Smoke TV show: John Leguizamo and Anna Chlumsky on normal sociopaths

Anyone would be chuffed to have a job created specifically for them.

For John Leguizamo, the creator was Dennis Lehane, and the job was a role on the writer’s new TV drama, Smoke.

“He’s one of the two great crime novelists in America working today, or in the world maybe, and he said, ‘Look, I wrote this character for you, I saw you in this other show, and I want you to bring all your craziness and insanity’,” Leguizamo told The Nightly.

“Then I read the role of Ezra, and I was offended! He thought I was a loser and I was broken, and then I realised maybe he’s more insightful than I had ever suspected.”

He was joking, of course, having said it with cheeky laugh. Lehane wasn’t making a comment on the actor’s actual personality, but knew Leguizamo could unleash a chaotic energy in Ezra, a washed-up detective who is brought out of retirement.

The character is, Leguizamo described, protectively, “a lovable loser, he’s broke, he’s rock bottom, and now he’s trying to claw his way back up”. Ezra is a character that feels very much part of a Lehane creation.

The writer was best known for his novels, often evoking the thorny textures of his native Massachusetts, with protagonists that would be uncomfortable with being tagged a hero.

Hollywood came calling and some of his best known work on the page became screen sensations. Clint Eastwood made Mystic River into a film starring Sean Penn; fellow Bostonian Ben Affleck picked Gone, Baby, Gone as his directorial debut; and Martin Scorsese recruited Leonardo DiCaprio to star in Shutter Island.

By the early 2000s, Lehane turned his hand to screenwriting, starting with three episodes of The Wire. Since then, he’s written for Boardwalk Empire, The Outsider and Mr Mercedes, and then created Black Bird, a well-received prison drama starring Taron Egerton.

The partnership obviously worked because Lehane has teamed up again with Egerton on Smoke, which was based on podcast Firebug, and not to be confused with another Egerton series, the 2014 British drama, The Smoke.

Egerton and Jurnee Smollett lead an ensemble cast that includes Leguizamo, Anna Chlumsky, Greg Kinnear, Rafe Spall, Ntare Mwine and Adina Porter, in a story about investigators trying to uncover and stop two serial arsonists terrorising a small city in the American Pacific Northwest.

The fires in the show were real, not visual effects, because Lehane insisted on authenticity. It was all very safe, of course, but the heat from one stunt involving a lit-up trailer was so intense, Leguizamo said he really didn’t want to have to go back in for a third take.

It’s a moody and involving series that offers more than your typical crime mystery, revealing early on to the audience (but not the onscreen characters) the culprits. It’s a how-to-catch-em as well as a whodunit.

“It’s great the way Dennis gets into the mind of a pathological liar, a sociopath, and he makes (them) accessible,” Leguizamo said. “We’re getting into (their) mind and how (they) think, and that’s what I think makes the show so fascinating, is how he populates this world while he’s studying a pathology.

“You always thought that these arsonists or these sociopaths are such strong, tough, scary-looking people, and they’re not. They’re like the real guy that (Smoke) is loosely based on – very meek, looked like your neighbour, very soft.”

The show is trying to bust the “monster” or “evil” myth that gets attached to criminals whose actions and psychology we sometimes refuse to acknowledge as being part of the human experience. They’re not other, they’re us.

Veep and My Girl actor Anna Chlumsky, who plays Dawn, a federal Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms investigator who becomes Ezra’s de facto partner, said that these criminals are not superhuman or untouchable.

“As if we can’t get into their psychology, like they’re just a vault or whatever,” she said. “It’s got to be BS, right? Something has got to make this person tick. This is somebody who is actually committing these things.

“We’re uncomfortable with confronting it because the line is so fragile between what’s going to make somebody take an action that is reprehensible or not take that action. Throughout our series, there are many turning points.”

Leguizamo suggested there was a Hitchcockian tenor to Smoke, referencing the legendary director’s tendency to place spectactors in the perspective of the bad guy, making audiences almost complicit in their choices and, eventually, their panic.

Lehane too knows exactly how to make the world feel smaller and smaller for his culprits, as the metaphorical noose tightens around them.

“He goes on a ride,” Chlumsky said. “Dennis goes on a ride with his characters and we can all trust him to go on the ride with him.”

Added Leguizamo, “This was so well crafted. There’s not a wasted word or a wasted moment. Everything has a purpose and an intention that specifically chosen to tantalise and titillate, and get you to watch for (what’s) next.”

Smoke is streaming on Apple TV+