When Steven Seagal set out to create “the most realistic TV show that’s ever been made”
In the mind of Steven Seagal, he’s only going to lend his endless gifts to a film or television production if it fulfils the lofty criteria he’s set for himself, which comes with the territory of being so in love with his own legend he’s embellished it to a quite phenomenal degree.
There are countless stories surrounding Seagal, and nobody seems entirely sure how much of the mythology he’s enshrouded himself within is actually true. Is he really the reincarnation of a Tibetan monk? Was he secretly training government agents for decades? Did he create fighting techniques that revolutionised the world of mixed martial arts? Almost certainly not, but that’s not the way he tells it.
Any actor needs to be confident in their own abilities to succeed in a cutthroat business, but there’s a fine line between talking a good game and spouting utter shite. For Seagal, that line has remained blurred for as long as he’s been famous, and even his desires to get into the television industry are coated in a thick layer of tall tales.
That’s not an unexpected development when he compared a script he’d written to the work of Akira Kurosawa, claimed that he was decades ahead of the curve on global warming, and indirectly claimed responsibility for Tommy Lee Jones winning an Academy Award, but the man can barely get a sentence out without stroking his own ego.
The short-lived TV show Steven Seagal: Lawman only ran for three seasons and 29 episodes, but it did at least manage to deliver exactly what was promised on the tin. It was about Seagal moonlighting as a man of the law, but it fell short of the lofty aspirations he’d cast upon it before an episode had even aired.
“We tried to set up a situation where I could test the waters of television to see if I could make the most realistic TV show that’s ever been made,” he opined to Complex. “I’ve been a cop for 20-some-odd years, and one of the original writers was a cop for 20-some-odd years. It was just something that I thought was interesting and that’s sort of the way I walked in the door on this one.”
Lawman was a standard reality show with the added novelty value of watching Seagal kick down doors and apprehend suspects. He claims to have more than 20 years of experience in law enforcement, but as often tends to be the case, that wasn’t entirely accurate.
While it’s true that Seagal had served as part of Jefferson Parish’s police force, it was only as a volunteer reserve deputy, and the title was strictly ceremonial. Not only that, but he claimed he’d attended a police academy and obtained a certificate from the Peace Officer Standards & Training, the organisation that accredits the officers. When asked, the California branch said they had no record of such a thing.
In essence, Steven Seagal: Lawman was never going to be the most realistic show in the history of television because he wasn’t even a real cop. Points for aiming high, but once again, he was found talking a good game without having anything to back it up.
