When our hero is “banished to the boonies,” that means Ridgefield.
Well, it actually means the beautiful Oregon Coast. That’s where a new ABC police drama, “Staties,” will be set, and a casting call just went out for “background talent” interested in working on filming March 12-28 in Manzanita, Ore., and other sites in the Portland-metro area. PDXtras, a Portland talent scout, is managing the casting call.
But Ridgefield is where filming will wind up, in “one very large and exciting scene scheduled for Wednesday, March 28th,” according to the PDXtras website.
All ages and backgrounds are welcome since the project is hungry for diversity, it says. “Staties” will star a black, female, gritty police detective (Annie Ilonzeh, best known for her recurring role on “Empire”) who’s been banished from New York City to these boonies after making a major mistake. She winds up working alongside an Oregon state trooper (Andy Karl of “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit”) who sounds like a true denizen of Portlandia: He talks to trees and has an obsession with flying kites.
Ilonzeh’s character “is a fish out of water in this police procedural set in an eccentric town of quirky characters in coastal Oregon,” PDXtras says. The “Staties” pilot will be directed by Rob Bowman, who made many episodes of “The X-Files” and “Star Trek: The Next Generation.”
