Maggie Q Reveals Titus Welliver’s Surprising Advice Ahead of ‘Bosch’ Spinoff ‘Ballard’

Before starring on the new Bosch spinoff Ballard, Maggie Q got some words of advice from the franchise’s star, Titus Welliver.

“He gave me a lot of advice. He’s a great guy, and I know you guys have interviewed him and you know him,” Q shared on the third hour of Today‘s Tuesday, July 8, episode. “He’s like a brother, he feels like family and he’s just such a gracious human. And I know that when his show ended and he was sort of prepping me for the future, he was like, ‘Q, plant your flag. Do not give in. Be strong.’ And he’s like, ‘Your instincts are correct, so just follow those,’ and it was great.’”

Q went on to note that Welliver “literally” passed down his role as the franchise’s lead to her. “He gave me the baton in front of the LAPD police chief and said, ‘Here we go,’” she shared. “And I sort of looked at [the chief] and went, ‘We need your support,’ ‘cause they were very helpful with Bosch [and] gave them a lot of access. So, we’re hoping for that same thing.”

Q stars as Detective Renée Ballard on the upcoming Prime Video series, which serves as a spinoff of police procedural Bosch and its follow-up series Bosch: Legacy. After her appearance in the Season 3 finale of Bosch: Legacy, Ballard will follow Renée as she heads the LAPD’s underfunded cold case division.

Patrick Wymore/Prime © Amazon Content Services LLC

Though Q has taken on many action-packed roles in the past, she told the Today hosts that training to play a homicide detective was “very specific.” She explained, “It’s a specific set of skills that they have and that they utilize. Even though I’ve been very physical before, obviously, the learning curve on this was new to me, for sure. But I am a very physical person as is, so I could jump into that part pretty easily.”

The actress added that she “pretty much” did all of her stunts, but her “great” stunt double took some of the harder hits for her.

Related

'Ballard': Everything We Know About 'Bosch: Legacy' Spinoff So Far

Q teased her character’s journey on Ballard in an interview with TV Insider earlier this month. “She is [heading the Cold Case Unit], and we peel away the layers to reveal, as the season goes on, why that is and the circumstances behind how that happened to her,” she said of where Renée starts the series. “But we know right away that she’s been demoted to a unit that she is not happy about and is trying to make the best of the very underfunded unit. [Her team] is really trying to make miracles happen, but the LAPD is not making it easy on her.”

She also opened up about filming scenes in Malibu before the California wildfires ravaged the area in January.

“It’s a very, very sad thing when this airs that we’re going to see a lot of Malibu that no longer exists and a lot of Malibu that, even if rebuilt, will never be the same,” she told TV Insider. “That coastline was my daily commute in the show, and we spent a lot of time there … So, we’ve immortalized this part of the West Side of LA that will never be the same, and I think it’s going to be very bittersweet to see what we captured — and I know what we captured because I was there — and what currently no longer exists.”

Ballard, Series Premiere, Wednesday, July 9, Prime Video