Xpose: All The Fun Of The Fehr
Thanks to RajiQ for this:
All the Fun of the Fehr
Taken from Xposé Special #15,
Destiny 2001, available nowA teenager unconcerned with matters of destiny, Brendan Fehr plays Roswell’s alien bad boy Michael Guerin. Ian Spelling asked if he could crash at his place
Brendan Fehr is not big on hyperbole. The actor, who co-stars as the human/alien hybrid Michael Guerin on Roswell, resembles his character in that he’s low-key, guarded and quick to tell it like it is. Ask him if he’s been pleased with the sophomore season of Roswell and he replies with refreshing candor.
“You have ups and downs on any show, in terms of the grind of working in episodic television, good scripts versus bad scripts… and bad acting episodes for you versus good acting episodes,” the actor says simply. “As far as other shows on TV and especially on The WB, I think we hold our own.”
It’s been a shakedown season for Roswell in several regards. Early second season episodes maintained the tone set by the first season’s last half-dozen hours, which put the sci-fi intrigue and non-stop action at the forefront. As the current season progressed, however, the ratings dipped a bit, prompting writer-producer Jason Katims and his staff to revert to more character-driven stories.
“When we find a way to walk that fine line, sort of going back and forth between genres and intertwining them, that’s when the show is at its best,” notes Fehr. “But walking that fine line is an extremely tough job. They really don’t work when we go overboard on one of the two, when we have either too much romance or too much sci-fi. When it’s too much romance it sucks. When it’s too much sci-fi I think it sucks. But when we do walk that line, it’s a real fun show to watch. We’ve got some episodes left to air and I think that the last couple of them will hopefully please both the people who like the romance and the people who like the sci-fi. And I think they will also please those of us who are involved in the making of the show.”
Those episodes might also answer the many questions fans are asking about the state of the Michael-Maria relationship. “Our relationship kind of does come to a head,” reveals Fehr. “A decision is made by the end of the season as to what we’re going to do about the relationship. I hope the fans appreciate what we did and how we did it. But the decision has been made. Hopefully the fans will be satisfied and enjoy it.”
Fehr on the finale
As Roswell hurtles toward the end of its second season, the threat of cancelation looms once again. It may take an up-tick in ratings for the last few episodes and another tidal wave of letters and Tabasco sauce to secure a third year for the series.
The season (or is that series?) finale, Fehr reports, was shot in such a way that it doesn’t answer all the lingering questions. “It leaves a bunch of things wide open, actually,” notes the actor, currently on movie screens as a just-bitten vampire hunter in the JS Cardone-written and directed horror saga The Forsaken.
“But that doesn’t guarantee that we have a third season. That’s not up to us at all. I think the writers have… assumed that there will be a third season, but just wrote it with the attitude, `If we don’t, we don’t; too bad.’”
Fehr is currently shooting a new movie, a period drama entitled The Wilderness Station, in his hometown of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, and will probably get word of The WB’s decision to cancel or renew Roswell during production.
“I think I’d be ignorant to say whether or not we’ll be back,” Fehr concludes. “There are arguments for both, for coming back and for not coming back. Right now, with all the political stuff that’s happening with Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Fox and The WB and contracts, we’re a pawn in the whole thing. We’re not the big man on campus in terms of being a [make-or-break WB] show. So we’ll just sit and wait.”
Full version of feature in the magazine
