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Julian McMahon & Dylan Walsh |
Currently in its fourth season, Nip/Tuck, airing Tuesdays on FX, has already gotten off to a strong start, pulling in close to 5 million viewers for it’s premiere. The original drama series follows the lives of Dr. Sean McNamara (Dylan Walsh) and Dr. Christian Troy (Julian McMahon), two plastic surgeons, best friends and business partners who run McNamara/Troy, a South Beach plastic surgery practice. While their patients are attempting to fix internal traumas with external cosmetic procedures, the surgeons themselves have their own unhealed wounds.
The first episode of the season saw the surgeons celebrate a milestone surgery -- their 5,000th operation -- even though the future of their practice may be in jeopardy. Christian decided to seek help from a psychologist (played by Brooke Shields), while Sean learned that there is something wrong with the unborn child that his wife Julia (Joely Richardson) is carrying. After having a considerably darker and more depressing tone last year, Julian McMahon is anxious to get back to the raunchiness that the series has become known for. “[Show creator] Ryan Murphy is always open to discussion,” the 38-year-old from Sydney, Australia tells MediaBlvd Magazine. “That’s one of the great things about working on the show. We all have the opportunity to voice our opinions. I usually love what Ryan does. I love all of his writing. I just felt like last year got a little depressing. For me, Nip/Tuck is deep and meaningful when we’re raunchy and sexy. I didn’t feel like we had to just be depressing.”
{quote_top}Even though Christian is an arrogant, narcissistic, unethical, ladies man who worships wine, women and the almighty dollar, he still manages to be appealing to the female viewers, thanks, in large part, to McMahon’s charisma on screen. “Christian lives by his own rules. He’s very gregarious in his manner and the way that he lives his life, and I think that’s fascinating to women. That’s fascinating to everybody.”
McMahon says that those personality traits were also what attracted him to the character, and made him want to be a part of the project. “I love the fact that he’s extraordinarily honest. I like that he’s honest about his manipulation. I like that he says things we’d all like to say and don’t actually get the opportunity to, or don’t feel we have the right to, or don’t feel like we can say it to that person. Sometimes playing him is a good cleanser because you get all that stuff out of your system.”
Over the seasons, Christian has sunk further and further into depravity -- a fact that McMahon says he’s just fine with. “One of the reasons Christian has gone so far out there is because that’s what I wanted to do. I don’t know if this is just a depiction of a build-up of doing things for three years and playing the character. I just wanted things to be sexier, wilder, more out of control, and I wanted to push that envelope as much as possible. I still want to do that.”
Last season, McMahon’s character pushed the envelope pretty far when Christian made one of his sexual conquests wear a bag over her head while they were in bed. “That was a big one. I don’t know if anybody liked that or didn’t like it. I thought it was pretty out of control. Last season was a tough season and that episode would have looked a little different, had it been in a season like the season that we’re having now, which is a bit more rambunctious, a bit more fun and a bit more enjoyable. As shallow as this guy seems, if you really go back and look at the people and the path that he’s traveled, than you get to see a guy who’s been many different people, not just the shallow, women-crazy, fast-car-driving guy.”
McMahon admits that a scene like that will make him stop and shake his head, but he trusts the writers enough to jump right in, anyway. “I often shake my head in many different directions. The bag over the head thing was a tough one for me, just because it was so denigrating. But, I like the way they finished it. We always travel that journey, and the journey fulfills itself in some way. It’s not just about denigrating somebody. It really was about opening up people and having them express themselves. If you had to put a bag on somebody’s head to do that, as ludicrous and horrific as it sounds, that’s what it takes. I find that truly interesting.”
The former University of Sydney law student says that he’s able to pull off the sometimes outrageous actions of his character because he has no problem leaving his work at work. “I just don’t take my work home with me. You learn, after a period of time, that you switch it on when you need it. It’s not just about not taking it home. You can’t take it to the trailer. You can’t take it to lunch. You need to have those little breaks, so that you can perform properly. If it’s encumbering you throughout the day, for me, personally, I don’t get the opportunity to perform properly when the cameras are rolling.”
{quote_middle}Although he only plays one on TV, McMahon admits that he has had plastic surgeons try to talk shop with him. “When we first started the show, there was this whole thing about the plastic surgery board being up in arms against us because we weren’t depicting surgery properly. But, every surgeon I’ve ever met has done nothing but say positive things. They love the show and they love the way we depict the surgery. Now, it is a TV show and we try to get away with as many things as we can. It’s not going to be a real surgery. That’s all there is to it. We’re trying to make it enjoyable. We’re trying to be shocking. I think the funniest thing I ever heard from a plastic surgeon was when one of them came up to me and said, ‘I think that your character, Christian Troy, was modeled on me.’”
“You have to remember that these guys save people’s lives. Plastic surgery goes in many different directions. It’s such an evolution of what’s happened over the last 20 years. They are the Gods of the universe, so they’ve got that God complex, which I think that Christian has, a little bit.”
Most of the outrageous surgeries featured on the show are based in reality, which makes them even more shocking. With all of the surgeries that have been featured on Nip/Tuck, McMahon says that he’s still shocked at what he reads in the scripts.
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(left to right) Dylan Walsh, Joely Richardson & Julian McMahon |
“Surgery’s not in my life, except for this show. So, to think about opening somebody up and putting their loved one’s ashes in their breasts, just sounds out of control to me. It wanes a little after four years, but I’m still shocked. I love reading the scripts for this show because I love what I get to play. I love the fact that the viewers are surprised every time they see it, and I want them to be continually surprised. That’s one of the great things about Nip/Tuck, that really separates it from other productions.”
The father of a 6-year-old girl who is already showing signs of being a natural performer, McMahon recently wrapped production on Premonition, a new film with Sandra Bullock that is expected to be released in March 2007. “It’s a psychological thriller, and I play her husband. The best way to describe the film is that she wakes up one morning, with her beautiful, happy life and her wonderful husband and children, to find out that her husband has been killed. And then, she wakes up the next morning and he wasn’t. We shot for five months in Shreveport, Louisiana. The great thing about this business is the ability to travel to different cultures and places. I’ve never spent time in Louisiana, and I never had crawfish before, so that was wonderful, as was working with Sandy, who is pretty much as big as it gets in this business. She was absolutely wonderful. It was just a great experience.”
Last summer, McMahon was seen in the hugely successful 20th Century Fox and Marvel Studios’ summer hit Fantastic Four, as villain Victor Von Doom. The cast is reuniting for the sequel which is due out in June 2007.
{quote_bottom}“With the first film, I was in make-up for up to 10 hours, and that is 10 hours before I started a 13 or 14 hour day. It was a pain in the ass, but it was just part of the job. I don’t think there’s going to be as many prosthetics this time. I’d rather not do it again, but at the same time, I’ve signed up to do what I need to do. I was the one that came up with a lot of it, so I was kicking myself afterwards.”
