Sci-Fi Talk 1/02: John Shea | listen

John Shea on Sci-Fi Talk

C3PO: Hello, I am C3PO, human-cyborg relations. And you are listening to Sci-Fi Talk. Gosh!

Tony Tellado: The words consummate professional definitely apply to our guest on this Segment of Scifi Talk, actor John Shea, starring in the exciting new series Mutant X. John shea brings his wealth of experience to Mutant X series with his marvellous stage and screen background. Yet you might remember him from 1982's Missing, and the fantastic Costa Gravis film, playing Jack Lemmon's son. He's also worked on the small screen, being well-known for playing Lex Luthor in the Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman. I always felt that after the departure of his character, the series actually lost a little bit of steam. But he did come back in the traditional Lex Luthor look, sans the hair in the November sweeps episode, if I remember correctly. He also won an Emmy award for the film Baby M, based on the famous case with Jobeth Williams playing Marybeth Whitehead, really interesting movie. John Shea is a familiar face on television, appearing in series like Sex in the City, Tales from the Crypt, The Hitchhiker, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and some fans of the show Man of Atalantis might remember John as well. Just to set it up, I was lucky enough to work with Shepley Winings public relations, and Marcia Hart did a fine job in setting up the interviews with the cast of Andromeda earlier this year, and Marcia was kind enough to set up an interview with John as he was visiting New York City. And he actually had a chance to visit Ground Zero, and we'll talk about that during the course of the interview as well. And now, let's go to our interview with John Shea, from the television series Mutant X.

Tony: Hi, John, how are you?

John Shea: Hey, man, how are you?

Tony: Good! Good!

John: Sorry I missed your call a little bit earlier.

Tony: No, I understand, you were busy, but that's a good thing. Promoting this great show.

John: Yeah, thanks, Tony.

Tony: Yeah, I really like it, I think it's a great concept.

John: Yeah, thanks, man.

Tony: I'm very happy you were in it, and I really like the fact that you get to play a good guy for a change.

John (laughing): Yeah, exactly. It's great.

Tony: One thing I do like about Adam is he really is like the center of the show, and really helps to keep all the young mutants, you know, kind of, develop them and also kind of keep them grounded a little bit. Is that part of what attracted you to play him?

John: Yeah, I figured if at this point in my life, if you're gonna surround me with a lot of young actors, I think that the one thing I could bring to it maybe would be the ability to be like a coach or something, you know? To either be a coach or a team captain, or something, 'cause I feel like I've been out there for a long time now, done so many things.

Tony: Yeah.

John: And when I read a role, I try to find something in the role that I can bring to the role, and then something that the role brings to me, that is a role that I don't know anything about, something that the character can teach me. So what I thought that I could bring to the role of Adam was the sense of being the leader of the team, the director of a team. I'd just directed a film, a feature film, that I had spent the last three years doing before I did Mutant X. And when you're a film director, it's like, you know, meeting a group of people for a particular cause. You have a goal in mind, you have to be really motivated, you have to motivate other people.

Tony: Right.

John: But you also have to be a team player.

Tony: Sure.

John: You take ideas from them, and you try to decide what the best ideas are and things like that, so, anyway. I thought that I could use some of those things that I learned from being a film director as Adam, because he's-- even though we're not making a film, it's like we're creating, you know, like a fighting unit and a living unit, and we're out there with a goal in mind, which is survival and rescue. This is what I can relate to. What I didn't know about life, that Adam is teaching me, is the world of science.

Tony: Yeah.

John: I don't know much about genetics. I don't know anything about genetic engineering or biogenetics. And this whole world of scientific possibilities that's very new to me, that's what Adam's given to me.

Tony: They used to call it technobabble on Star Trek, where you have to recite all these incredible lines and things that talk technical. How do you handle that as an actor?

John: Well, it's very weird. I try to come to understand exactly what it is that it means.

Tony: Yeah.

John: And I studied enough science in school, whether it's chemistry and biology, you know, some of those basic earth sciences, so that I understand a little bit about it. But then, if I have a question, I call Howard Chaykin, the head writer, and I say, you know, like, "What does this mean?" And he'll tell me that a lot of the stuff that they're writing is based on real science. And we want it to be as plausible as -- you know, even though we're dealing with science fiction -- it's becoming less science fiction, you know, as days go by. The more things evolve and the more we're discovering, the more we realize that this stuff is possible, and not so far off.

Tony: Yeah.

John: And so, anyway, what we're doing is trying to make it as real as possible. And so I figured if I can make it real for myself and come to understand it, then I can make it real for an audience and they'll come to understand it as well.

Tony: Well, you mentioned Mr. Chaykin, yeah. He's kind of an ace in the hole, because he has that experience working on The Flash series in the early '90s.

John: That's right.

Tony: And he brings dealing with people with powers, that experience into the show, and I think that's a nice ace in the hole there.

John: Yeah, exactly.

Tony: And, of course, you have experience with playing, on the other side of the coin, playing Lex Luthor, of course.

John: Yeah, that was a blast.

Tony: Yeah.

John: I loved playing Lex Luthor, and that was also coming out of the comic book world. What we tried to do in Lois & Clark was to make these comic book characters three dimensional, to make them human beings.

Tony: Yeah.

John: And not to give them one-dimensionality, which would just wear very thin very quickly in a television series. It would be okay in a movie, you know, but when you're dealing with twenty-two, or however many you have, fourty-four episodes that we're going to make, you know, you want the characters to be as real as possible so that the audience can relate to them. And they can feel for them, and they can come to understand them. So what we share in common, I think, with Lois & Clark is this effort to make the Mutant X characters also three-dimensional human beings.

Tony: Yeah.

John: What is different is the tone, I think. I think Lois & Clark was treated more as a romantic comedy than action, you know?

Tony: Yes, yep.

John: There was a lot of comedy and romantic comedy in Lois & Clark. Ours is much more a cross-genre piece.

Tony: Yeah.

John: Ours is action-adventure-science-fiction-drama, and it takes a little bit from each of those genres. And that's one of the reasons why, when they asked me to do it, I read it. And I didn't wanna do anything that wasn't going to be really cool, because I had come out of Lois & Clark, last series I did, which was really cool and became a global success. And I wanted something that was going to be equally successful. And then, as I examined the elements of this, I thought, "You know something? It's got a chance." And for these reasons: one, it's a drama; it's an hour-long drama. And in that hour long format, you can explore real stories, you know? Rather than the half-hour form, where things are treated much more superficially.

Tony: Sure.

John: Secondly, it's shot it 35 millimeter, like a feature film, like Lois & Clark was, and I knew that these guys who were producing it had just spent five years creating La Femme Nikita, and I thought that that was a really stylish cool show as well.

Tony: Oh, yeah.

John: So I knew that the creative force behind it was experienced and successful. And also the piece itself, as I read it, I knew that there was gonna be action, but the action was a very cool style. It was Hong Kong style that hadn't really been seen in television before, as far as I know. Our stunt coordinators and fight directors are guys who have spent time in Hong Kong. They live in Hong Kong, they've come from China to work with us. And they've brought this kind of Jet Li style of, you know, the wirework that they did on Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and other stuff to this series, and so it's a very cool action that we're doing. And in the most recent episodes, I've gotten to do some of that.

Tony: Oh, good.

John: In the early episodes, I didn't, and I was kind of bummed out that I was missing out on all that fun. I've become more involved in it, which is really cool. And I've done two really cool fight sequences. 'Cause I studied some martial arts when I was younger, so now I'm getting a chance to use them, you know?

Tony: Yeah.

John: So that's really cool.

Tony: Earlier this year, I had the chance to interview Michael Landis, who was Jimmy Olsen on Lois & Clark, of course.

John: Yeah.

Tony: And he says, "I didn't get to work with John that much on the show, but later on, I got to work with him, and I really am glad for that experience." And he's really enjoyed working with you. He's spreading his own wings a little bit with his own show, Special Unit 2.

John: Is he?

Tony: Yeah.

John: Oh, great, he's a great guy.

Tony: Yeah, so he enjoyed that. There was actually an interview I saw, just getting back to Lex momentarily, where you said something that really caught my eye about how you looked at him. You said, "I looked at him as like, Richard III and playing in that way." And I said, "That's it! He's right! That's perfect!" And that's what you brought to that character. And not to mention there was one episode where you tested Superman, and you had to say all those lines, like 'faster than a speeding bullet' and all that stuff.

John: Yes, yes.

Tony: And you did it with a straight face, and you did -- you made it believable. I really enjoyed the way you portrayed that.

John: Yeah, thanks, man, I had fun. I try to envision Lex Luthor as a cross between Richard III and Donald Trump. He would look like Donald Trump, you know, like a really cool billionaire, in a tuxedo, you know, living in a penthouse in the world's tallest building, lording over his, you know, empire. But inside, of course, he'd be a twisted and wounded in a funny way. Sociopathic, without a conscience, just kind of driven by appetite the way Richard III is, one of my favorite characters in Shakespeare. And I haven't figured out who Adam is in the Shakespearean mode. He's certainly not a Richard III character, he...you know, I'm not quite sure yet.

Tony: Yeah.

John: He's almost more like Othello, in the sense that he's been betrayed, but he's also something of a general. He's leading a team into war, to battle constantly to save his men. But the betrayal that he suffered is something like the betrayal that Othello suffers from Iago.

Tony: Yes.

John: And by that I mean that he's got a friend that's turned on him and stabbed him in the back, and that is something that Eckhart, the character that Tom McCamus -- the guy with the white hair -- plays.

Tony: Yes, yes.

John: He was my former partner and associate over at Genomex. And he was the one who co-opted my scientific inventions over there and has now used them against me, playing them in genetic engineering, and trying to, you know...so anyway, he's become now my enemy. And there's a betrayal that has wounded Adam, and has made him very, very wary of "who do you trust?"

Tony: Yeah, exactly.

John: And it's something that we're experiencing right now, even in the real world. As I was looking at Mutant X and trying to figure out, even recently, the last couple of months, September 11th, you know.

Tony: Yeah.

John: It's like, how does Mutant X fit into the zeitgeist, you know? I mean, how does it work in the world? And I was thinking, well, it is a paranoid universe, particularly where our enemy has been living within us, you know?

Tony: Yeah.

John: Our next-door neighbors. And we've also suffered a kind of national betrayal.

Tony: Absolutely.

John: And so I think something about that. But also, I thought that the best thing that Mutant X has to offer, is pure escapism.

Tony: Oh yeah.

John: For people who are afraid to travel, for people who cannot escape physically because they've lost their job because the economy is bad, because they're afraid to travel, they don't want to fly, they can't get out of their lives, they can once a week, you know, be transported to a little alternate universe that we helped make for them, you know, where they can be sort of entertained for a week and then just kind of leave the world behind for a little while, you know?

Tony: I wouldn't mind taking that jet you guys have once in a while for a spin. That looks like a pretty neat craft.

John: Yeah, yeah, it's pretty cool.

Tony: And you know, speaking of the cast that you have, I think there's something between Victoria Pratt's character -- who I love on the show, Shalimar -- and your character. She likes to flirt with you a lot. I've noticed that on the show so far.

John: Yeah.

Tony: Is there anything there, or what's going on?

John: No, you know, I think she's just a naturally affectionate person. And we might flirt with each other, but I think we have more, at least at this point, definitely a fraternal, kind of collegial relationship. We've all decided, I think, for, at least for the time being, to give vent any feelings that may be latent within us, you know? Might be a mistake.

Tony: Yeah.

John: Because you don't fraternize...I don't want to say fraternize with the enemy...but we don't dissipate energy that we have, I think, by turning it into romance.

Tony: Sure, I understand.

John: There's too many other more important things to deal with, and there's no time at the moment for that. So in one episode, it is, I think that has already aired, or is upcoming, you'll see that she has a really strong relationship with somebody else outside the team. And then in another episode that we just shot last week, I have a relationship with somebody outside the team.

Tony: Oh, good!

John: An old lover that comes back in, you know.

Tony: Wow.

John: And it's kind of a cool episode as well.

Tony: Yeah, her episode has already aired, you know.

John: Oh, her episode has aired.

Tony: Yeah, so that was a good one. And you know, it was a very nice shot at the end, too, where Adam is just like just hovering near her, like just to be there.

John: Exactly, because I know the pain that she was in. I remember that episode, yeah.

Tony: And then the candles in the water, very symbolic.

John: Yeah, yeah. I remember that she was, yeah. She was just in a lot of pain, you know? But we call that space The Sanctuary.

Tony: Yeah, that's a great -- Sanctuary's terrific.

John: And it is, gotta be something like that, because...and I think everybody needs a Sanctuary, don't you?

Tony: Oh, yeah.

John: Because when the world is as insane as it is right now, I just spent the day down at Ground Zero. I spent all morning there.

Tony: Oh, wow. Wow.

John: I was breathing in that smoke and walking around, just kind of stunned by what I saw. And then, you know, I ducked into a chapel for a little while and said a couple of prayers. Then I realized that what I had done, was that I had sought Sanctuary. And I realized that that's what we do on Mutant X every week, you know? We go out there and we do battle in the real world, and then all this stuff is happening. There's a kind of terrorism that happens to us every week, you know, as they try to hunt us down and kill us, and then we find Sanctuary among ourselves, you know?

Tony: You know, there's something else good about the show that I really like. It's essentially people who are different from other people, and acceptance. And that's a theme that's running through the core of the show that I really like, and accepting people for what they are.

John: That's right.

Tony: That rings a nice bell to me too.

John: Yeah, you know, we're shooting this scene in Toronto, which is a multi-national city, but being down here in New York today, I walk around the city, it just reminded me how astounding this city is and how great it is. And what makes it great is just the fact that you have all these amazing human beings from all over the earth here.

Tony: Oh yeah.

John: Every nation, every color, every creed, everything, and everybody feels a little like an outsider. And in a way, everybody is. You know, mutant means to change, you know?

Tony: Yeah.

John: To mutate. And everybody has been mutating, certainly by the events of September 11th.

Tony: Absolutely.

John: We've all changed. And everybody is like looking at the outside world slightly different, you knoa?

Tony: Yeah.

John: The secret is to, yeah. Feel tolerance and to come to understand the differences between us. One of the amazing things of September 11th is that we all feel sort of closer to one another. The thing that I feel also about the Mutant X team, is that these people have these powers that were hoisted upon them. They didn't really ask for them, right?

Tony: Right, exactly, yeah.

John: And they find themselves growing up with these extraordinary, these powers, but it makes them feel different, they feel like outcasts. And our job is, of course, to make them feel that, no, that's something, everybody feels that way at first. Everybody feels like they're different. And nobody fits in at first. And then the secret is to find out what your talents are, what gifts you have been given, and then use them the best way you can.

Tony: And that's actually something that Adam says, 'gifts.' You know, he makes that point, saying 'gifts,' not 'powers.'

John: Yeah.

Tony: And that's one of the things I like about him, too, is that he looks like a proud papa upon his fold, here, and he sees all the different gifts that they bring to the table. And harnassing them and using them for the right purpose.

John: Using them for the right purpose, because you've got a choice in life, which is that you can be on the light side or you can be on the dark side, and what are you gonna do? You can't always control the things that happen to us. The only thing we control is the way we respond to those things, right?

Tony: Absolutely, absolutely.

John: And so his message is to try to use the gifts that you're given and use the opportunity...see it as an opportunity and then use it for positive change. So anyway, that's also one of the reasons I wanted to do the show and play this role because it was very different. Having flirted with the dark side with Lex Luthor for all those years, and having studied kind of the psychopathic mind, I wanted to play somebody who was positive and on a spiritual path and was somebody who was going to be doing something that was on the light side for a change.

Tony: Sure, sure. You know, I can't go on an interview without mentioning some of the roles that I thought were memorable. Obviously playing Bill Stern in Baby M, it was a case that really hit the headlines here for the longest time, and I was just really floored by your performance. And obviously, the Emmy award floored a lot of other people too. So, just wanted to give you Kudos for that.

John: Yeah, thanks. Yeah, I felt really sympathetic for Bill Stern and I've been looking at portraying some real characters, you know, in my life.

Tony: Did you meet him at all before you took the role? No?

John: I never got to meet him. He never came around the shooting. I don't know, he was very shy about the whole thing, you know? So I just read everything I could about him and watched lots of videotape and tried to model my character after who he was, after him, you know?

Tony: Yeah.

John: And watching all the videotape, the news reports and stuff like that, but I never got a chance to meet him. Maybe someday down the line I will.

Tony: And playing Bobby Kennedy as well in the miniseries, I mean, that was a monumental challenge as well, to play someone like that.

John: That was a really, really hard thing to do too. That was even harder to do than Bill Stern, because, of course, of the public persona that Bobby had was so well known.

Tony: Sure. It was an incredible part, and Bobby is, in a lot of ways, an icon, you know, of the twentieth century.

John: Yeah. Yeah. But what I liked about that series, was that it was the most serious portrayal ever of the Kennedy years. It wasn't about their private lives, it was about a historical recreation of the Kennedy White House from the election to the assassination. I don't know if you know it was created by a British director.

Tony: Yes, right.

John: Written by an Englishman, and then directed by an Englishman, and then sold over here to CBS and NBC.

Tony: Yeah, they did a nice job with it. You know, what I'm noticing too is something that you mentioned, directing. Of course, you know, you must have been talking about Southie, the movie that you did with Donnie Wahlberg and Rose McGowen.

John: Yes. Yeah.

Tony: I actually had a chance to meet her when she did her stream, and I was impressed with her as a young and up and coming actress as well, so...

John: Oh, yeah, she was great. Yeah, we had a tremendous time. I just remember something, I spent three years writing and directing that thing and selling it and doing all that stuff, so... And then I spent the last two years on the stage in New York, doing off-Broadway work. Very serious, kind of serious. So for me, the return to Mutant X, and the return to serious television is a return to the mainstream. I wanted to do something very commercial, very popular, very, you know, different from the work that I've been doing for the last few years, which has been on stage and other stuff in theaters.

Tony: Hey, speaking of popular, this thing has taken off, you know, just its first few months on the air. It's really doing well.

John: Yeah, so far so good.

Tony: Yeah.

John: I'm actually encouraged.

Tony: Yeah.

John: Yeah, I'm really happy.

Tony: Anything big coming up for Mutant X?

John: Well, I know...oh-ho-ho! I'll take a quote from one of the really great American playwrights, Wallace Stevens. Wallace Stevens, he's a great playwright from Hartford Connecticut who said, "We climb to heaven on the stairway of surprise."

Tony (laughing): That says it all.

John: Okay? Now all I can tell Mutant X fans is that there are surprises in store. The writing has got all kinds of twists and turnscoming up.

Tony: Great.

John: And we're also going to see the dark side of Adam emerge. It's going to be very, very, very weird. And I won't tell you how or why, but I'll just tell you that there are very cool surprises coming up.

Tony: Thank you so much, and best of luck on the show. It looks great.

John: Oh, thank you very much. I hope I'll talk to you again sometime down the line.

Tony: Hey, definitely.

John: Be my pleasure.

Tony: Okay, John. Take care.

John: Okay.

Tony: Bye-bye.

John: Bye.

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