From the archives - "'Good time to leave 'Homicide'" (1998)
Good time to leave 'Homicide'
Actor: He's moving on to BTC other things, says Reed Diamond, who plays Mike Kellerman on the TV show. And he has no regrets.
April 12, 1998|By Chris Kaltenbach | Chris Kaltenbach,SUN STAFF
If this were a "Homicide" script, there's no way Reed Diamond would be this happy, no way he'd be leaving the cast of TV's finest drama with a smile on his face.
No, the "Homicide" writers would have had him telling someone off, or screaming about how he never wanted to leave the show in the first place, or suffering some career crisis that would have left him playing Shakespeare in the Park somewhere.
But Diamond, who for three years has played hard-luck Detective Mike Kellerman on NBC's "Homicide: Life on the Streets," insists he is leaving the show with no regrets.
"I've achieved everything I've wanted to do here, and it was time to move on," Reed said last week, as movers finished packing up his Baltimore home and he got ready to begin the cross-country drive back to California. "I'm leaving the show really happy to have been here, honored to be a part of this show, but I'm not leaving with any regrets. These three years have been great, and it all ended in a really nice way."
Moving on was entirely his idea, Diamond says -- although he admits to having believed that this would be the series' last season anyway. But even though "Homicide" will be back next season, he won't. And his reasoning is two-fold.
First, three years -- 67 shows -- was enough.
"When you play a character, like Mike, over and over again, at a certain point it doesn't require my full arsenal to play him," Diamond said. "There were a lot of [acting] muscles that hadn't been exercised in a while. I didn't want to get to the place where I was going to start walking through the role."
And, second, he said, Mike Kellerman had just about hit bottom. Since offing drug kingpin Luther Mahoney last season, the detective's life has been heading straight down the toilet, and having him weather the crisis to be back for another season would require the sort of nice, neat plot resolution that's absolutely foreign to "Homicide."
"I love this character, and it's been great playing him. But I really felt, to do him honor and to keep with the interity of the show, there was really no way we could pull him out of where he's gone. He's completely isolated, and there was really no way he could come back from that."
It's fitting, Diamond says, that Luther Mahoney be the one ultimately responsible for Detective Kellerman's fate.
"I remember the first time I came in contact with that character, I knew Mike wanted to kill him."
Diamond won't reveal how his character is written out of the show, other than to say he doesn't die.
And while he has several projects in the works, the actor realizes it could be a while before he finds another character as satisfying as Mike Kellerman, the cop who thought he was realizing a dream when he was transferred from the arson squad to homicide.
"I had the opportunity to play a very believable cop. His journey has been excellent. He came in an idealist, he had his heart on his sleeve, he really thought he was going to come in here and make the world a better place for old ladies and kids. He thought he was going to change the system.
"And then he got some really tough blows. He was accused of taking bribes last year when he hadn't. Somewhere in the second season, he realized that he wasn't going to make a difference. Not only was he not going to make a difference, but the bad guys often won."
"I'm really pleased with the way we say goodbye to Mike," Diamond added. "In true 'Homicide' style, it won't be predictable."
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Actor: He's moving on to BTC other things, says Reed Diamond, who plays Mike Kellerman on the TV show. And he has no regrets.
April 12, 1998|By Chris Kaltenbach | Chris Kaltenbach,SUN STAFF
If this were a "Homicide" script, there's no way Reed Diamond would be this happy, no way he'd be leaving the cast of TV's finest drama with a smile on his face.
No, the "Homicide" writers would have had him telling someone off, or screaming about how he never wanted to leave the show in the first place, or suffering some career crisis that would have left him playing Shakespeare in the Park somewhere.
But Diamond, who for three years has played hard-luck Detective Mike Kellerman on NBC's "Homicide: Life on the Streets," insists he is leaving the show with no regrets.
"I've achieved everything I've wanted to do here, and it was time to move on," Reed said last week, as movers finished packing up his Baltimore home and he got ready to begin the cross-country drive back to California. "I'm leaving the show really happy to have been here, honored to be a part of this show, but I'm not leaving with any regrets. These three years have been great, and it all ended in a really nice way."
Moving on was entirely his idea, Diamond says -- although he admits to having believed that this would be the series' last season anyway. But even though "Homicide" will be back next season, he won't. And his reasoning is two-fold.
First, three years -- 67 shows -- was enough.
"When you play a character, like Mike, over and over again, at a certain point it doesn't require my full arsenal to play him," Diamond said. "There were a lot of [acting] muscles that hadn't been exercised in a while. I didn't want to get to the place where I was going to start walking through the role."
And, second, he said, Mike Kellerman had just about hit bottom. Since offing drug kingpin Luther Mahoney last season, the detective's life has been heading straight down the toilet, and having him weather the crisis to be back for another season would require the sort of nice, neat plot resolution that's absolutely foreign to "Homicide."
"I love this character, and it's been great playing him. But I really felt, to do him honor and to keep with the interity of the show, there was really no way we could pull him out of where he's gone. He's completely isolated, and there was really no way he could come back from that."
It's fitting, Diamond says, that Luther Mahoney be the one ultimately responsible for Detective Kellerman's fate.
"I remember the first time I came in contact with that character, I knew Mike wanted to kill him."
Diamond won't reveal how his character is written out of the show, other than to say he doesn't die.
And while he has several projects in the works, the actor realizes it could be a while before he finds another character as satisfying as Mike Kellerman, the cop who thought he was realizing a dream when he was transferred from the arson squad to homicide.
"I had the opportunity to play a very believable cop. His journey has been excellent. He came in an idealist, he had his heart on his sleeve, he really thought he was going to come in here and make the world a better place for old ladies and kids. He thought he was going to change the system.
"And then he got some really tough blows. He was accused of taking bribes last year when he hadn't. Somewhere in the second season, he realized that he wasn't going to make a difference. Not only was he not going to make a difference, but the bad guys often won."
"I'm really pleased with the way we say goodbye to Mike," Diamond added. "In true 'Homicide' style, it won't be predictable."
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