Dennis Quaid

Armed with a killer smile and roguish charm, Dennis Quaid broke out in Hollywood in the ’80s with the films The Right Stuff, in which he played the real-life astronaut Gordon Cooper, and The Big Easy, where he was cast as a fictional Louisiana detective. After playing a wide variety of roles, from the iconic Jerry Lee Lewis in Great Balls of Fire!, Doc Holliday in Wyatt Earp and President Bill Clinton in HBO’s The Special Relationship to conflicted characters, such as the closeted homosexual family man in Far from Heaven and the middle-aged baseball player in The Rookie, Quaid now stars in his first TV series, Vegas. He once again steps into the role of a real person and a law enforcer, this time Sheriff Ralph Lamb, a rancher who was called upon to preserve law and order in the booming Las Vegas of the ’60s. Quaid, as Sheriff Lamb, soon clashes with Chicago mobster Vincent Savino, played by Michael Chiklis, who manages the swankiest hotel on the Strip, as they battle for control of Las Vegas.

 

WS: What appealed to you about Vegas?

QUAID: What drew me to it was, first, Nick Pileggi, the co-creator of Vegas [with Greg Walker], had written the feature films Goodfellas and Casino, and had a good pedigree. Second, the people who were involved, Cathy Konrad, James Mangold and Arthur Sarkissian, wanted to bring cable tele­vision to network television by way of doing a hybrid show that was not a straight procedural show, but one that would more and more be based on character and good story.

 

WS: Vegas in the ’60s is a fascinating backdrop.

QUAID: Yes, it is, and added to that, what was the kicker for me was that my character is based on the true story of Ralph Lamb, who was sheriff of Las Vegas from 1960 to 1978. He’s still alive. He lives in Las Vegas and we’ve come to have a relationship. That adds some authenticity to it as well. And during the ’60s Las Vegas went from basically a one-horse town to the fastest-growing city in the U.S. It became a huge city during that time, and along with that came a lot of money from a lot of places! That was when organized crime came in and tried to take over Vegas and they bumped up against the locals who were there. The story came down to gangsters versus cowboys, which are two American icons that are set against each other.

 

WS: Is it easier to play a flawed character like the gangster Vincent Savino because there are so many more facets to him, than it is to play a good guy like Sheriff Lamb?

QUAID: Yes and no. With Ralph Lamb, we always thought that he would start out as the traditional hero set against Michael Chiklis’s character Savino, who is trying to become more of a legitimate businessman in his world. What happens with Ralph is that he was a rancher and sort of a purist in his way of living, you might say. Being the sheriff of Las Vegas at the time was the most powerful position in Nevada, more powerful than being the governor because you controlled all the liquor licenses and dog licenses, any license, and any time you wanted to do anything, you had to come to the sheriff’s office and with that comes power. The question becomes: does power corrupt? And you can already feel a little bit of that in the other characters, like my brother the deputy sheriff, Jason O’Mara’s character, who has stepped across the line by having a relationship with Mia [the daughter of a mobster], which is not to the letter of the law. The question over time is how power does corrupt. You have this line drawn between right and wrong and once the line starts moving into gray areas, how does that affect one’s character?

 

WS: How has the real-life Ralph Lamb helped you prepare for the role?

QUAID: He’s still very much a person of that era in the way he talks and his personality. He’s kind of a combination between John Wayne and Chuck Yeager, a bigger-than-life type of figure. He handled things his own way back then, which I guess today you’d be brought up on charges [laughs] for the way he got things done! But he did get things done for the right reasons, although according to today’s laws and mores that might not be the right way.

 

WS: Is it more challenging to play somebody who did exist than someone who is the creation of a writer’s imagination?

QUAID: I’ve played a lot of real-life characters and you always take what you can and I try to capture the spirit of that person. At the same time, you have to follow the script. A lot of real-life stories are a great resource, but at the same time you do have an interpretation of the character, so it is a blend.

 

I played Jerry Lee Lewis [Great Balls of Fire!]. I played Gordon Cooper, one of the first astronauts [The Right Stuff], I played Bill Clinton [The Special Relationship]. I played Doc Holliday [Wyatt Earp]. The challenge is there even more when it’s someone who is alive and who is a really well-known figure. A lot of people don’t know what Ralph looks like or sounds like, so I haven’t tried to do an impression of him, but I have taken certain character traits he has.

 

WS: Do you feel Vegas has been able to bring a cable show to broadcast television?

QUAID: Oh, absolutely. We set out to really make a hybrid and in the beginning of the series the focus was a little bit more on the procedural because you didn’t really know the characters yet, but as you get to know the characters and the story progresses the characters become more of an integral part of the procedural. I think we’ve been successful in getting that hybrid we’ve been after.

 

WS: Do you enjoy doing a period drama?

QUAID: Yeah, I seem to fit well into that era. I grew up during that era! So the clothes and the attitudes and what was going on back then [are familiar to me]. It was a very robust time in America; the country was really exploding on so many fronts, economically [and technologically]. The Cold War was still going on. There was the Civil Rights movement. It was a very sexy time as well. There was a lot of cultural upheaval during that time, which makes it an interesting period.

 

WS: How is playing a lead in a television series different from playing one in a movie?

QUAID: One of the things I like about TV is the ability to unfold the story of a character and of a certain world over a long period of time—hopefully we’ll get several years to do this! I do like that part. You can take your time in doing that. A one-hour drama is tough to do, but I like the work and I like working in town [Los Angeles]. In movies, [the actors and crew] become a family, but you really become a family during a television show. We’re a close-knit group.

 

WS: What is the atmosphere on the set?

QUAID: It starts from the top down, it always does. Everyone really pulls his or her weight. My responsibility, when I walk on the set, is to leave my life behind and really create a positive atmosphere so everybody enjoys coming to work. And everybody feels like they are part of the show. Luckily, we have Michael Chiklis, who takes up quite a bit of the slack. He is such a great actor, and he knows how to do this, and Jason O’Mara and Carrie-Anne Moss and Taylor Handley—everyone pulls their weight.