Family dynamics generate arresting cop drama for Lifetime

In Lifetime's newest hourlong drama “Against the Wall,” premiering Sunday, July 31, Aussie beauty Rachael Carpani stars as Abby Kowalski, an internal affairs detective in the Chicago police department who, despite a razor-sharp mind, trips over curbs, wipes out grocery displays and gets her bobbing blond ponytail caught in a beat cop's badge.

In real life, Carpani — doppelgänger for a young Meg Ryan and an ace at an American accent — dials in a half-hour late for our interview. Overtime on the set? Nah … she just kind of forgot to charge her cellphone. Good casting!

“What makes Abby so much fun to play is she wears all of her flaws on the outside,” Carpani says. “Her mouth moves faster than her brain, so she puts her foot in it a lot, and she's very human. She's clumsy and klutzy. But when she is on the job, she does know what she is doing.”

And what she is doing is infuriating her father and three brothers, all proud beat cops who react with varying degrees of horror when the baby girl of the family makes detective and takes the only available opening — in internal affairs.

“She's now on the bad guys team, which she sees as the good guys,” Carpani explains. “But her family only sees them as bad guys, and that's really going to be put to the test. I love that you find out, and Abby finds out along the way, that it's a very different thing investigating ‘the good guys.'”

Having a family full of good guys does more than wreak havoc on Abby's career path — her social life isn't exactly burning up the Windy City skyline either. Unless you count making solo s'mores on the rooftop of her apartment building.

“She's not quite ready for anyone to take the place of those men in her life, her father and her brothers,” says Carpani of Abby's staunch unwillingness to dabble in dating. “And the men in her family have set a pretty high standard.”

Hence, there's another secret she's been keeping from clan Kowalski: When the loneliness of being young, single and overly responsible in the big city gets to be too much, Abby places no-strings booty calls to one other man she knows she can trust — brother Richie's beat partner, Brody (Andrew Walker). You'll want to usher the kids out of the room during those wall-shaking scenes. Refusing to make more of the relationship, or any other, says Carpani, is also Abby's way of reclaiming her own power as she plunges into an abyss of uncertainty.

“Her ultimate goal is homicide, but (her family members) don't hear that part. All they hear is I.A. … Abby was a good patrol cop. And we'll see as the season goes on how good she was. She had a sweet way of getting in there and making people want to talk to her, and then she could pull out the tough guy unexpectedly. But when she's around her family she becomes that little girl who trips over things all the time.”

While her on-screen family is upended by Abby's evolution (and an oh-here-we-go twist at the end of the premiere), off-screen Carpani says the cast members — who include Marisa Ramirez (“Spartacus: Gods of the Arena”), Brandon Quinn (“Entourage”), and acting vets Treat Williams and Kathy Baker as the clan's parents — are as tight as the real deal.

“Oh, my gosh! They're amazing! Honestly, honestly, everyone gets on so well that we're already like this really close-knit family — because we're shooting in Toronto, and most of us aren't from here, we've become very, very close.”

Carpani especially treasures her connection with Baker and the bond their characters share on the show. “I love the relationship they've written between mother and daughter. Angst between mother and daughter has been done so many times — but so many people are really close to their mothers. I'm extremely close to my mum! She came to visit me from Australia when I first came here to shoot the series, just to take care of me for a little bit. Each episode, you see how deep and how strong the relationship between Abby and her mother really is.”

And relationships are what Carpani says will prove most arresting about “Wall.”

“I hope these are characters that people are genuinely interested in because they see little facets of their own family, that need for approval and that closeness.

“Until you do one little thing wrong,” she says, laughing. “And then it's, like, ‘Hmmm!'”

<b>“Against the Wall”</b>

Premieres 9 p.m. Sunday, July 31, on Lifetime