Sam Witwer is an American actor with an impressive list of credentials to his name. The 35-year-old has appeared in hits shows including Angel, Star Trek: Enterprise, Dexter and Bones. Ā His breakthrough role was as Davis Bloome aka Doomsday in the eighth season of Smallville.
Since 2011 Sam has starred as vampire Aidan Waite in the US remake of Being Human. The show is finally coming to the UK from April 11th on Watch.
We recently caught up with Sam to find out more about the show, discuss the similarities with the UK version and to talk about his career so far.
How are you today Sam?
Iām good. Itās a nice morning here and the weatherās good. Iām alive so itās good!
It definitely beats the rain that we have in London at the momentā¦
Oh really? Yeah thatās unusual for London isnāt it? (laughs)
Letās talk about Being Human USA. In the US youāre already onto the third season but here in the UK weāll be seeing it for the first time. Tell us about the show.
Itās a reimagining of your show. We approached that with a great deal of humility, respect and deference toward the original material. Me and my cast members stayed away from watching the BBC version until we finished shooting the first season. At that point I bought everyone the Blu-ray boxsets and weāve all since become fans of the show. I really love the BBC original.
The idea was to create a companion piece. The BBC version is fantastic and wonderful, and has such a huge fanbase over here but it also has a very different sense of humour. There were other things you could do with that situation which is why Toby Whithouse and Rob Pursey were contacted with the idea of doing an American version.
What people are going to see is a version of the story of the first season of the BBC show except itās going to be expanded a little bit. The original had 6 episodes and we do that same story in 13 episodes. We take a little bit more time with certain aspects and go off in a few surprising directions based on the characters being essentially different than their UK counterparts. They were never intended to be the same people but just three different people in the same situation.
You play vampire Aidan in the series. What do we need to know about him?
Heās about 260 years old which puts him about 100 years older than Aidan Turnerās character Mitchell in the BBC Being Human; that was one of the ways they wanted to differentiate this guy. It puts him in a different light immediately. This guy was an American Revolutionary war soldier and heās been living the life of a socio-path/maniac/murdererā¦a really bad, bad guy. Not until recently has he decided that he canāt live like that anymore and heās tired of being a bad guy. Heās trying to go clean.
The whole concept of this piece is that the vampire phenomenon is a thinly veiled metaphor for drug addiction. You have a guy who is trying to stay away from his old drug buddies and trying to go clean. He meets this other guy who is a werewolf, newly turned and doesnāt really understand that phenomenon, takes him under his wing and they decide that they want to make a try of being normal guys and move in to an apartment. They happen to move into a haunted house and thatās where they meet the ghost.
Whatās the dynamic like between you and your co-stars Megan Rath and Sam Huntington?
Well (laughs)ā¦itās not that different to the dynamic that we have off-screen. The first time I ever met Sam Huntington was in the audition process. He sat down next to me and I guess the light was gleaming off my hair or maybe I had too much product in it or something (laughs) and he sits down, looks at me and say āare you going grey?ā right in front of the producers!Ā I was like āerm I donāt think so!ā and he said āoh yeah sorry!ā and he could see that I wasnāt but heād already said it in front of the producers. I said āthanks for doing that here pal, I appreciate the concernā so I immediately started giving him grief and we started joking around and laughing. The producers saw that and thatās very much the relationship that those characters develop.
I find him funny and Aidan finds Josh funny but heās also quite annoying and irritating. Once we had got our little group together, Megan Rath comes into the audition at some point later on in the process and is so excited to meet us with a big smile. Thatās precisely what happens in the script. We happened to have the exact relationship that they were writing for already.
We ended up having a degree of chemistry that the studio and the producers asked us to tone down for the first five or six episodes. It was interesting because weād seen the first episode of the BBC series and there was a wonderful chemistry there so we though thatās what they wanted. They hired us for our chemistry so letās do that. We would have this comedic timing and this fun banter and rapport but the producers said, quite rightfully, that we couldnāt do that as our characters donāt know each other that well yet. We said that in the BBC original they had that but they pointed out that in that version there was a different cast in the pilot than in the rest of the series. We donāt really know during that first episode how well those characters know each other; we just know that they know each other and they have this rapport. With our characters we track how long theyāve known each other so we have to honour that otherwise itās going to feel like a sitcom.
They were right. To play it realistically, under our circumstances, you have to honour what the audience is seeing. That was one of the first of many differences that started creeping in to our situation.
Having that chemistry between the three of you, does it make it easier to get into your characters and naturally interact with each other?
Oh absolutely yeah. A lot of who we are slips into those interactions (laughs). Season 3, which weāre airing right now in America, thereās a lot of ad-libbing and a lot of stuff that doesnāt appear in those scripts. Our showrunner encourages us to add them into our scenes. They just get weirder and weirder the scenes.
It sounds like you have a great time making the showā¦
Itās interesting. A lot of people say āwe have a wonderful castā and there are lots of wonderful casts out there. Iāve been privileged to be part of shows that have a very happy cast. For example Battlestar Galactica had a very happy cast where people generally got along. Being Human, we donāt just get along, we go on vacations together and hang out when weāre not shooting. We are extraordinarily close and thatās a really fun element to turn up to work and thereās two of your best friends waiting for you and you get to spend the whole day with them. Itās a pretty great job for that reason. Megan Rath and Sam Huntington are the reason to show up to work
Thatās a good reason. Itās better than going into a job where you canāt bear the people you work withā¦
(laughs) which does sometimes happen unfortunately!
What first attracted you to Being Human and made you decide you wanted to be a part of it?
I received the script and read three pages in, saw the word āvampireā, closed the script and just wasnāt interested. I didnāt want to do it. Itās not necessarily that I have anything against vampires per se. Itās more that thereās like 53 vampires out there on TV right now and I donāt know that we need another one. That was it. I turned down the audition.
Then I got a call from a good friend whoās very knowledgeable and knows whatās going on in Hollywood. She said, ādid you turn down the Being Human audition?ā and I said, āyeahā. She said, ādid you read the script?ā and I said, āyeahā. She said, āno you didnāt, you didnāt read the scriptā and I said, āyeahā¦ā (laughs) then she said, āread the script, thatās your job! As an actor itās your job to give the material a chance and figure out what you want to do and not do. How do you do that without reading a script?ā
She shamed me into reading the script. Once I got through that first one I went straight to the second one being ridiculously intrigued. By the end of reading those scripts I very humbly asked for an audition (laughs). Iād already turned it down so I humbly asked and said āIād like to be involved in this audition processā.Ā The moment I understood that it wasnāt as much about a vampire, as it was a recovering heroin addict ā thatās the story theyāre telling through the vampire metaphor ā I became very interested and I thought that was really cool. At that point I hadnāt heard of the BBC series so it was all very new to me.
The BBC series has just finished here in the UK so the timing of the US remake arriving here couldnāt be better reallyā¦
Yeah itās interesting. The intention for our show has always been, for fans of the BBC series, that it would be a fun companion. Rob Pursey, one of the creators of the BBC series, came to visit us on set and I was having a conversation with him about this. I said, āitās interesting Rob if we fail here it doesnāt affect you guys at all. Youāre doing fine and itās still brilliant. If we succeed weāll send a bunch of viewers your way and your ratings will increase. The brand will have a wider audience.ā Rob kinda smiled and said, āwell thatās the idea isnāt it?ā (laughs). We talked about the win-win nature of the deal for the Being Human BBC series but he was quick to point out that he wouldnāt be on set with me if he didnāt feel the American version was working. Fair enough (laughs).
Iāve always looked at them as companion pieces. I have friends, and Iāve certainly talked to fans, who watch and enjoy both series and I think thatās correct. There are always going to be people who like rivalries. They root for their favourite sports team but then thereās always a rival for that sports team. If they say I like Star Wars then they say I donāt like Star Trek. They think that you can only like one and not the other. Thatās not the world that I live in; I watch Star Trek and Star Wars. Thereās no competitiveness between the two shows. I have a reputation for being objective about what my show is doing and you kind of have to, or at least try to, so you can improve and know what youāre doing wrong. There are things that we do better than the BBC version and there are things they do better than our version. I think itās worth watching both of them. Especially as with our show, the more and more it goes on it diverges from the BBC version. By the second and third seasons we have no storylines in common.
Thatās a good thing that the show takes the original idea and then finds its feet in a different way taking along the audience that watched the original versionā¦
Yes and thatās important. You canāt just redo it and offer nothing new. It wouldnāt be much of a companion piece if thatās the way we approached it.
Looking at the roles youāve played so far in your career you seem attracted to the dark and challenging roles like Davis in Smallville. What do you like about these roles?
With Being Human and the audition, and I wasnāt aware of this until after, they came looking for me because of Davis Bloome. The casting director Being Human was also the casting director for Smallville. As I understand it, and was told later, they went through hundreds of guys and were having a hard time casting Aidan. They wanted to cast Aidan first before they cast the other roles. During that process the casting director Dee Dee Bradley said, āhold on weāre trying to cast an actor who can play the idea of a monster who doesnāt want to be a monster. I just cast a guy who is doing something like thatā. Thatās when I got sent the audition. They actually came looking for me.
Davis Bloome in a weird way is a kind of prototype version of Aidan. A humourless prototype I might add. There wasnāt a lot of time for Davis to have a sense of humour about what was happening to him whereas Being Human is actually quite funny. Itās interesting how it all came about.
Is it nice to get the opportunity to take the lead role in a series?
Yeah that was fun. Iād just come off of doing a couple of independents where I had the lead role in one and the second lead role in the other. I was getting used to this idea of doing leads. That was certainly one of the draws for doing Being Human. They were offering me a lead role and Iād get to put my stamp on my own series. It was certainly alluring.
Slightly off-topic but we hear that youāre passionate about role-playing video games. What is about them that you love?
Iām a big gamer altogether right. Weāre talking table top games, video games or board games. I think itās just a more adult version of playing cops and robbers like you do as a kid with your friends. Me and my friends that I grew up with, thereās about 8 of us, weāre always gaming in one shape or form or competing. When weāre not together weāre getting together on Xbox Live and playing Left 4 Dead with each other. Itās just what we did growing up and we see no reason not to continue it. We get a great deal of fun out of it.
The other aspect of it frankly is that you put a lot of effort into these games and it occurred to me as you become an adult some people fall away from this because you get busy and have a job and a career. I was preparing for running an RPG with my friends and I was working really hard at it. I thought, āIām working really hard here and itās kind childishā then I realised that Iām basically doing what I do for a living. I work in storytelling and create stories and all this weird fun stuff. Iām doing that kind of thing but Iām just not getting paid. Actually thatās cooler because it means I like it and enjoy stories (laughs).
Look at where video games have gone. Itās so story-based these days. If you look at the Star Wars: Force Unleashed game itās one of the first to get a Writerās Guild award for its script. Itās different mediums of storytelling but a lot of the same principles apply. For me thatās key. I love it, I do it for a living and when Iām not doing it for a living Iām doing it on my own time. Even the music I write is storytelling.
Back to Being Human USA now. Why should our readers tune in to Watch when the show begins this month?
Let me think about that. I would say if you love the situation and youāve already become attached to two different casts ā well three if you include the pilot of the original Being Human ā whatās a fourth cast huh? (laughs) Whatās a fourth group of people to add to that illustrious lists of vampires, werewolves and ghosts? Weāre your cousins from across the pond and this is how we handle that type of adversity. Itās all fun and weāre all in this together.
Being Human USA starts on 11th April at 9pm on Watch.