Bill T. Clark Materializes at QI

Another House Between interview to report today! Tony Mercer -- the intrepid (and long-suffering...) -- Bill T. Clark himself, is profiled at the fan page, Quantum Imprimaturs.

Tony pours every fiber of his (very intense...) person hood into every performance on The House Between, a fact I always appreciate and admire. And since this is the first interview he's done on the subject of the program, the conversation makes for an illuminating read. You'll get a good sense of Tony's intellectual nature here, as well as his sense of humor.

Here's a snippet:

What was it like acting with JKM in “Reunited?”

Terrible! That bum gives himself all the best lines! It was great performing with John. I had no idea what to expect from him as an actor, but he was great. He put the energy and emotion right out there, and we had a strong working rapport. Of course the cast joked about feeling vindicated while watching him struggle with his own 99 page monologues.

Is it just me or did the episodes in the second season seem to involve Bill more? Why do you think that happened?

If you examine the show as a whole, from Arrived to Resolved, I think you’ll find that the intricacy and consistency of its structure suggests a concrete plan. It seems that all of the details must have been completely mapped out from the very beginning. It even seems that way to me. But it isn’t quite true, you see. Certain things evolved as we went along.

I honestly don’t know which elements were set in stone from the beginning. I’m going to tell you the one thing I do know for certain, something that John may or may not have mentioned publically before. Bill wasn’t supposed to be around after the first episode or two. Bill was created to be the Janet Leigh of The House Between. He’d be established as a lead, in this case a typical hero type, and then killed off suddenly and shockingly, leaving Astrid to take the “hero” spot. This was supposed to happen in the first episode, or maybe the second. That is how the part was pitched to me.

But he didn’t die at the end of the first episode, nor the second. He is stabbed at the end of the third (and I think that’s more or less how it was meant to go down, with Arlo stabbing Bill) but he still doesn’t die. The shooting script for Departed has Bill (and only Bill) getting snatched by Outdwellers in the mist at the end. We never shot that. I think the idea that “Bill always dies” may have evolved from all of this, but I’m not sure. Ultimately, instead of becoming the fallen hero that Astrid must replace, he became the frustrated would-be hero that Astrid saves from danger, again and again. Consider how many times Astrid rescues Bill from something. Poor Bill is a washout as a hero (most of the time), but he continues to try, even when he probably shouldn’t. That may be the essence of the character...