Ballard, the most recent series expanding the Bosch based on Michael Connelly’s bestselling novels, comes to Prime Video today. The police procedural follows Detective Renée Ballard (Maggie Q), the leader of the new cold case division of the LAPD, as she, along with her team of under-resourced investigators, takes on the city’s unsolved cases, determined to bring justice to the victims. Among them is Thomas Laffont (John Carroll Lynch), Ballard’s retired former partner, and former LAPD officer Samira Parker (Courtney Taylor).

Q, Lynch, and Taylor recently spoke with SciFi Vision about what drew them to the project, their preparation, and more.

Ballard is now available to stream on Prime Video.

Watch the interview and read the transcript below.



SCIFI VISION:  To start off, why don't you each talk about what was it that made you really want to say yes to these parts? Just go in order, Courtney, Maggie, John.

COURTNEY TAYLOR:  The breakdown. I loved how they described her. I think sometimes I'll read a breakdown, and I'm like, “OK, I've seen this character before.” I have never seen this woman before, at least in my inbox. So, I was very excited about that.

And also, too, Michael Connelly. I was excited to work with an author who has been making such great series adaptations already. I was like, “Oh, I would love to be a part of that legacy.”

[crosstalk]

MAGGIE Q:  I read the first seven episodes, and then I had some talks with the producers of Bosch and Michael Connelly, and that was really it. It was those conversations. Even after reading the scripts, I did not decide to do it. It was after the sit-downs where I really felt trust in these people, and I felt like these are people that I want to have a long-term relationships with, because really, that's what it is, right? You're entering a relationship, a real one.

JOHN CARROLL LYNCH:  The quality of the work on the previous series was a big draw. Obviously, you were going to be working with a top-flight team of people who have done this for a while, which is always attractive when you know proof of concept is going to work. The scripts were great that I read, and I was really excited to work with Maggie.

When I read it, when I read the first script, I was like, “I can't imagine anybody else that I know playing this part.” So, I was really excited about that. I also loved the dilemma of the character, which I appreciated.

And I also felt like it had a kind of legs to it. A lot of times, when you're reading a pilot script, you read it and go, “Yeah, but what's the next thing that happens to this person? But you felt the air in the world. You felt that it could transform and change and be challenging, which was exciting.

SCIFI VISION:  Yeah, I was going to say, it pulls you in really quick. What was the preparation like for each of you for this? I know two of you have done police-type roles before, but still, what was the preparation like?

JOHN CARROLL LYNCH:  I've never done the kind of work that they asked us to do on this. They set up very specific training. We got a lot of different training in terms of tactic training, behavioral stuff that I would never have imagined. All that stuff, no one in all the times that I had been on series had ever done that. It was really amazing.

MAGGIE Q:  Yeah, psychological training. It was amazing. A homicide detective, very different thing. Very different thing. You could have maybe played a cop before or whatever, but these are very specific careers within a broader umbrella. So, they all come with their own caveats and their own nuances and their own clear directives, and they're just completely different.

COURTNEY TAYLOR:  It was fun to get to know their world. Absolutely. I feel like the consultants were so ready to teach us. They're like, “Oh, well, let's dive in.” So generous, yeah. Very generous.

So, it was wonderful doing the research, because they were so generous in providing it.

SCIFI VISION:  Maggie, what was it like working with Titus [Welliver] again? Because obviously, you were in the finale [of Bosch: Legacy].

MAGGIE Q:  We have so much fun together. We don't take anything seriously, so that's fun. But we also, he's such a brother from another mother kind of guy, because he really, Titus is so warm and wonderful. I know him well, and I know his family well. So, it really gives a lot of gravitas to the relationship. It felt like we knew each other forever.

The first lunch we had with our director, we didn't talk about the show at all. We didn't talk about Bosch, we didn't talk about Ballard, we didn't talk about anything. We just got to know each other. And I think that is really the crux and the essence of how you find that chemistry, right? So, you find the connections and the through lines that you both - the things you both care about, and that was there.

So, I mean, you can't really plan that. You get lucky to some degree.

SCIFI VISION:  Did you guys go back and read any of the books or anything like that? Or maybe you went back and watched all Bosch, I don't know, but did you do any of that?

COURTNEY TAYLOR:  I dove into the book. As soon as I got the audition, I was like, “Let me bust open these books.” Then, when I was reading, I said, “Oh, this is so exciting.” Like, I feel like - a page turner. And then I got the audio Audibles, because I was like, “I need to read this while I'm driving. I need to know what's going on while I'm driving. I can't put it down.” And I was already cued up to Bosch a bit.

But when I, again, when I got the audition, I said, “Well, let me go back into Bosch and really watch.” And I was like, “Okay, this world feels so like -

MAGGIE Q:  grounded, huh?

COURTNEY TAYLOR:  Grounded. Like, I was pulled right in. So, the Michael Connelly world is, ugh, it's so good.

SCIFI VISION:  What about you two? Did you read the books as well?

JOHN CARROLL LYNCH:  I read - I asked which books these were based on, this particular series was based on, and they gave me a couple of titles and one was The Late Show, and I really enjoyed that book.

That's not what happens to Ballard in the series, but it really gave you a sense of the, oh my God, the just encyclopedic knowledge that he has in Los Angeles, and the feeling that he has of the books. And Michael said something in the book in an interview I loved, which was, “I like it when the case works the cop.”

MAGGIE Q:  Oh, that's for sure.

JOHN CARROLL LYNCH:  I really loved that as a thing, and it starts to suck the detective into a personal relationship with it that makes it uncomfortable or reflects something in their lives. So, I really loved that about the books. And also, I loved how smart Ballard was in the books, but also how danger found her in ways she couldn't expect, which I thought was gonna happen in the series and does in the first season, that the danger finds her in places that she thought was safe, which is a really, really a violation of really powerful stuff.

SCIFI VISION:  Did you read them, Maggie? Did you do that too?

MAGGIE Q:  Yeah, of course I read them. [laughs] I mean, can you imagine?…What the scripts and the series became is an amalgamation of like The Late Show and then sort of like book four and five. So, they took sort of the best parts of the series to make the first season, and then we'll grow from there and create original content from there. But of course, the source material is really the key, the gold.