Mark A. Sheppard

To say Mark Sheppard is one of the busiest actors working in television is an understatement.

For years, he’s been the go-to villain for many shows and he’s become one of the genre’s most reliable players.

Whether its his recurring role as Jim Sterling on LEVERAGE (where he would have been the good guy if the show wasn’t about a bunch of thieves), Crowley the demon on SUPERNATURAL or even his forthcoming stint on CHUCK (yes, he has a significant role on the horizon on that cult fave), Sheppard commands the screen and reminds you just how delicious being bad can actually be.

In Part 2 of iF’s four-part exclusive interview, Sheppard talks about his return to SUPERNATURAL, Syfy’s WAREHOUSE 13 and his stint on Joss Whedon’s shows FIREFLY and DOLLHOUSE.

iF MAGAZINE: Recently, you’ve been playing a lot of very confident, in-charge characters – so Crowley on SUPERNATURAL may be a little concerned about where he’s living –

MARK SHEPPARD: In a castle watching Leni Riefenstahl movies, drinking blood, yes. Kind of fun.

iF: Do we know if Crowley’s coming back this season?

SHEPPARD: Yes, I’m back. I called [SUPERNATURAL creator] Eric [Kripke] and said, “Shall we leak this?” He said, “Absolutely.” I said, “What shall we come up with?” We came up with, “Crowley forms an unholy alliance.” It’s a great character, it’s a fabulous character. It’s written by Ben Edlund, one of my favorite writers of all time. I’ve worked with him in several capacities, worked with him on FIREFLY. I’ve always been a big fan of his work. I’m a huge fan of THE TICK [which Edlund created]. THE TICK is one of the greatest written, drawn and visualized masterpieces of modern times. "Spoon!" There is a thing to him that is fantastic. He has an incredibly dry sense of humor, very, very intelligent man, very witty, very dry and a truly lovely human being. The times that I’ve met him, I’ve always left smiling. And I pick up a script [for the SUPERNATURAL episode “Abandon All Hope”] and I’m looking at a script and it says I’m making out with a seventy-year-old man. Now, they couldn’t find a seventy-year-old man that would kiss me at the crossroads. It was hysterical. They couldn’t find a seventy-year-old man who’d kiss any man in Canada. I don’t think it was me personally. So they lowered it to sixty-five. We were lucky enough to find L. Harvey Gold, who’s wonderful, best known probably as a voice actor, plays a lot of judges on TV shows. I’ve seen him in tons of stuff. Really nice guy, but I think he was nervous as all hell.

iF: Is Crowley a gay demon or was he just trying to make Gold’s banker character uncomfortable?

SHEPPARD: What do you think? Because he kisses a guy, does that make him gay? Don’t you think that his idea is to make the banker – "piggy banker," I love that line, “you piggy banker” – to make him as uncomfortable as possible? To substitute himself for a blonde?

iF: Crowley is the first supernatural entity you’ve played. Do you play him any differently than you play humans?

SHEPPARD: Yeah. He’s not human. He’s a demon. Demons are far more interesting. I love the idea that there’s not an ounce of fear, not one iota of fear at all. There’s that great moment when I’m in my office and Sam [played by Jared Padalecki] pulls the gun. He puts it to my forehead, I’m sitting there with Jared, the gun’s to my forehead, he pulls the trigger and I’m, “You need some more ammunition for that.” There’s never an instance where Crowley doesn’t know what’s happening. There’s never an instance where Crowley isn’t literally two steps ahead. He’s superhuman. He’s beyond the concept of human. And they’re just mere mortals, as far as I’m concerned.

iF: But if Crowley runs into somebody like Lucifer …?

SHEPPARD: We’ll see how Crowley behaves with anybody else that he might run into. I don’t think it’s any coincidence that me and Mark [Pellegrino, who plays Lucifer] were in the show. If you’re going to have some good villains, you’re going to have some really good ones.

iF: Although Crowley is fairly fearless, Lucifer is sort of formidable.

SHEPPARD: Yeah. But I mean, you’re kind of stuck with the Devil, because the Devil either wins or he doesn’t. The Devil doesn’t partially win anything. You can cheat the Devil for awhile, very rarely. Demons have other agendas. Crowley’s agenda is he only wants to stop the Devil. There’s a reason he wants to stop the Devil, because he believes that the demons will be next. They’re only one step up from the humans. He hates humans, but he hates demons just as equally.

iF: We’re all wondering what they’re going to do about finding God on SUPERNATURAL.

SHEPPARD: It’ll be interesting. That would’ve been my role, I’m sure, if I’d waited long enough [laughs].

iF: You were also in three episodes of DOLLHOUSE, which sort of circles back to Ben Edlund, as you both previously worked with Joss Whedon on FIREFLY, where you played Badger. Was DOLLHOUSE a good experience?

SHEPPARD: Of course it was a good experience. Any time that I get to see my friends, hang out with Tahmoh [Penikett, who Sheppard worked with on BATTLESTAR GALACTICA] – that was a really good experience.

iF: How did it compare to working on FIREFLY?

SHEPPARD: I think FIREFLY is a very different thing for [Whedon]. I think FIREFLY, if done now, would be the best series on television. I really believe it. Because there’s something about how most of what he [set out to do] actually was realized, as opposed to every other compromise that he’d had to make to that point. They ran with it and then they shut it down. It’s really sad. I don’t think DOLLHOUSE reached its potential. Some wonderful talent. I’m a huge fan of Joss. Back to Ben, there are different sides to the Whedon world, as you know. Tim [Minear] is very different from Joss, who’s very different from Ben, who’s very different from Jane [Espenson]. I’ve worked with all of them. I’m fans of them all and they all have different, wonderful strings to their bows. Television is a very special medium. It’s a very precious medium. It’s competing for all of our hours, our entertainment hours. Movies are movies, but if we get into a show and we want to watch a show, we’re having to commit to this amount of time [it takes to watch a season of a series]. So if you’re going to give me THE WIRE, I want it to be good, I don’t want it to be a poor rendition. We look for the HILL STREET BLUES and the great series that were out there, the NEWS RADIO’s and all of those strange anomalies, the BATTLESTAR GALACTICA’s and everything else. I think, with the greatest respect to network, [the compelling series are] getting fewer and far between on network, because I think there’s so much going on on network that is about difficulty of business. I was [working for NBC] two years ago with BIONIC WOMAN. I was paid not to work. I watched something go from being very, very good to the worst clusterf*ck I’ve ever seen in my entire life, and that’s got nothing to do with the talent or the abilities. It has to do with the time and the situation that the studio was in and the situation that the world was in at the time and that our business was in at the time. Very, very scary to watch. A rollercoaster of decisions can derail [a show], just by deviating one degree from your original idea. What’s fascinating is, NBC has just run on with a media conglomerate, which includes five of the most successful cable companies in the world. SyFy, Bravo, USA – I don’t know how many hit shows we are talking.

iF: And clearly the company likes you, because they put you on all of their shows.

SHEPPARD: Well, it’s the same people. I’m treated wonderfully by NBC and its affiliates, from Tom Lieber, Todd Sharp, who’s now over at EUREKA – these guys are really, really important to me – [former LEVERAGE co-executive producer] Amy Berg’s now over at EUREKA. Todd Sharp left the production end of Universal and went into the private sector and went over to EUREKA. It’s wonderful to see him do that, because he’s a wonderful facilitator. He’s a man who’s been instrumental when I was on MONK – Tom Lieber’s another great friend, Eric Storey and Mark Stern and all these people. You know what you’re going to get. You’re going to get a great guest star shot. The best honor that I’ve had is when WAREHOUSE 13 came up. I was in New York doing something for a videogame and I get a phone call, and it’s like nine-and-a-half pages of dialogue on Monday. SyFy asked, “Can you do it?” “This Monday?” “Yeah.” It’s Saturday. I went, “Absolutely. I’m in New York, I’ll fly up.” They wanted a rehearsal, just in case. It was CCH Pounder and Saul Rubinek and I went out to a diner, directed by Eric Laneuville – I mean, you’re talking about some really nice people to have around. And I got to meet Jack Kenny, who is a huge fan of THE BOOK OF DANIEL. The man is a great writer. I watched him take WAREHOUSE 13 into that new evolution and create a hit out of it. I think it was fantastic to watch it and take part in that, but to have SyFy go, “Nine-and-a-half pages? Get Mark,” is an honor and it shows their faith that Tom Lieber and Eric and Dave Howe and everybody else has put in me. They’re very important in my career, as is Dean [Devlin, executive producer of LEVERAGE] for the same reason. I mean, Dean is a studio in his own right and they didn’t have to cast me at all.