PASADENA, Calif. _ Aliens aren't always little green men with enormous eyes and pot bellies. Sometimes they are ordinary people who feel they are on the outside looking in. That's one of the themes of NBC's new fantasy, "Midnight, Texas," premiering next Monday.
Based on the best-selling trilogy by Charlaine Harris, the series discovers Midnight, a small, isolated town in Texas where being different is the new normal. Nothing is what it appears to be.
Writer and executive producer Monica Owusu-Breen says she likes writing fantasy because it can serve as a metaphor for our struggles and feelings of alienation.
Actor Jason Lewis ("Sex and the City," "Brothers & Sisters"), who plays an angel on the show, says he found acting a way of fitting in.
"For me, story as a kid was a place to go hide and disappear into other worlds than the one I was afforded, and I think that's something that 'Midnight' offers," he says.
"We are a bunch of misfits, outsiders, the way it's (viewed) to the rest of the world. But here we are family, and I think that's something that most people kind of struggle with. Very few of us end up being born into perfect families. Some of us have to find them, and in 'Midnight,' we found ours," he says.
Parisa Fitz-Henley, who plays Fiji, a witch who owns the local Wiccan shop, says she felt like an outsider as a kid. "I am bi-racial. I have one parent from the States, one parent from Jamaica. I grew up in a town where, if people knew that you were from that town, you got made fun of and called names. Growing up dealing with issues of race _ this was in Florida _ I always felt not quite right," she says.
"I also felt like, as a woman, sometimes our gifts are not welcome in the world. And reading about Fiji, I was like, 'Oh, my God. I so completely relate to her.' And in the books, you'll see she deals a lot with issues of her own perception of self and her body and how she moves in the world, and I so related to that as well. So all of these characters, I feel, bring that home to me, that feeling of you are outside until you are with your people, and then you are all in. And I love that about it."
Viewers continue to be fascinated with vampires and monsters, says Lewis, because they can relate to the loneliness of such creatures. "There's a story of (Mary) Shelley's 'Frankenstein' being a writing competition, who could write the worst monster. And Dr. Frankenstein is the worst monster, not Frankenstein's creature. I think it's that thing of being TREATED like a monster. And I don't think there is anybody who hasn't experienced that at some level, even the cool kids. You are treated like there's something wrong with you ... "
"Every character brings something different to the table," says Francois Arnaud who plays a psychic who communicates with spirits from another world. "We are all wrestling with our inner demons, and it's about controlling and taming them," he says.
It was the culmination of real-life tragedies that inspired Owusu-Breen to write the series. "Two years ago, I had the worst fall of my life where my mother, my mother-in-law, and my dog all died in the same month, which sucked," she says.
"So I wanted to develop something to take my mind off of it. And I read two chapters and called my agent and said I had to (write it) because my mother lived in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere where every house is a row-house right next to each other.
"And my mother-in-law was a psychic who moved to a small town. So I feel like maybe they are watching. I can't figure it out. But it felt like it would be weird not to develop this. So I had a real affinity for the material and these characters."
While the books' author, Harris, did visit the set in Albuquerque, she did not participate in writing the series. "We talked a lot," says Owusu-Breen. "But she understands that the novel had a very small-town pace to it, which is very different from what network requires. So it's a little bit like her books on steroids ... The thing is I really love those characters, and I wanted to stay true to their heart. So I think that she's extraordinarily supportive of what we've done with this."
AMAZON OFFERS NEW VERSION OF 'TYCOON'
"The Last Tycoon," F. Scott Fitzgerald's final (and unfinished) novel inherits a new version from Amazon, premiering on July 28. It stars Matt Bomer as a young studio executive trying to swim in the shark-infested waters of 1930's Hollywood. Bomer struggled for some time before he was cast in the pivotal role for him in "White Collar." "One thing my parents always instilled in me was perseverance, that's the one thing I got growing up in Texas and having athletics," he says.
"A lot of people have the talent. A lot of people have the right look for a part, but not everybody has the perseverance to hang in there and keep going for it. I think I've been really blessed. I can't complain. But when you love what you do, perseverance comes easy."
FILMMAKER FINALIZES TV DEAL
John Carpenter, the legendary director of such classics as "Escape from New York," "Halloween," "The Thing," has signed a deal with Universal Cable Productions to oversee a series of projects. Already under way is "Tales for a Halloween Night," slated for the Syfy Channel and adapted from Carpenter's graphic novel anthology.
Carpenter says filmmaking requires some special abilities. "You need a thick skin. You have to have talent first of all _ luck, a thick skin and the will to survive. The same qualities that make anybody do anything that's impossible. Making movies is impossible. You can't do it, but somehow you do it," he says.
COMEDIAN MAKES 'SNAP DECISION'
David Alan Grier will inherit his own TV game show starting Aug. 7 on GSN. Called "Snap Decision," the show asks contestants to relate their first impressions about perfect strangers. The participants compete for a $10,000 prize to see whose gut instinct serves him best.
Not many people know that Grier has a master's degree from Yale. "For me, as a black actor, I always wanted to feel when I went to auditions, I never wanted the people I was auditioning for to say, 'Well, if you were better trained.' 'If you'd gone to another school.' I wanted to go into an audition knowing I had the best training . So I applied to Juilliard, Yale drama and Circle in the Square. I got into all of them. So I chose Yale."
