James and McBride intercede with a man on a ledge. (
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Nicholas Wootton was 23 years old when he started writing for “NYPD Blue.” He was surrounded by an array of pros, series creator Steven Bochco among them, who made him think, “My God, I have got to work my ass off to get to this level.” The best on-the-job training he got was writing for Andy Sipowicz, the ferocious detective who was up until that point television’s most “difficult” character.
“Sipowicz had a great heart,” says Wootton. When he was casting around for a new character to anchor a new show, Sipowicz’s contradictions came to mind. “What’s the young version of that today? Who’s the new young cop? How do you make a series out of him?”
The idea for “Golden Boy,” his new series, came when he was watching the arrogant young hotshots in “The Social Network.” Wootton used those traits in his young cop, Walter Clark, a hotshot who earns a promotion into the homicide division early in his career, along with Sipowicz’s disdain for following procedure.
The actor who best embodied the qualities on Wootton’s wish list was Theo James. Not in anybody’s wheelhouse when it came to casting the lead on a cop show, James was selected after an exhaustive search in this country, as well as Australia, England and Canada.
“When you see the guy’s tape, basically he’s 90 percent there,” Wootton says. “The director called Theo at midnight and gave him some notes and he re-taped himself.”
James has only been acting a few years, but he was in the right place at the right time to get discovered — on “Downton Abbey,” where he played Turkish diplomat Mr. Pamuk in Season 1. The sight of him being carried by the servants, wrapped only in a sheet, from Lady Mary’s bed, where he perished, made a lasting impression.
“Honestly with the Pamuk character, he is talked about constantly. The character doesn’t go away,” Wootton says. “That says something about Theo.”
It also says something about James’ physique. “You need a really gorgeous British lead who takes his shirt off in the first four minutes of every episode,” Wootton says.
On a bright winter morning in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, James bursts out of a studio door onto Kingsland Avenue, taking a moment to gather his thoughts while the crew looks at the scene he’s just filmed on monitors. Tall, trim and elegant, he wears a striped shirt, purple tie and a dapper, tailored blue gray topcoat. He’s the best-looking cop on the massive CBS force; that’s “NCIS” “CSI” and “Hawaii Five-0” and “Blue Bloods” combined.
It’s his final day of shooting. “I’m ready to take a break,” James says.
The “Golden Boy” cast has been hidden away in this Greenpoint outpost, completing its 13-episode shooting schedule in advance of its debut this week. A temporary family took shape: Display cases filled with the Polaroids of the cast and crew fooling around behind the scenes line the studio hallways. After a day of filming, they bonded over drinks at a neighborhood bar called the Place and celebrated Thanksgiving together at Matilda, an East Village restaurant.
Almost everyone has come here from somewhere else. Chi McBride, who plays Clark’s partner, the ready-to-retire Don Owen, is so relieved to work in New York after filming series after series, among them “Boston Public,” in LA that he takes the slightest shout out from a New Yorker as a blessing. “If you’re walking down the street and someone goes, ‘Yo, Chi,’ that’s enough,” he says. “If people in NY recognize you for your work, you kind of belong in the field that you’re in. It’s the proving ground of everything.”
Kevin Alejandro, a Snyder, Texas., native who played a gay witch on HBO’s “True Blood,” moved his wife, Leslie, and 4-year-old son, Kaden, here from Santa Monica to play detective Christian Arroyo, Clark’s devious rival.
James, 28, came from London, but he does have some connections to New York: His grandparents were married in the Greek Orthodox Cathedral of the Holy Trinity on the Upper East Side.
The idea to pursue acting was in the back of his mind when he was pursuing a philosophy degree at Nottingham University; he then went to study at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. Landing a series in America is quite an achievement and in the first two episodes, James’ action chops are on display. He runs for blocks and scales tall, chain-link fences with nary a wrinkle to his suit.
Carrying the show has become second nature to him. “You need a sense of duty and leadership because you feel a part of something bigger,” says James, relaxing in his dressing room, and now that the work day is over, speaking with a British accent.
Playing the arrogant, driven Clark gives him plenty of opportunity to spar with his male co-stars but James does have a sense of humor. He jokes about his “Downton Abbey” appearance, saying he “still had an erection from the sex scene” with Michelle Dockery after Pamuk passed away.
Bonnie Somerville, who plays Deborah McKenzie, “Golden Boy’s” lone female detective, is the only New York native on the show. Like McBride, she has come here from LA, but is from Brooklyn -— Quentin Road to be exact.
“I’m playing an Irish Catholic cop from Brooklyn,” she says, picking up a bra off a chair in her dressing room. “It’s perfect casting.”
Having grown up with five brothers, Somerville doesn’t mind being the only girl on the squad. “I want to stay in the city this time,” she says. “We’ve been totally autonomous out here. No pressure. When the pressure’s on, we’ll be at home waiting for our cellphones to ring.” To see if they’ve been picked up. With the way CBS works, they won’t know until May.
Having been around the TV block several times, McBride is willing to be patient. He’s already planning to settle down, in New Jersey. “I hope this show is a hit,” he says. “So I can get the hell out of LA. It’s not even the United States. It’s only a matter of time before it’s against the law there to have wrinkles. You can get all the black tar heroin you want but you can’t smoke.”
GOLDEN BOY
Tuesday, 10 p.m., CBS