LOS ANGELES – Milo Ventimiglia had two weeks between ending “This is Us” and starting a new series, “The Company You Keep.” The break was enough.
“I was ready. I was excited,” TV’s favorite dad says. “It let me stretch into something new creatively.”
In the series – which is based on a Korean format – Ventimiglia plays Charlie, a con artist who becomes romantically involved with Emma, an undercover CIA agent (played by Catherine Haena Kim), who is trying to close in on a criminal who may be affecting her new lover’s life.
Toss in politicians, crime and drug syndicates and law enforcement and “Company You Keep” is about as far removed as the Pearsons as these things get.
“I was running toward a character like this,” Ventimiglia says. “It let me stretch into something new creatively.”
For comfort sake, Ventimiglia brought 90 percent of the crew from “This is Us” to his new venture. That created a shorthand and allowed producers to ramp up quickly.
“It’s an interesting dynamic,” says Executive Producer Phil Klemmer. “Charlie is a romantic at heart, which you wouldn’t expect from a con man, and Emma is a real pragmatist and is much more guarded. Just to feel that tension between two people, who shouldn’t trust one another, is a dance. Instead of doing the ‘Will they? Won’t they?’, they do, immediately.”
Kim says the bonding occurs because they happen to meet at the right time: “It’s the moment when you look over at somebody and you think, ‘Oh, it’s you. It’s going to be you.’ And then it’s on.”
While Charlie is much more debonair and polished than Jack, Ventimiglia (who’s also an executive producer on the show) understood him. “There’s an honesty to Charlie – even in his lie. And, for me, I couldn’t just put on a character anymore. I had to exist, look at my scene partner, listen to my writers, work with our production team and just be. It’s been wonderful.”
While Charlie and Emma are masterful liars, they find commonalities in each other.
“And that brings about the question, ‘Can I trust you?’” Kim says. “Not all of us are con artists or CIA officers. But I think we know what it’s like to fall in love. It’s ‘Can I trust you with my heart? What’s real? What’s not?’”
Klemmer says a family of con artist and a family of politicians are in the same business. “Politics is selling a fiction and a con artist sells a plausible version of reality,” he explains. “People do want to be suckered. We want to believe. We want to fall in love.”
Although “Company” didn't linger once it got the green light, it had been in development for some time. Director Jon Chu was involved; Ventimiglia had it in his production arsenal.
“As an actor, I wasn’t so concerned with what my next project was,” Ventimiglia says. “This was just one of those undeniables. The right pieces were assembled and then other pieces were brought in to enrich and make it even fuller.
"For me, it was a haircut and a shave…and here I go.”
“The Company You Keep” begins Feb. 19 on ABC.
