Ronin's work: Titus Welliver talks Bosch: Legacy and playing Harry as a 'masterless samurai'
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Who is Harry Bosch without a badge? The relentless ex-LAPD detective played by Titus Welliver on seven seasons of Bosch is about to find out, and so will audiences when the follow-up series Bosch: Legacy premieres next month on Amazon Freevee (formerly IMDb TV).
Picking up about a year after the Bosch series finale, Legacy finds Harry navigating his transition to life as a private investigator after decades spent on the police force — an institution that gave him a framework to pursue justice but frustrated him with bureaucracy and corruption. As is glimpsed in the series' latest trailer, which you can watch exclusively above, Harry is still guided by an unwavering moral compass, but he's more isolated than ever.
"I can't help but draw the analogy to him being a ronin," Welliver tells EW. "Suddenly Harry is this masterless samurai, and he's trying to kind of figure out, where is he in the world?"
It's uncharted territory for Harry, and part of what makes Legacy a new series, as opposed to just being Bosch season 8. And so it brought new challenges for the man who has inhabited the character for the better part of a decade.
Tyler Golden/Amazon Freevee Mimi Rogers and Titus Welliver on 'Bosch: Legacy'
"Harry has his purpose, but he no longer has a badge, so he's really untethered in a big way," Welliver says. "He's kind of out there naked, to a certain degree. And when people seek to do harm, it makes him very dangerous because he's operating in a different way. And that for me dramatically is a huge change."
Legacy also brings changes for Harry at home, the biggest one being his daughter, Maddie (Madison Lintz), following in his footsteps and becoming a rookie patrol officer. She's no longer a kid, and now Harry is as worried about her as she has always been about him. But at the end of the day, they're after the same thing.
"The only anchor [Harry] has in this world is his child," Welliver says, "and she's now out there and he's trying to exercise some kind of restraint with her and their emotional life, and not hover. But he's terrified, and she has to tread the line of, how much do I tell my father? How much do I let him in?"
Greg Gayne/Amazon Freevee Madison Lintz on 'Bosch: Legacy'
The third member of Legacy's central trio is beginning a new chapter as well: Honey Chandler, the hotshot defense attorney played by Mimi Rogers, has survived an assassination attempt but is still seeking to bring the man who put a hit on her to justice (with Harry's help, naturally). She has also come down from "the big ivory tower office," as Welliver puts it, to work with her her old mentor and law school professor Martin Rose (David Moses), a local civil rights icon.
Rogers was thrilled to reprise her role, especially after she almost didn't get the chance to do so. "I don't know if I'm supposed to say this, but I was supposed to die in the final episode of [Bosch] season 7," she reveals. "The assassin was supposed to succeed."
Honey's fate changed as Legacy got the green light, which gave Rogers the opportunity to show a different, more vulnerable side of the usually unflappable character — and a more personal one. Both Rogers' performance and Honey's arc draw on the actress' experience of being held up at gunpoint in her garage years ago. "It was very important to me to find a very real, visceral method of showing someone dealing with the aftermath of that kind of trauma," she says.
Tyler Golden/Amazon Freevee Brody the dog and Titus Welliver on 'Bosch: Legacy'
As much as Legacy is a continuation of the original Bosch series (yes, Harry's beloved dog Coltrane is back), there's lots that's new as well. The title, for one, along with the theme song and opening credits. And unlike Bosch, which originated on Amazon Prime Video, Legacy hails from its ad-supported sibling Freevee. There are new characters, played by Stephen A. Chang, Denise Sanchez, William Devane, and others.
And considering the deep library of Michael Connelly novels that serve as the source material for Bosch and Bosch: Legacy, there are presumably are more stories to tell. But how many more?
"The first question that Mike Connelly asked me on the very first day of shooting the pilot for Bosch was, he said, 'How long do you see yourself playing this character?' " Welliver recalls. "And I said, 'I'll play him as long as they'll have me.' And that still stands."
The first four episodes of Bosch: Legacy will premiere May 6 on Amazon Freevee, with two new episodes following each Friday through May 27.
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