Reviving old shows seems to be in vogue at the moment, and as his acclaimed cop drama The Shield celebrates its fifteenth anniversary, creator Shawn Ryan has been chatting to EW about the prospect of going down the same route as the likes of The X-Files, 24, Prison Break and Twin Peaks and catching up with Michael Chiklis’ Vic Mackey and the (surviving) police officers of the Farmington district of Los Angeles.
“Jay Karnes and Michael Chiklis were over at our house [Ryan’s wife Cathy Cahlin Ryan played Vic’s ex-wife Corrine] a week ago, so it turned into a lot of reminiscing. We’ve all sort of worked and we’ve all enjoyed things we’ve done, but The Shield was a singular pleasure to do. To me, it’s hard not to want to recapture that feeling we all had when we were making the show. But nostalgia is a tricky thing. You’d also like the feel the nostalgia of being back in college or when you first feel in love with your wife. I was reading an interview with Joss Whedon about the 20th anniversary of Buffy, and he addressed this a little bit and I agree — you can’t recreate the time and experience of first seeing it. I’m of two minds: Something that would bring me back to all those friends, feelings, and the freedom we had making the show — I would love. I do think the ending is such a high bar and I would only come back if I thought we could beat that or exceed that, and I honestly don’t know if we could. Artistically, I’m in the camp of leaving it there. Personally, to get a chance to work with Michael, Walton, C.C.H., Jay, Cathy, Catherine, and everyone would be amazing. We really did all love each other and we loved doing that show.”
“There was a time a few years after The Shield ended, where I was having some talks with Fox’s movie division about something Shield–related. I had a pitch and what intrigued me about that pitch is that for the first 30 to 40 minutes of the movie, you wouldn’t meet anyone from The Shield universe. Then, at a certain point, Vic Mackey comes in to the main character’s world. That to me at least felt like I wasn’t just trying to make two more episodes of The Shield, it felt like something new and different that could stand on its own and wouldn’t detract from the show’s legacy. For various reasons, that never happened and now, any momentum for that is probably gone. I never want to close the door to it continuing in some way, but I never want to give unnecessary hope to the fans. I don’t know what the future holds. I’ve never definitively decided what Vic Mackey is doing now. As a fan of The Shield, I am interested in seeing that.”
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Originally published March 18, 2017. Updated April 16, 2018.
