The FX Twitter team shared another brief spot for Mayans MC, highlighting Michael Irby’s role as Obispo “Bishop” Losa, the president of the Mayans MC Santo Padre Charter.
El Presidente. @MichaelIrby is Bishop. #MayansFX pic.twitter.com/hJcekXGyVH
— Mayans MC (@MayansFX) August 9, 2018
Irby was not originally in the series. Co-creator Kurt Sutter explained in a Deadline interview last month that John Ortiz (Fast & Furious, American Gangster) originally played a different character in the first pilot. After they reshot most of the Mayans MC pilot, Ortiz was dropped and Irby was brought in to play Bishop.
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“We replaced John Ortiz with Michael Irby, and that was really in the writing because I had that [club leader] Bishop being a little bit more indecisive,” Sutter explained. “He was under the wing of Alvarez [Sons’ vet Emilio Rivera]. And we realized what it did is undermine the power of that charter, of that MC, so we changed that character. He became a military guy, more aggressive, and John just wasn’t the right choice for that and that’s why we went to Irby. It had nothing to do, honestly, with performance.”
Irby recently starred in HBO’s Barry, NBC’s Taken and CBS’ SEAL Team. He also played Detective Elvis Ilinca in season two of True Detective. On the big screen, he had a role in 2011’s Fast Five.
Irby joined the show in October 2017. According to TVLine, Bishop is described as a veteran who served in Iraq and Pelican Bay. He is the cousin of Marcus Alvarez, the Mayans MC Oakland Carter president. Emilio Rivera, who played Alvarez in Sons of Anarchy, is reprising his role.
Mayans MC picks up about three years after the events of Sons of Anarchy, and stars J.D. Pardo as Ezekiel “EZ” Reyes, a new Mayans MC prospect who joins up because his once-promising American dream has collapsed and he is out for vengance. Other members of the cast include Sarah Bolger, Edward James Olmos, Richard Cabral, Carla Baratta, Frankie Loyal Delgado and Danny Pino. Sutter created the series with Elgin James.
In an interview with XFinity at San Diego Comic Con last month, Sutter said he was a little hesitant to create a new show in the Sons of Anarchy universe “because you don’t want it to suck.”
“The idea of transitioning from one mythology to the next is my responsibility and bringing in Elgin to co-create it with me, to really allows it to have another voice other than my own, I think that allows it to be its own thing. So I’m not worried about so much about it ultimately feeling derivative or familiar,” Sutter said in July.
The new series debuts on FX Tuesday, Sept. 4.
Photo credit: FX
