John Shea - SFX (January 2002)
He was the other Lex Luthor that wasn't Gene Hackman. What is it about the letter X for John Shea?
You're a delectable stud muffin or a gorgeous babe. You wake up one morning and you've suddenly developed superpowers. So, who do you turn to? If you're one of the unfeasibly attractive members of Mutant X, chances are you'd seek out Adam, leader of a rebel organisation that harbours mutants and sends them out to fight evil. Because, as John Shea puts it, he's their new dad. "It's fun for me because I am a father in real life, so I understand that parental thing," he tells us, proudly. "Adam's a director, a coach on a team, because I have to direct their energies into a positive realm rather than a negative."
Adam's presence provides the show with a weighty central character to balance out the bevy of male and female beauties, many of whom have only just entered this old business called "show". "For some of them, this is their first major piece of work; they're really just beginning," he confirms. "And I do feel more like a veteran here: 40 feature films; this is my third television series, and I've been in 20 plays in New York. I've done films all over the world, including England. My first feature film in England was a film with Helen Mirren called Hussy." Great title! "It was about a guy that worked nights in a nightclub where all these strippers hung out. I had a great time with that! She was my love interest in the film and we shot some wild scenes." He laughs cheekily. "So, anyway, I feel now as I meet all these younger actors, that I'm an old pro who's been out there and done all this other stuff."
Mutant X aside, many people probably most associate John Shea with his role as Lex Luthor on Lois & Clark: The New Adventures Of Superman. "We had a fantastic time filming it!" he recalls. "We always tried to play it for real, as much as possible, although the tone of Lois & Clark was much more like romantic comedy than Mutant X; it had a lighter tone to it, as well as a lot of adventure. It had all kinds of sexual dynamics between Lois and Clark and me." Because Shea lived in New York at the time he had to commute to LA and back for the filming. Understandably, this took its toll, and he negotiated a smaller role in season two. "A 100,000 miles in the air," he explains, "was really hard on me and my family. I was still in the show, but I was doing special 'sweeps'Lex Luthor episodes. And the question was, how 'super' was Superman if he couldnever vanquish this guy? So they created what I call Kleenex villains, disposable ones that popped up every week. And I would come back in and we would mix it up and have a lot of fun, then I would disappear."Something that didn't disappear was his hair. Shea acknowledges that the 'real' Luthor was bald, "but we wanted to do something different. The other thing is that if you have a shaved head and you show up in the series, there's something wrong with you: it immediately screams 'villain'. If Lex Luthor were really alive, he would probably look exactly like I tried to look. He was a cross between Richard III and Donald Trump: outside you look like Trump, inside you're Richard III, a deeply twisted sociopath!"
Has he seen the new version of Lex in current US smash Smallville? He chuckles. "He's too young to be bald," he says of shiny-domed actor Michael Rosenbaum. "He must have shaved his head! I know that it's on the air, and I haven't seen it yet. I think it's doing really well." Shea is especially philosophical about Mutant X after the events of September 11. "We're at war; I'm from New York, I've got friends down there in Ground Zero and firemen are losing their lives... I thought, God, what a silly thing I do for a living! Then I thought, no: we're providing a world that people can travel to. They can forget about all the events outside and feel good about themselves." He pauses to think. "Mutant X was to me a potentially interesting world. It seemed to be original; I'd never seen a world in which people had been created through genetic mutation that gave them these cool powers."
Obviously he hasn't seen the X-Men movie, but he has gone out of his way to paw through some old X-Men and Mutant X comic books. "There are parallels, but there are also vast differences. Our characters are trying to create three-dimensional human beings. What we discovered on Lois & Clark, which I think is true for Mutant X, is that the audience tire very quickly of characters that they cannot relate to. If these characters are just larger than life, and don't feel sadness and pain then it's gonna get very boring."
So what of Adam? He's surrounded by fanciable young 'uns, but will he ever getto have some fun himself? "We just shot an episode where an old lover comes back into my life," he says, wryly. "I won't tell you what happens, but it was a really interesting episode!"
Any rampant sex, a la Helen Mirren in Hussy? "No, but she had stealth abilities," he admits. "That's a very sexy thing to have!"
