For some, the name The Rockford Files means nothing. For others, it means six seasons and James Garner. But the new NBC show has to convince both the people who remember the show it’s remaking and those who have no idea about it and might be tuning in for David Boreanaz (Angel, Bones). And both star Boreanaz and executive producer Mike Daniels understand this.
“The hope is that there will be Easter eggs throughout the season and the series, throwbacks, callbacks to the original series,” Daniels shared during a panel alongside Boreanaz. “I think when we set out to do this, we kind of purposely didn’t want it to be a one‑for‑one, apples‑to‑apples remake. I think you can kind of get in trouble with people who are sentimental with the original. It just becomes a comparison of who is the actor they remember loving as a kid and who’s the actor playing it now.”
So, how did Daniels tackle this problem? “When we jumped into it, the two things fans of the original seemed to remember were James Garner, who is iconic, and the character that he played, but also how they felt watching the show. The words they used was fun. It was exciting. He was cool. So, for me it became more about creating a show that made fans of the original feel like they felt watching the original and then just nailing that part of Rockford, which, luckily for me, I had the David Boreanaz to pull that off for me.”
Ironically, for Boreanaz, it felt like he was always meant to play a role that Garner played before. “A piece of me owes that to my mother, who was… when I started Bones, my mother said, ‘David, you need to play something of Jim Garner. You have to. You look just like him. You resemble him. Somehow, you have to do something.’ So within those 15, I don’t know, 20 years of doing the show on Bones and then doing a military show for seven years, which I call the boot camp to get to this show, my mother’s spirit obviously brought that to light somehow. So I thank my mom a little bit for that energy.”
For Daniels, it went beyond the physical.
“David obviously has a resemblance to Garner, but there are moments in this pilot and moments when we were on set shooting it that he would suddenly look in the camera, and it was just uncanny. Beyond what it is sitting next to him, it really felt like the guy was challenging someone or being inhabited by someone. And it wasn’t just the features. It was the half smile, the charm, the smirk, the twinkle behind the eye. It just suddenly all fit.”
“Certainly, when we cast him, we were like, ‘Oh, great. He even kind of looks like the guy,’ you know. And then he got on set, and we were like, ‘Whoa, he feels like the guy too in how he’s inhabiting this character.'”
We’ll get to see what that looks like when the show premieres midseason.
