“I’ve never definitively decided what Vic Mackey is doing now,” he shared.
“As a fan of The Shield, I am interested in seeing that.”
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Where did you get the idea for the show?
20th Century Fox/ Courtesy Everett Collection; Mark Davis/Getty Images
What I saw was much darker than that.
After three years of that, I was motivated to write that out of my system.
As all of this happening, theRampart scandalwas breaking.
20th Century Fox Film Corp./ Courtesy Everett Collection
I was reading regular newspaper articles about that and the details were so fascinating to me.
They all have different lines and Vic Mackeys line is the most different.
What was it about Michael that made you decide he was the guy would could do that?
Right now, theres probably very few actors who wouldnt want to be on FX.
But, at the time, it was very different.
And we didnt have a lot of money to spend on the show or actors.
So that was the environment we found ourselves in.
We were just trying to look for diamonds in the rough with the cast.
When it came to Michael, I have to give him a lot of credit.
I always described it as a young Harrison Ford role and Michael came in and made me reimagine it.
He was this bulldog with this intensity and energy that matched.
He saw and read the character differently and better than anyone who came in before or after him…
In his audition for us, he was on his feet and pacing around like a caged tiger.
Even then, as great as the performance was, I still kind of nervous…
I still had some butterflies.
And fortunately they did.
Why did you decide to go in that direction?
When I was doing this pilot, I decided that is what I want the ending to be.
[laughs] Now, your lead character is a murderer, so what do you do?
A lot of time was spent talking about where the line could and should be.
The genius of casting Michael Chiklis was that he was surprisingly likable in the role.
Somehow, the audience was very much against him and for Vic.
Almost every episode, writers would have some sort of pitch that ended with Vic killing someone.
Finally, I said, Look, Vic killed Terry, I get it.
He will kill other people along the way, but hes not a serial killer.
Why did you decide to wrap things up like this?
And why do you believe the finale is as revered as it is?
Im flattered that so many people think that.
At the risk of sounding egotistical, I think it deserves to be.
We spent a lot of time thinking about it.
A lot of shows had to preserve a good feeling about their show in the finale.
I had never thought of it this way, but he really thoughtThe Shieldwas a Shakespearean tragedy.
He encouraged me to think about how plays likeHamletandMacbethultimately played out.
In particular, the last two episodes, sometimes the work is greater than the sum of its parts.
It just all worked.
In a world of reboots and revivals, what are your thoughts on possibly revisiting the series?
But nostalgia is a tricky thing.
We really did all love each other and we loved doing that show… Then, at a certain point, Vic Mackey comes in to the main characters world.
For various reasons, that never happened and now, any momentum for that is probably gone.
I dont know what the future holds.
Ive never definitively decided what Vic Mackey is doing now.
As a fan ofThe Shield, I am interested in seeing that.
