Titus Welliver & Mimi Rogers on What's Really Going on with Harry & Honey on 'Bosch: Legacy'

Mimi Rogers, Titus Welliver

Harry Bosch (Titus Welliver) and Honey “Money” Chandler (Mimi Rogers) have come a long way since their first interaction in the courtroom scene in Bosch, where Chandler was grilling Bosch regarding a case against the L.A.P.D. They’ve gone from adversaries to a grudging admiration for each other’s work ethic to actual friends as the seasons have unfolded.

“Now we find them, it’s not Nanny and the Professor—nobody’s going to know that reference—or anything like that, but there’s mutual respect and there’s admiration and they’re kind of weird de facto, dysfunctional but very rooted in a kind of love or affection,” Welliver tells Parade of their relationship on Bosch: Legacy. “Certainly love, I’m not trying to suggest that there’s a love interest with Harry and Chandler, I think that would be the ultimate, as much as Mimi’s a great…”

“That’d be terrible,” she interrupts.

Then Titus picks up the thought, “Mimi’s a great kisser but there’s a dynamic there, they almost operate like a divorced couple that actually have a healthy working relationship and they both work in the service of putting the child’s needs first. She’s every bit as crazed in the pursuit of trying to find Maddie [Madison Lintz] as Harry is, and the fact that she goes with him to the desert. I said to someone, ‘That encapsulates their relationship very clearly.’”

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Both Welliver and Rogers credit the growth of their relationship and the 180 degree change to having had the luxury of its playing out over many seasons, allowing them to develop a very deep level of respect and understanding.

“First and foremost, it started with the casting of Mimi as Chandler, because what everybody agreed on was this character has to possess the power for the audience to go, ‘Harry might not slip this, Chandler’s formidable.’ And so, when you take that and you introduce that immediately in the court, then that’s what it’s been. They’ve come up against it a bunch of times.”

“As characters, Chandler and Bosch, the sparks flew right from the beginning, right from the get-go,” Rogers adds. “It’s just the nature of who these two people are and how they interact together. It’s very entertaining and it’s very watchable. It started out as there weren’t many people around that could in any way intimidate Harry Bosch, and Chandler ends up being one of them.”

But it is the very fact that Chandler was able to daunt Bosch that set them on this road to friendship, and Rogers has an interesting take on that.

She says, “In many ways, they’re very similar as people and as characters -- the tenaciousness and the quest for justice and the willingness to do whatever it takes to get there is something that they have in common and something that they recognize in one another. It’s just been a wonderful dynamic that we’ve had the luxury to explore.”

The two also expressed their opinions on how Bosch’s handling the transition from L.A.P.D. homicide detective to private detective and the loss of status that comes with that; Chandler’s decision to run for Los Angeles District Attorney – again a 180-degree switch; and whether or not Bosch lied to Maddie about his call to the prison where Dockweiler (David Denman) was killed.

Related: Bosch is Back! Michael Connelly Spills the Tea on Bosch: Legacy Season 2, His New Novel and More

Titus, Harry’s made the transition from LAPD to private detective, which is kind of a loss in status, he doesn’t have that badge. How is he dealing with the transition?

Titus Welliver: I think it’s about the work. At one point someone asks, “How’s that going?” I think it was Golliher (Alan Rosenberg). And Harry says, “Look, I do mostly snoop-arounds, divorce cases and things like that,” and yet he manages to get these things that are big and there’s levels of peril. Both times with these things he almost gets killed, the female assassin came to kill him, the boy and the mother [in season 1 of Bosch: Legacy], and then Ellis (Max Martini) and Long (Guy Wilson) almost successfully kill Harry and Mo (Stephen A. Chang), and then Maddie saves Harry’s life by killing Ellis who’s about to shoot Harry.

I think the transition is good, still we continue that relationship that Harry has, and I call it the cinema of loneliness because he’s an isolated character. He’s very, very isolated, and I think in some ways he’s more isolated now than ever because he doesn’t have that constant interaction and that energy that was there all the time for a homicide detective. But I think he’s doing well.

And, obviously, there’s a hint at the idea that Honey would enlist his aid should she become the DA, that she would say, “Hey, why don’t you come on?”

Mimi, Titus brought up the fact that you’re running for DA, and we know that Honey never loses. That’s a total 180 for her because she was defending scumbags and now she wants to prosecute them.

Mimi: Obviously, Chandler’s been doing this a long time, she’s had tremendous success, she’s made a lot of money, but she’s still very passionate about her clients and about defending people. I think coming up against this political nonsense with the David Foster case and the idea that we knew he was innocent, the DA knew he was innocent, but because of political concerns the guy was willing to let my client rot in jail. I think there’s tremendous frustration and disgust in a sense that the system has just gone off the rails and she’s like, “All right, I’ll do it. I’ll do it and I’ll show you how it’s done right.”

Related: Bestselling Author Michael Connelly on Taking Harry Bosch from Books to TV

Titus, another big thing at the end of the season was when Maddie discovers that Harry may have called in a favor to get Dockweiler killed in prison. What does that bode for their future in Season 3?

Titus: Well, I think if you had to play the immediate moment after that, I think if you notice Harry, his reaction is almost no reaction to at all to when she says, “Dad, what have you done?” I think in the next moment she would say, “What?” and he would say to her, “This guy’s a psychopath. I locked him up. I put him away. He’s a serial rapist and murderer and I don’t know what angle or game he’s trying to play but I can assure you that I did not have him kill Dockweiler.”

That’s what he would say to Maddie, but look, in that scenario if Harry had had the chance, had J. Edgar (Jamie Hector) not come into that room, I think Harry, if he hadn’t gotten an answer from Dockweiler, he would have put that pen right through his eye socket. In that circumstance, he is the wolf, and you don’t mess around with someone’s family. We’d like to believe that Harry possesses such a strong moral compass that he would never cross that line, but he’s also, if anything we know after almost 10 years of this character, we know he’s human. So, it could go either way, and I think it’s balance there.

Can we tease anything from Season 3? Will Honey and Harry be able to work together?

Titus: Even if we knew, we probably wouldn’t be able to share. We don’t know.

Mimi: We actually don’t know. We know that we’re doing Season 3.

The compete second season of Bosch: Legacy is currently streaming on Prime Video.

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