The Pretender Lives On by David Martindale
Fans of the series can now indulge on DVD
As Michael T. Weiss sees it, he pretends for a living. “The great part about being an actor is that one day you portray a lawyer and the next project you’re a doctor,” he says. “In one movie, you play a hero; in the next, you’re the bad guy. It’s liberating. It’s always interesting. It’s a lot of fun.” It’s also fitting that Weiss, given his fondness for an actor’s “who am I today?” existence, is now perhaps best known for his four seasons on television as Jarod, the title character of The Pretender.
Jarod was a man of exceptional intelligence, so brilliant he could master any profession virtually overnight. Having escaped from a lifetime of captivity at the ominous Centre (which now had pursuers forever on his heels), each episode featured Jarod in a new line of work, from surgeon to test pilot, using his gift to help others and to right wrongs. The series was a cult favorite during its original run (1996-2000); now it lives on in reruns and on DVD (thanks to the March 22 release of a season-one set).
“When the producers were pursuing me pretty intensely to do this,” Weiss recalls, “I didn’t particularly want to do television again — because I had done it for a while and I had kind of gotten away from it. But it intrigued me that the character was so multifaceted and that basically he gets to play a different character every week. It kind of struck me as the best of both worlds: a complex character to flesh out over an extended period, but at the same time the character gets to play other characters, so I’d get lots of variety.”
And lots of devoted fans. Although The Pretender was never a ratings-topping hit on NBC, its cadre of fans are still fiercely loyal. “I like to think of it as the little show that could,” Weiss says. “It’s an odd phenomena, our little show. It’s amazing how many people come up and say it’s their favorite show. I’ll always be proud of that.”
The same goes for his former costar, Andrea Parker, who says the below-the-radar success of The Pretender “fills me with pride, gratitude and elation.” It’s worth noting, though, that not as many hard-core fans as you might expect recognize her as Miss Parker, Jarod’s chain-smoking adversary from the Centre. “People don’t recognize me,” she says, “because I don’t look or behave like Miss Parker in any way. People don’t recognize me with teeth.” Which is to say that people don’t recognize Andrea Parker with a smile.
In fact, during my interview with Parker, she made a most unusual request: She insisted on being misquoted. “Don’t tell anybody I’m nice,” she told me. “Tell them what they want to hear. Make something up. Say I’m vicious. Say I’m cruel. They don’t want to hear that I’m just some nice actress from California. They want something good and juicy.” Maybe she’s right, but she won’t get her wish. Consider the illusion shattered. Miss Parker (the character) might have been the nastiest vamp on television, but Ms. Parker (the actress) is warm and funny. “And I’m a lot more relaxed. I don’t have that armor of makeup and I would like to think that my personality is a little softer.”
Yet Parker always adored playing Miss Parker, a character she knew she had to play the moment she spotted her own last name in the script. She loved the role because “I’d get to be the villain AND the heroine. How unreal is that?”
Another former Pretender costar, James Denton (he was billed himself as Jamie Denton at the time), has only good things to say about the series and his experiences working as the evil Mr. Lyle. Until Desperate Housewives became such a huge hit this season, Denton’s recurring Pretender role was his biggest claim to fame. “I was this bad guy who had his thumb cut off by the Japanese Yakuza. I was bringing over Japanese mail-order brides and killing them. And then it’s implied that I might actually be eating them. It got crazier and crazier. It was very tongue in cheek. It was a great role and people seemed to respond to that guy really well.”
Well, most people. “I’ve had people get off of elevators that I was on,” Denton says. “Seriously! The woman told me, ‘I know you’re an actor, but I can’t be in the elevator with you,’ and she got off. That, to me, was very funny. And I felt like I must have been doing my job well. If Mr. Lyle was creepy enough to keep her off an elevator, I was doing my job.”
Remember, people. They’re actors. They’re just pretending.
