Life‘s Ted Earley may have spent some time in a maximum security prison for insider trading, but this doesn’t necessarily mean he’s a hardened criminal. Even Adam Arkin, the actor who has brought life to the to the ex-con, is quick to withhold judgment against his character.
“He was not anybody with overt criminal intentions ever,” Arkin explained. “He was a guy that was seduced by his own ability to play with numbers and play with money.”
Ted’s crime looks even more petty when compared to what his former prisonmate, Charlie Crews (Damian Lewis), was wrongfully convicted of. Crews, a detective for the Los Angeles Police Department, spent twelve years in prison for a headline-making triple murder that he did not commit. Now free, Crews is busy looking for the real culprits of the murder, while Ted handles the settlement money he received from the force.
As part of his preparation for Life, Adam Arkin visited several prisons in order to gain a better insight of life behind bars. He, however, did not conduct any interviews with actual prisoners, as he said that he has learned quite a lot from the experiences of industry people who have been incarcerated.
“Amazingly enough, there are lots of people in our business that have done time, and so I sort of had a general handle on what the experiences of people that have been through that consisted of,” Adam Arkin said.
Being cast in Life has given Arkin the opportunity not only to appear regularly on television again, but also to pursue directing, another one of his passions. He explained that while there “is something about acting on a series that can feel a little isolating in its specialization,” directing gives one the chance to be “in the middle of the kind of collaborative decision-making process that makes the overall thing work.”
Included in Arkin’s deal for Life is the privilege to sit on the director’s chair for two episodes every season. His first directorial episode is from the season’s first half, while the second is from the remaining nine episodes that the network recently picked up.
-Lisa Claustro, BuddyTV Staff Columnist
Source: Columbia Spectator
(Image Courtesy of NBC)
Staff Columnist, BuddyTV
