Titus Welliver is stepping into a new chapter of his career with Dark Winds.
Appearing as Dominic McNair in the Western crime series, Welliver plays a ruthless crime boss — a major shift from the heroic Harry Bosch character he’s best known for. A powerful figure in the Dark Winds universe, McNair is involved in trafficking drugs and stolen goods in and out of Los Angeles, putting him in direct conflict with the Navajo Tribal Police.
And while the role is different for Welliver, his work on Dark Winds has brought things full circle unexpectedly for the actor. Teaming up with Zahn McClarnon in the AMC drama gave Welliver the chance to share the screen with a longtime wishlist collaborator — something that nearly happened years ago in the Bosch universe but ultimately didn’t come together.
Reflecting on that missed opportunity in an interview with ScreenRant’s Grant Hermanns, Welliver explained how the timing never quite worked out back then, making their eventual pairing all the more meaningful now.
Titus Welliver: Then, when they announced that Zahn [McClarnon] was playing him, I’ve been a fan of his work for so many years. Every time I would see him, I was like, “He’s certainly an actor that was on my bucket list that I wanted to work with.” Interestingly enough, there was a character — and not to deviate to Bosch, but there was a character in one of the books that was a reservation cop, who was an old friend of Harry Bosch’s. It landed right at the same time, because I immediately went, “There’s one guy that can play this part.” And he had just been cast in Dark Winds. So, they reconfigured and changed the character on our show.
As for how his casting on Dark Winds came about, Welliver said he got a call, and as a “massive fan” of the series, it was an opportunity he couldn’t pass up.
Titus Welliver: I got the call about [season 4], and I’m a massive fan of the show. So I, of course, was like, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’m in, I’m in, I’m in.” I didn’t even ask who the character was. [Chuckles] I remember it was one of those things. This iteration of McNair is slightly different than the McNair in the book, but when I got on a phone call with John Wirth, and he started to talk about how it was going to play out, I thought it was very, very interesting. Because McNair is definitely a shark, but while he’s visually and physically contained, he’s still the puppet master. He has all this power and control, operating [his empire], even while he’s incarcerated. He has this implement of destruction in [Franka Potente’s Irene] Vaggan, who is so off the rails and really frightening. So I kind of couldn’t wait to get there. I talked to John, and typically those conversations are like, “Well, this is what we want to do, and blah, blah, blah. Do you have any ideas?” And you go, “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” And then you get on the set. But we started spitballing back and forth. John’s a great writer, and that character was beautifully realized on the page. So, it became a question of coming in and just doing it.
And that he has, with McNair operating both inside and outside prison, and at one point is revealed to be pulling strings from behind bars, orchestrating hits and trying to eliminate loose ends connected to the central case. That immense power that McNair holds is something Welliver said is foreign to him in his own life, calling it “almost like a drug” for the crime boss.
Titus Welliver: I think for a character like McNair, that’s got to be almost like a drug for a character. A person who operates outside the rules and gets away with it, and heavily profits from it, not just in the sense of power, but monetarily, large sums of money are at play. And obviously, in the scenes that I got to do with Zahn, where I really am on the opposite side of the table, that stuff was so much fun to play, because I remember the director, before we were doing it, said to me, “What do you think the scene is about the first time they see each other?” Leaphorn comes to visit him. I said, “It’s two wolves, and basically, they’re circling each other, and it’s not macho posturing.” These guys both carry their own skill sets, for lack of a better word. Also, Joe Leaphorn is a righteous guy, but he’s somebody that you don’t f–k around with, and he should not be underestimated. I think there’s that odd connection that exists between arch criminals and really good cops, which is, “You do what you do, and I do what I do, and let’s see how it shakes out.”
We kind of tossed it up in the air, and played around with it to fine-tune it technically to get to the place [we wanted], because it’s almost — I don’t want to say that it’s a power struggle. It’s not a, “Oh yeah? Oh yeah?” Those scenes are not like that. It’s Leaphorn putting him on notice, completely aware of who he is dealing with. And it’s also McNair measuring Leaphorn to go, “I wonder how far this guy is going to push it.” And when it becomes abundantly clear to him that it’s not just a cop who feels protected by glass. This is a guy who’s saying, “I’ll see you when I see you, and you may not see me coming.” So that was some great stuff, really wonderful stuff to play.
Dark Winds airs Sundays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on AMC and AMC+.
- Release Date
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June 12, 2022
- Showrunner
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John Wirth, Vince Calandra