Talented writer and Executive Producer John Rogers has been on our radar ever since he was developing a Global Frequency adaptation for The WB a decade ago. While that project didn’t make it to the air, Rogers has still had a lot of success since, on shows like Leverage and The Librarians, and tonight, he has a new show, The Player, premiering at 10PM on NBC.
The Player stars Philip Winchester (Strike Back!) as Alex Kane, and features a talented cast including Charity Wakefield and Wesley Snipes. We spoke with John Rogers last month at the Television Critics Association Press Tour for some intel about his show as well as his other projects.
What can you tell us about The Player?
What’s about The Player is that it was created to be a high-concept crime-of-the-week show, and it’s not like a murder every week. So, anything goes. We go from hunting down a crew of ex-military armored car robbers where the final action sequence is a mid-air gun fight after they’ve jumped out of a plane, to hunting a serial killer, to stopping a sniper who is working in the glass towers of L.A., to going up against the cartels and the mob… every single week, the fun of this is going to the writers and saying “what’s the craziest, most interesting, most dangerous crime you can think of? Let’s do that one.”
You mentioned L.A.. Does that mean the show will go beyond Las Vegas?
We are based out of Las Vegas, and that’s where we live for most of the show, but over the course of the show, you find out that their territory for the House is North America, so very slowly, we’ll start to go to other places that’ll radius around. So, we run to Chicago at one point; we come to L.A. in the third episode… just enough so you don’t feel trapped, but at the same time, Vegas is the hub of excitement and crime and sin, so we get a lot of stories to tell there.
Will revelations on The Player involving characters like Mr. Johnson (Wesley Snipes) be a slow burn?
Yeah, absolutely. I think if you develop strong characters with a strong backstory, you don’t have to play this game with the audience where you hide too much, because that always feels like a disappointment. The thing I love about this show, and it’s really coming across in the scripts… a lot of shows would be “all right, we’ve teamed up; now we’re a crimefighting family!” You’re not sure if anybody’s gonna shoot anybody at the end of every single episode of this show. And the fun of this has been revealing Cassandra’s secret life. The fun has been revealing Mr. Johnson’s past very slowly and very relevantly. He’s not just involved in Alex Kane’s plotline; he’s involved in the conspiracy, and it’s through his character we see the lens of the secret history of the world, and how this conspiracy works. Maybe there’s opponents out there that are bigger than anybody imagined. Everyone on the show has their own agenda. Everyone on the show is lying to each other. Everyone on the show saves each other’s lives on a regular basis. There’s this constant exchange of trust and betrayal within the cast… and the fun of it is looping other people in. Damon Gupton’s character Cal is Alex’s best friend, and they have great chemistry together, and Alex is constantly torn between “if I tell you, they’re going to kill you, but I trust you.” And Cal’s torn between “I know you’re in trouble, but I think there’s something really bad here, and if you’re a part of it, I’ll bring you down.” This is a really dynamic honest friendship that the actors are creating between those characters.
This interview is a bit long, so navigate below for more:
