Thanks to Jezzaj for sending this in!<\/p>\n
This article appeared in the Sunday Times, TV extra magazine on June 18 (from Western Australia)<\/p>\n
\nTeen Role Is Not So Alien<\/strong><\/p>\n
There’s a storm aging in Los Angeles which seems to be playing havoc with the telephone connection, and it doesn’t help that Jason Behr speaks quite softly.<\/p>\n
But he’s friendly and eager to talk about his popular new show, Roswell, which is, curiously enough, showing in the US back-to-back with another show about angst-ridden teenagers – Dawson’s Creek, in which Behr feature last year.<\/p>\n
In Roswell, Behr plays 16-year-old Max Evans. He and his sister Isabel (Katherine Heigl) and friend Michael (Brendan Fehr), are survivors of an alien spacecraft that landed in an New Mexico desert in 1947.<\/p>\n
The teenagers have been living quietly in Roswell since emerging from incubation but suddenly everything changes. While waiting on tables at her father’s caf\ufffd, Liz (Shiri Appleby) is accidentally shot.<\/p>\n
Her high-school classmate Max puts aside a life long pact of secrecy and miraculously heals Liz’s gunshot wound with his hand.<\/p>\n
In saving Liz’s life, Max not only exposes himself, but also Isabel and Michael, putting all their lives at risk through discovery.<\/p>\n
Behr described Max and a “very careful” person.<\/p>\n
“He’s living life which is a secret and living this life causes him to be more aware than the average teenager,” he said. “Max wants to reach out and do things, spread his wings a little, explore who he is through relationships with people, but he can’t because of who he is.<\/p>\n
“With that, his mere existence causes him to be very restrained, very careful. It’s a lonely and depressing existence to be that confined when you are wanting things – it’s a sad kind of existence.”<\/p>\n
Behr admitted he shared some of Max’s personality traits.<\/p>\n
“There’s always a little piece of you in your work; it’s inevitable that it’s sort of in there somewhere,” he said.<\/p>\n
Behr would be familiar to fans of Dawson’s Creek, where he played party animal Chris Wolfe.<\/p>\n
Behr said Chris was the antithesis of Max.<\/p>\n
“He was kind of a trouble maker, the rich classmate who was carefree and out to have a good time,” he said. “I like to think of him as free, while he was always trying to have a good time at everyone else’s expense.<\/p>\n
“He didn’t care about stepping on a few people’s toes, didn’t think about the consequences of what he was doing.”<\/p>\n
Behr described his stint on Dawson’s, filmed in North Carolina, as a wonderful experience.<\/p>\n
“There was so much support from everyone out there, and I’d never met any of them before,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Because you’re out in the middle of North Carolina, I didn’t know how they would treat me, being the new guy. I didn’t expect them to be so friendly, but they welcomed me with open arms.”<\/p>\n
At 26, Behr said he hadn’t found it difficult to play a 16-year-old high-school student.<\/p>\n
“Giving wedgies, shoving people into lockers – it’s easy for me to do that,” he laughed.<\/p>\n
“I have a younger brother who has just graduated from high school.<\/p>\n
“But I think that the overall themes about high school life are always there.<\/p>\n
“Back when I was in high school and now, the themes remain the same – those metaphors of the aliens who represent alienation, self-discovery and trying to find your place in this world.<\/p>\n
“Technology, pop culture, music and movies all influence how we act and our general way of thinking.<\/p>\n
“The whole idea behind the aliens is that they’re not so different from us.”<\/p>\n
Asked how he prepared for the Roswell role, Behr said he had to try and imagine what it would be like to grow up in such a strange place, where you could expect to be asked everyday about aliens.<\/p>\n
“I can’t go and talk to any other aliens about their experience, I can only read books about Roswell and watch videos about the town and imagine what it would have been like to grow up in a place like that. Everything is geared up to make something out of nothing or, if it’s a big secret, shrouded in mystery, and might be all true,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Behr made his acting debut at the age of five.<\/p>\n
“I was playing a flower – I didn’t actually say anything,” he said.<\/p>\n
He did a lot of theatre work in Minnesota, but on-screen opportunities were few and far between so he decided to move to Los Angeles.<\/p>\n
He was soon appearing on such programs as JAG, Profiler and Buffy The Vampire Slayer. He also played the lead role of Dempsy Easton in Push. Then came Dawson’s Creek.<\/p>\n
Behr also stared in the independent film Rites of Passage, co-starring Dean Stockwell, which made it’s US debut at the 1999 Palm springs Film Festival.<\/p>\n
But Behr said his main focus was Roswell on which he has finished work on the first season.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Thanks to Jezzaj for sending this in! This article appeared in the Sunday Times, TV extra magazine on June 18<\/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":[2375,3],"tags":[40,13],"coauthors":[2266],"class_list":["post-700","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-jason-behr","category-leading","tag-article","tag-jason-behr"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/700","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=700"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/700\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28162,"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/700\/revisions\/28162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=700"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}