Titus Welliver Details Harry’s Life After the Badge in ‘Bosch: Legacy’
Q&A
On Bosch: Legacy, Harry Bosch (a superlative Titus Welliver) may no longer be an LAPD detective, but luckily for fans of Bosch, he’s still driven to find justice for the aggrieved.
As viewers find out in the May 6 premiere of the Amazon Freevee (formerly IMDb TV) spinoff, in the few years since political interference on the force led him to quit, he’s morphed into a private eye taking cases that include locating stolen property and missing heirs and uncovering murderous culprits.
Below, Welliver, who’s also an EP on Legacy, which he calls “a continuation” rather than a sequel to Prime Video’s original series, clues us in on what to expect this season.
Let’s talk about what fans will find the same or different in Bosch: Legacy.
Titus Welliver: Harry’s in a different place now that he’s turned in his badge and works as a private investigator. But what’s stayed the same is his perseverance. We’ll see that he’s still a determined man on a mission. I always say Harry’s evolution is very incremental. There’s a consistency to who he is.
Why is he living in his humble office and not in his iconic house with the spectacular Los Angeles view?
Well, circumstances have forced him out of his canyon perch. He’s living with his dog Coltrane. He has a dog walker, a young girl named Sam, who’s coincidentally or not, played by my daughter, Cora Welliver. I imagine that for Harry to have contact with this 16-year-old young lady is a good thing because he misses Maddie who is living on her own. Sam fills some of that emptiness.
Has he hung out a shingle?
[Laughs] He has a hand-written sign on a piece of paper, in sort of a Harry scrawl outside his office. We bandied the idea of a classic Sam Spade thing, having the letters scraped off and new letters etched on glass, but the handwritten note was hilarious. I said, ‘That’s Harry in a nutshell.’
What does he have to get used to without the detective shield’s protections?
He’s the same guy but a little bit at sea because protocols and laws are sort of out the window. He has to pick a lock because he can’t just show up with a warrant — he doesn’t have one. Interestingly, he’s still smart and cautious in how he works, but you have to imagine that he’s pissed people off and his connection to the police department is somewhat damaged.
Not only Harry has moved on, but his daughter Maddie (Madison Lintz) has also switched her career from wannabe lawyer to LAPD beat cop. What’s Harry’s POV on this?
It presents its own heightened levels of anxiety for Harry. Though he has tremendous confidence in Maddie, he’s very aware of what dangers the job entails, as both a parent and a former cop. It’s an interesting dance that he has to do because he wants to release her to a certain degree, but he does it in a state of abject terror at the same time. That really gives some wonderful stuff to Madison Lintz and me to play.
How’s Maddie’s rookie year going?
Harry’s not very good at navigating bureaucracy and neither is Maddie. As a boots-on-the-ground cop, she walks in the shadow of this iconic detective father with a massive reputation and she’s trying to make her own way and doesn’t want to carry Harry’s baggage,
The father-daughter relationship between Harry and Maddie has been wonderful to observe.
I appreciate you saying that because many people comment about how much the relationship resonates for them when they approach me on the street. You had a relationship between a father and daughter that are kind of damaged in their own ways, trying to sort it all out. We ultimately realized that because of our chemistry as actors, the heart of the show began to beat around that relationship rather than the procedural parts of the show.
Amazon Studios
P.I. Bosch has one employee, Mo (Stephen A. Chang). What can you say about him?
Mo is a technical wizard, not a cop with a gun, like Harry’s former partner J. Edgar (Jamie Hector) was. So Harry’s really naked and alone.
J. Edgar is coming back for a visit, we hear.
All I’ll say is that the audience can look forward to cameos by some of their favorite characters.
Tell us more about Harry’s new partner in crime-solving.
He does all the surveillance. Harry can barely operate his phone. Mo is sort of like Q in the Bond movies, except that James Bond was able to immediately understand and utilize the gadgets Q gave him. Harry would prefer a Playskool or Fisher-Price version of this stuff because he can’t navigate it! Their common bond is that they both love jazz. I think that Bosch fans will really dig their relationship.
Amazon
What are the cases Harry’s involved in as the show opens? He’ll be working with hotshot defense attorney Honey Chandler (Mimi Rogers), a frenemy who’s traumatized after nearly dying from a gunshot wound. How does that go?
[Honey] enlists [Harry’s] aid to help her in obtaining justice and putting [the shooter] away. He’s very clear that he does not work for her, but they end up navigating around each other to work on the case. He’s also employed to find any living heirs to aircraft mogul Whitney Vance, played by William Devane. (To work with him was an enormous privilege and a pleasure. ) There are billions at stake and since Vance is unwell, a ticking clock. In typical fashion, tons of obstacles crop up. There are people — high-end pros — who don’t want Bosch investigating and, since Harry’s not a cop anymore, he’s extremely vulnerable. That makes him a dangerous person. We see a different side of Harry. I would say it’s a nail-biter.
Bosch: Legacy, Series Premiere, Friday, May 6, Amazon Freevee
