It’s no accident that Boyd Holbrook is playing DEA agent Steve Murphy on “Narcos.” Their paths had crossed before, genealogically, when Holbrook played William “Cap” Hatfield — Murphy’s great-uncle.
“I’ve never told anyone that,” says Murphy, who’s recuperating from shoulder surgery.
Now that he’s famous, he gets stopped in restaurants in the Washington, DC, area where he lives, and requests for speaking engagements through the National Law Enforcement Speakers Bureau have increased.
But he wants to stress that even though he and his partner Javier Pena (portrayed by Pedro Pascal) dismantled the Medellin cartel — and brought down Pablo Escobar — he does not consider himself a hero.
“The real heroes were the Colombian national police,” he says. “Javier and I were just lucky to be there. We’ve probably done a couple thousand interviews and one of the questions we’ve been asked is, ‘Do you think your actions had a positive effect?’ And I say, ‘Only for a week or two.’ The cocaine trade continued. There are so many people waiting to step up. People with no conscience driven by greed and ruthlessness.”
Murphy, who’s now retired, would also like to correct the assumption that Escobar, despite his innate evil, somewhat redeemed himself as a family man. “I take exception to that,” he says. “He was greedy. He couldn’t put it aside. People say, ‘Well, he was talking to his son when he was killed.’ But he was talking to his son about the government. Not about the family. It was still all about him.”
Now that “Narcos” is in production for Season 2, Murphy, a contracted consultant, is fielding questions from the writers. “The producers knew it was going to be a hit. But it’s surpassed everyone’s expectations,” he says. “That’s all they’re talking about.”
For his part, he was surprised by the amount of skin he saw on screen and shocked by the dialogue: “My language is not the best, but I’ve never dropped that many F-bombs on anybody.”