‘Cannibal’ N.Y.? Liev eats it up
‘Ray Donovan’ faces ‘chaotic’ Big Apple
The title character in “Ray Donovan” has been through a lot, but he'll face a whole new set of obstacles in the Big Apple-based upcoming season.
And not just because the South Boston-born Ray finds himself in a Yankees cap.
Season 6 of the hit crime drama series — which debuts Oct. 28 on Showtime, but premiered at the second annual Tribeca TV Festival Sunday evening — is set mostly in New York after five seasons of L.A. serving as the show's base.
Liev Schreiber, who plays the troubled Ray Donovan, says he and the cast couldn't help but “live the location” they were shooting in.
“There's something about New York, it's chaotic and it's crazy and it's fast and it's crowded,” Schreiber told fans at a chat that followed the Tribeca screening. “It's 19 new shows shooting, you're all fighting for space, you're all fighting for a crew and that can't help but find its way into the experience of shooting the show.”
Ray — a normally steady “fixer” who makes threats and arranges bribes for high-profile California clients — threw himself off a building into the East River at the end of Season 5 while following a vision of his dead wife. The first episode of Season 6 opens with him being rescued by a Staten Island cop who transports him to the Forgotten Borough where Ray ends up crashing on his couch and bonding in a bar after being sprung from the police precinct.
“It's such an extreme thing for me to try to imagine jumping off an eight-story building and landing in the East River and surviving,” Schreiber said. “I had to put myself in this overwhelmed place, which it doesn't seem very Ray Donovan to be overwhelmed, but it was right.
“And for a guy who grew up in Southie (South Boston) and then moved to L.A. to deal with celebrities, to suddenly be plunked down in a kind of cannibalistic city was terrific, really overwhelming,” Schreiber added.
Besides diving into Ray's personal problems with his East River plunge, the Season 6 opener also sets the stage for the drama he'll be embroiled in when he takes on a mayoral candidate as a client and gets involved in the life of the cop who rescued him.
Ray's put on some weight and his boxer brother Terry (Eddie Marsan) calls him “fat” in one scene. Terry also gives him hell for sporting a Yankees hat.
Schreiber, 50, recalled asking showrunner David Hollander what Season 6 would be about since Ray's wife, Abby (Paula Malcomson), was now gone and the show's home base shifted across the country.
“I said, ‘Paula's not there, it's in New York. I mean, what the hell?'” Schreiber joked. “He said, ‘Here's the idea, the first episode, you've got a fat suit and you really look 50.' And I was like. ‘Oh, that sounds great, David, I'm really looking forward to that.'”
Bronx-born actor Domenick Lombardozzi plays the police officer, Mac, who saves Ray.
Hollander says the relationship between Ray and Mac will be “a changing one. Initially, it's a story about this strangely created friendship. Dom's character's living in a much different world. ..that story will help change the nature of the relationship.”
Jon Voight is also back as Ray's wacky dad, Mickey, who's struggling and conniving in jail. Yonkers-born Voight, 79 — who joined Schreiber and Hollander onstage at the Tribeca chat — was thrilled when he found out that a scene he was filming in Yonkers was a seven-minute drive from the house he grew up in. So he stopped by.
“It's very nostalgic for me to be there,” Voight said. “And I love being from Yonkers. I think it's because anyone who's from Yonkers can't have airs. They can't pretend anything. They just are who they are.”