Stars add layers to 'Boomtown'
By Mike Hughes
Gannett News Service
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| Former member of musical group New Kids on the Block Donnie Wahlberg, center, stars as detective Joel Sears on the NBC series "Boomtown." The program shows a crime and its aftermath from the perspectives of different people involved — police, paramedics, witnesses, lawyers — adding the pieces together to form a story.
Gannett News Service 'Boomtown' 9 p.m. Sunday, NBC |
One of those is "Boomtown," which booms onto NBC Sunday. Another is Donnie Wahlberg, one of its stars.
The show views L.A. cops in a fresh way. It shifts viewpoint, seeing the same scenes from different perspectives — that of the police offers, paramedics, members of the district attorney's office, city officials, the media, witnesses and criminals.
"Sometimes, the parts give you a greater sense of the whole," says producer Jon Avnet, who directed the impressive pilot.
Neal McDonough, who plays a deputy district attorney, agrees. "We're gray characters," he says, "not black and white ... These characters (are) layered so well."
That makes them like real people — especially people like Wahlberg.
On one layer, people saw him as a pretty-boy pop star as part of the slickly packaged band New Kids on The Block, which at one point had 140 products licensed to its name, plus a cartoon series.
On another, he was viewed as a troublemaker who pleaded guilty to starting a hotel-room fire.
"We paint people into a certain point," Wahlberg says. "Then we criticize them for it."
In truth, he insists, he used music to beat the odds in a tough Boston neighborhood.
In a way, that fits "Boomtown," which says that people and events can be seen from many views.
Producer-writer Graham Yost says he got the idea while writing a "Band of Brothers" episode:
"Each veteran I spoke to had a different account of the battle ... I thought, 'Wouldn't it be interesting ... if I just told one vet's story and then another vet's story and let the audience put it together?' "
He didn't do that for "Band," but he created "Boomtown" to fit the format.
Wahlberg's character is an unflappable detective at work who is overwhelmed by a shattering problem at home. Other cops have their own surprises.
That reflects reality, Wahlberg says. "Every person has so much more than just what is on the surface, in real life."
At least, he seems to.
"I grew up in a family with nine kids," he says. "We were really poor. And to take time out of surviving every day, to think about being an actor or a musician ... doesn't bode well in a city like Boston."
Still, he says, his family encouraged him. He sang and acted, formed a group at 14 and went to a fledgling performing arts school. The time and place were right.
Maurice Starr, a Boston music producer, had just lost rights to the group New Edition. He announced he would start a new teen-soul group, this time with white kids.
Wahlberg pointed Starr to three of his friends. A fifth teen, Joey McIntyre, was added and the New Kids were born.
In 1989, the New Kids had five top-10 singles, two of them No. 1. In 1991, Forbes magazine listed them collectively as the highest-paid American entertainers, topping Michael Jackson and Madonna.
That was the year he started producing for his younger brother, then billed as the rapper Marky Mark.
"It was liberating to produce," Wahlberg says. "It was a way to prove the critics wrong about me."
His brother would later be known as Mark Wahlberg, the movie star. Donnie became an actor, too.
He kidnapped Mel Gibson's son in "Ransom" and shot Bruce Willis in "Sixth Sense." Then came his "Band of Brothers" role as real-life Lt. C. Carwood Lipton.
