Five Minutes With ‘V’s Scott Wolf
Tuesday night, the ‘V’s will be resuming their infiltration of Earth and picking up where they left off in perpetuating all sorts of guinea-pig-eatin’, rebel-scalpin’, and human brainwashin’ hijinks. (That’s right, silly human! You will look into our ridiculously gorgeous eyes, hear our soothing tones, and forget all thoughts of impending peril!)
Scott Wolf, who plays career-obsessed TV anchorman Chad, took a few minutes to talk to Fancast about the next chapter in this riveting Alien vs. Everyman saga. He promises that, amongst all the other lingering plot threads, things between Chad and Anna are about to get “physical,” and that Chad is exactly the kind of guy who could “save the world…or destroy it.” Plus, on the subject of plot twists, which one does he rank up there with the biggest cinematic shocks of all time? Read on and find out.
What kinds of spoiler-y things can you reveal about the new, upcoming episodes?
Wolf: Let me think … there’s just so much to choose from. Things that have already been said, I can kind of reiterate. There’s certain stories that are already in motion that come to a boiling point. Val is pregnant with Ryan’s child, so we’ve got the beginnings of a hybrid V/human pregnancy, and that’s not only a kick-ass story, but also an homage to the original. So that’s going to be revealed, in terms of what that means. In my story, Chad was put in a position where he was told he was going to develop a deadly brain aneurysm and die within the next six months, and that if he played ball, they would heal him. When we jump back into the story, you see that figure itself out. We see a guy who’s used to being in control of his life and situations scrambling to get control back, and figure out how to stay in the game with the Visitors. Obviously if they hold all the cards, he loses his power and will stop getting anything from this relationship with them. On the spoiler side, I would say there’s this really cool dynamic that exists between Chad and Anna – and part of it seems to be personal. There’s the professional thing where you have the leader of the alien race, and me, dancing around each other, kind of getting what they need from each other. And there’s a personal thing going on between them, and we see that advance. We see both of them use the physical side of this relationship to raise the stakes in terms of getting everything they need from each other.
And it’s probably safe to assume the V’s might not be telling Chad the truth about that brain aneurysm?
Wolf: Yes, this is one of the great things … I think the underlying fun is this simple and suspenseful sense of: Who can he believe? There’s a lot of shows that have very complex mythologies. Ours is pretty simple. It’s as simple as who is a Visitor and who isn’t? Yet it’s complex in that we don’t know which of our characters is actually an alien. The fun of playing Chad is he’s actually less interested in figuring out if they are “of peace always”, or if they’re gonna kill us. He’s concerning himself less with that, and he’s more focused on doing this dance with Anna, and advancing his own career, and keeping himself in the center of the bright white light of this story. What we see as we go into this next chapter of episodes is a guy who’s not able to ignore his underlying fear that they’re here and not actually telling us any of the truth. I suppose one of the other bits I can tease is: As his fear and skepticism over what Anna is telling him and the rest of the world grows, he is pulled in the direction of the Resistance. We see a guy who, from the beginning has not picked sides, start to really get pulled strongly in both directions. Ultimately I look at Chad and see a guy who could either save the world or destroy it.
In the spirit of monster plot twists, since there are obviously plenty coming here: Out of all the plot twists in existence in TV and film, what has been your favorite, biggest and baddest plot twist of all time?
Wolf: Wow. The one that just jumped into my mind – the first one I could think of – I guess it was a plot twist, or maybe more of just a visually mind-blowing sort of thing, but it’s plot as well: In ‘Silence of the Lambs,’ we think the FBI team is descending on the house [where Buffalo Bill is], and they’ll be there to support Clarice. They start pounding on the door, and the moment when the door opens, we realize she’s at the house with the serial killer by herself … they’re in the middle of nowhere, and she’s on her own with this monster. I have the chills just thinking about it. It’s incredible.
