![]() ![]() “And Kelly was going to be partnered with Martinez (Nicholas Turturro). “We originally wrote that he died at the end of the first episode,” Milch says. Which is remarkable when you consider that in the original pilot Sipowicz was intended to be killed. And yet what I think happened is that the character turned into such an interesting character the first couple of episodes, the relationship (between Sipowicz and Kelly) became very important to the overall impact of the show, and it became appealing for them to write for the two characters, and then by the end of the season they realized this is a show about two characters instead of one.” “It was clear and I never questioned the fact. “I knew it was second billing,” Franz says. The character that Caruso played-laconic, do-the-right-thing detective John Kelly-was always intended to be the center of the series, Bochco says, but Sipowicz was invented as his sidekick, in effect to be the second lead. “I called Dennis before there was a script, before there was Sipowicz,” Bochco says. Milch worked on all these shows, and when he and Bochco hatched the idea for “NYPD Blue,” their first casting decision was to try to include Franz again. I just loved my experience on ‘Hill Street.’ ”įranz played two different cops on “Hill Street Blues”-manic, crooked Sal Benedetto, who eventually killed himself, and later excitable detective Norman Buntz, who punched out the police commissioner, got fired and relocated to California as a private detective for the failed 1987-88 NBC spinoff “Beverly Hills Buntz.” In between, he was cast in the short-lived Bochco series about minor league baseball, “Bay City Blues,” in which he distinguished himself as Angelo Carbone, the team’s wily pitching coach (another role he might have been born to play). But because it was Milch and because it was Steven Bochco, I wanted to work with them again. “It was time not to play any more cop roles. “I told myself I was going to try to find another vehicle,” he says. Two years ago, he had just done a pilot for a series called “NYPD Mounted,” about guess what. He is the 28th cop Franz has played in films, on stage and on TV but the one, of course, who has made all the difference.īut precisely because this would be the 28th cop on his resume, Franz was reluctant to take the role. Yet his limitless supply of inflammatory irony, political incorrectness and black humor makes him hugely entertaining all the same. Sipowicz-apparently the symbiotic creation of Franz, who plays him, and producer-writer David Milch, who largely writes him-has talked his way gloriously, profanely to center stage in American television, even capturing the attention of viewers who previously didn’t find cops on TV all that interesting.ĭivorced, lonely, a recovering alcoholic with a distant son, Sipowicz is a guy who’s got more than his share of personal problems and seems to be getting through life one hour at a time. Sipowicz would have found more colorful language to describe the Getty Trust. “One of the reasons we bought this house was that you could look up at that hillside and feel like you were out in the country,” he says ruefully, though not as ruefully as Andy Sipowicz would have said it. In profile, the sweep of his strong nose and balding forehead makes him look as aerodynamically designed as an eagle. ![]() ![]() He has just come down the stairs dressed in jeans and a sweater and carrying a pair of white sneakers. It is a few days before the Super Bowl and Franz is enjoying a rare day off at his Bel-Air home just across the 405 from the new hillside Getty Museum, whose unfinished monumentality looms clearly into view from his pool. The writers really had to scramble for the first half-dozen or so episodes, and I think they did an amazing job for us to have sustained the popularity we have under those circumstances.” “When you consider the transition that we had to make-the departure of one major character and the introduction of another, the whole story line for the entire season had to be shifted all around. “It’s been difficult, it’s been good, it’s been easy, it’s been hard,” Franz says about the heavy lifting that has gone on in “NYPD Blue’s” second season. All the hype Caruso attracted the first season initially obscured Franz’s hefty contribution to the watchability of “NYPD Blue,” but with Caruso gone, there has been little doubt that Franz has stepped up and carried the show on Andy Sipowicz’s world-weary shoulders while the public waited to see if the Smits character could replace Caruso’s. ![]()
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