Original subtitles

And action!

Move it!

Where's my wife? -I don't know.

You're a clever one, Cork.

Come on!

Come on, James.

People always think that the times they live in...

...are unique and they also think that the times they live in...

...are the most difficult and the most chaotic.

If you go backwards to the Civil War, the country came to an end, it split in two.

And they weren't sure...

...whether they was ever going to come together again.

To do a cop show set in the 1860s...

...Is so rich with drama...

...because everything that a contemporary audience...

...faces on a day-to-day basis...

...they faced back then...

...but they didn't have a lot of the stuff that we have to make it a little easier.

Because the next scene is gonna be like this, right?

You just go "zoo." -Yeah.

Perfect. -Let's go right away, guys.

Copper is a cop show set in New York during the Civil War.

You're now looking at New York City...

...a hundred and forty some years ago.

You move through all these different parts of New York...

...and see how aggressive, unsure and violent the time was.

I think it's a show that is built on hope and survival.

I mean, the fact that it's built around a police force...

...in the most dilapidated area in New York during 1864 is a struggle for most people.

I guess it's an upstairs-downstairs...

...type of dichotomy going on, but they very much overlap.

On one level, you have the downtown, Five Points aspect.

And then you have what goes on up in Fifth Avenue.

Try not to miss me too much.

I think there's a huge class structure...

...which was more simple. You had the people...

...who are in the elite part of New York and you had the people that just weren't.

Copper is-- It's about a lot of things.

But it is a crime drama.

It's an interesting discussion about the nascent New York.

The way Copper came about...

...was I received a call from Christina Wayne...

...and she had been working on an idea for a series...

...with a wonderful screenwriter, Will Rooks.

I had recently met Will...

...for other projects and had read a script.

He was, you know, a nominated writer for Monster's Ball...

...So upon meeting him, I just thought his dark sensibility...

...would be great for a show like this.

I started off with a great producer...

...who helped get executives and producers...

...interested in actually making it into a television series.

Christina was able to get Tom Fontana to take a look...

...and Tom really brought a lot, made it more alive and richer.

You know, once you have a green light...

...and once you have the funding and a script...

...and once you have a vague outline of a plan...

...the real hurdle becomes finding the people to actually execute it.

But you must find people who are not only excellent...

...at what they do as craftsmen, but can also really handle the pressure...

...of something this gigantic and this unknown.

It's a great team, from top to bottom.

I think it's really good storytelling, and it has a great backdrop to it all.

There was huge immigration that took place.

Five Points, crowded, chaotic.

I mean, you're really talking about some very, very interesting elements...

...through the eyes of this detective.

I wanna know what Schwartz knows.

Schwartz!

I'm Tom Weston-Jones and I'm playing Kevin Cormorant...

...who is the Irish American cop in the Five Points...

...trying to create some semblance of law and order in the place.

Captain.

Every time I've seen a man drop...

...he tries to grab one more breath of air.

Meaning?

He was dead before he was lynched.

That's kind of beginnings of crime scene investigation.

I'm not sure yet if Garland is guilty.

I am sure that O'Connor was killed with a long, thin needle.

More of your scientific nonsense?

Let me prove Garland's guilt before we hang him.

As he's investigating other cases as a policeman...

...he's trying to solve a personal mystery that's been haunting him.

If you should happen to come across...

...a distinctive gold locket engraved with the letters "E" and "C" on its face...

...it might have pictures of a man and a little girl on the inside.

What's interesting is, through the police eyes...

...you can have contact with all the different neighborhoods...

...in New York City.

From the Five Points, a really squalid situation that New York was in...

...also uptown on Fifth Avenue.

In Civil War era New York...

...Fifth Avenue becomes synonymous with opulence, luxurious living.

They had a way of life that was known only to a few of the elite.

I think someone needs to dance.

Yes, he does.

Five Points wouldn't really leak into Fifth Avenue...

...even though those areas are very close together.

There is this knowledge all the time that we're living this life...

...and just down the street there is a completely different existence going on.

In the Five Points, although it was bad to live there...

...there were still people who were trying to be industrious and make the best of it.

But it's just the sheer number of people that make it impossible to survive.

New York City, America's first metropolis...

...reached roughly a million people by the Civil War era.

Of those million people, roughly 500,000...

...were packed into the small strip of Manhattan below 14th Street.

The Five Points, the sixth ward, had roughly 20,000 people...

...and had the highest density per population...

...not only of any place in New York City...

...but just about any place in the western world.

Jacob Rios' book How the Other Half Lives...

...was the first time that this environment was documented.

His photographs were taken 20 years after our series...

...but the lives that he depicted in his photographs...

...are not substantially different from the lives...

...that we're depicting in our series.

The Five Points, by the Civil War, was principally an Irish neighborhood.

There were blacks, there were Jews, there were Italians...

...but by and large it's the Irish working class that defines the area.

So by our time, the police department is roughly one-half Irish Catholic...

...and there were a lot of concerns about that.

Would the Irish-Catholic immigrants be loyal to their own people...

...or would they be loyal to the job of being a cop?

You're committing an insult against our people.

If I wanted to be locked up for being Irish, I'd go to Belfast.

Not everybody in the neighborhood is a criminal.

I think that there's a lot of hardworking people here that really...

...respected and appreciated what the police officers were trying to do.

But at the same time, I think it was probably the most dangerous job...

...in New York, at the time, was to be a police officer in the Five Points.

If you're given power in an area filled with people...

...that will do whatever they want to survive...

...you're gonna have to play it pretty tough.

Always good to be on the right side of the law.

It was a messy, confusing time.

There was bigotry, there's prejudice and crime.

I think this has a lot of the elements which makes for very good storytelling...

...and you're also showing, very much, the American experience.

No cane? -Yeah, feeling risky.

When you see something that you go...

...Wow, that's actually what I saw," it's pretty damned exciting.

What's even more exciting is when you see something...

...better than what you thought you wanted.

I mean, it's almost like it smells of New York back in the day.

Especially in the butchers. -Yeah. Yeah.

You really don't have to act all that much when you smell a rotting pig.

It's very honest. It's very, very honest.

Christ!

Can't you knock?

Ha, ha, ha. Hui.

Come in here.

Creating new characters is always fun...

...and challenging, because what you wanna do...

...Is come up with characters that haven't been seen on TV before...

...which I think we have done with this show.

Our lowly Irish asses would hang for a lesser crime, but you...

...you sit there, letting them win, because you want the ho poll oi to think...

...Saran Joseph Sullivan was a good boy.

You finished, copper?

In terms of the individual characters...

...1 think the character of Cormorant IS a hero...

...without necessarily being heroic.

You know, it's like a Greek myth...

...almost, in terms of the size of the struggle...

...that he has in the course of the series.

Some people would say he's an incredibly tragic character.

He's come back from the Civil War...

...to find out that his wife has disappeared and his daughter is dead.

And his morals come into question a little bit...

...because he has to do the wrong things for the right reasons.

Maguire and O'Brien are his boys...

...and you'll get a real sense of defense of each other...

...especially Maguire and Cormorant. He's his go-to guy.

Get Freeman. Get Freeman.

I think at the core of our relationship...

...with Cormorant, Maguire and O'Brien, I think it's friendship.

And it's ultimate friendship and trust. And we've all, you know...

...have our layers of what we've done that isn't correct...

...or that affects our friendship...

...but I think we absolutely have each other's backs.

Thank God there's three of us, then?

O'Brien is the powerhouse of the group.

O'Brien is the guy who will just pick someone up...

...and throw them through a window.

That's his go-to place during a fight.

Andrew O'Brien is a very loyal man.

He's married to Sybil O'Brien...

...who wears the pants in the relationship, certainly.

And he's relatively new to the whole detective business.

Reverend, you seem awfully calm for a guilty man.

I think O'Brien is really enamored by the work that Cormorant does...

...because he's this detective that thinks outside the box.

Yes?

There's a body in Cow Bay.

Franks Potent plays Eva...

...who is the madam at the brothel.

She is a very powerful woman in Five Points.

She is very cunning...

...and also has a soft side, a weak side to her...

...which is her love for Cormorant.

A little courtesy is all I'm asking.

I'm not thinking courteous thoughts right now.

With Cormorant and Eva, their relationship...

...you'll see, is a very, very heated, sexual one.

I think, overall, she wants prosperity.

This is why she came to America and left everything behind.

She wants the American dream, you know, and she works hard for it.

She wants a home, she wants everything...

...that other people want too, but without children and that kind of stuff.

In the case of Annie, which is kind of like this little thing...

...that comes to her by accident...

...I always imagine that it's like a hint of a memory of herself, maybe.

So you don't have to be afraid, all right?

Come along, hon.

Annie Reilly is a girl who's a runaway.

She's grown up way too quickly.

She has had a horrible childhood...

...and I think she's searching for just someone to care for her...

...to love her, and for protection.

Please don't send me back to Mr. Reilly.

Well, Annie is an immediate reminder of his daughter...

...and it breaks Cormorant�s heart to see her suffering so much.

Get some rest, honey. -So that need to make things...

...okay becomes very convoluted and very strange.

So it's a fascinating relationship between the two...

...because you never really know which way it's gonna turn.

Kevin, I'm sorry.

I think women during the 1860s had a lot of conventions...

...forced upon them.

And the way that you behaved in society...

...it was much more rigid and restricted...

...in terms of what you were allowed to do or say.

Thank you.

Elizabeth Haverford is a well-to-do woman...

...who was brought up in London...

...and she finds herself on Fifth Avenue...

...where they're all emulating that same stifling British society...

...and she's really not finding the space and the freedom that she wants.

She's seeing a lot of men who say one thing and do another...

...live a very polite life but actually behave very badly.

And she doesn't respect it.

And she really doesn't care that much what society thinks.

You may show yourselves out once the performance is over...

...and then, please, never call again.

It's a complicated thing for Cormorant...

...because he has spent his entire life surrounded by the people of Five Points...

...where he really feels at home.

But the person who he mixes most with from Fifth Avenue would be Mo rehouse.

That's where he gets his flavor and his sense of...

...you know, the elite class of New York.

Cork, join us.

Mo rehouse is an upper-class character who has a very interesting...

...political compass that separates him...

...from a lot of the upper echelon in New York City.

Father, I see you have a new clerk.

He isn't 100 percent about money, of course, that's business.

He's not willing to let go of his wealth.

There will be a proper commission.

But I think his moral compass is a place where he kind of feels...

...that he's a man of the people...

...although, I don't think anybody else would feel that way.

Your friend Cormorant is beneath contempt.

Which puts him one level above you.

If you weren't Norbert's son, I would give you a good thrashing.

If you were to say that there's one character...

...who is the most honest and true and good...

...I'd say that Matthew Freeman is that character.

I think he's an incredibly moral person.

-What do you want? - I want to know how she died.

You know, I feel that the character, Matthew Freeman...

...he represents where we all wanna be as people...

...because what he does is he doesn't look necessarily at the color of your skin.

He's my assistant. His name is Kevin.

He's someone that Cormorant not only turns to for help...

...with the detective work that he comes across...

...but also in terms of his choices and what he does with his time.

And both of them have concern for one another.

-Today is moving day. -You're moving? To where?

Just up north of the new park, Commons ville.

-So far away. -Look around you, Cork.

Since the riots, my people have been moving out of Five Points.

What I love about a lot of the relationships in this...

...Is that they're bonded through turmoil and suffering.

And you can see that with the relationship between Freeman and Mo rehouse.

I wouldn't call them friends in the true sense of the word...

...I'd call them...

...unlikely companions.

You, me and our good friend Matthew Freeman...

...we three must tread carefully.

Our lives depend on our finesse.

Mo rehouse, Cormorant and the character that I play...

...Matthew Freeman, we all fought together in the Civil War.

Mo rehouse was the major who led us...

...and Cormorant and I, we were in the trenches together.

I think the thing that ties them all together...

...Is that they're all kind of modern thinkers, in their own ways.

They all see something in the other person they really admire...

...but there are huge differences between all of them.

If he beats Ginning you know these fine people will riot.

You could give me a free consultation now and then.

The actors that we've hired are so wonderfully human.

And they're so mulch-dimensional...

...what they're bringing to the characters...

...because none of these characters is evil...

...and none of these characters is totally good.

They're real people in a real time that existed...

...and our actors are, I think...

...doing a terrific job of depicting these lives.

No pain.

No shit.

If you think Lincoln cares about our city anymore...

...than he does that town of Vermont, I got a bar soap to sell you.

I should tell you that I'm a historian wannabe.

I love history, and this particular period, the American Civil War...

...Is something that I know a ridiculous amount about.

-Detective. - I say, let's step up...

...and tell Mr. Lincoln this war needs to stop now.

This time in New York City, specifically, but this time in America in general...

...was full of turbulence.

There was a huge amount of fear...

...because just before the show actually begins...

...that's when the draft riots were.

Tens of thousands of New Yorkers took to the streets...

...in protest against the first draft in American history.

Many of them were motivated by anger...

...against the provision that allowed people...

...to get out of the draft by paying for a substitute...

...three hundred dollars, which was about the annual wage...

...for a typical unskilled worker, a lot of money.

But others were motivated by other factors, namely racism.

They took the draft riots as an opportunity to attack...

...and in some cases Kill...

...African-Americans on the streets of New York.

Black people, since they were not citizens...

...were not going to be conscripted. So you can imagine the working class...

...the Irish and the Germans that live in the Five Points at that time...

...were pretty pissed off because now we're fighting a war...

...and going to die for black people who they didn't really like.

Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation has put fear in the hearts of the Irish.

They're terrified...

...that the Negros will come north and steal all their jobs.

The extremes of war bring the level of violence up...

...throughout the rest of society.

And that's when you have an increase of murders...

...and gang slayings that existed in Five Points at this time.

We're gonna police you, just like a dead nerve.

The Five Points is also a place that reminds us...

...that life was perilous in New York City.

It's a neighborhood that was showing all the problems...

...that are gonna come with the growth of the big city.

Certain streets and certain alleys in the Five Points were notorious for crime.

Notorious for places where murders happened frequently...

...where criminals lived or hung out...

...and where places that one would not go knowingly...

...unless one was accompanied by a policeman.

To be in that environment and trying to have some sort of policing control...

...it was an incredible task for anyone.

So you had to go at it with force...

...you know, in any way you could...

...because, really, when they got together in numbers, they had more men.

They were dangerous guys. They were brutal.

When I have a gun and you don't, it's bad for you...

...because I'm holding all the power, whether it's today or back then.

Talk or you can pray.

For the police guns, there was the 1851 Colt...

...and we're using the sheriff model...

...because it's a shorter barrel, easier to handle for the actors.

It was the same type of gun that was used in the day.

Hey.

The guns themselves, I think they were beautiful guns.

They've got this amazing artwork over the actual barrel here.

And what a lot of people don't know is that...

...they actually took a longtime to load.

You're not just willy-billy firing all over the place.

You wanna make every shot count because you only have six.

You don't know how many bad guys you're against...

...So you need to make every shot count.

And if you couldn't get it done in six, you better run.

There's certain police weapons...

...that were just kind of like household products stitched together...

...which were just used to cause as much damage as possible.

Like, they'd use the face of irons, they'd use horseshoes.

They'd use anything made of metal...

...and put it on the end of a stick to control people.

So it was a very brutal period of time.

I want the whole truth or I start swinging.

It was not a great life.

And I think one of the things that we do really well in Copper is show...

...the conditions at that time and how desperate people were.

I think that's why you see the women, especially, being prostitutes.

Have a good evening, James.

To our modern eyes...

...the social world to the Five Points can seem quite shocking.

For example, the age of consent in New York State at this period was 10.

Come on, Shady.

One could find very, very different kinds of prostitution.

There were prostitutes who operated out of their tenements.

There were also prostitutes who operated out of saloons.

There were also madams, brothel keepers.

Women who had establishments like Eva's Paradise...

...that were actually quite elaborate and quite profitable.

Left us a souvenir.

Being a prostitute...

...without a form of livelihood...

...was illegal.

A woman who ran her own prostitution business that was not illegal.

Monsieur M.

The brothels were hugely popular at the time.

I think from the perspective of women, it was an incredibly sad time...

...being indoctrinated into that kind of world...

...and just made to think that it's normal and okay.

Pleasure doing business with you.

Prostitution served a purpose, that it kept...

...men's lust safely removed...

...from the space of the home circle.

It was socially acceptable, and if not socially acceptable...

...socially unavoidable.

There were the horrible aspects of the abuse and the maltreatment...

...but then there were women like Eva, who's the brothel owner...

...who are like modern-day businesswomen.

Would you like to get rich with me, Cork?

When you're designing a series, you look for an endless amount of drama.

And that's what the 1860s in New York City gives you.

It gives you the same things...

...that a contemporary person experiences...

...but it's all just a little more brutal and little more raw.

To recreate New York in the 1860s...

...takes a lot of inventiveness on the part of the creative team.

In terms of creating the vision of the world that we're gonna be living in...

...we have John Blacking, who designed the sets and they're remarkable.

When you do a contemporary drama and you go outside...

...you're doctoring up a reality that already exist.

With period pictures, you start with zero...

...and you put it all in front of the camera.

Every piece of paint, the bricks, every wood texture, every road texture...

...a period piece gives you the opportunity to make it all happen.

Visually, I think it should be very striking...

...because what we've built here is Five Points...

...and incredible craftsmanship that has gone into it.

As you look around the set, you can tell that, you know...

...we tried to make everything have a different texture...

...from one building to the next...

...So that from the broken brick of that building to the crooked siding...

...on this one, to the yellow brick and the concretes and--

Yeah. The cobblestone streets but also the wooden sidewalks...

...that were very common back then.

The Five Points is a part of New York that was built on an old stagnant pond...

...and not many people actually know about it.

But the Five Points was actually sinking into the ground.

This is one of the buildings we have a fair bit of reference on.

There's a lot of etchings about this corner.

And this is the one that most clearly is sinking.

We tried to recreate that here.

We did it by making our window openings larger than our windows...

...and just kind of twisting the windows inside...

...and then following that line with the planks...

...and kind of give a sense of a sinking building.

One of the big challenges with Copper is that, in the studio...

...we're building what really is an entire little town.

And our town also has interiors in it too...

...So there's a huge volume that has to be dealt with.

We start by a lot of research. So understanding...

...what people have in their houses...

...what did doctors have, what kinds of things were in saloons...

...what were in bordellos. There's a real cross-section of society...

...that we're looking for.

So this is Madame Pompadour's bordello, and it's a very high-end bordello...

...where the upper crust of male aspect of New York society...

...comes to take their pleasure.

So all the furnishings here were mostly found online or in antique shops.

And we upholstered everything or painted it.

We got lots of small things that you may or may not pick up.

Kind of gaudy, but it's fun.

It takes weeks and months to find this.

This set has taken nearly three months to find to put together.

Getting it right is really important to us...

...and that pressure we feel in getting it right is enormous.

So the first thing that we see up, we are in the--

One of the mandates we had...

...was they wanted to be as historically accurate as possible.

We are looking back at what was done and we're replicating that.

Really, it's all about hunting the deer for us.

So one of the main scenes for episode six is...

...Freeman does what's called the Marsh test, which is the test for arsenic.

Basically, the chemicals are put into here. There's a chemical reaction that bubbles up...

...and sends smoke through the tube-

-And then the next beat is it's here. -In real time, how long does that take?

It's probably 15-minute test, it's not that long.

Prior to this test...

...lots of people were actually using arsenic...

...to bump off some of their relatives.

It was called the "inheritance powder"...

...because it was so potent and so untraceable.

Freeman is sitting down.

It's one thing to find out what a Marsh test is...

...but it's another thing to get a Marsh test.

So we had to construct that prop...

...because nobody had one in existence that we could find.

We found people that could fabricate the pieces for us...

...and they clicked it all together like Lego.

Now I, as the actor, come on set and they've set it up for me...

...and so I get to recreate this landmark forensic moment in our TV show.

As an actor, you show up and you say, "Wow, what I'm doing is pretty incredible.�

And this is what happens every day on set.

I mean, obviously the clothes, the sets, the world...

...all of that sort of layers on top of each other...

...and helps us feel more authentic in the roles that we're playing.

And we have to suck all of that up and use it as much as possible.

Aren't you the debonair detective. And you're enjoying yourself?

The biggest challenges in working with period are getting a realistic look.

The fact that the sewing machine had only been invented in the 1840s...

...and the people that are less well-off would not have had machine sewing.

I mean, now it's become a real sign of status...

...to be able to afford handmade suits and handmade clothing...

...but back then if you could afford to have sewing machined, that was great.

The quality of the wardrobe and what Delphinus has done with...

...just her whole vision of the show is phenomenal.

Everything is made out of-- All my stuff is made out of cashmere...

...which is awesome, because I've never owned any cashmere.

Do you usually walk around the front?

I have huge empathy for the women of this time...

...having to navigate their lives dressed like this.

Even just the days I have on set...

...where I'm working maybe even five, six hours...

...and I have to hang out in the corset...

...it can become very challenging, not just how tight it is...

...but also, you know, the hoop. You have no flexibility.

You have no freedom, really. You have to constrain your movements.

It's interesting too...

...because I was just talking to her the other day.

We have made a corset for her that is a little more comfortable...

...but she is not feeling the part.

She is not feeling this kind of separation and propriety...

...that she does with this really uncomfortable corset.

All this chatter has made me quite ill.

I knew the walk that I would have to do was that bit smaller...

...because they've done all of this.

You know, you show up, you put on this wardrobe...

...and you step into this world and you're there.

There ain't much we can do to lock up this room...

...without turning the place into a prison.

Design of the whole thing is just so incredibly detailed...

...that you can immerse yourself in it without really trying that hard.

Once you step into this world, it's surreal.

It is the world and everybody just, I think, feels the magic...

...when they get on the set.

I am constantly being surprised by the various artisans...

...who are working on this show taking what's on the page...

...and like kicking it up to the next level.

It doesn't matter. It's just like seeing his world, right?

And then when you get parallel with the mark...

When you've got a big day of shooting with a lot of stunts...

...it's very exciting for everybody.

And I think no matter what scene we throw at Tom...

...I am always totally confident that he will deliver...

...not just what's on the page but more.

Well, when I get out of the car...

...my clothes are in my trailer so I normally get in there...

...1 have to put on a small amount of costume first...

...just because otherwise you'd mess up the makeup...

...whenever you go to makeup afterwards, So yeah.

And the makeup trailer is a great place to just look over the lines...

...getting them very much in your head.

When you get the makeup and costume on...

...because it's so particular to the period...

...that's when you actually get the character on.

That's when it actually starts to fit.

For Tom's character, you know...

...we look to living in Five Points. It's a grimy place...

...it's a dirty place, he's a night guy, he doesn't sleep very much.

So we do things that kind of make him look tired and worn.

The dirt helps so much to get into that vibe of the period...

...because it was so grungy, especially with the oil lamps...

...that were going on, so as soon as you can look at the fingernails that I have here.

Linda is great in terms of the details she puts into everything.

And then she'd apply some redness under the eyes...

...and around the nose and sort of broken capillaries and things.

Feeling hungover is kind of how I wanna look.

That will be great.

Normally, after having makeup you get sometimes sends straight in for blocking...

...depending on what time of the day it is.

Normally, a closed kind of thing...

...like Jeff likes it to be just the actors and him...

...but today because it's such a large scene...

...and there's a lot of choreographed boxing in it...

...we had everybody on set.

Well, this scene is-- It's a boxing match that Cormorant is refereeing.

Tom Weston-Jones' character has his leg broken in episode two.

So in this scene, he's got his cane and he's using it...

...to help coral the fighters and help keep them in line.

One of the challenges that you have shooting the 1860s...

...Is that there was no electricity.

So anything that you're gonna do interior at night has to be lit by fire...

...because that was the only light source back then.

So you'll see in the barn...

...that we have probably a dozen or more kerosene lanterns hung from the rafters.

In order to get that authentic look, you know...

...that fire-lit look from the 1860s...

...Paul has to keep all his light levels very, very low so that the lanterns read.

If the Paul has got too much light in there, the lanterns aren't going to show up at all.

It's always a balance for a cinematographer in lighting a situation...

...between what's correct and also what's practical.

And so from a practical standpoint...

...it makes a lot of sense to engineer some kind of lighting plan...

...that would allow that and yet still be flattering to the actors...

...and technically correct for the time period.

When we do a big fight scene like this...

...the most important thing is for the fighters...

...and Tom Weston-Jones, in this case, to be rehearsed...

...and have the fight choreographed well ahead of time.

-Just so there's no hesitation. -Okay. Gotcha.

So Layton and the stunt guys and actors...

...who were involved in the fights...

...spent a lot of time last week...

...actually choreographing this and getting it down. They videotape it.

They come and show it to us. It's quite an elaborate process.

One of the main reasons we do this is because...

...when we get here with the full crew standing, waiting...

...hundred and fifty people, that's a lot of time and a lot of energy.

We can just walk in, say: "This is the action.

This is how it's going to be." And our director and our POD can say...

...camera here, camera there, and we're ready to roll.

It all can get a little bit overexciting...

...when you're actually going to do the first take...

...but, you know, we do it SO many, So many times...

...and these stunt guys are so good that they don't mind taking a tumble.

They really wanted to make it look as really as possible.

One thing that really helped...

...was just having the extras around really throwing themselves into it...

...because in that kind of environment, boxing...

...It needs spectators and it needs people that really back it.

And I can see the two guys who are doing the fighting felt that as well.

You always get a little bit of adrenaline rush and everything...

...because you hear the cameras rolling and "action"...

...and the people are cheering and everything.

-It is really great. I've the smile. -Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I can tell by the reactions of crowd, the crew, the director...

...and if they get a good feeling and they're saying...

..." That was a good job. That looked great." I know it did.

And cut.

Cutting. Cut, cut.

After a particularly tough day, I am so exhausted.

I feel like I've run the marathon, boxed myself.

And yet there is an enormous feeling of satisfaction...

...knowing that we took the time and got the scene.

-Mark. -Camera mark.

Rolling.

Action.

Now that we've reached the end of the filming...

...it's just an extraordinary feeling of exhilaration...

...to have done something out of the ordinary.

You try to put the best thing forward that you can and you hope for the best.

I wish there was some good luck charm.

I wish there was this one thing you said, "Okay, if I rub it twice...

...then you got a show that's gonna run for at least seven years."

After years of trying to get this show off the ground...

...and putting all the work that everybody's putting...

...I'm incredibly proud of everyone...

...and incredibly proud of the show that we've put together.

And it's been an amazing experience.

You're really lucky when you get a good group of people who are...

...you know, dedicated fellow artists, who bring it live and make it happen.

I think the creative team, from the very beginning...

...has been very sensitive to...

...the importance of historical accuracy, historical plausibility.

I think they have built it into the DNA of the show, so to speak.

Negroids who will take away your hard-earned pay.

We all wanna tell the story the best way we possibly can, without ego...

...without want of attention.

We just all want the story to be honest.

Make sure that spin happens. -Yeah.

More so than anything else...

...it's something that we're all really proud of.

It's a show I would watch.

It's a show I would love to tell all my friends and family to watch.

My surgeons were extremely impressed.

Luck of the Irish.

Always so modest Cork.

I would say my biggest hope for this series...

...Is that it shines a light on a time in America...

...that people don't really think too much about.

We live in the year 2012, and we think we're the shit. We think this is it.

A hundred years from now, people will look back and be like:

"My God. Cute, they had iPhones. Ha, ha." You know what I mean?

And people back in the day probably felt very modern too.

People don't think about history very much anymore.

They don't think about how we got to where we are.

For the most part, I think audiences might be able to take away some idea...

...of how their current urban landscape came into being.

The Five Points, although it doesn't exist anymore as a specific intersection...

...still lives on in history and imagination.

And as William Faulkner taught us, the past isn't dead, it isn't even past.

I guess two words for Copper would be...

Um, that's a good question.

Can I get three? Ha, ha, ha.

That's a really interesting question.

Well, "city at war." You said two words...

...and I couldn't make it two words. So I was thinking about this all night.

"How am I going to do this?"

"Honest." "Explosive."

"Cops" and "robbers."

"Cops and robbers." That's three words. Um... L... Two words.

-What did other people say? -"Gritty" and "real."

Copper in two words for me would probably be "sex" and "addiction."

"Dirty" and "intriguing."

"Bloody brilliant." Ha, ha, ha.

I already gave you two words. I don't have two more words.

I would describe Copper as "mind-boggling."

"Gritty" and "real."

"Raw." "Modern."

"Rich" and "poor."

"Mystery" and "extremes."

"Dirty justice."

"Fungus." Heh.

McCarty.

I got "hairy chest."

Heh, heh. Sorry, guys.

What do you think? No? -Ha, ha, ha.