Debra Messing & Larry Drake
You'd Better Prey ...
In the ABC drama Prey, Mankind's future is at stake when a concealed enemy plots the downfall of society.
While this might not seem the most original premise for a new series, Prey actually explores a fresh and intriguing concept. The villains in this scenario are not humans, nor are they an invading alien species. Instead, they are the enemy within - the next stage of human development.
In the show's pilot episode Existence, bio-anthropologist Sloan Parker (played by Debra Messing) investigates the death of her mentor. She uncovers the terrifying truth: the killer is not human. Rather, he is a member of a new species, a result of the effects of global warming. Outwardly this race is indistinguishable from Home Sapiens, but their faculties are far more advanced. If this new race succeed in reproducing in significant numbers then, according to the law of evolution, humanity's days are numbered ....
Beautifully shot, directed with style and chillingly realistic, Prey is the latest series to be accused of jumping on the X-Files bandwagon. Nevertheless, as Debra Messing tells TV Zone, such comparisons are unfair.
'The X-Files is different,' she says 'what I like about our show is that it's more fact based, it's scarier. It's not the supernatural. It's not horror. It's something more insidious and more evasive than that. That scare me. It gets my imagination sparked'.
Prey originally started life as a pilot called Hungry for Survival, which starred Twin Peaks' Sherilyn Fenn as Sloan Parker. While ABC executives liked the idea, certain aspects of the production did not seem to gel. A new executive producer, Craig Charles was brought aboard to beef up the story line, while the leading role was re-cast.
Messing says she needed little persuasion to step into the recently vacated role.
'What I responded to about Sloan Parker was that she is unlikely heroine in the midst of all this.' she reveals. 'She is fundamentally a lab rat who is very passionate and dedicated to her science work, and then she's thrust into the middle of this thing. She's not really equipped to handle it, but she finds the resolve and the forces within herself to forge ahead. Sometimes she surprises herself with her own strength, and her own courage, and she discovers things about herself that she didn't know existed. In other times, she's not quite as capable and as effective, and luckily she has friends around her who are there.'
One of those allies is Dr Walter Attwood, played by Larry Drake - best known to audiences for his stint as the developmentally challenged office helper Benny in LA Law. While many actors might have faced years of typecasting after playing such a part, Drake is delighted to be playing a part which could not be more different to Benny.
'It's wonderful.' he grins. 'That's what I love about being an actor is taking the range and playing what's there. I love the fact that this guy's smart. I love the fact that he's capable. He's not as emotional as Benny; some of that is a little disappointing. I loved doing Benny. This is new, and different.'
Drake has been with Prey since the original pilot. He has survived changes in both cast and production staff, and through this creative process the character has developed in new directions.
'I kind of liked him in the first pilot,' Drake claims, 'but he was king of foolish and arrogant and he was a little more on the funny side. In this version my character has evolved into a very capable, smart man. Enigmatic as well. The change in the character was, to me, a very positive change. He's not so much the butt of a joke, but more a guiding light.
'He's one of those people that we haven't defined yet. The upside of that is he can go almost anywhere. What I like about playing it is the fact he can handle so many different things. He is full of surprises as the episodes evolve, and I like the potential in that.
'Sometimes it's a little frustrating not knowing exactly what the background is, but that's okay, I'd rather have the open-ended potential than things tied down too much that limit the character in the future.'
Commissioned as a mid-season replacement, Prey is very much a work in progress. While many shows have their own series bible devised in advance, Charlie Craig and his team do not wish to stifle their creativity.
'Literally ever week we get the script and we discover something new,' says Messing. 'That's the thing that's great - the audience and the characters discover it at exactly the same time. At this point we just know that this new species is smarter and they don't feel emotion as deeply, and that allows them to be far more violent and to be serial rapists and serial killers.'
'Part of what attracted me about this was the fact that our species cannot identify the other species,' continues Drake. 'They know us, but we don't know them. This is an internal change that is not recognisable, and that means anything is possible, and you're going to get people not knowing where they stand. Once this becomes a public issue, you're going to have a populace that begins to panic and doesn't know what to do next or who to be afraid of. That's a very frightening situation.'
Thus far only half a season of Prey has been ordered - a 13 episode commitment that takes the show into the spring. Messing indicates that, if a second series is commissioned, things will really begin to heat up ....
'By next year the whole world will know that this species exists. I think it will then become and international effort to figure out how to deal with the species.'
Just as Prey has been likened to The X-Files, it's almost inevitable that Sloan Parker will be compared to Dana Scully. Some actresses could find the comparison frustrating, but Messing reveals that she regards it a huge compliment.
'I am such a huge fan of Gillian Anderson's work,' she says. 'Sloan is not a professional; Scully has been doing this for a long time. I'm just a researcher who is thrust into it.
'They're both very intelligent. They're both scientists, they both are analytical but obviously Dana Scully is far more sceptical. From my experience of watching The X-Files, David Duchovny's character was the one who believed, and Dana Scully was always the scientists who was trying to prove scientifically that it could not happen. In Prey, I have the scientific proof, and that means more than anything to both of our characters - the scientific validity.'
Thousands of years ago, the Neanderthals died out. Many scientists believe that the evolution of Homo Sapiens, brought about by major climatic changes, was responsible for the extinction.
With mounting scientific evidence that global warming could repeat the phenomena, even Dana Scully might be forced to keep her scepticism in check ....
TV Zone ..... May 1998
David Richardson