Chris Pratt selects military veterans for ‘The Terminal List’

NEW YORK (AP) — Chris Pratt portrays a Navy SEAL in his new Amazon series The Terminal List and is surrounded on camera and behind the scenes by former U.S. military personnel.

In the 2013 film Zero Dark Thirty, Pratt played one of the Navy SEALs who helped kill Osama Bin Laden “ Friends count.

“He was at my wedding,” Pratt said. The two also lived together before he moved in with his now-wife, Katherine Schwarzenegger Pratt.

Shaw introduced Pratt to Jack Carr’s book The Terminal List, a story about a Navy SEAL named Jack Reece whose train is ambushed in a covert operation. When Reece returns home, he begins to question both his memories of what happened and the world around him.

Pratt loved the book so much that he gave Antoine Fuqua the option to direct the first episode and serve as co-executive producer alongside Pratt and others.

Shaw has been added as an Associate Producer and also has a role on the show. The team hired real life special ops members to perform in a major fight scene in the first episode that kickstarted the series. It also employed former military personnel behind the scenes in various roles.

Pratt said he wanted The Terminal List, which debuts July 1, to have a “level of authenticity” that many Hollywood special ops productions don’t have.

“Action movies have transformed Navy SEALs into superheroes over time. I think when real SEALs look at that stuff, they’re like, ‘Nah, that’s Hollywood (expletive.)’”

By enlisting former special ops as technical advisors, Pratt said, they could say, “Hey, guys, this shouldn’t look like this. You have to do it again.’” The goal was “to try to honor this community and do it for this community, so they would watch us and say, ‘Wow. That’s actually very accurate.’

Beyond realism, Pratt says enlisting former military personnel to work on Hollywood productions makes sense. “They wake up looking for work that needs to be done,” he said.

“I love this transition for people stepping out of the service and into the film and television industry. It’s a really great place for them. A chain of command is very similar. They have departments and initiatives that come from the top. We had props people, we had wardrobe people, we had hair and makeup people, we had extras, location people, we had actors, writers, producers who were ex-military.”

Carr has written four more books about the Reese character, and Pratt says he’s ready to continue the story on screen. When that happens, he will “make sure” he continues to hire ex-military personnel. “They fit great,” he said.

It’s also a point of pride for Pratt to help Shaw fulfill a personal dream of going into showbiz. He had questioned whether attempting a career in Hollywood was realistic.

“It was very coincidental that we met. (Shaw) was an actor in high school… I said, ‘Hey dude. You know I love this kind of bubble I live in. And I know it’s created in part by men and women taking a gun and grabbing their boots and their uniform and going to work… You bought our freedom and I appreciate that.’ I said, ‘It’s time you might enjoy the spoils of his services… Move to the film and television industry. It thrives. It’s booming. And we need you.’”