Legacy’s Troy Evans Talks Amazon Controversy, The Cancelation & Ballard Role

Summary

• Troy Evans said Bosch: Legacy’s cancelation was a surprise to the cast, and Crate and Barrel’s roles have been heavily reduced.
• Troy Evans believes Amazon prioritizes profit over creativity, stifling the art in Hollywood.
• The Ballard spin-off is allegedly trying to appeal to a younger demographic, leading Evans to make a controversial comment directed at Amazon.

Bosch: Legacy‘s third and final season is just one week away, and it’s a bittersweet feeling for fans who are still upset about the series coming to an end. Amazon canceled it over six months ago, and the petition to save it has nearly hit 30,000 signatures. Game Rant interviewed Troy Evans ahead of Bosch: Legacy‘s final season, and he was extremely candid about why he uttered THAT controversial F-Bomb aimed at Amazon, while also giving his thoughts on why the show was canceled.

Troy Evans also talked about his fan favorite role as Barrel Johnson in Bosch and Bosch: Legacy, as well as his long and varied career as one of Hollywood’s top character actors. Evans is a great storyteller, and he didn’t hold back his opinions about the industry, and also talked about his troubled background before he got into acting. Like all great Hollywood stories, it needs to be experienced from start to finish.

Troy Evans’ Life Before Acting Was Eventful And He Explains How A Key Meeting Back In The 70s Led To His Role In The Original Bosch Series

The original Bosch series felt like the first time audiences saw the real Los Angeles on screen. Would you agree with that?

Yes, the real L.A. When they first made the deal for Bosch, Amazon wanted to shoot it in Vancouver, and Michael Connelly, bless his heart, said ‘we won’t do it’. All that stuff like Musso and Frank’s was key. The Real L.A. spots are so important. I think it was very well done, the stories are great. Michael Connelly was a crime reporter for the L.A. Times, and then he started writing the Harry Bosch novels many years ago, and I think he’s done pretty well. He reached out, and there was also a guy I knew called Eric Overmyer, who is a writer. When Michael Connelly got the deal with Amazon, he made a good decision to reach out to Eric Overmyer and ask him to run Bosch for television because writing a novel is different to writing a television show, right? Eric was there from the beginning, and then Titus Welliver was just right. It clicked. One of the ways you can tell is that Michael Connelly is very happy with him. I’ve always really admired Michael Connelly for his writing and he was always very nice to me on the set.

You and Eric Overmyer go back a long way then?

Yes. When I first got to California, I went to this little theater in San Maria, and a college playwright came through to see a play I was in, and that was Eric Overmyer. I met him in the summer of 1976. And then 40 years later he calls me up, ‘Troy, it’s Eric, I’m working on this thing with Michael Connelly and I think there’s something there for you.’ Crate and Barrel are not prominent in the books, but Eric told Michael Connelly that these guys needed to be there.

And the rest is history. Before Bosch started, were you at a point where you were content with your career?

Yeah, I figured I’d get a little job here and there, and I thought that’s what Bosch was. I thought we were doing one or two episodes. And I did over 70.

How did you first get into acting?

There are sh*tty Hollywood stories, but this isn’t one of them. In 1976, I was in college and I got drafted. I went to Vietnam and came home. I was completely unaware of it, but I was not the same person. I can remember actively thinking, I was gone a year and a half, and I came back and every other person in Montana was a a** hole. What happened to them? Nothing happened to them, it was me. The plan was to go back to school and get my law degree, become the governor of Montana, and be president. That was my life plan. Instead, I opened a bar and, it turns out, owning a bar is not a particularly good thing for an alcoholic, which is what I was when I got back from Vietnam. I opened a rock’ n’ roll bar. It was the only one for 100 miles. The business was huge. Always chaos. Saturday night, early, and there’s a key table in a raised area, and this group is arguing and breaking glasses. I bought them a pitcher of beer and said,’ Let’s be happy and get along. ‘Ok Troy, we’re sorry.’

It sounds like that 80s movie, Road House. What happened next?

By the time I got back to the bar, they were fighting again. So I did the only reasonable thing. I reached under the cash register where I had a 9mm pistol and I pointed up in their general direction and emptied it. Bang bang bang. All in the ceiling and walls. The fact I didn’t hit any of them is just sheer f**k**g chance. That’s how I rolled. This went on for two years. People would make complaints, they’d haul me in, and I’d get a stern lecture, and they’d fine me $65. I didn’t care. Then a guy grabbed a woman in a bar, and he was a guy I didn’t like. I can remember this vividly. This is 50 years ago now. I remember thinking of two words: Far out. I went over the bar and hurt him really badly. Broke both his legs, dislocated his shoulder, and fractured his skull. Threw him out on the street. But that guy was a lawyer. I ended up in Montana state prison. But that’s how I became an actor. I had this epiphany and thought, I’m not going to be the governor anymore. I can’t go back to the military, can’t own a bar anymore, can’t be a teacher, can’t be an accountant. One day a bell went off in my head. I bet nobody ever asks an actor if he has a felony conviction. I asked for a copy of Hamlet. I still have it now, stamped on the front ‘Inmate Evans has permission to have in his cell, Hamlet.’

Wow. That’s quite a story. What was the bar called?

The Powder Keg. Very appropriate name.

Is it still open now?

No, it closed when I got arrested.

How long were you in prison for?

I spent 90 days in an alcohol treatment program in a veterans’ hospital and when I came back, my attorney and I met with the prosecutor. I would plead guilty and get a six-year suspended sentence. In this case, the judge didn’t give me the six-year sentence. He gave me 40 years. The prosecutor is up there arguing my case saying we have a plea agreement with this defendant. I’m in handcuffs and shackles, they drag me out. They said ‘Bring the defendant back. I’m going to revise the sentence and give him 40 years plus 6 years suspended.’

No way.

Turns out, the judge ran for office in Silver Bow County three times in the 1940s and early 50s, and all three times, he was beaten by the same guy, Troy Evans, my grandfather. He got his revenge. Many people thought it was a disaster and tragedy in my life. Now I view it as one of the luckiest things that ever happened to me, because if they’d given me that suspended sentence, I might have made it weeks, months, maybe years, but at some point I would have said, I can handle a beer. An interesting thing happened. They have a sentencing board at Montana state prison. It took two years, but they finally looked at my case, and I was released. That was perfect. Just enough time for me to get my head sorted. I went back to university to study acting and the rest is history. Why would the parole officer have that distinct interest in my case? Other than, well, he was my brother. The judge had a personal grudge, and the parole officer was my freaking brother.

That is a fascinating story.

Yeah. If I was to honestly list my profession, it would not be actor. I am a professional storyteller. That is what I’ve done my entire life. I tell stories. When you spend two years in a maximum-security prison in Montana, you get a few stories, man.

I can imagine. I like that term ‘storyteller’ because it can be anything. Do you play music?

In high school, I had a rock’ n’ roll band called Gangrene. We covered bands like the Rolling Stones and the Beatles. The band was quite good. All of them were pretty good musicians, except the guitar player, who was horrible and that was me. At an event, we were playing, they went to the guitar solo, and I’m wailing away on the guitar. The sax player yells at me ‘what are you playing?’ I said, I’m playing what I feel. He said ‘well feel something in B flat mother f**k*r. They were the happiest suckers on the planet when I got drafted.

I’ve heard about a project of yours called The Montana Tales. What exactly is that?

You’ve had a taste of them in this interview. I did it in the first theater job I did in California. I’d been to Vietnam, a mental hospital and prison, so my stories were a little different. One night, I got everyone together and told what became the Montana Tales.

And you go on stage and perform it?

Yeah, I just sit on stage and talk for a couple of hours.

Are you still doing this now?

I haven’t done it for a while. In recent years, I’ve done it for fundraisers.

Save Bosch: Legacy Key Points:

• Sign the petition to Save Bosch: Legacy HERE
• Spread the word by visiting Bosch: Legacy’s official Facebook and Instagram accounts, and tell other fans about the cancelation, and link to the petition.

The Cancelation Of Bosch: Legacy Came As A Surprise To All The Cast And Crew And Evans Explains Why He Thinks It Was Axed

Let’s move onto Bosch: Legacy. When Amazon canceled it, it really frustrated the fans, because it didn’t feel ready to end. The fans were upset that Harry Bosch wasn’t going to get a proper ending. What is your take on it?

About 25 years ago, I had the good fortune of working on a movie with Eli Wallach called Article 99, with Kiefer Sutherland and Ray Liotta. A dark comedy in a veterans’ hospital. Eli Wallach played one of the patients, as did I. Article 99 was early in my career, and I’ve never had a starring career. That’s never happened. Probably a lot of people who really like my work don’t know what my name is.

The character actor

That’s not the kind of actor Eli Wallach was. At some point during the shoot, Eli Wallach turned to me and said ‘Kid, you’re an artist, but you’re an artist in a business. And being an artist in a business is like being a cockroach in an elephant’s ear.’ I know exactly how he would translate that, and how I translate that is ‘I might be along for the ride, but I’m not driving’. And that’s, in my estimation, what happened to Bosch: Legacy. You have a group of young, ambitious, not very creative humans running Amazon, and they have no appreciation for creativity. No understanding of how it even happens.

That’s very interesting. How would you sum up Crate and Barrel’s role in Bosch and Bosch: Legacy?

I’m not coming from a neutral position, but I have a deep appreciation for Crate and Barrel and what they contributed to that story and, in my mind, it’s this: Everybody loves Harry Bosch, but he’s an obsessive human being. And when he’s on a case, that’s it. He’s going to be focused on that case 24 hours a day until he gets that mother f**k*r. Crate and Barrel are two very good detectives who are still enjoying their lives, and they go home at the end of their shift. They did one episode where they showed me watching TV with my dog and having a drink. That’s not what Bosch would do.

Bosch would be taking the case files home. He never stops.

A lot of people think Crate and Barrel were just comic relief. That’s not it. I want to mention Greg Cummins. He’s so good, and he brought so much to that. If I had to narrow it down one moment that I’m really proud of, and I’ve been an actor for 50 years, which isn’t bad. Still going. Do you remember the scene where there was a serial murderer who would pick up male hookers?

Yes, Bosch season 1. Raynard Waits.

There’s an interrogation scene where Greg and I go in, and the killer is in custody. We interrogated him. It’s so easy, and we toss it back and forth, and I remember that was really early in Bosch. Other cast and crew came round to watch us shoot it, and we finished that scene and one of the other actors came over to us and said ‘My God, how long have you guys known each other?’ 15 minutes.

Are you kidding? So you two just had this thing from the start?

From the start.

That chemistry is amazing. I agree, there’s so much more to Crate and Barrel aside from the comic relief, and real Bosch fans recognize that.

We were there a long time and I knew some of those people before Bosch. What’s painful to me is the fact that Crate and Barrel were well liked, and people watched the show in part to see them. And the cops loved Crate and Barrel. Rather than celebrate that and reward it, Amazon was offended by it because that’s not the demographic they want. They wanted young people, so because we were doing a good job, we were the enemy.

Why do you think there was an initial unwillingness by the cast to initially speak out about Bosch: Legacy’s cancelation?

They have their careers to protect. I have the freedom to speak out. I’m 77 years old. If I never work again, that’s ok. I have other things in my life. It’s also clear that if they were going to do the Troy Evans story, they wouldn’t hire me. What am I losing?

That makes more sense.

This sums up Hollywood. I was once at an audition, and they were asking for a Barry Corbin type. A week or so later, I ran into Barry somewhere, and I said, I was in on something the other day you might’ve been able to get. They were looking for a Berry Corbin type. He said ‘Oh Troy, I doubt it. I was at an audition a few weeks ago, and they were asking for a Barry Corbyn type and I went in and worked on it, and did it as well as I could, but when I was done, they said,’Well, we’re very sorry, but what we need is someone who is a little more like you than you are.’ So that’s casting in Hollywood.

Evans Confirms Crate And Barrel’s Appearance In The Ballard Spin-Off And Also Explains What Led To That Controversial F-Bomb Directed At Amazon

In the upcoming Renee Ballard spin-off, the cold case unit is supposed to be full of retired detectives, but that doesn’t appear to be the case based on the actors they’ve cast. Crate and Barrel would be perfect for Ballard’s cold case unit. Are you involved with the Ballard spin-off?

They’ve gone younger. This is hearsay because I haven’t seen any scripts. And I was only on the Ballard set one day. They had us in for one scene. That’s all we had in the Ballard season. There’s a woman who has been an advisor on Bosch this whole time, Mitzi Roberts, who ran the cold case unit for the LAPD until she retired recently. Wonderful person. She was the only LAPD employee in that unit. Everybody else were retired officers working on the one that got away.

The white whale, as Harry Bosch would call it

What I’m told is, they decided to put an interesting twist on it. Instead of retired officers, Renee Ballard has a lot of friends who are younger, and they work on cold cases because that’s the demographic they want. You don’t see that in murder mysteries with a 16-year-old detective. Now that may not be exactly right, but Amazon made it very clear they didn’t want Crate and Barrel. And the reason was, not because we weren’t popular, but because we were. And that stinks.

I speak to a lot of fans, and the consensus is that Crate and Barrel still have so much more to offer.

Producers told me years ago, they never got a letter that didn’t mention Crate and Barrel.

I want to ask you about the comment you made about Amazon in response to their promotion for Bosch: Legacy’s final season being really poor.

It was a two-word response, I believe.

Yes, fans responded to it, and it also started this conversation about Crate and Barrel being pushed aside. It needed someone to speak up about what was happening to the Bosch-verse and tell it how it is.

You can’t fault people for not speaking out. I don’t expect to work anyway. How many jobs are there for a guy almost 80 years old?

I understand people trying to protect their careers, but the Hollywood industry is in crisis mode, especially in Los Angeles with projects moving out of the area. I just felt like someone needed to stand up and say that this whole situation isn’t right.

I go back to Eli Wallach. It’s a business, and that’s the shift that actually happened a long time ago. The guys who started the movie business, by and large, were a**-holes. But they were a**-holes who loved the movies. These guys now, don’t care. It’s just a product. They are tearing down sound stages at Warner Brothers, and they’re building in Las Vegas. You don’t have the labor protection in Las Vegas that you have in LA. They are building in Florida too.

I love television shows and movies set and filmed in Los Angeles. The industry people out of work in L.A. are experiencing a really tough time at the moment. Amazon canceling shows like Bosch: Legacy when it’s still pulling in great viewership and has such a loyal fan base is terrible for the industry.

It’s always been the case that 90% of actors are out of work. When I started out, I thought everybody worked 10% of the time, but that’s not how it works. 10% of people work all the time and 90% never get a job. It’s a grind.

Troy Evans Thinks Amazon Is Stifling Creativity In Hollywood And Has One Final Message For Them

At the end of the original Bosch series, they gave the creative team a proper chance to end the story, then Legacy comes along and the majority of the cast are gone, aside from Harry Bosch, Honey Chandler and Maddie Bosch. Crate and Barrel obviously had reduced guest roles. I’d heard you previously say something about contracts being broken after the end of Bosch?

Yeah. For instance, they got rid of the caterer. They got rid of a lot of people on the crew because, over time, they made a little more money, working on the series for six or seven years. It was a wonderful set, and it worked like clockwork. Everything was so clean. As long as they stay with Bosch, those people have certain protections from the unions. There’s no reason at all that Harry Bosch couldn’t retire, and it would still be Bosch, except now he’s a private detective, right? By making it Legacy, Amazon swept all those people out. When I did go to the Ballard set, I didn’t know anybody there. Once again, Eli Wallach, an artist and a business.

Unfortunately, it feels like it’s a business that kills art, and loyal and hard-working crew members aren’t rewarded.

Loyal for seven years, then Amazon kicked them to the curb to save a few bucks. People on Bosch: Legacy had no idea it was going to be canceled. They thought there was going to be more Legacy and the Connelly world was expanding.

What do you think Amazon is really up to with the Ballard spin-off?

Amazon wants the cold case investigations in Ballard to be done by younger people, and they figure they’ll get new viewers that way. On Bosch and Bosch: Legacy, I took that sh*t personally. I felt like I had an obligation to police detectives to represent them in a respectable way. What it boils down to is this: all the people who are Crate and Barrel fans already have Amazon Prime, so Amazon doesn’t give a sh*t. $100 or whatever comes in every year from two million subscribers. They want to pick up two million more, but younger viewers. They don’t give a sh*t about creativity or the art. If they could make the same money mailing out shark loot bags of mushrooms, that’s what they’d do.

Have you got any final words for Amazon?

Here’s my tribute to Amazon Prime: (Troy gives the V-Sign gesture) F**k Amazon!

Sign The Petition To Save Bosch: Legacy Here