The day of The rookieWhen Season 8 premieres on ABC on Tuesday, its creator, executive producer and showrunner Alexi Hawley travels from Los Angeles, where the hit series starring Nathan Fillion is filmed, to Vancouver, where the spin-off pilot The Recruit: North will shoot.
Jay Ellis was cast in the lead role in the ABC pilot, which was greenlit in November. Hawley, who prepared the project last year, is returning to Vancouver to resume preparations. Currently in casting, the pilot, written and directed by Hawley, will shoot in late February, Hawley told Deadline in an interview about the Season 8 premiere of The rookiewhich will be released later this evening.
By The recruit: North »According to the show’s official logline, the offshoot centers on Alex Holland (Ellis) who thought his quarantine wasn’t crisis-worthy. But after a violent home invasion awakens a dormant purpose, Alex fights back against a lifetime of failed engagements by joining the Pierce County Police Department as its oldest recruit. Policing from the urban coast to the rural forest where reinforcements are just 5 minutes away, Alex must prove to his skeptical training officer, his fellow recruits and himself that he has finally found something worth fighting for.
Hawley explained last year about the mothership Beginner series that “I don’t really see us as a procedural series, I see it as a patrol show.” The recruit: North »The setting sets it apart from other patrol shows.
“I think ultimately what excited me was that every cop show versus procedural was really geared toward big cities, New York, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, so I like the idea of this place being a bigger part of America, where people live,” Hawley said. “The county they’re policing includes Tacoma, so there’s an urban part but at the same time, there’s also the suburbs and the exurbs, and it’s also the meth lab in the woods, and a national park, and there’s a military base. That kind of county is really interesting.”
Taking on a smaller police force where it can take 15 minutes for reinforcements to arrive compared to. The rookieLos Angeles, where “if you need the world to appear, it appears in a giant way,” was also interesting to Hawley.
“I thought it would immediately set the show apart visually and then thematically; I think our main character, the character Jay plays, is a guy who never really found anything he was passionate about before this,” Hawley said. “And part of it has to do with a tragedy in his past, which we’re getting into a little bit. So it was a little bit different, he’s a guy who’s a little more lost. I think Nathan’s character was a successful professional, obviously blue-collar or whatever, he was just a little lost after his divorce and everything. But this is just a little different.”
Hawley revealed more clues about Alex Holland’s background.
“He bounced around. He went to law school and then something happened and he kind of gave that up,” Hawley said.
As for the name of Alex Holland’s character being a lot like Alexi Hawley, was that intentional?
“No, it wasn’t. It’s not that you don’t recognize it now, but at that point you go, which sounds good together,” Hawley said. “So yeah, it’s my story. I mean, I don’t need to name a character after myself, but it ended up like that.”
After a long gestation period, The Recruit: North received a pilot’s green light after securing Ellis for the lead.
Hawley called his casting a “dream.”
“Tonally, with Beginner, because we do everything, you really want to find someone who, like Nathan, can do comedy, but can also bring emotion, and Jay is so talented on every level,” Hawley said. “It’s another name that comes to you, and you’re like, is that possible? And then everything went well. So I’m really excited about Jay, I think he’s really opening up the show to be its own thing in a great way.
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The Recruit: North is an autonomous pilot; it will not be integrated into The rookie the way the fallout The recruit: the feds with Niecy Nash was. And because The Recruit: North is aiming for next season, Ellis is not expected to appear in the mothership series this season.
“But down the road, in terms of success, for sure. It’s a little harder if it’s Vancouver and Los Angeles, but it’s not impossible,” Hawley said.
