Looking Back at Bosch: Titus Welliver Says Goodbye to a Decade of Detective Work
FilmSpeak sits down with the star of Prime’s Bosch and Bosch: Legacy, and while it may not be a hard goodbye to the character, Welliver knows it is the closure of yet another chapter.
It’s strange to think of the world a decade ago, even stranger still to think about the world of TV. While reality shows still ran rampant, but in that brief period before their stars were elected President, the talk of TV town was how much speed streaming services were gathering. Amazon Prime was one of the big three in 2014, among their brothers Netflix, and the runt of the family at the time, Hulu.
And unlike its brothers, Prime took chances. They were darker. They were edgier. They brought dystopian sci-fi into the light with shows like The Expanse and The Man in the High Castle, so it made sense that they also chose to green light Michael Connelly’s neo-noir series Bosch. The show’s aesthetic, atmosphere and sardonic no-nonsense characters fit the brand perfectly. Yet no one could have expected that a decade later, after 7 seasons of the original show, and 3 additional years of Bosch: Legacy, that Bosch would still resonate with audiences as strongly as it did 11 years ago.
That includes Titus Welliver, who plays the titular detective turned private investigator Heronimus ‘Harry’ Bosch. “Sometimes it's amazing that you could sustain not only an audience, but a fan base that is so intensely passionate and supportive of this show.” Welliver smiles as he reflects on saying ‘goodbye’ to Bosch after all this time. Bosch: Legacy concluded its run merely days ago. It was an amazing run for the character, it was a great gig for Welliver personally, but are there any regrets? Was there a Connelly story they could have adapted, or a character they could have done more justice to? According to Welliver, the simple answer is ‘no’.
Check out the full interview with Titus Welliver below, or continue scrolling for the remainder of the article.
“I feel like in 10 years, we've serviced [the material] well.” Welliver says. “I would say any book that we didn't get an opportunity to adapt is a loss, but independently of the books you had Eric Overmeyer and Tom Bernardo and Michael coming up with other ideas.” Being able to create and expand the novels on screen had its share of blessings. Some of the fan-favorite icons of Bosch would have barely been a blip on the screen if it weren’t for what the aforementioned writing team did. Most notably the late, great Lance Reddick who played ‘Irving’ in the original show, and Honey Chandler, played by Mimi Rogers, whose character was an integral part of both the original run and Legacy.
Welliver simply wraps up his thoughts with “So no, I don't, I feel like we left no stone unturned”. So there it is. Case closed (if this writer may borrow the vernacular of the genre). Or… is it?
“That being said, there's still so many stories to tell” grins Welliver. “You just never know. Never say never. If the opportunity presents itself again to revisit Harry Bosch… I'm there. There's a wealth of material existing and also swirling around in my head and the writer's heads”. Whether this means that Welliver believes Bosch might be able to be resurrected in yet a third Bosch oriented series, is between the actor and the rest of the creatives at Prime, but what we do know is we’ll see Harry on screen again sooner rather than later.
Audience members who have enjoyed this last season on Prime were introduced to veteran actor Maggie Q’s Renée Ballard, a fellow LAPD detective. At this point, it has been revealed that the Connelly Boschverse will live on with yet another spin-off with Q’s Ballard in the lead, aptly named ‘Ballard’ which will be released this summer. If you have yet to see the teaser trailer for the show, guess who makes an appearance?
Harry Fu*king Bosch.
But for now, Welliver isn’t looking ahead, he has a little bit of time to look back at the amazing 11 years of playing Harry. With that much time, there has to be some key memories that have been created, both personally and professionally. When asked about some of his favorite moments from either Bosch or Legacy, Welliver revisits the time he spent with Reddick, and how their bond was something special.
“My relationship with him was not just an artistic colleague, but he was like a brother to me, and I loved him very deeply and had enormous respect for him.” Welliver gets visibly choked up when reminiscing about Reddick. Bosch and Irving, both great, archetypal tough-guy cops remain two of the most intense characters ever put to screen, and both Reddick and Welliver have a trademark stare that could melt glass.
“The other great misconception of Lance is that, you know, because of the nature of some of the characters that he would play, people would say, ‘He must be really intense. Is he hard to work with? He must be so intimidating’. Of all of my friends, he might be one of the goofiest. Lance was an inordinately funny guy. He was a ray of light. When we worked together, I think we probably worked the hardest when we were in scenes together. And it was a level of competition not to out-intensify each other, but to be generous with each other off camera”.
Without knowing Reddick, it really comes as no surprise that he’s an excellent, gracious and giving acting partner. But there are even more layers to the great Reddick.
According to Welliver, both he and Reddick are ‘BIG TIME’ science-fiction nerds.
“[Lance] flipped out when Jeri Ryan [was a guest] on the show.” Welliver reveals. The funniest part comes when Titus went to introduce the two veteran actors, and Reddick, who plays some of the toughest men on screen, was practically hiding like a shy toddler from a mall-Santa Claus. “I went into her makeup trailer, and I left the door open, and I realized he's not coming up the stairs. I just stick my head out the door, and I mouth to him ‘What are you doing? Come on’. He was genuinely flustered, but he came in and we chatted for a second, and then she left to go get dressed to shoot the scene and Lance had a very dark complexion, and when I looked at him, I said ‘I'm sorry, but I think in all the years I've known you, I just saw you blush.’”
It’s that juxtaposition of humanity and grittiness that has made Bosch a fan favorite for these past 11 years, and Welliver has always been at the crux of it. So while it might have been revealed that Ballard will at least give audience a cameo, it’s extremely difficult to imagine this fictional L.A. without Harry Fuc*ing Bosch.