Jennifer Lopez plays Harlee Santos a NYC Detective, who is unwillingly recruited by the FBI as an informant to bust her boss and friend, on Shades of Blue. Tonight at 10p on NBC, Lt. Matt Wozniak (Ray Liotta) suspects that there is a rat in his crew and he wants to kill it. Does he suspect Harlee? How long can she keep her secret from him?
Lopez has done several movies and she has been judging American Idol for a few seasons now, so was it hard for her to commit to the police procedural? Yesterday at NBC’s TCA Press Days she answered that question. She said, “To be honest, for me, right now in television it’s like the best movies are on television. The characters are better. The stories like you say, it has more of an opportunity to kind of really explore something.” Then she added, “It was just a really exciting opportunity to do something that I hadn’t done in a while in a different way than I had done in a long time. For me, the script itself, the story itself, the idea of it from the very first time I spoke about it with my producing partner Elaine Goldsmith Thomas, I knew that there was something that could go on. It just had enough of a base to kind of really grow and grow and grow into something that never hopefully, never gets boring.”
Something that never gets boring for is working out, yet she opted not to do it as much while filming the drama. She explained why, “I felt like this character was a little different than maybe who I am in my real life where I’m always kind of having to stay fit and worried about my appearance, and Harlee is not like that.” Although, she admitted, “I did do the boxing.”
That wasn’t the only thing she didn’t so as much of for this role. She revealed, “I wear more makeup to bed.” Her reason for these changes, “I think it had to be a little bit more real than that, like more real life. People get to the gym, but not like people like me have to.”
So tune in to see J-Lo wear less makeup and be less buff. That and a compelling crime drama that will have you on the edge of your seat every week.
