Thanks to Nerie for sending this in!<\/p>\n
\nFrom Sci-Fi tv magazine, April 2000 issue<\/p>\n
Acting Alien <\/strong>
\nBy Ian Spelling<\/p>\nKatherine Heigl knew Roswell was a hit when–well, when her sister
\ncalled. \u201cShe said, `The show was great this week!\u2019 \u201c Heigl recalls.
\n\u201cShe would get into it and discuss things about the show and ask me
\nquestions. It was really weird that my sister, who lives across the
\ncountry, was watching me on Roswell. It was strange to realize that I
\nwas on TV every week. I had always done film. And, going into the show, I didn\u2019t think it would feel that different from doing film. But it is.
\nI\u2019m getting calls from my sister, my friends. I go out and I\u2019m recognized so much more, and that\u2019s because Roswell is on every week. Before that, I would be recognized occasionally by someone who knew me from My Father the Hero and Under Siege 3 or maybe Bride of Chucky. Now, when I go out to the mall, people will say, \u2018Hey aren\u2019t you on that showRoswell?\u2019 The whole thing is weird. Because I\u2019m in their living roomsn every week, people feel like they know me. I love it. It\u2019s so nice to know people like the show and I have a job for at least the nine next months.\u201d<\/p>\nRoswell, for those who don\u2019t know by now, centers on Isabel Evans
\n(Heigl), her brother Max (Jason Behr) and their friend Michael (Brendan
\nFehr), three aliens growing up in Roswell, New Mexico, as average human
\nteens. The three live in constant fear of being found out, something
\nthat could easily happen at any moment, particularly given that Max has
\nrevealed both his powers and the truth about himself to Liz (Shiri
\nAppleby), the high school girl he adores, and that Liz\u2019s pals, Maria
\n(Majandra Delfino) and Alex (Colin Hanks), know the trio\u2019s secret and
\ntend to open their mouths at inopportune moments.<\/p>\nIn a season that saw so anticipated a genre show as Harsh Realm flame
\nout after three episodes, what is it about Roswell that appeals to the
\naudience? Heigl thinks she knows. \u201cIt\u2019s a little bit more mature and
\nsophisticated than just any regular teenage show,\u201d she reasons. \u201cWe\u2019re
\ndealing with the Fugitive aspect, the alien aspect. Our lives are in
\ndanger. Because our situation is so delicate, anybody involved with us
\nor around us is suddenly in a dangerous situation, too. There\u2019s that
\nelement to it, that suspense, and there\u2019s also the chase and the constant search for some sort of knowledge or information, so that we can figure out what the heck we\u2019re doing here on Earth. That makes it a little more interesting than just dealing with the day-to-day high school stuff.\u201d<\/p>\nThough many Roswell fans revel in the often heart-wrenching Max-Liz
\nrelationship, there\u2019s something to be said for the edge that Isabel lends
\nto the proceedings. She speaks her mind and displays what can perhaps
\nbest be described as smug inferiority complex. And, taking into account
\nthe fact that Isabel does indeed possess superior otherworldly powers,
\nit\u2019s hard to begrudge Isabel her imperiousness. \u201cInitially, I thought,
\n`Is this just an insecurity of hers? Maybe that\u2019s why she behaves this
\nway.\u2019 And then,\u201d Heigl notes. \u201cI thought, \u2018No, it\u2019s really not.\u2019 Isabel
\nknows that she\u2019s unique. She knows that she has something over everybody else, and she\u2019s confident in that and confident in herself and who she is. This secret–even though it\u2019s dangerous, even though she\u2019s afraid of it–makes her aware of just how unique she is. She\u2019s so above it all. It\u2019s great, but in future episodes, you\u2019ll see that toned down just a
\nbit. It\u2019s also a defense mechanism in some respects, and they don\u2019t want to overdo it.<\/p>\n\u201cIsabel is one of those great characters that I\u2019ve always wanted to play.
\nShe has such complexity. She\u2019s the girl who wants to be like everybody
\nelse. She wants to fit into the normal high school scene and be popular,
\nhave boy friends and wear cool clothes. At the same time, she has these extraordinary powers, this big secret. She is special. So, she wants tomfit in, but she\u2019s really different, and she\u2019s fighting between these two sides of herself. Obviously, the stakes are a little higher, because she could get killed if her secret gets out.\u201d<\/p>\nJust as Isabel struggles daily to find balance, Roswell\u2019s writers and
\nproducers must strike the right balance on a weekly basis between kitschy humor and urgent drama, between SF and action. And given the built-in cheeesiness factor of setting a show in Roswell–what with its Crashdown Cafe, alien trinket stores and 24-7 fascination with visitors from other galaxies–it\u2019s no easy task. \u201cIt was a concern at first,\u201d Heigl admits. \u201cInitially, the show was going to be called Roswell High, which I felt was even more cheesy. That put the two together, the fact that it was a high school show and about this kooky town of Roswell. I\u2019ve never even been to Roswell, which is absurd, so I don\u2019t know if the town itself is quite as extreme as we make it in the series.<\/p>\n\u201cAt this point, the show\u2019s tone is funny, quirky and endearing. I mean,
\nthe Crashdown Cafe. Everybody\u2019s always saying, \u201cI\u2019ll meet you at the
\nCrashdown.\u2019 The kids who live in the town [on the show] are so used to
\nthis stuff. to them it\u2019s just their world, their life. They don\u2019t even
\nthink about it. They\u2019re not saying, `Oh, isn\u2019t it ridiculous that we
\nhave a UFO museum center here?\u2019 It\u2019s their way of life. They\u2019ve grown up with these tales, in the town with the big secret.\u201d<\/p>\nSome actors love ensemble work, since they don\u2019t have to be on set every day and don\u2019t have to carry the weight of an entire production on their shoulders. Other actors loathe relinquishing even a moment of screen time or, to a less egocentric degree, simply don\u2019t feel they get enough to do. \u201cInitially, I would have to say I agreed with the people who say they don\u2019t get enough to do,\u201d the actress admits. \u201cI was used to doing a lot in the films I\u2019ve done. I sometimes was the center of a film. When I started Roswell, I had to humble myself a bit and realize that the show wouldn\u2019t be carried by me, that it\u2019s carried by everybody. And now I\u2019m so, so grateful that it is an ensemble show.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne, it makes it so much more interesting that they focus on all the
\ndifferent characters in different episodes. We each get our opportunity
\nfor a storyline. Two, I love this cast and the characters. Brendan and
\nMajandra are fantastic, and their characters really spice things up.
\nShiri and Jason are great. Colin and Nick (Wechsler, as Kyle Valenti)
\nare starting to get more to do. When you ork the kind of hours we do,
\nit\u2019s nice to have an episode where you\u2019re not in the whole thing and you
\nget three days off during the week. In the beginning, I was like, `Hmm,
\nwhy aren\u2019t I in these three days?\u2019 Now, I rejoice. I\u2019m like, \u2018I have
\nthree days off! Let\u2019s go somewhere! I\u2019m loving the ensemble aspect of it
\nnow.\u201d<\/p>\nAnd with whom among her co-stars has Heigl become closest? \u201cI\u2019m mostly with Majandra, Brendan and Jason,\u201d she replies. \u201cMajandra has become a really, really close friend. She\u2019s one of those people you immediately know you\u2019ll just love. She\u2019s funny and wise beyond her years. Jason and Brendan are hilarious. Most of my scenes are with Jason and Brendan, so we\u2019re always hanging out anyway. They keep me laughing the entire day. My cheeks were really sore from laughing yesterday, because they were making fun of me. It\u2019s a fun set. I\u2019m really lucky. But talk to me in a year, I could hate everybody.<\/p>\n
Just as Heigl is getting to know Behr, Appleby and her other co-stars
\nmore and more each day, so too is Isabel getting to know the people
\naround her, particularly such new figures in her life as Liz, Maria and
\nAlex. And then there\u2019s Michael to consider. He\u2019s certainly not a fresh
\nface in Isabel\u2019s life, but there seems to be a huge window of opportunity
\nfor a romantic relationship to be explored. After all, being alien, he\u2019s
\nmore like her and surely understands her better than any human possibly
\ncould. \u201cIn a sense, Isabel feels that Liz and Maria could be her
\nfriends,\u201d Heigl observes. \u201cAt the same time, they are a threat. They\u2019re
\ntaking away her two boys and invading her world. So, Isabel is fighting
\nher need for companionship and her fear of having her bubble busted.<\/p>\n\u201cThere\u2019s a romantic thread of some kind with Alex, but I think it will
\nbecome more of a friendship than anything else. Isabel really leans on
\nhim as a friend, which is great because she needs a friend. But I don\u2019t
\nthink he\u2019s a love interest. I don\u2019t know why they haven\u2019t made Michael a
\nlove interest. I initially thought that\u2019s where they were going to go
\nwith it, and they haven\u2019t touched it. I\u2019m sort of grateful, because it is
\nalmost too logical a choice. I like it that they\u2019re making things more
\ncomplicated. Michael\u2019s almost like a brother to Isabel now, so it would
\nbe weird if they did anything.<\/p>\n\u201cWe\u2019ve definitely not explored any love interest yet for Isabel, and I
\nkeep nagging at the writers for one,\u201d Heigl continues. \u201cI\u2019m feeling
\nlonely, you know? Everybody else has somebody. I would like to see what Isabel would be like in that situation. She has always been afraid of intimacy, of letting someone else in. As it is, the only two people she
\nhas ever really let into her world are Max and Michael. I don\u2019t even
\nknow that they know her as well as they should because they\u2019re men. I
\nwould also like to see her have a real friendship with a woman. It would
\nbe interesting to see where that could go. I would also like to see her
\nfind some humor in herself.\u201d<\/p>\nMost of the actors on the show cite the \u201cRoute 285\u201d and \u201cRiver Dog\u201d
\nepisodes as Roswell\u2019s finest hours to date. And Heigl concurs, though
\nshe goes on to mention several other installments. \u201cI would say that
\n\u2018Route 285\u2019 and \u2018River Dog\u2019 are my favorites so far, but I liked \u2018Heat
\nWave,\u2019 too. It spiced things up,\u201d she notes. \u2018285\u2019 was really
\ninteresting. Shiri and I had some great moments, which I really liked
\ngetting to do. You saw everybody\u2019s vulnerability in that one. Jonathan
\nFrakes directed \u2018River Dog,\u2019 and he did such a great job with it.
\n\u2018Monsters\u2019 had a totally different feeling than the ones before it. We
\nwere introduced to this weird power Isabel has, which is going into
\npeople\u2019s dreams. That has been my most interesting power so far. That
\nepisode also showcased this potential relationship between Maria and
\nIsabel, and we\u2019ll see where we go with that.<\/p>\n\u201cI also like \u2018The Balance.\u2019 It\u2019s very SF. We think Michael is dying,
\nand I love what happens to everybody in this situation, how everybody
\nreacts. I freak out, and it\u2019s the one time Isabel really loses it. Up
\nuntil then, even in the most extreme situations, Isabel had kept her head
\nabout her. In this instance, there was one scene in particular where I
\nreally just lost it. I loved that. [Co-executive producer-director]\nDavid Nutter and I talked about the scene. He initially thought that the
\ncharacter should remain strong, cool, calm and collected. I said, \u2018But
\nshe has been through so much. FBI agents are chasing them. So many
\npeople know their secret. Max was just in a car accident [the week
\nbefore]. I think it makes sense for Isabel to lose it for a minute.\u2019
\nIt\u2019s just one scene. It\u2019s not like she\u2019s on the floor, catatonic or
\nanything. We\u2019ve also done an episode called \u2018Toy House,\u2019 which is really
\ncool. It\u2019s about me, Max and our mother [Mary Ellen Trainor], and our
\nsecret almost coming out. It\u2019s really touching, and that\u2019s why I love
\nthe show. We go into deep stuff as well as the really fun, supernatural
\nSF stuff.\u201d<\/p>\nAnd where\u2019s that episode in which other aliens –be they of the trio\u2019s
\nspecies or not of their world — arrive in Roswell? Heigl laughs.
\n\u201cSoon,\u201d she says coyly. \u201cSoon, It\u2019s coming. I haven\u2019t read a script
\nyet, but every script I\u2019ve been reading seems to be leading up to it.
\nSo, we\u2019re getting there.\u201d<\/p>\nRaised in Connecticut, she has been working professionally since she was nine years old, first as a child model, then as an actress. TV
\ncommercials paved the way to features, and Heigl counts among her credits That Night, My Father The Hero, Under Siege 2, Prince Valiant, Bride of Chucky, and Big Buster. Of the later two vehicles, Heigl considers Chucky \u201ca cool movie\u201d and reports that she \u201cdoesn\u2019t remember much\u201d about the low-budget Big Buster. Acting, she says, is the be-all and end-all for her. \u201cThere\u2019s something about the camera, something about playing somebody else, figuring out who the character is, that I love,\u201d she enthuses. \u201cI love discovering new people and becoming them. I\u2019ve always loved doing that, and acting is second nature tome now because I\u2019ve been doing it since I was little. It\u2019s like a foreign language. When you learn it young, you just know it. It becomes a part of you. Acting is just a part of me.<\/p>\n\u201cSometimes I\u2019ll sit on a set and complain because I\u2019m bored and it\u2019s
\ntaking forever to get to a scene. I\u2019ll think to myself, \u2018Why am I doing
\nthis if it\u2019s so boring all the time?\u2019 Then, I\u2019ll get in front of the
\ncamera to do a scene and I\u2019ll have two minutes of dialogue. And for
\nthose two minutes, I\u2019m someplace else, I\u2019m someone else, and I totally
\nforget about everything. That makes up for all the hours of working, all
\nthe tedium, and I think, \u2018This is why I love acting. This is why I\u2019m
\nhere.\u201d<\/p>\nAnd no doubt Heigl could be around the Roswell set for years to come.
\nThat would mean lots of sitting around, plenty of tedium and, on the plus side, hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of opportunities to flesh out Isabel. Heigl weighed those pros and cons very carefully prior to
\nagreeing to a potentially long commitment to Roswell. \u201cBefore you even
\ngo into a room to audition, you have to sign a seven-year contract. It\u2019s
\na big deal,\u201d Katherine Heigl concludes. \u201cI remember sitting there and
\nthinking, \u2018This is what I\u2019ve avoided all of these years, because I was so
\nafraid of getting stuck on a show and playing a character I would
\neventually get so bored with.\u2019 But I just went ahead and auditioned for
\nRoswell. Now I\u2019ve got this character I continually get to develop and go
\ndifferent places with. Hopefully, that will continue. I want the character to grow and develop, and that\u2019s always interesting. You can\u2019t get bored with that.<\/p>\n\u201cAs far as five or six years of it, I don\u2019t know. At this moment, I\u2019m
\nlooking forward to our break. I think after some time away from the
\nshow, I\u2019ll miss Isabel, I\u2019ll miss the rest of the cast. If I\u2019ve got
\nsomething to do during my hiatuses, like a film or theater, that\u2019ll
\nalways keep Roswell alive and fresh and that will always keep me alive
\nand fresh, too.\u201d\n\t<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Thanks to Nerie for sending this in! From Sci-Fi tv magazine, April 2000 issue Acting Alien By Ian Spelling Katherine<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[2379,3],"tags":[40,70,6],"coauthors":[2266],"class_list":["post-468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-katherine-heigl","category-leading","tag-article","tag-interview","tag-katherine-heigl"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=468"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28030,"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468\/revisions\/28030"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=468"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}