Coyote ugly
Michael Chiklis’s new drama Coyote shows the good, bad and ugly side of the border war between Mexico and the US.
Coyote
Season 1 Mondays (from 17 May) Universal TV (*117) 20:00
Refugees and people fleeing their home countries for freedom and safety is nothing new – see the doccies on p12 for some eye-opening real-life stories. But there’s another tale being told at the Unite StatesMexico border in single-season thriller Coyote (2021), explains lead star Michael Chiklis. “My character Ben Clemens, he is a normal guy. He works at the Border Patrol and he’s retiring in episode 1. He has spent 32 years keeping people out of the United States illegally.” Thanks to an unfortunate turn of events, he’s now got to smuggle people in.
Before hanging up his handcuffs, Ben discovers a tunnel during a routine patrol and it’s somehow linked to a late friend. “He has a moral obligation to his friend to investigate, but foolishly Ben doesn’t tell anyone,” explains Michael, who is famous for playing corrupt Los Angeles cop Vic Mackey in The Shield (2002-2008). “Instead, he investigates and he literally walks into a coyote den of drama and he’s going to be forced to break the laws he has lived and upheld throughout his career,” adds Michael.
LOOKING DOWN A BARREL
Tunnels have been used for decades to smuggle everything from drugs, alcohol and human slaves across borders around the world – and not just little holes in the ground. “The cave that we filmed in was long. The tunnel went on for a few hundred yards more than we needed and it was totally natural,” says Michael.
Ben legally crosses the border into Mexico and tries to work backwards, starting at the house on a cliffside that his friend was building. Ben goes to the local pub for a beer and lunch and that’s where the trouble starts, says the actor, whose character bumps into aggressive, slick and arrogant gangster named Sultan (Octavio Pisano, Scott in comedy series iLove, 2019). “There’s immediate dislike and tension between Ben and
Sultan – they’re like two wild dogs sizing each other up for the territory,” explains Octavio. “Sultan is just a captain, but he has power. Ben irritates Sultan by talking to the pregnant waitress and it’s like a red cape to a bull, he’s instantly incensed with this outsider.” The woman, as it turns out, is carrying the child of Sultan’s cousin and boss Dante (Kristyan Ferrer, Zorrito in drama seires Here On Earth, 2018-2020), a vicious local cartel boss who uses the very same tunnel that Ben has been digging in…
YOU BELONG TO ME
Being a stranger in town makes it easy for Sultan and Dante to find out where Ben is staying and they pay him an unfriendly visit. “Ben was a border patrol agent. He’s had his share of fights and scraps and beatings while arresting people. So he knows that the two men aren’t there for a beer and chit-chat,” explains Michael. And Ben couldn’t be more right if his life depended on it, because after a quick gunfight, he has a gun to his head and the druglords reveal that they’ve done their research on him. “They know where he lives, they know where his ex-wife and daughter live and they use that leverage over Ben to force him into smuggling drugs for them,” adds Octavio.
SOCIAL AWARENESS
Coyote is more than just another sixepisode series about the war on drugs that the US is heading up around the world. It’s a story about the fight for life, to do right, as well as the having to face up to the things you believe to be right morally and the things you’re told are right by others. “Ben meets with Dante’s uncle, who looks like a lawyer in a suit. He looks like a businessman on the outside, yet he’s here telling Ben that if Ben doesn’t do as he’s told, Ben will be watching his family die,” explains Michael. That’s enough to scare Ben into doing what he’s told and he realises that he’s never going to get out of this loop. “They tell him to move drugs, then it’s finding a missing uncle in a US federal facility, then they want him to fetch money. Ben gets into this loop of trouble, like a drug addict who has no way out. It’s terrifying,” says Michael.