Adrian Pasdar is moving in 'Mysterious Ways'
By Bridget Byrne / Entertainment News Wire
"I thought I'd try my hand here because it might be difficult to pull off, and because it deals with the mind."
Adrian Pasdar speaks of Mysterious Ways, the new drama series in which he stars as Declan Dunn, an anthropology professor fascinated by inexplicable phenomena.
The hourlong show debuts on NBC at 8 tonight, in what the network touts as an "unprecedented, multiepisode preview." On Tuesday, Aug. 22, the series will re-premiere on the cable outlet PAX, now partnered with the Peacock. This family show will provide the major network with some sorely needed original summer programing, and, it is hoped, will benefit the minor network with broader exposure. During late August and early September Mysterious Ways will be seen on both networks, after that, PAX alone will air the remaining episodes.
Thirteen episodes of the show were ordered, and Pasdar is in Vancouver, B.C., working on the eighth.
Pasdar, 35, broke in big as Chipper in the 1986 film Top Gun. He's married to Natalie Maines, lead singer of the Dixie Chicks. He was born in Pittsfield, Mass., and grew up in a Philadelphia suburb. His earliest theatrical efforts were plays based on biblical stories, performed in his family home.
He recalls one in particular that he directed, and in which he played Joseph: "We'd dressed the dogs up to look like sheep, but our family also had cats and in the middle of the play one of the dogs saw one of the cats. It took off and the other dogs followed. I had told the shepherds it was very important they stick with their 'sheep,' and so they raced out too and the whole cast followed and we ended up finishing the play outside. I felt like a mini-Orson Welles."
A football scholarship took him to the University of Florida, but after a serious on-field injury he found himself in a wheelchair. His first priority was "just to get up and walk again." However, the forced time-out also allowed him to remember how much he'd enjoyed acting and directing when he was a kid. Eventually he quit school, joined a local theater company and began taking classes at the Lee Strasberg Theater Institute.
It took him about a year to fully recover and not walk with a pronounced limp, but the scar on his chin remains. He never thinks about it, but Hollywood sometimes does. In the old days expert lighting could mask Carole Lombard's scar or hide Doris Day's freckles, but today "it's the scene they light, not the people," and at times he's noticed concern among casting agents. If the scarred face isn't enough, he also lacks the tip of his left thumb, the result of an accident he had while building theater sets.
In Mysterious Ways, the scar on Dunn's chin is the result of the accident that buried him in an avalanche and led to his interest in the strange and unexplained. But it's all part of Pasdar's kind of throw-away appeal, which allows Dunn to often appear unshaven, and wear rumpled clothes and mismatched socks.
Pasdar says he got some instruction on how to play the role of this truth seeker from executive producer/director, Peter O'Fallon, who, as a child, had been trapped by an avalanche.
Of the show, which explores the gray areas where science and spirituality mingle, Pasdar says: "What I really like about it is that there's a wide-open range of acceptance to just about anything, any possibility. It's not about someone giving you what he believes in, but someone who's prepared to consider what others believe."
Because Mysterious Ways is "somewhat enigmatic," and the characters and plots are not structured with some "easy-out formula," Pasdar thinks pulling this show off will be a pleasant challenge. "With most of the other shows I looked at during pilot season, I'd have to have been a cop, a lawyer, a doctor -- it would have bored me to tears. But this is cool."
Pasdar co-stars with Rae Dawn Chong, who plays Peggy Fowler, a hospital psychiatrist, and Alisen Down who plays Miranda, Dunn's assistant. As of yet, Pasdar says, his character is not romantically involved with either. "The relationships are more playful than romantic, more siblinglike."