Creator / Executive Producer Alexi Hawley on the set of THE ROOKIE – Season 6 – “Strike Back” | ©2024 Disney/Raymond Liu
THE ROOKIE, ABC’s dramedy cop show, premieres its sixth season on Tuesday, February 20. The following week, the series celebrates its milestone 100th episode, which features the wedding of Nathan Fillion’s LAPD rookie-turned-training officer John Nolan to Jenna Dewan’s firefighter Bailey Nune.
Series creator/executive producer Alexi Hawley, who wrote and directed Episode 100, “The Hammer,” sits down for a one-on-one interview to discuss THE ROOKIE during ABC’s portion of the Winter 2024 Television Critics Association (TCA) press tour in Pasadena, California.
Not many shows make it to one hundred episodes. What does Hawley credit with THE ROOKIE’s longevity?
“Nathan Fillion, and a show that’s fun to watch, a show that tries to be unexpected with its storytelling, and really celebrates what I think especially network TV does best, which is shows that take you on a ride.”
With the writers’ and actors’ strikes lasting as long as they did, was Hawley ever worried that it might not be possible to make Season 6 at all?
“Of course. There was a lot of uncertainty in the strike. It lasted a very long time. I hadn’t even started doing TV – I was doing movies in the last strike, the hundred-day 2007-2008 strike, and that felt like forever.”
But Hawley was ready to spring back into show-making action as soon as possible. “Whenever there was a conversation to be had with the studio or network, my position [as a producer] was always, ‘I can get up and shooting in four weeks. We’re professional writers, we can come up with story, I’ve got crews to feed and pay.’ And so, I was committed to, no matter what, we can get episodes made and get them to start quickly, which I think was music to the network’s ear once the strike was over. But yeah, of course everyone was worried that it would go on for even longer.”
When Hawley began THE ROOKIE, he wanted to do a series that was “aspirational” in its depiction of the LAPD. This changed dramatically in Season 3, with a long arc about institutional racism within the department. What changed Hawley’s mind about his approach?
“George Floyd changed my mind about that, and the conversations that came out about policing after that, where it felt like ultimately it was important for us to be not just aspirational, but to reflect a version of policing that a lot of people were experiencing. It felt apparent to me that we were portraying a version of policing that was alien to a bunch of the population, and we had a responsibility to do more, to be better.
“I love the first two seasons. After George Floyd was killed, and we were having conversations about what Season 3 was going to be, I did task a few of the writers to go back and give me a report card – ‘How did we do?’ – in terms of how we talked about policing and what we showed. And what I’m proud of is, for the most part, we did really well. We did talk about issues.
“But there were things like the no-knock warrant being something that was [approvingly] talked about [in the first two seasons] like, ‘That’s why you’re my favorite detective, you got that.’ I was like, ‘Yeah, we can’t do that anymore, and we can’t do “noble cause corruption”,’ which is cops going rogue because they think the ends justify the means. And so, repercussions came into play. Going into Season 3, it was like, ‘How do we talk about this, and how do we make it more part of the DNA just to focus on the injustice in the justice system?’”
THE ROOKIE’s spinoff THE ROOKIE: FEDS, about newcomers in the FBI, had originally been picked up for a second season, but it was ultimately canceled amid the long writers’ and actors’ strikes. Does the end of the spinoff affect anything on the mothership?
Mekia Cox and Arjay Smith in THE ROOKIE – Season 6 – “The Hammer” | ©2024 Disney/Raymond Liu
“No. [The cancellation] is very sad and unfortunate. They were shows that crossed over, but ultimately, lived a little bit in separate spaces, the FBI of it all versus the LAPD, so there wasn’t a physical impact on us.”
Hawley adds that some the THE ROOKIE: FEDS regulars, including Kevin Zegers, Britt Robertson, James Lesure, and Felix Solis may return in guest spots on THE ROOKIE, although he thinks lead Niecy Nash-Betts “is going to be busy. I’m hoping ultimately that those characters still live in our universe, and so, not this season, obviously, we only have ten [episodes], and the cancellation came very much at the last second, so we’d already committed to some storytelling, but yes, in the future. Obviously, they’re all successful actors, and if they’re available, I’d love to have [them] back on the show.”
Although she is still technically training officer John’s rookie, Celina Juarez (Lisseth Chavez), seems to be folded into THE ROOKIE character family. Is Hawley going to continue to increase the cast each year with each new rookie?
Hawley laughs. “I don’t know is the honest answer. Obviously, budgets are budgets, and we can’t necessarily sustain forever an ever-increasing line-up. That being said, we do love everybody. But I don’t know. I haven’t really gone down that road too far yet. We’ve had some moving pieces, we’ve had some new people coming in. So, I guess it’s to be seen.”
What about the recurring villains, like Matthew Glave’s often comedic but always lethal Oscar Hutchinson? “Again, I can’t plan too far out in the future. Matthew is an amazing actor, and Oscar is a sort of joyous character, who I have to remember not to round the edges off of, because we’ve had some shocking violence from him. But yeah, I love that we have a whole world full of these characters who are complicated and whether it’s Bridget Regan as Monica or Matthew as Oscar or Brandon [Jay McLaren] as Elijah.”
Then there are newcomers in every sense of the word. On THE ROOKIE, Detective Angela Lopez (Alyssa Diaz) has had two babies, and Detective Nyla Harper (Mekia Cox) has had one. The latter resulted in a fairly spectacular episode in Season 5, where Nyla successfully dispatches an entire team of assassins in the midst of giving birth in a sort of DIE HARD meets the Nativity sequence. “Oh, my God, that’s one of my favorite episodes,” Hawley says. “The REAR WINDOW of it all with that birthing tub. That just came to me. I thought that would be really fun, because obviously, [Cox] was pregnant in real life, and also the character, and how could we do a dynamic birth that I don’t think had been done before. It was really one of my favorite moments in the entire series, ‘It’s a girl,’ where she comes out of that birthing tub like APOCALYPSE NOW.”
Did Hawley consult anyone about the physical possibilities of this? “I have four kids, the fourth of which was a home birth, and there was a birthing tub, and so my wife went through it. I’ve been a witness to it. So, I think that helped me understand the real of what that experience would be like. And then, yeah, we do check with people and we do ask.”
When characters get pregnant on the show, it’s often because the actors are pregnant themselves, although there has been at least one occasion where the writers had discussed it and then the actor became pregnant.
“In some instances, we had been talking about a storyline, and then got a phone call, and then sometimes we got a phone call and then came up with a storyline.”
Mekia Cox and Arjay Smith in THE ROOKIE – Season 6 – “The Hammer” | ©2024 Disney/Raymond Liu
In THE ROOKIE, John has a son, Henry (Zayne Emory), from his first marriage. John has already ended one relationship because he, unlike his girlfriend, did not want another child. Dewan is pregnant in real life. How will the show deal with this?
“I think what I can say is that it will be a conversation. Henry is basically out in the world and graduating college and working a job. And so, conversations about whether he felt like he was done with that or not, and then whether Bailey even wants kids. To a certain extent, all of that will come into play in this season.”
Has Hawley had a favorite season of THE ROOKIE so far? “Every season feels different to me, in a good way. [Some of those differences are dictated by] our circumstances – the pandemic, George Floyd, the strike leading into this one – but I love every season I’m in when I’m in it.
“What was interesting was that, over the course of the strike, I ended up on YouTube at three in the morning, the way you do, and there were a lot of [THE ROOKIE-related] shorts. THE ROOKIE seems to have taken a lot of purchase in terms of memes.”
Seeing the fan-made YouTube clips gave Hawley some new perspective. “I don’t watch episodes again once they’re out in the world, but just to see where the show came from, and some of the character moments. [The YouTube clips] made me walk into the writers’ room on Day One and go, ‘Okay, we’re in Season 6, and it’s very easy to fall in love with your characters and round the edges off of them, right?’ Tim Bradford [Eric Winter] in the early days was a hardass training officer, and I don’t want to soften him up. He’s still that guy, and we’re still working in a place that’s dangerous, that has stakes where there’s hierarchy, and if you screw up, you get in trouble, and so, I felt it was really important to reset that this season.”
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Article: THE ROOKIE: Creator and Executive Producer Alexi Hawley on Season 6 – Exclusive Interview
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