The cast and creator of Cross discuss digging deep into the world of their characters.
The upcoming Prime Video show Cross stars Aldis Hodge as D.C. Detective Alex Cross who is also a forensic psychologist and deeply devoted to his job. He dives intensely into the minds of victims and killers alike to solve crimes – there’s a twisted one at the start of this series – while trying to balance life as a good father and family man. He is also grieving the loss of his wife from a year earlier. Cross has been on the big screen thrice in the past – Morgan Freeman portrayed him in Kiss the Girls (1997) and Along Came a Spider (2001), then it was Tyler Perry turn in 2012’s Alex Cross. This latest version was created by Ben Watkins, and the showrunner served up a new perspective on the famed character created by author James Patterson.
At New York Comic Con, The Aquarian attended a press conference for the show that also included Hodge, Watkins, Isaiah Mustafa (who portrays Detective John Sampson), and Samantha Walkes (as Elle Monteiro, Cross’ childhood friend who loves him). Prime is so confident in the show that it has been renewed for a second season before the first one even airs.
Cross premieres on Prime on November 14th.
Aldis, what drew you to the role of Alex Cross?
Aldis Hodge: There was an opportunity to reimagine and deliver something that has a very refreshing new take. This man over here [Watkins] brought it into this era, and there are a lot of opportunities to update it in ways that were quite relevant, specifically speaking to what we deal with on a regular basis. I just saw plentiful opportunities to create magnificent art. The rewards on the back end are the fact that we get to engage people, we get to see the love, we get to understand how it hits them personally. It lets us know that we did the job that we were trying to do.
The tone of this Alex Cross is completely different from the 2012 film. When it comes to the topic of grief, where did you pull from to portray that?
Aldis Hodge: We started off this whole journey having a happy conversation just about who we were, as men and individuals. Honestly, I brought in a lot of my own personal experience. I have lived a full life, and I was able to understand and navigate what Cross was going through, where he was going, because of the things I have personally been through, and then the added asset of being able to have that relationship with Samson [played by Isaiah Mustafa]. You’ve got your ace who’s telling you, “Man, you need help. I’m here to help, just accept.” I love that we get to explore that. To me, that’s one of the most beautiful relationships that we get to exhibit because that’s real. We hold each other down off-camera, so the fact that we can bring that on screen is amazing.
Ben Watkins: When you think about Alex Cross, he’s a pretty-well known character, it’s a ubiquitious name. [Even] folks who haven’t read the series, they definitely know the name. Some folks saw the movies, but there’s an obsessed fan base. There’s a danger there to put yourself in a situation where you create a superhero, and I feel like it’s really important that I don’t create a superhero. We need to have a hero, and the difference to me is a hero struggles and sometimes doesn’t win. We can all relate to the struggle, and that will make him accessible. My biggest fear would be that you come and you really enjoy the mysteries, but you don’t really invest in the people that this show is about, so giving Alex Cross a struggle that he might not overcome, and he might only learn to manage, that is something that I think everybody can relate to. That is one of the reasons I think folks will invest in the show. We try to do that with all the characters. In fact, we have a little joke; when we start collaborating, anybody I would collaborate with, I always warn them – and I’m only half joking – I always say, “Hey, if I find out something about you, I might use it against you,” [Laughs]. Everyone here I know something personal about at this point, and I have found a way to work that into their characters. The same thing happens with our writers. We get to those points where these are touchy subjects for them, and I know that might be great potential for very specific, deep layered storytelling, so I’ll find something out, and then the next thing you know, that’s what’s going to be in the line.
Aldis Hodge: It’s done with the utmost respect. It’s not blindsiding.
I’m curious about the breakdown of the psychological aspects of putting together clues for the cast and the script. How does that work?
Ben Watkins: Doing a show, I like to amuse myself. A hallmark of the Alex Cross series is these unique villains. There are great serial killers and other villains, but what I love about it – and I think it’s good for television – is in the books you actually spend time with the villains. That’s one of the signature pieces of our show, too. We get to get with the villains. Now I like to amuse myself, so as we start to peel back this mystery, I’m not telling anybody what it is, so I have cast coming up to me saying, “Wait a minute, what’s about to happen?” We were giving them scripts that would be completely redacted, and they wouldn’t get the true story sometimes until after the table read, but a lot of times you get the actual twist of that episode in the table reading. We’d have folks reading at the table, gasping, “Oh no!” That’s a great part of our show – a lot of choices come with that. We do break [point of view], and I think everybody here had some fun with that.
The show can be dark and intense. How do you navigate that for the audience and make it relatable?
Ben Watkins: That’s a great question. I think Elle is one of the characters that really, I think in some ways, is a surrogate for the audience because they’re not in the Metropolitan Police Department, they’re not one of the cases, and maybe we can talk a little bit about character perspective, dealing with the darkness.
Samantha Walkes: As Elle, it’s interesting because you love people who willingly to put themselves in this position [of being a cop]. To navigate a relationship where this person comes home to you – now you have to figure out what you can and cannot say. How are you supposed to be supportive? How do you come down? How do we connect? Sometimes it just makes a person numb, and there is no connection. Then also remembering the humanity of each individual in that relationship. Sometimes just because he is in a moment incapacitated [emotionally] does not mean he loves me any less. It’s a beautiful dance that we all get to contribute to. But, to a more practical point, I’ve never been on a production as an actor where our sister company provided therapy, provided spaces of counseling where we could be as instruments to the art form and do our job well. I think that’s a huge part of making sure that we all stay very healthy, so that we enter into these positions where we talk about suicide, we talk about social justice issues, and we can be a whole person coming to that work.
Watching the show, it is very clear that you guys took care to show the culture of D.C. How much did you all research and really take care to keep it authentic?
Isaiah Mustafa: We spent a good 10 to 12 days in D.C., and Aldis and I did tactical training together. I really think that the training we did with the police psychologist was one of the most impactful things for me because we got to talk to real detectives and talk about how they actually dealt with some of the things that go on in D.C.: how did they shed that stuff and go home to their families? I don’t want to get into the private stuff about what this man was talking about, but it was so similar to what Alex was going through. It was amazing.
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