Simmons and Lee Tergesen choking each other in a scene, and the director would yell 'Cut!' and they would drop their hands and say, 'Wanna go bowling?'”įontana: You’d literally have J.K. Kirk Acevedo was the best man at my wedding. It’s actually the closest I’ve ever felt on any set I’ve ever been on. When there was nothing to do, you’d see guys in the corner playing cards or doing pushups, or we’d be making plans about something we were doing later, or supporting somebody’s new rap group. If we had lunch, everybody would eat in a common area. We had these makeshift rooms where we could go and sit if we had to get ready for the next scene but they weren’t anything glamorous. Harold Perrineau (Augustus Hill): We didn’t have big trailers or assistants or any of that kind of stuff on set with us. Tergesen: It was so predominately male-except for the sexiest woman on the planet, Rita Moreno-it was like a frat house, except I hate frats. Besides Edie Falco, Betty Buckley, Rita Moreno, and Lauren Velez, it was like a pirate ship. I’m telling you, I’ve never had that much fun on a set. Winters: You had an environment where any given day you have 68 guys and you need to blow off some steam and we all realized early on that the wrong way to blow off that steam would be to avoid each other it was more about embracing each other because the content of the show was so hard, what we were putting on camera that the only way to levitate that was to have a lot of fun.
What is oz tv series about tv#
Tergesen: There was one critic who said, “This show offends me, and it offends God.” I love that a TV critic has the ear of God. Apparently, some priests agreed with that. Rita Moreno (Sister Peter Marie Reimondo): Near the end of the first season I went to Tom, with whom I’ve become very close by the way, we are now dear friends-I said to him, "You wouldn’t happen to be Catholic, would you?" And he said, "Yeah! How’d you know?" I said, "Only a Catholic could have written this show." The redemption, the violence-there’s something so Catholic about all that to me. Kathryn Erbe (Shirley Bellinger): I didn’t appreciate the show as much when I was on it as I do now. I thought that was a cool way to present a show that also had inmate rape and all that other brutal stuff. Harold Perrineau was the Greek chorus, the grand observer of these silly games that humankind plays. Simmons (Vern Schillinger): Tom Fontana is equal parts genius and mentor and pater familia-and you know, just a great guy.Ĭhristopher Meloni (Chris Keller): It was brutality combined with poetry. Lee Tergesen (Tobias Beecher): When Method Man first met Tom, he was like “ You’re the one who writes this stuff? A forty-year-old Italian guy from Buffalo?” Tom is my best friend in the world. But if you talk to any writer worth his grain of salt, whether it’s Vince Gilligan or David Simon, any of these guys, they’ll say it all started with Tom. Tom was approaching issues without kid gloves on 20 years ago, and that’s why I think Oz didn’t really find its footing initially.ĭon’t get me wrong, there were amazing writers on television before Tom and after Tom-I won’t lie about that.
What is oz tv series about series#
Tom Fontana: We were really in uncharted territory, because HBO had never done a drama series before.ĭean Winters (Ryan O'Reily): Who watches HBO in 1997 at 11:00pm? Nobody. Several key cast members join creator Tom Fontana to reflect on the show’s enduring impact. Without it, there would be no Sopranos, no Breaking Bad, no Walking Dead, no Game of Thrones.
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An HBO ensemble drama set inside the Oswald correctional facility, redefined what you could do on non-network television-pretty much anything, it turned out-while fearlessly probing the unexplored tensions in American life. Two decades on, it’s clear that the 1997 premiere of Oz was the Big Bang of Great TV. A third is sprayed with lighter fluid and set aflame. Another is euthanized in bed with a hand over his nose and mouth. In the Season 2 episode, "Jamie's Got a Gun," it is revealed that Jackson's father had performed experiments on Jackson, which caused Jackson to develop the Ghost Gene.A man is branded with a swastika. Jackson was only 12 years old at the time.
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One example of this was when he asked Jackson if he wanted to buy a soul. However, Robert used to have some weird behaviors around his son. As a child, he used to go with his father in weekend expeditions all over the country to study and observe animals. Jackson Oz is the son of doctor Elizabeth Oz and professor/scientist Robert Oz. He made sure that his TX gas formula would help them do that. My father always said that one day the animals would reclaim the planet.