From SHIVERS #46, October 1997 ================================ Nicholas Lea is Captain Black A SHIVERS interview by Nigel Adams More From Nic Lea, Alias THE X-FILES's Traitorous Krycek THE X-FILES's most popular recurring villain, Alex Krycek, shows no sign of disappearing, despite the fact that he has been almost blown up by his mysterious superiors ("The Blessing Way"), became the unwitting host to an alien organism, ("Piper Maru") and finally lost his arm in a Russian forest ("Tunguska"). Nevertheless, he is still alive, and who knows what power - earthly or otherwise - he will ally himself with next. Krycek is played of course by distinctly un-villainous actor Nicholas Lea, who recounts the adventures of his much loved creation with self-deprecating charm. Covered In Goo At the climax of "Apocrypha," the alien organism that has been using Krycek as a host, returns to its spaceship in a stream of oily fluid that pours out of Krycek's eyes, nose and mouth. Nic *was* required to play his part in achieving this effect. "A majority of that was prosthetics," he explains of the method used to bring the sequence to life. "They put half-globes over your eyes, to stop the stuff getting in, and then you breath through the mask via a tube. You can't see and you can't really breath, and they have to have someone walk you around. So for the first hour it's exciting - 'Hey, look, I've got a mask on my face!' - and they after that it was just 'Get this f****** thing off me!'. It tool an hour to put on, and about 45 minutes to take off. We did it the first day and everyone was really happy, and then after watching the dailies they realised that the shot was too dark! So we had to go back and shoot it all over again. I went in again and spent an hour getting made up - then almost as soon as I was ready they broke for lunch! So I had to sit there for an hour and do nothing! But the end result was the most important thing, and I think it really worked!" Nic's work on The X-Files has converted him into a real fan of the series; even episodes that he's not in he says he watches religiously. His tips for the best episodes of the third season are "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose," "Wet Wired" (which he says was "great; one of the best ones they've ever done") and "DPO." Fans' concerns that Chris Carter's time was being divided between MILLENNIUM and THE X-FILES seem unfounded. Carter was always on hand during the making of "Piper Maru" and "Apocrypha," even though he was busy prepping MILLENNIUM at the time. "Chris is always available which is one of the great things about working on the series," the actor says. "I never really noticed that he was 'missing'. Quite often, he's in Los Angeles and we're in Vancouver anyway, so he's not physically there, but whenever we need to contact him he's certainly available." Woo Woo Kid Nic landed the lead in a FOX series executively-produced by John Woo called ONCE A THIEF, but prior to that there was also talk of him joining the cast of Fox sci-fi series SLIDERS on a regular or semi-regular basis. However, Fox's temporary cancelling of the series put paid to that. "There was s whole mixup with the producers and the network with SLIDERS," Nic reveals, "because they wanted to have me back for a couple of episodes. I was in their eighth episode cliffhanger where the character gets shot, and they wanted me to come back for the next episodes. The series was shelved for a while, so when they finally came back the network didn't want them to return to the cliffhanger concept, they wanted them to start afresh, which meant that my part was unnecessary. But the producer really wanted to have me in it, so they brought me back for one scene. They flew me all the way back to Vancouver, first class, booked me into a hotel, gave me all this money, and when I finally got the script I had one line: 'Like Icarus, he flew too close to the sun'!" Conventioneer But even with the pressures of a lead role in a weekly TV series, THE X-FILES will continue to play a large part in Nic's life. Recently the actor has become a popular attraction on the American convention circuit with Mitch Pileggi. "All of the relatively main players in the show are very welcome at those things," Nic says of the large-scale US conventions. "I've been really lucky, I've been to quite a few places - New York, Austin, Toronto, Reno, over here...... All this travel has been a real treat." And what exactly is expected of Nic at these events? "I get up and I talk a little about myself and how I got the job and how I feel about the people that I work with etc etc," he explains. "Then I usually field questions. It's fairly simple. My dad has a saying every time he has to get up and say something; he says 'Unaccustomed as I am to public speaking' - with a lot of sarcasm in his voice! I actually love doing it because it's like impro. You get up there and you want to be clever and you want to be humorous and so when you get the question you have to answer at a moment's notice and you just have to be creative!" Interrogation Cult TV fans have a reputation for being pretty intense and asking the strangest of questions to actors from their favorite shows. Has Nic had any experienced of this? He ponders the question for a while before answering, "Somebody asked me if there was going to be some sort of relationship between Mulder and Krycek, which was pretty funny! But," he continues, "for the most part the fans are really nice and they're pleasant and they're smart and they ask good questions. So it's a breeze really." And Nic's limited exposure to UK fans has convinced him that this is pretty much a universal thing. "As far as the typical fan goes, there wasn't a great difference," he states. "Fans on both sides of the ocean are fairly similar." Whatever happens to Krycek, it seems like he'll always find a way to haunt Mulder and Scully, and this is an aspect of the work that Nic loves. "The sooner I get to come back, the better," he says gleefully. "It's like the character's got nine lives!"