IRONSIDE: Blair Underwood Previews His New Show

Police procedurals are fairly easy to find on any given night of television, but NBC is attempting to do something a bit different with their new show, IRONSIDE: the lead character is bound to a wheelchair (in the present-day; in flashbacks, we see Ironside before his injury).

“He’s the kind of character I don’t see on television right now,” series star Blair Underwood (Ironside) noted. “Partially because of his disability, but even more than that, he’s assertive, but he’s multilayered. He’s very complex, he’s a loner, he’s a very independent spirit, he’s a rebel…I think if there’s anything that’s a parallel to the original character [from series that aired in the late ’60s], it’s the spirit: he’s the fighter of the people, he’s a fighter for the underdog. They fight in different ways, but he will always fight for what he feels is morally and ethically right. Sometimes it flies in the face of what the law says is morally and ethically right. But he’ll take those lumps if he has to. All that being said, it makes it such a fascinating and compelling character.”

But no matter how compelling Ironside is — and Underwood absolutely is in the role — he can’t do it alone. Ironside is surrounded by a group of specialists he has assembled to help him solve crimes.

“I can tell you he sees himself in each one of them,” Underwood explained. “He sees their strength and their weakness in each one. Pablo [Schreiber]’s characater, Virgil, is big, strong, aggressive. He has a history of excessive force issues; that’s very much Ironside. [Spencer Grammer’s Holly] as we elude to in the pilot, she has connections to a crime family. Ironside can relate to that. And then [Neal Bledsoe’s Teddy] is a character that comes from elegance and wealth, and Ironside doesn’t [have that], but he understands his intellect and the way his brain works.”

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IRONSIDE premieres tonight at 10 PM on NBC.

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