Dennis Lehane on Black Bird, Ray Liotta, and Why He Loved Working on The Wire

With Black Bird now streaming on Apple TV , I recently spoke with Dennis Lehane (Mystic River, Gone Baby Gone) about writing and creating the fantastic new series. Inspired by the true-crime memoir In With The Devil: A Fallen Hero, A Serial Killer, and A Dangerous Bargain for Redemption by authors James Keene and Hillel Levin, Black Bird follows a convicted felon (Taron Egerton) who is given the chance to reduce his 10-year sentence by entering a maximum-security prison for the criminally insane and befriending a suspected serial killer (Paul Walter Hauser). If he can manage to find out where the bodies are buried, he can have his sentence commuted. But if anything happens in the maximum-security prison, he’s on his own. Black Bird also stars Sepideh Moafi, Greg Kinnear, and a phenomenal Ray Liotta, who plays Egerton’s father. During the wide-ranging interview, Lehane talked about what drew him to the material, why it’s six episodes, what it was like working with Ray Liotta and watching his performance