Did you emulate a past real-life or fictional President to prepare for the role?
People say I look like John Kerry, and some people perceive me to have that particular kind of carriage. I love to shake that perception up. I love the opportunity to just be silly, because people don’t expect it. The balance of this character is to have the political carriage, and in the next instant, to break it up with a good laugh, and then go back to it.
It sounds like Kyle Massey’s Cory will be causing plenty of trouble for the Martinez administration. Was Kyle as difficult to work with as Lt. Darwin, the animatronic dolphin on seaQuest DSV?
Next thing you’ll be telling me is that Kyle Massey is animatronic, which I would believe because I always felt Darwin was a real dolphin. You could work with him in a scene and not know he was animatronic. It’s much more challenging to work with Kyle, because he has great improvisational skills and he keeps you on his toes.
So many of us loved you on seaQuest. What do you remember most from working on that classic sci-fi series?
My first memory of walking through the three or four sound stages that were dripping with millions of dollars and all that high-tech equipment is the strongest. They were the most incredible sets I had ever seen. I was in uniform and thinking, "God, I’m a part of all of this, part of this vessel." It was truly exciting. I met Mister Spielberg a couple of times on the set, and though I didn’t know him well enough to call him Steven, he told me that if the show spun off, I was one who’d be taking the lead in the sequel. It was a beautiful thing, a dream that every actor fantasizes about, having a Spielberg or a Coppola telling him what he wants to hear. I had that moment with Spielberg, and it was like I wrote out the dialogue. It was that perfect. Unfortunately, the show took a dive in the ratings and they went hunting for reasons behind the plunge, and they figured that I was one of those reasons.
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