TERRY O’QUINN “666 PARK AVENUE” & “LOST” INTERVIEW
By Abbie Bernstein
Terry O’Quinn is standing all by himself in the lobby of the Beverly Hilton Hotel. There has just been a question-and-answer panel for his new series 666 PARK AVENUE, ABC Sunday nights at 10 PM. It’s in the middle of the Television Critics Association press tour, which means that the premises are swarming with journalists, publicists and network executives, but for some reason, O’Quinn has ten minutes between appointments and doesn’t appear to be in the middle of something else.
It seems a perfect time to ask if he has a couple of moments to talk to a reporter, and he answers in the affirmative.
O’Quinn, originally from Michigan, will forever be known to many TV viewers for his six years in his Emmy-winning role as John Locke on LOST. He also has a massive array of credits on film (his title turn in 1987’s THE STEPFATHER is still one of the scariest performances you’ll ever see and he was Howard Hughes in THE ROCKETEER), television (he just completed an arc on last season’s HAWAII FIVE-0 and played significant characters on EARTH 2, MILLENNIUM, HARSH REALM, THE X-FILES, JAG, ALIAS and THE WEST WING, to name a few) and stage. In short, he’s been around the block a few times.
In 666 PARK AVENUE, O’Quinn’s character Gavin Doran owns the title address – which is actually 999 Park Avenue, but the number changes when it’s reflected a certain way, which in turn reflects certain things about the nature of the building, called the Drake. Gavin and his wife Olivia, played by Vanessa Williams, like to help their residents achieve their unique ambitions and desires – at the cost of their souls. And woe betide the unfortunate resident who tries to renege on a deal; these people tend to get eaten by the walls, or worse. The new building managers, played by Dave Annable and Rachael Taylor, are likely in for quite an experience.
Given the phenomenal job O’Quinn did for ABC on LOST, is his gig on 666 PARK AVENUE the direct result of the network wanting to stay in business with the actor? “They did actually offer me a holding contract at some point in the year after LOST,” O’Quinn relates. “I didn’t take it, because I wanted to keep all of my options open.”
Instead, O’Quinn opted to play Joe White, a Navy Black Ops agent who is mentor to Alex O’Loughlin’s Steve McGarrett character, on CBS’ HAWAII FIVE-0. “They asked me if I would be on it,” O’Quinn explains, “they said there was going to be a three-show arc, and I said I would do three, and I ended up doing I guess ten of HAWAII FIVE-0.”
The job offered O’Quinn the ability to stay in Hawaii a little longer, where the actor had lived during the duration of production on LOST. He says there wasn’t a lot of crossover between the two productions in terms of where they filmed on the islands. “We didn’t use many of the locations. I’m always happy to be working, and I was happy to be able to occupy my own house in Hawaii for awhile, which I’ve since sold. But I was glad to leave when I left.”
666 PARK AVENUE films in New York, so O’Quinn is now residing there. He says it requires a bit of adjustment for him. “I’m much more comfortable in an outdoor environment. I was raised in the country and every opportunity in my life, I’ve lived in the country. I spent a little time in New York in the Seventies and Eighties. That was challenging for me, and I expect it’s going to be challenging for me now. I’m much more comfortable if I can wake up and just hear the wind and the birds. I expect it’s going to be a little stressful. I think adjusting to that is part of becoming Gavin.”
O’Quinn adds that Gavin doesn’t dress the actor does in real life, noting, “[The wardrobe contains] the nicest clothes I’ve ever worn for a character. It’s not what I choose to wear when I’m out and about, but that being said, yes, it’s nice suits and he’s a good dresser.”
The TV series 666 PARK AVENUE has been adapted, very loosely, by David Wilcox from a series of novels by Gabrielle Pierce. “I have never read the book 666 PARK AVENUE,” says O’Quinn. “From what I understand, this is very little like it”
Is Gavin comparable to any other character O’Quinn has played previously? “Not that I’m aware of,” he replies. “I’ve been told about ROSEMARY’S BABY and a little bit like the old TWILIGHT ZONE – sometimes it reminds me of that – and people have said DEVIL’S ADVOCATE, which I haven’t seen, so no, there’s nothing that I base it on.”
Toward the end of LOST, John Locke died and his body – still played by O’Quinn – became taken over by a Mephistophelian character known as the Man in Black. However, the Man worked solo, whereas Gavin is very much in partnership with Olivia. Does that make a difference?
“It’s a little bit different,” O’Quinn points out, “because of the fact that in this case, that’s the one chink in his armor – his relationship with Olivia is the one place where he can be vulnerable that I’ve seen so far. Either from her or through her, he can be hit and wounded. That’s my take on him so far – that they love each other, they have a dedicated relationship and they’re happy together.”
There’s a lot we don’t know about Gavin yet – and O’Quinn says he doesn’t know much more than the audience does, which is how he likes it. “I haven’t filled my mind up with anything that Gavin might know. To me, that’s investing in possibilities that might be wrong, so I simply try to play what’s on the page, to make that interesting, and if there’s something that I’m missing, I trust the writers to tell me what that it. But other than that, I don’t like to carry needless baggage. I like to try to keep it as simple as I can and make what I want in any particular scene as clear as I can make it.”
Is the Drake building itself supernatural, in O’Quinn’s opinion, or is it simply manifesting the natures of the people who inhabit it? “My theory – and it’s just a theory, David [Wilcox, the show runner] can answer, but I reckon he doesn’t really want to – is that Gavin’s kind of a sharecropper on the plantation of Evil. He plants the seeds, he only gets half the harvest. He has to feed some back to the building, but he gets his share and he uses people to his own ends. My feeling is he has to satisfy those [requirements]. I like that.”
Does O’Quinn think that, within its entertainment premise, that 666 PARK AVENUE addresses the evil and the good within the individual? “I think that’s what it’s about, really. I mean, it’s about how much do we give in, what will we give to get what we want? How badly do we want it? I think Gavin is a predator who sees the weak members of the herd and brings them down if he can and exploits them to the fullest if he can do it. I think that whole question about, ‘Is there evil in the world?’ Well, yeah, it’s in everybody. Either you let it out or you don’t. It’s on all our color wheels. I think we all have color wheels. And when I play a character, I think, ‘Well, what color is this character’s strongest, but what are the other colors I can bring?’ If God’s there, He or She is in all of us, and the same is true of the evil, the Devil.”
In playing any character, O’Quinn adds, “I try to not be just one thing. A performance is kind of like a piece of music. Sometimes you hit the note hard and you hit it triple forte, and sometimes you play it a little softly while you’re playing other notes. So you try to put as many things as you can into a character without confusing the audience. That character wants something in every scene – there’s some point to playing that scene, so that’s the first job. When I was on stage, the first thing that you do is make sure that you’re heard and understood. After that, if you want to add colors, good, that’s great. But the first thing is to be heard and to be understood.”
Since the opportunity is here to ask, how did O’Quinn feel about the conclusion of LOST? “I was neither happy nor unhappy,” O’Quinn replies. “I knew it was ending – I was unhappy that it ended, not that I think they made a mistake, I think they did the right thing, ending it when it was healthy, ending it when it was good. At some point in the year Season Four, Season Five, I knew they had so many balls in the air that they would never catch them all, that they wouldn’t satisfy anybody who was very particular about tying up every loose end. I decided that LOST was about the journey, not really about the destination. When I knew it was ending and we were shooting our last month or so, I think a lot of us had one foot out the door. We were kind of going like, ‘Well, okay, this is …’ It was very dear to us all, but we didn’t really want to watch that denouement, we wanted to finish it up and move on.”
Between the end of LOST and the advent of 666 PARK AVENUE, O’Quinn was trying to launch a series that would have starred him and fellow LOST castmate and Emmy winner Michael Emerson as former special ops agents. “That project’s not on any burners right now,” O’Quinn relates. “That was called ODD JOBS. Warner Brothers bought it from me, they sold it to NBC as a pilot, J.J. Abrams found the writers for it, and then unfortunately nobody liked the script. NBC didn’t like the script, I didn’t like the script, nobody really liked the script, so they decided to shelve the whole idea. Michael and I were under contract for a year, but Michael went to do another Warner Brothers project [PERSON OF INTEREST] and so did I [666 PARK AVENUE], so Warner Brothers was okay with that. Michael called me when they offered him PERSON OF INTEREST and sort of asked if it was okay if he accepted this job, and I thought that was a wonderful thing for him to do, and I said, ‘Yes, you go ahead, I don’t think ODD JOBS is going to happen right now.’ We both decided it’s going to happen in about five years,” O’Quinn concludes with a laugh.
He adds that various people come up with their own wish lists for additions to the putative ODD JOBS cast, should it ever get made. “I’ve gotten a few suggestions. Somebody said, ‘Why don’t you bring Mark Harmon in to work on that show?’ I said, ‘Okay.’ He is almost the nicest person I’ve ever worked with. Probably one of the three nicest people I’ve ever worked with on television.”
Harmon, of course, is still busy starring in Season 10 of NCIS. “I was on it once,” O’Quinn recalls. “He was just a real sweetheart of a guy. He and Jonathan Frakes, who played Number One in STAR TREK [O’Quinn guest-starred in the ST:TNG episode “The Pegasus” as Admiral Pressman], just a lovely man.”
Is there anything else O’Quinn would like to say about 666 PARK AVENUE at present? “I hope everybody watches it and gives it a chance and loves it,” O’Quinn replies. “We’ll see.”
By Abbie Bernstien
Buzzy Mag Entertainment Reporter
