Post by TVFan on May 23, 2006 9:53:17 GMT -5
I found this article with John Billingsley who played the unforgettable George Marks in season 2. It's a long piece that focuses mainly on his Star Trek experiences, so I'm going to post the relevent CC stuff and link to the article.
Before Enterprise came to an end John guest starred on CBS's Cold case. The show, headed by Kathryn Morris as Detective Lily Rush, deals with an unsolved murder case each week that the team attempt to solve. The case could be 5 years old or 50, but rather than the forensics of shows like CSI the show decides to explore the life of the murdered person using flashbacks. In "Mind Hunters", John played a chilling killer named George who hunted women in the woods and decapitates them. In the episode Rush and her team were not able to arrest George, and the murder was unsolved. A shock for viewers, it was the very first time a case hadn't been solved, and the first time an episode didn't end by showing a vision of the murdered person at rest. John returned as George in the season finale, where George terrorizes Rush and is shot dead.
George was a complete contrast to Doctor Phlox, but John explained that playing a killer was actually all too familiar. "Before I was cast as Doctor Phlox I'd been cast quite frequently as killers, nut jobs and what have you, so it wasn't as out of the blue sky as it might have appeared to people, that I would play a psychotic. So I had a certain familiarity with the way psychotic personalities' value systems are arranged."
As such, he didn't do any specific research into playing the killer. "Most of the research I think you do, frankly in television especially you don't have a lot of time to prepare, is essentially just along the lines of engaging yourself in a conversation about what you think the story is about and how you can help server the writers' needs. Sometimes there's a little bit of a problem, as to me there was in those episodes, because what I would have said was the truth of who this guy is [is] that he had an extraordinary capability to compartmentalize and to outwit the police for years by never letting his emotional needs creep in and sabotage his need to kill. I feel the nature of television sometimes is that you have to have the hero win by making the villain cave, and the only thing for me that was a little problematic was trying to justify why I have these emotional outbursts and make that function in the story."
John said he liked playing the first character to foil Rush. "I quite loved that, I loved the fact that he sauntered away, and although there aspects of the last episode that were intriguing to me the first episode was much stronger. I thought that it was very compelling that he bends but doesn't break, and particulary I suspect for regular viewers to the show that it allowed them to have greater access to these series regular because it was the first chance to really see them in the depth of the deceit, and I think that gave a level of three dimensionality to them that they might have been lacking otherwise, having seen a few episodes of the show.
He added that he really enjoyed his time working on the show, and in particular had praise for Morris. "It was great, the people are just terrific. It's a lovely group of people. It's always an interesting experience if you're a guest actor because you come on to a set and like it or not you don't know anybody. And naturally enough, having experienced it from both sides as a series regular, you're always a little trepidatious about whether the guest star is going to really have their lines frankly, much less have the craft to really turn in a good performance. They were so willing and supportive to let me stand up ands say 'Here's what I think, here's what my argument would be for how this scenes functions'. Very supportive. I really enjoyed working with Kathryn Morris. Just a lovely lady. She got in touch with me outside of the rehearsals, we talked to over the phone, she had a real strong commitment to rehearsing and making this show as good as it could be. The schedule is so gruelling on episodic television. For the person who plays the lead to have that sort of commitment to the work I found very impressive, I really enjoyed working with her."
Rest of article HERE.
Before Enterprise came to an end John guest starred on CBS's Cold case. The show, headed by Kathryn Morris as Detective Lily Rush, deals with an unsolved murder case each week that the team attempt to solve. The case could be 5 years old or 50, but rather than the forensics of shows like CSI the show decides to explore the life of the murdered person using flashbacks. In "Mind Hunters", John played a chilling killer named George who hunted women in the woods and decapitates them. In the episode Rush and her team were not able to arrest George, and the murder was unsolved. A shock for viewers, it was the very first time a case hadn't been solved, and the first time an episode didn't end by showing a vision of the murdered person at rest. John returned as George in the season finale, where George terrorizes Rush and is shot dead.
George was a complete contrast to Doctor Phlox, but John explained that playing a killer was actually all too familiar. "Before I was cast as Doctor Phlox I'd been cast quite frequently as killers, nut jobs and what have you, so it wasn't as out of the blue sky as it might have appeared to people, that I would play a psychotic. So I had a certain familiarity with the way psychotic personalities' value systems are arranged."
As such, he didn't do any specific research into playing the killer. "Most of the research I think you do, frankly in television especially you don't have a lot of time to prepare, is essentially just along the lines of engaging yourself in a conversation about what you think the story is about and how you can help server the writers' needs. Sometimes there's a little bit of a problem, as to me there was in those episodes, because what I would have said was the truth of who this guy is [is] that he had an extraordinary capability to compartmentalize and to outwit the police for years by never letting his emotional needs creep in and sabotage his need to kill. I feel the nature of television sometimes is that you have to have the hero win by making the villain cave, and the only thing for me that was a little problematic was trying to justify why I have these emotional outbursts and make that function in the story."
John said he liked playing the first character to foil Rush. "I quite loved that, I loved the fact that he sauntered away, and although there aspects of the last episode that were intriguing to me the first episode was much stronger. I thought that it was very compelling that he bends but doesn't break, and particulary I suspect for regular viewers to the show that it allowed them to have greater access to these series regular because it was the first chance to really see them in the depth of the deceit, and I think that gave a level of three dimensionality to them that they might have been lacking otherwise, having seen a few episodes of the show.
He added that he really enjoyed his time working on the show, and in particular had praise for Morris. "It was great, the people are just terrific. It's a lovely group of people. It's always an interesting experience if you're a guest actor because you come on to a set and like it or not you don't know anybody. And naturally enough, having experienced it from both sides as a series regular, you're always a little trepidatious about whether the guest star is going to really have their lines frankly, much less have the craft to really turn in a good performance. They were so willing and supportive to let me stand up ands say 'Here's what I think, here's what my argument would be for how this scenes functions'. Very supportive. I really enjoyed working with Kathryn Morris. Just a lovely lady. She got in touch with me outside of the rehearsals, we talked to over the phone, she had a real strong commitment to rehearsing and making this show as good as it could be. The schedule is so gruelling on episodic television. For the person who plays the lead to have that sort of commitment to the work I found very impressive, I really enjoyed working with her."
Rest of article HERE.
