02:08:34] was fairly introspective of talking about what it feels like to look back 30 years later,

[02:08:41] not just at herself, but also at the interpretation that she did of her character, you know, and that

[02:08:49] she maybe now, later, much later, has a different feeling or affinity or understanding for Kay Howard.

[02:08:58] Yeah, yeah.

[02:08:59] That maybe there would be a slightly different approach than there was then. And her perspective

[02:09:08] changes. And it's interesting, she was sort of on the fence about the Waterman episode, which I think is

[02:09:15] a terrific episode. Although I think you did mention at one point, you wish they had stayed with that

[02:09:21] story and not worried about bouncing back to Baltimore.

[02:09:25] Yeah, we were chatting about it, I think, before our interview. And I feel like the weakness of that

[02:09:30] episode is having to come back to Baltimore, because they're investigating the woman who his tongue has

[02:09:35] been taken out. And it's sort of Bo and Pembelton are working together. And it's quite a lot of

[02:09:40] interesting Bo and Pembelton dynamic, but I feel like it then slightly dilutes what's going on with

[02:09:46] Kay. So I feel like I would have liked more of Kay and less of them. If anything, they could have

[02:09:51] solved that murder the following week.

[02:09:53] Right. And I did love, even though she said it felt like Murder, She Wrote, which of course I

[02:09:57] pointed out to her, not Murder, She Wrote. But that, you know, I did love the, you know, her,

[02:10:07] her, you know, she had a moment, right? She had a moment when they go in and I'm sure homicide

[02:10:11] detectives and anybody, you know, any cop or anybody, you know, medical people, any people that

[02:10:16] work with life and death, that you come to work one day and it's just like, oh my God, I can't take

[02:10:24] one more. I can't take one more of these things. And this one's, you know, especially horrific.

[02:10:31] And so she tries to escape. She ends up with a dead body full of knife wounds, you know? I mean,

[02:10:38] Yeah.

[02:10:39] You know, and what does that say? I mean, if you really want to go deep on that too, it's not,

[02:10:43] it was an interesting look at, okay, everybody, not everybody, there are people that complain

[02:10:49] that homicide only showed the bad parts of Baltimore and that it reflected badly on us. And people thought

[02:10:56] we were just the murder capital and blah, blah, blah, which I disagree with. But that episode also

[02:11:03] showed, which you can look at the news here any night and see that it ain't just happening in the

[02:11:10] city, right? I mean, bad things happen everywhere, right? And so she goes and finds that out for

[02:11:17] herself that bad things even happen, unfortunately, not just close to home, but at home, right?

[02:11:24] Right. So yeah, yeah, it was, yeah, she was terrific in really being incisive in her,

[02:11:33] in looking back and thinking from a distance about the show and about her character.

[02:11:38] Yeah, yeah, we'll see. And, you know, obviously she's a much older person now,

[02:11:43] so she's looking back and a lot more experienced now as an actor. So she probably would want to try

[02:11:48] things differently. And, well, maybe there's cool for, you know, we talked about Kellerman P.I.,

[02:11:54] maybe we need, I don't know, Captain Howard or something. It's a sort of spinoff show to return to

[02:12:00] the streets of Baltimore or something. That'd be quite interesting.

[02:12:02] Yeah. And she did say her upcoming The Knife, I think she's playing a detective. Is that the one

[02:12:10] she said? Or was it that or was it King Ivory? King Ivory or The Knife? I think The Knife she's

[02:12:16] playing a detective.

[02:12:17] The Knife, yes. Detective Carlson. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The Knife. The Knife though.

[02:12:20] There you go. So that'll be cool. I'll look forward to those.

[02:12:24] Yeah, that'll be really good.

[02:12:25] She's had quite the career since then. If you scroll through her IMDB list, it goes on forever. It's very

[02:12:31] impressive. So she really has.

[02:12:33] I think she's had an amazing career. And I always, I always enjoy seeing members of the

[02:12:37] homicide cast in things because you see Reed pop up in a lot of things. I've seen Melissa,

[02:12:41] like we were watching The Equalizer a while back and there was Melissa Lea. I was like,

[02:12:45] oh, wow. You know, I want to give away spoilers for The Equalizer 2. That was a little bit

[02:12:50] disappointing. But no, it's always great to see her in these things. And, you know, I always get a

[02:12:56] kick out of seeing homicide actors sort of appear and stuff. So no, she's had an amazing career.

[02:13:01] And, you know, and I hope, you know, she's got more to do, you know, it's hope she keeps going.

[02:13:08] Yeah. And I would underline to people, go back and watch Frozen River and go back and watch The

[02:13:12] Fighter.

[02:13:13] Yeah. Yeah, definitely.

[02:13:15] Terrific film.

[02:13:16] Definitely. Well, I think that's us done, isn't it? I think we, you know, we've had a good point

[02:13:21] there. Again, Melissa, thank you so much for being on the show and everybody listening out there. I hope

[02:13:26] you enjoyed this interview. I hope you found it interesting and thank you for listening. And one other

[02:13:30] things I want to give a quick shout out to a Facebook group called The Waterfront. They're

[02:13:36] brilliant at sharing our episodes and talking about the episodes and things. So I just want to say a

[02:13:40] huge thank you to you for your support as well, because it's really nice to see a homicide

[02:13:45] community on Facebook and The Waterfront. It's a really great group.

[02:13:49] Yay. Thank you. Excellent.

[02:13:51] Excellent. Well, thank you again, everybody, for listening. And we will catch you on the next one.

[02:13:55] Take care.

[02:13:56] See you next time. Bye.

[02:13:58] Bye. Bye.