Cole Hauser on Playing a Cop

Cole Hauser plays Trevor Cobb, new partner to Anthony Anderson's Marlin Boulet. Trevor escaped from a flooded prison and joined the army before joining the New Orleans Police Department (NOPD) and becoming a cop. Cole is working hard to play an authentic NOPD officer.

According to this article at CanMag.com, Cole has been spending time with the real NOPD as research.

"They do things differently in New Orleans, different than around the country as far as the cops I've been around, whether it be New York or Los Angeles," said Hauser. "It's just a different style. As far as playing characters that are cops in New Orleans, it's the best kind of cop you can play. The fact is that in doing things different and being around and just the actual place that we're at in the French Quarter and dealing with Louisiana and Ninth Ward, New Orleans East and seeing the things that these guys go through."

Some of the actors have been allowed to travel with the police, even with SWAT, and get to see how the officers work and what it is like to arrest someone. In addition to getting a close-up introduction to the criminal element in New Orleans, the actors are getting to know the freakshow that is night-time New Orleans (and I say that affectionately).

Even in good times, New Orleans presents a different kind of perp. "It's the people they're dealing with. You have to understand like the French Quarter, everybody thinks New Orleans is the French Quarter. You go down there, everybody is drinking, you're talking about a city that is partying 24/7 and the people that they're dealing with, the perps that they're dealing with, most people are either on drugs in that quarter or drinking out of their mind. So the people that they're dealing with are just, pardon the expression, but out of their minds drunk."

I'm glad these guys are in New Orleans making this show. The NOPD has had some bad publicity, some of it very much deserved, but the cops in New Orleans are mostly good people with a really hard and dangerous job. I'm hoping K-Ville with shed a little light on the real NOPD just as much as I hope that K-Ville will shed some light on the real NOLA. It would be nice if the show spent more time in the precinct and with the various officers.