It's A Dirty Job...

"You think you're the first person I dealt with who woke up in bed with a dead body?"

"This is so fucking great," says David Nevins as he watches Jon Voight, 73, dance topless with a hooker amid a cloud of marijuana smoke. It is mid-March, and Showtime's president of entertainment is sharing dailies on his iPad from his Ray Donovan pilot, a Liev Schreiber-led drama about a fixer with his own demons. Minutes earlier, Nevins had been making his way around the Malibu set with the kind of excitement of a budding actor getting his break. Schreiber had just completed a scene in which he breaks the hand of another man, one of many windows into his character's complexities, and now a fully clothed Elliott Gould is standing knee deep in the Pacific as his character unravels in the wake of his wife's death.

As costumers, dialect coaches and a sizable crew scurry about the beachfront property on day seven of a 15-day shoot, Nevins keeps his distance from the cameras to avoid falling back into producer mode. With those around him inching down the cliff to capture the beach scene, he grins widely from his perch above the California coastline, confident the drama fits his mandate- masculinity, contemporariness and in-your-face sexual content- for Showtime, or "the inappropriate network," as his young children with wife Andrea Blaugrund, a filmmaker, have come to know it.

"Ray Donovan has all of these different shades of men in transition, which is why I like to say it feels like Passages for men," Nevin said, referencing Gail Sheehy's book about adult life stages as he waxes on about the modern-day Los Angeles pilot, featuring Schreiber, Voight and Gould's characters at significant turning points in their own adult lives. "It's so interesting to me that it is written by a woman [Southland's Ann Biderman] who really seems to understand male psychology with a depth." By early June, the show had received a 12-episode order for debut in 2013. According to Nevins, the series, in its own way, broadens the network's brand by offering "a deep and broad show with an incredible cast going 6 and 7 actors deep that has the makings of a great pay cable drama that is gripping, complicated and I think extremely watchable."


So, who or what is Ray Donovan? Promising 'a novelistic look' at the contemporary sprawling mecca of the rich and famous, the titular character (Schreiber) is a professional trouble-shooter who is regularly called on to solve the complicated, confidential and controversial problems of L.A.’s elite; like dead hookers or action heroes getting busted while coked out of their mind and attempting to couple with inanimate objects. He's the guy that keeps people's names out of the papers, pays off those who need to be payed off, and generally tries to keep the world from noticing the thick sheen of filth under Hollywood's glitz and glamour. Unfortunately, his knack for problem-solving doesn't extend to sorting out his own dysfunctional family. As we see when his father, played by Jon Voight, is unexpectedly released from prison, setting off a chain of events that shakes the Donovan family to its core.



"Ray does the dirty work for the city’s top power players," summarises Nevins. "He’s the guy they go to to make their problems disappear." The only issues he seemingly can't make disappear are the ones created by his damaged "Southie" family back in Boston. "It is a hard-hitting crime drama," agrees Nevins, but also a disturbing family drama." To that end, the series’ all-star cast also includes Paula Malcomson (Deadwood) in the role of Ray’s wife, Abby. Described as a "frank and honest, beautiful, and assertive woman," she is nevertheless having difficulty adjusting to the L.A. scene. She is also terrified that her husband could be cheating on her with one of his clients. Eddie Marsan (Sherlock Holmes) and Dash Mihok (I Am Legend) will play Ray’s brothers, Terry and Bunchy; the latter a toubled manic-depressive with an alcohol problem. Kerris Dorsey (Moneyball) features as Ray's daughter, Bridget.

Elsewhere, Gould plays the recurring role of Ray’s mentor and confidante, Ezra Goodman; Steven Bauer (Breaking Bad) is Avi, a partner and former Mossad agent; Peter Jacobson (House) plays a loud-mouthed and morally questionable lawyer called Lee Drexler; Johnathon Schaech (That Thing You Do!) is Sean Stevens, a major movie star with a mysterious connection to Ray's past; and Pooch Hall (The Game) plays Daryll, a boxer in training.

The fact that the siren song of pay cable has lured such big talent- many of who have traditionally stuck to the big screen- is indicative of an incredibly creative time in television thinks Nevins. This will be the first TV series job for Schreiber, for example, since a four-episode run on CSI back in 2007, in the aftermath of William Petersen's departure. "You've got the crème de la crème of great actors and great writers who are now interested in doing television," says the network chief. "Everything that we've ever done - and that I've ever done as a producer - has been script driven; these projects have never been developed for a specific actor. The idea is to get the best writer and develop a great script. Actors tend to be very smart readers. That's what gets people like Don Cheadle, Claire Daines, and Laura Linney to say yes to television. So it's a very exciting time creatively and it's where adults go for programming. Most adults get their most nourishing cultural enrichment from cable television."

Of course some adults, as Nevins instictly understands, also get their most nourishing celebrity titillation from cable television as well. If the thought of a topless John Voight doesn't float your boat, then maybe the prospect of The L Word alum Kate Moennig returning to a gay role will pique interest. Her character, Lena, is described as "dark, intense and naturally skilled at investigative work," who "knows how to defuse a potential disasters." She also "stays calm in stressful situations"; including, as one of the opening scene of the pilot shows us, when being disturbed in bed with another woman by an office-related phone call. "I have to work," she tells her young bedroom companion, "get dressed." In addition to her run as Shane, The L Word's woman-killer, Moennig’s previous TV credits also include CBS medical drama Three Rivers, Young Americans and more recently an episode of Dexter. On the big screen, she has appeared in films such as Everybody’s Fine, The Lincoln Lawyer and the upcoming Gone, opposite Amanda Seyfried.

Adding further glamour to Ray Donovan is California native Ambyr Childers (All My Children) in the role of Ashley Rucker. She plays "an attractive, emotionally-vulnerable, and famous young rock star" who has an extremely devoted fan base. Described as having a strong crush on Donovan, she is dating an overly controlling movie studio executive when we first meet her. In fact, he is so determined to make sure that Ashley doesn't cheat on him that he hires Ray to spy on her. "Ashley might seem perfect to her fans, but she has a number of problems," reveals the casting call. "She has epilepsy and refuses to take her medicine. But her biggest problem is that she is being tracked by a possibly violent fan."

Childers is best known for the role of bratty teen Colby Chandler on All My Children; spending nearly two years on the show, exploring car theft, a pregnancy scare, and the consequences of crashing your father's yacht. It's not exactly the training one would expect to be helpful in landing a part in Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master, the director's closely guarded follow-up to There Will Be Blood, or indeed, one of Showtime's highest profile new projects. "It's so weird," says Childers, when considering her role as 'a tortured Britney Spears-type who needs plenty of fixing'. "I've been thinking about it all day. Who knew that in 2012 I would be auditioning for the dream cast or the dream director?"