Shades of Blue is back for a second season on NBC Sundays at 10p and the show is even more intense this year. Jennifer Lopez and Ray Liotta recently talked about what’s coming up on the good cop, very bad cop drama at NBC’s TCA Winter Press Day and you are not going to want to muss a single second this season.
What is coming up for Jennifer Lopez’s character Harlee this season?
Lopez: I mean, the mess just becomes even bigger. And the moral lines and ethical lines are pushed even further, and the struggle becomes even more intense for her because of her daughter, because of who she is as a person and her beliefs. I think what people respond to in Harlee’s character is that, at the end of the day, she’s not, she may have been a cop who, you know, they went around the neighborhood and they collected money and stuff, but they weren’t, in their minds, bad cops. They were really holding the line to what it takes and pushing those areas of black and white and getting in the gray areas there of what it takes to maintain justice and to keep neighborhoods safe. But she was pushed into a further conundrum of what her moral and ethical lines were, and this year, I feel like it goes even further into what she believes is right and wrong. And why people like her is because I think my job is to always keep her truthful but, beyond that, that they feel like she’s still even though you are seeing her do the most outrageous, heinous things, that you still believe that she’s a good person. If I can do that, if I can show you that heart, if I can show you that humanity, then I’m doing my job as far as Harlee is concerned. And I think that we were able to do that this season even with all of the things that this one came up with for me to do that were awful, and for him, too.
Is this season more challenging?
Lopez: It was a challenging season. You know, I thought the first season was so challenging because it was just emotionally taxing. I think our characters mostly take the brunt of that in this series, but for this one, I knew when I read the first page of the first scene of this season. I was, like, “Okay. That’s what we are doing. We are going there. Okay. We are burying the body. Okay. Here we go. Wrap him up in a curtain, and then knock his teeth out. Got it. I’m there.” So I knew that, emotionally, it wasn’t going to get any easier for her. I knew that it was going to be more of I call this like a storm is coming this season. …There’s this some story about Hurricane Sandy, and it really does feel like they get caught in a hurricane that they can’t get out of this season until there’s so much so many casualties and things that happen that she just it’s like sliding down a slippery slope, and she cannot get traction the whole time. She’s just looking to the side of her and hoping that it stops. And, like, she’s going to hit the bottom, and it just doesn’t stop.
What is happening between Harlee and Nava (Gino Anthony Pesi)?
Lopez: I think Nava represents for Harlee, like, that life that she could have if she could get out of the mess that she’s in and that she’s kind of created for herself. He’s like the dream. Do you know what I mean? And he keeps coming back to help her. Instead of him kind of rescuing her, she somehow sucks him into her world unintentionally. He just gets caught up in the mess of what happens this season in a really bad way. And I think Harlee is just, you know, again, one of these characters that is so complicated in that she’s so pulled to Woz and she’s so pulled to the loyalty and the code of what they have and what they must do and, at the same time, struggling with her own moral compass as a mother and as a good person and wanting to be a good person after what she’s done, I think, at the beginning of this season, after having killed Miguel at the end of last season, which she felt that she had no choice, that she would never be free of him — to then, at the beginning of this season, say to her daughter, “I don’t want to do this anymore. I promise I’m going to make better choices,” and then to be sucked back in, again, because of the complexities of the relationship she has with Woz and the crew and her loyalty to them.
What about Woz’s (Liotta) love life?
Liotta: No. I think Woz is “tri-sexual.” He’ll try anything.
Yeah. They stayed away from that aspect this season, but the relationship that I have with Anna Gunn is not your everyday, you know, go on a date and with a movie. I mean, we have a scene where it turns into very rough S&M y kind of sex. So this is probably something that Jack is trying to exorcise from himself.
Finally, what about Harlee’s relationship with her daughter Cristina (Sarah Jeffery)?
Lopez: Actually my scenes with Cristina are probably some of the easiest for me to do, and it’s because I am a mom and I do feel such an affinity and an affection toward her and I know our relationship is so clear. The way I feel about her is so untainted. It is what it is. It’s unconditional. It’s fierce. It’s deep. It’s what you have for a child. Everything we play together has that. She’s really the biggest joy in her life and the only joy in her life at the time, really, besides kind of getting to know Nava and following in love with him over this season and getting a little more serious with him. That’s her whole world. So for me, it makes it easy.
Yesterday, the World fell in love with 2 awwwwdorable kids who interrupted their dad’s BBC interview about South Korea impeaching their President, Park Geun-hye, and now their grandmother explains what happened.
Ellen Kelly told Daily Mail why her grandchildren, Marion 4, and James, 9 months, bursted into the room when they heard their dad talking to someone on the computer. She said, “Robert usually Skypes with us from his home office, which is where he did the interview.” Then she added, “The kids probably heard voices coming from the computer and assumed it was us…It was just hilarious.”
You see Ellen Kelly lives in Ohio, while her son, Robert E Kelly, and his wife, Jung-a Kim, live in South Korea, so that is the best and cheapest way for her to see her two grandkids. Since, kids love their grandparents, you can’t blame them for running in to talk to them. Which explains why Marion came in dancing, she was putting a little show for her grandma.
When it comes to Ellen, being the proud mom that she is, she told the British newspaper, “I just hope that he gains recognition for his expertise rather than for this, as great as it all is.” Sorry, he will always be remembered for this because he is this year’s biggest viral sensation and it is something the whole World has been craving and desiring.
Now, when it comes to the Kelly family, which talk shows do you think they will be on this week here in the States? I say Good Morning America, Today, The Ellen DeGeneres Show and Jimmy Kimmel Live. Therefore, look out for the family of four to make their American debut. And let’s hope it is just as memorable.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-XV8RkVicw
As hard as CBS tried to keep Training Day on Thursday nights on CBS after Bull Paxton’s sudden and shocking death, the ratings did not support their effort. Therefore, beginning next week the gritty police drama moves to Saturdays and Amazing Race will take over it’s Thursday night at 10p slot. How the multi Emmy-winning Reality Competition show does on its new night and timeslot is up in the air, but I expect it to fail big time. Giving CBS its lowest rated 10p show and Elementary is getting elementary numbers.
That was not their only announcement MacGyver airs its season finale on April 21st and Undercover Boss takes over on April 28th. While it is not a good sign for the new show to end in April as compared to May. That didn’t hurt Ghost Whisperer that used to air in that slot years ago.
Finally, when it comes to MacGyver’s renewal, since CBS did not have a break out hit like NBC, it will be interesting to how many of their new fall shows will be back. Since the midseason dramas all failed big time. When it comes to their midseason comedy, Superior Donuts has proven it deserves to be back for a second season.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDlZL44sz80
Tonight at 8p on The CW, The Vampire Diaries is saying goodbye after 8 bloody good seasons with a retrospect followed by the series finale episode. We will find out if Stefan, Damon and Caroline will live happily ever after or if their the immortality will come to an end.
While it is bittersweet for us to say goodbye to the supernatural drama, imagine how hard it is for the actors. Last week, I was at a press event with Ian Somerhalder, Paul Wesley, Zach Roerig and Michael Malarkey and they talked about their time with the beloved drama.
What are their favorite memories? WESLEY: Off the top of my head, I don’t really have a favorite memory, but in the general sense, as an actor, you audition for something, you get a job, you shoot that job, and then you go away and shoot the next job. It all comes and goes. And with something like this, I never knew, walking into that room, that it was going to be eight years of my life. I started the job as a certain kind of person, and I left a completely different person. It’s shaped my entire existence, or at least a lot of my formative years, in my 20s. This show is going to forever be ingrained in my personality, which is a major deal. I didn’t sign up for that, when I walked into the audition, but I’m very grateful for it. It’s amazing! I’m scarred for life.
ROERIG: My favorite memory would be the pilot. A lot of us were very young, and it was early in our careers. There was a certain excitement. There was an electric buzz in Vancouver, that we all felt, especially around the casting of Stefan. Most of us were there in Vancouver, waiting to see who they were going to cast.
I remember Kayla Ewell and Nina (Dobrev) floating around pictures on their phones of who they might pick, and I saw a picture of Paul. It was the beginning of the very formative years of all of our lives, I guess. Vancouver definitely sticks out in my mind.
MALARKEY: For me, it was also the beginning. That first episode that I shot, with Ian (Somerhalder) in the cell, felt like we were shooting this little short film. All my scenes, we were shooting together, and we just had this instant connection and understanding of each other. When you come onto a show late in the game, it’s rare you have that synergy with one of the main actors on the show. I found that, subsequently, with the rest of the cast and was embraced into this world. I feel like I’ve been there forever. It all started with that episode, so that’s my most pivotal and favorite memory.
SOMERHALDER: You have to realize that it’s 171 episodes, at a minimum of eight days per episode and sometimes ten, so you’re look at hundreds and hundreds of days. The newness of it, in the beginning, was really special, with the bonding of this cast and crew. That’s what you miss most, when you leave these things. It’s not performing every day, or the writing. You miss the cast and the crew. You miss all the people who make it work because you, effectively, become a family. Paul and I have been joking for years, while we’re killing each other or staking people. In the middle of it, all of a sudden, there’s a fart joke, and you’re just hysterically laughing while everyone is covered in blood. There were these really funny juxtapositions, and there are just too many to count. It’s an era of our lives. I’m 38. Eight years of that is a substantial part of your life.
To read more about their memorable time on the show, then click here!
Even though Jimmy Fallon talks a lot about his family, he rarely shows a picture of 3 girls. The Tonight Show is hiatus this week, so the host took his family skiing in Utah for Spring Break. Which defeats the purpose, but they all look so happy in this photo.
On the photo front, how nice is it to see him with his wife Nancy Juvonen and their two daughters, Winnie Rose, 3, and Frances Cole, 2. Especially since the toddlers are wearing matching ski suits. The NBC host should share photos of them all together more often because they are such a perfectly looking family. Don’t you agree?
