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Features
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Knocking Out a New Kojak
Although the new USA series Kojak marks the first time Ving Rhames has played a cop, he’s already well familiar with the beat thanks to a wife who was also once a homicide detective.
Friday, March 25, 2005
By Shelley Gabert
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Steve Granitz/Wireimage.com
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Rhames, with wife Debbie
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He may be bald and suck on a lollipop, but Ving Rhames is no Telly Savalas. And that’s okay, because Rhames, the star of Kojak, the new series debuting tonight on USA Network, isn’t trying to be.
Other than capitalizing on the name, the candy and the spirit of the original Emmy-winning Universal Television police drama, the USA series isn’t a remake as much as a rebirth. “I can applaud Telly Savalas for what he gave to the role,” Rhames observed during a recent Television Critics Association presentation. “And sometimes when I’m learning my dialogue, I can feel his spirit and I can hear his voice.”
“But I’m not trying to recreate what he did.”
Although there will be those who pronounce Rhames a mere pretender to the Savalas throne, the actor likens it to the James Bond franchise, where each actor is allowed to fuse their own personality to the character. And there’s no shortage of that in tonight’s two-hour debut, with Kojak investigating a serial killer who is murdering single mother prostitutes.
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Dimitrios Kambouris/Wireimage.com
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Smashing co-star Sanchez
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Both Savalas and Rhames hail from the New York area - Savalas was born in Garden City, Long Island, and Rhames grew up on 126th Street in Harlem before attending the New York High School of the Performing Arts and Julliard. After snagging a breakthrough role in the Broadway play The Winter Boys, Rhames went on to become a busy film and TV actor, essaying such memorable characters as Marsellus Wallace in Pulp Fiction and boxing promoter Don King in the HBO movie Only in America, which earned him the Golden Globe Award he so memorably donated for the evening to Jack Lemmon.
Not only is Kojak the first time Rhames has played a cop. It’s also his first experience of any kind with the one-hour TV longform staple, as he never really had that much interest in them growing up. “Who wanted to see a white man arresting black people,” he asked. “We saw that every day. [So] we were watching shows like Good Times.”
USA began to look through the NBC/Universal library for possible projects after a merger the brought the cable channel into the Universal City fold. Kojak, which ran on CBS from 1973 to 1978 and pushed Savalas into the leagues of other memorable television cops like Baretta and Rockford, emerged as one of the leading contenders.
Tom Thayer, who serves as executive producer of the new Kojak, chose Tony Piccirillo to write the script for the pilot, based on a copy of a script he wrote four or five years ago called “The One-Nine.” A former president of Universal Television for six years, Thayer was also the founding president of MCA Television Entertainment, home of Dream On for HBO and many other movies and series for cable networks, including USA, Showtime and Lifetime.
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Dimitrios Kambouris/Wireimage.com
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Multi-talented Palminteri
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“I worked with Telly Savalas as a baby at Universal when I first started there,” recalled Thayer. “The thing I remember about Telly is he created a character that you could stand behind and walk into any storm.”
“And unlike a lot of other characters, when the storm was over he would still be there,” he adds. “But now it’s a whole new ball game, and while Kojak gets you in the door, now it’s all about Ving Rhames.”
Rhames’ Kojak is tough, for sure; in one of tonight’s opening scenes, he pressures a possible witness for information by playing a game of Russian roulette. But he’s also sensitive and soulful. This Kojak is a jazz aficionado, someone who is capable of forming an attachment to a little boy and girl left alone after their mother is murdered. In that case, the detective asks his girlfriend Carmen Warrick, a New York assistant district attorney played by Roselyn Sanchez (Dragnet, Rush Hour 2), to help get their father out of prison to be with them. It’s that juxtaposition of strength and vulnerability that makes his character both layered and eminently fascinating.
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Steve Grayson/Wireimage.com
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USA programming chief Wachtel
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“It’s about balancing the law with the human side,” suggested Rhames, who has been on both sides and is also married to a former homicide detective. “My wife definitely helped me with protocol and how the law is enforced. But the most important thing she gave me is sharing the ongoing struggles that she went through.”
“There was this 14-year-old girl who was molested by her stepfather, and she went to a foster home," he continued. "Then, six months later, she was sent back to her parents where she was molested again. My wife’s partner took him out back and beat his behind.”
“That’s what I think we have on Kojak; the human element dealing with the human condition, where if you abuse a minor, maybe I will bend the law a bit.”
At the end of tonight's movie, after which the drama will air as eight one-hour episodes beginning Sunday, April 3rd, Rhames does more than just bend the law; he breaks the code of ethics when he exacts a brutal form of justice. But a few minutes later, he breaks down into tears into the arms of his friend, former partner and boss, Chazz Palminteri (The Usual Suspects, Bullets Over Broadway).
“That was the first scene that Chazz and I did together, and I cried into his arms,” Rhames recalls. “It wasn’t planned for that to happen, but we have a very good natural chemistry with one another.”
Palminteri, who isn’t known for doing television, was interested when Rhames called him and asked him to read the script. “I’ve always wanted to work with Ving and this opportunity came up and it was right at this point in my life,” said the actor.
“I have read some of the upcoming scripts and I’m able to be flawed,” Palminteri added. “Ving is able to be flawed and we are able to touch on the last frontier, and that is race. It’s something they could never talk about 30 years ago, and that’s why this series is groundbreaking television, and that’s why I’m here.”
Indeed, the new Kojak is diversity in action, with co-stars who are African American, Italian American and a Puerto Rican speaking Spanish. Rhames credits USA for allowing that ethnicity to co-exist in one show. “How many times do you see an Italian American and an African American and they’re not killing or robbing someone?” he exclaims.
| While Rhames has played criminals in movies like Out of Sight and Con Air, he says it’s always been for him as an actor about pushing beyond the stereotypes and showing the human race, regardless of color. “Whether the name is Kojak or Lopez, what you have - and what I’m trying to do as an artist and as a man and as part of my legacy on this planet - is to show how similar we are,” he said. “If I take any kid and raise him in the ghetto in Harlem and he goes out and kills someone or steals from someone, the system is set up so that kid is damn near born in a trap.”
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“What I’m trying to get the world to see, is that there’s really not that much difference between you and I,” Rhames insists. “So it’s not a color thing. I’m African American, Telly was Greek; if we take that away we’re really the same.”
Except that now, the star of Kojak is also one of the show’s executive producers. As such, Rhames stands a solid chance of being able to stamp the program with his voluminous heart and spirit.
“I think it takes a village to raise a good television show,” proclaimed Rhames. “That’s why even though the show is called Kojak, to me, it’s USA, NBC, Universal, it’s Chazz Palminteri, Roselyn Sanchez, it’s Tom [Thayer], it's [USA’s executive Vice President, Series and Longform) Jeff Wachtel.”
| “I’m a believer that the show is as good as the chemistry of the actors, the producers, the writers, the network and I think we’ve captured that,” he added. “So I think when you see Kojak, God bless you, Telly Savalas, but we’re knocking it out.” |
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