Ham Tyler is a mercenary with a mission, a man who has left the 
jungles of banana republic revolts behind him to take on the greatest 
challenge of any soldier's career. The defense of the world itself.

In the original V, Mike Donovan (Marc Singer) led a group of rebels 
against the increasing stranglehold of the Visitors. In The Final 
Battle, his group struck time after time with tangible results. And 
leading forays with merciless skill was a new character, a man who 
would not let sentiment stand in the way of doing what needed to be 
done for the greater good. That man is Ham Tyler, as ruthless and 
implacable a foe as the Visitors are ever likely to face. Accepting 
orders from Mike Donovan only with great reluctance, he challenges 
those decisions and exposes the reckless side while agreeing to abide 
by them--up to a point. In the original conception of The Final 
Battle, there was no Ham Tyler, but rather a wheelchair-bound rebel 
leader.

"I was brought on to V through Brian Taggert. He was a writer on the 
six-hour sequel as well as on a movie I had done called Visiting 
Hours," Michael Ironside recalled. "Brian had a character named Ham 
who was in a wheelchair, but he felt that they needed someone with 
more grit or more punch to kind of balance out the good side of the 
resistance--to show the violent, hard-hitting side." And that fit 
the sturdy, imposing actor to a "t." "So I was basically asked to 
come in and supply some grit. I have to balance Marc Singer's 
character--who doesn't agree with the way Ham does things--and my 
character feels the same way about him.

"I chose to do Ham because he is not a sick character. He is a very 
hard, pragmatic character. He doesn't trust anybody and can't afford 
to get emotionally involved since he has lost his wife and child. 
Ham simply wants to do the job as fast and as simple as possible, 
with no parades."

While being an imposing and powerful character, Ham Tyler in V is yet 
a departure from previous larger than life roles Ironside has played 
because this time he isn't trying to murder or brutalize the good 
guys.

"The characters I've played up until now have been very sick people," 
Ironside explained. "They were people who are emotionally damaged or 
physically damaged. That's the nature of acting."

"While in Canada I'd be asked, 'Do you want to do this, take it or 
leave it?' So I'd take whatever I was given and did the best that I 
could with it. But now I can choose. I'd like to get more of the 
enjoyment I feel from acting and put it into my acting, but with the 
characters I'd been playing that wasn't easy.

"I don't see the difference between acting on a street corner or the 
Broadway stage. My job is to be real. I've heard myself referred to 
as a 'character actor' and I think that's a wonderful compliment. I 
think of character actors like Alec Guinness or Charles Laughton who 
have kinks and twists. I've played a psychiatrist but I've also 
played killers and it's the nature of the business that if you do it 
well, that's what they'll want to hire you for next time. I used to 
call them the 'dog-eating parts.' You know, the director say, 'We 
need somebody to bite a dog in this scene--let's call Ironside.'

"But my whole attitude towards myself has changed over the past few 
years. I just found out that half the crew on V-The Final Battle 
thought I was an asshole last year! They say now, 'Boy, have you 
changed!' What is reality? How big is King Kong? Your perceptions 
of truth can be so wrong. I did a show for NBC a few weeks ago, wore 
a tuxedo all day and thought, 'Michael, you did well.' I looked in 
the mirror on my way out and noticed that my zipper was open! What I 
thought was okay wasn't! That's where I think the humor and drama of 
life come about."

Another example of altered perceptions happened when he was working 
on V-The Final Battle. "Somebody came up to me and apologized for 
the great rush in producing a television show because they assumed I 
was used to features, which are usually produced slower. But what I 
had really been thinking was, 'Boy, is this slow,' because in Canada 
features are done for a million or a million-two and have a quicker 
pace than American TV work. Even Scanners was basically a low-budget 
film."

V--The Saga Continues
Having started out as a writer and being an actor who still writes in 
his spare time, he is very concerned with this aspect of his 
profession.

"People say that writing on TV is not creative. The point is that 
it's an incredibly hard thing to do because of different factors that 
take away the creative colors of a writer. Writers have to paint the 
best pictures they can with just two colors of the spectrum.

"On V the writing is very specific and it keeps me on my toes to know 
all the time exactly what I'm saying in the subtext. I'm of the 
belief that writing is like stained glass--it's there and the actor 
is the light behind it. The director tells me how bright, how soft 
and which way around the stained glass we're going. Our job is to 
hold consistency in our characters. The director has his job to do, 
which is filming the show in seven days and then off to another 
assignment. We help the director with the character backgrounds 
since there hasn't been time to put together a program bible."

As Clarence Hamilton Tyler, Michael Ironside, while still a 
protagonist, is also a counterpoint to Marc Singer's character and as 
such remains a bit more unpredictable. Ironside recognizes this as 
being a dilemma of leading men everywhere while at the same time 
being a boon to the supporting characters.

"Marc has a very difficult job to do," Michael explained. "Leading 
men in a series are like a wall in a handball court. Everyone else 
gets to bounce balls around and dance while the wall has to stand 
there and be consistent. Marc does a very good job of handling that.

"My character can swing either way, if he chooses, and I like that. 
I've broken him down so that when he's not on a raid, he's semi-
casual. But when he's on a raid, in black-out clothing, he goes 
about the job pragmatically. I've tried to mellow him otherwise. As 
Ham I'm going to continue to try and kill Bates. I don't care that 
everyone knows I was responsible for Diana's escape--my integrity was 
basically to get rid of her anyway. What Ham doesn't like is that he 
was made a fool of. A patsy. There was a story where I was supposed 
to have a relationship with a lady at one point but it keeps getting 
pushed back.

"The character of Ham Tyler is the one where if somebody has to look 
tough, I get hit. If somebody has to appear professional, I get 
boxed! In one episode I just got punched out by a 14-year-old boy! 
It seems like true heroes can't really get beaten up, so not being 
the lead, I get it."

With V as a series, the show is trying to do different things, but 
the hectic shooting schedule has made it difficult to accomplish all 
of the creative goals the people have set for it.

"We started out shooting four days in studio and three days out, but things got kind of hairy.  It's hard to have a semblance of a relationship among the characters and have action.  It's like trying to have what Hill Street Blues and St. Elsewhere have plus the action of the A-Team.  In seven days that's very difficult.  V is really an eight or nine day show and we don't have a strong second unit to film empty cars going over cliffs and such.  Our special effects are strongly tied to the main characters.

"I get up at 5:30 AM and work until 8 at night.  I have two days off in about a month and my weekends are non-existent.  That's because you start to recover on Saturday, do your laundry or shopping and then on Sunday you just start to feel human again and bang!--you're back in production.  I heard rumors that we'll get two days off around Thanksgiving.  I'm not complaining, but there's a little boy in all actors who says, 'When do I get mine?  When do I get some sleep?'  I'm grateful for a couple of hours.

"I do quite a bit of my own stuntwork but I've got old injuries in my legs from playing football in Canada.  Marc Singer is really in shape.  He's like an antelope running over fences and things.  He can run up a ladder like it was nothing.  In years past I've had just about every bone in my body broken except my spine.  So we put in 14 hour days with locations in places like hot Indian Dunes area.  I always thought film was an art form of concessions and TV really is that."

Prior to V Michael Ironside had a contractual stipulation that he could see and approve everything he shot, but in this series there just isn't time and it would be much too complicated to manage.

"There are a hundred or so people in between Grant Tinker and myself and down the ladder of decision making, so checking on the dailies isn't really necessary.  In a feature you have five or six people making the decisions.  In television there's many more people involved.  NBC has lots of shows to control.  If some guy down the road has a breakdown and decides I should have orange hair and wear pink suits, that could happen.  That's one of the gambles of something this large."

And what is the direction of the series now that it has gone beyond the final battle stages?

"It's become more centralized," Michael stated.  "It's based solely in Los Angeles.  In The Final Battle there was a lot of moving around.  Now it's like the Vichy government in World War Two.  I'd say that Bates is the Vichy French.  We're the freedom fighters, the aliens are the Nazis and the human race is being persecuted.  Los Angeles is an open city and aliens and humans can walk around while Bates holds off the aliens with his red dust.  We've introduced a few new characters and it will take awhile to settle down.  Right now Marc is the tentpole holding up the tent."

And what about Michael Ironside's professional plans outside of V?

"I want to do a film called Damaged Goods as soon as we get a release date on V.  Another picture I want to do is called Bulk Erase, and with that one I'm not sure if I want to be the lead and produce it or direct and produce it.  So things are good for me."

And on the science fiction horizon things seem to be good for the fantastic adventures depicted in the continuing saga of Mankind versus the Visitors.