Tucson scripted podcast lands big Hollywood star

In its second season in 2022, he snagged 1970s TV heartthrob Erik Estrada (Ponch on the 1970s NBC drama “CHiPs”).

For the third and final season, which posted the first two of six episodes on Nov. 10, he landed Kathleen Turner (“Body Heat,” “Romancing the Stone,” “The War of the Roses”).

Like he had with Estrada, “I reached out to her people and I made an offer,” he said.

Turner read the scripts and said she liked the writing.

“She’s like ‘Let’s do it’,” Scott said.

“Tucson Heat” follows Detectives Harriet Shepard (Betsy Bruce) and Jasmine Alicia (Chezale Rodriguez) as they find a serial killer (season one), investigate a wave of mail bombings (season two) and find themselves in the crosshairs of a 30-year-old cold case that points to one of them.

Turner comes on as Private Investigator Victoria Dickinson in the third episode that drops Nov. 17. The series runs through Dec. 10.

Other cast members include Michaela Ivey as County Attorney Casey Wallace and Ashton Moio as Mateo Lopez.

The podcast was Scott’s pandemic pivot; he had wanted to make a feature film called “Good Cop, Mom Cop” based on a short film he made in 2018.

It was one of two shorts that he screened for a murder mystery night at the Rialto Theatre.

“We did a live murder mystery to solve for the audience, like a dinner theater,” Scott said. “It was pretty fun.”

Since the pandemic shut everything down, Scott decided to put the film’s characters in a scripted podcast, which the actors could record remotely for his Elephant Scout production company.

“We can edit it and put it out into the world, and hopefully start building an audience that way,” was his thought, he said.

When the first season dropped, the audience response was positive.

“People seemed to like it,” Scott said, which got him thinking: “How do we take this to the next level?”

Next level comes with named talent.

Enter Estrada.

“We reached out to his people and they vetted us. It was good enough to get to a yes from him,” Scott said.

Elephant Scout is self-financed, which means Estrada’s fee — which wasn’t as much as Scott paid to get Turner, he said — came from the company.

Scott said the payoff was a sizeable boost in viewership.

“Our numbers just doubled right away, and I'm hoping they'll do that again for this upcoming season,” he said. “We were on the cusp of getting to the point of being able to run ads on our podcast.”

In addition to “Tucson Heat,” Scott is working on a documentary about Dennis Leone, a Latino stunt performer at Old Tucson Studios in 1975 who later became the stand-in for “Hawaii Five-O” star Jack Lord.

Leone later moved to Hollywood, and in 2000, he created the Showtime series “Resurrection Boulevard” that ran for three seasons.

“Tucson Heat” is available wherever you get your podcasts. For more information on Scott’s film projects, visit elephantscout.com.