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Scifi Magazine Interview - April 2001 Part 1

The wiggle room also means that the show isn’t confined to any specific, prescribed formula. “Every week we’re making a completely different kind of show. We don’t sit there and just make a repeat of last week’s episode, which a show like this could become,” he observes candidly. “Every week, Logan could give Max the mission, and she could go off and come back in a Charlie’s Angels kind of thing. But it’s really not like that at all.”

Even though the structure of the episodes might be different each week, the characters themselves don’t suddenly sprout new personalities. “It’s always consistent, character-wise,” he says. “So it’s not like every week we come in and it’s like, “Who’s this Logan this week.”

“The real challenge,” Weatherly adds laughing, “is trying to keep a straight face while I give the exposition. I occasionally have these long sequences of telling the backstory on the bad guy or something like that. That’s not the easiest stuff in the world to do.”

Logan isn’t a one-note character, though – and Weatherly is enjoying the opportunity to explore his character, in spite of his crack-of-dawn set calls. “It’s a lot of fun. When we first started doing these episodes, the interesting game that was going on between Logan and Max is that she is someone who is searching to find out who she is. She’s a cat burglar at night so she can make this money to pay a private investigator to find out who is behind her [existence]. But she’s not interested at all in the world in which she actually lives; she’s only interested in the world which has long since disappeared behind her.

“And Logan is only interested in the world that exists around him, and fighting that system. But you know next to nothing about Logan’s personal mythology. He has almost no interest in who he is; he only has an interest in the society, and trying to effect some kind of positive change on that society.” Weatherly pauses. “So the two of them have this sort of positive and negative charges; and obviously, those opposites attract, in some ways.”

Chemistry between two actors on screen isn’t something that can be forced: It’s either there, or it isn’t. However, in the case of Alba and Weatherly, it quickly became clear that the only problem would be preventing the actors’ chemistry from spontaneously combusting. “Whether it’s written for it or not – and sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t – Jessica and I always have a lot of fun with the scenes when they unfold,” Weatherly says with a chuckle. “In every scene, you’re always trying to play not just what’s on the page, but you’re also trying to make it interesting and expand it and push outside of it as much as possible. And I think the show is built for that. It’s always fun. She’s not too hard on the eyes, either.”

While it’s easy to draw broad assumptions, though, Weatherly is quick to dispel such thoughts. “One of the criticisms of the show that I’m aware of,” he notes, “is that these postmodern, archetypal characters like the empowered Powder Puff Babe and the Brainiac in the Wheelchair, and I’d like to think that the show is a little more than just these over-simplified cartoon characters.”

The burgeoning deeper friendship between Logan and Max also means the personal stakes are getting higher. “They each hold a secret of the other, and as they expand that into a deeper understanding with each other, it’s fun. But it can get a little dangerous – they’re both pretty willful characters, and neither one of them seems to be suffering from the deficit of intellect.”

And the emotional bond between these two characters is going to come more into focus as the second half of the season rolls out. “The more that he develops this friendship and relationship with her, the more he cares about the outcome of the situation, and it gets more and more complicated for both of them,” says Weatherly.

Working with Alba is a treat – but there’s more to it than just having “the best view in North America,” jokes Weatherly, whose character is usually found in his wheelchair looking up to Alba. “When the buzzer goes off and the red lights starts blinking, you have to be ready – she’s not someone who will forgive you too easily if you’re sloppy or lazy or not getting your lines or not hitting your mark,” he says. “And when the shot is finished, she usually goes for some kind of sucker-punch.”

No matter how you slice it, working on Dark Angel is unlike any of Weatherly’s past experiences, which include roles in The Last Days of Disco, The Specials, Gun Shy, and the TV series Jesse. “This is completely different. I’ve done plenty of pilots: I’ve been a lawyer, a doctor, a boat captain, [and] a construction worker. But underground cyber-journalist in the year 2020 with the genetically engineered super babe as you friend, that’s the job. That’s the one you want, I’d trade all the rest in”