Interviews

Shawn Ryan

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Interviewed by Noel Murray
November 25th, 2008

Prior to the 2002 première of The Shield on FX, original programming on basic-cable channels was largely limited to bland procedurals and adventure shows, not unlike what bored TV watchers could find on UHF on a Saturday afternoon. The Shield was a game-changer, proving that fans of great TV didn't need to subscribe to HBO to see an adult drama dealing with mature themes. Over the past seven years, The Shield has told one long story, about corrupt LAPD detective Vic Mackey (played by Michael Chiklis), and his efforts to uphold the law while scrambling to protect his "Strike Team" from being held accountable for their methods. Throughout its entire run, The Shield has been helmed by Shawn Ryan, who came to FX after working as a producer on Angel and a writer on Nash Bridges—two shows that bear little relation in style or tone to the series that now joins Hill Street Blues, NYPD Blues, Homicide: Life On The Street, and The Wire on the shortlist of TV's greatest cop shows. As The Shield prepares to air its final episode (on Tuesday, November 25), Ryan spoke with The A.V. Club about his future plans (beyond his current job executive-producing The Unit for CBS), the legacy of The Shield, and why Nash Bridges was a great place for fledgling TV auteurs to work.

The A.V. Club: How have you been feeling throughout this final season?

Shawn Ryan: Mainly it's been fun to have people finally see these episodes. We finished working on them back in May. We filmed them at the end of last year, but with the writers' strike, it took five months to come back and edit them. So they've been in our heads for a while, and it's nice to finally be able to share them.

AVC: You weren't actually on the set when the finale was shot, right? Because you were on the picket lines?

SR: Yes, but my presence would've been mostly ceremonial anyway. I don't tend to spend a lot of time on the set while we're filming, because I focus on the writing and editing and everything else. So it was more just a tough thing not to be able to share that moment with the cast and crew. It didn't affect the quality of what got filmed.

AVC: Did you have any kind of wrap party later on?

SR: Not exactly. There was a get-together, but it was still during the strike, which kind of muted things. We're having one for the finale, though. The night the finale airs, we're gonna watch it in Los Angeles the same time it's premièring on the East Coast. That's our big sort of farewell party.

AVC: Have you had the ending of The Shield in mind from the start, or did that develop as you went along?

SR: Over the years, yeah. It wasn't until I started getting into seasons three and four that I thought about how I wanted it all to end. I had a couple of big notions, but the show has always been a collaborative effort, so I took my ideas to the writers, with all of us sitting in a group. We had like three months' time before we began filming season seven, so we all sat down and worked it out. By the time we started filming the first episode of the final season, we had a pretty good idea where we were gonna go. Then we figured some other things out along the way, as we were filming. So it was a process. It evolved. But I always think it's better to take your time and go through a lot of ideas—and dismiss a lot of ideas—before figuring out where to land. It's a good way to care for your audience, too. If you spend hours and hours and days and weeks coming up with the ending, then there's a chance the fans won't figure it out on their own.

AVC: One impressive thing about this season is how often events and characters from previous seasons have come back and affected the plot.

SR: We've tried to be consistent, and we were always looking back at what we'd done with other episodes: what had been resolved, and what characters we thought were worth bringing back. Knowing that this was going to be the end really helped us bring certain things full circle—in a fun way, I think. And we really did put a lot of time and effort into studying past episodes and thinking of how we might be able to use certain characters or threads to propel the story forward.

AVC: Here's a prime example: The episode where Vic challenges Aceveda's manhood, and Aceveda responds by punching out Pezuela. Even though it's never directly stated, to some extent, his action appears to be motivated by his rape from several seasons back.

SR: The gift that keeps on giving, huh? That plot twist really propelled a lot of stories forward for Aceveda over the years. Having been a victim of that, then feeling kind of impotent, of course he gets enraged and lashes out, to grab that masculinity back.

AVC: Are there any storylines or characters you never got to do as much with as you would've liked?

SR: In the end of season six, we had Franka Potente play a role for us that she was really great in. We had a couple ideas of how to bring her back in season seven. We had a story arc that would have involved her in the first seven or eight episodes of the season, with the Armenians and everything. But she was unavailable. She was in the jungles filming Che with Steven Soderbergh and could not make it out, though she wanted to. So we had a lot of ideas there that I think would have been fun, and she's just such a fantastic actress that it would've been great to get her back in front of our cameras. But we found a way around it. You can't spend too much time worrying about regret and what could've been. TV is just such a fast-moving medium that you do what you can do, and what you can't do, you don't worry about too much.

AVC: When you're dealing with a tightly serialized drama like The Shield, is it appropriate to think of it as being like a long feature film, or a novel? Or is it still ultimately TV?

SR: There are story-room sessions where you think about the big picture, like a novel, but once you have certain things in place, you have to treat each episode like an hour of TV, and think that maybe this will be the only episode that anyone will ever watch. You want to have some sort of beginning, middle, and end to the episode, even if you have storylines that are carrying over. You still want it to feel like a cohesive hour of entertainment. And you can't think about both at the same time. We'd have story meetings where we'd sit around and talk about the big picture, and a lot of meetings where we'd sit around and think about what we were going to do for one particular episode: "What's the arc for this character in this episode?" And so on. That's how we dealt with it.

AVC: Yet when the last episode airs, fans will have seen one of the rare TV series that has a beginning, a middle, and an end.

SR: Yeah, and that wasn't always intentional, because when you start a TV show, you're not necessarily thinking, "Are we setting up what we need for season seven?" You're just trying to stay on the air, and you try to learn your job as you go, and do what you can. But we've been able to plan for a couple years toward an ending, and that has helped us make things come back around. So I do think that people who watched the series from the very beginning, or watched the episodes in a short time frame—on DVD or online, for instance—will think The Shield feels novelistic, in the sense that it's cohesive. We tried really hard to be consistent and have things make sense from one season to another.

AVC: From a financial point of view, is a show like The Shield likely to have a long afterlife? Or does the fact that it's so serialized limit its ability to get replays?

SR: I think with some formats, that hurts, and with others, it helps. I know for a fact that The Shield sells very well on DVD. I think it's the kind of show that people really love watching on DVD, and going through three or four episodes a night, and going through a whole season in two or three nights. I've heard a lot of people who talk about how they enjoy watching it that way. I think the format of the show really helps its DVD possibilities. It was sold in syndication to Spike, and has had minimal repeat numbers there. So it may not be the kind of show with long-term syndication potential. It is a show that has tended to do well overseas, however. It just depends. There's certainly a market for the CSIs and Without A Traces that are closed stories and easily digestible in a given night. And those shows ultimately are probably more profitable than ours. But a show like The Shield has done very well in terms of increasing the value of FX as a network, in the ratings, and selling DVDs, and overseas. I don't hear anyone who's financially involved with the show complaining.

AVC: It was stirring earlier this year when FX president John Landgraf gave a speech—

SR: —talking about the place of The Shield in the history of cable? Yeah, I heard that, and it was very touching. It's great to have such a fantastic advocate. You hear all the time about writers complaining about their networks or complaining about the "suits." The reality is that John has been a consistent champion of the show, both creatively and economically. I could not ask for a better partner to work with. I think the comment he gave that day shows the affection he has for the show.

AVC: Have you been disappointed by the lack of awards attention from the Emmys and the Golden Globes?

SR: I think if we'd never won anything, I probably would be. But we did win some things early. Michael Chiklis won the Emmy for Best Actor, and [pilot director] Clark Johnson and I both got nominated that year, even though we didn't win. The show won a Golden Globe for Best Drama. I have a Golden Globe sitting at my house, I have an AFI Award, I have a Peabody Award… When you win a few things, your attitude toward that stuff just becomes a little more Zen-like. My attitude at this point is that I feel pretty good about the creative aspects of the show, and if someone were to nominate us or give us an award for something, I'd show up and be very grateful. But if they don't, it doesn't chip away at my view of what we've done. Also, bear in mind that we're living in a golden age of television in a lot of ways, with a lot of great shows that appeal to a lot of people. I can't sit here and say that The Shield is any more deserving than Friday Night Lights, Battlestar Galactica, The Wire, Mad Men, or any of those shows. It's just a really wonderful time to watch television. So the awards are… If they come, it's great. But if not, it's all right. And because we won a few early, it's easier to feel that way, I guess.

AVC: Do you watch a lot of TV, just as a fan?

SR: I do. I watch far too much. I was never that kid who grew up in New York and was always at the arthouse watching important films. I was the kid who grew up in the Midwest where there weren't any art films, and I watched TV. And that was really the medium that affected me and that I fell in love with. To this day, nothing makes me happier than finding a TV show I really love.

AVC: What shows do you love right now?

SR: Big fan of Lost.

AVC: Some old friends of yours work on Lost.

SR: Yeah, a couple. Carlton Cuse was my first full-time boss in this business on Nash Bridges, and I learned a lot from him. And Damon Lindelof was the guy Carlton hired to replace me after I left Nash Bridges. So I've got to give Carlton credit for having a good eye for talent. [Laughs.] Also, I was a little late to the game, but just this last year on DVD, I've watched Battlestar Galactica, and I'm really in love with that show. It took me a while to come to it, because like The Shield, it's such a big time commitment, in that you really should watch all the episodes in a row. I'd missed the first season, so I didn't want to watch season two or three without going back. But I finally did, and I'm really glad I did, because that show is so impressive.

On the comedy side, I'm a big fan of The Office. And because a friend of mine co-created it, I've been watching The Big Bang Theory. I'm not sure that I would've watched it without knowing my friend, but now that I have, I really love it. I just think it's a really smart, well-written, great show in a genre that's kind of under attack these days. Bill Prady, who I know, and Chuck Lorre, who I know—the two of them co-created it. I think they do a great job with that show and those characters. There are some really great, distinctive characters on that show that are fun to watch.

AVC: The Big Bang Theory doesn't have a lot of critical cred, but it's very entertaining.

SR: No, it doesn't. And it is. I've also been watching How I Met My Mother recently. I like that show. You see I like to watch a lot of comedies.

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