Good Day New York 1/04/96
Question: How did you get picked for Nowhere Man?
Answer: I think like most other actors in Los Angeles are picked. I went in and auditioned and sat by the phone. And this time - miracle of miracles! - it rang!"
Sidewalks Entertainment 9/5/95
I am excited about it! We've worked really hard and I don't know if you've seen the pilot or not but it just moves like crazy and hopefully we can just keep it driving that hard throughout the season."
Sidewalks Entertainment 9/5/95
I used to be a little more enthusiastic about long shots. Now I'm a little older, a little wiser, and I realize that this job on Nowhere Man is as much of a long shot as those hats.
TV Guide 11/ 4/95
TV is a factory and to create a product of quality with the time constraints and budget restrictions is very tricky and not always possible. Of course it'd be different if everyone listened to everything I had to say! Then again we might have been off the air in three shows.
Prodigy Chat 5/20/96
I generally go to work excited--maybe because it's early and I've got
like, a double cappuccino in me, but still, I'm going to work excited.
E! News Daily 1/10 /96
It's a very personal take I have on it - just like I think anybody would - basically, it's what would happen to you and how would you feel if your life was taken away from you and your keys didn't work in the lock and your money was no good and your wife didn't know you and your best friends claimed they didn't know you either. What would you do? Well, I would freak out!
Sidewalks Entertainment 9/5/95
I believe, now more than ever, that all this stuff happens for a reason.
This show could not have happened without things happening the way they
did before. So in a way, yes, it was destined.
Playgirl 6/96
Paranoia and Trust
I think there are parallels (in the series) for my life and your life and for anybody. Who do you trust? If you want to take it that one step further, when I fill in my tax return and all that stuff, how much do they know? What does that little magnetic strip on the back of my driver's license mean? What information do they have there?
Los Angeles Times 10/15/95
Nowhere Man plays into my own personal paranoia. Certainly the idea that everything can be yanked away without a moment's notice is a nightmare that I've had. The fact that I'm living it [on TV] doesn't seem so bizarre to me. I've lived it in little bits one way or the other in my mind. Talk to any actor. Paranoia is the main ingredient in their lives.
Cinescape 1/96
Nowhere Man is saying that those forces are out there and whether they're governmental or industrial is basically up to wherever your personal paranoia leads you. What the show is saying is that they can get us, and if we don't fight back with everything we've got, we're destined for the psychological scrap heap.
Science-Fiction Explorer 2/96
We're exploring this current preoccupation with Big Brother looking over our shoulder all the time, the electronic media being so pervasive. I think it's a timely subject and one that deserves to be dug into a little bit.
Science-Fiction Explorer 2/96
Absolutely there's validity to the premise. Some of the story lines are thoroughly believable. Some of them, I think, are thoroughly unbelievable. But sometimes I'm approached by people on the street who come to me and say, "That last episode was my life, man!" And I'll say, "You've got to be joking. That was so absurdly farfetched!" They'll insist that it was real and happened to them--and they're not all cross-eyed stoners who look like they've been clubbed with a hammer. They're intelligent people who come up and echo the sentiments of the writers and the scripts.
Playgirl 6/96
When somebody walks up to me and goes, "This show is real", I'm less likely to go, "Right" and not believe them.
New York Daily News 1/15/96
Everybody in America is far more paranoid today. Maybe the advent of all these semi-hard news shows that ask everybody to stick a camera on their neighbor is to blame. If your neighbor is tipping over your garbage, you're supposed to put a camera out there and then sell it to one of those news magazine shows. We're all being lured into hopping on this bandwagon of filming and recording everything that happens and trying to get something from it. Also, the country is so insanely litigious now, that we think we can use and manipulate the law to get something. I think that in a very subtle and insidious way, that reinforces for us that the government or whoever is probably doing the same thing on a much deeper, much grander level.
Science-Fiction Explorer 2/96
I think everybody can see a little bit of themselves in this guy in that they're not entirely in control of their own lives when they think they are, and then suddenly something happens and you go, "I guess I'm not in control of what's happening to me."
Entertainment Tonight 8/26/95
On the face of it, the trials and the moral choices that Tom Veil must face on a weekly basis arise out of the specifics of the story. But there's a metaphor for Veil's isolation that's provided by the story--the metaphor is really interesting because we're all ultimately alone and we all play these trust games with each other. How much can you afford to trust people if you've just met them, and how much do you really trust those that you think you trust a lot?
Science-Fiction Explorer 2/96
With that lack of trust, even the mundane or innocuous can be absolutely terrifying. Like meeting somebody on the street who you knew when you were a kid. In the context of Tom's experience, that becomes scary. For anybody else it would be, 'Oh, God, how are you? Where have you been?' But not for Veil. He's got to wonder, 'Is this just coincidence? What is he doing here?' He knows that seemingly innocent incidents can have sinister implications.
Cinescape 1/96
[Trust] has certainly become less a part of my life. When I see deeper inside this business--these Machiavellian characters are people whom you really can't trust. You can't trust a fraction of what they tell you. And they're really good at telling you what they think you want to hear. In a lot of cases, that's their job, to placate. It's making me grow up a little bit. And I guess it depends on your definition of growing up--some people think you're growing up when you learn not to trust others so easily.
Playgirl 6/96
A great many more people than I ever imagined have conspiracy theories of
one kind or another. I think that's what's driving the success of the
show thus far, is that everybody has their paranoias, and this plays right
into them.
UPN 9 News 2/5/96
Suddenly, my personal paranoia has a purpose.
Smoke 2/96
The Story
I suppose that it has something to do with the photograph that Veil took and maybe something that he saw that happened in the periphery of the photograph or just out of frame. But [Veil] doesn't know exactly what it is he's done. It makes it really interesting to play, because I honestly don't know why the hell they're doing it to him. My personal feeling is that there may be some small cabal just watching him like a guinea pig, just doing it to him to see how he behaves.
Cinescape 1/96
My background is pretty varied, but I've been a fan of this kind of show for a long time. I like to have my psyche tickled and messed with, but that's a personal Achilles' heel of mine.
Times Leader TV Book 8/27/95
My guess is, although I can't be sure, they'll answer that photograph by the end of the year and the whole thing will take a big shift elsewhere. That negative will be a door to a much larger castle where weirder things will happen.
fX: Breakfast Time 1/3/96
It's so rich with possibilities for the exploration of what happens to somebody when he becomes completely disenfranchised and alone. Currently, we are spinning it in a fanciful way and making it a bit extreme in terms of the guys who are after me. It's pretty edgy and I do a lot of escaping. But I think it may spin slightly differently later in the season when it just becomes those simple stories of a guy with no money, no job, no home, just trying to get along and what that means. Of course, you can ladle in the 'Nowhere Man'-ish aspect by having things that appear innocent and innocuous be sinister to me because I am so paranoid.
Los Angeles Times 10/15/95
The reality is that he must deal, on a day-to-day basis, with questions such as, 'Where do I sleep?' "Where do I get my money?" "How do I avoid getting caught?" while at the same time hunting the people who are trying to get him. So there's tension in that reality. The deception happens on a couple of levels, and they're constantly setting him up to believe things that aren't so, and at the same time he must make an effort to become clandestine and deceive them himself. He has to play their game in order to win, and it's not who he is.
Science-Fiction Explorer 2/96
It's more about my experience than the content of my experience. So, from show to show, the personal relationships that I have, and what's happening between me and the other character in the moment is, hopefully, going to be interesting on a human level--interesting enough that it'll keep you there. And those big questions about what got me here in the first place are going to be secondary to, how am I going to deal with the situation at hand?
UPN Press Tour 7/27/95
It's about what's really going on in his heart and in his mind, not so much about who's doing it to him.
Newsday 3/12/96
I think in the second half of the year [Veil's] going to become much more active; he's going to pursue [the conspirators] a little harder. It's going to be less that he's blindsided by these bizarre setups and more that he actively tries to figure out something. He's going to be taking a more active role in hunting down these guys who stole his life. He's a very complex character, and I think we can afford to look a little more deeply at his interior strengths and weaknesses, not just batter him week to week.
Cinescape 1/96
There's been all kinds of conversations and discussions between the network/studio and the producers/writers ... The first three or four episodes [this winter] were a little broader than I think was originally intended, in terms of making the conspiracy the big aspect of the story as opposed to his experience of fear and confusion that he lives with. But after these first three or four episodes, the footing becomes a little firmer in terms of what the show's truly about.
Newsday 3/12/96
I think there may be a corner up ahead. Suddenly I will find myself looking in the mirror and wonder if I am who I think I am. Or if what I think happened actually happened. It's a nice place to be in terms of the drama and of being an actor. It's just not very nice for the character.
Chicago Tribune 1/31/96
Question: Was the fact that Tom Veil is Gemini a surprise to you?
BG: Yes. Floored me.
Compuserve Conference 6/20/96
Tom Veil
If I were to think of him as a victim for too long, I would fall apart, and the character would fall apart, because it's so debilitating. But I don't think of him as a hero either; I think of him more as an Everyman who's doing his best to keep his head above water. If on occasion that's heroic, OK, but I don't think it's the role of a hero.
Science-Fiction Explorer 2/96
(Tom) can't be continually freaked out, oppressed and squashed by this stuff. At some point he's going to have to say, "Well, here I am. You haven't killed me yet. Bring it on. I dare you." I think he'll decide, "I don't know who I was, but who I am now is invincible for some reason. I'm just going to take bigger chances."
Times Leader TV Book 8/27/95
He had a certain arrogance about him. He needed to drop down the ladder a few steps. The experience has given him the opportunity to think about who he really is.
USA Today 2/5/96
What's so much fun about this is that I don't have to decide exactly who this guy is right now. I could decide who he WAS, but a lot of that doesn't apply anymore, because he has to redefine himself at the same time he's trying to figure out whether or not he's going nuts.
Times Leader TV Book 8/27/96
Initially, I was thinking what his weaknesses were, what his Achilles' Heel was. I concluded that, as a photographer--and a well known one--and one who was used to putting his life on the line, getting in tricky situations, there was a lot of pride in him and he was a bit cocky. I wanted to give him somewhere to fall from in the pilot episode. He discovers pretty quickly that his cockiness is misplaced. At the same time, because he manages to stay a step ahead of the most heinous organization ever put together, he's bound to have a sense of power. On a deeper level, he's a guy who cares about knowing the truth, and has never shied away from exposing--for lack of a better word--what he sees the truth to be. His artistic sense decided that he should expose it on film, but, in general, he's a man who's after truth.
Science-Fiction Explorer 2/96
So many people lay their hunt for truth aside because the day-to-day requirements of living just beg for so much compromise. But Tom Veil has never been afraid of being poor, of being ostracized, and he has never been afraid of being alone. And then suddenly, when he is alone, he finds it to be a very different experience than he imagined it would be.
Science-Fiction Explorer 2/96
Question:If your whole life was erased like Veil's do you think you would handle it as well as he does?
BG: I think I might go mad. I'm a bit more of a reactionary than he is. I mean, more knee-jerk reactionary than he is. Yeah, I might have crawled into the belltower a bit sooner.
Prodigy Chat 5/20/96
Question: Are you satisfied with your portrayal of Tom?
BG: I think I could've done better if I hadn't taken it so seriously and if Tom hadn't taken himself so seriously. That's a regret I have.
Compuserve Conference 6/20/96
Tom's Hair
We have had many discussions about Veil's hair. I want to chop it off. They tell me, "We've done extensive market research, and the hair is an issue with the viewers. An informed poll indicates you'll keep it long." So there's a conspiracy even there.
People 3/18/96
Frankly I was tried of it! It was always in my face, and I had worn it long for a year and I needed a change. I also needed to shave off Tom Veil. I needed a break from looking at that face every day. Actors thrive on change and to look at the same face and do for nine months is frustrating. Also, it's summer, it's hot here. Also I don't have a professional standing by me with a blowdryer.
Prodigy Chat 5/20/96
I'm tired of looking like a cross between a collie and Joey Lawrence.
Compuserve Conference 6/20/96
Alyson
I will have to ask myself, "How could my wife have done this to me? How could she have turned in such a short period of time?" When I was shooting the pilot, I initially thought to myself, "The worst case scenario is that five years ago, when I met her, she was already a plant, and I was set up to fall in love with her, and nothing about our relationship was ever real." So, I think Tom Veil must look back through his life and ask questions about everybody with whom he has ever came in contact. He has to wonder if he has been set up for a long, long time now without it actually being put into motion.
Science-Fiction Explorer 2/96
That's one of the interesting conundrums about Veil's existence. He desperately loves her, but he can't afford to trust her, but in a sense he also can't afford not to trust her because if he doesn't trust her his whole belief in human nature is exploded.
CNN Show Biz Today 2/22/96
....and the plot is [Tom Veil] trying to find out who did it to him and why his wife - of all people - would say, "I don't know you. Who are you?' I mean, it's terrifying!
Sidewalks Entertainment 9/5/96
Question: When - for you - did Tom turn against Alyson?
Answer: The Christmas Show
CompuServe Conference 6/20/96
Newt
He wouldn't come out of his trailer. We discovered that he eloped with a very high strung poodle who was very controlling and wouldn't let him return to the show.
Prodigy Chat 5/20/96
Larry Hertzog
He's a very creative, slightly mad storyteller. And a cigar aficionado the like of which I never knew could exist. To him, I think heaven is a humidor!
Prodigy 5/20/96
It's hard to tell how up front Larry is. He'll say, "You know, Bruce, I don't know. But if I did know, I wouldn't tell you." At first, I thought, "Come on, give me some credit; if I know everything, I might be able to put an interesting spin on it that would be visible maybe only in retrospect, but interesting nonetheless." I've got my work cut out for me just doing what's on the page on any given day! Just trying to bring truth to that is a full-time job, and it's more demanding than trying to lay some interesting subtextual comment about the entire tenor of the series because I know what the big answers are.
Science-Fiction Explorer 2/96
Well, since he's buying me dinner tonight, I think I couldn't do the show without him.
Compuserve Conference 6/20/96
Tobe Hooper
He's a very free spirit, completely ego-less. He's a funny guy in that he would let you run it, let you put a scene together. He would say, "OK, how do you see it?" When we would played a scene, he would say, "That's cool, put the camera over there. That's cool, dudes." And I would say to myself, "That's cool, dudes? Tobe, are you going to elaborate on that?" But then he would run the scene a couple of times, the camera would roll, and he would just say a couple of very simple words, and we would get a different spin on the scene. He's not a big talker, but when he does choose to invest a couple of comments on how you're doing the scene, they're always well-chosen. He made for a very free atmosphere.
Science-Fiction Explorer 2/96
That's one of the nice things about working with Tobe ... in a funny way, he's really egoless. He's there, he's present all the time helping you, but you never get the sense of "Look at me, I'm making this thing." It's always, (whispers), "Come on, let's just do some stuff," you know. And in a lot of ways it's a really, really healthy atmosphere, and one I haven't run across a lot.
UPN Press Tour 7/27/95
Smoking and Cigars
I was one of those people who smoked heavily when I worked and claimed I was a non-smoker when I wasn't working. I smoked like a fiend during the pilot and completely overdid it. I glutted out and it was good for me. I made the decision not to smoke, and so far, so good.
New York Vue (Daily News) 10/1/95
Question: Why do you feel cigars were chosen to be the recurring theme in Nowhere Man?
Because Larry Hertzog, the producer, is dependent on them for his very survival.
Smoke 2/96
Question: What are your feelings on the resurgence of cigars?
BG: I really enjoy cigars now, and I probably wouldn't have been introduced to them without their current popularity, so I guess it's great.
Smoke 2/96
Viewers love the cigars and we're having a lot of fun with them. We're sneaking cigars into all kinds of weird little places where most of the audience doesn't see them, but five percent of the audience does. Occasionally we'll leave a smoldering cigar in a scene. We'll get a bunch of people calling in after the show asking, "Was that a smoking cigar at the end of that piano?" The cigar is good for cryptic clues.
Cinescape 1/96
Rigors of Filming Nowhere Man
I'm a sunny person. I'm happy to wake up in the morning. I have a brooding, black, miserable bent, but I thwart that by taking deep breaths and looking at the sky. This role has led me into the dark more. I don't have a life. This show is all I do. I relax by playing guitar, and I play angry stuff. It comes from this experience. What else do I have? I come home at night, my wife's asleep. She's asleep when I leave to get back to the set. And there's all this stuff with the show. Is it gonna change? Are we gonna get picked up? All this stuff that's constantly hurled at us by people way above me. This show is going through what Veil is going through on a daily basis in the politics of making television.
NDV 12/1/95
I had no idea what I was in for. For the first five or six weeks, we were averaging at least 14 hours (a day) and going 16, 18 or 20. Then it just beat everybody up so badly. People were just dropping like flies. I was one of the first to fall. I basically went down the fifth week. The doctor diagnosed me with exhaustion, so we shut down the show for a couple of days and took a four-day weekend. We sort of cut down to a 12 and sometime 14-hours day... This is part of the gig.
Los Angeles Times 10/15/95
It's grueling. It's really draining. It's taking much more of a toll on me physically than I had imagined. I mean, in order to make the series interesting, Tom Veil has to go through an emotional wringer pretty regularly, and I've never done anything like this on such a concentrated level. I find I spend my weekends just lying on my back, staring at the ceiling, waiting for my heart to slow down. It has really been exhausting.
Science-Fiction Explorer 2/96
I came home the other night, I crawled into bed, my wife rolls over, puts her hand on my chest, there's a silence and she goes, "Oh, God, you're so hairy!" And I thought, "who's the last chest you were stroking while you were lying in bed--that suddenly your husband of 10 years seems to have a hairier chest than you remember?" But this is how little we've seen each other -- we're forgetting how each other feels! Nowhere Man is the first time I've had hours like this so consistently, and it's hard on a relationship for sure...There is no private life.
TV Host Weekly 4/27/96
I discovered through the year that you can operate well on about 6 hours sleep, which is half of what I like. Now I just leap out of bed and pursue my own life which is a nice change. It geared me up to work on a high energy level and turned out to be a good thing in my life. I'm relaxing with a vengeance.
Prodigy Chat 5/20/96
Nowhere Man vs. St. Elsewhere
The difference vis-à-vis the networks is that UPN struggles to get recognition and pulling in the viewers because their viewer base is so much smaller. From an acting perspective, the difference is that on this show I work every minute of every day. On St. Elsewhere I worked a few hours a day. There's no comparison of the workload. It's very grueling and your life takes absolutely backseat and, in fact, it doesn't even get on the bus. In a way I have to rediscover myself.
Prodigy Chat 5/20/96
This is so different from any series work I've done before, though. This
is, you know, like 16 hour days, I'm in every shot. This is a very
different animal than St. Elsewhere, for example.
CNN Show Biz Today 2/22/96
Favorite Episode
I have a few favorites: Through a Lens Darkly is my #1 favorite .. and Something About Her is another. A departure from our style and genre was Dark Side of the Moon. The first two I like because of the emotional journey he goes on is so tangible and quite adult. It was challenging to play and the stories paid off in the end. I was lucky to work with great actors, which luckily is more the rule than the exception. Dark Side I like on a visual level .. the working conditions were extreme in the rain in Portland and it was a challenge to make. It really paid off in something visually rewarding. And it was nice to work hard and end up with something we could really be proud of.
Prodigy Chat 5/20/96
Least Favorite Episode
Forever Jung ... it was absurdly implausible ... totally implausible ... hysterically implausible.
Prodigy Chat 5/20/96
Experiences Filming Nowhere Man
In Enemy Within when I'm being towed on the litter behind the horse back to Emily's house and my head is right below the horse's you know where, every step he took -- there was probably a cubic foot of "internal air" that was released with every step. Everyone on the set was howling as I was expecting to be wearing the horse's lunch. As it turned out he just dragged me, farting, across the field. We had to mute the sound.
Compuserve Conference 6/20/96
Question: How did you achieve that "haven't slept in 9 days" look in the Calaway episode?
BG: It was weird, I just kinda "stoned" myself out without the use of any outside you know whats. Just with the power of suggestion, I guess and -- it worked, I exhausted myself.
Compuserve Conference 6/20/96
UPN
UPN is a new network, so almost all the stuff that applies here doesn't apply at the other networks. They're willing to take chances and to give us free rein, but of course, those reins will tighten as they get indications of what the people out there like and don't like. On this network, though, we couldn't ask for a better situation than we currently have in terms of getting on the air, getting promotion and getting a good lead-in.
Times Leader TV Book 8/27/95
The Cancellation
My first reaction was complete and total deflation for 24 hours, then I bounced back into a heavy state of denial, full of mirth and "hey it's no problem," to be followed 2 weeks later by a more profound sense of loss and disappointment that has now given way to a somewhat fatalistic and somewhat happy acquiescence -- It wasn't meant to be.
Compuserve Conference 6/20/96
There were an awful lot of cooks in the kitchen. It was a
direction that UPN hadn't gone before, so EVERYBODY wanted to be involved
in the decision-making. There were too many people with power--producers,
the studio, the network--and they all wanted the show to be as good as it
could be. But they all had different ideas of what to do.
[The show had] a fascinating premise, and I think if any of the
half-dozen or so people who had influence on any given day had been given
ALL the power, it would have found one direction and stuck to it. And that would've helped a lot. The problem was that it kept weaving to
and fro. Every two weeks there would be a different direction because
somebody whose power was finally being acknowledged was pushing the show in
a different direction. So it wavered and, ultimately, it failed.
Cinescape Nov/Dec 97
My last series, Nowhere Man, went nowhere because it wasn't on a major network. We made some fine episodes.
Toronto Star 7/22/97
Ideal scenario now would be MOW's with my favorite people and my own hand being strong enough in it so we don't run afoul of so many of the personnel problems we had during the season.
Compuserve Conference 6/20/96
I think I could've done better if I hadn't taken it so seriously and if
Tom hadn't taken himself so seriously. That's a regret I have. As far as
a single scene, the season is full of little moments that I like to look
back on, though it's rare you'll find an actor who will ever point to an
entire scene or a whole performance and, with honesty, tell you that he
likes what he did.
CompuServe Conference 6/10/96
Everything for me can eventually be explained, except, that is, the behavior of studio executives.
Canadian TV Guide 11/25/95
What Megan Gallagher Has to Say About Working with Bruce
Starlog 1/97
Nowhere Man