King's Toronto-raised, L.A.-based lead Amy Price-Francis has a TV resume almost as long as the statuesque star is tall. Last time we spoke, she delved into the inner workings of her character Det. Jessica King. This time out we talk about what it's like working on a series that takes place in her former hometown, what sets King apart from all the other cops shows on your dial, how she prepared to play a homicide detective and how her role as a cop's ex-wife on The Chicago Code helped. Oh, and why playing David Duchovny's girlfriend on Californication was her career breakout.
What’s the difference for you working on American and Canadian TV shows?
The main difference would just be the bigger presence in America of the network and the studio. But the work is the same. I’ve been given very fortunate opportunities, but I approach each job as a job.
How does it feel to work on a show that’s proudly set in Toronto, rather than, y’know, forgetting to mention the city or zooming past the CN Tower?
I totally know what you’re saying, that’s hilarious. It’s true, like, whoops, let’s avoid the streetcar. I love Canada, I’m proud to have spent most of my life in Canada and I love Toronto, it’s where I lived for 9 or 10 years. The show is a representation of that. It doesn't try to be anything that it isn’t. Hopefully, it’ll be fun for people when we go out on location and they’re like, oh, that’s Riverdale Park or that’s the east end. There are recognizable places where we went, there’s no pretending that it’s anywhere else.
How does the Toronto setting differentiate King from a New York or L.A. or Vegas cop show?
I’d have to say the difference is not necessarily that it's set in Toronto, although that’s a fantastic thing, the difference for me is in the writing. It’s not strictly a cop show. It has procedural elements that a cop show has, in that each week the task force is given a new case to work on, but the show also follows her personal life. And that’s a through line in the story that continues on each week as we get to know what's going on in her life, in her marriage, what’s happening with her colleagues... The story progresses, the episodes don't just stand alone. And I can't think of another cop show on the air that does that.
Hill Street Blues, of course, was one of the first non-soap operas to take a serialized structure. Why do you think police procedurals went away from that?
It's a very difficult thing to do, and I think that’s why it’s not done. To write an hour of television, and have an interesting enough case for people to figure out, and be connected to and intrigued by and want to stick around—and then balance that with enough personal intrigue about who these people are and their humanity and their lives, that’s difficult. Greg Spottiswood, the creator who wrote the pilot, is an exceptional writer and I think he’s really captured something that’s hard to capture.
You met with a number of female detectives while researching the show, what did you learn from these women?
The technicalities of the actual work itself, from showing up on a crime scene and speaking to a homicide detective, which King was for eight years, to the process of the investigation. Just the protocol from beginning to end. And also being a woman in a man’s world, it’s obviously a very male heavy profession. There’s more women now than there ever were, but there are still those [macho] elements.
It must be especially so in the homicide division.
What do you think a female detective brings differently to a case?
I think women have louder intuition than men do, and she follows those. It doesn’t make her flighty, but she can use that essence as a woman to further her work. She can also play many different roles herself in the work—she can be hard-ass, or she can be the softest person in the world. She can be whatever she needs to be to get that information.
How close is real life to what you’re portraying on the screen?
Some of the cases were built around real, identifiable ones. It’s very close. It's a television show, so you’re not going to see all 18 hours of the investigations. It'll be a more condensed version, but hopefully the audience will see the craft in the writing and watch how it unfolds.
You play a cop’s ex-wife on The Chicago Code. Did that help give you perspective on what it’s like for the friends and family around these police officers?
Yes, exactly. That was informative to me. And realizing that for these cop shows the city is really important. Shawn Ryan, who created that show, felt it was imperative that it was set in Chicago. The city is one of the characters. And there’s such a history in Chicago of families with generations of cops. But for Jessica her husband is in the guns and gangs unit, so there will never be that misunderstanding. There may be desire to see each other more, or connect more than ships in the night, but they both live their work and they get it. So it’s a different scenario.
Though you’ve done a ton of shows, your breakout seems to have been on Californication, as David Duchovny’s LOL-ing girlfriend. What was that experience like?
When I came to Los Angeles, that was the job that enabled me to get my screen actors guild membership, and I’ll always be very appreciative of the casting director and David Duchovny. I auditioned for Marcy, Evan Handler’s wife, and that didn't work out but they asked if I wanted to do this one-day thing where he’s a total asshole to you in a restaurant and I thought, 'Yeah, great.' Very kindly, when the show got picked up, there were three episodes for me. She was never intended to be a character that came back, so that was a really wonderful welcome to working in L.A. David is very playful, he likes to improvise and we just had a really great time. I really enjoyed that gig.