‘Bosch’ Star Titus Welliver ‘Nailed’ His Harry Bosch Audition, Michael Connelly Says
When Amazon greenlit a series based on Michael Connelly’s best-selling series of Harry Bosch novels, there was one detail everyone involved knew they had to get right. The show’s success hinged on finding the right actor to play LAPD Detective Harry Bosch.
Luckily, the Bosch creators struck gold with Titus Welliver, who’s embodied the gruff detective over nine seasons of Prime Video’s Bosch and its Amazon Freevee spinoff, Bosch: Legacy. But the casting process wasn’t easy, as Connelly recently recalled.
‘Dozen and dozens of actors’ were considered for the title role on ‘Bosch’
On Nov. 8, Connelly sat down for a virtual chat about his new novel, Resurrection Walk, with author S.A. Crosby as part of Barnes & Noble Midday Mysteries series. At one point, the conversation turned to Bosch, with Connelly opening up about how Welliver landed the role.
“The most important decision was who’s going to play Harry Bosch,” Connelly recalled.
“We talked through dozens and dozens of actors,” he said of the casting process, with the Edgar Award-winning author favoring Welliver from the start.
“He was the name I submitted. So I was thinking about him,” he said.
Connelly had seen Welliver in a short-lived TV series called Touch, he said in a 2021 interview with The Crew Review (via YouTube). He was struck by his ability to convey his character’s complicated background in a way that didn’t require words and felt he would be a good fit for Harry Bosch.
Titus Welliver captures Harry Bosch’s ‘inner turmoil’
Unfortunately, Welliver was working on a movie outside of the U.S. during the Bosch casting window. It didn’t seem like he would have a chance to audition before a decision had to be made. Then, just before they had to make a final choice about who would take the lead role in Bosch, the Sons of Anarchy and The Good Wife actor returned to the U.S.
Welliver came in and read for the role. He “nailed” the scene from Bosch pilot, Connelly said, even though he was jetlagged from a long international flight during the audition.
Welliver brought a certain quality to the Harry Bosch character that other actors lacked, according to Connelly.
“The reason we wanted him was because of his way of projecting,” he explained. “He can project inner turmoil really well … Harry’s seen a lot.”
Titus Welliver worried that book readers might not accept him as Harry Bosch
Connelly and the rest of Bosch team were confident that they’d found their Harry Bosch in Welliver. But the actor worried he might not fit what fans of the original books expected of the character.
“I’ve experienced that reader’s prejudice,” he told Vulture in 2015.
His solution? Make the character his own.
“I realized very quickly I had to take some ownership of the character,” he went on to say. “It would be very easy to become hamstrung. Sometimes actors want to cram every single nuance from the page into a character, and it’s too much.”
One thing he wasn’t worried about was the character turning stale. Unlike some fictional detectives, Harry ages and changes throughout Connelly’s novels.
“Bosch is a guy I knew I could play for a long time and be happy,” Welliver said. “We’re not building it from the ground up. We have Michael’s books, and they’re all very different. There’s enough going on with this character to satiate my appetite for new challenges.”
All episodes of Bosch: Legacy Season 2 are now streaming on Amazon Freevee.
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