Alec Newman

Actor Newman happy with his niche

When he took on the role of space messiah Paul Atreides in the Sci Fi Channel miniseries "Dune" and "Children of Dune," Scottish actor Alec Newman carved himself a niche in science-fiction television.

Now that he’s relocated to Los Angeles, the trend has only continued, with roles on The WB’s "Angel," UPN’s "Star Trek Enterprise" and Hallmark’s upcoming miniseries "Frankenstein" (the one based on the Shelley book, not the USA Network pastiche by the same name), airing Tuesday and Wednesday.

"It’s something I’m keeping an eye on," he says. "It’s a danger. But the truth of the matter is, I have been doing other stuff, a couple of independent features. It’s just that the sci-fi stuff really grabs attention because the fans seem to be a bit more tenacious."

For a few episodes last spring in the final season of "Angel," Newman played the mysterious Drogyn, who starts out with what the actor describes as an "Aragorn-esque wig" and winds up bald and withered, with only a few scraps of hair on his scalp.

"I took some pictures of that," he says, "for my mother. ’The sun’s a bit intense here, Mum. Look.’ But I had a great time. It was just a little dip into the show for me. Just to be around somebody like Joss Whedon was great. Four hundred years ago, Joss Whedon would have been a prolific theater writer or something. He has that kind of energy about him."

At about the same time, Newman shot the pilot for The WB’s updated version of the 1960s Gothic soap "Dark Shadows," which most people will likely never see (unless it surfaces at a convention).

In front of assembled TV critics this summer, WB chairman Garth Ancier said the expensive "Dark Shadows" pilot had "no salvageable scenes." Newman has a perspective on how that may have happened.

"There was a lot of politics with it," he says. "I haven’t seen the whole thing, but I’ve seen parts of it that I was very happy with. The word was that it just wasn’t quite as cohesive as they wanted it to be.

"I know there was stuff going on behind the scenes, as there always is, with network television, which was the new lesson for me. But as far as I’m concerned, if everybody was that unhappy with the situation around a pilot, just imagine the hell that it would have been to go to a series with it.

"Everything for a reason - but I had a lot of fun."

In "Frankenstein" - with creature makeup by Rob Hall’s Almost Human, which also did "Angel" - Newman plays the title role of Dr. Victor Frankenstein, who defies nature and decides to stitch together his own man (Luke Goss) out of cadaver parts animated by electricity.

"It’s a great book," Newman says, "why mess with it? Even in the arrangement of Mark Kreuger’s screenplay, it tries to mirror the book, at least in part, and it works."

As to why he keeps winding up in period and/or genre roles, Newman says, "Probably to do with my background in the theater and my training. I like using my imagination. In a way - to be tech-y and actorish-y with you - it’s an actor’s responsibility to do that, otherwise, why are you there? ’Let the blue screen do it’ - no. You either do it, or it doesn’t quite work."

And the costumes don’t bother him. "The puffy shirts? They’re just gear. It could be jeans and a T-shirt."

Sometimes, though, the costumes were a bit iffy.

"You know that cloth thing that I wear when I’m in the lab?" Newman says. "It looks a bit strange, really. It looks like a dress or a smock. I said, ’What about this, I know I’m not wearing any trousers, but he is in his bedroom messing around with stuff he doesn’t understand. He’s hardly going to put his suit on.’

"So we went with it. The costume designer said, ’You just need some shoes, you have that scene on the roof.’ So I stuck the boots on and said, ’This is kind of all right.’ But I was freezing - freezing. But it works.

"That is an OK way to mess around with a story, as far as I’m concerned. That is interpretation. Nobody mentioned in the book what he’s wearing as he’s working on this stuff in the lab. You go with what makes sense, and that made sense and didn’t get in the way."

It also didn’t require Newman to go shirtless in the lab scenes, as did Kenneth Branagh in the feature film "Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein."

"I remember his amazing abs," Newman says. "He must have done a lot of sit-ups. I didn’t bother so much with the sit-ups."

In late October and early November, Newman does a three-episode stint on "Star Trek: Enterprise," playing a genetically enhanced Augment. They’re the creation of Dr. Arik Soong, played by Brent Spiner. In "Trek" lore, Soong is the great-grandfather of Dr. Noonien Soong (also played by Spiner), who created the "Star Trek: The Next Generation" android Data (also Spiner).

According to Newman, the Augments are precursors to the genetic super-humans led by Khan Noonian Singh (Ricardo Montalban) in the "Star Trek" episode "Space Seed" and the movie "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan."

"I loved Ricardo Montalban," he says. "And I’m a big fan of (’ST:E’ star) Scott Bakula. I remember watching ’Quantum Leap’ on BBC2 back home with my mother. I got on the set and went, ’It’s Scott Bakula.’ And he kind of looks the same. I look older than him. It’s a problem."

Newman also got a taste of the hair issues that seem to always plague "Star Trek" shows. "I managed to escape the prosthetic situation on ’Enterprise.’ I managed to have my own face, albeit with some rather unfortunate hair. We were laughing about that.

"We have these hairpieces, and I came up with the theory that because ’The Wrath of Khan’ was made in 1982 or whatever it was, and they all had these terrible mullets, we, of course, as Augments, have to have the 1982 style."

In the end, despite his reservations about doing so much sci-fi, Newman is unashamed.

"People so easily dismiss these kinds of things, saying, ’I just did it for a laugh,"’ he says. "But actually, that would be one of the shows that they would send out across space to show the aliens what we do in our spare time."