{"id":8276,"date":"2017-09-22T09:39:39","date_gmt":"2017-09-22T13:39:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/179998-2\/"},"modified":"2017-10-06T14:02:12","modified_gmt":"2017-10-06T18:02:12","slug":"peter-jankowski-shares-details-about-law-order-true-crime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/peter-jankowski-shares-details-about-law-order-true-crime\/","title":{"rendered":"Peter Jankowski"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>A Dick Wolf show has unique characteristics: it\u2019s most often a procedural and remains on the air for a very long time, it employs the best talent in front of and behind the camera, and it sells extremely well around the world. Law & Order<\/em> was on the air for 20 years, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit<\/em> premiered in 1999 and is now in its 19th season. A second Dick Wolf franchise started in 2012 with Chicago Fire<\/em>, which was followed by Chicago P.D.<\/em> and Chicago Med<\/em>. As president and COO of Wolf Films, Peter Jankowski serves as executive producer on all these shows. He talks to TV Drama<\/em> about attracting talent, creating welcoming environments on sets and the newest member of the Dick Wolf family, Law & Order True Crime: The Menendez Murders<\/em>, which premiered this fall and revisits the notorious 1990s trial.<\/p>\n

TV DRAMA:<\/strong> Without giving away any secret sauces, to what do you attribute the ongoing appeal and success of Law & Order:<\/em> SVU<\/em>?
\nJANKOWSKI:<\/strong> No problem in telling you the secret sauce, it\u2019s a very hard sauce to put together! It starts with great stories, great personnel, an amazing crew and, not to be glib, the greatest actress on television, Mariska Hargitay. Those things don\u2019t come together that often and we\u2019ve been extremely lucky.<\/p>\n

TV DRAMA:<\/strong> Dick Wolf\u2019s Law & Order<\/em> franchise was such a fixture of New York. What brought about Chicago as a location and then the growth of the franchise?
\nJANKOWSKI:<\/strong> When Chicago Fire<\/em> first started, it was our attempt to reach beyond the shores of New York, where we had done most of our shows, and look into America\u2019s heartland and do a show about the real heroes, the first responders, and a more character-based show, perhaps. It\u2019s interesting to see what\u2019s happened. I have a poster on the wall behind my desk of all the actors on the various shows and you look at them and you realize they are families: Chicago Fire<\/em> represents a family of firefighters, Chicago P.D.<\/em> represents a family of police officers, Chicago Med<\/em> represents a family of doctors. It\u2019s those basic values that give all these shows a common strength.<\/p>\n

TV DRAMA:<\/strong> I\u2019ve moderated panels with several of the Chicago<\/em> franchise actors. They may have been acting, but they seemed close-knit.
\nJANKOWSKI:<\/strong> They weren\u2019t acting. I don\u2019t know if it\u2019s the shows creating the vibe or it\u2019s the actors creating the vibe, but they genuinely care about each other, and when we have actors leave the show, people are upset, it\u2019s an emotional thing for everybody. They are true families; they even have book clubs together!<\/p>\n

TV DRAMA:<\/strong> Dick Wolf shows have historically been procedurals, but SVU<\/em> has taken on some serialized storylines and Chicago Fire<\/em> is certainly serialized.
\nJANKOWSKI:<\/strong> I don\u2019t think you can compare Chicago Fire<\/em> to SVU<\/em>. Chicago Fire<\/em> was designed as a workplace drama that is serialized. All the Law & Order<\/em> shows were procedurals and SVU<\/em> is a procedural and they all are written a different way. Chicago P.D.<\/em> straddles the two; it\u2019s a procedural at heart but has a great deal of character in it because it\u2019s in the Chicago<\/em> universe. We\u2019ve gone a little more character-y on SVU<\/em> these last couple of years. I think it was a function of a writer who came in a couple of years ago, Warren Leight. That was where his heart went in terms of writing. We didn\u2019t turn our backs on the procedural part, but we brought a lot more richness to the characters and have gone to places we normally wouldn\u2019t have gone. I think it\u2019s helped the show and given it more longevity. It\u2019s not that we are spending the entire episode at home with somebody or dealing with their dilemma, but to see how difficult it is to be a single mother and have a full-time job is an interesting discussion on SVU<\/em>. It expands the audience and it expands what we can accomplish.<\/p>\n

TV DRAMA:<\/strong> SVU<\/em> and the Chicago<\/em> shows produce some 22 episodes each season. How have you created an environment that can produce so many episodes?
\nJANKOWSKI:<\/strong> It\u2019s a really easy answer: you surround yourself with the best people possible, the best writers, directors, actors and crew members, everybody top to bottom. In today\u2019s world, it\u2019s not an easy task; there are so many outlets now producing original programming that good people get snapped up. It\u2019s a testament to\u2014going back to the family and people enjoying working together\u2014trying to create an environment where people can do their best work and don\u2019t feel threatened. If you give them as much stability as possible, it\u2019s amazing how employees can flourish.<\/p>\n

TV DRAMA:<\/strong> Dick Wolf has told me that his shows have employed more than 40,000 actors.
\nJANKOWSKI:<\/strong> I\u2019ve heard various numbers, some were even higher than that, but it\u2019s certainly in that range and it\u2019s remarkable. We run out of good actors and a lot of the really good ones will come back two, three, four times.<\/p>\n

TV DRAMA:<\/strong> Is it getting harder to find the talent you want because there are so many scripted projects nowadays?
\nJANKOWSKI:<\/strong> Yes. We used to just compete with the network dramas; now there are dramas all over the place. There are so many you need a scorecard to keep track of what\u2019s being produced in a current month. When we first went to Chicago to produce Chicago Fire<\/em>, I\u2019d be stretching it to say there were two other shows in production. Now the city of Chicago has Empire<\/em> and our three shows; it\u2019s a very busy city, so even finding basic crews is a challenge.<\/p>\n

TV DRAMA:<\/strong> The crossover episodes are so popular with viewers. I imagine they are quite complicated to produce. How willing are the shows to provide actors to do the crossovers?
\nJANKOWSKI:<\/strong> The shows are very willing and the actors are very eager; that\u2019s not the issue. The first issue is what can we do that\u2019s going to be worthy of a crossover. We did one last year loosely based on the 2016 fire in the Ghost Ship warehouse in Oakland. [There was a concert taking place in the warehouse when the fire broke out.] The challenge is how you create a storyline that can be explored in all the shows involved in the crossover. It\u2019s very tricky because there\u2019s not a lot of subject matter that you can carry over that many episodes. But once you find that then you have to find out how to make it and that\u2019s also tricky. What makes it easier is that everybody is on the same page. Our production operation in Chicago is really well laid out. They all share a common wall, so when Monica Raymund [who plays paramedic and firefighter Gabriela Dawson on Chicago Fire<\/em>] needs to make an appearance on Chicago P.D.<\/em>, she just walks across the parking lot. That way, it\u2019s a simpler production challenge for actors and a lot of our personnel. What complicates it is scheduling. All the shows are going at the same time so somebody\u2019s got to lose something in order to give something to another show and that\u2019s where it gets very complicated.<\/p>\n

TV DRAMA:<\/strong> Despite the popularity of crossovers, do you need to limit them to keep them special?
\nJANKOWSKI:<\/strong> Absolutely, and even how NBC promotes them. We have small crossovers and we have big crossovers. If a character from Chicago P.D.<\/em> or Chicago Med<\/em> shows up in Molly\u2019s [the bar owned by some of the firefighters in Chicago Fire<\/em>], we have to be careful not to make a big deal out of it or call it a crossover because it dilutes the term we use for the big crossovers. We\u2019re very mindful of that.<\/p>\n

TV DRAMA:<\/strong> I was excited to read that Philip Winchester, who starred in Chicago Justice<\/em> as Peter Stone, will reprise that role on SVU<\/em>.
\nJANKOWSKI:<\/strong> I was very excited to have made that deal! Philip is a wonderful man and he did an amazing job on Justice<\/em>. Justice<\/em> was a terrific show that was canceled for reasons above my head. I make shows, other people schedule them and we were sad to see it go. But Philip left such a strong mark with the character of Peter Stone and because of the character\u2019s lineage\u2014he\u2019s the son of Ben Stone, who was the executive assistant district attorney on Law & Order<\/em>\u2014it just made sense to transition Peter back to New York. He\u2019s also a very interesting match for Mariska Hargitay and the two of them are going to have some great scenes together.<\/p>\n

TV DRAMA:<\/strong> Is ADA Rafael Barba, played by Ra\u00fal Esparza, still going to be in the show?
\nJANKOWSKI:<\/strong> Barba is in the first half of this season. Ra\u00fal is going off to do some Broadway and Philip will be coming in to replace him.<\/p>\n

TV DRAMA:<\/strong> Tell us about Law & Order True Crime<\/em>. Will it be more than just a retelling of the Menendez brothers\u2019 trial? Will we learn information we didn\u2019t know at the time of the original trial?
\nJANKOWSKI:<\/strong> I certainly hope people don\u2019t know what we\u2019re telling. It\u2019s eight episodes and we go into fairly interesting [detail] as we peel away the onion of the story. When I first heard the Menendez saga, I was a young kid in the late \u201980s. The conclusions I came to\u2014knee-jerk reactions based on everything that was in the media at the time\u2014are not the conclusions I have today. That\u2019s been a very interesting journey for me and all the people working on the show\u2014to what extreme did abuse affect these kids? How would they have been treated differently today? It\u2019s not a whodunit it\u2019s a whydunit and getting into the why is very interesting.<\/p>\n

TV DRAMA:<\/strong> Is it fair to say there could be more iterations of True Crime<\/em> down the line?
\nJANKOWSKI:<\/strong> Yes, I think it\u2019s very fair to say that we would like to do that but we have to finish this one first, get it out there and get everybody excited by it. While we are thinking about the future, we are putting our energy in the present.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

PREMIUM: Peter Jankowski, the president and COO of Wolf Films, talks to World Screen Newsflash about attracting talent, creating welcoming environments on sets and the newest member of the Dick Wolf family, Law & Order True Crime: The Menendez Murders, which premieres on Tuesday night and revisits the notorious 1990s trial.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":289,"featured_media":8277,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[68],"tags":[2126,134,2127],"class_list":["post-8276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-interviews","tag-law-order-true-crime","tag-law-order-svu","tag-peter-jankowski","pmpro-has-access"],"yoast_head":"\nPeter Jankowski - TVDRAMA<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/peter-jankowski-shares-details-about-law-order-true-crime\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Peter Jankowski - 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