NEW YORK, May 31 (UPI) — The Princess Bride and Robin Hood: Men in Tights icon Cary Elwes says he loved the comfy wardrobe he got to wear while playing Tim Kincaid, a Florida private eye, in the drama series, M.I.A.
“I was very lucky in that Karen Campbell, our showrunner and executive producer, said, ‘Cary, I think you’re going to be very happy with the choices we made for Kincaid,'” Elwes, 63, told UPI in a recent Zoom interview.
“I’m like, ‘Really, what’s that?’ She goes: ‘Well, it gets very hot here in Miami and we decided that we wanted to give Kincaid kind of a Key Largo vibe. I put you in Hawaiian Tommy Bahama shirts and shorts and flip flops,'” he recalled.
“And I said, ‘That sounds good to me,’ and, sure enough, when I arrived in Miami, in the summer last year, the rest of the cast were very jealous of me. Let me just put it that way.”
Starring Shannon Gisela, Danay Garcia, Brittany Adebumola and Dylan Jackson, the Peacock series was created by Bill Dubuque and follows Etta (Gisela,) a young woman determined to avenge the executions of her drug-running parents and brothers by members of a Miami cartel.
Kincaid initially was hired by the gangsters to find out if Etta survived the mass murder.
“I’ve been a big fan of Bill Dubuque for a long time. My wife and I binged Ozark as soon as it came out and we were just absolutely gripped by his extraordinary talent of writing really nuanced characters and drama and action in a way that no other writer we’ve seen in a long time has,” Elwes said.
“So, when I was approached to play Kincaid, I jumped at the chance because I knew that they would write a nuanced character for me and he is this complex guy. He’s an ex-Miami-Dade homicide detective who’s turned into a coin-operated private investigator and he’s trying to track down the killers of this young girl’s family. But he ends up, in this season, rediscovering his moral compass.”
The detective is committed to the case even as he realizes how dangerous the people involved in it are.
“He’s a curious person by nature. All private investigators I spent time with are very curious people. A lot of them are ex-detectives or ex-police officers and they’re sticklers for the truth,” Elwes said.
“I like that he’s a guy who’s incredibly inquisitive and just can’t turn off the clock when he discovers some new information or some clue,” he added.
“Private investigators have to use their wiles to get information and, obviously, most of their sources are from their colleagues within the police department and, so, they rely heavily on those relationships and sometimes you have to grease a palm or two to get some details that otherwise would be inaccessible.”
And be a little charming, too, when the situation calls for it?
“It doesn’t hurt,” Elwes quipped.
The actor was also recently seen playing a 1970s-era Indianapolis police detective in the film, Dead Man’s Wire.
“Playing two detectives in a row is an unusual thing for an actor. I guess I was giving off a detective vibe when Mr. Dubuque and Ms. Campbell saw my work. I don’t know,” Elwes said.
“I do love trying to mix it up, but, so, I try to make these characters as diverse as possible. Obviously, the character I play in Dead Man’s Wire is based on a real guy, so I had a lot of resources to work with there. But for Tim Kincaid, really, it was about finding the character with Karen and Bill and really figuring out what his nuance is.”