"Gang Related" Stars RZA & Ramon Rodriguez on Fave Heroes & Villains

I'm joined on the Young Hollywood sofa with two extremely talented men, Riza and Ramon Rodriguez, how are you?

Good.

Thanks for having us in your, in your lovely suite.

It's nice, right?

It's not bad. It's not bad. It's set up, we've got.

It's a good look.

It's good, you've had a busy morning, so now you can just chill on a sofa for a minute.

I did. This is good.

But you haven't been chilling, you two have been busy with Gang Related. This amazing show that's coming out on Fox this Thursday.

Yes.

Exciting time.

22nd. That's right. Yeah. On Fox, yep. On 9:00 p. m.

On 9:00 p. m.

22nd of May on Fox, 9:00 p. m. Gang Related.

Gang Related.

But I have seen the opening episode. It's amazing. I mean, it's like a movie, I was saying to Riza earlier, it's it's pretty much a movie.

Yeah, it's very cinematic, especially the pilot episode that you watched, directed by Alan Hughes, who's a fantastic film director. And you know, Riza and I have been talking about this a lot, how we feel it's it's very much something that you would see either in movies or on a cable uh, show. You know, that that's one thing that Fox wanted to do with this show. They wanted to try to create a cable type show on network, something serialized, something people can get invested in with these characters and you know, I think the writers did a fantastic job of creating some interesting stories and dilemmas.

Well, Chris Morgan, obviously, the Chris Morgan.

Fast and the Furious franchise. He got some action because of that for sure.

Just a little bit. Just a little bit. Which you'd expect, which you'd expect. For granted. Going into a show like that with someone like that involved, it must, it takes a little bit of preparation, you know, knowing that you've got a great team behind you, I guess, right?

Yeah, I mean we had him and then we have uh, you bring in Scott Rosenbaum, who was involved with The Shield, so now you've got like this gritty edge, you know, writer who uh, and they brought a fantastic writing staff. Then you bring in a a a fantastic cast. You got guys like the Riza, Sung Kang, uh Cliff Curtis, Terry O'Quinn, you know, they really, I feel like they brought in a uh, a really diverse, uh, beautiful and also talented cast and we have some lovely ladies as well for the gentleman. I know that. We were trying to cover all angles. Chantel in a bar. There you go. In a bar. Not bad to look at. Life's good for you. Ja, Ja, Ja Hernandez, you know, who girls love. And some of the guys love Ja too, so we got we got that balanced there. Ja goes likes both sides, well, both sides like Ja. He's he's a beautiful guy. I can say that. He's a beautiful guy. Yeah.

He's a beautiful guy. He's like a bad like a bad boy. It was tough to do scenes.

Yeah. Um, but your your character Detective Ryan Lopez, Detective Ryan Lopez in the show. Really a lot of depth to this character. I mean, the guy's caught in two worlds, to say the least.

Yeah, I mean, raised by this family, uh, who happens to be a gang, Los Halcones, uh, and this father figure who's played by Cliff Curtis, Javier Acosta. And so yeah, Ryan feels indebted to this guy who saved him as a young boy and will do anything for him. And you know, Javier really sold him on this vision of of taking this family and getting them out of it. Right. You know, and that kind of is a very, we were talking about this earlier, kind of a Godfather-esque element of of trying to get. They actually based his character off of Joe Kennedy. Right. You know, so it's cool that you you see these supposedly villains, bad guys, but they kind of have really great intentions. And so that's where the show I think it's complex and interesting. You got heroes or cops that are supposed to be good guys, doing some things that could be questionable, and you've got villains, quote unquote bad guys, doing things that you know, you might think are honorable or justified.

I play a character called Cassius Green, who I think Cassius really believes that the law enforcement can make a difference. And you know, he doesn't see Javier Acosta any good in him. He sees him as a guy who he wants to bring down because as you watch the season, you'll see that there's a lot of violence going on. The the body count is increasing because you have the Latinos fighting the the brothers, you have the Russian gang, the Korean gangs, and and and death is filling the city and and I think Cassius is like, Javier Acosta is the man responsible for these deaths. But at the same time, when you go into the community as we doing surveillance, we seeing that the community love this guy. Yeah. Right. He's he's he's he's actually a Robin Hood to the community. Yeah. And so, so it's a real a conflict there for um, for us as officers and uh, and um, and us as our characters are looking like, yo, in a way, we want this guy to come down, but the his people treat him like he's the mayor. You know what I mean? Think about the gang members, you know, you know, I grew up, you know, on the streets of New York, part of the Wu-Tang Clan, which, you know, in New York sometimes the cops consider us a gang, it's so many members of my crew. And, and, you know, every day we would, you know, live up in the living the street life, we, you know, we had no respect for the police because we never saw them as humans. You know, we just saw them as the enemy. And uh, doing this particular show for me, and working with the law enforcement, the SWAT team, and some of LAPD, I realized the human nature of the cops. You know, they are guys who are, you know, bonded through their brotherhood. They want to go to work. They don't want to see their partner get killed. They don't want to not go home to their family. And they don't want to get fired. So, so this new dynamic uh, really uh helped me understand both sides of the world.

Who's your favorite villain of all time, and who's your favorite hero?

I'm going to say, you know, Vito Corleone. It's my favorite. You know, because as a man, I've seen the qualities of him. I'll never forget the scene when he comes home, when he was poor and all he had was a pear. He pissed it on the table. He wipes it off his wife. Wife just get the knife and cut it up and you know, they have the optimism of life. And he goes on to be a killer and goes on, but you still root for him and his family, so he's my favorite villain.

Yeah, I'd have to say uh, he was a hero and a villain in some ways, but Tony Montana. Oh, yeah. Tony. You know, there were certain things about him and the dream that he wanted, and how he goes about it. But when he and he gets caught up, but it's it's uh, I thought it was a really compelling character, man. I was like, wow.

It's funny we catch ourselves liking him and then a hero sometimes a hero turned into a villain. Yeah. So I think hopefully that'll happen.

That's a grey area this show lives in it actually lives in a lot.

Well, tune in and find out. Gang Related, 9:00 p. m. Thursdays on Fox. Watch these guys in it.