Defying Gravity’s Andrew Airlie Cast In Seth Rogen’s Upcoming Feature Film

Actor Andrew Airlie. Photo copyright of The Promotion People

INSPIRING actor Andrew Airlie has worked on over 100 television and feature film projects during his extensive acting career, and isn’t slowing down anytime soon. Coming up next for Andrew is the role of Dr. Ross in the highly anticipated feature film Untitled Seth Rogen Project starring Rogen and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. The film follows Adam Schwartz (Gordon-Levitt) and his best friend Seth (Rogen). After being diagnosed with a rare type of cancer, Adam is forced to come to terms with the overwhelming challenge of beating cancer, and learning to appreciate what he has in life. Andrew, as Dr. Ross, is Adam’s oncologist with an unorthodox bedside manner.  

Andrew will be seen as well on the small screen this fall, appearing in the CW’s new television series Hellcats. He also plays Professor Harris in Dear Mr. Gacy, a true story from the producer of Monster starring Charlize Theron. The drama is based on the experience of 18-year-old college student Jason Moss and his relationship with notorious serial killer John Wayne Gacy.  

The in-demand actor is also currently working on a made-for-TV movie entitled Killer Mountain, also starring Emmanuelle Vaugier and Aaron Douglas. Andrew plays Walter Burton, a wealthy industrialist who sponsors a climbing expedition in Bhutan. The mission goes awry and he has to hire another expert climber to rescue the members of the first climb team. With ulterior motives at play, danger and mayhem ensue. Killer Mountain is produced by Chris Bartleman and Jeff Schenck, and directed by Sheldon Wilson.  

One of the recurring roles that Andrew is most proud of is that of Mike Goss on ABC/CTV’s Defying Gravity. The program follows the adventures of eight astronauts onboard the international spacecraft Antares on its six-year mission through the solar system. The lives of the astronauts onboard are constantly recorded and broadcast back to Earth, both as part of an ongoing documentary and as part of mission monitoring. Mike Goss is at the center of the mission’s true purpose, a secret that he hides from astronauts until after the mission is launched.  

In 2009, Andrew was nominated for a Leo Award for his recurring role as John Oliver in Reaper. He greatly enjoyed the experience of being on the pilot episode of the hit series House, and a recurring role on the critically acclaimed CBC TV series Intelligence. Other small screen credits include recurring roles on Whistler, Saved, The 4400 and guest-star roles on Fringe, Supernatural, Stargate SG-1 and Smallville. He also worked with a star-studded cast in the feature film The Safety of Objects starring Glenn Close. Other film credits include Normal, The Butterfly Effect 2 and Fantastic Four, to name a few.  

Born in Glasgow, Scotland, Andrew moved to Toronto before putting down roots in Vancouver. The well-rounded performer completed a number of impressive scholarly programs before venturing on his acting career. He attended the University of Toronto, Ulster College (New York) and George Mason University (Virginia), and graduated with a BA (History and Political Science) and a Masters Degree (International Relations), both from the University of Toronto.  

Looking ahead, Andrew plans to write and produce his own material. He is currently collaborating with British film director Peter Howitt (Sliding Doors, Laws of Attraction), writing a suspense/thriller and a TV pilot. When he is not acting and managing his busy career, the actor enjoys spending his free moments with his two children. Andrew also has a passion for photography, and is a die-hard Toronto Maple Leaf and Glasgow Celtic fan.  

As noted above, photo courtesy and copyright of The Promotion People, so please no unauthorized copying or duplicating of any kind. Thanks!

Human Target’s Mark Valley – Chance Encounter

Mark Valley as Christopher Chance in Human Target. Photo by David Gray and copyright of Fox Television

MARK Valley is a versatile film and TV actor who is known equally for his comedic, witty turns as he is for his dramatic, weighted performances. He is a familiar face to Fox viewers, having appeared as FBI Agent John Scott on the hit drama Fringe. His additional television credits include a three-year run as Brad Chase on Boston Legal, starring roles on Keen Eddie and Pasadena as well as recurring roles on Once and Again, ER, The 4400 and Swingtown. His film credits include John Schlesinger’s The Innocent, The Seige with Denzel Washington, John Frankenheimer’s George Wallace, The Next Best Thing with Madonna and Rupert Everett and Shrek III as the voice of Cyclops. Valley also wrote and performed in Walls, Wars and Whiskey, a one-man show about his experiences growing up in upstate New York and serving in the military.

Valley graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point, and began his acting career while serving overseas in the Army. The Gulf War veteran is a native of Ogdensburg, New York, and these days divides his time between Vancouver and Los Angeles. Currently, he stars as Christopher Chance in the Fox action TV series Human Target. On March 8th, I and other journalists had the pleasure of speaking with the actor on a conference call. The following is an edited version of that Q & A. Enjoy!

When did you realize that you had lightning in a bottle with the chemistry between you and Jackie Earle Haley (Guerrero) and Chi McBride (Winston)? When did they come into the project? I’m sure you got the script first and then they were added.

MARK VALLEY - Yes, I got the script first. I was the first one cast, I know that. I think we all realized that we had something pretty amazing when we were shooting the pilot in downtown Vancouver. I think it was at the very end of the episode. It wasn’t the end of shooting, but it was the end of the episode, and rarely are the three of us together in any episode, but in this instance we were. They were getting ready to set up a shot, and we were sitting around in our chairs and started talking, as actors do. Suddenly we just realized, my God, we all come from different places in terms of parts of the country and experience in the industry and so forth, and the three of us just kind of clicked. The thing I liked about Chi and Jackie is that I was just really kind of curious about them and wanted to get to know them better and thought they were both quite interesting. I think the three of us had that same feeling about each other, which is kind of cool and rare as well. And that kind of shows up on the screen and, perhaps, makes the viewer wonder how did these characters meet up, or come together, and what’s their history.

I know that you cannot possibly take risk taking and thrill seeking to the extreme that your character of Chance does, but how much of a daredevil do you allow yourself to be in real life? What are some of the more outrageous adventures that you might have taken? Have you ever jumped out of planes for  fun, or any of those things?

MV - Yes, I’ve done that. I’m a little more now into taking calculated risks. I like to mountain climb, and the better prepared you are, the safer it is. I don’t just run out and climb a mountain with a T-shirt on, you know? That would be kind of foolhardy. There are some inherent risks, you know, with mountaineering and stuff, but yes, I generally like to be well-prepared. I had parachuted. I did it in the Army and I also did it trying to get my certification to parachute down in Paris Island. I did it a few times, and that was pretty exciting, but for the most part, I’d say now the biggest risk I take is probably every once in a while I forget to put my seatbelt on. That’s about the limit of it these days.

How much has your military training helped you with acting, especially with Human Target?

MV - It’s funny, because they lay out all these weapons and talk about the ammunition and its effectiveness and so forth, and you know, we worked with weapons obviously in the Army. It’s actually something, though, that you can pick up pretty quickly. The hand-to-hand fighting, I learned a little bit of that in the Army, along with boxing as well as wrestling and those sorts of thing. But I think for the most part it’s working as a team under extreme circumstances with a limited amount of time to get something done. That’s probably the biggest experience I got from the Army that applies to this job because we’re really making a little movie in eight days, and that’s an awful lot of work that has to be done. So yes, it’s sort of that kind of teamwork and camaraderie that I experienced in the Army that seems to be showing up again here in this show.

So far your character has had cases in Los Angeles, Canada, the Russian Embassy, an airplane and South America. Is there anywhere in particular that you’d like to see Chance travel to?

MV - I would like to see Chance go to Paris. We do go to London in one episode. Where else? Africa, I think, would be kind of an interesting place. There are all kinds of places he could do. Somewhere down south, maybe Texas? I’d love to do an episode that is sort of a quasi-Western. That would be interesting. There’s Vietnam and all these other places in Asia that he could go, and there are things going on in China. You name it. We could even write an episode that takes place inside a contained area, like the airplane episode, for example. We really didn’t go anywhere for that. That all took place inside the fuselage of an airplane, so maybe we’ll be doing something like that as well.

What were some of the acting challenges you found first stepping into the role, and how have you seen the Chance character grow and develop in the episodes you’ve shot so far?

MV - When I first read the script, which is based on a comic book character, there are certain things that comic book characters can get away with that regular actors can’t really do, or at least do convincingly. One is to hold a pose for a long period of time, or to look concerned as if you’re in a comic book. So there was that. The show sort of had a feel of a comic book, so there was a challenge of trying to find a way to bring a real person into this. It wasn’t written in any sort of hyper-reality. I mean, there’s kind of a casual thing that can exist in John Steinberg’s [series creator/executive producer] writing, so it’s not that hard to kind of do it. It’s not complete melodrama or anything. That was the biggest challenge. Reading it and enjoying it like it could have been a comic book, and then thinking, “OK, wait a second, this is me now. How am I going to do this?” It’s kind of hard to explain, but that was the biggest challenge. And maybe picturing all the other actors who could do better at it and thinking, “OK, so I’m going to do this?”

As far as development, the way I’ve grown as an actor is that I’ve become much more comfortable with some of the action and fighting scenes, and the way Chance’s relationships with Jackie’s and Chi’s characters are starting to become a little bit clearer. And with Chance’s development, I’d say he’s beginning to come to terms with his past. He made a big change in his life about six or eight years prior to the present that we have now on the show. And I think the reality of why he made that choice and the repercussions that it’s going to have is starting to come back to him, so essentially his baggage is starting to arrive.

A lot of shows spend their first season throwing things against the wall to see what sticks. Do you feel like Human Target has found its groove and, if so, was there a particular moment for you when you felt like it really clicked?

MV - I think when it really clicked for me was probably the episode Rewind, where we didn’t have a lot of locations or big set pieces going on. It all took place in an airplane and you got an idea of, OK, very simply, this is something that has to get done in this plane. And it was broken down and all our characters were – well, Chi and I were in the same location shooting as well, which was kind of cool. Then I think it was the second or third episode in, and the pace that we came up with as well as the shorthand that we developed with the crew and the cameras was pretty amazing. We realized, “Oh, wow, this is what we can do. We’ve really got something here.”

Did you have a vision for what you expected the show to be when you first came onboard, and has it lived up to that?

MV - I didn’t have that clear a vision of how it would be. I’d been on shows before that have been new, and with this one, not only is it new, but I’m new to this genre, and Chi is kind of new to it as well, and even the show runners are sort of new to this. So I went into it with an open mind and thinking, “This is going to be exciting as to how it’s going to come together” And it has been. It is sort of a collaboration in some ways, where everyone’s influence is, if not heard, then it’s felt and reacted to, and the end product is something that everyone feels a part of.

How do you balance comedy and drama on the show? Particularly in your performance, you always seem to bring the humor to certain scenes where other  people wouldn’t, but then it doesn’t get too serious, either. How do you guys manage that?

MV - Something I really love to do is find the lighter moments. A lot of it depends on the scene and the person you’re working with and where the jokes can come in or seem appropriate. So there are a few elements that come into that. And, of course, there’s the way that the scene is written as well. Maybe it’s my soap opera background, where there were no jokes at all. It was all complete melodrama and I wanted parts of it to be funny, so I remember searching and combing through the material and saying, “Well, there’s this moment or that moment.” I was just so hungry for something to be funny, that I developed, perhaps, a perceptive eye for it.

What’s it like to play a lead character when you don’t have all the pieces of his background? Is that more difficult for you at all?

MV - Well, it’s definitely easier to have some of the pieces. It’s somewhat of an advantage to have a bit more of an idea because as actors, we create characters and create things in our imagination, but, ultimately, we’re interpretive artists and interpreting what the writers have created. Some people will say that doesn’t matter. If it’s not in the script, it really doesn’t exist, so don’t make a big deal about it, but I think in television, it’s different. Yes, it would be nice to know, but there are two sides to that. It would be nice to know ahead of time because then maybe I could plan a scene or have that in mind if this might have happened before. On the other hand, it’s pretty exciting to find it out as you go along with the rest of the viewers. So not only are you working on a show and acting in it, but it’s also fun to be experiencing it as a viewer as well and finding out things as they reveal themselves.

Is the master of disguise aspect of your character from the comic books ever going to make it into the TV series?

MV - Nobody’s ruled it out. I know John’s attitude was like, let’s start off the show where you get to know the central character before we begin dressing him up in disguises. Chance does have an aptitude for languages and my theory with that is he doesn’t use it more than is necessary. I mean, he doesn’t wear a mustache or glasses or anything if it’s not really necessary. or become that other person unless it’s absolutely necessary. So that was an adaptation for the TV show, I think, but, again, the disguise aspect hasn’t totally been ruled out.

So what’s in store for the season finale, and what other guest-stars can we expect to see in the second half of the season?

MV - Well, in the season finale, Baptiste, who is played by Jericho‘s Lennie James, comes back. His character is Chance’s nemesis and is probably the most talented assassin who’s still out there working for hire. He and Chance come to blows in an episode called Baptiste and then again in the season finale. Amy Acker shows up and plays a pivotal character from Chance’s past in that she was sort of the catalyst for his ultimate transformation into Christopher Chance. Lee Majors is in that episode, too. Armand Assante plays Chance’s old boss, and there’s a couple of major confrontations there. Emmanuelle Vaugier returns in another episode, too. She plays an FBI agent in Baptiste and Chance, Winston and Guerrero have to figure out a way to enlist her help. Autumn Reeser comes back as well. She sort of has a recurring role on our show. Grace Park is in an episode called Corner Man, and Leonor Varela is in Sanctuary. She’s a beautiful and talented Chilean actress who made this one episode look and feel like a movie. She just came in and completely took on this character of an ex-revolutionary who lives in South America and is an ex-lover of Chance’s. She was just fabulous.

As noted above, photo by David Gray and copyright of Fox Television, so please no unauthorized copying or duplicating of any kind. Thanks!

Emmanuelle Vaugier – Angell On My Shoulder

Actress Emmanuelle Vaugier - photo by and copyright of Beiron Andersson and courtesy of The Promotion People

In 2006, a photo of the beautiful and talented Emmanuelle Vaugier graced the cover of Maxim magazine with a caption that read, “Don’t miss this girl, she’s gonna be huge.” True words were never spoken. Since getting her start in the acting industry over 14 years ago, this Canadian native has appeared in several feature films as well as such popular TV series as Two and a Half Man, Charmed, Monk and CSI: NY, where she can currently be seen helping uphold law and order in the recurring role of Police Detective Jessica Angell. While you may be familiar with her face, you might not know that Vaugier once considered pursuing a very different line of work.

“I’ve always loved animals and I briefly thought about going to school to become a veterinarian,” says the actress. “However, I don’t like seeing animals hurt or even thinking about one dying or being put down, so I probably wouldn’t make a very stable vet as far as my emotional state in that profession.”

Having taken acting classes and studied in Vancouver with British acting teacher Shea Hampton, Vaugier made her professional debut in the 1995 make-for-TV movie A Family Divided starring Faye Dunaway, Stephen Collins and Cameron Bancroft. “I was terrified and excited at the same time,” she recalls. “I only have a few scenes at the beginning of the film and then my character is raped and murdered. I remember being so thrilled that my first job was working with Faye Dunaway and all these other great people. I was like, wow, what a neat way to start out. One thing led to another and I’ve been very lucky to have kept on acting.”

While most of us were enjoying parades and barbecues, Vaugier spent one July 4th a few years back reading for her role of Jessica Angell on CSI: NY. “They [the casting people] had business to take care of, so they held auditions that day,” says the actress. “I went in to read for them and was then told that I had been placed on hold while my audition tape was sent to the producers in New York for final approval. The following day I found out the job was mine.

“Originally it was only supposed to be for two or three episodes, but they weren’t sure, and it has since turned into three seasons, which has been terrific. On my first day we were shooting downtown and I had to deliver some technical dialogue. I thought, ‘You’re a guest-star, so you can’t screw it up. You don’t get the leeway that the show’s stars get,’ or at last that’s what goes through your mind. Of course it’s not at all like that, but on your first day you want to do your best.

“So I was a bit nervous about making sure I had the dialogue down pat. It’s material that can sometimes be a little harder to memorize because it’s not anything that you really speak about in your normal day-to-day life. It was like the first day of school. You’re the new kid so to speak, which is always daunting and awkward, but the CSI cast and crew were very friendly and inviting, so everything went quite smoothly.”

Jessica Angell first arrived on the crime scene in the CSI: NY season three opener People With Money, in which Detective Mac Taylor (Gary Sinise) and his people investigate the death of a man on the Brooklyn Bridge as well as a socialite who is found dead in a penthouse with another person’s blood on her body and LSD in her system. The youngest of five siblings, all brothers, and the daughter of a detective sergeant, part of Jessica Angell’s job is to brief the CSI team at various crime scenes.

“My character is a strong woman who’s very good at her job,” explains Vaugier. “She’s brought into this team of experts and not only fits in as one of the guys, but is also able to relate to the other females on the show. The biggest challenge on a program like this is trying to bring as much personality as possible to your character. Many times the [onscreen] relationships you have are business ones; your character is working with his or her partner and that sort of stuff.

“So there’s not a great deal of time for exploring personal relationships between characters other than what you see at the crime scenes. As such, you try to keep the person you’re playing interesting without infusing things falsely into a scene that don’t belong there.  It’s always exciting when you have a scene where you get to be a regular human being and talk about normal things as opposed to discussing the crime scene.”

Detective Don Flack (Eddie Cahill) and Detective Jessica Angell (Vaugier) in a scene from the CSI: NY episode "Dead Inside." Photo by David M. Russell and copyright of CBS/Paramount TV

Happily for Vaugier, CSI: NY writers have been developing a romantic relationship with Eddie Cahill’s character of Detective Don Flack Jr., and, in fact, at the end of the season five episode Dead Inside, the two finally share a kiss. “It started out slowly with a few quick lines between Jessica and Don,” notes the actress. “Then in one of the [fourth season] stories, the two characters were in a car together and chatting a bit and Eddie’s character made an attempt at flirting, which led to some flirty banter between him and Jessica. That was a great deal of fun,” she says with a laugh.

“Again, whenever it’s about the characters’ relationships and interacting in that way, I feel like that’s more of where the acting comes in, do you know what I mean? Yes, everything else involves acting, too, but it’s a bit more disconnected and about, say, the crime scene as opposed to anything else. One of my favorite scenes is in the episode [season four's Happily Ever After] where a girl is killed after being caught between a taxicab and a school bus. There’s a scene with me and Danny Messner [Detective Carmine Giovinazzo] inside the bus where, for a moment, we actually focus on something real that is going on in his life. I thought that was just great.”

For those fans of Vaugier whose TV tastes lean more towards Sci-Fi and Fantasy, the actress has dipped her toe more than once into that genre, with, for example, a recurring role as Lex Luthor’s (Michael Rosenbaum) wife, Dr. Helen Bryce, on Smallville and a guest-spot playing Maura in the two-part Andromeda episode The Heart of the Journey.

“Smallville was one of those situations where I was actually in Vancouver filming something else, and before I flew back to Los Angeles I got a call asking if I would like to come in that day to read with Michael Rosenbaum for the recurring role of his new girlfriend on the show,” she says. “So I went in and Michael came over from the set during his lunch break to read with me. They put my audition on tape and sent it down to Los Angeles for the producers there to look at, and in the meantime I flew back down there and home, too. A couple of days later I was offered the role and went back up to Vancouver. See, you move to L.A. from Canada and they just keep bringing you back,” jokes Vaugier, “which I have no problem with. Sure I’ll come back and see my family and friends in Vancouver.

“I had a lot of fun on Smallville,” continues the actress. “I always loved doing scenes with Michael and the two of us worked really well together. He had some interesting ideas about our characters’ relationship and it was wonderful to work with him on that level as well. Our storyline began to get really interesting when Helen tried to kill Lex and then the two of them reconciled and decided to have a second go at their marriage. That’s when the plot began to thicken so to speak. Their relationship could have gone in so many different directions, and acting-wise, I had a blast playing someone who kind of turned ‘evil’ all of a sudden.

The beautiful and talented Emmanuelle Vaugier - photo courtesy of The Promotion People

“As for Andromeda, that was a number of early mornings in the make-up chair. Mental note:  don’t do a TV show that requires prosthetics. Your life will be over as of day one. I should correct myself on that – in this case it was face paint, extensive hand-painted face painting as opposed to prosthetics. So it took three-and-a-half hours in the make-up chair and then a hour having my hair made up. The end process, including the costume, was absolutely beautiful.

“The actors on that show were amazing, too. Some of them also had to endure hours of make-up, but on a consistent basis, so I had a lot of respect for them for that. I’ve actually worked behind prosthetics as well and it can be pretty challenging depending on the process. I had this job where one of my eyes was covered. I had a splitting headache, and by the end of the day my other eye was strained because you’re not used to using just one eye. The make-up takes forever to remove, too. The paint wasn’t bad, but any type of latex takes a couple of hours to take off, again, depending on how much you have on. So it’s a difficult process, but necessary in certain instances.”

Along with her work on CSI:NY, Vaugier recently finished shooting the upcoming movie Dolan’s Cadillac, which is based on a short story by Stephen King and also stars Christian Slater and Wes Bentley. “This is basically a tale of revenge,” says the actress. “My character meets an untimely death and then her husband [Slater] plots his revenge against her killer [Bentley]. In the end, though, who really is the villain? The entire movie is sort of a twisted mental trip. It’s also more of a thriller than it is a horror story in the true sense of Stephen King. I feel the performances are really strong, so I’m looking forward to seeing what people think of it.”

Steve Eramo

As noted above, all photos copyright of Beiron Andersson, David M. Russell and/or CBS/Paramount TV and courtesy of The Promotion People, so please no copying or unauthorized duplicating of any form. Thanks!