NBC's new cop drama with a twist,
Life, airs its second episode tonight, after making a decent showing during its debut last Wednesday. Immediately following its first telecast, show creator and executive producer, Rand Ravich, participated in an exclusive live blog over at
Life's official NBC website.
During the live blog, Ravich took on a host of
Life-related inquiries ranging from lead character, Charlie Crews' Zen outlook to his obsession with fresh fruit. Read on for interesting details and tidbits straight from the man behind NBC's
Life.
A great deal of the questions thrown at Rand Ravich had to do with his series' central figure, Charlie Crews, as portrayed by the wonderfully talented
Damian Lewis. Rand spoke about what viewers can look forward to on this,
Life's maiden season, as well as Charlie's habits and philosophy, and the basis for his choice of Lewis in the starring role.
“I've been a big fan of Damian Lewis for a long time, certainly since
Band of Brothers, and he had never wanted to do television,” Ravich revealed. “When we first started the process with NBC we had talked about it but he said he wasn't interested. We came to him later when we got further down the road and he seemed interested and was at a point in his life when he wanted to move to California. It all came together in a Zen-like way. He's perfect for the role. He can be both warm and tough and he's smart, but accessible and obviously very handsome so I could not imagine another Charlie Crews.”
Speaking of Zen, fans wanted to know whether Charlie will continue to live by the teachings and mantras of the said eastern philosophy.
“It will absolutely continue through the series,” Ravich assured. "Charlie Crews' understanding of Zen is what I think of as a blue collar understanding. He found one book in the prison library and read it over and over. He's not a Zen master and doesn't have a PhD in philosophy. He taught it to himself and it saved his life in prison. He's coming to his own understanding of Zen, but what I find interesting is how he fails at Zen. He wants to forgive and let go of material objects, but vengeance is part of who he is and he likes the cars, he likes the money. He knows that meaningless relationships aren't part of Zen, but he'll be learning more about Zen as
Life goes on.”
The fruit obsession, I had done quite a bit of research about food in prison,” Ravich added about his lead's somewhat over-the-top fascination for fresh fruits. “I thought dripping fresh fruit was such a great representation of everything that he was missing. Now that he is out he's hungry for everything but this was a great visual representation for TV.”
“The things to look for are Charlie rediscovering more and more about the things in life, like his relationship with his ex-wife, technology, and a police dept. that might or might not have set him up,” Ravich pointed out. “Just reinventing himself and finding his place in the world.”
-Rosario Santiago, BuddyTV Staff Columnist
Source: NBC
(Image Courtesy of Viewimages)