Crime drama takes on race, not racism
To say the gritty new TV drama American Crime is infused with racial undertones is not enough for star Benito Martinez.
“Saying it’s an undertone of race is being polite,” he says. “I think race is right in your face the whole time. But it’s not about racism. It’s about different races, and their different views and their different realities.
“In a not-so-subtle way,” he says, “it’s about what you think you know about these people, who you actually don’t know anything about.”
Debuting Thursday on CTV and ABC, American Crime explores the aftermath of the murder of a young war veteran during a home invasion.
Felicity Huffman and Timothy Hutton portray the struggling parents of the deceased, while Martinez stars as the widowed father of the accused.
The show was created by John Ridley, who won an Academy Award for writing 12 Years a Slave and directed the warmly received Jimi Hendrix biopic All is By My Side. Huffman has won an Emmy and a Golden Globe while also reeling in an Oscar nomination, and Hutton is also an Academy Award winner.
Surrounded by decorated screen veterans, Martinez was certainly appreciative of his cast and crew.
“Everything about (the show) has just been like: ‘Don’t pinch me, because I do not want to wake up,’” he said.
Well, he does have a knack for working his way into challengingly dark TV fare.
In recent years, he’s found recurring roles as an undercover CIA agent on the biker yarn Sons of Anarchy and as a Republican senator on the gloomy House of Cards.
To most audiences, however, he’s still most familiar for his portrayal of the ambitious police captain-turned-politician David Aceveda on the dark cop saga The Shield.
“ABC has taken this show, which you would probably see on a cable network, and they put it on prime time,” he says.
“They said, ‘Yes, we’re going to tell stories like this.’ It’s a whole new ball game now.”