Nothing can ever replace The Shield but Shawn Ryan has one cool idea. He’s got six of his Shield cast members guesting on the Lie to Me episode “Pied Piper.” We got Ryan on the phone to talk about bringing David Marciano, Catherine Dent, Benito Martinez, David Rees Snell, Cathy Caihlin Ryan and Kenny Johnson back together in the episode. We also previewed his two new series but really just talked about The Shield.
Crave Online: Has there been a big demand to find some format to get the Shield actors back together in?
Shawn Ryan: For me there has been. I don't know if network TV or the world has been clamoring for it but selfishly I have been so fortunately I had the power to pull it off, so I did it.
Crave Online: I’ll vouch for the world. We have. How long has it been and what were you itching to do with them?
Shawn Ryan: One of the tricky things about running a TV show is that you just never know how good the guest stars you cast on a weekly basis, how good they’re going to be in the episode. Sometimes they surprise you in good ways and sometimes they surprise you in disappointing ways. So you’re always looking for some sort of insurance in terms of well, who could we get that’s good? Obviously I’ve been working with all these Shield actors for seven years and think the world of them and they’re all just amazing actors. I’ve been plotting how to get some of them on the show. Well, maybe this person would be right for this episode and maybe that person would be right for that episode. Then I realized well, gee, wouldn’t it be a lot cooler to see them work together? And wouldn’t it be a lot more fun to do one episode where we could have six or seven of these people on the show rather than to do three or four episodes where we’ve got one Shield actor in each one but it wouldn’t feel quite as special. So once I had that idea, it took us a couple months to find the right story and the right episode to do that in. I got very fortunate that Sharon Lee Watson who was a fantastic writer for me on the show, that she came up with this idea for this episode. She knew that I wanted to do a Shield reunion thing and she felt that her episode would be a good fit for it and it was. That’s how it came to be.
Crave Online: Was there ever a chance they could have been the same characters from The Shield crossing over?
Shawn Ryan: I didn’t give that any serious consideration. It would have been too tough and I think we would have had to go through [legal]. I know they’re all under the Newscorp. Umbrella but FX and Fox TV studios that produced The Shield are different companies than 20th Century Fox and FBC which does Lie to Me. I feel like there’s something special that I want to leave untouched about The Shield. I was very happy with how it ended and I don’t want to mess with that. So I just felt like it was enough to bring the actors in. What I think is great is for Shield fans, this will be a really fun episode to watch to see the different actors work together again and see them play different kinds of roles but for Lie to Me fans who never have seen The Shield, I think this will just feel like a really good Lie to Me episode. They won’t even know that this is sort of like a stunt casting thing happening. The intention was to just make a very good straight episode and yet populate it with these people that Shield fans would go nuts for.
Crave Online: Is this episode your last hurrah on Lie to Me as you hand it over to other showrunners?
Shawn Ryan: Well, I think there’s a few more episodes in the can. I’m not sure how many more but it’s close to the last hurrah. We filmed them and then we selected an order to air them so this wasn’t one of the last episode that I worked on but it is I think in a batch of the last three to four that I worked on that will air. Then the new showrunners who worked for me last year on the show and did a great job, they’re in the process now of making season three. From all reports, it sounds like it’s going really well so that’s a bit of a hit to my ego that the show is continuing and doing well without me.
Crave Online: We all still think about The Shield. How long did you know that you were going to stick Vic behind a desk?
Shawn Ryan: I had that image in my head probably as far back as season three or maybe early season four. I didn’t know how I would get there and I didn’t know what it meant, and I gave myself the freedom to abandon the idea if I couldn’t make it work. But I had that and the end song that plays over the final credits, this Concrete Blonde song called “Long Time Ago,” I had that in my head for a long time. I always thought that song would play over the final images and in fact in the first cut that I did, I played the song over but it just felt a little too much like a music montage and felt like it was sucking some of the drama away so we ended up playing it over the end credits as opposed to over Vic at the end. I had some of those things in mind but a lot of the stuff, certainly what led up to that final moment, the writers of season seven and I all came up with that year. So I had an idea where we wanted to go but I had no idea how we were going to get there.
Crave Online: One thing that always struck me was Julian’s story arc. In the first season when he was going through re-orientation, his colleagues told him that doesn’t work, that’s crazy but nobody ever said, “Also, it’s okay to be gay.” Was that in your mind that the police force wouldn’t go so far as to be that tolerant?
Shawn Ryan: In season one my attitude towards that was that I felt like we were entering a pretty progressive phase of American culture as it related to homosexuality. Yet I felt that there were pockets that were not entering that phase. I felt like police departments were one of those pockets. So to me, the attitudes were 10 to 15 years behind what the modern attitudes were. I just wanted to investigate a culture that we would all recognize as being unevolved. Yet I think it’s pretty realistic and I don't think all that much has changed now in 2010. I’ve spent a lot of time in the last year around cops in Chicago as I prepare for this new show Ride-Along. If there are gay cops there, they’re not trumpeting it. There are still some attitudes that have not quite evolved into the 21st century. Let me put it that way. So season one of The Shield I wanted to investigate a guy, Julian, who was caught in a world that wasn’t as accepting as it should’ve been and set him on a path that was a bit crooked and had some dead ends.
Crave Online: What new territory do you get to explore in Terriers and Ride-Along?
Shawn Ryan: Well, Terriers which is an FX show that premieres this September, there I get to explore a bit more of a comedic side. The show is just a lot of fun I think and it’s a buddy show in many ways which I haven’t done before. I get to investigate youthful indiscretions and guys who don’t have a lot of responsibility in their lives. The Shield we always tried to make it feel like the case that week was of ultra importance. These are guys who live a life that doesn’t seem all that important. It just seems like a lot of fun and then they get caught up in some important stuff. So that was fun on a comedic level to do that. Ride-Along you get to investigate a sort of Midwestern culture and ethos that I grew up in. I’m from Illinois and get to investigate the interesting historical and current way that Chicago politics mixes with Chicago police work and Chicago culture. In both cases, both shows, they’re just individual characters that I’ve never written before and that have different outlooks on life than characters from The Shield or The Unite. You come up with these characters and they just become very fun to write for.
Crave Online: Does the line “from the creator of The Shield” create more pressure for you?
Shawn Ryan: I always have wondered if it’s an effective marketing technique. Those people that love The Shield love it but as I’m constantly reminded as I go out in the world, there are a lot of people that never watched The Shield. So I just don’t know how effective it is. I would say on a creative level I put a lot of pressure on myself. I don’t want to feel like I peaked five years ago, that the rest of my life is all downhill. That may turn out to be the case because so many things went right for us on The Shield and those things are hard to duplicate but yeah, I put a lot of pressure on myself and I know that my success and increased paychecks and that response really comes to deliver. This is a high pressure business that is very results oriented, that excuses aren’t tolerated. It either works or it doesn’t. I’ve decided to take that challenge on and what’s great about the job is that you never know whether you’ll succeed or not. It’s a battle every day.
Crave Online: Do you think the shows you describe now are possible because of inroads shows like The Shield made in the world of television?
Shawn Ryan: I think in some ways. I never want to overhype the importance of The Shield. If other people want to I’m happy with that.
Crave Online: That’s what I’m here for.
Shawn Ryan: I never want to overstate it. Certainly I think The Shield had a lot of impact in the cable world and it emboldened a lot of channels to engage in programming that they might not otherwise have done, the Syfys of the world with Battlestar Galactica and AMC, things like that. The Shield wasn’t the first show to touch on these subjects. Shows like Homicide and Hill Street Blues and L.A. Law, shows like that touch on them. The Shield was an evolution of those shows and I think these shows coming up will be evolutions of The Shield and The Sopranos and Deadwood and The Wire and all these shows. So I’m happy to have a place in that but I wouldn’t give sole credit for that kind of stuff to The Shield.
Crave Online: I guess what you’re seeing is I’m doing the job of hyping up The Shield.
Shawn Ryan: Oh, well, I appreciate it.
Crave Online: I asked you my two questions I personally wanted to know but what are some surprising questions other Shield questions ask you?
Shawn Ryan: Well, they all want to know where Vic’s going at the end. They all want to know whether Dutch got the kid serial killer at the end. I hear a lot of frustration that they didn’t get to see Dutch get that guy in the finale. They ask about Claudette’s health, whether she’s going to get better or not. What’s nice is that they want to know more. You always get people sort of quibbling about they’d rather you have done this or fleshed this out more but for the most part, a lot of comments I get from Shield fans is they sort of want another episode. That’s really what it comes down to. They want another episode and in some ways, the finale ended the way a lot of episodes ended, on a sort of moment where it’s a conclusion to something but it feels like it’s the beginning to something else. Yet fans never got to see next week’s episode to see where Vic was going and to see how he would handle being in a cubicle at ICE. There’s an appetite for it and part of me would love to write that but that time’s gone, that time’s passed and we can’t do it.
Crave Online: Aren’t are all the questions you meant to leave ambiguous?
Shawn Ryan: Well, certainly I was worried about trying to answer everything. In my mind there were certain things that could be implied. In my mind I think you could imply that Dutch is going to eventually get that kid and make a case and get that kid off the street. I have some ideas where Vic is going as he leaves. I don’t want to be too literal with people, I don’t want to spell it all out and I love hearing theories from people. So I think there’s enough ambiguity there to keep people talking but I do think we answered plenty of questions, certainly more questions than The Sopranos finale answered for instance. So I’m happy with the balance that we have in terms of answered versus unanswered.
Crave Online: It’s interesting that you thought of answers whether you said them or not.
Shawn Ryan: Well, I don't know how you can go from step one to step two without having an idea of what step three would be, because that changes the direction of step two if that makes sense.
Crave Online: Was one of the biggest accomplishments making us feel for Shane over the years?
Shawn Ryan: Well, I can’t take all the credit for that. Certainly I think Walton Goggins’ performance added to that. Anytime you throw a kid into the mix, it’s like having a puppy. You generate some sympathy but that is something that I’m proud of the work that we writers did over the last six or seven episodes of that season. We were able to take him from arch villain to a guy that you felt sorry for as you saw him on the run and as you saw things closing in on him and that you saw that his nemesis, Vic, maybe wasn’t as rootable as you thought earlier. It was interesting how a lot of people really struggled with who to root for in that final episode, Shane or Vic.
Crave Online: Did you pick up Jennifer Beals for Ride-Along from your experience on Lie to Me?
Shawn Ryan: Yeah, I’d worked with her for four episodes on Lie to Me, thought she was pretty terrific on the show. She’s someone who was born and raised in Chicago. She really loved the role, really wanted to move back to Chicago and do it. She auditioned and she was great. So having worked with her on Lie to Me certainly gave me the confidence that she could pull off this role in Ride-Along.
