Titus Welliver is back as Detective Harry Bosch — but now his character is getting used to life outside the LAPD. The final episode of the original run of Prime Video's Bosch saw Harry resigning from the force after becoming disillusioned with the restrictions he was forced to work under, and making plans to become a private investigator — which is where we find him in the spinoff series Bosch: Legacy on Amazon Freevee (the ad-supported streaming service previously known as IMDBtv).
The new series follows Bosch as he establishes himself as a PI, taking on a case for a dying billionaire while also forming an unexpected alliance with attorney Honey 'Money' Chandler (Mimi Rogers) in order to get justice after a controversial mistrial. Meanwhile, Bosch's daughter Maddie (Madison Lintz) is now a rookie officer in the LAPD, trying to prove herself to her superiors while encountering some of the same obstacles that frustrated her father.
Here Titus tells us all about the new series — and why he hopes to be playing Harry for a long time yet...
Titus Welliver on playing Harry Bosch again
"I was hoping that I would never leave Bosch behind me, so it was a very nice surprise when I was told that we were going to continue. Michael Connelly [who wrote the novels on which the series is based] being the prolific guy that he is, there's still many, may stories to tell, so to be given the opportunity to continue is really quite thrilling."
Harry's working outside the LAPD now as a private investigator. What was it like to portray him in this changed world?
"He's still the same guy — Harry Bosch sort of evolves in his own way, in his own time! We find him, by his own choice, untethered from the police department and so in a way he's kind of like a ronin, a masterless samurai, and he's more isolated than he's ever been. He's always worked independently to a certain degree, but now he's completely independent, so if he has to get into a building or he needs access to information, he doesn't have search warrants so he has to navigate things in a more circuitous way. Mike Connelly was originally inspired to create Harry Bosch by all the great private detective characters, so for that to come full circle is exciting!"
He's working very closely with Honey Chandler in this series. How did you feel about fleshing out that relationship in more detail?
"They have formed a friendship, to a certain degree. They've worked together in some ways, and she was his attorney at one point, but they still do that dance — Harry doesn't have complete trust, and I think it's because in a lot of ways they're very similar animals. He doesn't really want to work for her because there's this credo that when you retire as a cop, you work for defense people and they call it 'working for the dark side', this idea that it's a betrayal. So he is very hesitant, but Chandler knows him well enough and basically pleads to his moral compass, which is what drives him, so circumstances bring them together."
And how does Harry feel about Maddie joining the LAPD?
"What's interesting is that it's in her DNA, and she's very much Harry's daughter — she's a go-getter, she's not the kind of cop that sits in the squad car waiting for the box to tell her what to do! And Harry at the same time is trying to exercise some restraint and give her freedom because she's an adult. But she comes to him for counsel with some trepidation, and he offers it with a degree of trepidation, so it's an interesting aspect in the growth of their relationship. He's trying to give her the room to find things on her own, but by the same token, he's a parent and he knows the dangers of the job, so it's a very nerve-racking state of being for Harry to be in!"
Is Harry a character who keeps surprising you even after years of playing him?
"Yeah — he's a guy who's kind of out of step with time, I had to use the cliché 'old school', but he is old school, and not unlike myself, he's not tech-savvy at all. He very much operates the way a generation of detectives were trained, which is a lot of legwork, and looking, and looking again. That's why we have the character of Mo [Stephen A. Chang], who is his sort of Q, for want of a better word! But Harry is really on his own more than ever, and I think in that way we get to see him evolve again. He's still the same guy, but the circumstances of his life and what he does are different."
Have you got any new tattoos recently?
"I have several! It's very funny, because often people on the street will go, 'oh, those are your tattoos?' and I say, 'yeah, what damn fool actor would sit in the make-up chair for three hours and change to put all these things on me?' I've probably got six or seven new tattoos since last season. I can't stop drawing on myself — I'm a 60-year-old adolescent, what can I tell you?"
Maybe spotting the new ones can be a fun Easter Egg for the fans?
"Yeah, and they find them, they definitely find them. It's a bit of a Where's Waldo!"
- Bosch: Legacy launches on Amazon Freevee (the new name for IMDBtv) on Friday, May 6.
