A daily chronicle of creativity in film, TV, music, arts, and entertainment, produced by Southern California Public Radio and broadcast from November 2014 – March 2020. Host John Horn leads the conversation, accompanied by the nation's most plugged-in cultural journalists.
The ABC show "American Crime" takes a humanistic look at a murder trial that rips apart families and leads to even more violence. The show was a huge success, and garnered 10 Emmy nominations after its first season.
Created by John Ridley, who won a Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar in 2013 for “Twelve Years a Slave,” the show tackles issues of race, class and pervasive stereotypes.
In the series, actor Richard Cabral plays Hector Tontz, a gang member who is a suspect in the trial. As a former gang member himself, Cabral pulled from his own life experiences to embody his character in the show. Now, he’s nominated for the Emmy for Best Supporting Actor.
When Ridley and Cabral joined us on The Frame, we asked them about the show's fictional plot lines that mirror real life events, how they're working on characters that explicitly subvert stereotypical representations of people of color and where "American Crime" will be headed in its second season.
John, you were sitting in that chair five months ago and you said that you didn't want "American Crime" to seem as if it were ripped from the headlines. But now that we've seen all of season one, it seems like the headlines have been ripped from your show, or that there's a parallel track between what's happening dramatically on your fictional show and what's been happening in the real world. I guess it's impossible not to see this show as timely.
Ridley: I don't think anybody realized that we would be intertwined so closely with so many things that were going on. From the moment that ABC approached me in the wake of Treyvon Martin and said that they wanted to do a show that examined race and perceptions, and then every step of the way, through Ferguson, Baltimore, and even the shootings in South Carolina, we've seen the continued use of force against people of color seemingly without regard to circumstance. But there are even other things that slip into the language, like when you hear people that are running for President who feel comfortable saying that all Mexicans are rapists.
Many times, I would've traded our immediacy for a little distance from things that were happening — in no way am I saying that this show made any kind of a difference, but to be so close to things that were happening and to see difference happen, that fills those of us around the show with a bit of hope. And that's what we want with the show: hope.
Richard, at the end of the season finale there is a scene where your character is applying for a job, but it also feels incredibly personal and maybe somewhat autobiographical. Could you talk a little bit about this scene? And John, could you talk about collaborating with your actor in writing it?
Cabral: We had talked, and by then we had gotten a chance to get to know each other a little bit more, and he said, "This is you. This is what you experienced in your life," and it hit me. Whether it was talking about my daughter or not, it was about asking for a second chance, and up to this point my life, my personal life, it was rough, and there was a time where I really needed that second chance, so it all intertwined in that moment.
Ridley: Back up for a second, because some people may not know, but Richard — and he speaks about this openly, in a way that's incredibly inspirational — came from gang culture, not just personally but his family as well, going back decades, and I didn't know this when I originally met Richard and auditioned him.
Richard had done a little bit of acting, but he came out of Homeboy Industries, which is dedicated to giving men and women an opportunity for a second chance. So honestly, when Richard came in he was just interesting, from his look and his manner to the authenticity and emotional honesty that you look for from any actor.
One of the downsides of a limited series is that, typically, at the end of the series you say goodbye to everybody. This time around, you're keeping a lot of your actors, including Richard — you're reuniting a lot of your cast in different roles. Richard, what will you be doing in the next season?
Cabral: John, where's my character at right now?
Ridley: I will say this, and I'm not trying to be coy, but it's 180 degrees. Richard certainly brought an authenticity in terms of how it related to his personal life, but when you see how much he loves his family, how protective he is of his family, how precious he considers life to be — can we take those levels of authenticity and weave those into a different character that's unexpected?
Very specific, yet totally vague.
Cabral: [laughs] Yeah, and I haven't gotten much information, so that's why I had John help me with that!
Ridley: My actors are so angry at me, because I see them do interviews now and they're like, "John never told us anything!"
Let me ask you this, Richard: what do you want to accomplish as an actor going forward? How important is it to you that you play characters that may not be like people imagine you are when they see you?
Cabral: That's the greatest part of hitting the audience from the blind-side, giving them something they didn't expect, and that's what it's about for me. For the last 15, 20 years, Hollywood has created this mindset for how Latino characters are, that they're one-sided and there are no emotions behind them, and working with John we've made the stories that I want to do — I might be a bad guy some times, but there's a reason he became a bad guy. There are three dimensions to this character, and that's why I love working with people like John, people that give so much.