Dwayne Johnson Rocks TV in the New HBO Sports Comedy Ballers

No one lives up to a nickname quite like Dwayne Johnson. It’s a quiet May afternoon in a tranquil suburb outside Boston and all 6 feet, 5 inches and 260 pounds of the man most commonly known as “The Rock” have just returned to his house fresh from a midday training session. Still catching his breath from the taxing workout, Johnson strides in wearing a sweat-soaked gray hoodie and extends his arm for a firm handshake while flashing his famous pearly-white smile before quickly excusing himself to change. “I put my Elvis shirt on for you,” his voice booms throughout the cavernous hallways as he reemerges, proudly puffing out his chest to display a bright yellow shirt with an image of the legendary king of rock ’n’ roll.

These days, it’s easy to crown the 43-year-old Johnson the king of the pop-culture landscape. After spending eight years as arguably the most recognizable face on the World Wrestling Entertainment roster, he made the move to acting with 2001’s The Mummy Returns. Since then, he has been unstoppable at the box office, headlining 2002’s The Scorpion King, appearing in the last three installments of the Fast and the Furious franchise, and starring in this summer’s disaster flick San Andreas.

On June 21, Johnson cooks up his first series-regular television gig on the new HBO comedy Ballers. He plays Spencer Strasmore, a retired NFL all-star linebacker beginning a new chapter as a financial adviser. “I’ve had an opportunity to play some cool characters, but this role truly became a wish-fulfillment scenario for me, because I always dreamed of having that life,” Johnson says as he cracks open two juice bottles and settles onto the white couch in his living room.

Johnson started his own football career as a high school freshman in Hawaii. Just before junior year, his family moved to Pennsylvania, and he spent the next two seasons becoming a dominant force in the game. Upon graduation, he was recruited by many of the top college programs in the country and ultimately settled on the University of Miami, where he helped his team to a national championship in 1991. But during Johnson’s senior year, a back injury and four knee surgeries sidelined him from the action. After being passed over in the NFL draft, he played in the Canadian Football League for two months before he was cut and moved back into his parents’ apartment. “We were broke during all of my teens, but if I became a professional football player, I could buy my parents a house,” Johnson says. “Football was everything, so when it was done, it was sobering and devastating.”

In 1996, he decided to follow in the steps of his father and grandfather and became a pro wrestler under the name Rocky Maivia. Thanks to his signature arched eyebrow and spirited catchphrases (e.g.,“Can you smell what The Rock is cooking?”), Johnson quickly became a fan favorite, landing a total of 17 championships during his tenure. It didn’t take long for Hollywood to come calling.

Johnson likens his Ballers character’s transition from sports to business to his own from wrestling to acting. “When you get into a world like Hollywood, the odds are that you won’t make it,” Johnson says. “When I got into acting at 29, I started applying myself with no formal training. I had to rely on my gut as a performer. I trusted my instincts, and I never forgot that.”

Spencer uses the same moxie to navigate the decadent Miami playground of nightclubs and luxury yachts as he builds up a sports division for his new firm, Anderson Financial. He uses his nice-guy reputation within the football community to build trust with current players, including Ricky (John David Washington, son of Denzel), a veteran wide receiver whose off-field antics got him cut from the Green Bay Packers but who now has a second chance to prove himself on the Dolphins. When it comes to managing the egos and finances of these athletes, Spencer considers himself their, well, rock. “That’s a good pun!” Johnson says with a laugh. “The interesting thing that happens to a lot of us is we, at times, are better at helping others than helping ourselves, and you’ll see Spencer have flashes of success and brilliance while wrestling with demons. Another pun!”

Ballers comes from executive producers Mark Wahlberg and Steve Levinson, two of the creative minds behind the long-running HBO comedy Entourage, whose DNA is apparent throughout Ballers—think high rollers, scantily clad women, extravagant parties, and overall dudeness. “But Ballers’ tone is still its own thing,” insists Levinson, who credits pilot director Peter Berg (Friday Night Lights) for infusing a fresh energy into the storytelling. “Plus, Dwayne has tremendous range and can tap into the drama of Spencer’s life and then effortlessly shift into playing the comedy that is [that world].”

Johnson’s comedic abilities come as no surprise to TV viewers. Earlier this year, he went head-to-head with Tonight Show host Jimmy Fallon on the premiere of Spike’s wildly popular Lip Sync Battle, bringing the house down with a performance of Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off” and the Bee Gees’ “Stayin’ Alive.” And in March, he returned to NBC’s Saturday Night Live for his fourth stint as host, reprising his Hulk-inspired presidential spoof “The Rock Obama.” “I love performing live,” Johnson says. “I’ll sing, I’ll dance, whatever. I just want to knock it out of the park.”

He often does—even off screen. “Regardless of what your taste is, everybody likes The Rock,” says Rob Corddry (Childrens Hospital), who plays Spencer’s wisecracking boss, Joe. “When you meet him, he lives up to that sterling reputation in that his heart is as big as his chest, and I think it comes back to him in terms of success. He gives love and gets it back.”

But Ballers is not all fun and games. The series hits on a number of issues plaguing the league today, including players’ legal troubles off the field and, in Spencer’s storyline specifically, concussions and the lasting damage experienced by a growing number of former NFLers. Johnson says addressing these issues was paramount for the preservation of the show’s authenticity. “We are aware there are two sides to every story,” he says. “So we wanted to be fair to the league, but, more importantly, we want to be fair to the players.” Johnson, who also serves as an executive producer, had conversations with the NFL about its portrayal. “They were hesitant at first, as they should be,” Johnson says. “But once they started seeing the parties involved in the project, it eased some tension. They saw that there would be a level of respect shown.”

And many current NFL superstars came ready to play. Just as Entourage attracted Hollywood A-listers for guest cameos, the first season of Ballers has lined up a roster of pro athletes, including Steelers Pro Bowler Antonio Brown, Redskins wide receiver DeSean Jackson, and Giants wide receiver Victor Cruz. “I spent a lot of time with Cruz,” says Corddry, whose personal obsession with fantasy football was written into his character. “He was my No. 1 wide receiver on two of my fantasy teams until he got hurt, but I didn’t want to be one of those fantasy guys who was like, ‘Come on, man, you didn’t score me enough points!’”

Helping to keep things real behind the scenes is Rashard Mendenhall, the promising former Steelers and Cardinals running back who shocked the sports world in 2014 when he announced his retirement at the age of 26 to pursue his true passion: screenwriting. “He knows about being in the locker room and winning in a way that, frankly, none of us do,” Johnson says. “He also brings the unique perspective of a guy who was on top and then quietly retired. That psychology of walking away from millions of dollars—this guy could be really f—ed up. But no, he’s satisfied, happy, and proud that he did it.”

When it comes to his own career decisions, Johnson, too, is extremely proud. In addition to sports, film, and TV, he’s formed production company 7 Bucks Entertainment (named for the amount of money he had in his pockets after being cut by the CFL), which has developed a number of projects, including the TNT reality series The Hero and Wake Up Call. “There’s still somehow a stigma in Hollywood that if you’re a movie star, you shouldn’t do television,” Johnson says. “But that rule is silly. Quality is the mandate. You’ve got to swing for the fences to be great, but if we strike out, at least we’ll go to sleep knowing we gave it our all.”

So does this guy ever rest? Johnson reveals that he gets enough for a guy who is constantly jet-setting around the globe, acting, producing, and maintaining one of the most prolific celebrity social-media presences today. (On May 21, he broke the world record for most selfies taken in three minutes after posing for 105 photos with fans at the London premiere of San Andreas. The next day, he surprised a superfan by officiating at his wedding.) “I do what I can to maintain the legend that I am a machine,” says Johnson, once again flashing that signature smile. “They say, ‘He doesn’t sleep! He sends out crazy f–ing messages at 3am! He’s talking to his cardio machines!’ My schedule is pretty hectic, but I get by with about five or six hours’ sleep.”

Keeping him extra busy this summer: shooting Central Intelligence, a new action-comedy movie with Kevin Hart. But Ballers remains Johnson’s most personal project to date, in more ways than one. “You get to see some parts of me that you’ve never seen before,” Johnson teases. Since the series is broadcast on a premium cable network, Johnson fans can expect a number of very racy sex scenes, one of which was interrupted by a faulty fire alarm during filming. “Look, I hit it so good that I set off alarms,” Johnson says with a laugh. “Talk about something that just feeds the ego. They call me The Rock for a reason!”

Summer Preview 2015: The Best New and Returning Shows

Summer is here and we’ve got you covered with our guide to the season’s best new and returning shows. Included in the package are:

• The Whispers puts a dark spin on imaginary friends, thanks to Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Television, premiering Monday, June 1, 10/9c, ABC.
• Hannibal is on the run, chowing his way through Florence, when Season 3 premieres, Thursday, June 4, 10/9c, NBC.
• The Astronaut Wives Club, based on Lily Koppel’s bestseller about the women married to NASA’s first astronauts, premieres Thursday, June 18, 8/7c, ABC.
• Killjoys, a new sci-fi jaunt with a trio of intergalactic bounty hunters who don’t take themselves too seriously, premieres Friday, June 19, 9/8c, Syfy.
• Mr. Robot, aka Christian Slater, leads an underground society of hackers in a new drama premiering Wednesday, June 24, 10/9c, USA.
• Zoo brings to life James Patterson and Michael Ledwidge’s bestseller about a worldwide animal attack, premiering Tuesday, June 30, 9/8c, CBS.
• Scream, inspired by the Wes Craven horror film of the same name, premieres Tuesday, June 30, 10/9c, MTV.
• Ray Donovan is back to business for a third season of dark drama, premiering Sunday, July 12, 9/8c, Showtime.
• Masters of Sex returns for Season 3, picking up with pioneering sex researchers William Masters and Virginia Johnson in 1965, premiering Sunday, July 12, 10/9c, Showtime.
• Mr. Robinson puts the spotlight on The Office‘s Craig Robinson in a new sitcom about a struggling Chicago musician-turned-substitute-teacher, premiering Wednesday, August 5, 9/8c, NBC.

For scoop on these shows, and dozens of others, pick up the new issue of TV Guide Magazine, on sale now.

David Duchovny Takes on Charles Manson in NBC’s Aquarius

The truth is still out there. Far out there, ya dig?

It’s a late-November afternoon on Paramount Pictures’ lot in Los Angeles, and everyone is feeling groovy during the final days of production on NBC’s new period procedural Aquarius. Dozens of extras cloaked in layers of hippie rags float wistfully around Stage 5 awaiting their turns on camera, while stars David Duchovny and Grey Damon wrap an intense interrogation scene in the adjoining studio, which has been outfitted to represent the LAPD’s Hollywood precinct circa 1967. As the crew preps for the next take, the actors make their way over to a couch adjacent to a car collector’s dream lineup of antique police cruisers, vintage Cadillacs, and a mammoth Plymouth.

“We are not happy driving in it,” Duchovny says of the cream-colored Plymouth. “The turning ra-dius is three blocks, and there’s no air-conditioning, so it’s a sweatbox. But we just kept telling each other it’s realistic—and that sweat is fine.”

“We are immense sweaters!” adds a smiling Damon, who plays rule-breaking undercover cop Brian Shafe. “It’s kind of a pain in the ass, but this guy [pointing to Duchovny] is a real stud.”

Indeed, this is the dawning of a new age for Duchovny, who spent nine seasons investigating paranormal activities as FBI Special Agent Fox Mulder on the sci-fi phenom The X-Files. The 54-year-old actor is making his return to the force—and network television—in Aquarius as homicide detective Sam Hodiak, a Los Angeles lawman whose search for a missing teenage girl (Emma Dumont) leads him to discover an underground movement of free-loving youths led by an aspiring musician named Charles Manson (Gethin Anthony). “Hodiak is more proactive and less investigative than Mulder,” Duchovny says. “The X-Files is a show where you’re chasing big mysteries, but Hodiak is chasing killers. So the mystery is a whodunit and not a what-the-hell-did-it.”

At the center of it is Manson, one of the world’s most notorious criminals. He was sentenced to life in prison after leading his followers on a killing spree in 1969 that took seven lives, including that of actress Sharon Tate. But Aquarius—which creator John McNamara (NBC’s Prime Suspect) classifies as “historical fiction”—is set two years before those events, and Manson is still just a struggling songwriter surrounding himself with a bevy of beautiful women. “Manson is posing as a peace-and-love dude and ends up being our first famous mass murderer, so he’s more of a symbol of when the ’60s died,” Duchovny says. “We don’t want you to sympathize with the guy, but we do want you to empathize with him.”

In finding the right actor to portray this dark American figure, producers took their search across the pond and tapped Oxford University grad Anthony, who most recently played the late Renly Baratheon on HBO’s Game of Thrones. “I started trying to sound like him and really understand his cadences,” Anthony says, citing Nuel Emmons’s book Manson in His Own Words as a vital tool to getting into Manson’s mind. “I tried to erase the monster that permeates our ideas of him. I read about where he grew up and what experiences he had in order to humanize his actions.”

Other cast members also delved into research for their roles. Friday Night Lights alum Damon spent three weeks before production immersing himself in books and documentaries about the Vietnam War to channel his character’s difficult return home from the front lines. “But I had to tone down [my research] a bit after I started having nightmares about Vietnam and comrades blowing up right next to me,” Damon reveals. “I had one dream where I walked into this dark room and Manson was standing there with a switchblade in the garb that he was arrested in…that lambskin.”

Vietnam is one of the many real-life social issues Aquarius will tackle during the course of its 13 episodes. Look for Hodiak and Shafe to enlist the help of a Black Panther named Bunchy Carter (played by fellow Friday Night Lights vet Gaius Charles) for a handful of cases involving race relations. There is also a multiepisode arc involving a shocking murder, which results in Hodiak having to go undercover at a gay nightclub. And the rise of feminism is addressed through the eyes of young female police officer Charmain Tully (The Originals’ Claire Holt), who struggles to earn respect in the cutthroat boys’ club of the precinct. “It’s such a fertile area for stories, because our characters are standing right on the point of history where things are going to go to utopia—where the hippies want to go—or things are going to turn dark, as it does for Manson,” Duchovny says. “Hodiak either has to come along or get left behind.”

In addition to addressing social change, Aquarius has plenty of patented ’60s sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll. The soundtrack in particular plays a vital role in setting Aquarius’s tone. Producers handpicked a variety of rock classics for each episode, with the first hour alone featuring popular tracks from Jefferson Airplane, the Who, and the Rolling Stones. “It was not cheap,” says executive producer Marty Adelstein. In order to avoid those hefty price tags going forward, producers scoured archives for lesser-known songs to showcase alongside the era’s greatest hits. “Frank Sinatra is a huge part of Episode 6, but that motherf—er is so expensive,” McNamara says. “So in that episode, it’s Sinatra and five songs you’ve never heard of. We became connoisseurs of garage bands, one-hit wonders, and B sides.”

The producers are also channeling their inner radicals by testing the limits of traditional network-television standards in the show’s depiction of drug use and sex. Originally conceived by McNamara as an envelope–pushing cable drama, the series was championed by NBC Entertainment Chairman Robert Greenblatt, who previously cast Duchovny in The X-Files and as sex addict Hank Moody on the Showtime comedy Californication. “Under normal circumstances now, talent like David chooses to go to cable or a digital platform first because there are so many restrictions on network television,” Greenblatt says. “But the lines are blurring more, and this has more darker edges and themes than the average broadcast show.”

To that end, NBC made it overtly clear to the show’s creative team that the integrity of the series would remain intact, including the explicit orgies and underage drug use that were staples at the Manson camp. This meant filming—and editing—two different versions of every episode: an hour approved by the network to air in primetime and a racier version that will be released later on Amazon and international platforms. “We would do the digital version, send it to NBC, and their heads would explode,” McNamara says. “Obviously nudity is a huge part of the era, and that is fully [on display] in the digital cuts.”

NBC is going one step further in bucking the traditional broadcast norms of series distribution by making all 13 episodes available for bingeing on nbc.com following the May 28 season premiere. “I believe viewers think more highly of a show that they can watch at their own discretion rather than waiting for every episode to come out,” Greenblatt says. “We’ll just give the viewer more of a chance to get sucked into it faster.”

For Duchovny, the broadcast rules for salty language were the most difficult to overcome, especially while having to play a tough-talking L.A. cop. “I feel like networks allow a lot more violence than they do language, and to me, that’s backward,” Duchovny says. “It’s a part of life. My kids know the words, so I don’t know who we’re protecting.”

Although Manson’s murderous rampage came to an end in 1971, McNamara insists that’s not where Aquarius’s story stops. The producers have six seasons plotted out, with a bulk of the action spanning into the late 1970s before time-jumping to 1984 for its ultimate conclusion. “The show really is about how people deal with failure, tragedy, and changes,” McNamara says. “How do you face the aftermath of things you couldn’t stop or fix?”

A potential six-season commitment might sound daunting to some actors, but Duchovny embraces the challenge as he adds this series to his expanding résumé. Earlier this year, he released his first novel, Holy Cow, about a cow that travels to India to avoid being eaten. And on May 12, he released his first album, a collection of folk-rock tunes, called Hell or High-water. “It’s exciting to be able to do such different things,” Duchovny says. But it is the upcoming reboot of The X-Files that has his fans in a frenzy. Earlier this year, Fox announced that Duchovny and costar Gillian Anderson—who played Mulder’s partner in crime (and later love interest), Dana Scully—would reprise their roles for a six-episode event series written by creator Chris Carter and set to air later in 2015.

“It just happened. We were all able to come together at this moment,” Duchovny says of the timing. “Also, who can’t do six episodes? My mom can do Mulder for six episodes.”

Production is set to begin in Vancouver in mid-June, and Duchovny has been dropping hints about familiar faces that will reappear, telling David Letterman that Mitch Pileggi (Assistant Director Walter Skinner) and William B. Davis (Cigarette-Smoking Man) will be back. Even though Duchovny has yet to see a script, he admits he is most looking forward to reuniting with Anderson to further explore the Mulder-Scully relationship. “I’m just thankful that Gillian will be there to check in with and go, ‘F–k, this is strange!’” he says with a laugh. “We started this show 23 years ago, and here we are still doing it. In some way, it’s a show that never ended.”

Back on the set of Aquarius, it’s apparent that Duchovny has already discovered a fresh new chemistry with his latest on-screen partner, Damon. “I look at the relationship like Jesse Pinkman and Walter White,” Damon says, referring to Breaking Bad’s meth-cooking duo. “They complement each other, both negatively and positively.”

“I’ll say your hair looks great,” Duchovny replies. “That’s a compliment!”

“And I’ll say your hair looks stupid,” Damon says with a laugh as he runs his hands through Duchovny’s crew cut. “This is going to be a wild, interesting, and very groovy ride.”

Crime is Paying Off for NCIS: New Orleans

At a cover shoot for TV Guide Magazine, the five principal cast members of NCIS: New Orleans have just come in from filming a scene at the soundstage next door, but you might think they’d dropped by after a night at Tipitina’s, the Spotted Cat, d.b.a, or one of Orleans Parish’s other celebrated nightspots. Things are getting loosey-goosey—emphasis on the goosing—as the quintet squeezes in tight. Lucas Black is tickling Zoe McLellan. McLellan is borrowing Rob Kerkovich’s glasses for that sexy librarian look. It’s up to Scott Bakula to provide the voice of reason. “We’ll hate these shots, I guarantee you,” he says, right after having his manly bosom groped from behind by CCH Pounder.

“Are we confused as to the nature of this procedural?” asks Pounder, suddenly sounding a sober note as she takes her mitts off the series’ star.

“This is full-on thank God it’s Friday,” says Kerkovich, usually the show’s comic foil, adding his own note of mock solemnity to this touchy-feely free-for-all: “So many people have died so far.”

Well, yes, they have, rather reliably, at the predictable rate of one corpse per week, with occasional bonus deaths in instances involving a mad bomber or some such. CBS’s NCIS: New Orleans didn’t get to be the season’s top freshman show by not playing by the procedural rules. What sailor would want to be stationed here after watching a series, which, if taken literally, suggests that Louisiana has an exponentially higher mortality rate among active and former servicemen and servicewomen than any other seaport state?

Probably a lot of impressionable petty officers are champing at that bit, actually, since the series also suggests that it’s worth the risk of being infected with bubonic plague, murdered vampire-style in a cemetery, poisoned with radiation, or shot during Mardi Gras just to live and thrive amid the city’s infectiously celebratory spirit. And although all the principals have been given—in typical NCIS-franchise fashion—slightly angsty backstories, a typical episode is less likely to end on a brooding close-up than with the characters cooking gumbo for one another in the squad room’s kitchen. And can it even be called a squad room, when the cozily funky office set looks like the House of Blues blew up, albeit with most-wanted lineups on the overhead monitors instead of drink specials?

If procedurals are a kind of comfort food, the good-times-and-autopsies mélange of NCIS: New Orleans managed to attract a whopping 18 million viewers (including DVR), on average, in Season 1 by being primetime’s oysters on the shell or its sugary beignet or nightcapping Sazerac.

“Part of what drew me to setting a show down there,” says creator and executive producer Gary Glasberg, “is the contrast of people who work hard and have faced all kinds of adversity—whether it’s Katrina or socio-economic problems—but hold on to each other and rise up and celebrate regardless. And the beauty of New Orleans is that there’s literally a parade or festival for everything. So you’re constantly working around that.” Sometimes they’re also working around that festiveness psychologically, as the city’s eternally high-spirited side can carry over into a kind of light-headedness at the workplace.

“But,” says McLellan (Agent Meredith Brody), “then we have to be reminded, ‘OK, someone’s dead,’ and remember the urgency of the story we’re telling. Especially when the baby was missing [in the April episode “Rock-a-Bye-Baby”]. It’s like, ‘You care about this baby!’ Got to find the baby! Find the Navy baby!” That last singsongy catchphrase has become a running joke between Black and McLellan—with apologies to missing naval infants everywhere, we’re sure.

Maybe they’ve earned this levity, given the pressure everyone faced at the start of the season just to produce a coherent show, with very little time for conceptual lollygagging. “There was a lot of tension at the beginning,” Black says, “but after we got on air, people at the network began to trust us more, and it felt a little more relaxed on set.” A little? “There was a point during this season where we felt comfortable to do our own thing a bit more, because it was like, ‘Huh! People like us!’” And those people have made this the most successful first-year drama since Desperate Housewives exactly a decade earlier.

But in the first year of any show, says Bakula (a veteran of Quantum Leap, Star Trek: Enterprise, and Men of a Certain Age, among many others), “you just never feel like you have your legs underneath you.” He recounts the series’ hurried history, which began with an embedded pilot that took the form of a two-parter on NCIS in spring 2014: “When we actually got the formal invitation that we were being picked up, it was the beginning of May, and then the scramble began to start shooting July 21. This place [in a New Orleans suburb] went from an empty soundstage to something we were shooting on in five weeks. The first day of shooting, they’d barely sealed the paint on the walls and hadn’t hung any lights.

“We’re not all in the same place, either,” he continues, “so there are so many reasons why it should have been a disaster.” He’s talking about how Glasberg and the writing staff stayed in Los Angeles—and so, in a way, did Bakula, who flew home every weekend, not wanting to uproot his family just as his son was entering high school. Somehow, Bakula also flew to San Francisco a few times to shoot three episodes of HBO’s Looking, fulfilling his promise to wrap up a supporting role on that niche drama’s second season even as he was anchoring TV’s hottest new mainstream show. But that shoulda-been disastrousness “hasn’t been,” he says. “And because they picked us up so early, all our directors are lined up for next year, so invariably it’s going to be an easier process.” Not the big easy, mind you—since, Bakula says, “they keep making the episodes bigger and harder to do”—but easier.

First, there’s a freshman season to wrap. Back on the soundstage, Bakula is shooting a scene for the penultimate episode with Steven Weber (Wings), who has a recurring role as a presumably corrupt city councilman whose unctuousness can be measured by his insistence on wearing sharp suits even in the harshest humidity. You can see the familiarity between these TV pros when they both flub their lines and Bakula quips, “Together, we almost add up to one actor.”

Their characters are discussing the city-rattling repercussions of violence perpetrated by Baitfish, a villain who’s been Special Agent Dwayne Pride’s bête noire throughout the season. No spoilers here, but suffice it to say that Baitfish’s mayhem is the focus of the May 5 episode, which opens the door to an even wider world of crime involving the New Orleans seaport in the May 12 finale. Weber’s politician and Bakula’s determined Pride are going at it over who’s to blame for some very public casualties, before Weber finally lowers his voice and says, “No matter what you think of me, I love this city too.” Which may be setting Weber up to be more sympathetic in Season 2, because, really, how can anyone crush so hard on NOLA and be all creep?

Just as the medical profession’s primary dictum is “First, do no harm,” this show’s initial mission was: Don’t tick off the host city. By that measure, too, the series has been a smashing success—even if everyone you run into in New Orleans will eagerly tell you, unprompted, which actors get the accents right.

“Everybody thinks I’m faking it,” says Black (Special Agent Christopher LaSalle), the lone primary cast member with a real-life Southern twang, thanks to his upbringing in nearby Alabama. “I’ve worked on this accent for 32 years. I feel like I’ve finally got it down pat. It’s a struggle, what we go through as actors.” Another thing he doesn’t actually struggle with: “I love the steaming heat, and I get to laugh at everybody who doesn’t.”

Pounder, who plays coroner Loretta Wade, had a tougher time adjusting, even though she’s gradually shifting her home base from L.A. to New Orleans. “I have to have faith that if the first [NCIS] show has been running for 12 years, maybe the second show [NCIS: Los Angeles] will run for eight years, and maybe this show will run for six or seven.” But, she adds, “I’m a Caribbean person, and this is a Caribbean country, stuck in America. Well, not stuck—happily hanging out in America—and therefore it has all the problems that that has: The heat come summertime is hellish, and that’s when we start our [production] season. I’m hoping to drop enough weight so that the water’s not just pouring out of me like it did last year, when I thought, ‘I’m going to die.’”

Northeast native Kerkovich arrived at an analogy for the city after first visiting (and feeling out of place on) legendarily rowdy Bourbon Street: “A local reporter asked me, ‘What do you think about New Orleans?’ I said. ‘It’s like Bartertown,’ from Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, which couldn’t be more obscure, because Bartertown isn’t even in the title of the movie. I thought, ‘This interview has tanked.’ I referenced the third Mad Max movie?’” (Yes, the resident forensic scientist is at least as ready with the pop cultural references off screen as on.) “But it’s cool to not be in the L.A./Hollywood world. Here you can go into a coffee shop and not every single person is working on a screenplay. They’re all on their laptops writing jazz.”

Bakula, who’s developed a list of favorite local nightspots despite spending his weekends in L.A., laughs when he’s reminded how he initially hoped the series could be filmed in Hollywood. “There’s a huge commitment to trying to do it correctly here,” he says. “I’ve lived in a lot of great cities in the United States, but this one’s unique in that people are always saying to me, ‘We love what you’re doing here. How are you liking my city?’ There’s this possessiveness about it. You don’t usually hear people say, ‘How are you loving my Santa Monica?’ I love how the people do things outside their homes here, which is kind of counter to the world that’s becoming more like, ‘How can I watch a movie in my house?’”

Not that anyone at this photo shoot wants to discourage NCIS: NOLA binge-watching, although it can lead viewers to mistake the actors for their characters, which they still find amusing. McLellan recalls an exchange she had with a local on Frenchmen Street. “My sister and I went out to hear music,” she says, “and as I go up to the bar to get a drink, this college girl is standing there and is like [affects thick Louisiana accent], ‘Brody, oh my God, hi! Is Pride with you?’ I said no. She said, ‘Good, because I’d do him right here.’”

Perhaps they need to throw in even more morgue scenes, then? Because while this show may be big, it probably shouldn’t feel that easy.

NCIS: New Orleans airs Tuesdays, 9/8c, CBS