It makes sense that “Coyote” was shot with a cast and a multinational crew – since the new drama series with Michael Chiklis deals with life on both sides of the US-Mexico border.
“Half of our editorial staff is Mexican and from South and Central America,” said Chiklis, 57, who plays a former US Border Patrol agent on the CBS All Access series. “We wanted people from all corners of this equation to weigh their perspective so that they would be represented in our scriptures.
“We had a border patrol officer who was also our technical advisor [border patrol] people from the Mexican side of the border, ”he says. “It’s a difficult line to walk, but I feel like I’ve done it with great success.”
In the premiere of Thursday’s series, viewers meet the tough, dedicated and well-respected Ben Clemens (Chiklis), who retires noisily and reluctantly after 32 years of work. Divorced, with a teenage daughter, he goes to Mexico to finish the construction of the house that his work partner, Javi Lopez (played by Jose Pablo Cantillo), built on a picturesque rock on the beach before meeting his death.
“This is a good man who has made some terrible mistakes and is trying to reconcile those mistakes and save his life,” says Chiklis. “He’s trying to change his own epitaph, you know?”
But his trip to Mexico is the trigger for the multi-layered “Coyote” plot – when Ben tries to help a teenage girl, Maria Elena Flores (Emy Mena), who is pregnant by a local drug lord and desperate to escape. its claws. He finds himself scattered in a dangerous, life-changing situation, playing on both sides of the border in a series of unexpected twists.
“This show is about a conversation between Mexico and the United States, about a clash of cultures happening at borders around the world,” says Chiklis, a 2002 Emmy winner for The Shield. “It is related to so many people living in countries where cultures are pushed up against each other and have to find a way to coexist.
“I thought it was a very timely and interesting way for a guy who looked at the world through a certain prism his whole life to literally and figuratively and suddenly he has to be on the other side of the wall … and go 100 miles in another man’s shoes.
“We have completely eliminated politics to show and represent all points of view without taking a position.”
“It’s an interesting way to take a very hot political issue and humanize it,” he says. “We have completely eliminated politics in order to show and represent all points of view without taking a position … so that people can watch the show and not be so caught up in politics, but in humanity.
“Whatever happens, the border situation is still very current and will remain so,” he said. “We wanted to dive even deeper into this situation and see where it takes us.”
Where “Coyote” not take Chiklis and his fellow executive producers, including Michelle MacLaren (“Breaking Bad,” “Game of Thrones”) and David Graziano (“American Gods”), it was until the end of the 10-episode series, which was filmed in Baja , Mexico.
“We were in the middle of episode 7 when we were interrupted by COVID,” says Chiklis. “Not without irony, I could not continue once things returned to production a few months ago, because I could not enter Mexico.
“If we manage to continue and I hope to do it, I think [the shutdown] it was a blessing in disguise because of everything that happened in 2020, ”he says. “I have the impression that this will shape the way forward in all sorts of stories in this regard. [border] problem.”