Eyes Up Front

Michael Weatherly talks to Joe Nazzaro about playing DARK ANGEL’S resident cyber-hacker

“I’m sitting atop a gleaming glass building in Vancouver British Columbia,” announces actor Michael Weatherly, who plays cyber-crusader Logan Cale on the futuristic drama DARK ANGEL. “I’m on the 52nd floor, above the clouds, surrounded by posters of Aquaman, Superman, the Bionic Man and a tiny picture of Jessica Alba.”

Weatherly is wrapping up the first season of DARK ANGEL, which stars Alba as Max, a genetically enhanced super-warrior living in a post-apocalyptic Seattle. Weatherly plays a wheelchair-bound cyber-journalist that uses his underground “Eyes Only” broadcasts to alert the public about corruption within their decaying city.

Like his on-screen persona, the actor prefers to do his talking from a position of relative anonymity, in this case over the phone. “I have a phobia about doing in-person interviews,” he explains. “I get all fidgety and nervous, and I’m kind of a disaster in person. We did an episode where Logan had to give a toast at his cousin’s wedding, and he loses the notes and completely self-destructs. That’s not far from my real personality.” Weatherly is still trying to accept the sudden success of DARK ANGEL, and the attention that comes from being associated with a series produced by Titanic’s James Cameron. “I’ve never made this many episodes in a row,” he declares. “I’ve made six of one, three of another and a bunch of pilots, but this is really the largest undertaking I’ve been involved in, outside of a soap opera I did for three years. DARK ANGEL just keeps going.

The actor may prefer his character’s penchant for keeping a low profile, but that’s pretty much where the similarities end. “The only thing we really have in common is that we look exactly the same. The way we process information and our sense of humour is entirely different. Every once in a while we’ll do a take where a little bit of me sneaks in, and we’ll have to do it again, because you can fall out of character sometimes.”

While Weatherly plays the show’s resident cyber-wizard, he’s quick to admit that his own real-life technical expertise isn’t too impressive. “I don’t know anything about computers, and sometimes for the purposes of the show, the computer I’m looking at it isn’t even actually on. They’ll just have a light under the monitor to light me, but for sound purposes, they have to turn off the computer. I’m not a big computer person.

“Way back in 1983, I had an Apple lle, but since then, for some reason, I don’t run into computers that often. However, I do need to understand the scene. If there’s going to be information coming up on the monitor, I’m kind of a pain in the ass about that stuff. I want Logan to look like he knows what he’s doing. I endeavor every day that I’m on the set to make him appear credible, someone who has the ease with all that technology.”

Technobabble

Unfortunately, one of the downsides to playing a credible cyber-hack is getting stuck with the most of the show’s pseudo-technical dialogue. “I had one sentence the other day,” he recalls. “Oh God, what was it? It’s worth me telling you about. Any time Logan sits at his computer, you know he’s going to get some sort of a doozy to say, but this one was particularly diabolical. I almost felt like they had cooked it up down in LA just to say, ‘Ah-ha, Weatherly will have to say this!’ Here it is: ‘We’re thinking their key is to self-dismantle in response to an electromagnetic signal.’ At the end of a 12-hour day, that’s not a sentence you want to say 15 times in a row.”

These complaints are all made in good humour. If it’s not already obvious, DARK ANGEL has turned out to be one of the better acting gigs in Michael Weatherly’s career. “I’d been happy with the fact that I was working and doing a couple of film roles every year. But it certainly didn’t have the kind of scope and impact that going in and meeting Jim Cameron and Jessica as well; you walked into that room and felt like, ‘Oh, this is a big room!’

“When we came to do the pilot, I didn’t know what to expect in terms of the odds of the show being picked up. You never quite know what anyone’s agenda is. I was psyched to do something that I felt was cinematic for television, as opposed to just another standard, paint by numbers thing. Hopefully DARK ANGEL will continue to explore what it is and never fall into the trap of being formulaic.”

One of the most unexpected rewards of the series turned out to be the actor’s off-camera romance with co-star Jessica Alba, to whom he became engaged shortly after this interview. Not surprisingly, it’s an area Weatherly is reluctant to talk about, but the sexual chemistry between the two characters is a different matter. “We deal with all sorts of stuff as far as trying to find the right balance of telling the story and connecting in the scene. The more episodes we do, you have to be more careful that you don’t forget all these little beats that go on. When you first start doing the show, you have a tendency to listen a little bit more. Especially in episodes 18, 19, and 20, you really have to take that moment and say, ‘Okay, how do we make sure that we sustain this credible kind of curiosity that these people are as curious about each other now as they hopefully will be down the road.”

Which is probably just as well considering that most of Logan’s scenes are with Max. “She has all these different facets to her life, and I think the pilot establishes that very well. [Director] David Nutter knew that she was the disco ball off of which everyone else was just a light reflecting, and she was an excellent disco ball. When she goes into Jam Pony or the Crash Bar, you get all these different tastes of the world in which she lives. It’s useful tool to use that one character, because in this story we’re telling, she’s is almost a humanoid amalgam who’s searching for her humanity. She’s checking everyone out, and constantly assessing this world she’s living in and trying to figure it out.”

Looking back over the first season of DARK ANGEL, are there any moments that Weatherly remembers with particular fondness? “We did an episode called PRODIGY, where Logan gets dumped off the top of a building, and Max jumps after him and catches him. They swing through a window and land on a hotel bed. We shot that over four separate days, one day for the rooftop, another for the special FX and falling, and then swinging through the window was a different day. The actual dialogue on the bed was done in one take, on second unit at 11pm and we had no time. That’s one episode I remember vividly.”

With DARK ANGEL continuing into a second season, Michael Weatherly is happy to stick around and see what the future holds for Logan Cale. “They keep giving me stuff to do,” he maintains. “I was walking in the pilot, and they shot me. I was in the wheelchair for 10 episodes. Then I was up out of it for several episodes, and then back in the wheelchair. Now there are rumours of another rising, so they constantly keep me guessing. I think as long as I’m curious about what the next script holds, I’ll be happy to report.”