[IMG:L]Heroes has certainly been filled with the kind of noble characters as the title suggests, as well as a few villains for them to face. But the verdict is still out on whether Nathan Petrelli is a good guy or a bad guy. The shrewd, slippery and frequently cutthroat politician who used his brother’s hospitalization for a boost in the polls early on has also shown glimmers of hope for redemption throughout the season, but continues to be depicted in shades of grey.
Petrelli’s alter ego, actor Adrian Pasdar is no stranger to the vagaries of politics, having watched his wife, Dixie Chick lead singer Natalie Maines, suffer various slings and arrows for speaking her mind in recent years, and he’s learned to talk like a candidate for office himself: the secrets of the Heroes season finale are closely guarded, but Pasdar deftly promises excitement without revealing details.
Hollywood.com: So, what can we look forward to in the finale?
Adrian Pasdar: Questions do get resolved in a huge way. I have a big part in the end of the final decision-making in the last few moments of the finale which all those questions that are posited in the pilot are answered almost to a tee in the finale. It’s a beautifully structured finale. I think I did remember at the offices there saying reading the first pages of the script, I couldn’t tell any of the scripts on penalty of being removed from the entire project. So keeping that in mind, there are really wonderful moments at the very end. I just looped 22 and 23 the other day and I got to see the final bit. It’s just mind blowing. It’s stunning the way it’s all put together.
[IMG:R]HW: Will any cliffhangers be extended into next season, or will it start from a different point?
AP: Well, I think we’re all privy to what happens in the end. The very end of the finale is where Season Two will pick up. It shows you a good three minutes or two minutes of where that’s going to pick up, and I don’t think anybody’s going to guess where. It’s a very, very interesting place.
HW: Can you say if you’ll even be there?
AP: I hope to be there. I think I’ll be there, but earlier somebody asked me this question. I signed on to do Heroes and I wound up being on Survivor. I’d like to stick around, but if and when it’s time for me to go, I’ll be just better than happy to be part of a terrific season of TV.
HW: Will we learn more about Nathan’s own heritage?
AP: I’ve always been under the suspicion–and again I’m not saying it’s any terrific insight–but I’ve always thought that wouldn’t it be interesting if Malcolm [MacDowell’s character Linderman] had something more to do with being familiar with Petrelli? Theories posited that Malcolm actually did sire somebody.
HW: What does family mean to Nathan?
AP: I think family plays such a big part in the landscape that’s been defined by Heroes. It’s been really a family oriented struggle on so many fronts. When I discovered that Claire was my daughter, there’s a certain pragmatic approach to understanding what needs to be done, and then there’s probably a less than pragmatic approach about trying to figure out how she’s going to fit into the future of his life. As an alpha male who’s so [obsessed with] succeeding politically and professionally, it all harkens back to trying to, I think, please and win the approval of your parents. I think it’s been a joy playing it. I think there are some very interesting decisions that are going to come up towards the very second half of the beginning of season two that are going to answer a lot of questions. But at the same time, the nature of the show will open up a lot of other questions as well. I can’t get much more specific, but I think that family as it’s structured and as it’s begun to unfold in the Petrelli household–the dynamic that exists between the four of us, myself, Peter, Angela and Claire–is going to open up a little bit more, or even add some more insight into how that all came to pass. But again, we are the third generation of the Petrelli dynasty. I think it’s either going to start to unfold like a cheap sweater or it’s going to be put back together very carefully by some talented people from the outside.
HW: How did you like playing the Sylar version of Nathan in the future episode?
AP: I thought it was a great opportunity to play another actor. I’ve always loved to do that. That morning was the culmination of a lot of work that Zach and I had done up to that point. He came to the set. He wasn’t on call, but he came to the set and spoke to me in my trailer and just whispered the lines in my ear for about half an hour. And then, I just watched him walk around. I followed him. He blocked the scene. And, to be able to take on his mannerisms and such, it was a real joy, a lot of fun, especially with it being so specific. And, there’s not a lot of ambivalence in his actions and his motions. To play somebody like that was a lot of fun.
HW: Would you have any political aspirations in real life?
AP: I haven’t. I did a show called Profit a while back and I based some of the work on some people who were in office at the time and I received the stationary from the White House. George Stefanapoulous wrote me a letter on White House stationary and I was so impressed and blown away to have received something with the White House seal – it was really impressive to me. I realized at that point how I did have a visit to the White House, and there’s so much showmanship and gamesmanship involved in politics it’s really not a stretch to imagine an actor getting involved in being a figurehead for a political party – for a certain party or so. But for myself personally: I’m involved in [some issues] in New York in terms of the high line and getting things going on here, but nothing grand on any scheme. No, I don’t think I could do that.
HW: Being married to Dixie Chick Natalie Maines, have you drawn on any of the political issues that have impacted your real life together?
AP: I think [the writers] have done a wonderful job of creating a fictional character. Whenever anything is so successfully drawn, obvious parallels can be drawn to existing people. Having said that, there haven’t been any attempts to base this on anything, other than our writers’ imaginations. The conversations we have on the set, by and large, tend to focus around everything but the parallels that might be drawn between what we’re doing in real life. We’re just a bunch of actors, at the end of the day. The parallels that we’ve drawn between what we’re doing and real-life people mainly seem to come from the press and from the questions that we get. We are forced to answer them, so we come up with them on the spot, but in real life we’re not making these leaps or assumptions on a daily basis at work, at all. It’s wonderful and it’s flattering, because there is an element of reality to what we’re doing. I think that’s why it resonates so well. The actors have two responsibilities. One is to be visually compelling and the other to recite the lines as written by the writers.
HW: Every time one of the Dixie Chicks albums went platinum, the girls would get a chicken footprint tattooed on their foot. Would the cast of Heroes consider a tradition like that?
AP: My God, I think if we were to count the success of the show internationally and attempt to do something like that, we’d be covered in tattoos. We’d look like Henry Rollins. I think that was something that [the Chicks] decided to do early on, not realizing that they were going to be quite as successful as they are, and they’ve stopped because otherwise, they would be covered up to their knees.
