TCA: Cast & Producers Preview Blood & Oil

The cast and producers of the new ABC primetime soap Blood & Oil previewed their new series tonight, and quite quickly, series star Don Johnson assured that his character of Hap Briggs is not a J.R. Ewing clone.

“By the way, I’m very respectful, and God rest his [Larry Hagman’s] soul, but the character of Hap Briggs is conceived by Rodes Fishburne and Josh Pate. I, then, accepted the role, and I know a lot of these guys. And so I took an amalgamation of these types of characters or these types of people, and I sort of rolled them into Hap Briggs,” Johnson assured. (Interesting trivia: Dallas and Miami Vice aired opposite one another for a time in the 1980’s.)

So, where did Blood & Oil came from?

It all started with a call between creators Rodes Fishburne and Josh Pate. “When I called Josh up, it was four years ago today, actually, and I said, ‘I just heard about the largest oil discovery in American history. It’s happening in North Dakota, and it’s the San Francisco 1849 gold rush in the middle of the prairie.’ And what Josh and I both immediately chimed on was we’ve never seen anything set in North Dakota. Even Fargo, of course, wasn’t actually in North Dakota. Right? If you remember the movie. And so we were excited about this new place where we could tell this old, classic tale of a speculative mania of a boom. And the fact that it was happening in a setting that we hadn’t seen before was just even more exciting,” Fishburne recalled.

“McDonald’s paid $40 an hour when we were there that year because they couldn’t get anybody to work at the take‑out window because everybody could make more money in the oil fields,” he continued. “So, when we say this is a San Francisco 1849 boomtown, we are being serious. Like, it really was that crazy and the feeling of economic opportunity and hopefulness of ‑‑ you see all 50 U.S. license plates within about 20 minutes of being in Williston, North Dakota, and the feeling of ‘This is the American dream,’ everybody had to go up there. This is in the wake of the 2008 recession, and so it was ‑‑ I had never seen anything like it in America. It really was unique and special, and that was what ‑‑ our creative instincts were very drawn to that,” he explained.

For Rebecca Rittenhouse and Chace Crawford — both best known for their younger-skewing roles in Red Band Society and Gossip Girl, respectively — this is a chance to finally play older.

“It’s a nice, refreshing change,” Rittenhouse said. “I feel like I’m playing a very real young, married woman, and I think a lot of young women in America and hopefully around the world are going to be able to relate to her, you know. Luckily, I have a handsome husband. My situation is not so bad. It’s really fun, and I enjoy playing her. I think she’s a really smart, whole person.”

“It’s nice to play an adult ‑‑ right? ‑‑ to play a real boy,” Crawford agreed. “It’s great.”

Blood & Oil premieres Sunday, September 27 at 9PM on ABC. You can see some photos from the TCA session below:

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TCA SUMMER PRESS TOUR 2015 - "Blood & Oil" Session - The cast and producers of ABC's "Blood & Oil" at Disney | ABC Television Group's Summer Press Tour 2015 at The Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, California. (ABC/Image Group LA)RODES FISHBURNE (CREATOR/EXECUTIVE PRODUCER), JOSH PATE (CREATOR/EXECUTIVE PRODUCER), DON JOHNSON, AMBER VALLETTA, REBECCA RITTENHOUSE, CHACE CRAWFORD, TONY KRANTZ (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER)