By Christina Radish
The third season of the hit USA Network television series The 4400, has followed NTAC (National Threat Assessment Command) partners Tom Baldwin (Joel Gretsch) and Diana Skouris (Jacqueline McKenzie), as they pursued a radical 4400 organization called the Nova Group. Nova had been launching attacks on individuals that were involved with the promicin inhibitor scandal that attempted to stifle the talents of the mysterious 4400 individuals who disappeared over a span of years, only to reappear without having aged a day. At the 4400 Center, Shawn (Patrick Flueger) dealt with this threat, along with the fact that 1-year-old Isabelle (Megalyn Echikunwoke) had become a beautiful and curious 20-year-old woman, literally overnight. All the while, no one had any idea that former Center leader Jordan Collier (Billy Campbell) would be returning from the dead. The season finale for The 4400 airs Sunday, August 27.
The 4400 co-stars Joel Gretsch, Jacqueline McKenzie, Billy Campbell and Megalyn Echikunwoke recently sat down with executive producer Ira Steven Behr (of Star Trek fame) and producer/writer Craig Sweeney to address some of the show’s secrets with MediaBlvd Magazine.
MediaBlvd.> What happened during last season, to lead up to what you’re doing this season?
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Billy Campbell at the San Diego Comic Convention held on July 22, 2006. PHOTO BY CHRISTINA RADISH / Agency Photos. |
Ira Steven Behr> Last season ended with the promicin scandal, and we realized that NTAC is not necessarily as clean an organization as we had thought. With the revelations of the promicin scandal and the stopping of the taking of the suppressor, at the end of the season, we kind of implied that all the 4400s, including Richard Tyler, who we saw suddenly get telekinesis, were meant to have abilities, and now they were going to develop abilities. That’s really what we took as the starting place for this season. We want to explore the change, both on a character level and how that would affect everything, both micro and macro. We also knew we had that last bullet in our pocket for the end of the season, when Jordan Collier was going to return. So, basically, we knew that we would be setting up a situation that would just get more and more heated. We knew we were setting up more and more dried brush for someone to come in and light a match to, and we knew who was going to light the match, so it just gave us an overall arcing feel for the season that we did not have last season, coming in. We were a mini-series, originally, and we didn’t know whether we were going to continue or not. In that sense, it’s been a really exciting year, creatively, because we had an idea what we wanted to do and to watch it unfold is fulfilling.
MB> For all of the actors, do you find that the writers are starting to write to your strengths? And, do you have things that you’re still learning about your characters?
Jacqueline McKenzie> I am definitely learning more about my character, that’s for sure. A part of the joy of being in a series is that you really have to relinquish all those needs to know the answers up front. I just roll with the punches. I get a script and all this stuff happens, and I go, “Oh, really? Wow!”
Megalyn Echikunwoke> It keeps it very fun and interesting. Every time we get a script, we’re like, “What will I learn about myself this time?”
MB> Billy, where has Jordan Collier been?
Billy Campbell> I have absolutely no idea. These guys are making it up as they go along, which is part of the extreme joy of the show.
Ira> The last time Jordan Collier disappeared, he was in the future, if you believe the myth that the 4400 were all taken to the future. Then, he was killed, and disappeared again.
MB> Will we find out where he went definitively, or will you keep the audience guessing?
Ira> We will find out where Jordan Collier was, according to Jordan Collier. And then, it’s up to all of us to decide whether or not we believe him.
MB> Is the fact that Jordan Collier and Jesus Christ share the same J.C. initials intentional?
Billy> I think that was entirely an accident.
Ira> His name, originally, was going to be Jordan Garfield. That was the name we sent off to get cleared. At the last minute, the name did not clear, and we had to come up with a different last name. The name Collier was tossed out there. At that moment -- of the five people that were in the room, or in rooms close by -- thought of the initials, so maybe it was just meant to be.
MB> Megalyn, your character is still very much a mystery. The audience doesn’t know whether she’s good or evil. Can you talk a little bit about what you know about Isabelle?
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Jacqueline McKenzie at the San Diego Comic Convention held on July 22, 2006. PHOTO BY CHRISTINA RADISH / Agency Photos. |
Megalyn> Well, she’s definitely childlike. I don’t know if she will ever completely grow up. I think she’s going to have an element of innocence to her for awhile, anyway. No matter how omni powerful you are, if you just grow up in five minutes, there’s only so much you can acquire, especially when you’re dealing with an evolving world. She’s innocent, but she’s also very powerful, so with that comes danger.
MB> Is she good or evil?
Jacqueline> I think that’s what I love about our show. I don’t think it ever says who’s good or evil, or if the 4400 are a good thing or a bad thing.
MB> But, Diana and Tom are good.
Jacqueline> Well, we work for a company that we believed in, and they turned out to have a huge conspiracy last year with the promicin scandal. There was backstabbing, and the shenanigans that are going on in NTAC, but I really like that. I think it shows more of a slice of life that way, and it’s far more acceptable to have characters that are really well drawn, and plights that are really well drawn.
Megalyn> It’s more about the characters and the individual relationships and the real moments in people’s lives.
MB> The last time we saw Jordan, he had an interest in baby Isabelle, who may have been responsible for his death. They recently got together after Jordan comes back. What can you tell us about getting them together, now that she’s an adult?
Ira> I think that both Craig and I, throughout the entire season, were waiting for the chance to take a wack at that scene, when first they meet. I think it’s an interesting scene. They’re two really interesting characters with a great deal of knowledge and, at the same time, at least in terms of Isabelle’s character, a desire to push some of that knowledge away. Jordan Collier, if you track him throughout the series, seems to take on many different personas. Now, he seems to be the guy who has the ultimate answer that he’s going to give to all of us. It’s just two interesting characters to play with.
MB> Joel, is Tom ever going to be able to have anyone stick around in his family?
Joel Gretsch> It’s been a difficult year. Last year was a difficult year too. The good thing about Tom, for me, would be Diana and the relationship that we had in the three years of the show. We’ve evolved, we’ve learned and we’ve kept secrets from each other, and then we’ve revealed them and gotten to see how we each react to that. It’s very true to life. I love how we grew together. This season really proves it’s very profound. Being with each other every day, and working together and getting to know each other, and the respect that we have for each other, it was a lot of art and life coming together. Tom has the release with Diana. He trusts her and he can let some steam off with her and feel that he can put his guard down, when a lot of times, he’s trying to hold up so many balls in the air.
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Joel Gretsch at the San Diego Comic Convention held on July 22, 2006. PHOTO BY CHRISTINA RADISH / Agency Photos. |
Jacqueline> It’s tricky, too, because the characters don’t hang out. You don’t see them at the pub having a drink, or anything like that. Joel and I have a great rapport and get along famously. We’ve always wanted to be able to put that in there. This year, we’ve managed to do that a bit.
Ira> I think that one of the interesting things, if I may be so bold, is that at the beginning of the series, we tried to make sure there was no sexual tension between these two characters. We kept talking about how they’re individuals and they both have their own lives. There’s a partnership there, but we don’t want the fans to be sitting around, wondering, “When are they going to kiss? When are they going to ask each other out?” What’s really interesting is, this year, it kind of just dawned on me, strictly from what Joel and Jacqueline have brought to the roles, that there really is this hard-core friendship and relationship between the two of them. I spend a lot of time with Craig, and you realize just how much, from being with someone, throughout the day, all the time, you learn about each other, both in terms of their lives, and just who they are and how they react to things. You just become close. And so, we’ve been able to do stuff this year that really came out of left field because the characters just asked us to go there. I think that’s lovely, and I think it’s one of the successes of the show that we’ve had two strong characters, like Tom and Diana, who are distinct individuals with distinct storylines, and yet the fans and the audience still know that there’s a really strong bond between them.
MB> Can you talk, in general terms, about the strong metaphors in the show?
Craig Sweeny> The story ideas come first, and then the metaphors come out of that. For example, when we did the inhibitor storyline to end season two, there was a very clear disease metaphor. Specifically, a lot of my research was geared toward the early days of the AIDS virus. It was a disease where the symptoms were unrecognizable, and nobody knew how to handle it because nobody knew what it was. That emerged, as all our metaphors do, from a notion, a storyline. We never think, “Let’s make a statement about racism or about being an outsider.” You think of the action story and then you talk about ways to make it deeper, and metaphors and resonances and hidden layers of the meaning emerge from that.
Jacqueline> You start with the character and what the immediate circumstances of the scene are, and then you let that have its own ripple effect, through to the audience and the people seeing it. You can’t really play an idea. You can only play the actions. But, I love the way these analogies will happen, if you just are true to character. People are people, and if you listen to what they’re going to say and do, and you write accordingly, racism will come up because people can be racist. That’s what I loved about the whole NOVA group part of our story this year. They were a group of people who had sprung from a group that’s been ostracized and they were trying to find a voice and power. That’s not right, and it’s not wrong. I love the way our story doesn’t pass judgment.
MB> There are definitely parallels to terrorism too.
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Megalyn Echikunwoke at the San Diego Comic Convention held on July 22, 2006. PHOTO BY CHRISTINA RADISH / Agency Photos. |
Ira> Well, it’s difficult to divorce what you’re doing from what you’re experiencing in life. If you’re lucky, you have a show that gives you the room to at least touch on certain concepts. But, I really do think that the key is character. All of these people that we have, we are very lucky, and I think we’ve done a good job ourselves, of making these characters fully dimensional. I could sit for two hours and talk about Jordan Collier’s character, or how I view his character. At the beginning of this series -- in the mini-series part of it -- I thought I had Tom Baldwin pegged, from the get-go. Since then, that character has gotten so much more complicated with so many different levels, which is what you want. It gives us a chance to look at all these little metaphors and things coming out of character, and I think that’s when you know you have a show that’s worthwhile -- when the characters and the things within the show give you the chance to play with things like that.
Craig> You often don’t realize what the metaphors are until you’re looking back. It’s only now, as I look back, that I think that the dominant metaphor of the third season is the way technology spreads and changes societies. But, if you would have asked, in the middle of trying to get script #10 out, I would have been like, “What are you talking about? I’m just trying to write a scene.”
Ira> Or, even that that would have been the intent. That would have been the farthest thing from our mind. How do you sit down and say, “Okay, that’s what we’re going to do a season about. How are we going to make that come to life?” You never think about that. At the end, it’s like, “Oh, I see that in this, and I see other things as well.”
MB> Billy , can you talk about the boat trip that took you away from the show?
Billy> I went around the world for 13 months on a three-masted, square rig sailing vessel. We took cargo and donated it for isolated villages along the way. We went through all the oceans of the world, stopping at over 25 places. Yes, it is dangerous sometimes, when you run into a gale, as we did off the coast of Africa, but everything’s okay ‘cause she’s actually built for that kind of condition. And, we made it home, safely, to the east coast of Canada, and went back to work.
MB> Did you get bored?
Billy> Sometimes, yes, but very rarely -- mostly having to do with having a hangover and just being impatient to begin with, or something. But, generally, no because it’s what I’ve always wanted to do and I’m terribly excited doing it. I put in extra hours every day of the entire journey, working, just because it’s what I’ve always wanted to do. It was a fantasy.
MB> How do you make the decision to leave for over a year?
Billy> After 20-some years of waiting around Hollywood to have work, and feeling like I was out of work most of the time, even though I wasn’t, and putting my life on hold, I just pulled the trigger. I don’t know how or why. I didn’t think much about it.
MB> Do you read the fan message boards and see what they have to say about the show?
Ira> I stay off of them, as much as possible, based on when I was doing Star Trek. This being a serialized show, and the way we take the show in different places, I know that response can be skewed in all different kinds of ways. Sweeny lives and dies for the fans. He reads it every morning and every night. It’s like his tarot cards. He won’t get out of bed unless the fans tell him they love him.
Jacqueline> They want to know the answers as much as we actors want to know. “What’s going to happen Ira?” “What’s going to happen Craig?” We never know. After the first episode, they want to know all the answers, and it’s like, “Hey, guys, there’s 13 episodes, just let it roll off smoothly and your answers will come.” And, they really will in this season.
