Walker’s Coby Bell Previews What’s Ahead for Captain James
The mysteries on Walker are getting more intense. In last week’s cliffhanger, Captain James (Coby Bell) and Liam Walker (Keegan Allen) discovered that Geri (Odette Annable) may have been more involved in Emily Walker’s death than anyone thought. This week Liam and Captain James are on their way to Mexico to investigate more, so Coby Bell took some time to preview the episode for us, as well as chatting about the series in general.
First off, we had to ask Bell if we’d be seeing more of the buddy comedy dynamic between Liam and the Captain that we enjoyed last week? “There’s definitely some buddy cop stuff going on,” Bell told us. “I think the writers did a good job of establishing that sort of rapport in episode six. And then, yeah, it continues into episode seven, for sure.”
The trip to Mexico was filmed, like the rest of the series, in Austin, Texas, but just because the crew didn’t head to the neighboring country, doesn’t mean they didn’t get to visit a fun location. In this case, it was some of the sets from Robert Rodriguez’s Alita: Battle Angel, which Allen was apparently very excited by. “Keegan was geeking out because he loves that movie,” Bell shared. “As we went around the set he was like ‘oh that was where they did this!'”
The city of Austin itself is a major character in Walker, and Bell has appreciated getting to know the city as part of his work on the show. “Austin is a great town, man. I had never been there before being there for this job,” Bell said. “Even during the pandemic, when everything sort of shut down and things not being normal, I can still just tell what great energy the city has. I definitely think it comes across on the show.” Bell added: “It’s one of those things where you don’t really need to try, you know, it’s kinda like one of the characters of the show … like when you film in New York and New York just kind of adds to it.”
But Austin, along with many areas in Texas, was recently hit with serious winter storms that shut down production. Bell had left for a trip home right before the storm hit and thus ended up with a slightly longer break, but other cast and crew were left without heat and power, with “people losing power and people losing water and people’s pipes are busting,” according to Bell. But luckily they were there to take care of one another, thanks to help from the top of the call sheet.
“A lot of people had to seek refuge at Jared [Padalecki]’s house because he luckily still had power,” Bell explained. “They even lost power for like 12 hours.” But everyone was able to come together and do so safely as well. “It was lucky that he was there for that and also lucky that we’re in a situation where everybody’s getting tested for COVID every day. So, you know, since they had to be under the same roof, they knew they could do it safely. It was a crazy situation.”
Dealing with major storms is one part of the job that was unexpected for sure, but other challenges for the show were apparent much earlier in 2020, namely: how do you make a cop show at a time when the role of law enforcement is being examined across the whole country and world. And for Bell, what does it mean to be playing a Texas Ranger Captain as a Black man?
“When I first booked the show, which is over a year ago, January of 2020, and then everything shut down, and then it was ‘okay, when are we actually you’re going to do the show?’ And then, you know, all of the much-needed social justice movement started up, and [Showrunner Anna Fricke] and I were talking, she was like, ‘Oh man … I don’t even know how do we make this show? How do we make the show now?'” Bell said. “You can’t just make a cop show like used to … you have to address what’s going on. And I think they’ve done a great job.”
Bell continued: “That’s not what the show is about, but they keep that narrative alive throughout the episodes.” Which is something viewers have seen, as the use of force and racial dynamics of law enforcement do get mentioned a lot in the series. “They sprinkle in mentions [and] try and do it the right way, mentions of Lindsey’s character being one of the few Latina females in the Rangers and her challenges there, me being a Black captain of a historically not very diverse branch of law enforcement. So I think they’re really doing a good job of walking that line.”
As for what we can anticipate on the show, we can look forward to more scenes between Bell, Padalecki, and Lindsey Morgan, as well as more teamwork with Allen. But we’ll also see more between Captain James and Geri. What can we expect to learn about Geri now that it’s been revealed she may have had something to do with Emily’s death?
“There’s definitely a lot more to the character than you thought,” Bell teased. “I can’t give anything away without giving stuff away. But a lot of that will be revealed in the next three, four episodes.”
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Walker airs Thursday at 8:00 PM on The CW, with new episodes available the next day on the CW app.
(images: Rebecca Brenneman/The CW)
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