Starlog 9/04, on Karen Cliche.com
Light Show
by Douglas Snauffer
Being offered a regular role on a hit series is always exciting for an actor. "I was like, 'Yeah, I'm working!' " exclaims Karen Cliche, who joined the cast of the syndicated Mutant X last fall for its third season. She was offered the part of Lexa Pierce--a tough, often arrogant new member of the genetically altered team of superheroes--without having to audition because several of the producers had worked with Cliche on her previous series, Adventure, Inc. Besides that, both shows came from the same company, and so Cliche was already somewhat familiar with the Mutant X cast. "We hung out during film festivals, and occasionally we would see each other on the job," she explains. "So I knew them on a very basic social level."
Still, Cliche did have to give it a little thought before accepting the role. Joining Mutant X presented a couple of dilemmas that caused her concern. First, she would be replacing Lauren Lee Smith, whose character, Emma, was to be killed off early in the season opener.
"It's tough when you come onto a show, especially when you're replacing a character whom everybody loves," Cliche says. "I felt a little bad and had to take that into considerations." Fortunately, things worked out. "Nobody said, 'Oh, you're the girl who replaced our friend,' " she laughs. "They knew it had nothing to do with me. As much as they're going to miss Lauren, they also told me that this is a different addition to the show, so let's see where it takes us. We hit it off right away."
She also wondered if fans would be as accepting as her new co-stars--a worry grounded in the fact that Lexa was going to be, at least initially, a very unlikable character. "Lexa's entire backstory is pretty complicated," Cliche says. "She basically comes to the Mutant X team under a deal. The people who she works for told her, "You do this for us, and we'll help you find your brother'; the twin brother she has been looking for. Lexa shows up not really caring for anybody and not wanting to make friends. Her attitude is, 'I know more than you do, I'm the boss and nobody is going to tell me what to do.' So she carries on with her mission to find her brother."
Early on, Cliche had to decide how to get a handle on her character, who clearly was going to be presented to viewers as an outsider with her own agenda. "There was that apprehension about whether [fans would] accept me as an actor and also Lexa as a character," Cliche acknowledges. Her solution was to approach the role as professionally as possible. "I couldn't give in to me, Karen, wanting to be loved by everybody. I needed to stay true to my character in hopes that everyone would wait to see why Lexa is like this. I wanted to present her in the most unforgiving way, and then allow her to begin unraveling. I didn't worry about whether people were going to like me. You can't be concerned about that as an actor. If I was, I would only take the safe roles."
Before joining up, Cliche was fairly new to the world of Mutant X. Her duties on Adventure, Inc. kept her busy for much of the previous season, including a five-month stint in Europe. She had only caught Mutant X in passing while flipping through channels. After signing on, Cliche played catch-up. "I did my research and the producers gave me a few tapes of previous epsiodes," she says. "They also told me not to base too much on Season One and Season Two because Season Three was going to be completely different, in terms of focusing on character development and being more specific about where these people come from and how they feel--as well as developing relationships between the team members."
The result, she feels, is that the series now focuses less on action and more on character and plot development. "If you've been watching, there are more twists and turns, including whether or not Adam [John Shea as Mutant X's former leader] is dead. The team's whole world has been turning upside down, and they're realizing that they don't know who the enemy is anymore. It's more dramatic and personal, and people have really responded to that well because the emotional risks are high. You still get the action and adrenaline boosts, but now they're backed by more details and you get to know more about the characters."
Cliche admits that she draws on her own personal experiences to help breathe life into the characters she plays. "Many of my roles are similar to each other: the tough, independent, opinionated, sarcastic girl," she says. "Much of that stems from traits in my own personality--not because I use those traits in my everyday life, but because I understand them. My father was in the Army, so I'm familiar with that whole upbringing. I was brought up in a strict [environment]. My Dad was pretty tough on us, so that mentality is ingrained in me, ad I know how to bring it out in certain characters."
But when it came to essaying a mutant, Cliche found relating to Lexa a bit of a stretch. "I don't know what it feels like to be a mutant. I have no research to base this on. So I based it on how someone in her position might feel, in terms of what the mutants are in relation to the rest of the world. They're outsiders, outcasts, different and alone, totally ostracized. I've tried to concentrate on how she lives while hiding this big, dark secret. We all have skeletons in our closets, and I just draw from those feelings."
Once she got on the set, playing a mutant presented its own peculiar problems. "On my first day of shooting, we had already established what my powers would be, but we did not know how I was going to manipulate them," Cliche recalls. "We had to decide things like how I would shoot my lasers: with a straight hand, two fingers, three fingers? We spent so much time trying to determine where my lasers would protrude from. It's kind of funny to see us all in action, especially Victor [Webster] and me, because without the special effects, we're just waving our arms around. Then I saw the other guys doing it, and noticed that they were acting it out with the utmost professionalism. When it isn't put together with the effects and editing, it's easy to feel ridiculous. The worst thing you can do as an actor is be unsure of yourself, because that does come across."
Given the choice in real life, Cliche would rather have Lexa's power of invisibility over her lasers. "I'm a little nosy," she chuckles. "I like people to be honest, and I really like to know what people are thinking and doing. I studied psychology, and I'm sort of obsessed about knowing secret little things about people. So I would like to be in other people's bedrooms, locker rooms--everywhere! It's so much fun observing peple when they don't realize they're being watched. You learn a lot. So that would be great. Just to sit and observe people like lab rats. I would hang out in Brad Pitt's bedroom!"
Not everything is accomplished with green screens and CGI, though. When it comes to doing stunts, Cliche is often front and center. She picked up plenty of experience throwing punches on Adventure, Inc., and feels confident when she has to abandon her powers and take somebody on with her fists. "I love it," she enthuses. "I've been doing [big fight scenes] for two years now; it has been a pretty big part of my job. There's always the risk of breaking somebody's nose, which is kind of scary, but it's fun. In one of my first fights on Adventure, Inc., I didn't break the guy's nose, but I definitely gave him a nosebleed. But give me a break, of all the fights I've done, and one little nosebleed. Come on! I bought the guy a bottle of Jack Daniels and he forgave me."
Cliche has a number of favorite Mutant X episodes this season. "There are three that I think really stand out," she states. "'Brother's Keeper' was great for me because I had the chance to show a whole different side of Lexa; I got to be vulnerable and explain to people why Lexa is the way she is. There's an episode called 'She's Come Undone,' about Lexa's implants, which is something we saw in the first show this season but haven't touched on since. They get activated again, and the implant programs her to be a trained killer. So she goes into full killer mode. It's pretty intense because somebody is controlling her and she can't do a damn thing about it. You get to see how the whole team comes together to save Lexa.
"One of the season's last epsidoes, 'The Prophecy,' is a great one. Of course, the episodes that I love--and this sounds terrible--are the ones focused around me. But I think that everyone on the show would say their favorites are the ones that focus on one specific aspect of the team, because then we can go into much greater detail with that character."
When asked about the quality of the series' scripts--which have been criticized by fans for their continuity conflicts and storyline shifts--Cliche is quick to defend the writing staff. "The writers work day and night to put out these scripts, and sometimes things change," she argues. "Many people have written letters pointing out that the picture of my brother [in an earlier episode] is totally different from the actor who ended up playing him. That's because the photo was in episode three, and 'Brother's Keeper' hadn't even been written yet. That was 10 episodes further down the line; they had no idea who would be playing the character yet.
"Things like that happen, writers get new ideas and sometimes the episodes don't air or aren't shot in order. So that can cause the fans a bit of confusion. It's a hazard of series television because you have to work so fast. Sometimes, the cast gives their input, because that's our responsibility as actors. We're the best sources for remembering what our characters have thought, done and said in the past. We pick up on little things and tell them, 'That happened three episodes ago, so I don't think this should happen now.'"
The Mutant X writers already have the added burden of dealing with the series' origins. After all, this is a comic book TV show featuring Marvel-style mutants that isn't actually derived from an ongoing comics title. The studio and producers still have to offer reminders in press materials as well as on the official website that Mutant X is in no way associated with the X-Men comics and film series. "There were a couple of times that we couldn't do certain storylines that we really wanted to do because it would be in breach of legalities," Cliche says. "It would be too much like a certain comic book. So you have to take that into consideration."
When Cliche was a child, she occasionally read comics, but rarely ventured into SF or fantasy. "I read Archie comics," she confesses. "Just to look at what Betty and Veronica were wearing, I know it's horrible. But I was not a big comic book fan. When I was a kid, I loved watching adult shows. I never watched many cartoons at all. I enjoyed seeing real people act, and was fascinated by human behavior. I could never get past the fact that it was fantasy."
But she did draw on a fantasy character at least once. "I had a little Wonder Woman outfit," she laughs. "It was kind of a sports bra and underwear set, with buttons on a fake belt. I was seven years old and running around my front yard shooting lasers, not too different from what I'm doing now. I've always had a big imagination, and Wonder Woman was a role model. I really didn't look up to any actors. I saw Gandhi when I was a pre-teen and loved it, and I started to be inspired by people who changed the world and fought for the underdog. Those were the kind of people that I looked up to, and still do to this day. I love activists and those who fight for people who really don't have a voice."
Although Mutant X is a science fiction series, the implications of the show's science haven't escaped Cliche. As far as cloning and genetic tampering goes, the actress is convinced that "there is so much that we don't know about. This whole cloning issue that people started talking about a few years ago has been going on for years and years. To me, there's no limit. Not that I have any proof to back this up. It's like believing in aliens: either you do or you don't.
"I have mixed feelings about tampering with genetics. Much good can come out of it. I mean, test tube babies are born, and that's a beautiful thing. But once you start messing with the genetic code, then you're fooling around with natural events and the way things are supposed to be--whatever it is that you believe in, whether it's God or evolution. It may seem like the solution--in terms of immediate gratification--but it's a scary topic. You can just imagine the backlash to living in a world where human beings have been tampered with for 100 years and everything is out of control."
Among Cliche's present-day concerts is the upcoming fourth Mutant X season, which begins shooting later this summer. But for now, she's just enjoying her time off and the new friends she has made. "We just got back from Los Angeles a few weeks ago," she says. "My boyfriend works on the show in the sound department, and we flew down with Vicki [Pratt] and one of the girls from wardrobe. Forbes {march} was in town, too. We were like, 'We just finished the show, we're free from nine months of seeing each other every day, and what are we doing? We're all now gathered around a table having dinner!"
"We went horseback riding and spent all this time together. We've become really close friends, and that doesn't always happen. But I've been fortunate with my past experiences and all the shows that I've been on. I've formed some wonderful friendships. I just visited [Adventure, Inc. co-star] Michael Biehn when I was in L.A. I went to his house and saw his new baby. I enjoy being close to the people I work with."
She's still feeling the loss of her Adventure, Inc. castmate Jesse Nilsson, who died in April 2003 of heart failure brought on by pneumonia. "That was such a shock," Cliche says. "Our producer called and told me the news. I phoned Jesse's parents right away. I've actually become very close to his family, and I go see them once in a while. Jesse's Mom came to the set of Mutant X. It's so tragic, and I feel horrible for his close friends.
"I knew Jesse a year, that's it, but in that time we became very, very close," Karen Cliche says. "We went to Europe together, and he and I were like brother and sister.We fought like brother and sister, we had fun like brother and sister. I helped him pick up girls in France because I speak French. It's so sad, but he's fondly remembered."
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