It makes sense that “Coyote” was shot with a multinational cast and crew – as the new drama series starring Michael Chiklis covers life on both sides of the US-Mexico border.
“Half of our writing staff are Mexican and are from South and Central America,” said Chiklis, 57, who plays an ex-US Border Patrol agent on the CBS All Access series. “We wanted people from every angle of this equation to show their perspective so it reflected in our scripts.
“We had a border guard agent who was also our technical advisor [border patrol] people from the Mexican side of the border, ”he says. “It’s a tough line to walk, but I feel like we’ve done it with great success.”
In Thursday’s series premiere, viewers meet tough, devoted and highly respected Ben Clemens (Chiklis), who is boisterous and reluctant to retire after 32 years of work. Divorced, with a teenage daughter, he heads to Mexico to complete the construction of the house that his working partner Javi Lopez (played by Jose Pablo Cantillo) was building on a picturesque beachside cliff before meeting his death.
“This is a good man who has made some terrible mistakes and who is trying to reconcile those mistakes and save his life,” said Chiklis. “He’s trying to change his own epitaph, you know?”
But it’s his trip to Mexico that kick-starts the multi-layered ‘Coyote’ storyline – when Ben tries to help a teenager, Maria Elena Flores (Emy Mena), who is pregnant with a local drug lord and desperate to escape his clutches. . He finds himself caught in a dangerous, life-changing situation that takes place on both sides of the border in a series of unexpected twists and turns.
“This show is about a conversation between Mexico and the US, about a clash of cultures taking place at borders around the world,” said Chiklis, a 2002 Emmy winner for “The Shield.” “It is recognizable to so many people who live in countries where cultures are pushed against each other and have to find a way to co-exist.
“I thought it was a very current and interesting way for a man who has spent his life looking at the world through a certain prism to be literally and figuratively and suddenly on the other side of the wall … and 100 miles to walk in another.mens shoes.
“We completely removed politics to show and represent all points of view without taking a position.”
“It’s an interesting way to take a very topical political issue and make it more human,” he says. “We completely removed politics to show and represent all points of view without taking a point of view… so that people can watch the show and not get so caught up in politics but humanity.
“Whatever happens, the border situation is still very current and will continue to be,” he says. “We wanted to dive deeper into this situation and see where we are going.”
Where “Coyote,” not Chiklis and his fellow executive producers, including Michelle MacLaren (“Breaking Bad”, “Game of Thrones”) and David Graziano (“American Gods”), was the completion of the 10-episode series, which was shot in Baja, Mexico.
“We were in the middle of episode 7 when we were interrupted by COVID,” said Chiklis. “Not without irony: we couldn’t continue when everything went back into production a few months ago, because we couldn’t go to Mexico.
‘If we can keep going, and I hope so, I think [the shutdown] was a blessing in disguise because of everything that happened in 2020, ”he says. “I feel like that’s going to be the way forward in all kinds of stories related to this [border] matter.”