Cale of the [New] Century

If you want a crusader against the evil forces of the future, you could do worse than Dark Angel's Logan Cale. Steven Eramo spoke to the Eyes Only of actor Michael Weatherly.

The year is 2019, and the once-mighty United States of America has been brought to its knees due to The Pulse, an electromagnectic shockwave that destroyed the world economy by obliterating every computer system in operation. From his high-rise, hi-tech flat, Logan Cale, aka Eyes Only, uses his hacking skills to broadcast messages over the TV airwaves. He keeps the citizens of Seattle abreast of everything from criminal activity to government corruption.

Logan is determined to hsave the world and help the US out of its worse depression yet. His quest is a lonely one, until one day when he crosses paths with Max, a tough young lady with superhuman strength and a mysterious past. She, too, is on a mission, but one very unlike Logan's. Together they make an unlikely--and unique--team. With his good looks and articulate manner, actor Michael Weatherly is perfectly cast as Logan. Oddly enough, though, he never envisioned himself in the shoes of such a character.

"Normally, I'll read for the role of a lawyer or doctor," he notes. "Someone like Logan was brand new territory for me.

"I remember arriving at James Cameron's production building in Santa Monica for my first audition. Right away I began to feel nervous. My initial reading was with the show's producers. Next time it was with Jessica Alba [Max] and the producers. At my third and final audition, the only ones there were Jessica, Jim, Charles 'Chic' Eglee [co-creator/executive producer] and myself. Chic was sitting in a dimly-lit corner of the room, stroking his skull and watching the proceedings like Dr. No in those old James Bond movies," jokes Weatherly.

"By the time I'd gotten to that meeting I was pretty terrified," continues the actor. "I'd only met Jessica the one time before, but it was on that day I realized what a shockingly self-confident young woman she is. No shrinking violet here! When you walk into the room and look at Jessica you think, 'She's an attractive girl,' but there are a lot of attractive girls in Los Angeles. I believe the reason Jessica was ultimately cast as Max is because she has, among other things, this core fearlessness in her. She'll stare at you as if to say, 'Okay, show me what you've got.'

"I think the nature of Logan's and Max's relationship was reflected in our audition process. So now when Jessica and I walk onto the set together it's like, 'How can we make this [scene] interesting for each other?' It's great. We're able to have fun. Some viewers might find the Max/Logan scenes kind of overbearing, while others probably think they're bland. You can't please all of the people ll of the time. However, for my money, I could do this show for the next 25 years just trying to counter that challenge in order to make this show the best it can be."
Things between Logan and Max get off to a rocky start in Dark Angel's two-hour pilot. Max was one of a groupof genetically-engineered children who escaped from a military base called Project Manticore in 2001. Now 19, she works by day as a bike messenger and by night as a cat burglar, stealing from the rich to finance her investigation into her past. Max meetings Logan while breaking into his apartment block. Logan is hiding a female informant who is willing to testify against a crooked entrepreneur. He knows all about Manticore and Max and asks for her help to protect the woman and her little girl, but she refuses. Only after Logan is shot does Max become involved. Paralyzed from the waist down and confined to a wheelchair, Logan joins her in an uneasy alliance by the end of the episode.

"Logan has an enormous social conscience and all these various moral imperatives which drive him. It's like George Orwell and Nineteen Eight Four, only in reverse. He's an altruistic 'Big Brother,' if you will," says Weatherly. "What fascinated me most about the character in the pilot is why he put himself in harm's way to save someone's life. Journalists are just supposed to basically tell the story. Logan isn't like that. He's a romantic and a realist. So he jumps in feet first and tries to fix society, while at the same time commenting on it. That's a very dangerous game. It's like time travel. What if you went back in time and told President Kennedy to duck, do you know what I mean?

"The thing about Logan is he wants to connect with the world around him, but he's sort of emotionally incapable of it. So his way of doing this is through his Eyes Only broadcasts and being an activist. He's afraid of the world and wants to change it into something he's not afraid of. However, I don't think it's the world Logan fears as much as something that happened in his own life. We know his parents died. Was that a direct result of the madness and violence of this broken-down world around him? Is that why he's trying to change things? There are all kinds of fun mysteries to play with as far as the psychology of why Logan is a do-gooder.
"Max, on the other hand, is obsessed with her past and it's one that we know a great deal about," continues the actor. "We've seen plenty of flashbacks and are learning more and more all the time. She's completely plugged into the mystery of herself and is trying to find the missing pieces to that puzzle. So you have these two contradictory characters in Max and Logan. I don't want to go all Freudian," laughs Weatherly, "but she's let's say, ego, while he's id. Logan is wrapped up in the world and the people around him and Max finds that intriguing because it' something she doesn't feel. At the same time, Max has a deep personal history that's important to her, whereas Logan really doesn't have such a history. Together they're an emotional Frankenstein that's trying to move forward and do what's right. I hope that makes sense."

When it comes to his favorite Dark Angel episodes, Weatherly has two, the first of which is Blah Blah, Woof Woof. In it, Max is framed for murder and must leave Seattle. However, when Logan falls ill, Max risks her life to return to the city and give him a much-needed blood transfusion. Obviously, the two have come to care very much for each other, but, according to the actor, they have a hard time showing it. "At one point, Logan is trying to let Max know that he's going to miss her, yet can't seem to muster up the courage to do so," explains Weatherly. "He and Max both have that problem, and it's part of what makes their characters interesting, at least to me and,
I hope, the audience. They want to reach out to each other and communicate, but are too [emotionally] damaged. It's quite tragic. You're sitting in front of your TV watching them and thinking, 'Be normal! Even if it's only for a minute or two,' but they can't. In this story, they're able to express some of what they feel are each other, but then pretty much dismiss it all right before the closing credits. It's like, 'That was an anomaly. It won't happen again.' Yeah, right!"

"So that was a fun episode to do. Another story I'm kind of crazy about is called Haven. It gets Logan and Max out of Seattle and into this run-down resort community in the wilderness. Initially they go there to relax, but then Max learns Logan has a hidden agenda that doesn't include her. Needless to say, she's pretty pissed off," chuckles the actor. "Once again, narcissism gets the better of Max. Fortunately for Logan, she doesn't stay mad at him for long as he ends up needing her help.
"The story eventually turns into a spaghetti Western with this big shoot-out at the end. Interestingly enough, it took us three days of second unit work to film 90 seconds of action. Because Logan was in his wheelchair, I wasn't involved in too much of the fighting, but at the same time I didn't just chill out and watch. It's hard, though, to do stunts sitting down. Let me tell you, it's murder on your back, arms and neck. I tried doing my best Clint Eastwood imitation, but think I wound up looking more like Steve Martin. The fans will have to decide. Was I the High Plains Drifter or Logan Cale -- The Man With Two Brains? Now there's an idea for a future Dark Angel story if ever I heard one," he laughs.

Born in Manhattan and raised in Fairfield, Connecticut, Weatherly left college to pursue his acting career, supporting himself briefly as a rock musician. The actor made his professional debut on The Cosby Show, after which he moved to Los Angeles and began doing more TV guest spots. While working on the short-lived Fox drama Significant Others, he met director Whit Stillman, who cast Weatherly in the 1998 feature film The Last Days of Disco. With that role, he established himself as an actor who can move effortlessly between TV and big-screen roles. At that moment, however, the actor is pleased to be a part of Dark Angel. "I feel more at home and comfortable in Logan Cale's skin than I have in most any other part I've played," he says. "This character is the most complicated and, also, due to the nature of series TV, the most fleshed-out. However, even when I did the pilot I was happy with what was there for me to play. It's a great role and a wonderful situation to be in."