Colin Farrell plays the title character John Sugar in the Mark Protosevich-scripted series, “Sugar,” which is a love letter to Los Angeles, Hollywood, classic films like “The Big Sleep” and the detective genre itself.
As Farrell told TheWrap in a recent interview, Sugar is not the “archetypical private detective.” Sure, he’s handy with his fists and can easily disarm an assailant, but he is also able to put the most reluctant witness at ease. The character is also a polyglot, a fancy word that means he speaks several different languages fluently — including Japanese, Arabic and Spanish.
The introspective P.I. who’s been hired to find Olivia Siegel, the missing granddaughter of James Cromwell’s legendary Hollywood producer, attracts the usual sorts of trouble throughout the case. But he also draws people to him, from Amy Ryan’s reclusive rock star Melanie Mackintosh to a dog that becomes his sidekick after a chance meeting near Hollywood Blvd.
“He’s deeply intuitive… very attuned to his environment, very attuned to anything living in creation; truly trees, birds, humans, dogs,” Farrell said. “That was one of the lovely things about him. He had a tenderness to him as well, and a concern for all things [in] creation.”
While fictional detectives like Philip Marlowe, Sam Spade and Mike Hammer aren’t known for being particularly tender, the actor welcomed the unique spin on the genre.
“It’s just kind of counter to a lot of the more archetypical private detectives that I’ve experienced in the world of noir, who are understandably somewhat jaded by what they’ve observed, somewhat tired by taking on the burden of the cases that they’ve worked. And this guy didn’t seem to — although he’s worked cases for years — he didn’t seem to carry that kind of weight with him. He had this optimism and this curiosity,” Farrell explained.
The Irish actor, who has an American accent in the series, also narrates in traditional noir style. “So many of the tropes are honored in this,” he said. “Obviously, the voiceover was an opportunity, as narration voiceovers so often are, to get beneath the hood of the character a little bit more.”
Farrell added, “[Sugar] keeps his cards close to his chest, he doesn’t really divulge much about his background or about his history. So it gave us an opportunity to expose more of the character in a way that felt very immediate and very intimate.”
In the first episode, Sugar tells us, “Out here, I’m considered a good guy.” But how does Farrell see the character?
“I see him as a good guy,” Farrell agreed, although he admitted that Sugar “gets into the weeds” and more than a little obsessed in trying to find Olivia. “I see him as someone who’s striving for good, and I see him as someone who wants to be on the right side of the lines of history, you know?”
The first two episodes of “Sugar” are now streaming on Apple TV+, with new episodes premiering on Fridays.
