Exclusive Interview: Pop Culturalist Chats with Blindfire’s Brian Geraghty

Actor Brian Geraghty’s career has been a stream of steady and memorable roles. From films like The Hurt Locker and Flight to popular TV shows like The Alienist, Big Sky, and Boardwalk Empire. He may be best known for his performance as fan-favorite Sean Roman on Chicago P.D..

Returning to the world of criminal justice, Brian’s latest project finds him starring as officer Will Bishop in Blindfire. Blindfire’s timely premise of police committing racial profiling to the detriment of innocent Black people is riveting. We chatted with Brian about Blindfire, his character’s dark spiral, and his love for independent filmmaking.

PC: Tell us about Blindfire and your character.
Brian: Blindfire is about a veteran police officer in LA who goes on a routine call that ends up having a tragic ending: he shoots a Black man. The movie is about him questioning whether he did it because the guy was Black or if he did it because he felt threatened for his life. In discovering and asking that question, he finds out that it was actually a setup called swatting, which is what kids do these days—they prank call in fake 911 calls. So, not only did he shoot an innocent man, he was set up as a joke.

PC: You sat down with Mike Nell [director-writer] and Howard Barish [producer] before jumping onto this project. What was discussed in that conversation? How did that ultimately lead you to make the decision to join the cast?
Brian: They were like, “We have all our own equipment, so the budget’s really this.” I was like, “Okay, that makes it a lot easier.” [laughs] Honestly, the first thing I thought when I read the script was, “How are we going to shoot this movie for this amount of money in this space in LA?” That was my first question. I was going to go in and say, “Thank you, but no thank you. There’s no way we could do this properly.” They go, “No, we own all our equipment, and we have trailers.” I was like, “Oh okay. Wow. All right. Let’s talk about the film then.” We started talking about the film, and I just wanted to know why Mike wrote the movie and why it was important to him and Howard to tell the story.

Howard’s thing was he had the funds to help support young and first-time directors, and because they worked so closely with Ava DuVernay, and because they were exploring material like this that was really asking questions about race and divisiveness and where our country is, they had a real, honest take on it. Mike had this idea because he heard about these things and he was exploring it for a while. Once he talked about why he wanted to do it and what it meant to him, I was like, “Okay, I like these guys. They’re coming into it with the right attitude.”

We started talking about the part more. Mike was very open. The subject matter was terrifying to me. I had done this New York Times piece with Brett Weiner called Verbatim, where basically, I played officer Darren Wilson in the Ferguson trial, and he shoots these pieces that are verbatim court transcripts. I did it with LaKeith Stanfield and Uzo Aduba from Orange Is the New Black, and it was really fun, but it was also really scary. Any time that you do something, people will scrutinize it. They’ll question, “Are they celebrating this? What is the point of view? Is this anti- or pro-something?” Like any war film, questions will be raised.

Any time I get offered a job like that, I always take it. I’m not really interested in doing anything safe. If it scares me, which this did, I usually go, “I got to do this.” I had a quick conversation with my friends, and they were like, “You have to do this.” I was like, “You’re right.” I had a great time making this movie. Obviously, we had a very short shooting schedule and not a lot of days. We showed up and did what we could.

PC: As your character comes to terms with his actions, he goes down this really dark spiral. How did you prepare to tackle that journey?
Brian: To be honest, I’ve been down the dark spiral before, so that wasn’t too hard. I’ve been down that road. I knew what that was. That being said, knowing what it is personally, and then portraying it in a film or TV show is different, so that was something that I worked on quite a bit. I tried to make it not be some meaningless archetype, but tried to really make it meaningful, because when people have something traumatic happen to them, they need to escape in a way. Everyone has different defense mechanisms; some people drink, some people do drugs, some people are able to compartmentalize it and not deal with it, and then it affects their lives in other ways. It’s something that I experienced and was very interested in. I watched a lot of movies with drinking and drugs and talked to a lot of my peers who I respect as actors. I worked on it with them and Mike. It was an amalgamation of things.

PC: As an artist, you’ve worked on projects of all sizes. What is it about independent filmmaking that excites you?
Brian: That’s a great question. What I love about independent filmmaking is that there’s a lot of true creativity. A lot of what we use as armor like, “I’m this, I’m that,” goes away. We’re there to tell a story. We’re there to use our craft and that’s a purer form of acting for me. You take everything else away, like the budget. We have enough to feel comfortable and to rehearse and then we put the rehearsal down on the film and we tell the story.

There are also no outside companies that are telling us what we need to do; it’s very streamlined. It’s the director, the writer, the actors, the producing partners, and the cinematographer who are there to help facilitate the story and to bring it to life.

I’m on a TV show right now, and I get to do incredibly fun things, and I’m very, very fortunate in that regard, but you have to go through the studio and the network. There are a lot of things to answer before you can get to the point where you’re just creating something that’s personal and meaningful.

PC: With this being such an incredibly relevant and timely film, what do you hope audiences take away?
Brian: That’s another great question. When I watch my fellow actors, from Jim Beaver to Sharon Leal to Edwina [Findley Dickerson] to Chiké [Okonkwo], I see a personal story being told. I hope audiences are moved. I hope they like it and feel like it’s a story that they haven’t seen before. It’s a small movie, but it’s got a lot of heart. That’s what I hope people take away: this personal story, and we all tried to tell it the best we could with no frills. We tried to simply tell the story, and you can see there’s a lot of heart and love there.

To keep up with Brian, follow him on Instagram. Watch Blindfire today.