Describe the show and your character and your part within the show.
I feel like I’m pitching it right now! It takes place about two years after the events of the second Terminator film. John and Sarah are hiding from the police and thinking that the nightmare is over. It turns out, of course, that it is much more complicated. I’m protected by a very sexy robot, which works for me!
Why are you a big fan of Terminator?
I think the answer lies in that I’m not an action fan. Those kinds of movies are not my thing at all and they never were. However, I just loved the Terminator films. It was this weird thing, I think the difference is that I like dark films, I like very heavy films. Even though Terminator is action sci-fi, it always had this real feeling of dread and an apocalyptic darkness that I found so frightening and interesting. That’s what set them apart for me – those and the Alien movies. With movies like Diehard, you eat your popcorn, you watch things blow up, it’s fun and you go home. But Terminator had a very disturbing point to me; it was so realistic.
How much creativity with the character did they let you have?
I have to say that everyone involved has been awesome with allowing all of us to feel it out. It happens often in television that it’s like, ‘This is how you do it.’ It’s hard for me because I started acting by inventing characters from the ground up. Obviously, we had these references to what people had previously done, which all of us took into consideration. For me it was a question of maintaining Connor’s instincts, but placing him in a more adult situation, a place where he needed to have his head down and be more mature. It was funny because I went in for the very first audition and I was one of the very first people they read. I did the first scene and the casting director looked at me and she said, ‘I don’t need to see anybody else, you’re John Connor.’ I was like, ‘Really?’ I was not expecting that at all. I still auditioned a lot of times because I had a lot of people to convince.
You’re bringing back the John character. How do you feel?
Honoured and scared. I hope people like what I’m doing with him. It’s tough as an actor. You want to be creative, but you have to live up to what’s already been done. You’re never going to please everybody.
Do you miss that Arnold Schwarzenegger is not in this show.
No, I don’t, I don’t miss Arnold because I wouldn’t have Summer Glau [Cameron Phillips, a Terminator infiltration unit sent back to protect John Connor and Sarah Connor from Skynet]. She’s the best. Of course, we miss Arnold. The audiences, I’m sure, miss Arnold, but I think our point was that this is The Sarah Connor Chronicles. It is about her journey. It is about her struggle and John and now Cameron. That’s a totally different timeline and I think that they were very clever to cast Summer as the Terminator rather than a big hulking guy because there are so many places you can go with John and her that you couldn’t have gone, unless it was getting into some really weird territory which I don’t think they were planning on doing.
Some viewers would probably recognise you from the first season of Heroes. Is this part much more challenging?
It is less challenging but much more fulfilling. It’s a totally different thing. The part on Heroes was a challenge because I was trying to make a guy who was so not me. He had a voice; he had a walk; he had a style; he had a face; he was always squinting; he had kind of a weird voice like he did a lot of drugs. Although John is different from me, it’s very natural, it’s very easy for me to go in and out. It’s so fulfilling because it’s a character of a lifetime, it’s a pop culture icon.
Is there any chance of bringing in the actors from the recent movie as guests?
Originally there was talk of that and I think it was a very wise decision that they decided against it. I don’t think you can set up this parallel universe of, ‘Well, it’s not Linda Hamilton, it’s not Edward Furlong and it’s is not Arnold Schwarzenegger’. Logically it kind of messes with the world that we’ve created.
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles airs on MBC Action every Monday at 8pm.
