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Alien High- Teens from Another World...
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Thanks to MyrnaLynne for submitting this!
The biggest challenge was casting the right talent to play the three alien teens. The roles ultimately went to Jason Behr, who plays Max Evans, Katherine Heigl as his sister Isobel and Brendan Fehr as Michael. “First, let me say that Jason is one of the most naturally gifted actors I’ve ever worked with,” Nutter remarks. “We talked a lot about this character during the show’s early stages. Even in the audition process we talked about him, and he totally got the guy. He understood Max’s humility, he understood that that was Max’s strength. There’s also a wonderful calmness, maturity, and wisdom about the guy that I thought was very important. All three of the aliens needed to {convey a sense of} wisdom that was something other than what you would expect in a young person, and he was perfect at that.” “Brendan Fehr has such charisma and such natural ability. He hasn’t been doing this for a very long time at all, but he has wonderful instincts. He’s from Vancouver, and looks a little like David Duchovny, so that can’t hurt, especially when you’re talking about aliens.” The role of Liz, a Roswell High student whose life changes dramatically after she’s saved by Max, proved to be more difficult to cast. A.J. Buckley, who had worked with Nutter on “Disturbing Behavior,” came in to “Roswell” to audi8tion for the role of the sheriff’s son Kyle, and suggested they look at Shiri Appelby. “A.J. had worked with her on a low-budget feature and said, ‘Why don’t you see this girl? She’s quite good!’ We were at the stage where we were trying to find the right Liz, so I said sure, and band, that was it.” Heading up the show’s adult cast is veteran character actor William Sadler as Sheriff Valenti. Sadler is familiar to Starlog readers for such diverse roles as Death in “Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey,” Newbery in “Disturbing Behavior,” the villain of “Die Hard 2” and Section 31’s Sloan on “DS9.” ... “Jason Katims and I both felt his character couldn’t be a black hat, because that gts very old,” he notes....’You get a sense of his passion. He’s not a bad guy, he’s just a guy who wants to find out the truth and what’s happening.” |