Exclusive! David Lawrence interview part 1
David Lawrence: (spot-on Robert Forster imitation) So how did it go with Robert Forster?House Petrelli: Spectacular! He’s such a nice guy!
DL: (imitation) Nathan... I have some jobs for you. I have the power now, so you, and Angela, are gonna have to do what I say.
HP: Damn! That’s really good!
DL: See, I’m gonna end up doing Robert Forster now. Who is actually Joe Stepnowski my plumber from when I was growing up in Cleveland. (New England accent) Yeah, what you got here is you got a drain that’s flowing back to the back of the basement, and the problem is that these houses were built back in the 20s? And so you got cracks all over the place...
HP: *laughs* All right. So I’ll get right to it. Are you now, or have you ever been, a geek? Preferably a comic book geek.
DL: Are you kidding me? Are you KIDDING ME?!? Okay, first of all, let’s just point out that I grew up about a block and a half from where Batman was conceived and where Superman was first thought of in Cleveland, Ohio. I am steeped in comic book tradition. I couldn’t wait to get home every day... at 4:30 on channel 43 in Cleveland when the Amazing Spider-hyphen-Man was on television...
HP: Yes! Thank you for getting that right!
DL: Speaking of Star Trek references? I was the guy that had a 5x7 three-ring notebook covered in plain green fabric acquired from NASA’s Lewis Research Center, which is now called the Glenn Research Center, when I was an Explorer there, post Boy Scouts in the Explorer Posts, I think they were called. In that notebook, which also had government-issue paper in it that was probably sent out to the lowest bidder like everything that NASA did, which probably explains Apollo 13 in some ways. I used to keep very careful track of the star dates of all of the episodes of Star Trek, thinking that if I could put them all in order... first of all, I noticed that they were not in order. Captain Kirk would come on and go (Shatner imitation) “Captain’s Log... star date..” Four digits, point two digits. They were not in order! So I wanted to put the series in order, and this was at age 13.
HP: That’s the kind of anal stuff I would do.
DL: Exactly. I did that, and every week I would go to Katie’s, which was the convenience store at the top of our street, and mow through the... just putrid array of comics. And because I was without a car until I was 16 and couldn’t travel to any of the cool comics shops further away, we didn’t have anything. We had nothing! But what it did do was it got me into computers. And I think there’s a huge crossover between people who are into technology and people who are into fantasy and comics and sci-fi and so on. So it wasn’t just comic books, it was also science fiction and cartoons and everything having to do with the escape from... it wasn’t a bad childhood but it certainly wasn’t the optimal childhood. I had a stepfather who just hated everything that I did, and right up until the day he died did not understand anything about computers, or drama, or radio, or any of the stuff that I was into. I mean, that’s where I made my bones in entertainment was in radio.
HP: Geez, don’t you wish we could have Mystery Theater back, with E.G. Marshall? God, I miss that show.
DL: Yes, and I also wish that we had funny things on the air. Like when I was growing up, my favorite thing on the radio was actually the National Lampoon Radio Hour with the original Not Ready for Prime Time Players.
HP: Nick Danger, Third Eye!
DL: Well, Nick Danger, Third Eye was actually not National Lampoon.
HP: Firesign Theater.
DL: Firesign Theater. “He’s no fun, he fell right over.”
HP: That’s right!
DL: But there was a thing they got me with, with the National Lampoon Radio Hour. I was probably 12 or 13 – again, very impressionable and I was listening on Sunday night on WMMS just before the King Biscuit Flower Hour.
HP: Yeah!
DL: And they started to tell a soft-core pornography story on the radio. “The princess’ breasts were heaving as the knight strode into the room...” And slowly the volume of the story started to drop. And there was turgid members involved, and there was rose-colored areolas involved, and so my finger started turning the volume control up on the little transistor radio under my pillow until it was at full volume, at which point Christopher Guest as Flash Bazbo comes in and goes, “Help! Police! There’s drugs in here! They’re smoking dope in here!” And I’m diving for the radio and my mom comes into the room, “What in the hell is going on in here?!” So the power of radio was very clearly defined for me at that moment.
HP: Yeah!
DL: I just loved every possible sci-fi series on television, although just now late in life I’m coming to Dr. Who because it seemed like such a daunting task to go back in history and watch all of the old Dr Whos to catch up with the new Dr. Whos and so on.
HP: Yeah, I was trying to watch a few of those and I love Red Dwarf too.
DL: Yeah, I was just in London at the London MCM Expo and they were all over the place. And the new series Torchwood and... what was the other one...
HP: Firefly?
DL: Well, Firefly, there were a lot of Firefly people there too. It begins with a D... somebody’s probably reading this and screaming at their computer... It was about going back in time to prehistoric times... there was like a tunnel underneath a lake, and when they went into the tunnel it took them back in time... well... but anyway, it was awesome, and there were all these people dressed up, there was a lot of cosplay going on. And it was just great.
HP: So then obviously you knew about Heroes before you were ever cast, right?
DL: I was hooked on Heroes from the first moment that Masi Oka was trying to get the second hand on the clock to go backwards. I was, from the very first episode, a huge fan. And I had also crossed it off my list of any show I would ever have any potential of being booked on, because the first thing I noticed about these people is that they are among the most beautiful people ever to populate a science fiction show. Obviously on Star Trek you had Seven of Nine, and you had T’pal, and you had Uhura and you had the chocolate love going on... and of course you had every alien chick that Kirk ever bedded down. You know, you have all these hot babes in sci-fi and of course that was part of the draw. But on Heroes in particular, these people are model-quality hot. I thought “I’ll never get on this show, these people are all hot.” And you look up hot in the dictionary and I’m under the section of antonyms for hot. But yes, I was a fan from the very start.
HP: So did you seek them out, or they seek you out?
DL: This truly was one of a series of auditions I had during the week of June 11, 2008, not that I remember the day like it was the back of my hand, but I do. Actually the week of June 8th if you’re being technical, because that was the Sunday, and on Tuesday my agent called and said, “You’ve got an audition on Thursday, I’m sending over the sides.” And I thought, “Tuesday to Thursday, wow, I’ve got a whole extra day with the sides, this is like icing on the cupcake.” So I got the sides, and it was for Heroes, and I was like, “Pfft, I’m never gonna get this.” I don’t know how much time you spend on the spoiler sites, but everybody was talking about this breakdown that was released for Eric Doyle. And he was 38 – 40 and imposing and hideous...
HP: Hideous... aw geez... *laughs*
DL: Do you remember that?
HP: I try to avoid the spoilers, I really do.
DL: Well, all the spoiler sites had that breakdown, and everybody was conjecturing as to who was going to get it. I, of course, didn’t even look at the sites until after I was told that I had the part. And then when I looked back into the older posts on HeroesTelevision.com, WatchingHeroes.com, and HeroesSpoilers.tv and all that, I realized that this was very big news to people to get, because apparently someone who was up for the part, and it wasn’t me, copied verbatim the breakdown that the casting directors for Heroes put out on the part. And they continue to do that to this day. And so I was able to work with the part for two days, which is like twice as long as you usually get, and really rehearse the heck out of it and find some really cool nuancy things to do with my voice, and all that sort of thing.
So I then went in, surrounded by people in the waiting room who were twice my “imposingness,” and half again as “hideosity” as I possibly was, and I thought, “What am I doing here? These guys all look like Lurch on a good Thanksgiving Day.” And I also sat myself across from the room where people were going in and auditioning for this stuff, and I noticed as the door opened and closed fairly quickly that there were a lot of people in the room. Usually there’s like one or two when you’re doing a read like this. But in this case there were 10 or 12, and I noticed they were sitting in rows, almost classroom style, which is very odd for an audition like this. Usually you go in and there’s the Casting Director or maybe just a casting assistant and maybe an intern running the camera. But in this case there was a reader, and someone running the camera, and all of the writers, and all of the producers, and I recognize now that Greg Beeman was in there, and Jeph Loeb was in there, and Chuck Kim was in there who wrote my episode that introduced me, and Chris Zatta who wrote it with him, plus people from NBC.
But I did know that there were people in there, and what I watched people doing when they went into the room time and again was be surprised by this and be taken aback by it. They were a little thrown off by it. They’d walk into the room and go “Whoa! Hey... what’s going on?” I walked in knowing that there were that many people in there and just said, “Hey, how’s it going everybody? Thanks for coming to my audition.” And they loved that, they thought it was great. “Look, I’d love to get this part. If I don’t, I understand, but man... this is the most goddamned fun I’ve had in months. Thank you so much.” And they loved that too, and they had me do my thing, and then I remember Greg Beeman stood up and said, “Okay. I hear all the cool stuff that you’re doing with your voice. I’m not sure the camera’s picking it up, so please move four feet closer to the camera and talk right into it so we know what you’re doing.” And I did it again, and I watched some woman just off camera as I was finishing... shudder. And thought, “Wow, I really effed this up, or I really knocked it out of the park and made her creeped out.” And it turned out it was the latter.
HP: Yeay!
DL: Yes. So it wasn’t me seeking them out, they weren’t on any target list that I had, because I figure the parts that come your way are the parts that come your way. And if you’re right for them, they’re gonna see it, and if you’re not, they’re gonna see that too. So you just have to do the best at being you in that particular part, and if it works for that particular part, boom, there you go.
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