Actor Jeremy Luke stars in the new crime drama Mob Cops, loosely based on the infamous Mafia cops, the NYPD detectives Eppolito and Caracappa, whose decades-long reign of corruption impacted the the department for years.
Jeremy talks about preparing to portray Leo Benetti, and how his path in the movie echoes what happened in real life.
Summer: Our guest today is Jeremy Luke, a very prolific actor who you may have seen in a few different shows here and there, but now he’s in the feature film called Mob Cops. And, being an aficionado of true crime stories, this one always fascinated me.
And Jeremy plays Detective Leo Benetti, who is, I’m going to say, unequivocally based on Louis Eppolito. Is that correct, sir?
Jeremy Luke: Well, I don’t know if legally I want to say that, but that is correct.
Summer: Well, the story, Mob Cops out from Lionsgate this week is based on the original book, Mafia Cop. Correct?
Jeremy: Who wrote the book?
Summer: Eppolito. Eppolito, right?
Jeremy: Oh, it’s not based on his book. It’s based on thhe story, the real story that happened, but his book is basically his version of growing up in the Mafia and then becoming a cop, but he wasn’t talking about any of this information. He wasn’t talking about being a killer for the Mafia in that book at all. This was all before he was found out.
Summer: Right, but the escapades that led up to that is what is covered in this movie in a very entertaining and compelling fashion for me. And… so did you base any of Leo’s behaviors or appetites off of the stories about Eppolito that were out there?
Jeremy: Yeah, I mean, I read his book and watched some of the documentaries. He was a pretty — from what I understand — he was a really big guy, he did have a big sense of humor, he did want to be seen. Which I understood, being an actor.
He was chasing an acting career after he retired. He was actually in the movie Goodfellas. If you ever see the scene where […] coming through with the camera, and they’re talking about, “oh, well, this is Jimmy Two Times”, and then he’s like, “and that’s Fat Andy,” and he gives a lot of these, “How ya doing”, which was actually in the movie, too, that scene in Mob Cops.
thriller MOB COPS, a Lionsgate release.
Summer: So what to you was the biggest appeal of this role?
Jeremy: I just thought it was like really fascinating. A man who is working for the NYPD, who is a man of the law, who is also mixed in with the mafia, and who is also a family man, and who is also an actor. It was just really fascinating to me that somebody could walk along like that. Not many, not many do.
Summer: Were there any scenes or preparations to do scenes that excited you? Like, what sort of things got you the most, the family scenes, or… ?
Jeremy: To be completely honest, I like the family scenes the most. I mean, the scene with his wife, on the couch, and she’s asking “where’s all this money coming from”. He really can’t explain it, because he has a very different relationship with his wife than he does outside of the family. I mean, with his wife and his children, he’s lying to his wife, telling her “it doesn’t matter. Don’t worry about it.”
I just really, with the actress Lynn Adrianna, that was probably my favorite scene.
Jeremy: Did you draw on any history from the real stories to sort of balance the dissonance between this family guy, this guy who wants to be a good cop, and this guy who’s just out there, wreaking havoc on behalf of the people he should be trying to arrest?
Jeremy: I think he justified what he was doing in some way that he was like, because the people that he was killing, most of them were also involved in an organized crime. There was, you know, who watched the movie, the character of Israel… I’m forgetting his name… the character of the Jewish man who was killed. That guy was innocent.
So, you know, if you’re having to try to justify the killing of somebody like that, killing, you know, killing in general it’s just terrible, but I think he justified it, “well these people are bad people. I’m doing something really good”, but not all of them were involved in organized crime.
He was a family man, the guy that he killed. He had children and I was terrible.
Summer: Now, this is a set piece, a period piece, set in the mostly the 70s, some in the 80s. Talk about the wardrobe and the cars, because somebody paid a lot of attention to what cars should have been in there. I was appreciative of that.
Jeremy: Yeah, we had a really great production design. We had a great, you know, so much goes into making a film, production design, the wardrobe. We had really good wardrobe people. Like, they were pretty on point.
We did, a lot of the stuff that we didlike New York City streets, were the New York City streets from Warner Bros. So that was really, really cool. It was actually a lot of fun, because when when you were on a set of Warner Brothers, and you’re on the street at Warner Bros… there’s not much more of a movie set than being on a street of Warner Brothers. And it makes the film look so much more legitimate as well, even the cars, the wardrobe.
It all, it all just adds and, you know, makes my life as an actor easier. It just enhances everything.
Summer: Did you have to do any extra work for some of the more physical scenes?
Jeremy: Yeah, I mean, I did, I did gain weight for the role. So I gained weight and then I wore a fat suit. So that was, it was a little bit hard to navigate through that because you’re just like, you can have all this stuff on it.
And also wearing a jacket, you know, like a suit jacket and tie and stuff. It’s, it’s a lot. It could be a lot.
Summer: (laughing) I’m trying to imagine this, wardrobe over the fat suit… that just… that never occurred to me.
Jeremy: There’s a lot that goes into it. And I was wearing… Leo was a big guy. I was wearing lifts, that were three or four inches, on top of boots. It was just… there was a lot going on.
Summer: So do you have anything else on the books for this year?
Jeremy: You know, I just did this, this proof of concept for Angel Studios, and it looks like it’s going to be, it’s a faith-based movie. It’s about a singer from the 80s, 70s, 80s, 90s, Italian-American, whose name was Carmen, who was a huge faith-based singer if you know that world. And I know a lot about him now.
But I mean, he’s selling out stadiums, he’s sold out Texas Stadium, 70,000 seats. And that’s where the Cowboys played in the 90s. I’m doing it. It looks like we’re going to do a feature about him.
And I’m going to play his brother, who’s a cop… who was a good cop! (chuckles) Who was head of security and also his big brother.
Summer: Excellent. Well, Jeremy, thank you for your time today, Your insight into Leo Benetti in the movie, Mob Cops, out from Lionsgate on April 25th.
Jeremy: Awesome. Thank you. Thank you so much.
Kevin Connolly (Entourage), David Arquette (Scream) and Jeremy Luke (Sully) star in a thrilling crime drama about the darkest corruption case in the history of the New York City Police Department. When a retired NYPD detective writes a book about his family’s ties to the mob, it ignites a firestorm between the dirty cops working for the city’s brutal crime boss and the officers trying to bring them to justice.
STARRING David Arquette, Jeremy Luke, Danny A. Abeckaser, Joseph Russo, Nathaniel Buzolic, Kyle Stefanski, Bo Dietl, Kevin Connolly, Graham Sibley
DIRECTED BY Danny A. Abeckaser
WRITTEN BY Kosta Kondilopoulous
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