E-mail a friendMichael Chiklis
airdate March 3, 2005
Emmy-winning actor Michael Chiklis describes his role as the corrupt hero of FX's controversial cop drama, The Shield, as career-changing. TIME magazine credits him with giving TV's performance of the year. The Massachusetts native made his stage debut at age 13. After college, he moved to New York to pursue his craft. He won the TV movie role of John Belushi in Wired and went on to star in the series, The Commish, for four seasons. Chiklis continues to work in theater and film and is one of the stars of the feature, Fantastic Four.
Michael Chiklis
Tavis: Michael Chiklis is the Emmy-winning star of one of the most critically acclaimed shows on all of television, 'The Shield.' Fans of the show have already circled March 15 on their calendars. That's when the FX series kicks off its fourth season. Among the new cast members this year--Oscar nominee Glenn Close. Here now a scene from 'The Shield.'
Vic: You stabbed me in the back. You didn't want me to find out about it until you ran out of here, right?
David: I won't pass you along to become someone else's problem.
Vic: Who's been running your precious little garage sting?
David: Oh, you mean that load of crack you sold me for a
Vic: So what is this, payback?
David: Consider it the bill coming due. You ran the strike team into the ground. To get you under control, I parked you in front of videotapes for 6 months and you even managed to botch that. You are a joke.
Vic: I'm a joke? Come on.
Man: Hey, come on, hey!
Tavis: Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey.
Michael Chiklis: Mr. Congeniality. That's Vic Mackey.
Tavis: Mr. Chiklis, how are you, sir?
Chiklis: Isn't he sweet?
Tavis: Yes, he is. Nice to see you.
Chiklis: Nice to see you, Tav.
Tavis: Speaking of sweet, how sweet is it to have Glenn Close as a part of the cast now?
Chiklis: Oh, man, it couldn't be sweeter. You know, I spent, literally, 5 full minutes on the phone with our executive producer Shawn Ryan when he called me to tell me that we had--you know no one told me who we got, and I left it alone purposely. I was up in Vancouver shooting 'The Fantastic Four.' And he called me and he said, 'Michael, listen, we got a captain.' And I was, like, 'OK. Who is it?' And he went, 'Um, we got Glenn Close.' And my first reaction was, 'Oh, man, why do you have to do that? That's not funny.' Because I, you know, I--you know, if you're gonna get--like if you could absolutely close your eyes and get your wish list, she's gotta be one of 3 of our national treasures, uh, female stars. Female actors. Um, and I just thought he was lying. You know, I said, why would you do that?
Tavis: A bad joke, huh?
Chiklis: Yeah, man. That's not right. You know, 5 full minutes of this, back and forth. It was like who's on the line? You know, I thought I was being punk'd. And, um...and then finally, I heard it in his voice that he meant it. And I went, oh, my lord. He's being real. And then there's the--then after the elation, how excited you get, you go, whoa, OK, now what's that gonna mean? Uh, well, I hope she doesn't show up and go, 'I'm Glenn Close and you're not.' You know, is there a diva there? And nothing could be further from the truth. I mean she is just an actor's actor. She shows up, she hits her mark, she says her words, she knows her stuff--and you know what? What really surprised me about Glenn is I didn't know that she'd be so funny. She's funny in paragraphs and, you know, she has all these great anecdotes. I mean she's been around. She's done some great work and with a lot of people. And she's got dirt on people you can't believe.
Tavis: Next time she comes on the show, I gotta ask her about that dirt. I didn't ask that question when she was last on here. But it's great for the show to have her, though. No question about it.
Chiklis: Phenomenal.
Tavis: Um, got those who don't know the story, this is a little bit of old news that I raise up only because you still look great. You are around the house, so the story goes, a few years ago before you got this series complaining about certain roles that you wanted that you couldn't get, you weren't being seen for. You just walk around the house complaining, and your wife, as wives tend to do, told you to shut up, stop complaining about the roles you weren't doing--
Chiklis: Well, she didn't say--
Tavis: Get to the gym--all right, I'm paraphrasing.
Chiklis: You know what, Michelle--
Tavis: What did Michelle say?
Chiklis: God bless my Michelle. What she did was she said, "Look, Michael, it's not incumbent upon the networks or the studios to reinvent you. It's incumbent upon you to reinvent yourself."
Tavis: That's a lot sweeter than what I was saying.
Chiklis: Yeah.
Tavis: Whole lot sweeter. I'm sorry, Michelle.
Chiklis: She didn't give me the tough love. She told me straight up, look, you know, if you want this, you first of all have to stop taking roles--Mr. Roly-Poly Affable Guy. You need to get in the gym. You need to change the look. You need to commit to going after these leading male roles. And that's the only way this is going to change. And you know that you can do it, and I know that you can do it. You just have to prove it. And that's when I embarked on about a 6- month really intense regime, and at the same time--it's kind of an odd story. We started to develop a script about a rogue cop in Miami who she was familiar with, who had more arrests and more citations than any cop in the area, but also had more lawsuits pending against him for abuse and, you know. And then all of a sudden, 'The Shield' ends up on my desk. It was sort of kismet. I mean, call it what you want, God, kismet, convergence, I don't know what, but all of a sudden, it's like this thing manifests itself in a way that I could never have brought it to paper in the way that Sean did. And the rest is history. It's just been a great ride ever since.
Tavis: Let me ask you a crazy, perhaps silly question, but I've been wanting to ask you this so badly. I was always a fan, when I grew up--my dad--there's so many things I love now and loved as a kid because my dad turned me on to it. I was an Ali fan as a kid. Still am to this day. My dad turned me on to Ali. Another thing my dad used to love and I loved because my dad loved it--my dad turned me on to a guy named Kojak.
Chiklis: The bald guy.
Tavis: Exactly. But I raise this because nowadays, all the brothers--I mean, Michael Jordan made this, you know, cool years ago. Before Michael, Isaac Hayes made it cool. So brothers always get away with the baldhead look and it looks cool and it works. What does the baldhead look do for you? It worked for Kojak, but I wonder whether or not there's something you think this look really does for you in this particular role.
Chiklis: I--you know what? It really--it's an interesting question. I've never really, uh, you know--ha ha ha!
Tavis: It works for this character.
Chiklis: Yeah. He, you know--there's--it's--I guess there's something sexy about it, because I keep getting told that, you know, and I did it because I was just thinking leaner, meaner, you know. It's a tough look. It was a harder look in general. I did it before 'The Shield' happened, and it just happened to work perfectly with Vic Mackey. So you know, yeah, it's interesting. It's amazing how many pictures I get of people who have shaved their head and dropped weight saying thank you. That's for sure.
Tavis: Ha ha ha! You sexy devil, you, Michael Chiklis. Your daughter--we talked about Michelle, your wife--you have 2 daughters.
Chiklis: Yeah.
Tavis: One of your daughters, in fact, plays your daughter on the show.
Chiklis: Yeah, my eldest--Autumn.
Tavis: Autumn does.
Chiklis: Yeah, Autumn, and I have my youngest--Odessa. Hi, Odessa. Hi, Autumn.
Tavis: Ha ha ha! Shout-outs to Odessa and Autumn. Is it true that, while Autumn plays your daughter on the show, because of the graphic nature of the show, you don't let Autumn watch the show?
Chiklis: That's correct, yeah.
Tavis: Wow!
Chiklis: Well, because she's now 11 and she started doing it when she was 8, and it's totally inappropriate for 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15-year-olds. It's not appropriate. As a parent, I guide what my children can watch and what they can't watch. And I'm also very careful about the content of the scenes that she's involved with. She's always voiced the desire to be an actor. You know, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. Well, you know, we're not going to be parents that schlep her around Los Angeles trying to get roles. I want her to have her life. I don't want to be "a child actor." That's just me. I want her to have her school friends, have her life in her childhood and go to college. And when she goes to college, if she wants to study it and study it formally and go on to become an actress, great. I will support her every step of the way. But you need to have a life experience. You need to have something under your belt to draw from, I think, to be a rounded person and to be an actor. A good one anyway. That's just my opinion. Now, as far as, you know, her not being able to watch the show, I just think it's inappropriate. People have knocked me for that, "How can you do that, sort of sending mixed signals to the kid?" But that's not true. I speak to my children, and I talk to Autumn and I say--she had a bad reaction when she was about 6 to seeing something on television once, an advertisement for a horror film, and it just was on national television all of a sudden, and it scared her. I said, "You remember that ad you saw for that thing and how it scared you? Well, you know, if you watch 'The Shield,' the whole show, it will affect you and scare you and some things will confuse you and you're not at a place in your life yet where you can really grasp the concepts yet. And as you get older, we'll watch it together and I'll explain it." And she goes, "Oh, I don't want to see it."
Tavis: Yeah. Speaking of being scared, Autumn's not the only one who gets scared about things on TV. Indeed, there have been advertisers--I'm not telling you something you don't know--advertisers who have been scared by the content, by the message, if you want to use that word, of 'The Shield.' Does that not bother you? Are you cool with that? To each his own? Or do you think that those advertisers who've pulled support from the show ought to be chastised for that? Are you cool with this?
Chiklis: Well, you know, I can understand how people get cold feet because of certain groups that make a lot of noise. I actually get more upset with groups, particularly the ones who have never seen 'The Shield' and sort of--I think that anybody who calls our show obscene, it does anger me and it mystifies me. I'm a believer in choice and freedom of choice and that this is the United States of America. And I also know that we're on basic cable. You know, you have to pay for it. And I know that my children aren't awake at 10:00 on a Tuesday night watching adult programming, because I know where they are. You know, and I'm not a flag waver or a political person, but that's just--it just makes common sense. It's good common sense.
Tavis: I don't want to put you in the position of having to answer a question that clearly the fans answer, and they answer it loudly and clearly by watching every season, but what do you think makes the show work?
Chiklis: Well, I think the ambiguous nature of the show is a huge hallmark of its success. I think that people understand that we live in a very, very complex world. Things aren't as cut and dried and black and white as people would ideally hope they would be. They're just not. And we live in a world with terrorism now and all kinds of different questions, and with regard to police work, you know, police don't have it very easy these days and we wanted to take an even-handed look at police work and corruption in it as well as people who are not corrupt. It really interests me. There's so many different opinions out there about it.
Tavis: Speaking of that, what do you hear from cops? I mean, give me the range of what you hear from cops.
Chiklis: I hear an incredibly broad range from cops, everything from, "You know...you know, you're playing a bad guy," to, "Oh, man, I remember those days."
Tavis: Ha ha ha!
Chiklis: And everything in-between.
Tavis: Right.
Chiklis: And, you know, sometimes you get a little nervous. And, you know, uh--but you know, I think a lot of cops actually look at it as a guilty pleasure, you know. Because, you know, if you're going to domestics every day and you see guys beating on their wives and doing these kind of things, you know, when you're a cop and you see that day in and day out, um, you know, you want 5 minutes alone with that guy, you know. And it might not be right, and it might, uh, go against our sensibilities of--uh, you know, of civil rights in America and all of that, um, and we--that's the whole question. It's back and forth. It's, you know, how far is too far, and how--you know, how much can we hog-tie them? You know what I mean? There's always that pushing and pulling. There's a lot of cops out there who feel like they're being asked to do the job with one hand tied behind their back and they can't be effective, then just basically give up and say, "Oh, I'm just gonna fill my quota." And then there's other cops who are like, "You know what? I'm gonna do things the way my heart tells me I should do 'em, and I'm gonna deal with bad guys the way I think I should do it," and they take it too far, and they take into their--their own hands to too far a degree.
Tavis: You--you think ultimately, though--you think ultimately, though, that 'The Shield' shows the complexity of that range.
Chiklis: That's right. That's right. You know, without judgment. That's the key, you know. We don't say, like at the end of an episode, this summation like, "OK, isn't it wrong what Vic did in this?" You know, there's no moralizing. We want the audience to make up their own mind.
Tavis: Let me close our conversation--I could do this for hours. Let me close our conversation by going back to what I know is near and dear to your heart, Odessa and Autumn. Um, I suspect because of them, you have been very much involved with--is it the Children's Lifesaving Foundation?
Chiklis: That's correct.
Tavis: Tell me about your work with them right quick.
Chiklis: Well, you know, the Children's Lifesaving Foundation is a group this lovely woman Maria D'Angelo started about 10 years ago where she helps inner-city kids. I mean, there are kids in East L.A. Who have never seen the ocean. And she has a summer program. For example, she brings them up to a summer camp in Malibu, and these kids get to see Malibu and the ocean and do all these summer sports and programs together, and they--and they have, um, you know, programs for college and, you know, giving kids who are in shelters, that are--that are, you know, from impoverished families, a real lease on life, new lease on life. We've found out that there were 80,000 homeless children and sheltered children in Los Angeles. We just thought that we should take a bite out of that.
Tavis: Well, I'm glad you're doing good work. And I'm glad that they let us out of the inner city. That's why I leave South Central every day and come up here to Hollywood to do this show. I need to see something different. Nice to have you on the program.
Chiklis: Thank you so much.
Tavis: All the best on a great fourth season.
Chiklis: Great to be here.
Tavis: Give my best to Glenn Close.
Chiklis: Thank you so much.
Tavis: Nice to see you. Childrenslifesaving.org is the web site. The season premiere--again, circle your calendars. March 15, 'The Shield's' back on FX. That's our show for tonight. I'll see you back here next time on PBS. Until then, good night from L.A. Thanks for watching and keep the faith.
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