Switching sides
Titus Welliver ushers in big changes in ‘Bosch: Legacy’ spinoff
Playing Michael Connelly’s L.A. detective Hieronymus “Harry” Bosch for seven seasons on Amazon changed Titus Welliver’s career.
Now with that series ended, change arrives with “Bosch: Legacy,” a spin-off series in which Harry, out of the LAPD, is a private detective.
Part of that change: Harry is now aligned with his former adversary, the celebrated defense attorney Honey “Give Me the Money” Chandler (once again a commanding Mimi Rogers).
Harry and “Bosch” have transformed Welliver, a veteran of “Sons of Anarchy,” “Lost” and “Deadwood,” into a leading man. For readers of Connelly’s many Bosch novels, the way character and actor mesh is remarkable.
“I don’t want to say that Harry Bosch is my King Lear — because I’m not that old,’ Welliver, 60, joked in a Zoom interview. “But in the train ride of my career, I’ve been extremely fortunate that I have been able to work with really great writers and directors, producers and actors.
“So I was ready to do a new show where I had to be there all the time (for lack of a better term). Harry is a very, very nuanced and complex character and it came at a time” – in 2014 – “when I was ready to do a series and have more responsibility. The timing was perfect in that way.”
Welliver has examined and re-examined his alter-ego throughout the years.
“Harry doesn’t subscribe to the sort of societal norms of decorum and protocol. He doesn’t suffer fools. He’s direct. He’s driven,” Welliver knows.
“If a person was a victim of a crime, he is the kind of homicide detective that that they would want, a detective like Harry Bosch. Because he’s relentless.
“He’s flawed — a very deeply haunted, very human character, which makes him accessible. He’s somebody who has a really good moral compass but he’s also the quintessential antihero. A lot of his appeal is you know that he’s out there. And whatever it is, he’s going to be relentless until he gets it done.”
“Bosch: Legacy” finds Harry in a different world. Working to defend rather than round up suspects. Worrying about Maddie (Madison Lintz), his only daughter, a rookie cop who faces danger and death daily.
“That relationship worked well. If you have Harry’s child there, for a guy who is a loner, there will always be a vulnerability there. Because there’ll be a way to get to Bosch through his family.
“And that relationship between Harry and Maddie became a core essential to the show — and to the success of it to a certain degree.”