Longmire’s Lou Diamond Phillips heading to Brooklyn Nine-Nine as…
Series star Andy Samberg announced this week while at the TCA Summer Press Tour that Phillips is going to be appearing in multiple episodes. What’s the role? Per Entertainment Weekly, he will be an “erratic” criminal mastermind, which is certainly an odd/funny description because it’s probably hard to track someone like this when they are a little bit all over the place. He’s going to collide in some way with Samberg’s character of Jake, which seems about right given that he’s about as erratic of a cop as they come. He’s great at what he does, but the vast majority of the time he uses unconventional methods (plus plenty of hijinks) in order to get the job done.
More than likely, you know Phillips from playing Henry Standing Bear on Longmire — if not, then maybe you do from Blindspot, The Ranch, Hawaii Five-0, Southland, or a wide array of other shows/films over the years. He’s long been a great character actor, someone who takes interesting roles but is more than capable of being a lead in his own right.
Basically, what’s so great about this part in theory is that it offers up a chance to see a very different side of Phillips to playing Henry on the Netflix series. For one, this is a chance for him to really play around in a world that’s often silly and over-the-top; that is a dark contrast from Longmire, a show that can often be gritty and realistic, even if it is set amidst a beautiful backdrop. It’s also nice to see him in an adversarial role; he can play evil well, so there’s exciting potential for what this part could hold. Another good thing about the Brooklyn Nine-Nine universe is that they do have a tendency to bring people back after they’ve used them a couple of times here and here. So long as Phillips’ character stays alive and the show is on the air, you have to think that there will be additional chances to have him around down the road.
Beyond Brooklyn Nine-Nine, we’ve already expressed our desire to see him in Outlander, a show that we know he also enjoys. We’d love like to see him become a part of the Walking Dead universe at some point, based mostly on what we’ve seen from him over on Talking Dead.
What do you think about this round of Lou Diamond Phillips casting news? Feel free to share in the comments below!
Also, head over to this link in the event you do want to get some additional insight now when it comes to Longmire season 6. New episodes of it are going to start streaming on Netflix this fall; we’ll have more specifics as they come out. (Photo: Netflix.)