Michael Chiklis Dives into Disco Era’s Dark Side in “Hotel Cocaine”

[Editor’s note: The following contains some spoilers for Hotel Cocaine.]

From showrunner Chris Brancato, the MGM+ original series Hotel Cocaine tells the story of real-life Cuban exile Roman Compte (Danny Pino), the general manager of the Mutiny Hotel, where you could find Florida businessmen and politicians, international drug traffickers, CIA and FBI agents, and the rich and beautiful in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. At the center of the cocaine scene, Compte is the eyes and ears for DEA Agent Zulio (Michael Chiklis), reporting on his ruthless brother (Yul Vazquez) while trying to define his loyalty to his family.

During a 1-on-1 interview, Chiklis talked about why he found Hotel Cocaine so appealing, what makes this character different from other cops he’s played, the very specific mustache and hat, how The Shield helped him reinvent his career, his desire to team up with Walton Goggins again on a project, his excitement for audiences to see his upcoming feel-good movie The Senior, why he wants to do more directing, and how he has no plans to ever stop acting.

We last spoke for Winning Time, and this is another very interesting character.

CHIKLIS: Yeah, I thought it was a fun world. The late seventies in Miami was just a wild time. It’s just cool. I wanted to work with Chris Brancato. The difference between this and Narcos is that Narcos really deals completely with the darker aspects of the whole drug trade. I found it really interesting, the juxtaposition of the hedonistic veneer of the disco era of fun, glitz, and glamour, along with what was going on behind the scenes and the darkness behind it. I just thought it was a really interesting world that gave us places to go and interesting things to do.

Because you never really know how a TV series will evolve over episodes or over seasons, does it help when you know someone like Chris Brancato is behind it? Does that at least give you something to put your trust in?

CHIKLIS: Yes, and that’s the reason why I ultimately signed on. I was reluctant to sign onto this, not the least of which was the reason that I’ve played a number of cops in my career and, though I would be stupid enough to just blanket preclude myself from playing cops since that’s 80% of what’s made my career, I’d like to think that I’m discerning about these things. It really comes down to what’s the world, who’s in it, and who’s making it, especially the latter. And when you have a showrunner like Chris, it was meeting with him and my conversation with him, discussing where it would go and the way my character would evolve and add to it, that made me jump in. I had the experience of working with Danny Pino on The Shield, and he was a champion and terrific, at the time. I’ve always liked Danny. He’s a wonderful actor. So, it gave me a level of comfort.

When we went down there, the writers were on strike for the first four episodes, so that made it a little difficult and fraught because we really couldn’t affect any changes, which is always part of the process of making a television show, or anything. We get on set and things change and evolve, so having the writers there is a big deal. Obviously, when we came back to finish the season and shoot the last four, it was quite a difference to have us all together. Although I will say the whole experience of being in the Dominican Republic banded us together. We were out of the country and isolated. We were all staying in the same building together, and it was almost like sleepaway camp. We had dinners together every night. There was nowhere else to go, so we were all together.

This character has a very specific mustache. How much does that, in addition to wardrobe and even shoes, help you get a feel for the character?

CHIKLIS: I’m not Dominic Zulio until I have that mustache. There’s character work in any show that you do. Usually, I work from the inside out, but that doesn’t diminish what wardrobe and hair and makeup do. In all honesty, when I spoke to this DEA officer who was there during that period, when he came up on the Zoom, he had this big honkin’ mustache. I said, “Wow, that’s a strong move.” And he goes, “Oh, yeah, we all wear these. In the seventies, none of us didn’t have one.” And I thought, “Well, there’s a mandate.” So, after having a long conversation with him about the actual nuts and bolts of procedures and what that period was like, I hung up the phone and called the makeup department and hair department immediately and said, “Hey, I need a mustache.” I can certainly grow a big mustache, but not that thick and honkin’ in a few days. So, I think they did a terrific job.

Did you also choose the hat that you wear?

CHIKLIS: Yeah, it speaks to his character. We did a whole backstory for him, where he was born in Brooklyn, and his parents were snowbirds that came down and stayed. He grew up in Miami in a quieter time. He’s from an Italian family from Brooklyn. The pork pie hat is a bit of a holdover from his family and that feeling. It’s just more character stuff, for sure.

Is it fun to be the type of character, like this guy, who just looms over everything and is a threat just by being there?

CHIKLIS: Yeah, and I knew that would be my role in this, at least to start with. The way I see it is that I’m the rock, and Danny is caught between me and Yul Vasquez’s hard place. Between the two of us, we’re the rock and the hard place. Sometimes it’s fun to be adversarial. It makes for some fun stuff, dramatically, and I get tapped for doing that quite often. I wonder why. It’s funny, I’m really not an adversarial type of person in my life, at all. Maybe I just look that way.

When you got the role in The Shield, was that a direction that you ever saw your career headed, or did that type of role come as a complete surprise to you?

CHIKLIS: It was very deliberate. You’ve probably heard things like manifestation and how, when you put something out there, you can make it happen. I really believe that. You can call it kismet or fate or luck, or whatever you wanna call it. This is pretty well-documented, but I was very frustrated at that time in my career. I was being pigeonholed in very easygoing, affable, serial comic roles, and I really wanted desperately to do something hard-hitting and grown-up, but that also had nuance and great detail and was real A-list, in terms of the material. My wife said something brilliant. She said, “It’s not incumbent upon the studios to reinvent you. It’s incumbent upon you to reinvent yourself.” So, I started by getting myself really, really fit and developing a film, called Franco, that was basically who Zulio is to me. He was a gold shield detective that she happened to know in Miami during the same period, when she was growing up in Miami, who had all these commendations for bravery in the field. At the same time, he had the most lawsuits pending against him for police brutality.

While we were working on that screenplay together, I happened to meet Shawn Ryan through my wife’s friend, Cathy Ryan, who is married to Shawn. They grew up together, my wife and she, and he had me read The Shield. I was like, “This is better than I ever could have put Franco together, and this is exactly the kind of thing that I’m looking to do.” So, it sort of appeared. What we were manifesting, there it was. I will say this about Hotel Cocaine, though it’s another cop, he’s a very different person than Vic Mackey. There’s crossover with any cop you’re gonna play because you’re dealing with crime and punishment and law enforcement. I’d like to think that I make distinct choices and look at all these characters as very, very different people and from a different time period entirely, in a different place.

Looking at The Shield now, all these years later, it’s easy to see what an insanely talented cast it had, and there was this great lineup of writers and directors. It’s been so fun to watch your career since then. What do you think of the success of Walton Goggins? Does it feel at least a little bit satisfying that The Shield had him first, or at least very early on?

CHIKLIS: Of course, it does. If you look on my Twitter feed, you’ll see that I unequivocally get very emotional. We talk a lot. Every week, I speak to Walt. We became best friends during that process. I love him and he’s my brother. When you see someone who you know is that good and has blown up in the way that he has, it’s fantastic. I’m really looking forward to us throwing it down again together. It won’t be in a Shield context, but we’ll do something together again and, man, that’ll be something. I look forward to it.

Personally, I would love to see you two do a comedy together.

CHIKLIS: We’ve actually talked about that a little bit. I would love to do a comedy with Walt. That would be so much fun. Honestly, I could watch Goggins in front of color bars. That guy is just tremendous. We have phenomenal chemistry together, and did from the beginning, from the day we met. That hasn’t changed, at all. So, yeah, I definitely look forward to that.

Do you know what’s next for you?

CHIKLIS: I’ve got a bunch of stuff coming up that I’m very excited about. I’ve got a movie, called The Senior, that we’re still waiting on distribution for, but it’s happening. The distribution deal is being finalized, so I’m thrilled that it’s actually gonna be in theaters, which is insane because nothing gets out in theaters these days. It speaks to the quality of the picture. Rod Lurie is a wonderful director and the cast is tremendous. It’s just a really big-hearted, feel-good movie, which is something that we really need right now. In terms of tone and tenor, it’s a redemption tale and an underdog story. I don’t know if you ever saw the movie Rudy, but it’s very much in keeping with that kind of feel. I played the oldest football player in the history of college football, a 59-year-old guy. It’s the true story of this guy named Mike Flynt, who, through an extraordinary set of circumstances, after being thrown out of college for senior year, right before his senior year football season, ended up trying out for the team and making it. I really look forward to that. I’m also putting together some other stuff that I’m really excited about. It’s a busy time. There’s a lot going on that I’m very excited about.

You’ve directed a few episodes of The Shield, you directed episodes of Vegas and Accused, but you haven’t directed a movie. Is that something you have any interest in doing? What have you learned about directing, and about yourself as a director, from actually doing it?

CHIKLIS: I love this question and thank you for asking it. Yes, my directorial debut as a feature director is absolutely coming, probably sooner than you think. That’s the tease I’ll give you. That’s the most I’ll give you at the moment. It’s probably much sooner than you’d anticipate. I’m really, really excited. I’ve got some things happening. I’ve spent a good deal of my life as an actor, living on sets and telling stories. And before that, as a theater actor, professionally since I was 14 years old. I’ve been standing in front of audiences and telling stories since I was a kid, and I’ve also been listening and learning and living and going throughout the world, raising my children, and my wife and I traveling and living our lives. I feel like, where I am right now, I’m really ready to control the narrative and be the storyteller, and I have some things to say.

I’m 60. Unless you’re completely asleep, you pick up a thing or two in those years, and I haven’t been sleeping. My eyes are wide open. So, there’s a number of things that I wanna cover and there’s a lot I wanna do, as a director. That is a very, very big piece of my career moving forward. I will never stop acting. That’s my first love and something that I’ll always do. I have a lot left in my tank in that area, as well. I feel very untapped, strangely enough, as an actor. There are a lot of things that I’m able to do, but just because of the nature of this business, you don’t get the opportunity to do a lot of things that you know you can crush, like a comedy with Walton Goggins, for example. But every minute is a new minute, like my father used to say, which is an innately hopeful expression.

I have a number of things in different stages of development that I can’t wait to let you and other people know about and see. There’s a lot in front of me. It’s interesting, I feel like the best years of my career are in front of me, which I love. Some people, maybe at my age, are feeling like they’ve hit their heights and that’s the end of it, or they’re waning. I don’t feel that way, at all. I feel like there’s a ton of stuff in front of me. Maybe something’s wrong with me. I’m as passionate and into this as I’ve ever been. I’m like, “Shouldn’t I be over it?” I see a lot of peers that are over it, but I’m not. I love everything about it. I love making films and television and doing theater. I love going to work. I love the camaraderie of it and the process of making film and television and theater and music. I just think it’s exciting and creative and new and different and challenging, in every situation. It just continues to feed me. As long as I feel like that, I’ll keep doing it.

Hotel Cocaine is available to stream on MGM+. Check out the trailer:

Watch on MGM+

Source: Collider