The BBC America drama series Copper – from Academy Award-winner Barry Levinson, Emmy-winner Tom Fontana and Academy Award-nominee Will Rokos – is set in 1864, at a time when disorder and mayhem were the law of the land, and New York City was filled with intrigue, corruption, mystery and murder. The show also stars Tom Weston-Jones (as Irish immigrant Detective Kevin Corcoran), Franka Potente, Anastasia Griffith, Kevin Ryan, Kyle Schmid, Ato Essandoh, Dylan Taylor, Kiara Glasco, Tanya Fischer and Tessa Thompson.

In this exclusive interview with Collider, co-stars Kevin Ryan (who plays Detective Francis Maguire, Detective Corcoran’s closet friend and partner in the Sixth Precinct), Kyle Schmid (who plays Robert Morehouse, a handsome Manhattan aristocrat) and Ato Essandoh (who plays Doctor Matthew Freeman, who secretly assists Corcoran with his work) talked about their audition process, how they got comfortable with this type of stylized dialogue, playing characters that live in the grey area, working on such realistic sets, and their favorite moments for their characters. Check out what they had to say after the jump.

BBC America’s new original series Copper seems an odd foray for a cable network built on rerunning some of the best programming from across the pond, though Copper is itself a bit of an amalgam of foreign and American interests (although in this case, Irish rather than British).  It’s 1864 New York, and Irish immigrant police detective Kevin “Corky” Corcoran (Tom Weston-Jones, MI-5) is exactly the type of ruggedly handsome, clever, morally complex hero with a tragic backstory you would expect to anchor such a work. And as of the first two episodes, Weston-Jones does an adequate job in charming viewers enough to take an interest in Corcoran as a protagonist and hero as he fights against (and occasionally participates in) a corrupt police force in a corrupt city.

Copper comes out of the box with violence and grit and doesn’t easily let up.  It relishes portraying the slums of the kind of day where you could punch a man carrying the corpse of a dead child for interrupting you being pleasured (or about to be) by another child.  There’s plenty of liquor, fighting and busty whores; this is a series for adults, and Copper doesn’t let it be forgotten.  Though it could be compared to — and does borrow from — series covering roughly the same time period and themes (Hell on Wheels, Deadwood), it owes the most to Scorsese’s Gangs of New York, taking place just after the New York Draft Riots of 1863 which acted as the climax of that film, and in the same Five Points slum.  But for more on why Copper may be worth a trip into the gutter, hit the jump.

Lucas Till, Kyle Schmid, Sonja Kinski, Rachel Blanchard, and Juliet Landau have signed on to join Goran Visjnic and Richard Edson in the independent noir thriller Dark Hearts.  Per Variety, the script by Christian Piers Betley centers on a “struggling artist [who] accompanies his younger brother to a secret gig where he finds his muse in sultry singer (Kinski) only to be thrust into a maelstrom of art, blood and passion, leading to a dangerous love triangle.”  Shooting began in May in Los Angeles under the direction of Rudolf Buitendach; Dark Hearts wraps production later this week.

Hit the jump for details on Rachael Taylor’s role in Loft.