In part one of our interview with series creator and writer of tonight’s episode, James Duff, he discusses in what ways the late renewal affected tonight’s season finale, and how it feels to be celebrating a combined 200 episodes in the world and characters of The Closer and Major Crimes. Stay turned for part two of our interview tonight, after the episode airs.

MajorCrimesTV: Last week’s episode was a real nail biter, and going into tonight, I have a lot of questions about what’s going to happen. And in terms of bad guys, it seems like Christian Ortiz rates right up there with some of the biggest foes the team has ever faced, right up there with Phillip Stroh and the Chris Wood character from the Poster Boy arc a few years ago. Was that an intentional choice to just put everything into this character and story?

James Duff: Most of our finales on Major Crimes center around a really bad guy you get to know. And Chris Wood is a fantastic example of someone we employed in that capacity. And by the way, look what happened to his career afterwards! He exploded. He’s such a fantastic actor. And the same thing is going to happen with this guy. He’s in “The Fate of the Furious”, coming out this weekend. So, we just got him at the right time. He was awesome and fantastic in this role.

But what’s really good for Major Crimes is when they face a foe who is formidable. Nothing is better than a formidable foe. And what we’ll find out tonight is that this guy is both deeper and more destructive than you thought possible. It’s the bomb at the graveyard that’s telling you he was willing to do anything. What he does tonight will convince you for sure. Those pictures that he took will come back to haunt him. We see those pictures and they have a role to play in how he’s apprehended.

MCTV: Rusty also faces a foe of his own tonight, when he meets Gus’s boss.

JD: Yes. We meet Aiden, played by Keegan Allen, who is formidable foe for Rusty, in that his interaction with Rusty is something we’ve never seen before.  Someone really putting the kid over a barrel and forcing him into doing something extremely adult and extremely loving, which turns out to be an amazing response for Rusty.

MCTV: One of the few lighter moments in last week’s episode was courtesy of Nolan, who called out Davis on her aspirations for the chief job. Are we going to see Nolan, now that he’s settled in more with the team, flying off the cuff a bit more and calling things the way they are?

JD: Nolan has been holding back and he’s been trying to find his way. But he’s also been in really desperate situations before and he doesn’t like the way Winnie Davis is treating people, and he’s like, “to hell with it,  I’m gonna say what I’m thinking here.” And I thought Daniel (di Tomasso) did a great job with that. He was so excited when he got that little exchange. None of our regular crew could have done it, because we don’t have a character like that in our regular crew. Provenza will sometimes get in people’s faces and even Sharon will sometimes say to a commanding officer “Do you want to cover this case, or would you like me to step aside?”, and diplomatically find a way to address it, but she would never do anything like Nolan did. Which was actually attack the character of a commanding officer. I loved it, personally.

MCTV: It was great, and you could tell the others loved it, and were also terrified for his future at that point forward. It also brought about a great moment for Sharon, too, where she says very clearly, “this is where I want to be, this is what I want to do, and quit screwing it up for me!”

JD: Yes! Exactly! I thought that was one of Mary’s best performances in the entire series. Her reaction to that was great, because we’re reminded that she believes in the rules, and she believes in the chain of command, and she believes in leveraging that knowledge into power. And I thought Mary played that scene beautifully. She did it several different ways, and we went with the one that we felt she was really behind in her heart.

MCTV: Between last week and tonight’s finale, these are two very big episodes in scale, especially with all the explosions, the locations, etc. What goes into getting these huge episodes, with all the effects, together?

JD: What we do is just hours and hours of preparation, so that we have everything we need in place, and we’ve tried to consider every stupid thing we might do wrong, and really work very hard to get it right the first or second time. The way you get to have really big episodes like this is by being extremely careful with your budget as you go along. So that you’re building a pool of cash that you can employ at the right moment to deliver an optimal experience at the end of the season.

MCTV: When you were writing it, you’ve said you thought it could potentially be the end of the series. Did that figure in?

JD: Exactly. You know, we also had every reason to believe that this was the end of the series. And I think if you watch it with the idea that we almost ended the series here, then you can see how we opted to put everything we had into it.

MCTV: Along with being the season finale, tonight’s episode marks two hundred episodes for some of these characters. What has the experience been to inhabit this world and these characters for this long, when these days so many shows never get past twelve episodes a show, if they even get past the pilot. You’ve had two hundred. What has that been like?

JD: If you put it in perspective, I’ve spent all of elementary school, middle school, high school and my first year of college in this world. (laughs) It is been like living inside a learning experience. And if you want to live inside a learning experience then this is the way to do it. I never could have imagined two hundred episodes. It just boggles the mind, especially going from the end of The Closer, to already be looking ahead to the hundredth episode of Major Crimes next year.  I mean, I thought it was possible, but not likely. But three people absolutely believed it would happen. And they were Tony Denison, Phillip Keene, and Raymond Cruz. The rest of us, and even at the network, there was curiosity and good intentions, but doubt.

And so I credit the audience, honestly, with getting us through that transition and sticking with us, and holding onto our characters. I guess, in addition to being a learning environment, the two hundred episodes that we’ve done, they’ve allowed me to grow close to the audience in a way I don’t think you get an opportunity to do very often. The social platforms that are available now have enhanced that opportunity. I feel incredibly close to the viewers and am incredibly grateful and thankful to them for electing to be a part of this community.

MCTV: Anything else you want to tease about tonight’s episode?

JD: Provenza’s bobble-head has never faced a bigger crisis (laughs).

The Major Crimes season finale airs tonight at 9pm/8c on TNT. Read part two of our interview with James Duff tonight, as he discusses what might have been different if the episode had been a series finale, and what we can expect when Major Crimes returns next fall.

MCTV: I would be remiss to start this off without asking about Taylor, and the shocking decision to kill him off in part one of this three-part summer finale. What lead you to making the decision to have Taylor’s death be such a catalyst in this arc, and as part of the season as a whole?

James Duff: There’s two things to discuss with this. Part one of that is, opening Taylor’s office was always my plan, so that was always going to happen at some point. Part two is that balance is the theme of all thirteen summer episodes – it links them all together. I couldn’t do a study on balance without including the balance of power, and without completely removing the balance of power and forcing a new center of gravity into the circumstances around which Major Crimes revolves. And this new center of gravity that the team is now looking to find is going to be the subject of the next eight episodes–how we adjust to changes, who becomes the center, and how everyone must adjust to accommodate that new center.

History itself is the story of a succession of one center of gravity replacing another, and how people must adapt constantly to that sort of change. People either adjust, or they crash and burn. That’s just how it works. And so, Major Crimes is adjusting. And that will be the back eight episodes we’ll see this winter. That’s always what I meant to happen. And beyond that, there is a world beyond the adjustment of gravity, and so that would be our next season, if we end up getting one.

It’s also important to remember that the LAPD is a dangerous place to work, and police officers have an extremely dangerous job in this day and age. The Los Angeles Police Department trains hard to do the right thing, and to bring policing into the twenty-first century, but it’s still every bit as vulnerable as the bad police departments are. There’s no discrimination, apparently, between good police officers and bad police officers. Taylor also encompassed the essence of the blue/black divide, because he’s both. And both sides are damaged by this divide. And I’m not taking sides, I’m just dramatizing the divide that exists, and he was a very good way to dramatize that nobody wins when violence is the answer.

So Taylor’s death accommodated the two things I needed. One was to explore the balance of power and how it affects our daily lives, which is what part two of the finale was about. But, any meditation on the balance of power in our human life would require us to take into account religion, and its force in the world and on our leading characters. So both of these major events, Taylor’s death, the shooting of Dwight Darnell, the balancing of what we owe to our spiritual selves and what we owe to our professional selves, all of that was meant to create special circumstances for Sharon Raydor. And I think we did that.

MCTV: Speaking to that examination of religion, last week was a departure for the show, in that it both took on a different structure in how it was framed from Sharon’s confession, but also gave us a much closer look at Sharon than we’ve seen for a while. There has been hints that Sharon has this strong religious part to her, but this was the most overtly we’ve seen it, and also gave a bit more insight into the state of her relationship with Andy, and what she feels like she can and can’t talk to him about.

JD: To be clear, it’s not that she can’t rely on Andy to talk to, it’s just as she says, she can’t rely on Andy to talk to about the death of Dwight Darnell. And truly, she couldn’t rely on a lot of the audience, either. A lot of the audience would tell her, ‘Look, you did the right thing. Get over it.” I heard that from people after the episode aired.

But taking a human life is complicated, no matter the circumstances. For example, with the military, we have 20 veterans a day committing suicide, and a lot of it has to do with loss of life they are involved in. We train people to believe that murder is wrong, and then we send them out to kill people, and don’t understand why they’re confused afterwards. And so I thought it would be important to show Sharon in a moral quandary – wanting to feel grief for having stopped Dwight Darnell from killing anybody else through violence, which she’s always been hesitant to use, unless absolutely necessary. And she’s never killed anyone, and I wanted to explore that aspect of her personality.

Also, she’s very Catholic. That has been mentioned throughout the series. She was so Catholic she didn’t divorce her husband for over thirty years. She loves angels, that’s an established fact, and she sent Rusty to a Catholic school. She’s been very serious about her religion, although, this is a murder show, not “True Confessions” or anything like that, so we just haven’t seen it more than that. But if she and Andy were to perhaps want to do something more than just live together, that would create conflict for her. And so maybe there’s a reminder there, maybe I’m setting something up for the future, by reminding everybody about how Catholic she is.

MCTV: Going back to Taylor for a moment, we’re heard through some casting announcements that we’re going to see the power shift, and we’re going to see some new people come in to be in the running for his job. Are we going to get closure on the loss of Taylor at all, and the impact that death itself has on the team?

JD: Well, we will be talking about Taylor for ages to come. And there is an attempt to honor him in the summer finale in the first act. Not at a funeral, because we’ve already done that, when we went to the funeral of the Chief of Police. I don’t want to give away too much, but he will not be gone completely. He’s a member of the Major Crimes family and he’ll be treated that way throughout.

MCTV: In terms of the power vacuum, the Sharon of a few years ago had a lot of desire to move up the ranks. But now that we’re seeing this job having opened up, it’s hard to envision Sharon wanting to leave Major Crimes now that she’s established this great team, and everyone works together so well. How is this power vacuum going to affect her, in a desire to move up the ranks, or lack thereof?

JD: It’s a delicate dance inside the LAPD when one of these positions opens up. If you get considered for a promotion, you have to try to get it because if you fail, you’ll lose what you have. And that happens all the time. It’s an unfortunate circumstance, but when new people move in to positions of power, then the people underneath them, who were also trying to get that position of power, end up with a lot of ‘freeway therapy’. They get transferred to Harbor Division or they end up at SOB (Special Operations Bureau) or teaching at the Police Academy. So in terms of a career path, it’s dangerous.

On the other hand, you don’t get to decide this. The Police Chief job is decided by the Mayor in concert with the city council and the police commission. The job of Assistant Chief is decided entirely by the Chief. There’s no one else to ask. So if he interviews you, and everybody knows you’re up for the job, then you’re exposed. That’s why we’re bringing on Camryn Manheim, and another actor I can’t announce yet, to all be in play for the job. But the struggle to replace Taylor, will also be a struggle to protect Major Crimes. Because a new Assistant Chief comes in, and the division changes. So Sharon is given a lot to think about in these back eight episodes this winter, and that influences how she has to react to being considered for the position.

MCTV: Switching just quickly over to Buzz, and his journey this season. We saw last episode that he’s really stepped up in this investigation and come into his own. Are we going to see more of that now that he has had a taste of being part of this side of the police work?

JD: Well, you’re going to see his realization that things are not over. That’s going to come back. So the conclusion of Buzz’s story is both final, and ambiguous. And Phillip has done an amazing job this season, and in the last scene of the case, he does an amazing job, and in the scene after the case, he does an amazing job. And also stepping up and showing he’s capable has been Julio Sanchez, as a foster parent. And we’re going to see just how much this new experience has meant to him in the finale.

MCTV: Finally, you mentioned that a potential season 6 would have a focus around the adjustment to whoever becomes the new chief, and how that appointment could change Major Crimes. There hasn’t been an announcement yet for season 6 from TNT. Any updates there?

JD: It’s impossible to know what the network consider their needs to be right now, and I can’t say for sure anything. They have not indicated a pickup for next season to me yet, so I really don’t know. I’m very happy overall with how we’ve managed our numbers this season, especially given the switch to 10pm. We did much better than we thought we would do and I think better than TNT thought we would do. It’s a bit of a win-win for us and hopefully the network will want to solidify their gains here and do it again.

The summer finale of Major Crimes airs tonight at 10pm/9c on TNT.

Over the years, DDA Andrea Hobbs and Dr. Fernando Morales have become valued parts of the Major Crimes team, and massive fan-favorites along the way. We chatted with Kathe Mazur and Jonathan Del Arco to find out just what makes their characters tick, and what all that sass is really about.

MajorCrimesTV: You guys are just about at the halfway point of filming for this season – how’s it all been going?

Jonathan Del Arco: I think we’re having an amazing season this year. I feel like the work is getting deeper and deeper for all of us, in different ways. And from my end, the work we do aside, I have gratitude to the fans right now for having continued to find us. The times keep changing, and you guys find us, the days change, and you find us, and I feel like that fed a lot of our enthusiasm to come to work, and the writers to write, and James to do all that he does because he knows you guys get it. And so, it’s very gratifying. Vis-a-vis the ratings and the fact that we’re crushing it, as it were, that way makes me very happy.

Kathe Mazur: I agree! I couldn’t have said it better.

MCTV: It seems like this move to 10pm this season has allowed the show to change tone a little bit, and allowed the show to explore some things a little more deeply.

KM: Well, to me, the very best of life is when you’ve taken an obstacle or something that you thought was going to be a problem and somehow it ends up creating a whole new opportunity. I think that in the work, and I think that in everything, that that’s the highest level because life is filled with obstacles. So, the thing that keeps amazing me about this crew, is that no matter what the obstacle is, it sort of ends up leading to something fantastic and unexpected, and I continually am amazed at how at every single step along the way of this journey that has happened.

JDA: We all have had our share of anxiety about the change, because we were in the same time slot for so long. But, we have such great leadership in James Duff and Mike Robin, and we were all encouraged by them early on to say, “You know what? Let’s just hit it out of the ballpark and have the best year ever, and just focus 100% on creating an amazing work.” A “if you build it they will come” mentality. And it’s so great to actually see that happen, and it’s so rare, because television is not being viewed as much as other mediums these days, so it’s great to know that we were able to meet the challenge, and we were able to bond together to get through it, and here we are! It’s been fantastic. We’re very lucky.

MCTV: It has been! Now, I loving having the chance to talk to the two of you together, because both of your characters have both become such strong fan-favorites. Both of you are also known for your characters’ sass and for having a little bit more attitude than maybe we get to see out of some of the others. Was that something that developed in the characters for you over the years, or was it always sort of inherent in the writing?

JDA: I was being myself! (laughs)
KM: I think that you hit it on the head. I mean, I think that it was inherent in Jonathan and it’s inherent in Hobbs, but the fact that those sasses have ended up being connective in some way, even though we’re generally not even in scenes together, is kind of fun for us.

JDA: It’s really odd because we don’t have that many scenes together, but it’s like two sides of one coin in a way, in that neither one of us suffers fools, personally or as the characters. We ain’t got time for that (laughs). We’re all really funny, by the way. We love to go out and eat and drink (more laughter). So, it is an interesting kind of exploration of that personality within a work environment. Like ‘Come on, I’m doing my job, you do your job.’

KM: And I also think that that we have complimentary positions in the show because we are not part of the regular team. So we have outsider status as characters which gives us the freedom of getting sort of wafted in and let loose.

JDA: Right. And also in a strange way we’re something like the audience, if you will, because we’re not necessarily always in the room, in terms of what’s happening with the cops. We get to come in and be like ‘Are you guys crazy?’ So in some ways it’s a bit like an audience member would be. Maybe that’s why the audience identifies with our characters so much.

KM: But, you know, it’s very interesting, this audience. This audience continues to amaze me, because they don’t miss a beat. They catch everything, you know, when I look on twitter and I see the quotes that they’re picking up, they’re catching everything. So it’s very satisfying, and must be satisfying for the writers to write for, because they catch everything the writers come up with.

MCTV: Absolutely, and the fans really do love finding the little moments, the Easter eggs, within the show. Another similarity in your characters is that we’ve seen both of them frequently for many years. Jonathan, you’re a series regular, and Kathe it’s been great that we’ve been seeing more of you with each season. But despite that, we don’t have much back-story on either of your characters. We’ve gotten a little bit here and there but how do work around that? Do you both have sort of your internal back-stories for your characters? Or do you go with just what’s on the page and wait till each bit gets more fleshed out?

KM: One of my favorite things about this show is that it is a workplace. And it’s a workplace with people who are good at their jobs and work very, very hard to do the best job they can. And if you go into a police station and you’re there for the day, you’re not going to end up knowing very much back-story about anybody there. But what you will get is the essence of their humanity-

JDA: Right

KM: -in whatever shape that is. And I think that it’s written with so much sensitivity to each character’s different tone. And I feel like if I’m just playing what’s on the page, there’s a whole world of many possible back-stories that come out. And also many not-possible back-stories. I don’t think anyone thinks I, as Hobbs, is happily married with children, even though it’s never been mentioned, what I have or don’t have. But it’s clear that I’m very much a lone wolf as a human being in certain ways.

JDA: You’re single and boozy, I hope!

KM: I’m single, and we don’t know how it got that way, but it wasn’t because my attitude was so good.

JDA: I don’t tend to overload scenes with too much history that I need to make up. I only do that as an actor, if I feel like I’m not connecting and I’ve never felt that way–

KM: Like something’s missing

JDA: Yeah, if something missing, but there’s nothing missing, like Kathe said. You show up to work, you’re not necessarily being drawn by everything that happened to you in your whole life, right?

Having said that, there was a script about a month ago that a single line in it, that made me have this crazy, like, actor moment where I realized things about my character from The Closer, all the way to here, that motivated why he became a coroner and what are his soft spots, which tend to be when he’s examining children or women that had been raped. And I was like, ‘Wow-that makes so much sense to me!’ And I told James and some other people, and they looked at me like I was crazy, but when it makes sense to you, it makes sense to you as an actor, and that’s all that should really matter, in terms of a back-story.

KM: And I also think it allows, like you said about the Easter eggs, that I think that the writers have had a lot of fun on this show with kind of just doling out information about people, a little here, a little there. And I think that James and Michael really bring in back-story when we need that back-story, when that back-story actually serves the show, instead of just inventing inorganic, ‘Oh, it’s time to have a personal moment’ excuses.

JDA: It always is such a part of the show, and is so tied to the theme of the seasons too. Like right now Buzz is having this whole season with the Dad thing, right? And those things sort of ricochet off of each episode. So if there was an issue with a dad and his son, you’d see Buzz having a moment about that. So, James, in particular when he’s structuring the season with the writers, is very into threading themes and ideas into the stories, and what the themes are that they play off of sort of bounce back to us as the actors.

It might have been the beginning of last season, where I thought I was way less snarky. And for some reason that fit better within the theme, I was very much business as usual last season, just doing my job, and I feel like this season that’s been completely different. I mean, they pull up, in that episode that aired a few weeks ago this attitude I had about structural government, if you will. I’m basically saying ‘I don’t work for you,’ to the FBI. That’s a callback to the first season of The Closer where I basically said, ‘I don’t work for you, I work for the county.’ So I love that they’re circling back to those ideas that were originally part of our characters.

KM: When I started the show, I didn’t know about the themes. I didn’t realize the over-arching intelligence that would take a whole season and that was really thought out in a certain way. And now at the beginning of every season I want to know what the theme is, because I like to also find out how that applies to me, not only as the character, but as the actor.

Like, okay, we’re taking on this theme, what is this theme in my life? Let’s bring that to the way that I approach being on the set. Why not? Somebody gives you something intelligent, why not use it? Why not go think, ‘Okay, how does that apply to me? And sometimes if I’m taking a look at a certain scene, then I can think about how does this scene fit into that theme, and how can I help the theme by the way that I look at my part in it? Because I do think that I am of service, and my character is of service to the story. It’s not “The Hobbs Show”, it’s a marathon of service. I’m not in the scene if I’m not usable, if I’m not useful. And if I’m not useful to move the whole thing forward, I wouldn’t be there. So it’s been a great thrill for me to go to look for that, to think, ‘Okay, I need to be of service to this story, how can I do that, on a deeper level’?

MCTV: Kathe, one thing we don’t see a ton of in the show, because so much of the team is made up of men, is that we don’t see much of women interacting. One thing fans have really latched onto is that Hobbs is another female voice in the show, and without it ever being said explicitly, seems to be another sounding board for Sharon Raydor. I think a lot of viewers would hope that Hobbs and Raydor are friends outside of the office. How have you approached that relationship, to kind of play this professional woman dealing with another professional women, which we don’t always see in the non-confrontational, great working relationship that these two have together?

KM: I agree. I love doing scenes with Mary. I just love it. And it is distinct, you know, when two professional women who are powerful are having a conversation that isn’t about men, and love. It is true that women’s subject matter, if it’s not professional, can tend to get a lot about relationships, as though women don’t think about other things besides their kids and man, or their love life. And I think it’s really powerful–I think I can speak for Mary–I think we both love those scenes, that there is a female-ness that comes into our communication that isn’t necessarily what we’re talking about.
But the way that we go about it and the way that we relate has absolutely to do with the fact that we’re women.

I think that’s why it reads as a friendship, because women relate differently than men. And women relate – I’m a little bit of a nerd, so to get linguistic, women relate through sameness, through understanding each other. And men linguistically have a lot more competitive language..

JDA: Adversarial, one-upping…

KM: And women just linguistically don’t do that. I mean, if women are doing that, there’s a huge problem in the relationship. So I think that when Mary and I are doing a scene and we’re just talking about the police issues or the law issues, I just think that there is always an effort, from being female on both of our parts, to say, ‘How can we understand each other? How are we alike, in this thinking?’.

And that is the way that women bond. And I think that’s true in most scenes, that there’s a sense of, ‘How do you have my back? How do you understand me? How are we on each other’s side?’ And I’ve seen that grow through the seasons. It was very present around the adoption of Rusty, which I think was, with the exception, maybe, of Andy’s time in the hospital, the most emotional stuff between us. And I always feel that when the door closes and Mary and I are in her office together, there’s something else that’s happening.

MCTV: Absolutely. And as a viewer it’s wonderful to see, because it feels like it’s not only a different side to those characters, but to the show itself in those moments.

KM: Yes, I agree.

MCTV: Jonathan, in terms of Morales, I think he might be one of the poster children for gallows humor.

JDA: (laughs) Literally!

MCTV: How does his snark and attitude come into play with his work? Again, it kind of goes back to the question of is that just his nature, or is that displacing some of the discomfort that is dealing with this job, that can often be seeing some of the worst of humanity?

JDA: I think it’s a little of both. I think he’s a very sensitive person and a very deep-feeling person. And in order to get through the day, doing that kind of work, he has to have fun, in whatever way possible. It’s not always the case, and it’s not always successful for him, right? Because some cases get under his skin in a real way. So it’s case by case in terms of that.

I don’t want to call it a defense mechanism, but maybe a coping mechanism. I mean, there are elements to my job that you never see, really. Or that you see very little of, and that’s notifying families, and showing families the bodies – that’s a hard part of a job. And, you know, releasing bodies to families, having to see that day in and day out, almost completely separate from the autopsy aspect of it. Or the heinousness of some of the crimes.

The episode that stands as a stark reminder to me of when he’s not that way have been ones where he’s had the rug has just pulled out from under him by the level of cruelty to a victim that he’s rendered without any of those tools, and almost speechless. And that can’t happen every day, if that’s your job. Cops can’t be sad every day because they’re dealing with people being shot. It would be impossible to make it through your day like that, if you’re an ER doctor, or policeman, or coroner. But there are things that get under your skin, and it’s personality, but it’s also a protection.

MCTV: Well, we certainly enjoy and appreciate both of your characters, and all they bring to the show. Thank you both for taking the time to speak to us.

KM: And thank you for everything you’ve done for this show, and continue to do. We’re so grateful.

JDA: Yeah!

MCTV: Thank you! We hope to see more of both of your characters this season!

Major Crimes is all new tonight at 10pm/9c on TNT

This season on Major Crimes has seen Buzz and Rusty team up to reopen the unsolved murder of Buzz’s father. Through both storylines in episodes, as well as Rusty’s web-excusive series Identity, the two have explored the circumstances surrounding the cold case, and seek to finally find some resolution for Buzz and his family. So it seemed only natural for us to sit down with both Graham Patrick Martin and Phillip Keene together, to discuss Buzz and Rusty’s new partnership in crime-solving, and what we can expect from both of their characters moving forward this season.

MCTV: This year has been a great year for both of you. Phillip, you’re having a great year with Buzz’s storyline, and Graham, Identity continues to be wonderful with Rusty as well as his storylines continuing. You’re about halfway through filming this season now – how has it been going for both of you?

Phillip Keene: We’re finishing up episode 9 and things have been going great. I mean, Graham has always been excellent at memorizing dialogue – and quite frankly I haven’t had that much dialogue to memorize in such a long time that it was a bit of a challenge for me. But the more that I do it with these episodes of Identity, the easier it becomes. And I just love the fact that you get to see more of my character’s background, so it gives me a lot to do, and I love working with Graham. He and I did a four-page scene a couple weeks ago and we were able to get it filmed in under an hour – it was great! The crew were happy, we loved it, it was just nice playing off of somebody who works as well as he does.

Graham Patrick Martin: Thank you Philip. I am a such a huge fan of the show, and I’ve always been a huge fan of the Buzz character, and so it’s been fun playing with that sort of brotherly relationship that Buzz and Rusty have always had. I’ve always been really anxious to dig deeper and to learn more about Buzz and what’s motivated him to be where he is. So that’s what this whole Identity Buzz and Rusty crossover has done for me. It’s really been an awesome platform to dive into the character of Buzz, who I feel like is one of the characters who we don’t know as much about as the others.

PK: And it’s really cool because in the beginning I was sort of Rusty’s mentor and in terms of bringing him into the fold, and now the roles are slightly reversed in that Rusty already has this Identity and journalism thing established and he’s bringing me out of my shell and exposing more of who I am.

MCTV: It’s been great to see that dynamic develop. In the beginning of Major Crimes, Buzz and Rusty’s relationship was very different from where it is at now –  do you feel like both characters are more on equal footing now than where they started?

GPM: Yes, I don’t know if you remember the first episode, we had that interaction where he comes in and then I say, ‘Well what kind of name is Buzz anyway?’ -

PK: [laughs] ‘Oh you mean like Rusty?’

GPM:[laughs] So we definitely started off on this weird footing and I guess now, it is sort of more of an equal relationship, but Buzz is still really good at keeping Rusty in check. Rusty tends to just go off based on his emotions and overstep his boundaries and Buzz is always there to tell him to pump the brakes little bit. So Rusty still has a lot to learn and Buzz is always there to give him some guidance, so there is still a little bit of that mentor aspect still around but they’re definitely sort of like coworkers now.

MCTV: Last year we saw Buzz try and help Rusty develop a sense of empathy for the people around him, and this year it seems that this sense of empathy has come back to Buzz because now he is the one requiring Rusty to be a little bit more self-aware.

PK: In the first episode, Buzz broke down when Rusty was asking very pointed questions about his relationship with his father and uncle and how they came to be killed. He trusts Rusty a lot, so much so that he’s able to let his guard down and show some real emotion and depend on him to be a sort of sounding board for what is going on in his life, while at the same time trying to maintain this facade of professionalism and non-reaction to things because it’s really just about the job. He wants to conclude, to open this cold case and find an answer, but he still has to keep everything else in check. But I think that Rusty is a great outlet for him to be able to express those emotions.

MCTV: We were  on set a few weeks ago during filming of one of the Identity features and what was striking was how much smaller the crew is, how much faster the filming goes. Is there anything else about the filming experience of Identity that differs from that of the rest of Major Crimes?

GPM: What I think is really great about the way that we shoot it is that we want it to be as realistic as possible. We want it to really feel like this is this 20-year old kid who has come up with this idea and is actually filming this thing to go on YouTube. I guess in my ideal world, I would like for someone to accidently come across it on YouTube and think it’s real, and watch the whole series thinking that it’s a real thing, and then come to realize that it’s from a TV show. You know we don’t have as much lighting, we don’t have as many effects, it’s really just the bare bones. We want it to feel like a real video blog and I think that they’ve been doing a pretty decent job of that.

PK: Yeah, I think it almost has the feelings of a behind-the-scenes aspect in that Rusty is doing this as a journalist and Buzz is doing this keeping his main job as the civilian tech guy for Major Crimes. That has to be his primary responsibility, but the skills that he’s gained from that, and then becoming a reserve officer, he’s now able to pursue this case which has been a lifelong goal for him.

MCTV: Last episode, we saw Rusty push away from his birth mother and the idea of a new baby, and at the same time we’re seeing Buzz trying to reconnect in a way with his father and the memories of him, which has created an interesting parallel for these two characters. Do you think that we’re going to see them find some common ground on which each of them can come to terms with their situations?

PK: I think that’s a good point that you bring up. Yes, I do think that there’s going to be some common ground and I think that they’re both – though I can only speak for my own character, but I am sure that the writers have devised this. The whole season this year is about balance and for Buzz it’s about finding a balance between his professional life and his personal life and in trying to bring justice to what he feels is a very unbalanced situation.

GPM: Yes, and I definitely think that they have a lot to learn from each other. I think that it’s a really sticky situation for Rusty with his mom and breaking up this family, their potential family, and then he looks at someone like Buzz who would probably give anything to have a family that was put together, so there are definitely some parallels there and I think that it is going to strongly affect the outcome.

PK: It’s a little like that saying, ‘the grass is always greener’ you know? Buzz is looking at Rusty and thinking how fortunate he is to have someone to have plucked him out of the situation that he was in. We’ll find out more about Buzz’s upbringing in the next few episodes of Identity, but it wasn’t all as rosy as many people may have thought it was. And for Buzz to have been taken out of that, or to choose who his family members would have been, would have been ideal. So he looks at Rusty in that way, and at the same time, maybe Rusty thinks, wow maybe it would have been better to have a family already that wasn’t as messed up as mine.

MCTV: Is working together on Identity at all straining on the relationship between Rusty and Buzz? Because it is so intensely personal for Buzz.

GPM: I think at times, yes. Rusty gets really anxious and into the idea of getting this story out there and often times I think that he oversteps the boundary and forgets that at the end of the day, Buzz can’t let this be a distraction from his actual job. And so, Buzz often has to step in and be like, ‘hey man, we need to relax for a second, don’t just jump to conclusions – you have to take this step by step and not rush into anything because it could get me into trouble and it could get you into trouble.’

PK: It’s about respect, and Rusty has a great deal of that for everybody that he works with, but again he is a little anxious and a little impetuous and he really wants to get this done, and I [Buzz] have to remind him that there are rules and regulations for very good reasons. And it’s not about trying to squash his dreams but it’s about trying to make this happen for the long term.

GPM: And I think that’s going to be good for the audience to see, because there are times where you think ‘why can’t we just go get the guy?’ And that’s how Rusty feels, the same way that the audience feels when watching Major Crimes, but Buzz has to step in and say no, and remind him that there is a process and if you were to just go get the guy, that could actually ruin everything.

MCTV: Phillip, we spoke a while ago about your amazing collection of Pan Am memorabilia – can you tell us about the new project you are involved with Pan Am?  

PK: I’m on the board of the Pan Am Museum Foundation, and we’re looking for a space currently on Long Island at the Cradle of Aviation Museum. They’re partnered with the communities in their area with a program that reaches out to youth in underserved communities and bring them into the space and teach them about aerospace, science, aviation, physics, and things like that. What they found is that when the kids get involved with this program they have a 90% graduation rate. These are kids who before probably had a 30% or 40% graduation rate. So it’s a great opportunity for them, it’s an existing structure for us, so we’re looking at a small space within the existing venue to try this out. Now it’s going to be a gathering of thousands of members of the Pan Am family, all of whom are welcome to attend. I’ve got a fundraiser going on here in Raleigh Studios in November and then we have a big gala in New York on December 3rd. And this is going to be a museum dedicated to the memory of Pan Am and its people, honoring all the firsts in aviation and its development of different products and bringing the world a little closer together through travel, and exporting American ideals and therefore also importing ideals from other countries into the United States.

MCTV: We will make sure to keep Major Crimes fans up to date as these events are taking place so that they can support it and all your efforts. Lastly, anything you can tell us about the next all-new Major Crimes?  

PK: We’re very excited about it! Buzz does some very un-Buzz-like things in this upcoming episode.

GPM: Yes, this next episode of Major Crimes is better than every single episode of Game of Thrones this season. It’s more exciting and has more cast members dying. (laughs)

PK: Yes, mayhem, murder on Mondays!

MCTV: Thank you Phillip and Graham for taking the time to talk to us!

Major Crimes is all-new tonight at 10pm/9c on TNT

Not literally of course, but as we are invited on set to interview Duff and watch the filming of an upcoming episode of Major Crimes, all plans for a traditional sit down with the executive producer/writer/creator of the show seem to go out the window when we arrive to find him and the cast and crew at full speed in the middle of production for the 5th season, premiering tonight at 10pm/9c on TNT.

As the day progresses, the scope of just what being in the middle of the episode order really means becomes more and more clear. Bits and pieces of all seven of the season’s first episodes are in different stages of progress at the same time, all on the same day, and each piece has to be perfect.

The cast is down on the soundstage filming the second-to-last day of episode 506. We first catch up with Duff when the cast takes a break to do the table read for episode 507. The read is running about 45 minutes late–the filming on the soundstage ran long. The actors are released from filming and start arriving, and the big conference room we’re in suddenly begins to feel very small as it fills.

The mood is jovial as Duff introduces himself and the episode’s writer and director to the guest cast that has joined the group for episode 507. The newcomers then introduce themselves and the room erupts in applause, welcoming them into the Major Crimes family. The regular cast introduces themselves and their characters, then Duff takes back over, introducing the dozens of other writers, producers and key crew members who have all joined for the reading as well. He rattles off an impressive list of names and titles of everyone present from memory, then they begin.The read-through is timed, in order to get an idea of how long – or alternatively, how short – the episode may run when completed, so that edits can be made. Throughout the process, the writer, director and crew members are frantically scribbling notes in their script – this is their one chance to hear the story read aloud before filming begins, their one opportunity to make adjustments to their own parts of the production before tomorrow.

As quickly as the read-through begins, it finishes, and as the actors head back down to the soundstage to continue work on their episode, we’re whisked into a van with Duff and a second unit crew. Our destination is only a few blocks away from the studio, and is quintessentially Hollywood. On the way, Duff explains that he’s shooting two different scenes at this location tonight, both for Identity, Rusty Beck’s (played by Graham Patrick Martin) video blog. This season, Rusty will focus his vlog on Buzz’s investigation into the perpetrators of his father’s murder.

Although Major Crimes has a full staff of writers and directors, Duff himself writes and directs each episode of Identity. Duff concedes that this additional content is a lot of work, but is passionate about his reason for doing them: to give back to the fans who have supported the show for so long. “I’m doing it solely for the audience. I’m not doing it for any other reason. The audience has been so good to us; amazingly good to us. They deserve added content, and a more immersive experience.”

As the television world continues to change, with “new media” and platforms like Netflix, Hulu and others now becoming mainstream, Duff acknowledges the importance of creating and fostering audience engagement past simply watching each episode. Beyond Identity, he plans to continue the weekly Facebook chats with various members of the cast and crew that have become ubiquitous on Monday nights before the episode airs. Looking further forward, Duff is hopeful that, as has happened in the past, Major Crimes viewership and fan engagement will speak for itself when it comes to potentially expanding the episode order for this season, and ultimately for a much hoped-for sixth season.

It’s just after 4 o’clock when we get to the location, and immediately work begins on the first scene, which will be part of episode 503. While the scene itself will be filmed once night has fallen, Duff takes advantage of the daylight to block out the action, so the actors know how the scene is going to go. The stunts that will eventually become part of the scene are simulated, and after about 45 minutes of rehearsal, the actors are sent back to the studio to be prepped for filming.

Phillip Keene and Graham Patrick Martin in the final version of one of the scenes we watched film for Identity,

Just as the actors in the first segment are sent back to the studio for final preparations for their scenes, another van drops off Graham Patrick Martin and Phillip Keene, who are there to film the Identity segment for the season premiere. Again, time is taken to block the scene for the actors, and ensure the best possible frames are being captured. Though Identity is only posted online and not aired as part of the episode, it’s abundantly clear that the cast and crew take these segments just as seriously as the rest of the series.

As dusk begins to fall, the scene is run several times for the camera. In between shots Duff is impatient, wanting to make sure they get it all just right before the daylight is gone. After multiple takes Duff is satisfied with what he has on film, and Martin and Keene are released for the day. As the crew waits for the sun to set so they can begin the night scenes, Duff takes a moment to quickly eat a salad, and discuss the theme of this season, balance, and how that can also bring change in both big and small ways.

Duff says that while change may be part of what is in store for many of the characters, it’s the rebalancing that happens after a major change that he’s most interested in exploring. He feels that last season’s format-changing five-part episode arc is having a lasting impact on the stories he’s looking to tell this season. “This is a season of rebalancing. Many of the characters are changing more than they have in the past, and that’s because the five-parter gave us a license to go where we have not been before. It showed a different side of Major Crimes. That gave us stylistic license that we don’t use a lot, so I feel like we have permission to go places that we haven’t really done before. And so we are doing that. And the change that we see is going to be both incremental and violent and unusual.”

It’s 8:45pm when filming begins on the second scene of the night, the stunt scene that was blocked earlier in the day. The actors are now back on set with costume, hair and makeup all ready to go, and filming begins. The scene involves a simple stunt and only one camera angle, but again great care is taken with each step. Duff is encouraging throughout, finishing each take with a positive word about the work even as he makes adjustments to get the scene exactly how he wants it. As we watch the scene unfold on a series of monitors in front of us, it’s clear when after several takes, everything comes together just right, and just like that, the scene is done.

We head back to the studio, where the first unit is still hard at work filming on one of the newer sets that was constructed last year for the five-part episode arc, that of ballistics expert “Firearms” Francine. Duff explains that another new set, that of the Mini RACR (Real-time Analysis and Critical Response Unit), has also become a permanent part of the Major Crimes world. While the digital command center has become part of many Police Departments across the country, including the LAPD, Duff also notes that the RACR allows the team to be more connected with the digital and virtual worlds. This also plays into the season’s theme of balance, as the team attempts to balance between real and virtual lives and crimes, and the expectations of what can and can’t be real, thanks to the internet.

It’s now after 10pm, and our final stop of the night is the writers’ room. The writers have gone home for the evening, but the evidence of their work remains – the walls of the room are all covered in white boards full of story notes, potential pitches, and even titles for episodes that don’t have a story to go with them yet, but may spark an idea all on their own. The writers all “break” each episode together on the boards, then the individual writer or writing team assigned to a given story will go off to write the episode. The process of planning a season is long, but if some of the story ideas on the board are any indication, a fair amount of fun is involved as well.

A note on the board sparks a question about the potential parallels between the relationships between Gus and Rusty, and Sharon and Andy, and how both those relationships might progress this season. Duff notes that it’s hard to avoid parallels, as both couples have had past relationships that make them wary about their current ones. And while he’s mum on how that might progress throughout the season, (especially when it comes to Sharon and Andy) there’s an indication in the season premiere that perhaps the patience of the fans for the slow burn of Sharon and Andy’s relationship may finally be paying off.

Duff says he is also eager to explore more of how balance and rebalancing will affect Sharon in other ways. “I think that the story of a mature woman achieving power in a world where mature women are often not seen as powerful figures is to me an interesting story. And no one else is telling this story. The quiet strength Sharon exudes in this show – it was a choice of (Mary McDonnell’s) to have Sharon focus on what needs to be done, because that is what the strength of a woman is. I want to see how far that takes her this year. Where does power go, how does power flow. We’re going to create a vacuum. And we’re going to see what happens. And people are going to rebalance as a result.”

In a season exploring balance, Duff says, what good is it if people aren’t thrown off-balance, and then have to find it again? “Balancing your life is a full time job that never ends, and when people say you have to roll with the punches that’s true, but you have to get up again. That’s mirrored in physical life too. We’re not born walking, we’re born crawling and unable to even hold ourselves up. Our entire lives are spent walking from place to place is for sixty or seventy or eighty years as an acrobat. You forget that. We’re acrobats, managing to keep our balance and standing up despite what happens. People need to get knocked down and they need to stand back up, and that’s what we’re going to see this season.”

Major Crimes season 5 returns Monday, June 13 at 10pm/9c on TNT