• Ballard, the brand new crime drama set in the identical world as Bosch and Bosch: Legacy, stars Maggie Q as Det. Renée Ballard, who's been tasked with main the LAPD's new cold-case unit.
• The present is predicated on the books of Michael Connelly, who says that Q "captured the character of Ballard from day one."
• Q says it's "an enormous accountability" to proceed what Bosch began, however she's ready to take the franchise to new locations.

After 10 seasons of Bosch and Bosch: Legacy, there's a brand new detective on the case.

In Ballard, the newest crime drama from the thoughts of best-selling creator Michael Connelly, viewers will comply with Maggie Q as Renée Ballard, a resolute LAPD detective who has misplaced standing within the division's elite Theft-Murder Division and been tasked with main a brand new cold-case unit that's overloaded and underfunded.

Q made her debut as Ballard within the Bosch: Legacy sequence finale, first butting heads with retired-cop-turned-P.I. Harry Bosch (Titus Welliver) however finally working with him to catch a long-sought serial killer.

Launching July 9 on Prime Video, Ballard marks a brand new chapter for what Connelly abashedly refers to as "the MCU," a display franchise drawing on his greater than two dozen books that includes Bosch, Ballard, or each. For him and Q, the mission assertion is to make Ballard really feel rooted on this planet established by the Bosch exhibits whereas additionally increasing its boundaries and telling new tales.

"It needs to be distinctive," Connelly tells Leisure Weekly, including that Ballard has its personal tone, setting, and visible fashion. Whereas Bosch's world centered on the LAPD's Hollywood station, Ballard lives and works on the Westside of Los Angeles.

"Once we have been making Bosch, we tried by no means to go west of La Brea," Connelly says. "In Ballard, we strive by no means to go east of La Brea."

By way of his two protagonists, Connelly says there's "a elementary distinction within the characters in that Bosch, whether or not he had a badge or not, was at all times a loner. He was an outsider with an insider's job. And Ballard, by advantage of what she's doing and why she was chosen, exhibits management expertise that Bosch doesn't have."

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Because the face of Ballard, Q admits that it looks like "an enormous accountability" taking the baton from Welliver (who will pop up on the brand new present). "If I inherit followers from the Bosch universe, I'm fortunate," she says. "And if I preserve them completely happy, I'm even luckier."

However she's assured in Connelly's supply materials — and has an ace up her sleeve in Mitzi Roberts, the true LAPD detective who impressed the character of Ballard. "We've develop into very shut," Q says of Roberts, who blazed a path as one of many first ladies assigned to RHD, caught some infamous serial killers by her cold-case work, and have become an "invaluable" useful resource after retiring from the power final yr. "I'm actually excited to place a highlight on the profession that Mitzi has had that Michael was capable of articulate fantastically within the books."

For Connelly, he's discovered the right actor to carry Ballard from web page to display: "Lengthy earlier than Maggie Q was ever on the spectrum of what we have been on the lookout for, I mentioned within the guide [that Ballard] was born in Hawaii, her father was somebody who served within the Vietnam Conflict, on his means again stayed in Hawaii, and that's the place Ballard comes from. And that's precisely Maggie Q's story."

That mixed with Q's appearing expertise, and Connelly says she has "captured the character of Ballard from day one." (Roberts, he notes, "feels the identical means.")

In the meantime, the members of Ballard's considerably ragtag all-volunteer staff are performed by John Carroll Lynch, Courtney Taylor, Michael Mosley, Rebecca Area, and Victoria Moroles.

As with the Bosch exhibits, there's one other main character in Ballard: Los Angeles itself. At a time when fewer and fewer Hollywood productions are shot regionally, and within the wake of wildfires that devastated giant swaths of the Southland earlier this yr, Q and Connelly are proud to be placing the true Metropolis of Angels on display.

"You get this juxtaposition of this gorgeous darkish, seedy metropolis and this lovely geography, this place that has sides to it," Q muses. "Each metropolis does, however L.A.'s are very stark."

Noting that Ballard incessantly shot alongside the picturesque Pacific Coast Freeway, she provides, "It's develop into this factor that's clearly very bittersweet now as a result of most of that coast is gone. So it's type of been preserved on this present. We get to indicate everybody what it was and what it would by no means be once more. Will probably be one thing else, but it surely gained't be this."

Connelly maintains that capturing in Los Angeles is essential to "the integrity of the present," because it was for Bosch.

"But additionally," he says, "it's a troublesome time proper now for manufacturing in California, and Los Angeles specifically. And so we're actually proud that we went from Bosch proper into Ballard and loads of the identical crew went alongside, and we're hoping to maintain it going and get one other season of Ballard."

All 10 episodes of Ballard will start streaming July 9 on Prime Video.

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