We’re totally Down To Earth-Brendan and Jason

Thanks so much to Rikke for sending this in from a Danish magazine and transcribing it :) It’s greatly appreciated. If anyone else has articles from magazines or has interviews from other countries (aside from the U.S.) please feel free to send them in as well.

Brendan and Jason from Roswell:

WE´RE TOTALLY DOWN TO EARTH

Both Brendan Fehr and Jason Behr were completely unknown when they came to Hollywood. Now they are playing Michael Guerin and Max Evans, two of the three aliens in the TV-Show “Roswell” and that has changed everything. But they still don´t really belive that they have fans.

– I remember, I was driving home from work and I had to stop at a red light.
Right beside me was a bus with my picture plastered all over one of the sides. That was a really bizarre expierience. Totally surreal.

The words are Jason Behr´s and neither he or Brendan Fehr, with the characteristic spiky hair, have gotten used to the fame. They both come from towns far away from the celebrity-worshipness-lifestyle of Hollywood. Jason are from Richfield, which is a subburb of Minneapolis, while Brendan is from Winnipeg, Canada.

– After High School I began doing a little bit of modelling, says Brendan, who in reality also looks like Michael from “Roswell”. With worn-out jeans, tee-shirts and spiky hair.

-Once I was at a wedding and this guy asked why I didn´t do TV and asked if I wanted to. And I just laughed and said “Yeah, right”… But from that day it went quickly. Several small parts appeared until Brendan one day was offered one of the main roles in a new TV-show. The show was gonna be called “Roswell”.

FARTS ARE ALWAYS FUNNY

Jason has, unlike Brendan, been into acting since he was very small.
– I had my debut on stage when I was five, where I was playing a flower and weren´t allowed to say anything, he says. But he was allowed to speak when he debuted on TV at age six.
– I was a part of a nativity play where I was going to sing “We Wish You A Merry Christmas” with three other kids, while we were standing on a sleigh. But I had got it all wrong. i thought the guy with the beard was Abraham Lincoln. Later on Jason landed the part of Max Evans, the sensitive alien. And that was where he met Brendan.
– We have a great time together, saays Brendan about his new friend Jason.
– The minute we´re together, we act like two little boys in sex ed. You know, the ones who always giggle at the word “penis”.
– Everything is turned into something lame. It´s not meant in a bad way, but our humor is just so immature that we find that sort of thing extremely funny. And the there´s farts, they are always funny…

Nonetheless Brendan and Jason have to admit that they´re actually not even the funniest guys on set. Nick Wechsler, who plays Kyle Valenti, can beat them at any time.
– He is simply the funniest guy in the world, Brendan laughs.
– He can turn everything around so that you can´t do anything else but laugh. And several times a day you just stand and look at him and think that he has to mentally disturbed. Normal people can´t make the kind of comments he can. Even if Brendan is 22 and Jason is 26, they don´t think that they have any problems playing teenagers.
– But once again it´s the immature humor that helps us, Jason smiles.
– Maybe it´s ten years since I´ve been to High School, but I still run around doing wedgies on everybody.
– But it´s also because we resemblence the characters that we play, Brendan says thoughtfully.
– Michael sees things in a very black and white way, and the minute he enters a grey-zone, where there is no concrete right or wrong, then he gets confused.
– That´s also why he doesn´t know what to do about Maria, he explains and admits at the same time that he also look at things that way himself. Actually Brendan originally wanted to be a maths teacher, because as he says, it´s the only subject where there´s only one answer.
– Max is also very confused, says Jason about his character.
– He is deaply in love with Liz, but on one hand he knows that it can never be them. But on the other hand there might be a chance for them. He doesn´t know his own powers yet, and doesn´t really know how he is different from her.
– He just has this feeling that it won´t be able to happen, and that just confuses him even more.

A QUESTION OF FAITH

– The real big challenge with “Roswell” is to be convincing when we are reading lines. It´s really hard to appear liable when you have to say stuff about being from space, Brendan says. Jason nods in consent and continues:
– I don´t really know if I believe UFO´s. But on the other hand, the universe is huge. If you believe too firmly in what is considered normal, we won´t ever get anywhere.
– Try to imagine what people thought the first time they were introduced to the phone or the internet. They thought it was completely out of this world, but if there hadn´t been anyone who believed it, it would have never happened. If not, you have to believe in the possibility.
Brendan nods. He also believes in the possibility of life on other planets. But that´s not all the show “Roswell” is about.
– When I first saw the script to “Roswell” I thought, that was the most lame story that I had ever heard, Brendan says.
– I mean teenage aliens…Come on, that could really end up with something bad.
– I felt the same way, until I read the script, Jason agries.
– But then I fell for it. What I really like is that, it´s about being young. Not knowing who you are and where you´re going. Of course the whole alien-thing adds extra spice, but it doesn´t go out of hand. It´s working. “Roswell” has become popular very quickly, and here in
Denmark the ratings go up week by week. But the two guys still have a hard time believing that they are famous. They are just being themselves.
– Just when we started out, I kept getting letters from this one girl, Brendan laughs.
– I remember she always began her letters by saying; ” now you are probably
getting thousands of letters like this”. But I actually only got letters from her.
– Of course I know that there are fans out there, but I don´t think it´s what´s matters to me as a person. I´m happy that people like my work, but I don´t meassure my succes as a person on the numbers of fanletters. It doesn´t go to my head.
– It´s hard to relate to the succes, because even though we enjoy doing it, “Roswell” is just a job to us. We are almost always in the studio, so we don´t really get the fact that we have fans. We can still get surprised when we receive a fanletter.