John Shea: Cinescape 10/6/01

Shea's X-rated return
Veteran genre actor John Shea returns to television with this season's MUTANT X
Dateline: Saturday, October 6, 2001
By: ROB ALLSTETTER

After a brief self-imposed hiatus from the small screen, actor John Shea, perhaps better known as Lex Luthor from LOIS & CLARK: THE NEW ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN, is returning to television in another series with comic-book roots: MUTANT X.

Beginning in syndication the week of Oct. 1, MUTANT X tells the story of a corrupt government agency genetically engineering "super" humans. A number of these "New Mutants," as the human guinea pigs have been dubbed, have escaped from the program and are living life on the run - the organization's top agent ?? ?? is after them. However, they do have a place to turn. Shea plays Adam Xero, the leader of Mutant X - a group organized to find and protect fellow New Mutants from the agency that created them.

While litigation continues between Tribune Entertainment, Marvel Entertainment and 20th Century Fox over the show's alleged X-MEN rights violations, MUTANT X continues production and will debut as scheduled. And while Shea stresses that his series is not X-MEN, it's sure to draw followers of the comic book property and summer 2000 blockbuster, as well as fans from the actor's LOIS & CLARK days.

Legal issues aside, Shea feels that MUTANT X is "the perfect series at the perfect time" in his career.

"After being part of the team that created LOIS & CLARK for a period of over four years and having seen it become a global phenomenon, I [decided to] wait five years," says Shea. "I retreated into the independent film world, to the New York theater world, and I didn't want to come back into the mainstream television world until I knew that I could come onto something that was equally good and not be embarrassing. I knew I wanted to do something different and that was going to be a hit. I read a lot of pilots. I was offered lots of TV series, and I waited until MUTANT X came along."

In this go around, Shea plays the good guy, the moral core of the series. Adam is the leader of MUTANT X whose last name is shrouded in mystery and who just might be the smartest man alive.

"He was a scientist, a 19-year-old prodigy at Stanford University, a bio-geneticist, hired away to go work for a company called Genomex," Shea says. "He started working doing agricultural cross-fertilization using cross-gene work, thinking this work was going to be for Alberta, for Saskatchewan, for Kansas and Nebraska. Then, of course, it turns out that the things he was developing agriculturally, maybe even for animals in terms of genetic engineering and cloning, was secretly being used by the darker side of this corporation for human genetic engineering."

Going deeper into the roots of the series, Shea outlines a story based on corruption, conspiracy and, of course, super-powers. Think of it as the SUPERFRIENDS meets DARK ANGEL.

"[My character] discovers that Genomex is actually a cover corporation for a wing of the CIA - the American Industrial Complex - and that they're using the genetic research to develop these powers in human embryos. He's disgusted by this and he downloads everything he can before he can be captured. And then what happens in the course of the series is that the embryos that were experimented upon are now coming into maturity and people are discovering, much to their surprise, that they have these astonishing powers. They also find out they are being pursued by this branch of the government called the GSA - or the Genetics Security Agency - which is now trying to track us down, hunt us down, to exploit the powers for their own dark purposes. You can imagine how they could use guys like this in espionage and in mind control. Or they will kill us if we don't play their game."

So Adam takes the millions he made on the Internet and builds an underground sanctuary, full of peaceful-looking plants and waterfalls, but also very high-tech computer gadgetry and a VTOL vehicle. There, he is joined by four young New Mutants - Shalimar (Victoria Pratt), Jesse (Forbes March), Brennan (Victor Webster) and Emma (Lauren Lee Smith) - in his mission.

While Shea acknowledges that it's fun to play a hero, he considers Adam to be more of an anti-hero.

"He's complex, a very human being, not a one-dimensional super-hero by any stretch," Shea says. "The guy is a scientist, and that's already a weird and a complicated thing to be. Secondly, he is on the run, so he's a fugitive scientist. He's being hunted down by the GSA, which is actually part of the government, and that's the law, so he's an outlaw scientist. So that becomes complicated for him emotionally, intellectually and spiritually and it makes him much more interesting to play."

Having been involved in a comic book based series once before, Shea understands the importance of visuals. To that end, he insists that MUTANT X is raising the bar for TV.

"This show is being produced by this top-notch team," Shea says. "Jamie Paul Rock and his team created LA FEMME NIKITA. And if anybody saw that, you know that it looked really good. It was shot like a feature film, like ours is, shot like a feature film. It's all done with state-of-the-art CGI. The stuff that we can do on this show couldn't be done on a television show, even when we were shooting LOIS & CLARK. Because in the last seven years, the technology has allowed us to do astounding things on a weekly basis that seven years ago, you could only do on a feature film. So it looks astonishing."

LOIS & CLARK continues to air in reruns on TNT after ABC abruptly pulled the plug on the series and while rumors persist as to a possible LOIS & CLARK reunion, Shea is quick to put the kibosh on said reports.

"There are no LOIS & CLARK projects that I know about that are planned," Shea says. "If there were to be, I would probably be part of them. Teri Hatcher, who played Lois, was just in town shooting a film. She and I stay in touch all the time. We talk about doing something maybe down the line, but at the moment there is nothing planned."

Besides, with 44 episodes of MUTANT X ordered, Shea will be pretty active over the next two years.

"It gives us a future to evolve this for the next two seasons," Shea says. "That's a real luxury for the writers and the actors and the directors and the production team, so we can plan these stories out over a long period of time."

© Cinescape

Comics Continuum 8/28/01: John Shea

JOHN SHEA ON LOIS AND CLARK REUNION

John Shea, who is currently starring in the upcoming syndicated Mutant X television series, addressed speculation about a possible reunion for Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman.

"There are no Lois and Clark projects that I know about that are planned," said Shea, who played Lex Luthor in the ABC series. "If there were to be, I would probably be part of them."

Shea was addressing a question during the Mutant X panel at the Canadian National Expo in Toronto over the weekend.

"Teri Hatcher, who played Lois, was just in town shooting a film. She and I stay in touch all the time," Shea said. "We've talked about doing something maybe down the line, but at the moment there is nothing planned."

With Mutant X, Shea said he's noticed a big leap in television special effects since Lois and Clark ended.

"The stuff that we can do on this show couldn't be done on a television show, even when we were shooting Lois and Clark," said Shea, who plays Mutant X leader Adam. "Because in the last seven years, technology has allowed us to do astounding things on a weekly basis that seven years ago, you could only do on a feature film. So it looks astonishing."

Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman continues to air in reruns on TNT.

© Comics Continuum

Comics Continuum 9/17/01: John Shea

MUTANT X'S JOHN SHEA

John Shea, who stars in the upcoming Mutant X syndicated television series, said he was particular about his return to a television series after Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman.

"After being part of that team that created Lois & Clark and been involved in that creative team for a period of over four years and having seen it go global, and become a global phenomenon, I waited five years," said Shea, who played Lex Luthor in Lois & Clark.

"I retreated into the independent film world, to the New York theater world, and I didn't want to come back into the mainstream television world until I knew that I could come onto something that was equally good and not be embarrassing. I knew I wanted to do something different and that was going to be a hit.

"I read a lot of pilots. I was offered lots of TV series, and I waited until Mutant X came along. It was the perfect place, it was the perfect series at the perfect time in my life."

This time around Shea's the good guy. He plays Adam, the leader of Mutant X whose last name is shrouded in mystery and who just might be the smartest man alive.

"He was a scientist, a 19-year-old prodigy at Stanford University, a bio-geneticist, hired away to go work for a company called Genomex," Shea said. "He started working doing agricultural cross-fertilization using cross-gene work, thinking that this work was going to be for Alberta, for Saskatchewan, for Kansas and Nebraska. Then, of course, it turns out that the things that he was developing agriculturally, maybe even for animals in terms of genetic engineering and cloning, was being secretly being by the darker side of this corporation for human genetic engineering.

"He discovers that the Genomex is actually a cover corporation for a wing of the CIA - the American Industrial Complex - and that they're using the genetic research to develop these powers in human embryos. So, he's disgusted by this, and he downloads everything he can before he can be captured. And then what happens in the course of the series is that the embryos that were experimented upon are now coming into maturity and people are discovering, much to their surprise, that they have these astonishing powers.

"They also find out they are being pursued by this branch of the government called the GSA - or the Genetics Security Agency - which is now trying to track us down, hunt us down, to exploit the powers for their own dark purposes. You can imagine how they could use guys like this in espionage and the military espionage and in mind control. Or they will kill us if we don't play their game.

"What Adam, my character has done, is he's used the money that he has made the money in the Internet - before it all went south, like last December - and invested his many millions in an underground sanctuary."

While Shea said it's fun to be a hero, he considers Adam to be more of an anti-hero.

"It's complex, a very human being, not a one-dimensional super-hero by any stretch," Shea said. "The guy is a scientist, and that's already a weird thing to be, and a complicated thing to be. Secondly, he is on the run, so he's a fugitive scientist. He's being hunted down by the GSA, but actually part of the government, and that's the law, so he's an outlaw scientist. So that becomes complicated for me emotionally, intellectually and spiritually. And it makes him much more interesting to play."

Shea said that Mutant X does differ from X-Men, taking a more realistic look at the possibility of mutants.

"The beauty of the way this show is created is that anybody in the audience could be one of these new mutants. It's not like you look so different from somebody else," Shea said. "There's an episode where a young boy is being kidnapped. And he gets really angry at one point and suddenly fire erupts from his hands and he burns something accidentally. He doesn't even know that he's got the power. It just manifests itself. He looks like a normal kid in seventh or eighth or 10th grade. Suddenly, it just erupts.

"This stuff has been genetically implanted and it all manifests at different points at the maturation of the person, and then the person has to figure out how to deal with it. Oftentimes, they're embarrassed by it. Oftentimes, along with the power, comes a chagrin and a responsibility. They're feeling like outcasts.

"Our job is to try to find them before the other guys find them and try to deal with that kind of power however it's manifesting."

With 44 episodes ordered, Shea said there will be lots of room to explore the Mutant X members and discover other new mutants.

"One of the best things about Lois & Clark is that we tried to make those comic-book characters human and bring to them all kinds of emotions you might not read in a one-dimensional or two-dimensional comic-book style," Shea said. "We're creating a drama here."

Having been involved with a comic-book show before, Shea knows the importance of visuals. He said Mutant X is raising the bar for TV.

"The stuff that we can do on this show couldn't be done on a television show, even when we were shooting Lois & Clark," Shea said. "Because in the last seven years, the technology has allowed us to do astounding things on a weekly basis that seven years ago, you could only do on a feature film. So it looks astonishing."

Mutant X begins in syndication the week of Oct. 1. Look for more from The Continuum's visit to the set in Toronto soon.

© Comics Continuum

Comics Continuum 7/5/02: John Shea

MUTANT X'S JOHN SHEA
By Rob Allstetter/The Comics Continuum

TORONTO -- "Welcome to Mutant X."

John Shea gets up from behind a desk, smiles and extends his hand in greeting. It's a busy Monday on the set of Mutant X, and Shea's Adam -- leader of the Marvel-created team -- is in almost every scene for the "Meaning of Death" episode.

"Something, isn't it?" Shea asks rhetorically, letting go of the handshake and turning his head. Behind him and through an archway, two dozen extras dressed as medical attendants mill about the set, a high-tech lab where Adam is forced to work with agents of the enemy Genomex to try to save new mutants infected with a virus. Twenty-seven patient beds, attached to scifi-ish monitoring devices, neatly line up in three rows, with airbag-like canvas walls against red and yellow tarp backdrops.

You would never guess it's really an indoor soccer practice field on an old air base in northern Toronto.

Dressed in a silver lab coat and looking very much the doctor, Shea excuses himself. He's called in for the scene, a heated exchange with Genomex associate Marlowe, played by Anthony Lemke, an invulnerable new mutant who saw his family die and struggles with his seeming immortality.

As an infected new mutant goes into cardiac arrest, Marlowe leans over her, sickly fascinated by her imminent demise. "What's it like? Tell me," he pleads, grabbing her face.

Alerted by a flatline signal, Adam races to her bed, and confronts Marlowe. The two shout each other, raising their voices with each line. "You get outta here!" Adam finally screams.

As Marlowe leaves, Adam looks down at the mutant, now dead, and pulls a blanket over her head. Another death on his hands, and his steely-eyed rage turns to sorrow. Adam hangs his head in grief and guilt, and the director cuts the shot.

Guilt. It's not a feeling Shea had to display much as the suave, deadly Lex Luthor in Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, the television role for which he is probably best known.

But that was five years ago. This is a different world and a different character. And it also raises the question: Where has Shea been and how'd he return to the comic-book world with Mutant X?

We'll let him explain.

"After being part of that team that created Lois and Clark and having been involved in that creative team for a period of over four years and having seen it go global, and become a global phenomenon, I waited five years," Shea says.

"I retreated into the independent film world, to the New York theater world, and I didn't want to come back into the mainstream television world until I knew that I could come onto something that was equally good and not be embarrassing. I knew I wanted to do something different and that was going to be a hit.

"I read a lot of pilots. I was offered lots of TV series, and I waited until Mutant X came along. It was the perfect place, it was the perfect series, at the perfect time in my life."

Seth Howard of Tribune Entertainment, which produces the syndicated Mutant X in association with Marvel Studios, agrees.

"Everyone involved had their own opinions as to who should play Adam, and we were submitted every actor that was out there," Howard says. "This was the hardest part to cast because no one was sure how to see this character. When John's name came up, everyone's eyes lit up. His stage work, movie roles, and of course his unforgettable -- and definitive -- portrayal of Lex Luthor in Lois and Clark, made him the perfect choice. From how well the series has been received, you have to agree."

Shea says he was struck by concept of Mutant X, where genetic tampering, based on Adam's research, has created thousands of emerging new mutants. Disgusted with where his work has gone, Adam heads underground to form Mutant X. His mission is simple: locate mutants, help them and protect them from Genomex and its government guise, the Genetic Security Agency.

"This show should not be really confused with the X-Men, which is a very different kind of show," Shea says. "The writing here is making these characters very different and very human. One of the best things about Lois and Clark is that we tried to make those comic-book characters human and bring to them all kinds of emotions you might not read in a one-dimensional or two-dimensional comic-book style. We're creating a drama here."

While Shea says it's fun to be a hero, he considers Adam to be more of an anti-hero.

"It's complex, a very human being, not a one-dimensional superhero by any stretch," Shea says. "The guy is a scientist, and that's already a weird thing to be, and a complicated thing to be. Secondly, he is on the run, so he's a fugitive scientist. He's being hunted down by the GSA, but that's actually part of the government, and that's the law, so he's an outlaw scientist. So that becomes complicated for me emotionally, intellectually and spiritually. And it makes him much more interesting to play."

"Adam is a tortured soul," Howard says. "This is a character that feels so much guilt and responsibility, his actions become a direct reaction to those feelings. Not every actor can bring that much to the table and still be able to kick some ass. There are so many guys out there that could have been cast but there are only a handful of actors. John is one of those actors. We are lucky to have him on the team."

Having been involved with a comic-book show before, Shea knows the importance of visuals. He says Mutant X has raised the bar for TV, with flashy camera angles and cuts, lots of wire-work action and special effects.

"The stuff that we can do on this show couldn't be done on a television show, even when we were shooting Lois and Clark," Shea says. "Because in the last seven years, the technology has allowed us to do astounding things on a weekly basis that seven years ago, you could only do on a feature film. So it looks astonishing."

Despite the popularity of Mutant X, some people will always associate Shea with Lex Luthor, a character first brought to life by Gene Hackman in the Superman movie series and now being continued by Michael Rosenbaum in Smallville.

Even as production of Mutant X started, rumors swirled about a possible Lois and Clark reunion -- the show remains a fixture on TNT these days. At a comics convention the previous weekend, fans approached Shea about returning as Luthor.

"There are no Lois and Clark projects that I know about that are planned," Shea says. "If there were to be, I would probably be part of them. Teri Hatcher, who played Lois, was just in town shooting a film. She and I stay in touch all the time. We talk about doing something maybe down the line, but at the moment there is nothing planned."

Besides, with 44 episodes of Mutant X ordered and a second season on the way, Shea will be plenty busy.

"It gives us a future to evolve this for two seasons," Shea says. "That's a real luxury for the writers and the actors and the directors and the production team, so we can plan these stories out over a long period of time."

© Comics Continuum

Comics Continuum 8/15/02: John Shea

John Shea Talks Mutant X's Season 2

Season 2 of the syndicated Mutant X television series promises to be more realistic and full of surprises, star John Shea said.

Shea, who plays Adam, appeared at the recent Comic-Con International in San Diego with castmates Forbes March (Jesse), Victoria Pratt (Shalimar) and Lauren Lee Smith (Emma), as well as Tribune Entertainment's Seth Howard.

Season 2 of the syndicated Mutant X television series promises to be more realistic and full of surprises, star John Shea said.

Shea, who plays Adam, appeared at the recent Comic-Con International in San Diego with castmates Forbes March (Jesse), Victoria Pratt (Shalimar) and Lauren Lee Smith (Emma), as well as Tribune Entertainment's Seth Howard.

"We're having fun," Shea said. "My favorite poet, Wallace Stevens said, 'We climb to heaven on a stairway of surprise.' The only thing I can tell you is that there are all kinds of surprises in store for you in Season 2.

"One of the best things about the Mutant X world is that it's changing, it's mutating, it is evolving. The Sanctuary, where we all hang out, is transformed. I won't tell you exactly how. But stuff is gone. The world that was so completely clean-surfaced is now littered with real life.

"The world of Genomex that you know is no longer that much of a threat. So what happened in the time between Season 1 and Season 2 is that we were able to rethink our environment. We redesigned everything. We've changed things around to make it much more like real life."

Shea said that the changes will involve his character as well.

"What you discover about Adam is that things are not what they seem," Shea said. "This guy who is always sort of noble and heroic and always this kind of purer-than-life, charismatic leader, has some hidden sides as well. It turns out that he wasn't just in genetics, but he also had his fingers in all kinds of parts of the military industrial complex. He's working with the government, he's working with CIA, he's working with Interpol.

"He's a genius, and he's really rich. The question is: How did he make that money and what did he do with his brains? And we're going to find that stuff out as Season 2 goes by."

The first season ended with Gabriel Ashlocke, the first New Mutant, taking over Genomex. Played by Michael Easton, Gabriel will be featured in three episodes of the second season.

"Gabriel Ashlocke, Patient Zero, who is endowed with all those powers in one human being, turns out to be a fairly formidable rival," Shea said. "But he's the first of many to come as people come out of the woodwork and Adam's past comes back to haunt him."

© Comics Continuum

S2 DVD Extras: John Shea Interview

John Shea: I think Adam’s story is one of betrayal, you know? He’s somebody who believed he’s an idealist. He’s a wounded idealist. I think he’s felt the sharp pain of a knife squarely placed between his shoulder blades. I think a lot of what he does is trying to recover from this betrayal. That is, as a young, extremely talented geneticist working out of Stanford University, hired by Genomex, which he thinks is a young up-and-coming genetics, scientific, maybe drug corporation that’s going to be doing all kinds of interesting research. And he does his research in animal husbandry. So he’s doing his genetic research, trying to improve livestock, trying to improve farm technology. And in the genetics that he’s doing, it’s about genetic splicing, genetic engineering. And so he’s hired by Genomex, which sounds like the kind of company that would be able to use his innovations in these worlds. And what he discovers is that these innovations that he’s come up with scientifically are being used secretly in secret branches of Genomex to experiment on human embryos. And a lot of his bosses have taken human embryos that are brought to Genomex to try to help cure them, and in fact what they’ve done is they’ve horribly in many cases altered them, without the parents even knowing what is going on. Or babies are bred, embryos are...you know...so anyway...he discovers that this world is going on and he feels completely betrayed because this is not what he agreed to do. And so what he does is that he has gone--he quits Genomex. He downloads the lists of all the people who have brought their children to Genomex, all the names of all the thousands of people, and he goes on the run. And he quits and he takes the money that he has made through the nineties through brilliant investing like a lot of people did, and he builds this kind of secret world into which he can put all of his laboratory equipment and then he vows to make amends for what Genomex has done to all these people. And his idea is trying to save these people who have been genetically altered before the government gets them. Before Genomex, as it turns out, is not the corporation he thinks it is, trading publically in the New York Stock Exchange, in fact, it is a secret branch of the military industrial complex, and in fact what they’re doing is they’re genetically altering these people for their own purposes. To use them in battle, to use them in espionage, to create people with special powers that...you know...I believe that the government played around with AIDS and viruses and things like that in the 70's and 80's and the price we’re paying for those things today, they’re doing the same thing right now with genetics. So, anyway, Adam is determined to set things right, so he forms Mutant X. A team of people, he hunts down a few of the people. He finds Shalimar, he finds out where she is and he says, you know, “Have you been noticing the fact that you have been developing these odd powers?” And of course she has, and there are other people who have. Because what happens is, the genetic enhancements that he’s created are time-released. And so what happens is that as these embryos mature into young adults, they begin to manifest these powers. But in often cases they think that they’re freaks, and they don’t want to tell anybody about it and they’re feeling extremely insecure about things and so they oftentimes hide them, these powers to their families and friends. So these people are extremely vulnerable. So the government is obviously trying to hunt these people down and either kill them or exploit them in one way or another before the word gets out about their secret experiments. This is the backstory in which we discover ourselves for Mutant X.

You know, he was brought into Genomex and he did experiment. Then at one point, he was hired to come in and work and try to save the experiments that had gone so badly wrong by the other scientists. And so he comes in and he begins to experiment on these people. And finds out that many of them have been given by the other Genomex scientists these extraordinary powers, but they’re kind of devoid of any conscience. They have created, in a way, a little mini-race of sociopaths. And so the question is whether or not science can give somebody a conscience, can give somebody a sense of moral responsibility. And so he begins to go in and genetically play with this, and in fact he makes mistakes. And these people are even more screwed up then when he got them and he realizes that things are going horribly wrong. And so he is in a way responsible, you know? And I think that when he gets to that point, he realizes in fact that things are getting worse rather than better, that’s when he leaves. That’s when he goes to create Mutant X.

Certainly one of the themes which goes through that, which is that if you’ve done things in the past that you want to atone for and you have any sense of conscience at all, then you try to find ways of fixing your mistakes. And I think he realizes that he’s made mistakes and now Mutant X is an attempt to rectify those mistakes. But, you know, everyone has a dark side, I think. And certainly Adam has one. There’s an episode in the first season where somebody actually has this ability to alter moral polarity and you begin to see his dark side. Where that which is the savior becomes the destroyer, the protector becomes the attacker. And it’s about–everybody I think fights with these things within themselves, and certainly Adam has his well. I think he’s tried to devote himself to the light side and he’s trying to do right, but of course the battle is always going on. And I think that as the season’s progressed, what we will discover is that the dark sides, there are secrets to his past that will reveal themselves, and that, like most human beings, he is not all what he seems to be. Which makes it interesting, because there are surprises in store. And I like that. I like that as an actor too, not knowing really where the character’s gonna go, because then there’s a danger to that which is exciting.

When I first met these guys who are doing Mutant X, they offered me this job and I flew up to Toronto to meet with them and I read the script. I thought that it was going to be successful, for a few reasons. One, because I thought it was original. There was a cross of genres here that I hadn’t seen before. A cross of action and adventure and sci-fi and drama, so it wasn’t just one genre. It was a cross-genrel [sic] piece that had an original tone to it. I liked that. And the second thing was, I mean, I wanted to play it. I had done one other thing remotely in this genre, after 40 films and 25 plays in New York and things in England. Instead of playing the villain...the last time I did this, on on Lois and Clark. I played this Lex Luthor character, this kind of Machiavellian sociopathic dark-sided person with a sense of humor, I was getting to play the light-sided person. So I was going to play the hero role rather than the villain role. Having played the villain, I didn’t want to reprise that role at all. But I learned a lot from the Lex Luthor character, and I learned a lot about sociopathologies and all kinds of dark-sided things. Anyway...and I’ve also played Richard the Third and some other dark Shakesperean characters, and I find it interesting to bring that, you know, there was an echo of that in Adam. And so he’s not just a pure, unadulterated hero. He’s much more of a modern man, much more complex. And that’s one of the things I liked about the writing. And I told them when I met them, over at my first dinner, is that I also have a lot of rage inside, and they should feel free to tap into that rage because it’s like an arrow in my quiver that they can draw upon. You k now, if they want someone who can snap, or if they want to sort of tap this cauldron that I carry around sometimes inside of me, despite all my attempts to be Zen-like and Buddhist and enlightened and peaceful, there is always within me a certain amount of outrage. And so I think that that’s a great thing for actors. That there’s this tension between the sense of outrage and a sense of volatility, as well as a kind of effort to be at peace.

I think Adam has the difficulty of all creators, that is, if you create something and you begin to fall in love with it, but then it begins to mutate beyond all of your controls to keep it. Things start to evolve beyond your control, you also risk the loss of it. And that causes quite a bit of pain. And I think what he sees is that that which he has set in motion is a kind of dominoes effect. They are falling and he doesn’t know where it’s going to end. There is a certain amount of his skating just on the edge. He’s surfing on the edge of a huge wave of change and he doesn’t know where it’s gonna take him or his team. So he’s doing the best that he can with everything that he’s learned through martial arts, through meditation, through zen philosophy, through tai chi, through yoga, through any other discipline that he has for self control and self discipline, he’s just trying to stay there on the edge in the here and now. Because if he thinks to far in advance in the future, that’s when the surfer falls off the board and that’s when he tumbles and that’s when he dies. So they’re all just kind of surfing on the edge of unpredictability and he’s doing his best to keep his balance.

And one of the things when I think about what might make the show successful around the world, is the concept that we’re all mutants. I mean, I feel like a mutant. What does mutant mean? I mean, to mutate is to change, and life, of course, is a process of change. And it’s this constant battle between light and dark forces, between yin and yang, life and death, all kinds of, you know, the mutability of human nature and constant sense of surprise. I had a friend die in my hometown last week who was perfectly healthy the week before, and now he’s dead. And I was at his funeral last week, and that’s change. He mutated, you know, he mutated. And everybody has experienced this. Not just the characters in our play, but I think the audience at large. And one of the things we’re trying to do is tell stories about the responsibilities that you have. To try to use whatever powers that you’ve been given for good rather than for evil. And also how to adapt to change and how to sort of–you know, you could be bitter at the changes that you go through, the way these Mutant X people could be. You know, our team could be really bitter, really angry with me, really angry at the process that turned them into these quote freaks of nature. Or, they could take whatever changes, whatever powers, whatever it is that happened to them, and they could use them for something positive. And this, I think, is one of the reasons that these stories might have a moral purpose or have a role in the universe at this point in time, when the world is at war and so many things are changing. We’re trying to tell stories that have some sort of responsibility, and also at the same time be totally entertaining. You know, take an audience to a place that they’ve never been before. In a time where people are afraid to travel and people are afraid to go places physically, they can go places intellectually and in their imagination. They can turn on the television, and once a week we will hopefully take them somewhere they haven’t been before. To a new world where there’s really cool costumes, really cool special effects, really cool martial arts, really cool action, and stories which I hope will have some kind of core of morality to them. A kind of tone or lesson or something that will leave them somehow richer for having watched the show.

Well, it’s so cool that at this point in my life I get to do these martial arts things. After 40 films, you know, I never had a chance to do this. When I was younger, I had a friend who was a black belt, a guy named Rich Meredith. Again, I had a friend who died, a very good friend who died. Death and I are old friends at this point in my life, but he was my first great friend who died, and tragically and suddenly. But he taught me. His legacy was he taught me martial arts, and I used to spar with him. We lived on a little island in Massachusetts, and I would sort of arrive on the island I would hear this unearthly kind of howl and I would come out my door and he’d be waiting there for me. And he and I would immediately start sparring. I hadn’t seen him for a year and we would start sparring with each other and do this great battle. And I knew that at any moment he could kill me, but he never did. He held it back and treated me like a cat with a play toy. But he taught me a lot. So here we cut to 20 years later and they offered me the job on Mutant X. And so I’ve got a chance to take some of those skills and hone them a little bit better and do some of those things that he taught me on the show. And it’s kind of cool to do and I love doing it. I was an athlete, you know, I played football and track and those things in school, and I still do a lot of yoga, tai chi, a lot of physical things. So that I feel like this is an opportunity for me to express myself physically for a change, and it’s great. And it’s fun to do. And this team that we have, I guess you’ll talk to them sometime later on, they’re first class. You know, we feel really lucky to be working with them.

Well, everybody gets along. Everybody gets along. You know, this is being shot in Canada. I’m the only American in the show. I came up from New York, and so you don’t really know what to expect, although I had shot a film here years ago. But what I was delighted to find is that the crews here and everybody here is as good as any crew that I’ve ever worked with anywhere in the world. And I’ve shot films all over the world, including the big Hollywood studios, and this crew is first class. One of the things that makes it great is that we-technically, if you want to know–is that they’ve gathered the best personnel. I think probably the best crews live in Toronto, and of the best crews that are in Toronto, we have guys that have worked together for many many years. They have a kind of teamwork that you’d find in a well-oiled American crew that had been working in studios for many many years. And it starts at the top, with out executive producers who want this thing to be unique and original, and then it filters its way down through our producers and all these crews. We shoot on 35 millimeter, for people who want to know this, and you’ll show this, but 35 millimeter means that we’re shooting it like a feature film. We shoot with two cameras all the time, almost every scene. So what that allows us to do is to shoot extremely efficiently, but also to shoot lots of material so when we get into the cutting room, it looks like a very expensive, much more expensive to show than it actually is because of the way the money is spent intelligently. I’ve shot a lot in England, I know this is going to be shown in England as well, and one of the great things about the way the British crews work is that they always shoot with two cameras so that they’re always getting different angles, getting different takes, getting great coverage. And then they can use that in the editing room. That’s how we shoot this and it proves to be the difference between having a show that looks like every other television show and one that looks like our show.
They called me up and asked me to do it. I mean, they...I was the...whatever...if you ask various people, they’ll tell you different stories. But I think that what happened was that I heard from Jay Firestone, who runs the Canadian co-producing company, that he was on a yacht in Caans. And they were running names by him at the Cannes Film Festival, and they said, “What about John Shea?” And he said okay, because he knew that I had done this Lex Luthor character and Lois and Clark had been a global success for Warner Brothers. And so he needed a kind of bankable name upon which he could then create the show and sell to the foreign, you know people all over the world. So I became the American star. You know, luckily I had done that show, because otherwise I don’t think they would have asked me to do the part. So work creates work, they always say. And so that work created this work.

I had come to Mutant X... The last thing I had done kind of in the public eye was Lois and Clark, which you know, was kind of this global thing. For five years after Lois and Clark, I disappeared. I directed a film, I wrote and directed a film called Southie. It’s actually playing in England as well. And then I stayed on the stage in New York and worked off Broadway for the last 2 years. So that I was kind of doing my art form in a very low-key kind of way. So Mutant X was for me a return to a very popular, very mainstream entertainment. And I knew that if I wanted to come back, I wanted the show to be as good as the last mainstream entertainment which I did, which was Lois and Clark. And I thought that Mutant X had that potential because, as I said before, the originality of its genre and the mix of writing and tone that it ha. You know, it has a sense of humor, but at the same time it’s not like Lois and Clark because it’s not just treated like a romantic comedy. This is much more dark and much more contemporary.

The most frustrating thing about television, well sometimes for me in the genre... I’ve played great roles in film and on stage. I’ve done all the classic plays. And so when you’re used to playing great characters, it’s like mountain climbing. I’ve climbed great mountains, and sometimes television writing can be like strolling across a flat field. And so what I’ve always urged the writers to do here is to write me scenes, just occasionally, that I can sink my teeth into. Where I feel like I have a...I’m stretched as an actor, and I can go someplace new and someplace different. Otherwise, it becomes artistically boring and we just kind of, you know? But I have to say with some relief that as the seasons have gone on, they’ve done that. And I’m encouraged by the writing team that we have now, which is also mutating as we speak, that there are new writers coming in who are hopefully gonna write interesting things for me to play. There were some scenes in some episodes last year where I got to really change and it challenged me. Also, the sheer volume of work that I have to do. Sometimes I’ll shoot 12–last week I shot 16 pages of dialogue in one day. And oftentimes it’s talking to people who aren’t there, because I’m looking at screens or I’m acting with holograms. I mean, I’m acting in thin air. And in a way, it harkens back to, like, Shakespearean plays where Macbeth is talking to witches, you know? They’re not there. You can’t see them. But he’s talking, he’s having scenes. You have to pretend, even in Shakespeare’s day that something that isn’t there is there. And that’s much like Mutant X. So in a funny way, my Shakespearean training has come to bear as I talk to actors oftentimes who are not on the set. And that part is actually really fascinating to me, and is a real challenge. Also, what I’ve discovered about television acting is that it’s very much like sculpture. Somebody once asked me what’s the difference between film and theater acting and television acting, and I have to say that film acting is like oil painting. Because you have the time, the luxury of adding brush stroke by brush stroke onto a finished portrait of a character. Because you shoot them over long periods of time, let’s say 3 or 4 or 5 months in a big feature film. In a play, it’s much like sculpture because you are constantly trying to perfect a character, again, over a long period of time. And every performance you’re perfecting, you’re molding your performance over 6 months or a year, that I‘ve done plays. Television acting is much like watercolors. And it’s not a lesser art form at all; it’s a very difficult art form. To be a great watercolorist, it means you have to make your decisions about what it is you want to do very quickly and you have to work much more quickly than you do in either the stage or feature films. And so we don’t have a lot of time to rehearse, and we don’t have a lot of time to do many many many takes, so it forces us to come to the set prepared, sort of en guarde and ready for action. Bang. And so it’s like a watercolorist who approaches his camera, who approaches his paper, whatever easel, and he looks at what he’s gotta do and just does it. And so it teaches you to act intuitively and to be right there in the moment because you don’t have the luxury of making mistakes. And so that part of it I really like. The other great thing about working on a television series is that we shoot 22 hours of these. 22 episodes in a season. That’s like 11 feature films, okay? ‘Cause each one’s an hour. Now that’s 22 hours of film that we’re shooting. That’s just 11 feature films. That’s like shooting 11 feature films in 8 months. That’s an astonishing amount of work for everybody, for the crews, for the writers, for the producers, for the actors. And it’s also like shooting one long feature film that’s 22 hours long. And people are going to be watching your DVDs. They’ll see how the show just kind of evolves in this long epic film that will take an audience through this entire season.

The other day I had a scene where I had to talk into a television monitor. And I had to imagine that I was talking to the other actors who were on location out here in the woods. And they were reporting back to me back at Sanctuary. Now this particular actor was Shalimar. She was supposed to be onscreen. Of course she wasn’t onscreen because they add that later in post production with the special effect. And I have to say for the first couple of days I just couldn’t get it. It was the first time we’d ever done this particular special effect, that is instead of just communicating with these rings, that is vocally, I could just access a two-way screen. So I can just talk to them and they can talk to me, and remote control. But what I had to do is I had to literally imagine her eyes looking at me. And until I got to that level of concentration where I could see her face, I couldn’t do the scene. So it involves a power of concentration. And just putting yourself into a place where that becomes real to you. And if it’s real to me, then it will become real to the rest of the world when they watch it.

Well, I trained in the method as well. You know, I went to drama school in America. I went to Yale drama school. I studied for three years, acting and directing, and I did everything. Every technique from Stonisklavsky and certainly the method. And what happens is you do draw upon your emotional life. But I find that the older I get and the more I do, I can very easily–I’ve experienced so many emotions at this point in my life that they’re all right there under the surface. And so if I have to worry about somebody in a scene or feel concerned about them, I don’t have to think very hard about how to feel that. It just comes naturally. That’s one of the great things about being an actor, is that the older you get, the more you’ve experienced, the easier it is to act, in a way. Because as a young person I can remember being in scene I was doing on Broadway. I was playing Romeo and Juliet, and I was playing Paris at the time. And I actually got to play Romeo once, but I was playing the character called Paris. And I had to go in and view Juliet, and I remember just I had to see her body and then I had to swordfight Romeo, and then I remember tears had to come to me. Well, as a young actor, I didn’t have anything to cry about. I was on top of the world, you know? And I used to stick my fingers in my eyes before I went on stage just to make myself cry. Cause I knew that the scene itself was so intense that if you saw the woman that you loved dead, you should have tears. I couldn’t do that. But now if you ask me to cry, I’ve experienced so many painful things, like sudden deaths of people that I loved, that tears come to me very easily. It’s one of the best things about growing older, is that you get to take the seemingly negative things that have happened to you in your life and turn them into positive things, turn them into your art form. So Adam, if required to do so, can do those things now much more easily.

Well, the beauty of television, and again, of Mutant X, is that every day is different. It’s not like a play where you’re doing a long run of a play and you’re having to repeat the same words performance after performance after performance. And I’ve done that 4, 5, 6, times in my life where I’ve done plays for 6 or 7 months and then I usually say, okay, I’ve explored this character enough. And I need out! And I’ll pass the role onto somebody else. But with Mutant X, what happens in a television is that every day is different. You’re never repeating the same scenes. Every day is completely fresh. The character is the same, but the character is constantly evolving. The character is constantly mutating. And so, again, it’s about being there in the present and going with the changes.

© Tribune Entertainment

John Shea Leads Mutant X

The words consummate professional come to mind when I think of Actor John Shea. The New England native has established himself with a solid career on stage, movies and television. His new role is Adam, who guides and shapes his team of mutant superheroes. We spoke one night via phone as he visited New York City.

The interview airs on Sci-Fi Talk's page at Live 365.Com on Tuesdays & Wednesdays. This is a transcript of the highlights of that conversation.

Tony Tellado: Adam keeps the young mutants grounded and helps them develop. Is that what attracted you to play him ?

John Shea: I figured that at this point in my life, if you are going to surround me with a lot of young actors, the one thing that I could bring to it would be the ability to be a coach. To lead, be a coach or team captain. I feel like I have been out there for a long time now. Done so many things. When I read a role, I try to find something that I can bring to the role and something that the role brings to me. Something that I don't know anything about and that the character can teach me. What I felt I could bring to Adam was to be the leader of the team or the director of a team. I had directed a film, and when you're a film director it's like leading a group of people for a cause. You have a goal in mind. You have to be really motivated. You have to motivate other people. You take ideas from them and you try to decide what the best ideas are. I thought that I could use some of those things I learned being a film director as Adam. Even though we're not making a film, we're creating a fighting unit with a goal in mind which is survival and rescue.What I didn't know about life that Adam is teaching me is about is the world of science. I don't know much about genetics. I don't know much about genetic engineering or this whole world of scientific possibilities. That's what Adam has given to me.

Tony: You're a hero now but you had the experience of playing a villain in Lex Luthor in Lois And Clark: The New Adventures Of Superman.

John: That was a blast. I loved playing Lex Luthor and that was also coming out of a comic book world. What we tried to do in Lois and Clark was to make these comic book characters three dimensional, to make them human beings. And not to give them that one dimensionality which would wear very thin very quickly in a television series. It would be Ok in a movie but when you're dealing with twenty-two, now forty-four episodes that we're going to make, you want the characters to be as real as possible so that the audience can relate to them. So what we share in common with Lois And Clark is this effort to make the Mutant X characters three dimensional human beings. What is different is the tone. Lois And Clark was treated more like a romantic comedy. Ours is much more of a cross genre piece. Ours is action adventure, science fiction, drama. It takes a little bit from each of those genres.

Tony: I saw an interview where you said that you based Lex Luthor on Richard III from Shakespeare. My thought was that's the right approach.

John: Thanks. I based him on Richard III and Donald Trump. A really cool billionaire in a tuxedo living in a penthouse lording over his empire, but inside he'd be a twisted and wounded in a funny way. You know sociopathic driven by appetite the way Richard III is. I haven't figured out who Adam is yet in the Shakespearean mode. He's certainly not a Richard III like character. He's almost more like Othello in the sense that he has been betrayed. And he's also something like a general. He's leading a team. He's leading his men into battle constantly to save them. But the betrayal that he has suffered is like the betrayal that Othello has. By that I mean that he has a friend that turned on him, Eckhart, the character that Tom McCamus plays in the series. He was my former partner and associate at Genomex. He is the one who co-opted my scientific inventions over there and has now used them against me. He has become my enemy. That was a betrayal that has wounded Adam. It has made him very wary. Who do you trust? As I was looking at Mutant X and trying to figure out even recently in light of recent events like September 11th, How does Mutant X fit into the zeitgeist? How does it work in the world? It is a paranoid universe in particular since our enemy has been living with us..our next door neighbors. We've all suffered a kind of national betrayal. The best thing that Mutant X has to offer is pure escapism.

Tony: I like your Headquarters.

John: We call it the Sanctuary. Everybody needs a sanctuary because with the world as insane as it is. I just spent the day down at Ground Zero. I spent all morning there. I was breathing in that smoke and walking around. I was stunned by what I saw. Then I ducked into a chapel for a little while and said a couple of prayers. I realized what I had done. I had sought sanctuary. I realized that's what we do on Mutant X every week. We go out there and do battle in the real world and all this stuff is happening. There's a kind of terrorism that happens every week as they try to hunt us down and kill us and we find sanctuary among ourselves.

Tony: There's another theme that I like in this series. It's acceptance of people's differences. That runs the core of the series. Accepting people for what they are.

John: Being down in New York today and walking around in the city, it just reminded me of how astounding this city is and how great it is. And what makes it great is that you have all these human beings from all over the earth, every nation, every color and every creed. And everyone feels a little bit like an outsider. Mutant means to change, right? To mutate. And everyone has been mutated by the events of September 11th. We've all changed. Everyone is looking at the outside world slight;y different. The secret here is to feel tolerance and come to understand the differences among us. One of the most amazing things about September 11th is that we all feel closer to one another. The thing that I also feel about this Mutant X team is that these people have these powers that were hoisted upon them. They really didn't ask for them. They find themselves growing up with these powers that make them feel different and make them feel like outcasts. Our job is to make them feel that everyone feels that way at first. Everyone feels that way at first. But the secret is to find out what your talents are and what your gifts are and use them the best way you can.

Tony: What can we expect coming up on Mutant X ?

John: I just finished up two really cool fight sequences. I had some martial arts when I was younger. So now I'm getting a chance to really use them. I'll quote one of the great American playwrights named Wallace Stevens from Hartford, Connecticut who said, "That we climb to heaven on the stairway of surprise."

Tony: That says it all.

John: All I can tell Mutant X fans is that there are surprises in store. The writing has all kinds of twists and turns coming up. We'll also see the dark side of Adam emerge. It's going to be very very weird. I won't tell you how or why but just that there are many cool surprises coming up.

© Scifi Talk

John Shea Extols Mutant X

John Shea, star of the new syndicated SF series Mutant X, told SCI FI Wire that he signed because, after several years of work in stage plays and independent features, it was time to find a high-profile job. "In the cycle of my life, what I've done over the last 25 years is go in and out of commercial work," the actor said in an interview. "When Mutant X was offered to me, it seemed like the natural evolution of the cycle, back to the commercial end, back to where I'd been with Lois & Clark."

Genre fans will remember that Shea co-starred as Lex Luthor on Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman. After that, he spent five years appearing in Broadway and off-Broadway shows, as well as in numerous independent films—among them the drama Southie, which he co-wrote, directed and acted in opposite Charmed's Rose McGowan. Shea's other genre credits include Tales from the Crypt, The Man from Atlantis, Freejack, Honey, I Blew Up the Kid and the upcoming indie film The Empath. Now he's on board for Mutant X, a series with a guaranteed run of 44 episodes.

On Mutant X, Shea plays Adam, a wealthy scientist who unwittingly partook in experiments that resulted in the creation of 1,000 genetically enhanced mutants. Seeking to right the situation, Adam oversees Mutant X, a group that operates in secret, attempting to recruit mutants to its cause; save mutants from the clutches of the Genetic Security Agency and its malevolent security chief, Mason Eckhart (Tom McManus), who is determined to eliminate all mutants before society takes note of them; and, in the process, protect mankind from renegade mutants.

"I didn't want to repeat myself and play another villain" like Luthor, Shea said. "What I like about Adam is that he's sort of an antihero. He's a wounded idealist, which is something I could relate to. And he's clearly the hero of the piece, or one of the heroes. He's on the run from the government and hiding underground. I liked that he's a complicated modern hero who's not so clearly black and white. I also met with [producer] Jamie Paul Rock and Howard Chaykin, the head writer, and I liked their take on what they promised would come. They said Mutant X would become an ensemble piece that would deal with some fairly serious issues and, at the same time, be enormously entertaining and broadly popular. I thought if I was going to be back in the world of television, I wanted to be in something that would be a hit, and this will be on the air for at least two years."

Shea added, "That also gave them the luxury of planning the evolution of my character and the show. So it wasn't a normal TV series situation. You weren't making a pilot and hoping it would get picked up for six episodes or 13 episodes and then another nine. This was an extraordinary opportunity: to know that you'd get to go out and shoot 44 shows, that there was an extraordinary production behind it that would allow the material to develop. So, everything considered, it made sense to me." Mutant X airs its second episode the week of Oct. 8.

© SciFi.com

John Shea: 3/18/02 SciFi Weekly

John Shea's acting genes have taken him from Eugene O'Neill to Mutant X
By Kathie Huddleston

Few actors could say they've played Romeo on both Broadway and in the television series The Man from Atlantis. However, for actor John Shea, going from Shakespeare to science fiction was just the beginning of a long and diverse career that has led him to play Adam in this season's highest-rated first-run syndicated action hour, Mutant X.

Equally at home on stage, the big screen and television, Shea has played in everything on stage from Ibsen to O'Neill. The versatile actor has been in 40 feature films and several television movies, including the Academy Award-winning Missing and the TV film Baby M, for which he received an Emmy Award. Most recently he co-wrote, directed and acted in the independent film Southie. However, for sci-fi fans, he is most notable for his complex performance as Lex Luthor in the ABC series Lois and Clark.

Shea chatted with Science Fiction Weekly about stupid science fiction, Lex Luthor and playing the good guy.
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How did you get started working in science-fiction television?

Shea: I've kind of worked in and out of this genre over the last 20 years, I guess, from The Man from Atlantis, where I was a guest star many, many, many years ago. But it was fun to do because I had just played Romeo on Broadway in New York City and I went out to L.A. in my first trip ever. I was a guest star in a couple of other things. Then they asked me if I would guest-star in Man From Atlantis. It was an episode where he went to Verona in like 1400 and he came up in a well in the middle of downtown Verona and there was a sword fight going on. So that was my first dabbling in science fiction. By the way, that particular episode, while it was well-meaning, it was really stupid. It had a stupid quotient. It taught me also the pitfalls of science fiction, which is that it can fall really easily into that stupid zone that you don't even want to be associated with. So then years went by and I think I did a couple other kind of guest-starring things in things like Tales from the Crypt, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Hitchhicker. For many years I was just doing serious dramas and then after that Lois and Clark brought me back into that world.
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And you played Lex Luthor.

Shea: It was a great character. But what was great about Lois and Clark and the reason why I went after that character and ended up doing the job was because they had an interesting take on the science fiction. Which is that it was treated seriously, first of all. It was treated as a drama, but with almost romantic comedy overtones. In the sense that there was this kind of comic roundelay between Lois and Clark and Luthor, that I really loved playing. And there was a wit to the writing.
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There was some romance between Lex and Lois.

Shea: As well there might be, because the truth about bad guys is that you don't know that they're bad until they sting you. Most bad guys in your life are guys that seem to be good guys. The thing about villains is that they never look to be villains. So I thought in the modern villain, from what I've seen in politics in Washington and what we know about corporate America and Wall Street, is that the villains of the world are guys who are really well dressed and usually power brokers. They're guys who have a kind of rapacious appetite for whatever it might be that satisfies them, but they also border on psychopathology or sociopathology. That is that they have no conscience about the little guy. They simply go after what they go after without any of the conventional restraints of common morality, which constrains somebody like Clark Kent and well-meaning human beings. Lex Luthor didn't have those restraints, and that's what made him very dangerous. And we've certainly seen this in the fall of Enron, where those guys were Luthor-like characters, captains of industry in powerful soaring glass towers looking down on the plebeians who work for them down below. Masters of the universe who, in the end, were robber barons and ended up stealing from the poor to feed the rich. And that's the kind of guy that Luthor was.
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Why did you start out as a regular on the series, but eventually became a recurring character?

Shea: I did every single episode the first season. I was living in New York when I shot Lois and Clark and I was commuting to Los Angeles every week to shoot. It was very difficult on me and my family. So I asked them if I could get out of my contract at the end of the first season, and they wouldn't let me out altogether, but they let me diminish my participation so that I only did certain episodes that were called Lex Luthor episodes and were usually three-part things that were during sweeps and they were kind of special things. But then suddenly it allowed them to write all these other new villains and made it much more interesting. And gave me a break and I was able to then create Southie.
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How long did the series last?

Shea: I did it on and off three seasons. But while I was doing Lois and Clark, I wrote a couple screenplays, but in particular Southie, which I ended up directing. I spent the next three years putting Southie together. So I went far away from the world of mainstream television into the world of American independent film, which is a world I had come from.

Raising the money, putting it all together, directing the thing, writing 12 drafts of it, casting it, shooting it in south Boston, and spending nine months doing the post-production, editing it, helping produce the soundtrack, and then taking that to the film festivals, obtaining distribution, going to the premiere. I used the money I had made during Lois and Clark to kind of finance that whole experience, because I wasn't paid for anything for Southie during its development. And then I was only paid scale minimum for directing it and acting in it. After Southie, I then stayed in New York for the next two years and did a series of independent films. I mean acting in them. I think I made about six of them during that time. They were all short, intense experiences. Completely different kinds of characters, and then I would be done and have some time off and then do another one. So there was the variety, which is missing when you do a long series. It took me in and out of various skins and taking on and off these various masks, which makes life more interesting. But then I stayed in New York, for the last two seasons I've been on stage working Off Broadway. I did two successful runs of two great plays. A play called The Director, which I starred in and then another play with Eli Wallach and Ann Jackson, that Anne Meara wrote, you know, Ben Stiller's mother. She's a wonderful playwright. She wrote a play called "Down the Garden Path." And that was a great experience. Then I got a phone call asking me if I wanted to do Mutant X, just out of the blue.
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You'd already spent some time doing series work. What did you think?

Shea: I'd done series for at least five years. I'd been working in the independent film, the off-Broadway theater world, and sort of in the rhythm of my life, I thought it was the perfect thing because it was a return to the mainstream; which I knew, sort of career-wise I needed to do, because I had been laboring in the fringes, non-commercially. So that was one thing, that I would be going back and getting into the mainstream. I knew what that meant in terms in career and exposure, and all those other things. That was one thing in its favor. The second thing in its favor, and more importantly to me, was the writing. The writing, I thought, was a clever blend of genres. Which is this original blend of action, adventure, sci-fi and drama. And those four genres mixed together in a unique way.
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Were you hesitant to get into the rigors of another series?

Shea: I was ready for it, in a funny way. Actually I was welcoming the rigors, only because the opposite of rigors is unemployment [laughs]. Or drifting out there in the independent theater and film world, which is spiritually and creative fulfilling, but financially bankrupting. It was time for me to go back and do something in the mainstream.
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And it was a pretty high-profile project.

Shea: And not only that, they were offering me two years on the air, which is unheard of. And you know that coming out of the world of Hollywood, I've spent years in and out of Hollywood. Most television series are pilots, so many thousands of them are written, a few are shot, many fewer are actually picked up. And when they are picked up, it's usually for maybe, if you're lucky, 13 or 16 episodes. Maybe they put three or four on the air. If you don't have the numbers immediately, they yank it. Then you're dead, you see. Then you have to wait another whole year for the next pilot season. You go through the same nonsense. The network system just doesn't work. And so, creatively what they were offering me was the opportunity to create a character who was going to be around for a while and be part of a series that was going to be around for a long time, that was going to grow and change and evolve. If you've been watching us you've seen that it has over the first season. But there are more surprises and other changes, and other steps for growth that are going to be happening in the second season. Then because I was involved with Southie and because the producers had seen my work as a writer and director, they were also open to whatever contributions I might make in those areas as well. So it became a multifaceted artistic collaboration, as well.
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Are you going to be doing any writing or directing?

Shea: Well, the writing that I do is sort of inside. I make suggestions and offers. My imagination doesn't work in this genre. It's not the kind of stuff that inspires me to come up with original ideas. It's not my gift to think in this particular way. However, because I studied quite a bit and I went to school as a director and all those things, I understand some story structure. Things like that. One of the great things about working on the series is that we take the stories very seriously. We all sit down as a cast with the producer and director of that particular episode and we do table readings of the script. We do them out loud around the table, around a speakerphone, which is then broadcast to the writers in Los Angeles and the executive producer, Howard Chaykin, and the writer of the week. So, in other words, there are three or four guys in L.A. who are listening to our reading, and then we sit around after we finish the reading and we discuss whatever changes might be desirable. That's a wonderful process. It's something like what we do certainly in feature films, but it's also something that you do in the theater because it means that you bring the focus completely on that which matters most, to me at least, which is, "The play's the thing." Because without good stories, without good writing, I think everything falls apart very quickly. So we've been trying to make all that as good as possible. And certainly make sure there's a consistency of tone for each of the characters and nobody's doing something that would contradict something that they'd done in the past. So that's a great thing for the show.
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What was appealing about the character of Adam to you?

Shea: They offered the opposite character from the last mainstream job that I had done. In a way he is [the mutants'] genetic father, you know, medically their father. Only because their mutations or their gifts, their alterations are a direct result of the work he was doing in biogenetics, even though they were applied to them without his knowing, which is where the betrayal comes in by Eckhart and those guys. But at the same time, now that he has gotten this band together with him, they're totally embattled, and he must now go out and fight for self-preservation and for the protection of the people he feels responsible for, all the other people who've been genetically altered.
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Do you see Adam as being a father to these mutants?

Shea: I think of him more as a kind of leader or a coach or a big brother. Rather than think of myself as their father, I think more of myself as an older brother who is maybe a little bit wiser about the ways of the world. Who can inspire them and lead them. A leader, if you will. A director who is directing them into a path.
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And he's risking the lives of these young mutants that he's become attached to.

Shea: That's right. So the stakes are high. They're life and death. Which is why he's serious a lot of the time [laughs].
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Your character is doing a little more action lately.

Shea: I have gotten to do more action. It's been really great. I have never had a chance to do any action before in any other movie or film. The last time I did action was in Romeo and Juliet, when I was fencing onstage in Broadway. I studied it when I was younger when I was in school. I studied martial arts with a friend of mine, who was a black belt, particularly this form of kung fu over a period of a couple years. I was his sparring partner, and anyway, he taught me quite a bit, this friend of mine who is now dead. But strangely enough, these many years later, part of his legacy is that I have a chance to use those skills, and I hope to do more so in the future.
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Have you done any wirework yet?

Shea: I have done one wirework. Not as much as they [the actors who play the mutants] do, and thank God [laughs]. It's fun and I would do more in a second. Except it's really time-consuming and physically taxing. And it's not really what my role is so much. That's probably a good thing. However, I do know how to do it, and I could do and I have done it, and I hope to do it again, but just not as often.
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And you get to wear really cool clothes.

Shea: I get to wear really cool clothes. The character is self-made. That's one of the things about Luthor, as well, is that he was self-made. I always think of superheroes, like Superman and those characters, as trust-fund babies, you know. Which is that they inherited their powers. Adam's self-made and I like that about him.
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He's brilliant and built his own world. What's your backstory for Adam?

Shea: He made his money through clever investing through the '90s. It'd be tough for him to do what he did through the '90s now, because the markets are so bad. But I think while he was working at Genomex he was investing his money wisely in technology stocks during the '90s boom and he made a lot of money. I think that he sold systems, just would invent things and sell them to companies and be bought out and make dummy corporations and sell those things, you know, patented things. And I think he made a lot of money that way.

The backstory is that he was a child prodigy at Stanford University working in genetics. And then he was hired away by what he thought was a private company, which is Genomex, to work in genetics. What he thought was to help to improve agricultural output and animal husbandry, working with animals and crops and things like that. This cutting-edge world of genetics. He had invented ways of cross-pollinating various genetic strains, and these inventions were used secretly by Eckhart and the other chiefs at Genomex on human embryos. And then what was happening is that these kinds of mutated embryos were being fostered. Then they would end up being operated on against their knowledge by other teams at Genomex. What happened was that Adam found out about this, and that's when he was outraged and considered what Eckhart had done. It'd been a total betrayal of his trust and ethics and all the other stuff. And he downloaded the list of all names of people who'd been worked upon and experimented with, and destroyed whatever he could and then went into hiding, went underground and built his world, and now at the beginning of this season has begun to build the Mutant X team.
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There are points when Adam and Eckhart could have killed each other, but didn't? The world would be a better place without Eckhart.

Shea: Yeah, but you know there's going to be another Eckhart, and that's the problem with murder that way. You notice in the violence that we do, it's a very stylized kind of violence in that nobody dies. Have you noticed that? That Genomex kills people fairly ruthlessly and fairly often, fairly consistently. It seems to be their answer to a given problem.
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It's certainly Eckhart's answer.

Shea: Yes, Eckhart's answer is murder. It's a big world out there and he has lots of money, and people don't know what he's up to. He's working secretly, I'm sure, with quite a bit of power that way. From Adam's standpoint, murder is a failure of imagination, and violence should be used only in self-defense. He's not really a pacifist. But he has learned, and what he teaches in martial arts or the physical work that they do is usually about self-defense or about the protection of other people. It is not an aggressive posture, it's a defensive posture. And he knows another [Eckhart] will pop up, and another one will pop up, and another one will pop up.
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But they might not be as good.

Shea: They might not be as good, and that's the chance that you take. It also goes back to my own personal philosophy, which seems to dovetail with Adam's, which is that violence is not the answer. And that violence begets violence.
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So what is the answer? What does Adam really want to happen?

Shea: Well, the long-term goal, I think, is certainly the protection of all the other people who have been genetically altered. Gather them together, if not in the Mutant X team, then into safe houses just to protect them and advise them and to be there in one way or another. To make sure they're not either killed or exploited.
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Do you think Adam is looking for redemption?

Shea: You know, I don't know if Adam did anything wrong, so I don't know that he did anything that he needs redeeming for. What Adam did was, I think, relatively innocent in the sense that he was experimenting with genetics in a relative innocent way, and I think that he was betrayed by evil, if you will, by competitors. Let's not call it evil. By competitors who were jealous of him, and they took what he had experimented with and then perverted it and subverted it and exploited it to their own ends. And I'm not so sure that the theme for Adam is one of redemption as much as it is vengeance. But it's vengeance with a code of ethics and a code of honor that he has for himself within that framework, that violence is not the answer. That only in self-defense do you become unfettered in your defense of that which you believe to be right. You can be savage in his belief of what is right and what is wrong and his defense of the freedom and the liberty of others.
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Does he want to bring down Genomex?

Shea: It's like thinking about bringing down the CIA or the FBI. It's like a big government thing. I don't know that you can bring it down. He's an outlaw, don't forget. It's like trying to bring down the establishment. He's wiser than thinking that he can actually accomplish something like that. Because the other thing that you learn when you battle evil is that evil never thinks of itself as evil. Evil always thinks of itself as good. And we've experienced this now with al Qaeda and with Osama bin Laden, whose methods we certainly would consider evil. Right. But from Osama bin Laden's point of view he is a messenger of God, and he's doing the right thing, and it's divine intervention that these people died in the World Trade Center, you see. He was simply an instrument of Allah. And I think if you were to question Eckhart you'd probably find a similar philosophy. And this is the most mysterious element of all, which is that evil never thinks of itself as evil. It thinks of itself as good. And it looks at the world with equal amounts of self-justification. It's not like some sniveling villain who's twisting his hands while he's tying the maiden to the railroad tracks. It's a very, very modern concept of evil.
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And Tom McCamus has done a great job with Eckhart.

Shea: And he's done a wonderful job as well. It's one of the things that makes this series so timely.
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What do you see as the reoccurring themes on the show?

Shea: Well, certainly there's an overarching theme of the battle over light and dark and good and evil. Which is one of the things that explains our residence into the collective unconscious that's watching the show. There's also the kind of allegorical level where each of these episodes stands alone as a morality play.
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What's your favorite episode so far?

Shea: The favorite one I've had to play? I've had a couple favorite ones. I loved the one when everybody was just dying. And they set up this nasty mutant killing disease that was wiping through the ranks, and we had set up this kind of M*A*S*H-like hospital unit in a big airplane hangar and I had to fight to save them. I had this great guest villain that week. It was a really interesting the way that that story evolved. But then there's another one with this woman who is capable of changing someone's moral polarity. This woman changes me. She touches me and changes me, so good people turn bad and bad people turn good, and I turn completely into a monster. Oh, it's very cool. The stuff I got to do was so much fun. Those are really fun.
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You're in the middle of an amazing career. There aren't many actors who have the ability to move from something like Missing to Mutant X. And to play the villain or to play the good guy in equal quantities.

Shea: Well, it's been fun that way. There's a great American poet named Wallace Stevens from Hartford, Connecticut, who wrote that we climb to heaven on the stairway of surprise, and it's this element of surprise in constantly being challenged by something completely different from what you've done before that I think makes life interesting for me. That's like going from directing Southie to working off-Broadway, to doing something on television mainstream, and after this God knows what I'll do, but I'm sure it will not be on television. It makes life much more interesting and stretches you and in the end you look back on your career and you've had a lot of fun. It's really exciting when you go skiing and you look at the map of the mountain and you see all these runs, there might be 40 or 50 different runs. And some of them are simple runs and some of them are intermediate runs and some of them are really tricky, and really hard. But also if you look at a mountain they're carved out, there might be 40 different runs. So if you look at a career that way too, the beauty of being a modern actor in the 21st century is that we go with equal facility between the stage and film and television, between acting and directing and writing. And in the course of a long career you want to do all the runs down that mountain. So you say, "Well, I did whatever could be done and that's a great thing." I've talked to the current producer about directing an episode, maybe at the end of next season. That would be a great challenge for me, because of the astonishing technical complexity that the show demands of a director and its crew. The digital effects, working with CGI, working with computer stuff and planning those effects and shooting them are very, very tricky and they are unlike anything I've directed before. The stunt work is state of the art, and demands directors know how to shoot action. Between the wirework, you know, working with the stunt coordinators and the fight coordinators would be a real challenge because there's a good way to do it and there's a bad way to do it, and I'd want to do it really well. And also if I was going to direct an episode, I'd have to act in it as well as be the director and that would be a great challenge. That's something that I look forward to somewhere down the line.
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I hear big changes are in store for the end of the season.

Shea: That's right. It's going to be really exciting. It will be great for the audience, because it allows us to take them places where they didn't anticipate we were going to go. We can climb to that heaven.
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What do we have to look forward to in the future from John Shea?

Shea: I don't know [laughs]. I am so rooted in the moment, I can't even begin to tell you what lies ahead. I know that I will be back and doing all the episodes next year. But I don't know what those episodes entail, nor do the writers [laughs], because they're so exhausted after producing all of this. We've talked about ideas, but I don't even want to say what they might be. I know that there are surprises in store, and I know that things are going to change. And I know that this last episode we're shooting is going to set up an entire new dimension to the show, and that's going to be really exciting. But I don't even want to know too much about it. I want to just go in and just do it and be taken someplace as an actor. Only because I just like surprises. I don't read reviews. I don't watch previews. If somebody is talking about a movie that they love, I just walk away from them. I put my fingers in my ears and hum to myself. Only because I like blind dates. And for me what is about to happen to Adam and Mutant X is going to be a blind date.

© SciFi.com

John Shea: 1/02 SFX interview, on John Shea Fans

John Shea - SFX (January 2002)

He was the other Lex Luthor that wasn't Gene Hackman. What is it about the letter X for John Shea?

You're a delectable stud muffin or a gorgeous babe. You wake up one morning and you've suddenly developed superpowers. So, who do you turn to? If you're one of the unfeasibly attractive members of Mutant X, chances are you'd seek out Adam, leader of a rebel organisation that harbours mutants and sends them out to fight evil. Because, as John Shea puts it, he's their new dad. "It's fun for me because I am a father in real life, so I understand that parental thing," he tells us, proudly. "Adam's a director, a coach on a team, because I have to direct their energies into a positive realm rather than a negative."

Adam's presence provides the show with a weighty central character to balance out the bevy of male and female beauties, many of whom have only just entered this old business called "show". "For some of them, this is their first major piece of work; they're really just beginning," he confirms. "And I do feel more like a veteran here: 40 feature films; this is my third television series, and I've been in 20 plays in New York. I've done films all over the world, including England. My first feature film in England was a film with Helen Mirren called Hussy." Great title! "It was about a guy that worked nights in a nightclub where all these strippers hung out. I had a great time with that! She was my love interest in the film and we shot some wild scenes." He laughs cheekily. "So, anyway, I feel now as I meet all these younger actors, that I'm an old pro who's been out there and done all this other stuff."

Mutant X aside, many people probably most associate John Shea with his role as Lex Luthor on Lois & Clark: The New Adventures Of Superman. "We had a fantastic time filming it!" he recalls. "We always tried to play it for real, as much as possible, although the tone of Lois & Clark was much more like romantic comedy than Mutant X; it had a lighter tone to it, as well as a lot of adventure. It had all kinds of sexual dynamics between Lois and Clark and me." Because Shea lived in New York at the time he had to commute to LA and back for the filming. Understandably, this took its toll, and he negotiated a smaller role in season two. "A 100,000 miles in the air," he explains, "was really hard on me and my family. I was still in the show, but I was doing special 'sweeps'Lex Luthor episodes. And the question was, how 'super' was Superman if he couldnever vanquish this guy? So they created what I call Kleenex villains, disposable ones that popped up every week. And I would come back in and we would mix it up and have a lot of fun, then I would disappear."Something that didn't disappear was his hair. Shea acknowledges that the 'real' Luthor was bald, "but we wanted to do something different. The other thing is that if you have a shaved head and you show up in the series, there's something wrong with you: it immediately screams 'villain'. If Lex Luthor were really alive, he would probably look exactly like I tried to look. He was a cross between Richard III and Donald Trump: outside you look like Trump, inside you're Richard III, a deeply twisted sociopath!"

Has he seen the new version of Lex in current US smash Smallville? He chuckles. "He's too young to be bald," he says of shiny-domed actor Michael Rosenbaum. "He must have shaved his head! I know that it's on the air, and I haven't seen it yet. I think it's doing really well." Shea is especially philosophical about Mutant X after the events of September 11. "We're at war; I'm from New York, I've got friends down there in Ground Zero and firemen are losing their lives... I thought, God, what a silly thing I do for a living! Then I thought, no: we're providing a world that people can travel to. They can forget about all the events outside and feel good about themselves." He pauses to think. "Mutant X was to me a potentially interesting world. It seemed to be original; I'd never seen a world in which people had been created through genetic mutation that gave them these cool powers."

Obviously he hasn't seen the X-Men movie, but he has gone out of his way to paw through some old X-Men and Mutant X comic books. "There are parallels, but there are also vast differences. Our characters are trying to create three-dimensional human beings. What we discovered on Lois & Clark, which I think is true for Mutant X, is that the audience tire very quickly of characters that they cannot relate to. If these characters are just larger than life, and don't feel sadness and pain then it's gonna get very boring."

So what of Adam? He's surrounded by fanciable young 'uns, but will he ever getto have some fun himself? "We just shot an episode where an old lover comes back into my life," he says, wryly. "I won't tell you what happens, but it was a really interesting episode!"

Any rampant sex, a la Helen Mirren in Hussy? "No, but she had stealth abilities," he admits. "That's a very sexy thing to have!"

© SFX

John Shea: 12/12/02 Visimag's Xpose

Madam I'm Adam
by Isabelle Meunier Xpose special

Adam's leading the Mutant X team into a more pro-active attitude in season two, as star John Shea tells Isabelle Meunier.

As Mutant X reaches the end of its second year on air, Canada has honored the first season with four nominations for the 2002 Gemini Awards, including Best Actor shortlist for John Shea's portrayal of Adam, charismatic founder of the Mutant X team. "I'm working hard to make it good as it can be and if somebody else thinks so, that's great," the actor modestly smiles. "Lauren [Lee Smith] was nominated too, as was the show in the Sound and Music categories, and it's a good thing that Mutant X got these nominations in the first season. This is a sign that at least people know that we're doing the best we can within the genre's rules, and it brings us extra artistic credibility because these genre shows-particularly action shows-aren't usually taken so seriously at first. "This show isn't the king that's ever going to get great reviews from the critics," he continues, "because it's a genre they can put down very easily, but I don't care. All I know is that we have a loyal audience out there and that out mission is to entertain, to tell good stories and create a fantastic universe where people can come in for one hour a week and have a good time. We are proud of what we've accomplished so far and the effort is to keep going and make it as strong as it can be given the time, money and genre limitations that we have."

In an attempt to take the series to new levels, new blood has been infused into its creative heart, something Shea welcomes enthusiastically. "We have a new producer and production team," he explains, "and this brings new energy, ideas and dimensions to the show. We're trying to explore more of the characters' emotional dimensions, because we spent more time last year dealing with the villas and guest stars than we did with our own characters. The focus has changed, and this will make the show richer and also much more interesting for us as actors. Sometimes our characters will be in conflict with each other; and that'll create problems we'll have to deal with as any family does. Feelings will get hurt because they have feelings to be hurt. These people may have been genetically altered to have these cool powers, but it doesn't make them any less human and as such, they'll have good and bad days, as well as secrets and problems. Exploring this further makes the characters much more emotionally accessible to the audience and people begin to relate to them. It's less 'comic book' and more drama, and while there's still plenty of action and adventure going on, there's this added dimension the show needed."

That's the good news for critics who complained that the first season of Mutant X was a little formulaic. "It's a similar problem to the one Lois and Clark ran into with Lex Luthor. Throughout the first season, Superman couldn't vanquish Lex who was smarter than him; therefore how 'super' was he? I wanted to leave in the second season and the producers said, 'Oh good, because we can bring in more villains.' I call these 'Kleenex villains'; they pop up once a week and can be disposed of. I loved working with Tom McCamus [regular villain Mason Eckhart] and the battle of wits was fun," he fondly adds, "but I know that they'll bring in other people for me to spar with like this.

"Having vanquished Genomex and got rid of Eckhart," he continues, "the entire world of Mutant X's been redesigned. There's a kind of breathing space and things which were under the surface of last years can begin to manifest in the designs; Oriental influences that were underneath Mutant X philosophically are starting to be expressed symbolically through sculptures and art that you now see hanging on the walls. The antiseptic world were all living in last year was appropriate for the battles we were fighting then, because we were constantly embattled. We lived in a sort of military state of mind which was reflected in the sets, costumes and writing, but now real-life has began to creep in. We use props we didn't have last year; there are papers on out desks, we'll drink a cup of coffee while walking down the hall, there's a living area where we can hang out and talk. We have bedrooms, sometimes there's music playing…It's less military, more real and human, which is the point."

Still, relaxation can only go so far, as the team's genetic powers are in a constant state of flux. "When Emma first got her [blasting] power last year, in the season finale A Breed Apart, it was like a bull in a china shop," Shea chuckles. "She couldn't control it and was blasting at us, so seeing us running for cover was very funny! But she's learned to control it over a period of time and it's now a powerful weapon." Other members of the team are also developing extra powers, some of which have hidden dangers. "For instance," Shea comments, "Jesse now has the power to phase out, but if he loses his ability to phase back or gets a virus in his system, he could dissipate without ever coming back to physical reality, literally disintegrating into thin air. There's an added sense of danger because any of them could die at any time." New powers aren't an issue for Adam, but we'll still be discovering his hidden depths. "He begins to be less than perfect, you know. He's not always right all the time and he also has his own secret little world, "Shea reveals. "he communicates with people Mutant X doesn't even know about; and turns out to have contacts through the military -industrial complex, with politicians, industrialist and agencies like the CIA and Interpol. People running those agencies turn to Adam for information and favors, as they know our computer and satellite technology is pretty advanced and sophisticated. Adam also turns to them for information, but of course, he doesn't know if they're always telling the truth."

This should prove a source of trouble within the team, if unreliable information puts the group at risk. "There could be some tension and I hope the team doesn't turn on me," Shea laughs before justifying the secrecy. "This is lying so much as it is trying to protect them. It's about the need to know; does Mutant X always need to know where I get some of my information from? No." Nor does the world at large need to know about the existence of the team protecting them, as reflected by the series' new opening narration. "I say in each episode opening, 'we fight to protect a world that doesn't even know we exist,' so it's like Mutant X is this secret positive force out there watching and monitoring what's going on. We've become much more of a global police force," Shea comments. "Our reach is much broader than it was last year when we were preoccupied with pure survival, and out potential annihilation by Genomex."

When Mutant X's out and about, Adam will often stay behind to keep an eye on Sanctuary, which means the actor has to use on his imagination as he woks alone save for a camera crew. "I have long conversations with people who aren't there," he laughs. "Although I do get out, I find myself acting alone a lot on set because the four of them are out kicking ass somewhere on location and I'm in the Sanctuary, communicating with them through computer video links, So I have the assistant director or script supervisor reading their lines and I have to imagine how the actors would do it. It's a challenge, but it's worked out pretty well and it's also better for the audience to see people interacting that way." Shea finds solace in his on-on-one dialogues with fellow co-stars, especially those conducted in layman's terms. "Last season I had to talk a lot of scientific techno babble, which is important because Adam's a scientist and knows about this world, but there should be a balance between this and having normal person-to-person conversation as well." Finding that balance is an essential part of the series' evolution, the 'stairway of surprise' from one of Shea's favorite quotes. "Things constantly change and that's exciting to me," he enthuses, "because if things don't change, they stagnate and die."

© Visimag's Xpose

John Shea: 4/6/04 Zap 2 It

'Mutant X's' John Shea Goes West
(Tuesday, April 06 03:38 PM)
By Kate O'Hare

HOLLYWOOD (Zap2it.com) - - After apparently returning from the dead on the syndicated science-fiction series "Mutant X," actor John Shea is experiencing a resurrection of sorts in other areas of his life.
The long-time New York resident temporarily has left Gotham behind for the golden shores of Southern California.

"Over the years, I've lived in L.A. many, many times," he says. "But this is the first time I've lived in Venice. I'm right on the Boardwalk. It's so cool.

"There's this great world outside the windows. As I talk to you, I'm looking out over the ocean. Then there's this parade of characters that marches below on the Boardwalk. It reminds me of New York.
"I've just been on the East Coast. From the stage in New York, I went to Toronto to do 'Mutant X.' Now, with 'Mutant X' finishing up its third season, I thought it was time to return to L.A. I'm feeling like I'm being reborn here."

Shea spent two seasons as a regular in "Mutant X," playing Adam Kane, a genetic scientist protecting a group of his mutant creations from his former employer, now determined to hunt them down. The original cast included Victoria Pratt, Victor Webster, Forbes March and Lauren Lee Smith.

At the end of season two, the destruction of a genetic lab left Smith's character, telepathic mutant Emma DeLauro, dead, and Kane missing.

"I was very sad," Shea says about Smith being dropped from the cast. "I loved her. On the other hand, in the world of 'Mutant X,' anything can happen. It's like in real life -- now you see them, now you don't. That shock that everyone felt when that happened reflects what happens in real life, when people in your life suddenly disappear and there's no good reason why. They're just not there anymore.

"They've been killed; they've disappeared; they've run away. Whatever it might be, they're just not there, and they leave a hole in your life, a wound. I feel that her loss was a kind of wound that's still felt by me and the audience."

It was well into the third season before the Mutant X team learned that Kane was not dead, but in hiding.

"When producer Peter Mohan and I talked about how I might come back and how interesting it might be, the idea was to have disappeared for a good reason," Shea explains. "That is, I had been underground, doing investigations about the threats that were out there for all of us.

"The only way to do that was to fake my own death. In doing that, I've gone into deep cover. I discovered things that I will now reveal over the next six episodes. The show has this paranoid world view that reflects the paranoid world we live in, where there's secret cells of al-Qaida in your corner grocery."

Adam's disappearance coincided with the arrival of new team member Lexa Pierce (Karen Cliche), a mutant who can bend light, and who has her own personal history with Adam. The team hardly welcomed her with open arms.

"What Peter is reflecting in the writing," Shea says, "is the fact that it's very difficult to know who to trust in this day and age. That's one of the things Peter and I talked about. There's this new team member, Lexa Pierce. They don't know if they can trust her or not; she doesn't know if she can trust him.

"With Adam gone, there's no kind of moral compass. They're on their own. When he does come back, it's 'Why was he gone? Can we trust what he's saying? Why did he abandon us?' It's all the feelings of betrayal that people have."

Shea made his feature writing and directing debut in 1998 with the gritty Boston-set drama "Southie," starring Donnie Wahlberg ("Boomtown") and Rose McGowan ("Charmed").

Under "it's a small world after all," McGowan's boss on "Charmed" is executive producer Brad Kern, who cut his genre teeth as a writer in the 1990s on "Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman," which featured Shea as the Man of Steel's nemesis, Lex Luthor.

"One of the reasons I wanted to do 'Lois & Clark,' " Shea says, "is because of the action-adventure and special-effects aspects of it. So I've had a tremendous education.

"The last episode of 'Mutant X' we shot, the last 20 minutes of the film were all CGI, so it's sort of like shooting 'Lord of the Rings.' We're acting in sets that aren't really there and talking to people that aren't really there. I feel like I'm plugged into where the future of film and television is going."

Shea also keeps a weather eye on the newest incarnation of Superman, The WB's "Smallville," and on the small screen's current Lex Luthor.

"I met Michael Rosenbaum in London this past summer," Shea recalls. "We were both there as part of a big sci-fi convention. I had a great time with him, and he and I hatched a lot of possible scenarios where we could come back together [on 'Smallville']. I'd like to work with him. He's a great guy."

Right now, Shea is reading pilots and working on a new feature project, tentatively titled "The Junkie Priest," about Father Dan Egan, a Franciscan friar who battled drug and alcohol addiction in New York. It's unsure whether he'll return to 'Mutant X' for its fourth season.

"That remains to be seen," he says. "Let's put it this way, I would like to go back, because season three ends on another very cool cliffhanger.

"I'm not under contract with them, but I feel like I'm under contract with the audience. I wouldn't want to be left at the altar. So I would like to go back and shoot some episodes that would resolve that character arc, do it in an artistic and intelligent fashion, so that people weren't just left hanging."

CYBERSPATIAL ANOMALIES: "Mutant-Xtreme" at cetara.tripod.com/mutantx/main.html offers series info and "Rumors." Meanwhile, the show's official site can be found at mutantx.com.

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