Exclusive: THE CLOSER’s Corey Reynolds Interview

Season 6 of THE CLOSER returns to TNT Monday, December 6 with new cases and a new chief, but thankfully also the same Brenda and her team. An integral part of that team is Brenda’s right hand man Sgt. David Gabriel, who has a strong sense of justice and integrity and who was one of the first to accept Brenda.

Corey Reynolds has been nominated for the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series, the NAMIC Vision Award nomination for Best Actor, and four times for the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble for his portrayal of Sgt. Gabriel. Before The Closer, he earned Tony and Drama Desk nominations for his role of Seaweed in the Broadway musical ‘Hairspray’ and he appeared in the film ‘The Terminal,’ a role he got after Steven Spielberg was so impressed with his performance in ‘Hairspray.’

Daemon’s TV recently talked to Corey about how Sgt. Gabriel and the challenges of playing him have changed over the years, how the Brenda-Gabriel relationship and Kyra-Corey relationship mirror each other, and how he spends his off-season. He also tosses in a tidbit about a development in the Brenda-Corey relationship.

Be sure to watch The Closer when it comes back with five new episodes beginning on TNT Monday, December 6 at 9pm eastern/8 central. You can read all our The Closer coverage here. In the meantime, enjoy the interview with the talented and gracious Corey Reynolds.

You guys are coming back for season six and have already been renewed for a seventh. That’s not bad for your first series –

Corey Reynolds: Not bad at all for the first pilot I actually booked. It’s funny because when we were shooting the pilot I tested for five pilots in 2004 and this one came long after pilot season was over. This one, the audition happened in the fall. Most of the time pilot season, I’m sure you know, is like the end of January through maybe the first week of April. I had gone in for so many pilots and five times I tested and five times I didn’t get it. And then ‘The Closer’ popped up, and ironically enough this is the one that I booked and none of the other pilots that I tested for and didn’t get are still even around. So, everything happens for a reason.

How grueling a process is going through pilot season and auditioning?

Corey Reynolds: It depends on what you find enjoyable. For me, I kind of enjoy the auditioning process. So I don’t look at it as too overwhelming. You can hustle sometimes to two to three to four appointments in a day. It really is kind of like that time, I believe, on the Serengeti that it rains for two weeks out of the year and all of the animals come out and do their thing. It’s kind of like that with actors. That pilot season, for television actors in particular, is the summer rain that comes in. But it can be a challenging process just because, like you were saying, there are layers to get to this type of conversation with me there are so many layers to get to the point of testing. You have to impress the casting director first, who then has to feel that your worthy of bringing in front of the director and executive producers and you’ll usually do that twice and then you’ll go in, if they like you then they’ll bring you in for the studio and then if you impress the studio then you move on to the network test. That’s the final hurdle. It’s part of the business. It’s kind of like an athlete. You have to go to practice. For an actor you have to go to auditions. That’s just the business.

What did you initially like about the role of Sergeant Gabriel?

Corey Reynolds: Honestly, there weren’t a lot of characters that I was going in for at the time that I felt were reflective of the type of images that I wanted to portray. I like that Gabriel first and foremost is one of the good guys. He’s honorable. He has integrity. He stands by his convictions. He’s charming. He’s still a little naive, a little more doe eyed I think in the latter seasons, but what was really important to me was having the opportunity to play an articulate, well spoken, college educated good guy of color on television. That was probably the most alluring aspect to it for me. Interesting enough the character wasn’t written with a Black actor in mind. I was the only Black actor testing at the time. It was me and like five other really good looking white guys with five o’clock shadows. Having been through pilot season, as I looked around the room I thought to myself, ‘I’ve been here before. I don’t think I’m going to get this one.’ But I went into the room and Kyra [Sedgwick] and James Duff, our show creator, had both seen me in ‘Hairspray’ along with Peter Roth, the president of Warner Brothers Television who actually had me autograph my headshot for his daughter. He was saying to me, ‘Hairspray is in my CD player right now in my car. You’re hair favorite character. Will you sign this?’ I was thinking to myself, ‘Well, this is probably a good sign. If I’m at an audition and the president of television is asking me to autograph a headshot for his daughter -’ but I didn’t want to get too excited. So I went in and I read and then I actually went home and I got a call from my manager about an hour later and I was like, ‘What’s the word?’ He said, ‘Okay, they want you to come back. Can you go back in?’ I said, ‘What?’ He said, ‘I don’t know. Just go back in.’ So I went back in and Mike Robin, the executive producer, met me outside. He said, ‘We love everything you’re doing, but can you make this character a little more -’ and I literally – he and I tell this story all the time – I finished his sentence. I said, ‘Charming?’ He goes, ‘Exactly.’ So I went back in. I felt that I was so into the procedural police show mindset that I kind of came across a little stagnant. So I wanted to go back in and show them that I could give this guy a personality as well as authority.

The Closer’ does have a different tone than most of the other procedurals –

Corey Reynolds: Exactly, and well, I think that they allow us to be people. I think that a lot of the other procedural shows, and no offense to them, it’s really based upon the formula of the show. So the characters are to a certain extent interchangeable. I think that’s why you can see such a success in long running shows like ‘Law and Order’ and ‘CSI’, because they don’t take as much time, and that’s not to say that this is a bad thing on them because I think the formula works for their show, but they don’t take as much time to really expand the characters. You don’t go home with those characters. So you can invest in our characters I think at a higher level because you see aspects of their personal life and how that affects how they do their job. I think it’s a really good structure for storytelling.

What’s been the most interesting thing for you about Gabriel’s development over the years?

Corey Reynolds: That’s a good question. I don’t know if I’ve been asked that question. I think to be honest it’s his discovery of the gray area. I think that in the beginning of the show, in the beginning of the series Gabriel was pretty black and white. There were procedures. There were rules. There was a protocol that was an integral part of the investigative process for him. I think that what he’s learned from Brenda is that there’s a lot of wiggle room when you’re pursuing justice. That doesn’t mean that you cross the line. Although, I think there have been moments on the show where many of the characters have crossed the line, but we do our best to push the envelope within the perimeters of the rules that police officers have to follow. I think that he was a little more strict about that in the beginning than he is now. I think he understands that there is a gray area and we all kind of live in it.

I think that goes along with his innate sense of justice –

Corey Reynolds: Absolutely, and I think that it’s kind of a little bit of art imitating life in a lot of ways. I think that his naiveté in the beginning, similar to my own – to give you a quick story, when we were shooting the pilot we knew that TNT was going to pick up two shows. They were making three pilots. So that means your odds are pretty good. I remember when we were filming the pilot, because I’d read the script for the pilot and it got to the end and I saw that the doctor was actually a woman living as a man or a man living as a woman I was like, ‘Whoa, that’s crazy.’ We were filming and I was like, ‘This is awesome. We’re going to be on TV. This is great, you guys. You guys, we’re going to be on TV.’ G. W. Bailey who’s a mentor in a lot of ways to me, he pulled me aside because I said, ‘This is a no brainer. We’ve got Kyra. We’ve got a great script. We’ve got a great cast. I think this is going to be a hit.’ G. W. looked at me and said, ‘I’ve been doing this longer than you’ve been alive. Do you know how many good shows don’t get picked up?’ It was the first bucket. I felt like that scene in ‘Flashdance’. I felt like this bucket of ice water had come down on me. I thought to myself, ‘Am I being naive here?’ It was the same feeling that I had with ‘Hairspray’. I knew from the moment that I started working on that that show was going to be a hit if for no other reason I’m a pretty tough critic myself. Like with ‘Hairspray’ ‘The Closer’ was something that I really enjoyed and I thought to myself, ‘Wow. If I like this -’ because I don’t like a lot. ‘If I like this then I think the average person will as well,’ and I’m proud to say that I was right, six years and eighty eight episodes later that the naive doe eyed kid running around super excited doing bell kicks was right.

How have the challenges of playing Gabriel changed over the years?

Corey Reynolds: There’s an interesting kind of fourth wall in television. I’ll explain that. In the theater realm you never break the fourth wall and in television you kind of have to break that rule a little bit because the episodes, the stories within them, there’s an arc for the season. But the way the shows are designed, episodics, you want all of them to be able to stand alone. By that I mean you don’t want the viewer to have to have watched last weeks episode to necessarily know what’s happening this week. It’s not that serial series like a ‘Lost’ or ‘The Event’. As the actor and as the character you might’ve had an experience in a previous episode that the learning you got from that case might influence your thinking on the current case. But you’re not always allowed to play that. For instance, I’ll give you an example, back in season three, I think it was, there was an episode called ‘Ruby’ and this little girl was murdered, killed by this racist child molester and then later on in season four we had an episode about a Russian kid by the name of Sergei who was missing as well. The undertone of the episode as far as some of the unspoken aspects of my performance were directed to be influenced by the previous missing child case with ‘Ruby’. But we’re not allowed to say on the show, for instance, ‘This is the worst thing since Ruby.’ Our characters aren’t necessarily allowed to reflect on previous cases and episodes. You can bring the experience that you got from the episode but you can’t necessarily bring the knowledge that you got from the episode. So that’s an interesting thing to have to deal with sometimes because sometimes, honestly, it’s up to myself, but like, ‘In season four, in episode six, wouldn’t we have thought about that?’ In those instances you have to just kind of go with the flow of the storytelling because whatever it was that you were thinking about from a previous episode the writers are going to reflect a theme that reflects that if not the episode itself. So I know that was longwinded professorial answer to a somewhat simple question but that’s how my mind works.

I think the fans do notice the callbacks and appreciate them so much –

Corey Reynolds: Absolutely, and I think it’s only natural even in the human experience, outside of the scripted realm you are the sum total of your life experience. So everything that you’ve experienced in life has helped shape who you are at this very moment. So it’s a challenge at times to remove things that have shaped these character so dramatically within specific episodes, to not let that influence necessarily or bleed that storytelling in the next.

Can you tease anything about the final five episodes of the season?

Corey Reynolds: I sure can. One exciting thing that’s happening, I believe it’s episode twelve, that we have case where a lot of times in the course of our investigation Brenda’s logic in her mind that kind of leads us to the direction we need to go in to solve the cases and in one of these in particular Brenda is actually wrong about a suspect and Gabriel is right. So it’s an interesting development to take place, between Brenda and Gabriel. I think there’s been, out of all the relationships in the show with the exception of maybe her relationship with Fritz, her personal relationship, I think that within the squad most of the developing we’ve seen the two of them kind of grow together. She’s slowly began to defer to him in certain places and I think this instance the first time that she actually sees that she’s molded him correctly, that he’s learned from her. It’s very personal to our personal life. I don’t have the years of experience that some of the other actors on this show do and I didn’t go to college either, and so for me this is a master class that I’ve been studying for a few years. And Kyra is a mentor to me in that capacity just like Brenda is a mentor to Gabriel. There are a lot of things that you can learn from someone as graceful and as beautiful and kind as she is and it’s easy to have fun with the days are fun. But when the days get long and the shots aren’t maybe working the way that you anticipated that’s when you really see what’s within a person. I think that’s what I’ve taken from her, how to be graceful when the situation maybe is not. That’s something that’s kind of reflected in the relationship that Gabriel has with Brenda as well.

This season Brenda tried for Chief, but didn’t get it. Kyra did tease though that there might be another opportunity for her character’s advancement. What would that mean for Gabriel?

Corey Reynolds: Well, here’s the thing, I think we saw earlier in this season that out of all of the squad members Gabriel is probably the one that most closely resembles Brenda’s investigative style and I think if some sort of promotion was made to Brenda I would think that he would probably be the best on qualified to take over Major Crimes. But his rank wouldn’t necessarily dictate that. Actually, that would be an interesting thing to see take place within the squad as things moved around and power began to shift. I think we even saw in an episode that she referenced that Gabriel is the most qualified to take over her position, but with his rank no one would ever go for it. Who knows what type of affect that would have. I think that immediately it would have an adverse affect on him because he probably wouldn’t be working as closely with her as he’d like to.

You’ve been nominated for a Tony, a Drama Desk Award, multiple times for SAG Ensemble award and you just got your first NAACP Image award nomination. Is there a particular award that you’d like to win first?

Corey Reynolds: Out of any of them? If I’m painting my dream picture of my first award in any way for anything it would be an Oscar for screenwriting. That would be my first award. The three questions I get from people all the time are usually, the first one is what’s it like working with Kyra and the second one is are you Flex? I don’t know if you know who Flex Alexander is but he was the actor on ‘One on One’ on UPN. I get that question, especially when I first came out here. People would be like, ‘You Flex, right?’ ‘No, I’m not.’ ‘Stop lying, man. I know you Flex. I watch you show. You going to try tell me you ain’t Flex. Is Flex you stage name.’ I’m like, ‘No. I’m not Flex.’ ‘Oh, you just trying to go all Hollywood.’ And the third question is, ‘How come I don’t see you in more stuff?’ That question is kind of complicated for me. I spend a lot of my time in the off season writing. I’ve pitched a few shows to different networks and I have a screenplay called ‘The Triple Nickels’ based on the first African American Division of the United States paratroopers that I’m shopping at the moment, that I wrote myself. I have grander plans than just being an actor. Not that there’s anything wrong with being an actor, but my real passion lies in the creative aspect of things.

That sounds like a very interesting movie –

Corey Reynolds: Thank you. It’s kind of fascinating because they’re the first and only military unit in U.S. history to fight a foreign attack on the U.S. mainland. This took place during World War II and the Japanese were launching what they called Fugos, basically these mini hot air balloons that would ride the Pacific air currents across the Pacific and would drop bombs on the continental U.S. and the U.S. Government kept this weapon and what was happening, they kept it top secret because they didn’t want the Japanese to know that these bombs were actually making it to U.S. soil because they didn’t want them to use chemical or biological weapons. So they had to find a way to extinguish the forest fires that were being created in California, Oregon, as far east as Michigan and Washington State by these bombs. So they took these guys, The Triple Nickels, who were trained as paratroopers and retrained them as America’s first military smoke jumpers and they would go in and put out these giant forest fires and disarm these bombs and they never really received the pat on the back from society that I think they deserved. When the story was brought to my attention by another writer friend of mine I jumped all over it. It’s so powerful. The centrifuge of the story and the script is one line by the main character, Joe, because there was a lot of racism and doubt in respect to whether or not they could even qualify to be paratroopers and his statement is, ‘I didn’t want to join airborne to prove that Negro’s could jump out of planes. I wanted to join airborne to prove that it never should’ve been a question.’ That statement is what the whole project is built from. That’s usually where I dedicate the majority of my energy when I’m not in front of the camera, on being creative.

Is there any show out there that you would love to be a guest star on?

Corey Reynolds: Oh, wow, there are a few of them. I would love to go around with Larry David on ‘Curb’. I actually did four episodes of ‘Curb the Discussion’, the TV Guide Channel with the roundtable panel afterwards with Susie Essman as the host. ‘Curb’ would be right at the top of my list, and also maybe only in the sense to show the world or America that I sing as well, ‘Glee’ and get to reunite with Matt [Morrison]. But only to go on there to sing something and to sing it live. I don’t know about some of the canned vocals I hear on there. But those are my two. I would love to maybe take a spin on ‘Weeds’ as well. I’m a big fan of ‘Weeds’ and maybe take a pass at Kenny Powers on ‘Eastbound and Down’, anything where I’d be able to adlib and do a little back and forth would be great.

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