At first glance, the idea of a cop drama which takes place in the post-Katrina world of New Orleans seems like it might taking advantage of a well-documented natural disaster to inspire ratings…but after the panel for “K-Ville,” I walked away being more curious that I otherwise had been. I still haven’t seen the pilot for the series yet, but despite my concerns, it sounds like there’s far more of a buddy-flick dynamic between stars Anthony Anderson and Cole Hauser than I had anticipated. More importantly, though, the show is actually being filmed in New Orleans, with the cast and crew doing their part to rebuild the city.
Anderson hadn’t really spent much time in the city prior to Katrina’s devastating strike. “My first time there really was during the pilot back in March,” he admits, “and to arrive in the city, it was very disheartening to see the city in the state that it was. The spirit of the people in New Orleans is unlike any other spirit in people that I’ve seen before, you know, to go through what they’ve gone through and still walk tall with the sense of pride and courage. In Lower Ninth Ward, Jefferson Parish and places around like that, that are hard-hit, where communities have been devastated and decimated. And this is still two years later, so for it to be that way now, yeah, it was quite a shock and a surprise to me, what we’ve allowed to happen on our watch, our government or whoever. But you know, we’re there lending a helping hand to do what little it is that we are doing, but we’re doing something.”
To say that Anderson is doing little is to say that he’s being humble. Later in the panel, he acknowledged that “we signed on with Habitat for Humanity, and we’re out there on our days off rebuilding the community and rebuilding homes because, you know, this is our neighborhood, and this is where we plan on living for the next 6, 7, 8, 9 years. So that’s what we’re doing, personally.”
After Anderson applauded Fox for A) putting the show on the air, and B) allowing them to shoot it in New Orleans, thereby bringing revenue to the city, producer Jonathan Lisco added, “There are some people working on our crew right now, our art designer and a few other people, who have come up to the three of us and actually embraced us. The art designer, Tim, in particular, said to me, ‘You know, your show is the reason why my family and I have recommitted to the land here: because I got the job down here. What’s interesting is…and not to sound too grandiose…but, luckily, the people of the New Orleans are very resilient by nature. So it’s nothing that we’re creating from whole cloth, but I think that the show is great for the rebuilding, concretely, of the city, but also for the spirit of the city.”
And the show does sound interesting. In addition to the very specific regional flavor of the area, the show is being described as a cross between “NYPD Blue” and “Starsky & Hutch,” which, at least in theory, sounds like it has a decent amount of potential.
Although Lisco admitted that he wasn’t out to malign any specific show, he nonetheless admitted, “We’re not trying to do something that is so hyper-real that it’s along the lines of “Nash Bridges,” where each
episode there’s a your-ass-is-mine by our bad guys, a car chase, et cetera. However, we’re not necessarily out to be only messaging in the wake of a big national disaster. We’re out to create entertainment, and I actually think that that balance is something we are very focused on in the show. We want to create entertainment; at the same time, we want to be socially relevant to the extent possible.”
Will they find the right blend? We’ll see.
