"WOMAN:" "A mark." "MAN:" "A mark." "(IMITATING BLOWS STRIKING)" "Where's your face at?" "Right here, on the left." "Just keep it on that side." "Try it with your left now." "See?" "I'm thinking maybe what you do, is you're doing this, this, he says the line, and you come across, boom, and now you see him..." "Sail in, then down, and you go after him." "Absolutely." "Got one of my best friends, Mr. Clayne Crawford, to come in and play Quinn." "So we get to beat up on each other today." "Not unlike a couple... (LAUGHING)" "Not unlike our lives, I guess." "(LAUGHING) Yeah, exactly." "And we're actually getting paid for it." "But it's a four-part fight, and the first part, is really just me being caught off surprise." "You know, Eliot doesn't get hit a lot, so all of a sudden he's got somebody who's got a..." "An adversary in front of him." "It's not what he expects." "I go down, and then there's a rib kick that will spin us into a cut scene." "(GROANS)" "Now that rib's broken." "For the next, we'll pick it up on part two, which will be, um..." "Which will be..." "Here, boom, boom, boom." "Boom, boom, boom." "I'll come back and block, and then swing." "This is actually the second part of the second series, where I..." "That's this, this, right?" "Yeah, right, that's it." "Yeah." "That's down." "Boom!" "I'm stunned here." "This will be the actual knockout of the fight." "And he'll come in, and I'm stunned, One up." "go boom, crack, smash, spin him this way, and then it's just a tooth." "But it's a little bit kind of a TV chill, actually." "I like that." "And it's a little bit kind of disappointment." "Yeah, like..." "I don't know." ""Hey, Zac, I was hoping for a good fight."" "Yeah." "So this isn't Eliot Spencer!" "All right." "And that just kills you." "(LAUGHING) Yeah." "It's better..." "Sometimes you don't have time, if it's shot in a one, to go through the whole fight." "It's just straight through." "It's very tiring." "A lot of times, you know, that's when a lot of people get hurt, so it's better to break it up and to do segments of it." "And it's really just a dance." "I mean, like for this thing right here, you can actually count it." "So, for the second part of the scene, it's just, one, One... (IMITATING BODY BLOWS) two, three, four." "Regroup and come back." "One, two, three, four." "So you just kind of get into a dance." "It's just a little dance," "I actually like to count in my head sometimes." "(GRUNTING)" "(GROANING)" "And that's basically it." "It's easy when you got your buddy on the set and you can work with him, and he's a damn good fighter, so..." "You heard me, boy." "Come on." "We're done!" "That's lunch, guys!" "Lunch, one half!" "Stands are over here..." "Hi." "My name is Dean Devlin." "I'm really excited about a new TV series I'm doing for TNT called Leverage." "So come with me, and let me give you a look behind the scenes." "MAN:" "Fix this up!" "MAN 1: (OVER RADIO) Okay, we're hot." "MAN 2:" "Sound stage!" "MAN 3:" "Roll!" "WOMAN:" "D mark!" "MAN 3:" "And three, two, one, go!" "(PEOPLE EXCLAIMING)" "Very good." "Very, very good." "All right, everybody!" "(ALL CHEERING)" "Great job." "Great job." "This is a group of thieves who have worked their whole lives alone." "They've never worked in a group, and they've been antisocial to begin with." "Nate, in essence, is the glue that holds them together." "The character I play, Nate, is not a thief, but he's quite a good profiler of thieves, and that's what he did for years when he worked for an insurance company." "Hey!" "Hey, you!" "Where's the Pacific..." "The cruise, the parking for the cruise?" "He knew every possible scam that people would try to do to collect money off of insurance claims." "Leverage was kind of a weird intersection of influences." "Chris Downey and I had been talking about the fact that no one was really doing heist or con shows the way we thought they were attractive." "You know, we were talking about how there was just no kind of fun con show on TV like there was back in the '70s, and we wanted to do more of a return to that." "You watch these shows for the candy." "You watch it so at the end of it, you go, "Oh!" "That's the magic trick."" "When John was presented with this opportunity from Dean Devlin, we just jumped at it." "We said, "This is something we've been wanting to do for a long time."" "So it all kind of came together." "Well, I have a phenomenal team on this show." "John Rogers is my favorite writer on the planet." "And the fact that he's running this show and running that writers' room, it's a gift." "The pitch was basically..." "It was like The A-Team." "People were saying, Ocean's Eleven, Ocean's Twelve, stuff like that," "I really think it's a modern-day A-Team, to be honest with you." "It was essentially reformed cons and thieves who, because of the leadership of one man, decide to use their skills for good." "And the interesting thing about it is, they're not all really reformed." "And so, in the pilot, you see them come together on one single job, just one job, and it's a walkaway." "It all goes wrong." "It wouldn't be fun if they set up this great plan in the beginning and then everything goes perfectly." "Tim Hutton, Nate, is the one who bands them back together for vengeance, and when they work together, they realize, this is the most fun they've ever had." "And since they're all really adrenaline junkies anyway, they decide to work together, but they have to follow Nate's one rule, which is, "This time, we go after the bad guys."" "You know, we start with great scripts every single week." "And that's really a blessing." "Usually on a show, you get a couple of good scripts and the rest, you got to beat up and beat up until you get something worth shooting." "Every week we're handed another gem, so we start with something great." "The great thing about it is that there haven't been these kind of bad guys on TV, so it's kind of like..." "There's a lot of stuff out there that hasn't been mined." "These kind of CEOs, and these corrupt corporate types, and, you know, every day, we'll email something to each other." "And so, you know, we're always kind of looking for these things and trying to put our own sort of spin on it." "Nearly all the cons that are presented in the show are based on actual cons." "And we have these marvelous people who are working with us, led by Apollo Robbins, who's opened up this encyclopedia of cons and heists." "Growing up, my two half-brothers were involved in crimes." "They were thieves." "And my dad was a minister." "So I grew up in that dichotomy, and it made me an honest thief." "We knew that on, say, a cop show, they typically have an ex-cop as a technical consultant." "On a medical show, they'll have a doctor." "So I suggested, "Why don't we get this guy Apollo Robbins" ""as our pickpocket consultant?"" "I work as a professional thief." "I do it honestly, for the good of people." "In hacking, they call it "black hats" and "white hats."" "I wear a white hat." "But I keep my foot in the black as well, so I get the latest information, the current trends going on with cons and fraud." "A lot of this is with identity theft nowadays." "But my fascination is with the classic long cons, which is what we're doing on the show." "Apollo Robbins is a walking encyclopedia of crime, and he knows the long history of what cons were used where, what techniques are used to distract you." "I worked with Apollo Robbins on the set, learning some techniques, or sleight of hand, and pickpocket and, you know, ways to divert people's attention to accomplish other things, and, yeah, it's been great working with him." "We've all worked with him." "Apollo, meeting him was a lot of fun." "He actually showed us a few things here and there." "Came in on, you know, an episode where we were playing cards, and showed us some card tricks." "Apollo Robbins?" "Um, I don't know who you're talking about." "I like to call him The People Whisperer... (LAUGHING) He's a man of mystery." "...because he has so studied human behavior." "He's amazing." "He's the real deal." "He knows that world, you know, inside, forwards, backwards..." "He's a master at misdirection." "Apollo is legit, so you don't have to be afraid." "He's a good people." "The other day, he was in a room, and he had..." "He wrote something on a card, and he walked up to this man and he took his glasses down, like this, and he walked closer and closer and closer, and the man went like this." "And Apollo said, turn the card over." "And the card said, "I'm going to make you cross your arms."" "And it's that kind of understanding psychology and human behavior allows him to make you look here when he's doing something over here." "And that's something he's brought to the set, and all the actors have learned how to do it." "A sleight-of-hand artist is..." "They used to call it prestidigitation, the art of specific manipulation with the hands." "My fascination is not with the magic you'd see on TV, with illusionists, per se, but the classic sleight of hand used by thieves that was passed from generation to generation." "Who could really pull off a scam out of all of us?" "Me!" "Pretty much me." "Yeah." "I work with, primarily, three people." "Parker is my first, 'cause I develop a lot of the scenes and she does them herself." "For Timothy, or Nate's character," "I'll come in and do the hands sometimes, to add a certain flourish to his style." "And then, also working with Sophie, as a character, and helping her add a little bit of con element to what she does." "And all of them have picked it up very well." "One of the things that was very surprising is that when Apollo Robbins started training Beth Riesgraf, who plays Parker, was that she had a natural ability for it." "In fact, if the show doesn't go well, she may have a new career, 'cause she can pick your pocket and you don't even know it!" "(LAUGHING)" "I steal everything all the time." "Check your back pocket." "But she's a very good girl." "She doesn't steal from anyone." "(LAUGHING) Yet!" "Let's see how the ratings go." "There's an old saying that it takes a thief to catch a thief." "So I've been spending time going into prisons recruiting ex-thieves, who are nonviolent, but they're grifters, but they have an insight into the psychology and the techniques that are used, 'cause I have limited knowledge in certain areas." "But, with their backgrounds, I get to learn a little bit from a wide range." "So I'm kind of a jack of all trades with diversion, fraud and theft." "When we were casting the show, we really wanted to make sure that we had characters that were from very disparate backgrounds, including from around the world, and that these were people who were world travelers." "Tim Hutton plays Nathan Ford, who's a man who lived his entire life by the straight and narrow." "Nathan Ford, the part I play, who is the former insurance investigator who has now gone to the other side and become somewhat of a thief, con artist, himself in order to help those who can't be helped in other ways." "One day, he was called to lead a group of thieves on a mission." "And suddenly, he thought, he can take these bad people, and use them for good." "Yeah, he's always got something in his head." "He's always got something, you know, cooking, in case something goes wrong, and things go wrong quite often." "There is Parker, who has no other name than Parker, who is probably the world's best thief." "Parker is a really interesting woman." "She had a pretty tough upbringing, pretty tough life." "Unfortunately, she's also a bit crazy, and she has a very mild case of Aspergers and really doesn't understand how other people react to things in the world." "Through it all, she's sort of found the best way that she knew how to survive, you know, came easier when she was stealing and able to get herself in and out of situations easily and quickly." "She's the girl you want to hug desperately, but you're a little frightened she might put a knife in your back while you're doing it." "And then, there is Eliot, played by Christian Kane, and he's, in essence, the muscle of the group." "I play Eliot Spencer and it's a little bit of a mystery to what his background is." "It's definitely military." "He's been a retrieval specialist, so he's been sent all around the world to bring back dangerous items and risk his neck doing so." "What I did was I just made him mad at the world." "(LAUGHING) So he's always upset, until he gets in a fight." "And it's just, you know..." "Then that's when he's actually calm." "So he's always..." "You know, he's got the wisecracks, he really can't stand the people that he's around sometimes, and, you know, everything kind of bugs him." "In a strange way, he's the most grounded of the group, because he's been very clear on what he's done in his whole life, but he's also been a loner, as has everybody on this team." "Nate Ford, played by Timothy Hutton, if he's the..." "If he's the gun, if he's the trigger, then I'm the bullet." "And that brings us to Alec Hardison, who is our resident hacker, computer genius and sci-fi nerd." "But not in the 1980s pocket protector way, with the Band-Aids on the glasses." "He's the image of the modern-day geek, which means he's gonna rule the world soon." "Alec Hardison is the tech specialist." "He knows everything about computers." "He's a big super-geek, but he's still a cool dude." "But this is something he's been doing all his life, just, you know, cracking into places, just to see if he can get in." "You know, it's what he does for fun, and now he's turned it into a life career." "You know, he's a career criminal." "He's played with such style that I think it's going to redefine the way you think of the computer hacker in the future." "It's all about the hands." "See, the face tricks you." "I pull you in with the face." "Only a mother could love this face." "Hi!" "How you doin'?" "But the hands are doin' the work." "Then there's Sophie Devereaux, played by Gina Bellman." "And she is a grifter, in the grand tradition of the grifter." "Sophie Devereaux is an enigma." "And I was informed by one of our writers the other day that we don't even know if that's her name, and it might be revealed in a later episode that that's not even her name." "She can be a thousand different people, with a thousand different voices." "And even to this team, who has become very close to her, they're never really quite sure who she really is or where she really came from." "She's a great mouthpiece." "She can put on any characterization, which obviously is a gift for an actor." "She can play a nun, she can play a banker, she can play a pilot." "Gina is amazing with her dialects, you know." "I mean, they throw so many at her, and she just tackles them like nobody's business." "But her secret ambition is to be a theatrical actress." "And what's really kooky about her is that she bombs on stage." "I mean, she's just awful, she falls flat on her face." "What Nate, Tim's character, realizes about Sophie is that she can give a perfect performance if she's breaking the law." "I think the ongoing conflict of the show is," ""Can this group stay together?"" "You never know if they're gonna stick together as a group from show to show, week to week, so that's kind of great to come back and see, see how they're all getting along and how they're each contributing to the plan." "Make no mistake about it, these people have big hearts, you know, but they also..." "They're thieves." "It's about the money." "It's about, "What can we get for ourselves?"" "And we found out, you know, along the way, helping people feels pretty good, too." "I think people are gonna really take notice of what we did on this one, and we're very proud of it." "We hope that, for an hour, we get to transport you into some place that's a little more fun, that's a little bit more adventurous." "MAN:" "Action!" "And just let you escape what's going on in the world and vanish off into the fantasy world of Leverage." "Very often when you're into additional seasons on a TV series, actors will want to participate in the writing process, to, you know, further develop their characters." "So we like to do a thing we call the Idea Day, and have the actors come by." "And they usually contribute something positive to the show." "And, um..." "And then there's Beth." "I'd just like to say that I saw the YouTube video that you guys did, and I'm actually pretty pissed off about it." "These people frighten me." "They had lots of black suits and they had lots of papers for us to sign." "Zombie-alien babies?" "I mean, who exactly is supposed to have that baby?" "Me, right?" "I mean, I'm thinking it's me." "I mean, have you seen the size of E.T.'s head?" "MAN:" "It's a big head." "This is not gonna come out of my (BLEEP)." "I don't even like the idea of it coming out of Parker." "I can assure you that now we don't, either." "There's a lot of talk about Eliot doing all the fight scenes, but I'm training every single day." "So I got Beth doing lots of different training." "You know, lots of different leg sweeps, laser beams." "To not use me, I just feel like it's not fair." "Basically, I'm just training a killing machine." "Hey, you!" "Yeah." "Come here." "Come in here." "I want you to come at me." "No, no, no." "Back up." "Like you're a bear." "You're angry, you're mad at me, and you wanna attack." "(GROWLING) Laser beam!" "(GROANS)" "I think that's the Make-A-Wish kid." "This is a release." "If you could just sign that for Ms. Riesgraf." "Thank you." "So this is my idea." "So Parker starts to morph, and all of a sudden she's combined with one of the most deadly animals on the whole planet, and it's a shark." "Parker turns into a shark, and she grows a fin." "Parker becomes Sharker." "(EXCLAIMS) You got it!" "That's what I came up with." "That was her idea." "I thought it could be Sharker." "That was her idea." "I don't know if it'd be the same with a half-Beth, half-shark saving a bunch of orphans from Serbia." "Ready?" "WOMAN:" "Just look up or something." "MAN:" "Just describe it to me." "MAN 2:" "Sharker." "Sharker." "Sharker." "RIESGRAF:" "Sharker?" "(RHYTHMICALLY) We are Sharker." "We are Sharker." "Yeah!" "Shark." "Fin." "Sharker!" "Parker, as a weapon, has a branding iron, like a calling card." "She stamps them and brands them, and then she has..." "How does the device work?" "It just stays hot constantly, because her inner temperature is like the temperature of the middle of Mars." "Couldn't it be like a curling iron?" "No." "That's..." "It's way hotter than that." "And you, by the way, please stop making (BLEEP) eye contact with me." "Dean, I talked to you about this." "It's like a weird thing, you guys." "He does it to me when you're not around, and it's not even like it's a thing I'm making up." "Well, you know, Beth is very upset because she believes that Chris had behaved badly towards her on the set of the show." "You realize Chris was actually never on set during the entire season, right?" "I can't work like this anymore, Dean." "If he's gonna be on the show, then something has to change." "DEVLIN:" "I don't even know him." "We've asked Chris to change his name." "I'm gonna..." "Say it." "Just..." "It just makes our lives a lot easier if you just say it." "(SIGHS)" ""I am very and sincerely sorry for anything I may have done or said" ""that could have implied less than a complete respect for Ms. Riesgraf..."" "Okay!" "Just..." ""I was so concerned about my behavior" ""that I fell and bumped my head" ""in a completely accidental way..." We all saw it." "We all saw it was an accident." "I'm gonna get the pencil behind your ear and shove it down your throat!" "Yeah, I have the best relationship with my writers." "I'm so lucky because they really take me" "(SIGHS) and my ideas to heart." "You know, we haven't really gotten a lot of work done, and having the actors come in It's great." "pretty much everyday has just really helped us, really..." "These long meetings have moved things along." "Yeah." "Yeah." "I am so excited for the second season of Leverage, with all my ideas!" "I've been dreaming about this for a really long time." "Just can't believe it's happening." "Season Two." "Leverage." "Yay!" "MAN:" "Has anybody ever said that maybe you're a prima donna?" "No." "No, no, I would never have typed that." "No, no, it says right here, "Take 10 pills every two hours."" "(GROANING)" "I see..." "I see the light." "I see a tunnel of light." "MAN:" "Can you describe the pills?" "You know, you are so sweet, I'm going to write your name down right here on the pad next to my bed." "No, don't write my name down." "You are just my angel of mercy, darling." "How are you?" "(PEOPLE CHATTERING)" "MAN:" "This is very natural." "It's like we're sitting in 3-D." "Mike..." "Gina, can you hear me?" "Yes, I got it all from here." "Christian, can you hear me?" "Yeah, I'm here, man." "I see you." "And can you guys see this laptop in front of me?" "Is this not the height of geekiness?" "(ALL LAUGHING)" "Before we start, I just wanted to say, you know, that our show, is about deception." "And so, so is this today." "Okay." "I wanted to bring everybody here, because there's something you all needed to hear." "I want you to hear it at the same time." "So, ladies and gentlemen, may I present to you," "Michael Wright." "(ALL EXCLAIMING)" "What's up, Wright?" "Hello, cast of Leverage." "Hey!" "What's up?" "What's up, Tim?" "It's Michael Wright." "I'm not a reporter, and I'm calling all of you to say that you've been renewed for a second series." "I know that was rude, dragging you all down at 8:45 in the morning." "What great news." "We get to all come back and tell these wonderful stories and start a whole new adventure with a second season." "It's just great news. will freaking love this show." "Every bit of it." "Thank you." "Thank you!" "Thank you, man!" "Thank you, Michael Wright!" "(WHOOPING)" "Thank you, Michael." "Fifteen?" "RIESGRAF:" "Yeah!" "Love you, too." "Yeah, party!" "I love you guys, man." "We love you, too, Christian." "When I was in Oklahoma and I used to sit on my bed and pray to God that this would happen to me, this is exactly the role that I was craving for, and I get to play it now, and with my best friends." "HODGE:" "Hell, yeah!" "Good." "Where's Gina?" "KANE:" "There she is!" "Sorry, I was talking to Steve." "(LAUGHING)" "DEVLIN:" "And Friday we got the news." "Really?" "And that's when I decided to do this." "'Cause I didn't want to call you guys separately." "I wanted to somehow get us together, 'cause, you know, we've done this together, and I wanted us to hear it all together." "This is my mom." "Would you mind telling her the bad news?" "Are you there?" "This is Dean." "Yes, I just wanted you to know that, you know, it was a great run, we had a lot of fun, and it's going to be, you know, a lot of fun to do the next 15," "'cause we've just been picked up, and it's official, and we start on April 13th, and we're going to shoot till September, baby!" "(LAUGHING) Is she screaming?" "Yeah. 15 episodes." "Try it." "C mark!" "MAN:" "Here we go." "MAN:" "Do you have your set, Terry?" "MAN:" "Down to the left." "Down to the left." "CAMERA OPERATOR:" "Okay, I'll come down." "(ALL CLAPPING)" "MAN: ...out of here, so let's just make sure..." "No." "We're gonna have some reflection, probably." "Perfect." "Ready?" "MAN:" "Cut!"