Smoking Bianco
15-01-2007, 11:44
http://www.herosite.net/hrgstand.jpg
Il Wizard Magazine WizardUniverse.com (http://www.wizarduniverse.com/television/heroes/003044177.cfm?page=1) ha realizzato un'intervista prorprio ad HRG, Jack Coleman, in cui si parla del suo personaggio, le sue misteriose intenzioni, il suo primo nome, e molto altro.
Forse ci sono anche altri piccoli spoiler, ma Coleman parla per lo piu' del suo ruolo e della posizione di HRG in Heroes.
Coleman parla anche delle teorie e supposizioni che si fanno online sul suo personaggio. Ecco l'intervista:
WIZARD: I’ve always wondered: We know you as HRG, but does your character, Mr. Bennet, have a first name?
COLEMAN: Mr. Bennet does not have a first name that’s been identified yet. That’s kind of an ongoing joke, I think.
So it’s purposeful?
COLEMAN: Yeah. I’m hoping maybe it’ll be Anthony so that I’ll be “Tony Bennet.” [Chuckles]
His wife doesn’t even call him by his first name. I just realized that.
COLEMAN: No. There is actually a very funny scene where at one point she says to someone, “It’s so funny that you all call him Mr. Bennet, because I’ve always just known him as…” and then she starts yelling at Mr. Muggles. The audience is like, “Ooh!” So it’s not going to be revealed, or not for a while, anyway.
It’s only been two short months and “Heroes” has become such a phenomenon. How has that been for you so far?
COLEMAN: It’s great. It’s lightning in a bottle. I mean, I’ve been around this town a long time. I’ve been in this business a long time. I know how hard it is. For an actor it’s really hard just to get a pilot. It’s very rare and hard for a pilot to get picked up and that you stay with and aren’t fired or replaced, then the show becomes a hit. I mean, there are so many improbable, against-the-odds events that have to happen.
And especially with you, because HRG was initially just a recurring character, correct?
COLEMAN: Exactly, yeah. It was a one-page audition that was a small part, but even in its original incarnation it was still a very interesting character, and then when he’s revealed to be Claire’s father it was great. So there were like three scenes that he was in on the pilot and they were all pretty small and shadowy, but it was setting up this sort of mysterious figure, and then when he turns out to be Claire’s father you think, “Okay, there’s got to be some kind of life here.” But for it to go from what it was originally to what it is now for me is really unbelievable, and I’m incredibly thankful.
It’s funny that you mention shadowy, because in episode 11, the midseason cliffhanger, it’s alluded to that HRG answers to a higher authority, a shadowy person or organization, if you will. There are a lot of theories on the Web. I know you probably don’t know what it is and even if you did you probably couldn’t tell me about it, but do you have any personal theories?
COLEMAN: No. It’s funny, because sometimes I go online and I read some of these things and I go, “Oh, that’s an interesting one.” They really do know about as much as I do. I mean, I’m obviously a few episodes ahead of them. I can tell you that a few episodes ahead, it’s certainly not been revealed yet who I am answering to, but you see more and more of me answering to someone and usually not getting my way. So it’s going to be interesting, and my guess is that it’s not going to be a quick reveal because the show is, after all, a mystery. Although people are always dying to know if you’re good or bad, if it’s this or that, who is it—ultimately when all questions are answered, what do you have left? It’s a never-ending series of questions, of which some get answered and the new ones arrive, but at the heart of a mystery you have to have a mystery.
Right. Like you said, is HRG a good guy or a bad guy?
COLEMAN: Right, and I kind of hope that’s never answered.
Really?
COLEMAN: Yeah, or never definitively answered, because then who is he except some guy on one side or the other? I love the fact that he could be playing any side at any time. That just makes it more fun to play. I think that it makes it more fun to watch even though people feel like, “I need to know!” You don’t need to know really, in a way, and it’s kind of cool to see that like any human being, you can be good and bad. I think that’s also kind of more fun anyway.
Let’s talk about that famous prop of yours, the horn-rimmed glasses. First of all, are they prescription?
COLEMAN: They are not, although they certainly could be. If they were, I think that you would be unable to see my eyes, because I’m so blind. I do wear contact lenses, and if they were actual prescription glasses I think it would be a nightmare. It’d be like Coke bottles, although they do index them now. So, no, they’re not prescription.
How many pairs of them are there?
COLEMAN: There are a couple of different pairs. Some of them are—there’s the “hero” pair and then there’s the “stunt” pair. I just got slammed into something the other day and we had a different pair of glasses for me, a pair that could fall on the floor without breaking, or if something happened to them it’s okay. But they’re trying to single-handedly bring horn-rimmed glasses back into the fashion world. Although you see it now—if you look at “The Good Shepherd,” not only is Matt Damon wearing horn-rimmed glasses, but the ad is this huge close-up of the horn-rimmed glasses and his eye through them, which immediately makes you suspicious. So there is a long history of horn-rimmed glasses being evil, I think.
What do you think about HRG’s deteriorating relationship with Claire?
COLEMAN: Well, it’s certainly evolving, or maybe at this moment you could say devolving. I can say unequivocally, whether HRG is good or bad, his love for Claire is real and his desire to protect her is real. Now, his idea of protecting her might not be exactly what the ACLU would recommend as a politically correct means of doing it. Let’s just say she’s not entirely informed of her rights. Everything that he does is fairly clandestine and he’s not an above-board sort of guy in any way. The thing that I’ve always kind of loved about this relationship is that they really do love each other and almost everything that they say to each other is a lie. I mean, even in their sweetest moments they’re withholding or somehow obscuring the whole truth. HRG, though, definitely loves Claire. There is no question about that.
We now know that Claire knows something is up with her father, that he’s not who he seems to be.
COLEMAN: Right.
He’s had this mysterious Haitian working for him whom he had wanted to erase her memory, and now she has to fake or pretend that she doesn’t remember anything. So that creates an interesting dynamic there. Can you tease any part of that particular relationship?
COLEMAN: Well, I think that sort of a macro-view of it is that for the first half of the season, he’s had this big secret on her and in the second half of the season, she has a big secret on him. So the tables have turned and the power dynamic has turned to a certain extent because she’s now holding onto information that he does not know she has. So she now has the luxury…that’s not the right word. She now has the opportunity to observe him and try to figure out what he is up to. Now he’s a pretty cagey character, and so even when people have stuff on him, he’s not easy to pin down. Without giving away any specific storyline, Claire obviously sees her father through very different eyes now. Gone are the rose-colored glasses. A very harsh light has been cast on him, and she’s looking at him very differently and he’s desperately trying to win back her love and affection, but without being too forthcoming.
So what is HRG’s role now in the new “Are you on the list?” underlying theme? Before, he wanted to save his daughter’s life. Now what’s his motivation?
COLEMAN: Well, that has not changed, because the danger remains and is in many ways heightened. In a lot of ways everything has been ratcheted up, because he’s still trying to save her but now she is reluctant to go along with what he says, and she sort of fights him on everything now. So while he’s still trying to protect her, now he’s also trying to gain access to this list, which means that maybe he’s going to try to recruit other people and go to the source of the list. It also becomes revealed to him that people he thought were dead and gone are not and have resurfaced. There is a whole new thing, and then there is also the Sylar question, which is certainly not resolved. So in many ways, that has just been ratcheted up to where Sylar is really hell-bent on getting to Claire as well as others, and HRG is still very much trying to keep her safe from him as well as deal with all of these other things that are going on.
Now that Eden has been killed off, do you think any character on the show is safe?
COLEMAN: No one is ever safe. Some are safer than others and I think that everyone recognizes sort of in what category they fall into. But yeah, I mean, that’s the nature of the business first off, and the nature of this kind of a show. So, I mean, you’re always on the chopping block, but that’s true of anyone here. It’s true of anyone in this business on any show, on any movie. It’s unlikely that Tom Hanks is going to get fired from his next movie, but other than a few truly sacred cows, no one is safe. Well, certainly there are people on this show that are not in any grave danger, but then again you never know. You never know because someone might want to get out to do something and they say, “Well, all right. We can accommodate that. You’ve got something else that you want to do? We could have a spectacular series finale, or I mean, season finale.” So you never really know.
Do you wish that HRG had a power?
COLEMAN: No, not really. Not really. I mean, put it this way: If HRG remains a formidable force, I would prefer it to be without a power in that his sort of cunning and intelligence—and I don’t mean just personal intelligence, but actually his intelligence-gathering capacity—can make him that much of a force without being able to do something superhuman. I think that’s kind of cool. I think that it’s good for the show to have that too, to have at least one or two people that are earthbound and have to obey the laws of physics.
Il Wizard Magazine WizardUniverse.com (http://www.wizarduniverse.com/television/heroes/003044177.cfm?page=1) ha realizzato un'intervista prorprio ad HRG, Jack Coleman, in cui si parla del suo personaggio, le sue misteriose intenzioni, il suo primo nome, e molto altro.
Forse ci sono anche altri piccoli spoiler, ma Coleman parla per lo piu' del suo ruolo e della posizione di HRG in Heroes.
Coleman parla anche delle teorie e supposizioni che si fanno online sul suo personaggio. Ecco l'intervista:
WIZARD: I’ve always wondered: We know you as HRG, but does your character, Mr. Bennet, have a first name?
COLEMAN: Mr. Bennet does not have a first name that’s been identified yet. That’s kind of an ongoing joke, I think.
So it’s purposeful?
COLEMAN: Yeah. I’m hoping maybe it’ll be Anthony so that I’ll be “Tony Bennet.” [Chuckles]
His wife doesn’t even call him by his first name. I just realized that.
COLEMAN: No. There is actually a very funny scene where at one point she says to someone, “It’s so funny that you all call him Mr. Bennet, because I’ve always just known him as…” and then she starts yelling at Mr. Muggles. The audience is like, “Ooh!” So it’s not going to be revealed, or not for a while, anyway.
It’s only been two short months and “Heroes” has become such a phenomenon. How has that been for you so far?
COLEMAN: It’s great. It’s lightning in a bottle. I mean, I’ve been around this town a long time. I’ve been in this business a long time. I know how hard it is. For an actor it’s really hard just to get a pilot. It’s very rare and hard for a pilot to get picked up and that you stay with and aren’t fired or replaced, then the show becomes a hit. I mean, there are so many improbable, against-the-odds events that have to happen.
And especially with you, because HRG was initially just a recurring character, correct?
COLEMAN: Exactly, yeah. It was a one-page audition that was a small part, but even in its original incarnation it was still a very interesting character, and then when he’s revealed to be Claire’s father it was great. So there were like three scenes that he was in on the pilot and they were all pretty small and shadowy, but it was setting up this sort of mysterious figure, and then when he turns out to be Claire’s father you think, “Okay, there’s got to be some kind of life here.” But for it to go from what it was originally to what it is now for me is really unbelievable, and I’m incredibly thankful.
It’s funny that you mention shadowy, because in episode 11, the midseason cliffhanger, it’s alluded to that HRG answers to a higher authority, a shadowy person or organization, if you will. There are a lot of theories on the Web. I know you probably don’t know what it is and even if you did you probably couldn’t tell me about it, but do you have any personal theories?
COLEMAN: No. It’s funny, because sometimes I go online and I read some of these things and I go, “Oh, that’s an interesting one.” They really do know about as much as I do. I mean, I’m obviously a few episodes ahead of them. I can tell you that a few episodes ahead, it’s certainly not been revealed yet who I am answering to, but you see more and more of me answering to someone and usually not getting my way. So it’s going to be interesting, and my guess is that it’s not going to be a quick reveal because the show is, after all, a mystery. Although people are always dying to know if you’re good or bad, if it’s this or that, who is it—ultimately when all questions are answered, what do you have left? It’s a never-ending series of questions, of which some get answered and the new ones arrive, but at the heart of a mystery you have to have a mystery.
Right. Like you said, is HRG a good guy or a bad guy?
COLEMAN: Right, and I kind of hope that’s never answered.
Really?
COLEMAN: Yeah, or never definitively answered, because then who is he except some guy on one side or the other? I love the fact that he could be playing any side at any time. That just makes it more fun to play. I think that it makes it more fun to watch even though people feel like, “I need to know!” You don’t need to know really, in a way, and it’s kind of cool to see that like any human being, you can be good and bad. I think that’s also kind of more fun anyway.
Let’s talk about that famous prop of yours, the horn-rimmed glasses. First of all, are they prescription?
COLEMAN: They are not, although they certainly could be. If they were, I think that you would be unable to see my eyes, because I’m so blind. I do wear contact lenses, and if they were actual prescription glasses I think it would be a nightmare. It’d be like Coke bottles, although they do index them now. So, no, they’re not prescription.
How many pairs of them are there?
COLEMAN: There are a couple of different pairs. Some of them are—there’s the “hero” pair and then there’s the “stunt” pair. I just got slammed into something the other day and we had a different pair of glasses for me, a pair that could fall on the floor without breaking, or if something happened to them it’s okay. But they’re trying to single-handedly bring horn-rimmed glasses back into the fashion world. Although you see it now—if you look at “The Good Shepherd,” not only is Matt Damon wearing horn-rimmed glasses, but the ad is this huge close-up of the horn-rimmed glasses and his eye through them, which immediately makes you suspicious. So there is a long history of horn-rimmed glasses being evil, I think.
What do you think about HRG’s deteriorating relationship with Claire?
COLEMAN: Well, it’s certainly evolving, or maybe at this moment you could say devolving. I can say unequivocally, whether HRG is good or bad, his love for Claire is real and his desire to protect her is real. Now, his idea of protecting her might not be exactly what the ACLU would recommend as a politically correct means of doing it. Let’s just say she’s not entirely informed of her rights. Everything that he does is fairly clandestine and he’s not an above-board sort of guy in any way. The thing that I’ve always kind of loved about this relationship is that they really do love each other and almost everything that they say to each other is a lie. I mean, even in their sweetest moments they’re withholding or somehow obscuring the whole truth. HRG, though, definitely loves Claire. There is no question about that.
We now know that Claire knows something is up with her father, that he’s not who he seems to be.
COLEMAN: Right.
He’s had this mysterious Haitian working for him whom he had wanted to erase her memory, and now she has to fake or pretend that she doesn’t remember anything. So that creates an interesting dynamic there. Can you tease any part of that particular relationship?
COLEMAN: Well, I think that sort of a macro-view of it is that for the first half of the season, he’s had this big secret on her and in the second half of the season, she has a big secret on him. So the tables have turned and the power dynamic has turned to a certain extent because she’s now holding onto information that he does not know she has. So she now has the luxury…that’s not the right word. She now has the opportunity to observe him and try to figure out what he is up to. Now he’s a pretty cagey character, and so even when people have stuff on him, he’s not easy to pin down. Without giving away any specific storyline, Claire obviously sees her father through very different eyes now. Gone are the rose-colored glasses. A very harsh light has been cast on him, and she’s looking at him very differently and he’s desperately trying to win back her love and affection, but without being too forthcoming.
So what is HRG’s role now in the new “Are you on the list?” underlying theme? Before, he wanted to save his daughter’s life. Now what’s his motivation?
COLEMAN: Well, that has not changed, because the danger remains and is in many ways heightened. In a lot of ways everything has been ratcheted up, because he’s still trying to save her but now she is reluctant to go along with what he says, and she sort of fights him on everything now. So while he’s still trying to protect her, now he’s also trying to gain access to this list, which means that maybe he’s going to try to recruit other people and go to the source of the list. It also becomes revealed to him that people he thought were dead and gone are not and have resurfaced. There is a whole new thing, and then there is also the Sylar question, which is certainly not resolved. So in many ways, that has just been ratcheted up to where Sylar is really hell-bent on getting to Claire as well as others, and HRG is still very much trying to keep her safe from him as well as deal with all of these other things that are going on.
Now that Eden has been killed off, do you think any character on the show is safe?
COLEMAN: No one is ever safe. Some are safer than others and I think that everyone recognizes sort of in what category they fall into. But yeah, I mean, that’s the nature of the business first off, and the nature of this kind of a show. So, I mean, you’re always on the chopping block, but that’s true of anyone here. It’s true of anyone in this business on any show, on any movie. It’s unlikely that Tom Hanks is going to get fired from his next movie, but other than a few truly sacred cows, no one is safe. Well, certainly there are people on this show that are not in any grave danger, but then again you never know. You never know because someone might want to get out to do something and they say, “Well, all right. We can accommodate that. You’ve got something else that you want to do? We could have a spectacular series finale, or I mean, season finale.” So you never really know.
Do you wish that HRG had a power?
COLEMAN: No, not really. Not really. I mean, put it this way: If HRG remains a formidable force, I would prefer it to be without a power in that his sort of cunning and intelligence—and I don’t mean just personal intelligence, but actually his intelligence-gathering capacity—can make him that much of a force without being able to do something superhuman. I think that’s kind of cool. I think that it’s good for the show to have that too, to have at least one or two people that are earthbound and have to obey the laws of physics.