Orleans
Brett was part of the ensemble cast for the 1997 CBS television series “Orleans,” headed by Larry Hagman. Brett’s character was Clade Charbonnet, a New Orleans homicide detective with a habit of bending the rules and a penchant for dangerous women. The series only lasted seven episodes, but Brett considers Clade one of the few characters he would like to play again…
Clade or Claude?
John Sacret Young (executive producer) and Toni Graphia (co-executive producer) had a great deal of input into Clade. Orleans was originally her script and John re-wrote it with her and then they produced it together. The funny thing about Clade was, originally his name was “Claude” (laughs) and there was a typo and it came out Clade and John liked it so they decided it would stay that way. I told them, “I wouldn’t have played him if his name was Claude!” (laughs). My mother had me take French lessons when I was a kid and the French name I was given in class was “Claude” and all the kids would call me “Clod” as in, a clod of dirt, so it’s not a name I like!
Why Clade was drawn to the dark side…
And as far as why I think Clade was drawn to the dark side…for instance, dangerous women…I think that’s just what he was raised with. His mother left, and he stayed with his father, who was a judge, and he was left to his own devices. New Orleans has a real dark side. Just going there as a tourist, you’re going to see it and experience it. It’s part of the world of New Orleans. I grew up in Houston, which isn’t far from New Orleans and I used to go there and hang out a little bit. That was the lure. There was a 21 drinking age in Texas and it was 18 in New Orleans so we’d go there and drink. We were just kids in college trying to have a good old time or trying to get in the jazz clubs or trying to go down to the Mardi Gras. That was sort of the idea, to go down there and it was like the wild, wild west. It was a lawless place. Anything you want, you could get. It was like being in Vegas, but only darker and sweatier.
Clade’s empathy…
I think Clade, since he spent so much time on the streets, has a great deal of empathy for those that can’t defend themselves, in the sense that they don’t have the kind of money to protect the way the rich do. So he has more empathy and he has more relationships with these people who live on the dark side, like hookers, strippers, drug dealers and pimps and all that stuff that you see down there. So that’s who he has relationships with and they become part of his family, just because he deals with them on a day-to-day basis. Sometimes he hates them, sometimes he loves them. That’s what he’s drawn to.
The contacts and the coat…
A lot of it had to do with John’s input and my input…John I’ve worked with several times and he always wants to change the way I look, as I do, and as we sat down to talk about things he wanted, for instance, the coat that I always wore was a John Young thing. He really, really wanted that. A modern day long-rider kind of jacket, where it kind of signifies that this guy is a little different from the other cops, and had his own style. And in trying to find something physically…John has shaved my head, he’s put scars on my face before (for the movie “Keys”), and I stupidly, after a few drinks, said, “What if I had two different colored eyes, kind of like those wolf dogs?” And he said, “No,” but then he thought about it and came back later and said, “Yeah, let’s do that.” To my dismay, (laughs) because you never really see it hardly in the show, unless you get a really good shot of my eyes. It was uncomfortable, because I don’t wear contacts. So I had to put in two different contacts…one was a different color blue and one made my eye brown. And the coat was John’s idea, and then I fell in love with it. As long as it was a flowing coat. I wanted something that moved with me, something that flowed. So that was part of the layering of Clade that I thought made him interesting, and kind of the idea of this lone wolf that this guy is. He was a cop that would bend rules. And part of that was being in New Orleans, too.
Preparing for the role of a cop…
When I was in New Orleans I used to do ride-arounds with the homicide detectives that I knew. I would hang out with them. New Orleans is a world within itself. I mean, people claimed that it was one of the most crooked police forces in the country. And that may be true. I think the starting salary for a police detective then was $23,000 a year. So they had to take second jobs, or they had to find some other way to make a living. If you didn’t live in New Orleans parish, you couldn’t get any kind of promotions. So that was something I took into consideration in terms of why he would bend the rules, because I think they all do.
Being tested to see if he could hack it…
When I was researching the role and would drive around all night with the homicide detectives, I would ask them, “Why are you just driving around? What do you normally do?” And they said, “Normally? We go sit in bars and restaurants, keep our radios on, and as soon as something happens, we’re outta there.” That’s what these guys do. They live on the dark edge, on the dark side. They are great guys. I was very fond of them. They did a very good job, but they also had very sardonic, dark senses of humor because they dealt with death and murder all the time. They showed me pictures of murders to test me to see if I could handle it, and they would say, “What do you think that is?” And I would go, “I don’t know…a fried egg?” And they would say, “That’s someone’s eyeball. What do you think that is?” I’d go, “I don’t know…scrambled eggs?” And they would go, “Those are brains.” You walk into a house and you see somebody’s head blown up against the wall. It’s been splattered on the wall with a shotgun. So, it’s pretty intense.
More on ride-arounds…
I rode around with cops one night and saw a really horrible car accident. It was a block up and they turned and I said, “Hey guys, there’s a really bad car accident over there,” and they said, “Yeah, well, when their heart stops beating they’ll give us a call.” That’s their job. They deal with death. And murder. Their job wasn’t trafficking, or taking care of traffic accidents. But that gives you some insight…I didn’t think badly of them, I thought, “Wow, that’s wild.” It was just sort of a very New Orleans moment for me (laughs).
What the cops are up against…
There was a night where I walked up to one of the police detectives and I knew his shift had come up and he was doing security for us, and I said, “What the hell are you doing?” And he said, “What do you mean?” and I said, “Didn’t your shift start already?” And he said, “Yeah, but you guys are paying me a helluva lot more than the City of New Orleans. I’m gonna stay here until I finish my shift and then go on duty.” So you know, that tells you a little about what those guys are up against.
Digging in deep and accessing difficult emotions…
You have to dig into a really personal side of what you believe and what really matters to you in your life and then apply that to your work. Sometimes it’s scary to expose those dark sides of your personality. I once played a serial rapist, a true story about a serial rapist in Atlanta, and I had to really explore that. I read the police reports, the victims’ descriptions of what happened to them, the confessions‚ and I used to have nightmares where I would be the guy and I’d wake up in a cold sweat and my wife would say, “What’s the matter?” And I would say, “Nothing, honey, I just had a really bad dream,” and I couldn’t sleep the rest of the night because it gets to the point, that dangerous point, where you start to imagine, and it becomes so real to you, that you become that. I mean, the secret is to walk away at the end of the day and go home and be a father and be the husband and be myself. That’s the key to keeping your sanity about you. Occasionally sometimes you get so deep into a role that it just invades your subconscious, and you’ll dream about it like I did and it’s frightening.
An instance from a past series…
So for me to play a character…even Ned Logan had a dark side. You saw that when he almost killed that man when his daughter had been kidnapped. That same man had also stolen money from his family. UPN and some of it’s people were concerned that it was a little too violent, and would be a bit too much to see Ned go off and almost bare-handedly murder a man. His daughter had been taken and it was all about rage. Ned’s a great father, but he’s also a man not to be messed with. That was part of the dark side. I have that in my life. I guarantee you, if someone stole my daughter, that would be the end of their life if I ever got my hands on them. I’d probably go to jail. But that’s how much I love my daughter, and that’s how much I loved Lexy, as Ned.
On how dark roles affect him…
For instance, when I played the serial rapist in Atlanta, it was weird. I would do these scenes with these girls who I was very friendly to, and I would have to grab them or throw them around or smack them, you know, it was all movie making, but after they would “cut” I would pull the mask off them and say, “Are you okay?” And they would say, “Don’t touch me! Stay away from me.” It affected them. I don’t know if they had a personal experience about this or what. It was such a vile idea, this character I was playing. It was so upsetting to me, that the day I wrapped, I walked up this ramp where we were shooting in this Atlanta suburb, in this garage, and sat down on the curb about two blocks from my trailer and cried for an hour. Because I was just sort of expelling all these feelings I had about this character. He was so vile, but I had to try and bring his truth to make the picture work. So yeah, you have to at times, touch on some very dark things I don’t agree with or want to be with.
The key to the dark side… (Referring to the rapist role)
I had to really find the key to play that, to make that real, and in order to do that, I had to sort of go into his head (the rapist), where he was, and why he would do that and enjoy that because obviously he got some sort of enjoyment or had some sort of addiction to that. The fear or the terror that he brought into other people’s lives really turned him on. So you have to go there and that’s sort of scary. So, yes, the dark side…you have to touch on that. Sometimes it’s therapeutical to be able to examine those things in yourself and sometimes it’s painful, but I believe they are all experiences an actor should go through to reach where he needs to get to find the truthfulness to playing the role and the reality in which that character lives in.
Leaving emotions on the set at the end of the day…
Orleans was not as difficult for me as some other shows I’ve done, because I didn’t think of Clade as a dark, unhappy character…in the pilot, he was a man who was torn because he’d fallen in love with a woman who was a hooker. She had been taken advantage of and sexually abused. That was difficult. After a period of years in the business, you hopefully learn how to differentiate between the character’s emotions and your own. A friend of mine once told me, “The secret to acting is knowing when to turn your ego on and off.” Because when you’re performing, your ego is on. I mean, when I’m on the set, I’m there. I’m full blown and completely geared up. I’m sure there are times that all actors have where they can’t let go of a particular scene or a particular moment they’ve played. But, I’ve gotten to the point where I can pretty much leave stuff alone and let it go so I can go home and not be unpleasant to my family or my wife. Because they’re more important to me than this. Unfortunately sometimes you put so much energy out on the set that there are times you go home and you’re so exhausted you don’t even have time for your own family. You just want to go home and go to sleep. Fortunately for me, I’m married to a wonderful actress who understands that and gives me my space.
On film acting…
When you shoot a master, you give the broad strokes in a scene, because you know they’re going to do coverage…they’re going to come in and do close ups and medium shots and over the shoulders and stuff and you try and define the scene slowly but surely through the process. If you look at it like a picture that you look at from a distance and as you get closer and closer the details become that much more clearer. You start with a master and you get closer in and define what each moment is going to be. When you have a wide shot…you’re a little larger and when the camera comes in really tight you have to pull everything in a little bit, physically and emotionally. That’s what film acting is like, in my opinion.
Counting how many times he said “Slimeball” in episode two…
How many times did I say slimeball in that episode? Probably about 10-11. (laughs) **
Keeping his accent and maintaining consistency…
Well, they had a guy come in from Tulane University and go over certain things with us. For instance, the word “street.” Generally, there, you say “shtreet.” Like, if I’m going down “Royal,” like “Royal Family” or “Royal Street,” it’s “Roll.” “I’m going down to Roll Shtreet, we’re having a pahty.” (laughs) And you figure certain things out and then you define them a little bit. You learn to do it much more “throw away.” What happens with a lot of actors, in my opinion, is actors who do their homework, who study the accent and really work on it, even if they can’t do it just in every day conversation, they at least go through the script and phonetically break down their dialogue to the point that they know exactly what it is they want to say and how they want to say it. Not emotionally, but technically.
Whether he thinks he would make a good cop…
Would I make a good cop? Yes. (laughs) I would be like Clade. I would have the tendency to base some very close calls on my judgment, on what I believe, versus, “The rules say this and this is what I have to do.” Like, “Well, you know, I know you have a beer can in the car, it’s not cold, you probably weren’t drinking it, but you can’t have a beer can in the car because it’s against the law. I’m going to let it slide this time, but if I catch you again, you’re going to jail.”
Where the series was going…
Well, there was an episode where my sister walks into a bar and there was a blonde girl singing, this torch singer on the stage, but the idea was that the torch singer would be my sister that was lost. She was kidnapped when she was six and has returned unbeknownst to us. She had a really rough life and what I think John had in mind was that I was going to get really close to her, because of my relationship with the dark side. It would have been a marvelous series. I think that would have been an exciting story line, bringing her in‚Ķand at one point, we talked about either me or my brother end up in bed with her, not knowing she was our lost sister. I mean, that’s really going to the dark side. To find out it’s your sister…
What was shown versus what was scripted…
What was written and what we did were completely different things. There was a scene where Larry was with his girlfriend, and they had obviously spent the night together, and he’s in the kitchen making breakfast, and her mother shows up. And, what they had written was he was wearing an apron, and he was bending over the stove JUST wearing the apron, with his butt sticking up in the air, and she walks in, the mother, with his bare ass right there (laughs). Course, they can’t shoot that, but that’s what was written. I don’t know if America wanted to look at Larry’s backside…
On gambling while in New Orleans…
No, I never gamble! (laughs)
On working with Larry Hagman…
Larry has great capacity as an actor and he’s proven that time and time again. Larry has a lot to offer. And I think this show challenged that. It was a different role for him. He was in a relationship with a younger black woman, all that stuff. I thought he was really good. He brought some really nice stuff to the table.
Bonding with the crew…
On Orleans, the crew really bonded with me and that was a wonderful thing. It made it fun going to work, I knew everybody’s name, and everyone knew me and everyone was having a great time. If you’re going to act, you better take care of them. A lot of actors go to work and say to them, “I’m the star of the show, you better treat me a certain way.” As opposed to going to work and saying, “I’m just part of the ensemble here. And I’m getting paid more money than you guys, probably, but I couldn’t do my job unless you do your job. And I want you to know I appreciate how well you do your job.”
Some final thoughts…
I felt very strongly about that show, I really wish it had gone…It was a really wonderful character that I got to play. I was really happy about that.
** Brett was right. He said the word “slimeball” 10 times in the episode “Why Did the Crawfish Cross the Road?
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