Eric McCormack is best known for playing the first title character on Will & Grace. After about a decade in that role, he's taking a dramatic left turn in A&E's miniseries, The Andromeda Strain.
Eric McCormack Reports on The Andromeda Strain
"I am Jack Nash who is a recovering coke addict and a reporter for a CNN-like news station," said McCormack. "He's somewhere between Geraldo Rivera and Anderson Cooper I would say, with a little Hunter Thompson thrown in there. He is the only reporter that gets wind of this and he's all society has which is pretty sad."
That's exactly the type of guy we want covering a crisis, and Nash has the exclusive. "It's definitely my exclusive and my character and Ben Bratt's character knew each other from a previous crisis, so he needs me to get the word out and I need him because he's my only thing but we have only one scene together and that's like a phone scene. So we actually didn't get to act together until the final, final moment of the movie."
Michael Crichton's novel was made into a theatrical movie once before, but the two night event has many more subplots. "I don't even think he exists in the original movie. I think the original film was so focused on the actual disease and finding the cure. That is one definite third of this movie, it's Ben and all the doctors. There's also the military/political part of the movie that is very much the espionage, the cover-up, who knows who, who's really the bad guy side. Then the other third of the movie is me by myself running through the desert trying to find a phone."
The media component makes this Andromeda Strain more reflective of today's world. "First of all, it was science fiction when it was written. I think this is pretty close to science fact now. It's not outrageous to think if people are getting on international flights with tuberculosis or whole continents are dying of AIDS, it's not impossible to imagine a killer disease. It's very, very close to the truth and the truth is, nowadays, rather than three anchors, all of whom would never out the president, we now have a trillion media people who would kill for the scoop. I don't think it's impossible, as we see with these various cover-ups, it's almost impossible for the government to hide everything, because you guys are going to find out about it. Well, not you. People magazine's probably not going to break the story but Time might. Or actually, this guy isn't a magazine, he's CNN. It's that constant 24 hour news things that doesn't allow anybody to get away with anything."
Add to Heffee!
