Southland season 2 premiere tonight on TNT @ 10pm!

Ben was in-studio with Ryan Seacrest on his radio show. You can listen to Ben’s interview here!

Photo credit: Jessicachenow

Southland has had a tough time of things, getting booted off NBC, then starting over on TNT. But the gritty cop drama is finally back with its first brand new episode since moving to cable, and star Ben McKenzie, who plays rich-kid-turned-inner-city-cop Ben Sherman, couldn’t be happier (despite how broody he may look on television). He talked to EW.com about the upside of moving to the less-restrictive cable portion of the TV tuner, why he doesn’t feel sorry for NBC, and why you should watch tonight’s season premiere. (Namely, because it’s awesome.)

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: So the move to cable means what, exactly? Will we see more risque content?

BEN MCKENZIE: Yeah. If I have anything to do with it, there will be as much nudity as possible.

Any thoughts on NBC’s programming implosion since they canceled your show this season before it could even air to make way for the now-failed Jay Leno Show to air at 10 p.m.?

Just that now that NBC is in need of quality dramatic programming at 10 o’clock, I wonder where they’d get something like that…. I’m talking s–t, but why not? They said we could make the same show we made at 10 at 9. Then we started making the show and they saw the footage, and they were like, Oh my God, it’s so dark. So then they freaked out. But it’s a situation where you’re like, Why didn’t you freak out earlier? If you didn’t want to pick us up, don’t pick us up. It was one of the only hourlong shows they launched to decent ratings and decent critical response. But we caught the last lifeboat off the Titanic.

How are you feeling about your new home at TNT?

I absolutely think both sides want it to work. My dream is to actually make 13 episodes of this show in a row. I think TNT will actually let us make the show we want to make. TNT wants to get into grittier, edgier stuff.

What can we expect from tonight’s new episode?

The first one back is probably my favorite episode we’ve done. It opens on a riot in [a Los Angeles neighborhood called] The Jungle. The residents call it that, so that gives you a pretty good idea of the quality of life there. You don’t call where you live The Jungle unless you have a pretty dim view of things. [We had] 200 extras who were real residents who we paid to pretend they were upset with the cops, which was not too far off for them. It was pretty fun. They actually pulled a loaded gun off a woman 100 feet from where we were shooting. Luckily our extras are real cops.

So it’s a lot like shooting The O.C.
I knew we’d get around to The O.C. Yes, we hang out all the time. We have potluck on Tuesdays.

Okay, instead of talking about The O.C. we’ll ask, what’s coming up for your character on Southland the rest of this season?

There’s some drama involving my character’s childhood. That will come up and make me contemplate going to the dark side. I think the way I’ve always seen the character is his journey is learning to be a man in the world as it is instead of the world as he wants it to be.

Southland airs at 10 p.m. ET Tuesdays on TNT.

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Ben McKenzie is where show business clichés go to die. No son of Hollywood, he grew up in Austin, Texas and came from a literary family: His mother is a poet and his uncle won the Pulitzer Prize for drama.

Smart, laid-back, introspective, and sure, I suppose, rather handsome, McKenzie is firing on all cylinders—having survived his overnight success and Teen Choice-style notoriety as Ryan Atwood on The O.C. and seamlessly moved onto meatier roles without losing fans along the way. Now on Southland, he plays rookie cop Ben Sherman, a boy from the right side of the tracks who’s crossed over to work the mean streets of L.A.

With Southland’s unseen Season 2 episodes premiering tonight on TNT, we caught up with McKenzie for a one-on-one about the show.

TV.com: You’re from a literary family. Why did you choose acting instead of writing?

Ben McKenzie: Ego and laziness. Those were the main two reasons. I don’t know. I was attending the University of Virginia, majoring in economics and foreign affairs, and midway through I was pretty bored with my studies and searching for something else to do—to give me some enjoyment, some thrill. I stumbled over to the theater department, and started doing plays. And I kind of fell in love with it. Why I ended up there as opposed to writing, I couldn’t tell you. But I knew pretty quickly that I needed to give it a shot, because I got a certain thrill from acting that I didn’t get out of anything else.

So what do you get out of acting?

Good question. I should probably be better at answering it; it’s hard to express. It’s a way of looking into, without being utterly pretentious about it, what it is to be human and the kind of shared human experience that we can all relate to—no matter who we are and what we are. We’re all human, we all have our own talents and fears and accomplishments and loves and hates, and we all tend to go about this thing not really knowing what we’re doing, living moment-to-moment. I like portraying that, getting a view into other people’s worlds and experiences, trying to walk in their shoes for a minute. It’s slightly voyeuristic, in a way. You get to be somebody else.

He graduated from The O.C. to a serious dramatic role as rookie cop on the critically praised Southland, which was canceled last fall to make way for Jay Leno. Now, with Southland returning to TV on TNT, Ben McKenzie speaks exclusively to Uinterview here.

Q: What was your reaction when you heard about the cancelation of Southland by NBC. – Uinterview

A: My reaction was ‘WTF OMG?’ And I said it that way. I honestly thought someone was kidding. I didn’t understand. I thought it was an elaborate gag or something because why would you renew a show, order 13 episodes, give it a time slot, wait until two weeks before it was about to premiere and then cancel it? Very peculiar. It was a bit of a frustrating situation. In part because shooting the show was a fantastic experience. I think the entire cast feels that way, but the drama behind the scenes has been bizarre and never-ending. No matter what we did, we needed to bear the brunt of a lot of changes in corporate strategy at NBC. But now that we are back on a different network, on TNT, I hope that it’s going to actually work out.

Q: Will the show be different now that it’s on cable? – Uinterview

A: TNT bought the episodes from last year that aired on NBC and the new episodes that we had shot before we were canceled that were still ordered under the contract. We haven’t shot new episodes for TNT yet, but it will all depend on whether the ratings are good enough for them to renew it. In terms of the different content, well, part of the reason we were canceled is because of a disagreement between the network and the producers over what the show is and when we had to move to 9 o’clock to accommodate Jay Leno, they promised we would be able to write the same show, but as we got closer and closer to it and they started seeing the show put together. They started having a lot of problems with the content.
Q: Was it too violent? – Uinterview

A: Yeah. Exactly. Although they were given the script, so I don’t know why they didn’t figure it out until that point. Anyway, I’m not going to get into that. There’s always a problem with content. Now that we’re on TNT, we can use whatever footage we have. We can unbleep some things now that we’re on cable. And I think the show doesn’t pull a lot of punches. There’s one thing that actually got us into trouble, interestingly enough, in that first episode. Shawn Hatosy and Kevin Alejandro do an interrogation of one of the gangbangers on a toilet. They thought that was way too crude. And you know, things like that, where you and I would say,’Who cares? That’s what you object to? Didn’t you see the rest of the show?’ Things like that, where I’ll just say it’s better situation to be on a network like TNT. Certainly, if we go forward and the ratings are good enough and TNT picks us up, I think you’ll see us fully push the envelope. I don’t think we’ve had to back off too much. Maybe that’s why we got canceled because we should have backed off more. But at the end of the day – I’m glad. If it was a choice between compromising the vision of the show drastically vs. getting canceled and risking not being picked up, I’m glad we didn’t compromise it. It certainly is unusual to be picked up by another network, and we’re fortunate. But in the long run, maybe it will work out for everyone. Our gritty show, maybe we’ll find somewhere for it to be on the air.

944.com has published a new interview with Ben Mckenzie. He talks about TV series ‘Southland’ and more. You can read it below. Enjoy!

The Reconstruction

What Happens to a Former Teen Heartthrob with a Claim to Fame as a Boy from the Bad Side of the Tracks on The O.C.? For Ben McKenzie, it’s Building a Reputation for Being Quite a Serious Actor

Although many people might know him from his stint as Ryan Atwood in The O.C., Ben McKenzie is ready to make waves again on TV with Southland, a gritty, realistic LAPD cop drama. After a false start as the next great thing on NBC, the fan favorite and critically-acclaimed show will return on TNT in March and the 31-year-old Austin, Texas native will get a chance to shine once again as Officer Ben Sherman.

While McKenzie has been seen in films like the indie hit Junebug and 88 Minutes with Al Pacino, the young actor has made most of his appearances on the small screen and with any luck, will stay there for a while.

McKenzie has maintained a pretty low-key private life, which suits his laid-back demeanor and celeb-free upbringing. In fact, it’s given the actor a little chance to sit back and enjoy the ride a little.

944: So what exactly happened with Southland getting cancelled? This was what NBC was claiming to be the show to take the place of ER.
BEN MCKENZIE: Well, we got cancelled two weeks before we were going to premiere again on NBC after we had already been renewed for a second season, so it was pretty unexpected. Nobody saw it coming, so that was a shock. So we sat around and assumed — well, it’s not likely that network shows get cancelled and are picked up again by another network, so when TNT came along, it was a pleasant surprise.

944: Where does TNT want to go with the show and how did they know it would click with their audience?
BM: TNT wants to get into a grittier, more realistic program and they understand better than NBC did, the feel of the show. Now we can be a little more edgy and unapologetic, which we couldn’t do before. With NBC, we were trying to fit a square peg in a round hole as far as what the show is, which is to explore the lives of copes in 21st-century century LA in an intimate character-driven way and not a procedural show. But what sparks with an audience? That’s the million-dollar question. If we knew that, every show would be a fit but, in fact, 99 percent of them fail.

944: The shoots are kind of hectic, though, not only because you have real cops and real gang members in them, but because of the constraints you have, right?
BM: It’s very frenetic. We’re trying to do a lot in a short amount of time in several locations every day, so we’re constantly moving all the time in a 12-hour day. If a helicopter flies by, the response of the crew is, “Quick, grab that shot and pan back down and don’t break character”. We’ve had some helicopters come by because we have a relationship with the LAPD now. It is a high-stakes environment because you only get one or two takes sometimes.

944: Does working with the cops make you appreciate your job a little more?
BM: Yeah, it does. It gives you an appreciation for how easy you have it. They’re on set all the time because they’re our background and extras, so half of them at least are real cops and there’s an on-set advisor that’s ex-LAPD, so we’re surrounded by cops and can’t get away from the cops. They love to tell stories and love to point out if you’re doing anything incorrectly. Cops are not shrinking violets by any stretch of the imagination, so they’ll tell you what’s going on. It’s probably the most gratifying aspect, finding law enforcement fans of the show because they enjoy it and have the best BS detector so if they come up and tell you they like it, that means a lot.

The critically-acclaimed TV series was abruptly dropped by NBC last October — but TNT has given it a new chance to prove its viewership potential.

Audio Interview: Listen now

Southland, by all accounts, got a raw deal from NBC when that network canceled the second season premiere only a couple weeks before it was scheduled to air. Blame risk aversion — blame Dateline — blame Leno — but mostly blame the major networks’ sudden disinterest in adding (or even keeping) unestablished drama series in their prime-time lineup.

Enter TNT, who saw the potential for the edgy, gritty, darker-than-usual network cop drama, and determined to give it a shot in their programming lineup.

The episode that was set to premiere on NBC on October 23 will now be aired — in altered (enhanced?) version — on TNT next Tuesday, January 12, at 9 p.m. Central.

Austin native Ben McKenzie — who many will remember from his portrayal of Ryan Atwood in The O.C. — stopped by the W Hotel in Dallas this Wednesday to promote the show. Here’s a sample of what he talks about in the audio interview:

* How he gets along — on screen and off — with co-star Michael Cudlitz.
* His hair-raising experiences riding around with undercover L.A. gang units.
* “I couldn’t do it for a living. I get enough adrenaline boost just riding around with them occasionally.”
* Whether he’s seen (or even wants to see) Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans.
* What he misses most about living in Texas — and what he doesn’t miss at all.
* Changes in the show resulting from the move to TNT.

While we North Texans are shivering in our long handles, Ben will be enjoying himself in the shirtsleeves weather at tonight’s big Rose Bowl matchup between the University of Texas Longhorns and that other team. (Something about a Crimson Tide?)

Three guesses who he’ll be rooting for — and the first two don’t count.

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Actor Ben McKenzie returns to Texas for ‘Southland’ screening

“Lady, with that attitude, you’re just asking for trouble,” Ben McKenzie joked after a woman at Wednesday night’s Southland screening at the W Hotel began her question to him by saying, “I know I’m not anywhere near your age group…”

McKenzie, born in Austin, is 31, but going off of my interview with him and his Q-and-A session at the screening, he’s very wise while still young at heart. He’s someone who starred in a primetime soap opera yet graduated college with a degree in foreign affairs and economics.

Which would explain his in-depth answer to a fan who compared Southland to another gritty, critically-praised cop drama, The Wire. McKenzie had lots of good food for thought, and said Los Angeles, where the show is based, is a prime example of 21st Century America, where “the richest zip codes are 10 miles away from third world-like areas.”

McKenzie didn’t stay for the screening, saying he was on his way back to California to see Texas and Alabama face off in the BCS national championship game. But those in attendance were privileged to see a brand new episode of the show about two months before it airs.

TNT, having picked up Southland after NBC canceled it, is re-airing the first episodes already aired before completely new ones are shown. But McKenzie did say fans should expect some extras/differences to episodes they’ve already seen, including six additional minutes to the pilot airing at 9 p.m. Tuesday.

You can hear more from McKenzie in our interview here. McKenzie’s Ben Sherman will still be dealing with his father issues, and we may find out more about his privileged yet problematic past. Regina King’s character may or may not be without a partner, seeing as Tom Everett Scott’s character was shot in NBC’s series season finale in May.

He also gave a tidbit about his character’s partner, John Cooper, played by Michael Cudlitz. Cooper’s divorced, and his most obvious demons are his alcoholism and pill popping, but keen fans have caught on by now that Cooper is gay but very closeted. McKenzie said Cooper thinks being out on the force would hinder him in some way, and Sherman is still unaware. But something tells me that with Sherman dogging Cooper over his partner’s “back pain,” he’ll soon learn about the drug addiction and even more.

I’ll have more from our interview up on Tuesday, when Southland returns to TV.

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