(a very special thanks to MyrnaLynne for transcribing the interview ;) )

Starlog December 2000 #281, Interview with Jessica Alba, pp. 68-71

Divine Rogue – Jessica Alba is perfectly engineered to play the Dark Angel – by Ian Spelling

Photo captions:

p. 69 top – In a corrupt, post-apocalyptic future, Max's genetic enhancements help her survive. But she soon sees that her gifts can also aid others.

p. 69 below – On Dark Angel, lab escapee Max (Jessica Alba, right) has found freedom. But her past returns, endangering her and her friends like Original Cindy (Valerie Rae Miller).

p. 70 top - Before the darkness claimed Alba, this angel had a run-in with a five-fingered demon – one of Devon Sawa's (right) 'Idle Hand.'

p. 70 below - What traits do Alba and Max share? A love for casual dress, perhaps. "I like wearing whatever clothes I feel comfortable in," Alba says.

p. 71 – Alba is ready for a long run – and a great deal of action – as an avenger of the night.

Quotes: "Dark Angel was the first thing I've done where I could actually sit down and watch it without crying."

"Dark Angel makes people think."

* * *

Starring in Dark Angel, the much-hyped new series from James Cameron is... the girl from TV's "Flipper." Hey, everyone has to start somewhere, and Jessica Alba did indeed first gain some solid experience by swimming with dolphins for that '90s series revival. Since then, she had reeled in bigger fish, including the films "Idle Hands" and "Never Been Kissed." Now, after some significant juggling and much shuttling across the planet, Alba has completed John Duigan's thriller "Paranoia," the period drama "Sleeping Dictionary," and, yes, Dark Angel.

Given that her film career looked to be catching fire, it's a bit of a surprise that Alba – a striking 19-year-old with pouty lips, dark eyes and creamy skin that befits her Mexican-French-Danish-American heritage – agreed to sign on for another TV series. Then again, Dark Angel is supposed to be a series like no other. "It was a huge decision," notes the actress, who stars as Max on the fledgling show. "It was especially huge because I had gotten another film, "Sleeping Dictionary," and I had to choose between doing that and Dark Angel. I passed on "Sleeping Dictionary" in order to do Dark Angel, but then I was able to do both.

"I wanted to do Dark Angel because the character appealed to me so much. They hadn't even written the [pilot] script yet, but I had so much faith in the writers, in Jim Cameron – I think he's a genius – and Chic Eglee, in the storyline they told me about and in what we could do with the character. It was amazing. When I said yes, Max didn't have friends yet. She didn't have a love interest. That was all developed from how we thought the character would be, how people would relate to her the best. It was awesome to be in on something that early. I was really lucky. I've never been involved in anything that early, and I don't think many people are. Jim and Chic made me very much a part of the [creative] group, and that was excellent.

"It seemed like a chance to do stuff that you've never seen on television before. Dark Angel doesn't seem like the usual commercial TV to me. We deal with issues and show things that you just don't see. One of the main characters, my best friend, is a lesbian. But we're not harping on the fact that she's a lesbian. It's just the way it is. We're not making issues out of things that people make issues out of right now. Dark Angel is multiracial. It's fast. There's humor in it, yet it deals with smart issues. Dark Angel makes people think. If you want to sit back and go brain-dead, watch the show and have fun, you can, but you can also think about what you see, dissect the characters and try to guess what's coming next."

Hybrid Heroine

Dark Angel kicks off with a two-hour pilot, written by Cameron and Eglee and directed by David Nutter, that sets the overall arc in motion. Max is a genetically advanced young woman who could slip easily into the "X-Men" universe were the character a comic-book figure. She ekes out a life in Seattle circa 2020, not long after an electro-magnetic pulse device detonated by terrorists has hurled America back into a Depression-like existence. However, Max is not destined for a low-key reality. The military, in the form of Lydecker (John Savage) – the officer who ran the compound from which Max and other genetically enhanced tykes like her escaped years before – is on the hunt for her and her fellow escapees. And then there's Logan Cale (Michael Weatherly). He's a handsome, charismatic cyberjournalist who runs a clandestine operation designed to expose corrupt types. Needless to say, sparks fly the instant he and Max meet.

"Max is very sensitive," Alba opines. "She's very cautious. She's a smart-ass and just kind of goes. She thinks before she speaks, and many people don't do that. She doesn't speak to hear herself talk. In terms of her abilities, she knows that not everyone is like her. Max has fun with hit, because it's an advantage she has. I don't think she's a superhero. I don't think she thinks she's a superhero. It's more like an adrenaline rush for her. And that's how I play her."

"One of the things I like about Max is that, to a degree, I can relate to her. Max doesn't care about certain things. She does not care how sexy she is or if she's flirting the right way. She's not caught up in anything. She's very cool and very, 'Whatever. If you don't accept me, then screw you. You do nothing for me.' She knows that her priority is all about heart, about relating to people's hearts. It's not about who has more money or who is cooler. She doesn't care about that. She doesn't feed into any kind of ideal, any kind of mass idea of what is excellent or what is supposed to be a certain way. I could relate to all of that."

"I don't care about what anybody says is cool or not cool," continues the actress. "I've been listening to Cat Stevens, James Taylor and the Beatles since I was young. That's just the way it is. That may or may not be cool, but it's what I listen to and whether anyone accepts it or not, I don't care. And I like wearing whatever clothes I feel comfortable in. I don't care about wearing the most fashionable, up-to-date thing. I usually walk around without makeup on, with my hair in a ponytail, because I don't care. Chic and Jim took that part of me, to a degree, and made it a big part of Max. Max is an extreme human being."

Thought it's still early in the game, Alba thinks she knows where elements of Dark Angel are headed. At presstime, Eglee and Cameron had developed five post-pilot stories and just handed their star the first post-pilot script. "I think Max will definitely find the woman who rescued her," Alba notes. "I think she'll find some of the kids who were with her in the compound. Maybe she and Logan will run into each other and then run away from each other as well. He makes her feel vulnerable. He gets right to a nerve in her, and nobody knows how to do that but him. He's on a different level of smartness from anyone else. He cuts through her bullshit."

"In terms of what I would like to see, I want Max to learn some lessons in life. I want her to get a taste of her own medicine and realize that she can't breeze through everything, that there are consequences to what she does. I want her to be more human, to open up a little and close up a bit. She's part feline, and I hope they'll play with that. I hope we'll figure out what's with her and Lydecker. Why is he so attached to her? Why doesn't he say, 'Screw it' and let it go?"

Much of the show's entertainment value is derived from the chemistry between Max and Logan, which makes sense since Eglee spent a great deal of time toiling on "Moonlighting." From the get-go, it's obvious they like each other, and fortunately Alba and Weatherly emit a natural heat in their scenes together. Alba read with a number of would-be Logans, but knew the moment Weatherly stepped into the room that he was the man for the job. "I don't think we needed a pretty boy," she explains. "I wanted a guy who didn't care what he looked like, who hid behind glasses and was really smart. That's what was needed for Logan. Michael has all of that. He's intelligent, and you can tell. He doesn't go in and try to glorify certain parts of his personality. He's smart and doesn't have to try to be smart. He's funny, so he doesn't have to try to be a funny guy. Michael's not desperate to play any of that. I like his confidence, too, and that's why I thought he would be great as the character."

Super Starlet

As vital as an ingredient in the mix as Weatherly – and Savage and even Cameron and Eglee – might be, Dark Angel will sink like the Titanic (the ship) or rise like Titanic (the movie) on the modest shoulders of its young star. Alba trained extensively to get into shape for the role, working out with Cameron regulars. She studied martial arts and took a fresh course in motorcycle riding (after she had received a few lessons as an "Idle Hands" wrap present). "I did pretty much everything except the real dangerous stunts," she says proudly of pulling off the Dark Angel pilot's rigorous stunts. "I didn't plunge 27 stories off the top of a building. I didn't do a wheelie on the motorcycle. But I pretty much did everything else. In terms of my acting, Dark Angel is the first thing I've done where I could actually sit down and watch it without crying. And that's only because I put so much of my everything into this show. It took every bit of me to do what I did. I could watch it and I knew I couldn't do any better. It was humiliating at the same time because, if what I did wasn't good enough, what then? What are you left with?"

Alba, of course, is hoping that her best is good enough, that audiences will take to Dark Angel and to Max and that she'll be part of the show for a long time to come. "It's totally exciting," she says. "You can challenge yourself in every way. You can change. You can grow. You can learn. It's a never-ending process. Hopefully, if we all do our jobs the right way, it could be a great experience. The moment I get bored or the moment Dark Angel stops being fun, I need to check into why I'm doing what I'm doing, why I chose acting as a career. Dark Angel can be limitless, in terms of what we can do with the main idea and the character. When the pilot was done and I saw the final cut, I thought, 'Oh my goodness. This is a big deal.' And now, I just read a bit of our second episode. I was at Lighstorm, reading the script and thinking, 'I'm doing this. That's me every time it says Max. I can't believe it."

Though still in her teens, Alba has been acting for the better part of a decade. In addition to "Flipper," "Never Been Kissed," and "Idle Hands" ("It was OK," she says of the horror flop. "I had fun working with everyone and I was glad they hired me. I was lucky to be working."), she appeared in the little-seen films "Camp Nowhere" and "P.U.N.K.S.," as well as TV's 'Chicago Hope.' "As an actress, you're so vulnerable and so open when you're in the moment," she says. "You're also relating to other human beings and playing human emotion. It kills me. I get a high from that, from being so raw and so exposed. I guess it's therapeutic. In life, you can't afford to be open and vulnerable all the time. Acting gives me an opportunity to be as open and vulnerable as I can be, to feel things to an extreme, without holding back. It doesn't matter if I'm laughing, crying or being angry. It's all for the moment, for a scene. You're not angry at the person you're fighting with. It's just acting. You can throw it away, but hopefully it's there on film."

Alba finished both "Paranoia" and "Sleeping Dictionary" before devoting herself to Dark Angel. Actually, the actress show "Paranoia", then the Dark Angel pilot, then "Sleeping Dictionary" in Malaysia, returning to Los Angeles for a couple of weeks in July before departing for Vancouver, British Columbia to start work on a weekly basis on Dark Angel. Though she stars in "Paranoia," a psychological thriller about a woman stuck at a lodge following a car crash, Alba politely but pointedly notes that she would rather discuss "Sleeping Dictionary." "It's set in the 1930s and I play a native girl," she explains. "Sleeping Dictionary' is about the relationship between this girl and a British officer [Hugh Dancy]. It's a beautiful movie, and it's so the opposite of Dark Angel. I had black hair extensions, down to my waist. I had a Malaysian-English accent. Bob Hoskins and Brenda Blethyn are in it, too. It's a beautiful love story."

As the conversation draws to an end, Alba returns to Dark Angel. Based on the teaser commercials and on the pilot, one might assume that the series will be a somber and gloomy affair. The show's star, however, nips that preconception in the bud. "Many people don't get that there's a lot of humor in Dark Angel," Jessica Alba says. "It will be exciting and fast-paced and serious, too, but it will also be funny. There will be a lot of street-smart jokes. Max has a cool group of friends and there are many different characters we can play with. Dark Angel is not going to be as dark and dreary as some people seem to think. Max is only 18, but she's riding a motorcycle and kicking ass. There's something cool about that, too."