Michael McGrady Talks SouthLAnd, Art and Living Life

By Bob Parker
Interview conducted February 1, 2010
Posted on March 5, 2010

Michael McGrady as Detective Daniel "Sal" Salinger

Last month I was privileged to spend quite a bit of time on the phone speaking with Michael McGrady, who plays Detective Daniel “Sal” Salinger on SouthLAnd. While it took a while to get this interview written up for the website, I think all you fans will be as pleased with the results as I was talking with him.

SouthLAndTvFans.com (STF)
Thanks for talking with me, I know you’re extremely busy right now. I appreciate you taking the time to talk with me today.

Michael McGrady (MM)
It’s my pleasure. Anything I can do to get the word out that there’s a great show on TNT called SouthLAnd. I don’t think it’s any secret that as a cast, and as a group, that we’re just as much behind the show as the fans are. We think we’ve got a real winner on our hands here. I’m not just saying that because I’m in the show, because I’ve been in a few shows and some films and you know, you get excited about them but certainly not like you do a project like this. Because all the elements are there, the people behind the camera, the people in front of the camera are the best at what they do, and to be apart of the mix of an ensemble cast with this level of talent is a very rare and unique opportunity. So anything I can do, of course, to promote the show… I’m all for it. Thank you so much for having me.

STF
Not a problem, I appreciate it. It’s great for all of us to get a chance to hear from the individual stars from the show. Not many shows have given us access to the individual stars the way y’all have given us access. It’s a very rare opportunity and we very much appreciate it

MM
It’s my pleasure.

STF
So, the first question is, you obviously play “Sal” Salinger on the show, and as we go through the season and watch the show, it quickly becomes obvious that Sal is a character that is quite a bit more complex than he first appears.

MM
Yeah, I agree with that. You know, it’s funny. By the way my first name in the show is Daniel, but they call me “Sal” because it’s short for Salinger. (laughing) It’s so interesting, because I don’t think we ever really refer to it. Everybody calls him Sal including my wife, and of course my mistress as well.

When I first took the part and read the script I was very intrigued by this character because I saw a lot of potential for complexity, and then of course once having been cast in the role I spoke with Ann Biderman, the creator. We had quite a few conversations about Salinger and how his role was going to evolve. I was very excited about it because you know, typically the “boss job” on most shows, you show up every once in a while and you hand out a couple of assignments and that’s the end of it.

But I knew that this was going to be an opportunity for me to really bite my teeth into a character that was going to be an integral part of the show. I have the daughter, and of course we met the wife in the last show of the first season, and then there’s the mistress. In addition to all of that I’ve got all the gang detectives and the ensuing story lines as well. So I knew there were going to be the possibility of story lines in all those different directions and that’s exactly what has played out. And we’ll see that even more in the new episodes that start coming out March 2nd. It’s everything I thought it was going to be and more. So I’m very excited about it and very glad to be a part of the show with the role of Salinger.

STF
Well, you just answered my second question, which was going to be what’s it like playing him. (both laughing)

MM
Well, you know, for me it’s like, you’ve seen a lot of detectives in a lot of offices on TV and film and they’re fairly straightforward and maybe even bordering on cliché. I think that’s one of things that makes this show so unique, is that none of us are doing any kind of cliché work on the show. We’re all making very interesting, very unique choices with our characters, given the parameters we’re given by Ann Biderman and our creative writing staff and our producers. So, that being said you know, we’re able to create a flavor in the show, if you will, that is not cliché, not typical, not predictable, and so far as my role is concerned, that’s what I’ve always wanted to do. I’ve wanted to bring something unique and something different.

One thing that Ann and I spoke about was that Salinger on the job is in absolute control of everything, and that’s where he is most comfortable, most confident and of course, most respected. He’s got rank; he’s a D3, which is a supervising detective. He’s got many years on the job. Been there, done that. Everything the young guys are doing like Sammy and Nate, I’ve done it seven times over. I like that.

Then you take that to the home front and it’s an entirely different story. Where he does not get the respect at home. He’s dealing with those father issues. He’s dealing with a marriage he’s unhappy in. I have my own back-story on that, but you know he’s got this affair going on with the news reporter. That’s just a whole ‘nother added layer to his personality and his make-up. I just think all those different elements are what make this role, for me, so exciting and so challenging and so rich.

STF
That’s very apparent. I love the scene in Two Gangs, where after crashing your car into the light pole and you go home, you do the drill with your daughter where “there’s someone at the door, what do you do?” and she’s like “big deal, I’m trying to sleep”. He’s trying to emphasize the importance of “I’m a cop and this is your life, it’s what could happen to you” and she couldn’t care less.

MM
You know, it’s funny there’s such a balance. You know, we have a tendency, because we like this TV action stuff, with Ben and Cooper and that’s a huge part of our show in fact that work seems to be a popular part of our show, that exciting bang-bang, shoot ‘em up, get the bad guy and stuff. You’ve got some pretty funny lines as well.

Well we knew the detective story lines weren’t going to include a lot of that stuff, especially not in the first season. We weren’t going to do a lot of bang-bang shoot ‘em up. Contrary to how they were portraying Cooper and Ben’s character in the beginning, which is basically their professional life on the job, although we reveal little bits and pieces of Ben’s story and more of Cooper’s back-story and whatnot in subsequent episodes, we predominantly delve right into the personal lives of the detectives, with Sammy & Tammy and Sal and his personal world. So we knew there was going to be a challenge juxtaposing the very exciting and I’d say popular action scenes with the cops with the more mundane, every day world of the personal lives of the detectives. But how do you do that, how do you make that balance so that people are as intrigued by the back story of personal life issues as they are by the action scenes the police officers are doing

That was one of the things I talked with Ann about. I said, you know I made the mistake of assuming that some of the stuff I was doing with the daughter was trivial by comparison and rather mundane. But in reality it’s… reality. It’s very real. I’ve got to know some D3 Homicide detectives who have become personal friends of mine. Dewaine Fields – who I’ve worked with very closely in terms of research for my role, have spent a substantial amount of time together, and in fact have become good friends and just talking about life and what it’s like being a D3. He says that what I depict and what I do in the personal life is very honest, it’s very genuine. Although he tells me that detectives do a lot more interesting and exciting things than what we portray on the show.

I know as a father – I have 2 teenage girls and a son, I have to say that raising two 2 teenage girls in Los Angeles who like to drive their cars out to the clubs and who sometimes have to go out in those unsafe areas, causes me concern, at times it keeps me up at night. I’ve told them, please, call me as soon as you get in or let me know you are home because I just want to know you are safe. The stuff with Kimmy? That is kind of my life. In the show I’m a cop and I’m a supervisory detective and I’ve seen where you don’t have to be mixed up in gangs to get hurt in LA. There are innocent shootings all the time. People just wander into the wrong areas at the wrong time and they get hurt or killed. This is something that these police officers deal with all the time, they have kids and they’re very concerned about them. They spend the whole day out there in the jungle, the Wild, Wild West if you will and then they have to come home and act like everything is OK. And like any parent, they are concerned about their kids, but I think even more so.

STF
For what it’s worth, you know obviously I spend a lot of time on Twitter talking with the fans and communicating with people through the website. It’s that realism and getting to know the detectives as people rather than the action, which has actually drawn in a lot of fans from what I’ve seen. The action is good, and that’s brought in some people, but there’s a lot of fans who’ve seen the show and seen the realism, and appreciate the fact that it’s not just a cop show with guns and car chases and stuff, they appreciate seeing the real side of a detective and what’s going on outside of the job.

MM
I think that, first of all, I’m very happy to hear that. I think people have a tendency to tune into these shows under the assumption that there’s going to be a lot of action and we knew our show wasn’t predominantly that. Like you were saying, we are going to delve into the real life drama of these characters. That is real life.

You know, we kind of have a tendency to naively assume that police officers for the most part, with the exception of maybe a couple of bad apples we might read about in the newspaper here and there are like choir boys or boy scouts, when the truth of the matter is, that’s not real life. Nor are their lives simple, and organized, or even law abiding. Some of their kids are in jail, some of their kids are on drugs, and some of them have been in trouble with the law themselves. They deal with the same issues that you and I or anyone else deals with when it comes to family and personal issues. They have a badge and a gun, and that’s what they need for the job and everybody respects that, but on the home front you’re just “dad”. Or you’re the husband. You just can’t pull rank at home.

STF
A question from one of the fans: Do you think Salinger is really a bad boy, or is he just someone who has made some really bad judgment calls over time as circumstances have overcome him?

MM
It’s interesting because as an actor you flesh a character out. The creator gives you the bare bones then you have to bring your own back-story, your own thing to it. One thing I spoke with Ann about was that my take on Salinger is that he really loves police work, he loves being in the field, he got married and started a family and. he wanted more, he wanted more than just living in the Valley somewhere in a basic 3-bedroom rambler home. He and his wife wanted to live out in Santa Clarita where some of the bigger homes and safer neighborhoods were. So he took the detective job in hopes that the added income would provide him with a better lifestyle. Once he did that and committed himself financially to that, I think he just sort of took the path of least resistance and went from a D1 to a D2 to a D3.

But in reality I think he’s bored, and he’s at his wit’s end sometimes. I think he’d much rather be out in the field working on cases. I think that’s why you find him spending time trying to find out what his daughter’s up to on the Internet and why he has time to have a mistress. I think he’s a blue collar individual at his core and would much rather be out in the field rather than be in the office shuffling papers. I think he’s a good leader and he’s a good mentor to the young detectives, but if he had his opportunity to turn back the clock, he might have gone the route of a cooper possibly. I really think it’s not so much that he’s a bad boy; I think he’s just bored. When you get to that place where there’s no excitement, no drama in your life, you just create it.

STF
Without giving away too much of Season 2 spoilers, how do you see the relationship between Sal and his daughter Kimmy progressing as time goes by?

MM
Let’s just say I think things are going to get worse before they get better and leave it at that.

STF
This one was asked by quite a few people, actually. In the lead up to the launch of SouthLAnd on TNT we saw a lot of promotions that featured Michael Cudlitz, Regina King and Ben McKenzie, but we didn’t see any of the reset of the cast like you, Shawn or Kevin. Was that something that was a marketing decision on the part of TNT or was it simply a scheduling conflict on your parts that kept you from being available while they were doing the promotion shoots?

MM
I don’t presume to know why certain decisions are made at the adult table, if you will. They had their reasons for doing what they do. When we were originally brought onto this project we were told time and time again repeatedly that it was an ensemble cast and we would treat it as such. Then once we made the move over to TNT, yeah there was definitely much more emphasis on Regina, Michael and Ben. Which is fine, you know, I hold no grudges on that. I think that at the end of the day Regina and Ben especially have a following. Regina is a highly respected film actress and that comes with a lot of credibility and as does Ben with the success of The OC and the high profile movie projects he’s done recently. I think the two of them have been bringing in a fan base. I think the first two episodes really focus on those two characters as well. I think that’s probably the reason why marketing did it that way. It makes sense; you’ve got to put the money where the money’s being spent, too.

STF
Given the opportunity, though, if you could shoot behind the scenes, or in depth character shoots like they did for their characters, to put up on the website, or maybe more promos for the new episodes starting March 2nd, you’d definitely jump at the chance to do it, then?

MM
Oh, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. I was involved in another project at a network, called Daybreak, about 3 years ago and it was an ensemble cast as well, with some really tremendously talented people, But they decided to focus on the lead character in that show, Again, it was a marketing decision. I think sometimes the networks, in my opinion, miss the mark with that kind of thinking and approach. I think that they’re selling the audience on something, on one particular star or a couple of characters, then when the fans tune in thinking that this is a show about those particular people and then suddenly there’s a bunch of other regular characters on the show as well. You know what I mean? The world of the show’s much bigger and more populated than what’s originally depicted.

Some of the movies these days? That whole star power draw is kind of coming to a close. The big stars don’t pull in the big dollars like they used to. Now days it’s not enough to have a name, people want a story and they want a good film, they want something that’s entertaining and fulfilling and satisfying, regardless of who the star is, and I think the networks need to discover and cater to that a little more. If you look at some of the more famous ensemble shows like ER, Friends, CSI, shows that have ensemble casts in them, or even more recent ones like Heroes, they didn’t select one particular star or name and promote the show on that. They sold the show as an ensemble show. So people correctly presumed, OK, these are the people in this “world”, I have to buy into these people, and they’re in this world whether I like them or not and I’ve got to somehow just accept that. What I think happens then is that people are open to receiving all the different characters, all the different story lines, realizing that this is the show, let me get on board 100% as opposed to dissecting the show… I don’t like this character, or that story line. Then what your really asking for is a different show and you’re only enjoying perhaps 10 minutes out of the show and jettisoning the other 20, and that’s crazy. I think the fans of our show are settling in with all the different characters and attendant story lines.

STF
And Ann Biderman and Chris Chulack did such an amazing job putting this show together, if you take any one character out, the whole thing just falls apart.

MM
Right and that’s always the sign of good composition. The composition of even a piece of artwork, if you remove anything it upsets the balance of the whole. Yes you’re absolutely right. For instance, Shawn, Kevin, Arija and Tom Everett Scott are all tremendous actors, I mean extremely talented with solid credentials, they’ve got great resumes and there’s a reason for that, because they are great actors and very interesting performers to watch. They make great choices and unique choices, each one of them has brought a compelling mix of ingredients to the show and I think that needs to be respected. I love what all the actors bring to our show.

STF
Michael Cudlitz said numerous times now that he’s pretty confident TNT will order new episodes, as have several other people. Do you have any gut feelings on that?