Oz is one of the most brutal shows ever made. That's saying something because especially in terms of HBO's content, there have been some pretty hardcore projects out there. But one of the things you may not know about HBO and its projects is that Oz is really the show that opened the door for every intensely dark drama on TV today. While David Chase's The Sopranos gets the credit for this, it's really Tom Fontana's Oz that should get the recognition. While the prison drama and the mafia drama are both outlandishly well-written shows that shaped what great television has become, Oz was first. So Oz should get some credit.
One of the reasons Oz so fantastic was due to the insane casting. While fans are still wondering how Rita Moreno is still acting in her 90s due to West Side Story's recent release, fans of OZ were absolutely blown away by her performance on the show between 1997 and 2003. With Rita, the great J.K. Simmons, Ghostbusters star Ernie Hudson, Terry Kinney, Eammon Walker, Kirk Acevedo, and Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Oz's quality couldn't fail. But the material was heavy, violent, and downright uncomfortable meaning that the set could be a high-stress environment. So, did that cause tensions between the actors or did it help them bond? Here's the truth...
Did The Predominantly Male Cast Of Oz Constantly Fight With One Another?
In a fascinating and in-depth article about the creation and execution of Tom Fontana's HBO hit Oz by Esquire, the crew and cast went into detail about the inner workings of the on-set dynamics between the cast. For one, most of the cast (aside from Rita Moreno and Ernie Hudson) were relatively unknown. So, the diva-like attitudes just weren't there. Tom Fontana wanted a mostly unknown cast because he didn't want the audience to be taken out of the story by someone's celebrity status. He wanted them to be fully invested in just how brutish, violent, and in most cases, awful these characters were.
"There was this quest for credibility for a lot of us playing these tough guys and we were kind of feeling our way—for all of us except Chuck Zito of course, who is an actual tough guy. The rest of us were just a bunch of musical theater sissies," J.K. Simmons, who later went on to MCU Spider-Man fame as well as win an Oscar for his role in Whiplash, said. "I would always tell people that what makes Oz so great is that it’s shot in New York and New York actors are the best, blah, blah, blah. Of course, I’ve been living in L.A. for the past 14 years, so I’m not quite sure what that says."
While the cast may have been a bunch of the theater geeks, it was still a predominantly male cast with a lot of testosterone. And it was enhanced testosterone given the subject matter. So, how did this affect the on-set environment?
"You had an environment where any given day you have 68 guys and you need to blow off some steam and we all realized early on that the wrong way to blow off that steam would be to avoid each other; it was more about embracing each other because the content of the show was so hard, what we were putting on camera that the only way to levitate that was to have a lot of fun," Dean Winters, who played Ryan O'Reilly, said to Esquire. "I’m telling you, I’ve never had that much fun on a set. Besides Edie Falco, Betty Buckley, Rita Moreno, and Lauren Velez, it was like a pirate ship."
"It was so predominately male—except for the sexiest woman on the planet, Rita Moreno—it was like a frat house, except I hate frats," Lee Tergesen, who played Tobias Beecher, explained.
The Cast Of Oz Were Extremely Friendly With One Another
Due to the budget of the show, there were no trailers or assistants. There wasn't an environment that supported divas. It was very much like a theater troupe and therefore the cast really got to spend a lot of time with one another and become friends.
"If we had lunch, everybody would eat in a common area," Harold Perrineau, who played August Hill, explained. "When there was nothing to do, you’d see guys in the corner playing cards or doing pushups, or we’d be making plans about something we were doing later or supporting somebody’s new rap group. It felt like a real brotherhood. It’s actually the closest I’ve ever felt on any set I’ve ever been on. Kirk Acevedo was the best man at my wedding."
"You’d literally have J.K. Simmons and Lee Tergesen choking each other in a scene, and the director would yell 'Cut!' and they would drop their hands and say, 'Wanna go bowling?'", Tom Fontana, the series creator, executive producer, and head writer, said. "This bunch of actors hung out together, they went to nightclubs together, they had dinners together. They were remarkably tight, I guess because what they were expected to do on the show was so sort of brutal and extreme, that they wanted to be able to feel like they were protected by their fellow actors and felt an ability to communicate with their fellow actors when the cameras weren’t rolling."
