Nathan Fillion

Zombie lover’s Slither to success

With tongue in cheek, gun on the hip and mischief in the eye, Nathan Fillion figures he is ready for action in the coming apocalypse.

That is, if it involves a plague of zombies. And maybe those zombies are real, he says playfully in a free-wheeling conversation.

The Edmonton-born, Hollywood-based Fillion is talking by cellphone from his car while he cruises through Los Angeles on an errand.

"You know, anything’s possible," Fillion says, teasingly. "I’m going to say this: When it does happen — and it will — the people best trained to deal with it are going to be actors. They’re going to be the only people with any practical zombie experience!"

Fillion has been well trained — as the killing priest Caleb on the TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, as the outlaw spaceman Mal Reynolds on Firefly and its movie spinoff Serenity, and most recently as the smalltown cop Bill Pardy in the horror comedy Slither.

It is Slither — a hip, cultish genre piece that earned kudos but generally struggled in theatres — that triggered the interview. James Gunn’s flick has just come to DVD and Fillion is confident that this made-in-Vancouver movie will finally earn its proper due.

"Serenity taught me that," Fillion says, referring to the track record of Joss Whedon’s sci-fi thriller. "It didn’t do super-well in the theatre but it was very well-received, critically acclaimed, and everybody who saw it loved it. Then it had a life on DVD. I think we’re going to experience much the same with Slither."

On set, Fillion co-operated fully with the DVD extras team, unlike some actors, who don’t like when ’outsiders’ intrude on their method-acting techniques and take up their time between scenes.

"I’m invested," Fillion says. "When you spend three months in the cold in the woods with 100 guys, you get to know them. I’m invested in the show and I’m more than happy to be mugging for the camera to support it."

At 35 and established on Hollywood’s list of reliable action guys, Fillion has made his name by combining sly humour with his stunts.

"I think I’m finding my niche — the everyman thrust into extraordinary circumstances," Fillion says.

That was part of the appeal of Slither. Even though aliens land on Earth and infest the townfolk, turning them into blood-lusting and flesh-eating zombies, he played his role for real, with humour to relieve the tension.

"It was funny because it was reality-based. That’s what really tickled me about this."

Growing up in Edmonton, including a stint at the University of Alberta, Fillion always gravitated to genre horror and sci-fi for entertainment, if it had a sense of humour. I mention Army of Darkness and the Evil Dead flicks.

"Oh, it’s right up my alley," he says of the cult movie genre. "I like an Academy Award-winning movie as much as the next guy, but I’m the guy who pays the money to see the crappy movies (because) I can’t wait to see what the people did with this or that idea. And I love zombie movies."