City on a Hill | Sunday, 9 p.m., Showtime “City on a Hill” features a contentious pairing: crooked, racist FBI agent Jackie Rohr (Kevin Bacon) and corruption-busting black assistant district attorney DeCourcy Ward (Aldis Hodge). They team up to track down a gang of armored-truck robbers in 1990s Boston. But don’t expect to see the overused white-savior trope favored by Hollywood, in which a character of color is saved by a suddenly-woke bigot. “They need each other to a degree, but DeCourcy is not looking for anyone to save him and Jackie’s not looking for anyone to save,” said Hodge. “They are two titans boxing in a ring. Jackie is using DeCourcy for an agenda and DeCourcy is using Jackie equally.” Hodge, 32, and co-star Bacon, 60, recently spoke to The Post about racism, their characters and how they connect with them in separate interviews as they wrapped filming on Season 1 of the series. How would you describe your role? Hodge: Ward is a highly principled man who’s got to hold onto as much of himself as possible. He believes he’s more good than bad. But that’s his journey: challenging how bad he’s going to get for what he believes in. Bacon: Jackie’s someone who should be starting to put his foot on the brake and yet he literally has his foot on the gas pedal. He has a tired, antiquated idea of what law enforcement is. He should probably retire, and stop the drugs and drinking and every piece of his lifestyle. He’s running from his fear of death and being irrelevant. see also Cop drama 'City on a Hill' lets Bacon go gritty and greasy The summer is always a good time to launch a... What do you bring to your character? Hodge: My personal experience of having grown up dealing with racism, which I thought I could add in terms of how DeCourcy deals with it. I wanted to show that we, as a black culture, have learned and adapted to dealing with it in various ways. It all points to our survival as people. Bacon: Well, everything that comes out of Jackie’s mouth is offensive. My job is to walk in his shoes. There’s a lot of actors who would hesitate to play a part like that because it could negatively affect how people see them as personalities. There is a lot of strongly racist and anti-gay language. How jarring is it to hear and say those words? Hodge: It’s jarring every single time. I don’t care what set we’re on, I don’t care if people go, “Oh, it’s fake.” It’s not fake. Unless you live the black experience, you don’t understand the effect of “porch monkey” or the N-word or whatever term is being used as a weapon. So as an artist, you always want to see honesty, you [also] want to show the ugliness. It’s absolutely necessary because this is what people go through today. We cannot hide from it. Bacon: I don’t like it. I don’t like it. But the casual nature with which the character throws it out there is so terrifying. It’s much more dangerous to pretend that these kinds of characters don’t exist in our society. Which man will affect
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City on a Hill | Sunday, 9 p.m., Showtime “City on a Hill” features a contentious pairing: crooked, racist FBI agent Jackie Rohr (Kevin Bacon) and corruption-busting black assistant district attorney DeCourcy Ward (Aldis Hodge). They team up to track down a gang of armored-truck robbers in 1990s Boston. But don’t expect to see the overused white-savior trope favored by Hollywood, in which a character of color is saved by a suddenly-woke bigot. “They need each other to a degree, but DeCourcy is not looking for anyone to save him and Jackie’s not looking for anyone to save,” said Hodge. “They are two titans boxing in a ring. Jackie is using DeCourcy for an agenda and DeCourcy is using Jackie equally.” Hodge, 32, and co-star Bacon, 60, recently spoke to The Post about racism, their characters and how they connect with them in separate interviews as they wrapped filming on Season 1 of the series. How would you describe your role? Hodge: Ward is a highly principled man who’s got to hold onto as much of himself as possible. He believes he’s more good than bad. But that’s his journey: challenging how bad he’s going to get for what he believes in. Bacon: Jackie’s someone who should be starting to put his foot on the brake and yet he literally has his foot on the gas pedal. He has a tired, antiquated idea of what law enforcement is. He should probably retire, and stop the drugs and drinking and every piece of his lifestyle. He’s running from his fear of death and being irrelevant. see also Cop drama 'City on a Hill' lets Bacon go gritty and greasy The summer is always a good time to launch a... What do you bring to your character? Hodge: My personal experience of having grown up dealing with racism, which I thought I could add in terms of how DeCourcy deals with it. I wanted to show that we, as a black culture, have learned and adapted to dealing with it in various ways. It all points to our survival as people. Bacon: Well, everything that comes out of Jackie’s mouth is offensive. My job is to walk in his shoes. There’s a lot of actors who would hesitate to play a part like that because it could negatively affect how people see them as personalities. There is a lot of strongly racist and anti-gay language. How jarring is it to hear and say those words? Hodge: It’s jarring every single time. I don’t care what set we’re on, I don’t care if people go, “Oh, it’s fake.” It’s not fake. Unless you live the black experience, you don’t understand the effect of “porch monkey” or the N-word or whatever term is being used as a weapon. So as an artist, you always want to see honesty, you [also] want to show the ugliness. It’s absolutely necessary because this is what people go through today. We cannot hide from it. Bacon: I don’t like it. I don’t like it. But the casual nature with which the character throws it out there is so terrifying. It’s much more dangerous to pretend that these kinds of characters don’t exist in our society. Which man will affect
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