LOS ANGELES _ When it debuted in February 2017, NBC promoted their new drama "Taken" as being based on the trilogy of action films starring Liam Neeson. Those films featured retired government operative Bryan Mills, who in a classic scene explained he had "a particular set of skills" he would use to save his daughter.
It was a little difficult to see how the new series connected to the films during season one as the series began with a very young Mills played by Clive Standen. It's obvious now that the second season has started that those first 10 episodes were just setting up the foundation for the character.
The first season was necessary because of the vast differences between TV and film. Each of the "Taken" movies came in at about two hours, and all three had a beginning, middle and end. That's only six hours for the entire movie franchise.
Standen, during an interview during a rare rainy afternoon in Southern California, says, "With a TV show you hopefully want it to go 30, 40, 50 hours and you can't have an end until you know when your last season is. So therefore you can't give the audience too early the finished product of the character. Making a TV show is a marathon and not a sprint.
"In this case, the finished product is a 60-year-old man who is grizzled and jaded and (has) lost his family."
That first season was spent showing the reckless side of the character of a Green Beret who joins the entirely different world of the CIA and Black Ops. To accomplish his training to fit in that world required Mills being surrounded by a team. That's why Mills works with former CIA spy Christina Hart (Jennifer Beals), who sent him and a team of covert operatives on rescue missions around the world.
Now that the heavy lifting has been done to get Mills trained, there has been some reshuffling this season to reduce the cast to four main characters. Plots will now lean more on the particular set of skills Mills brings to the spy world. That change means less of a focus on international bad guys and more personal stories. Standen describes this season as being more like "The Equalizer," where the focus is more on individuals or families in need.
"That's why I signed on to do this series in the first place," Standen says. "That's what I saw in the films. Now we finally have that in the show. It may be a season too late, but thankfully people invested in the show and we got a season two. Now we can really give the viewer what they wanted. We can let him off the leash and each episode is refining that particular set of skills."
When it comes to the particular skills Standen brings to the role, he was an actor at the National Youth Theatre, National Youth Music Theatre and London Academy of Dramatic Art. Standen appeared in theatrical roles at the Royal Albert Hall and Shakespeare's Globe Theatre. Along with all his acting training, Standen has an extensive background in stunt work and sword fighting, and by his teens was working as part of a professional stunt team, mastering horse riding, jousting and swordplay. He also studied Muay Thai boxing and quickly became the undefeated national champion.
Despite that very physical background, Standen has never wanted to play an action hero _ either on TV or in films _ who did little more than break down doors and smash heads. He prefers to play characters who have great vulnerability.
"I want to play a character who will stumble, trip and fall because I am interested in seeing what he will do when he gets back up," Standen says. "That only happens when a character becomes too emotionally involved with what they are doing. Once you get emotionally involved, it clouds your judgment and you make mistakes.
"That's so much fun for the audience because we want him to make that mistake because we would make those same mistakes."
Whether it is a big mission on the other side of the world or a small problem near to home, "Taken" is a physically demanding job. Standen already had a strong foundation in the action world after starring in a variety of TV roles that both required massive amounts of research and physical training. Along with playing Rollo, a fearsome warrior with a wild impulsive streak in History Channel's "Vikings," he portrayed Sir Gawain in the Starz original series "Camelot," alongside Joseph Fiennes and Eva Green, and had a starring role in the BBC America series "Robin Hood."
Taking on the wide range of roles makes Standen happy because he looks at acting as just getting to "play make-believe." He's more comfortable when he's dressed for a role than when he looks more like a company executive.
"Taken" is his first series in recent years in which Standen wears modern clothes. But, he is so aware of exactly how the character would think and act, it's not unusual for Standen to have disagreements with what he's given to wear as Mills.
"I can't stand the TV idea of everyone looking perfect all the time," Standen says. "Bryan is too busy to go shopping. Bryan's the kind of guy who leaves his clothes in the washing machine for four days and they would be dank and wrinkled. But, that's not the way it works on network TV.
"I don't like being clean cut."
