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"Hawaii" cast members Sharif Atkins, left, Ivan Sergei and Eric Balfour appear at a press event in Los Angeles, Calif.
Quirky chemistry drives
‘Hawaii’ co-starsThe islands' culture and lifestyle play
roles in the new NBC series
Eric Balfour and Ivan Sergei, co-stars of NBC's police drama "Hawaii," pretty much cemented their on-screen, off-screen buddy relationship during a recent media meet in Los Angeles where the 20-something duo brought spark to the gathering with playful sarcasm and lots of teasing.
NBC brought six of the seven ensemble cast members to the Century City Hotel, including Balfour and Sergei, Sharif Atkins, Michael Biehn, Peter Navy Tuiasosopo, Aya Sumika and executive producer/show creator Jeff Eastin.
Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, who plays the police precinct's captain, couldn't attend because, Eastin told some 150 reporters, "he lives in Hawaii."
Balfour congratulated the man who introduced Tuiasosopo "for getting Peter's last name right. That was good."
Then Sergei piped in to the silent reporters, "I have a question. Does anyone have any questions?"
Balfour: "I have a question. Have you always been this handsome?"
Sergei: "Do not start with me. He's wearing a pink shirt and he's starting with me."
Balfour: "I can rock the pink shirt. I told you that before."
Sergei: "Very manly man."
Hawaii news media were not invited to the L.A. press junket, so the "Hawaii" production provided the Star-Bulletin with a transcript that provides insight into the actors and the direction Eastin wants to take the show. The network didn't allow interviews with cast members or producers prior to the junket.
Much of the session was spent with Eastin or frequent island visitors Balfour and Sergei talking about Hawaii's culture, lifestyle, and how police operate in Honolulu, including HPD officers' use of their own automobiles for work.
"Oh, my God," a reporter exclaimed in response.
In the show, the two police teams of Balfour-Sergei and Biehn-Atkins use convertibles.
"We may be playing a little loose with reality," Eastin said. "Convertibles were a question mark, but we figured ... it was at least playing within the rules to have Harrison, Michael Biehn's character, who has been there for a few years ... that the department would cut him a little slack and let him have the convertible."
"Plus, I look good in it," Biehn joked.
Reporters wanted to know how the actors "split up this Hawaii-L.A. thing," and, "Do you have groupie pads out there?"
Balfour, who is in the process of purchasing a home here, said the cast lives in Honolulu. Balfour's and Sergei's frequent trips here allows them to incorporate firsthand knowledge into their work.
"If you're trying to solve a crime in Hawaii, even though it is an island, there's nowhere for (criminals) to go," Sergei said. "And so if you try to just bust into a room with your gun and say, 'You're going to tell me this' or 'You're going to tell me that,' it's not as easy as walking in, taking your shoes off, as the culture calls for. ... There's a pace to Hawaii. You have to slow down a little bit. So my character personally needs to learn that."
The series is "not just procedure, procedure, procedure," like many police dramas, but "adventure and action and comedy," Balfour said.
That allows the show to go in different directions, he said.
"And we're going to deal with these detectives and these police officers as people," Balfour said.
Eastin, who said the signature "Hawaii Five-O" line "Book 'em, Dano" is in the series' second episode, said it's difficult not to feel the significance of the earlier Hawaii police show.
"Obviously, there's some parallels there, but we've sort of taken the show in a different direction," he said. "It's much more ensemble than ... 'Hawaii 5-0.' Other than just the setting, we don't share a lot of similarities."
Eastin pointed out that "Hawaii," with Tagawa, has a Hawaii-based actor in a significant role and that producers also plan to expand Andy Bumatai's role. Part-Japanese actor Aya Sumika, and Tuiasosopo, who is Samoan, also help to give the show a racial makeup reflecting Hawaii, he said.
"I honestly prayed and hoped that I would end up in a career with a show in Hawaii, mainly to enhance the show or to offer the show some kind of balance of ... flavor and culture and color," Tuiasosopo said.
Hawaii's culture, racial diversity and scenery are fodder for interesting and unique stories absent in other series, Eastin told the group.
"I was actually more worried when we started about having to incorporate the local culture into the stories because I figured it would be pretty easy to come up with straight cop stories," he said. "And I thought, 'Man, it's going to be kind of tough ... putting this (cultural) stuff in.'"
But it's been easy "partly because it's a really, really rich culture," he said.
NBC'S TAG LINE for "Hawaii" -- "The other side of paradise" -- indicates what viewers can expect to see. Hawaii's East-meets-West profile intrigues Eastin.
"Just because of that, there's so many unique things," he said. "The drug trade is incredible (in Hawaii) because you've got it coming from east and west. So just in terms of finding unique stories, say, with drug smuggling, it's really easy to do in Hawaii and give it a unique twist."
Balfour said many mainland people don't understand that Honolulu is a major metropolis with "all the problems and dynamics of Los Angeles, New York, Chicago."
"When you get there, it's surprising, and I think that's what actually makes it a lot of fun ... that not only do you have this urban environment, but five minutes away you have rain forest and beach," he said.
"It's very rich, very poor," Sergei added. "There's a lot of tourism and there's a lot of locals, so there's always a lot of conflict."
Sumika, who was trained as a ballet dancer at the Juilliard School, said landing the role is her big break in television. She was one of hundreds of actors auditioning for the part.
"We did a chemistry read," Eastin said. "Sharif was cast first, and Aya came in, and it was great because it was just the two of them in the room.
"They were really shockingly, amazingly good together. The second she walked out of the room ... everybody looked at everybody and just said, 'She's the one.' There really wasn't any concern she hadn't done anything before. We were actually kind of excited about that."
BALFOUR, SERGEI and Sumika rode along with HPD officers to train for their roles. Sumika's mentor was "a woman named Jack."
"We were in Kalihi. ... She was the only woman in the sector that I visited, and she was one of the only women who graduated in her class, so it was so helpful," Sumika said. "The day-to-day process that a cop goes through is ... similar to acting in the sense they have to react in the moment professionally to anything and everything that comes at them."
Co-star Michael Biehn has portrayed many police officers in his career and said, "I really like police officers; I feel like I could have been one, and wanted to be one when I was younger.
"I understand the circumstances in which police officers work. What I do is just play myself in (their) shoes. So I think of the character as being me in their shoes under those circumstances. ... It's the way that Michael Biehn would react if I was in that same situation, as compared to a character that is somewhat foreign to me."
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