Jack Coleman News

Jack Coleman's Noah Bennet (HRG to most Heroes fans, of course) is at the center of tonight's new episode, "Cold Wars."

The actor sat down with TV Guide this week and previewed the installment, as well as the rest of the volume. Here are a couple excerpts:

What can we expect?
Suresh, Peter Petrelli and Matt Parkman have gotten together and decided that HRG is the key to what they need to find out. Parkman is driving the whole thing because he wants to find out what happened to Daphne. So he does a mental interrogation — he processes my memories, and we flash back to see how all these events came to be. It's a really good use of Parkman's abilities. He's not going in and telling me what to think, he's going in and prying loose this information.

What can we expect from the rest of "Fugitives"?
There will be fewer stories per episode and more concentration on the relationships between people — it will be more character driven than plot driven. Ultimately, we're trying to get back to the emotional core of the show — relationships between human beings. I really think these new episodes are quite good. People get wrapped up in thinking this show is not what it used to be, but if you forget all that and take these episodes on face value, they are really good.

And what's happening right now, we're making stories that are relatable, have emotional value to  them and are also entertaining. I'm really excited about where we're headed. People who have liked the show at any point will be rewarded. I think a corner has been turned, and we're heading in the right direction.

The worst part of this week's Heroes episode, by far, was the lack of Jack Coleman on screen. We need our weekly HRG fix!

Fortunately, this is unlikely to be a regular occurrence. And at least our friends at BuddyTV sat down with the Heroes star recently. Here are excerpts from that interview:

What was it like coming back after the strike and going into this new partnership with Sylar?
We were gone for so long it just seemed like forever, so when we came back it took a couple days to get the wheels working and the joints oiled. It was laid on me pretty early that HRG was going to be in partnership with somebody very different, and at first I thought it was going to be Claire.

When it turned out to be Sylar I thought that was very cool. I was a little concerned about the transition from mortal enemies to cooperating on a mission together. That worried me a little bit to start out that way, but I think the fact that they have the two of us kind of scheming against each other even as we work together, I think that works well.

Are we going to see more of that back story with HRG's relationship to these villains?
You see a little of it. There's not all that much. What you will see more of is in a great episode, it's episode eight, and it's a flashback episode that's kind of a prequel to the pilot. It sort of dovetails into the pilot, and you see how, for instance, HRG and Elle are complicit in sort of the creation of Sylar.

It's a really good origins episode of how Sylar got to be the way he is, and the relationship between HRG and Elle. It was hinted at last year when Suresh says to me, "You know her?" and it's like, "Oh yeah." It's never really explained in what form, how it is that I knew her, so you really see more of that. In that episode you will also see Knox and see where he came from, so you do see the villains there. But there's not a tremendous amount of HRG and the villains back story.

While new Heroes may be coming aboard the show next season, we're always curious about the state of past characters.

Thanks to a recent Jack Coleman interview with TV Guide, we now have an idea of where various Heroes will begin the new season. To wit:

• On HRG: "I'm currently incarcerated and at the bottom of Level Five in the company facility. I think there may be an escape in the offing, but at a cost."

• On Hiro: "He's firmly planted in Yakamoto Industries now. I think Hiro's more the guy who starts out wealthy and comfortable and is very unhappy taking over his father's business and needs the quest. That's his destiny."

• On Claire: "She's trying to use what she has for a greater good rather than just blend in and be anonymous"

• On Mohinder: "He's not as mild-mannered as he once was."

While some feel the second season of Heroes is off to a slow start, Entertainment Weekly has the answer: More Jack Coleman!

The magazine sat down with the man who portrays Mr. Bennet before the season premiere a few weeks ago. Here are a few highlights from the interview:

Did you ever think HRG would connect with the audience the way he has, and in turn, become the defining role of your career?
Well...no. The character was never originally part of the plans. [But] as the season went along, I just started getting better and better stuff... I really think the character of HRG — he really is a story engine. I can connect people. I can know their past when they don't, I can let the audience in on things that the characters can't know. I can be hunting someone, or I can be trying to liberate someone. There's just so many ways to go with it.

It's weird to think, in light of where we are today in the Heroes saga, that your character wasn't conceived to go any further than a few episodes.
It's really weird. My suspicion is that it wasn't ''This man is brilliant! Give him lots of stuff to do!'' I think they just saw how well the character could work as a story device. The moment that Tim [Kring, creator] decided that this man in the horned-rimmed glasses was Claire's adopted father, that was the moment in my mind that the character as he came to be known was created. Because it's just too rich not to mine it.

You have great chemistry with Hayden Panettiere — was it easy for you to develop a rapport with her?
The scene that we did in the pilot where I come home and she comes running into my arms, we'd known each other for about 45 seconds when we shot that. I was the guest star. I come out of my trailer, we're about to shoot, she comes out with ''Daddy!'' I thought, ''Wow, this is a very open actor.''

I was really kind of blown away. Hayden has chemistry with everybody. She does. She's just invested in whoever she is looking at and acting with, and I think that's something that's really special about her. She's very savvy about the camera, but she's not giving it to the camera, she's giving it to the actor. We had a scene right before ''Company Man'' where, in the hospital, where she finally blows up and yells at me. We had to do a lot of coverage of her, and she's crying through the whole thing, for several hours, and it's exhausting.

And we did all her coverage, and then the camera came around and shot me, and all the tears came, and she's off-camera. She really invests. It's funny, all of this talk in the media about her being another ''teenage starlet,'' wondering if she'll go the way of other young actresses — people need to pay attention to her work.

Her work is really good. It'd be nice if people talked about that sometime instead of just where she's going, or who she's dating, and whether or not she's going to run off the rails. And by the way? I don't see that happening.

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Moments after the Heroes season premiere aired, Jack Coleman and Tim Kring logged on to the official NBC website for a chat with fans.

Here are a couple notes the actor that portrays Noah Bennet passed along about his character this season:

"The most fun part about this character is that I generally get to cahoot with almost everybody at this point... I cross paths with just about everybody," Coleman wrote. "The one character I haven't locked horns with, and while I'm not pitching this to Tim, there might be some mileage in a Nathan/HRG tete a tete."

He was then asked about the role of Mr. Bennet over the next batch of episodes and added:

"Keeping Claire out of the clutches of certain people plays a big part of his role this season, though he will have his own self-interests in mind."

Kring, meanwhile, assured readers that The Company will be heard from again in season two. But will Mohinder and Mr. Bennet be successful in their plans to bring it down?

Guess we'll have to tune in and find out.

The Chicago Tribune recently interviewed the actor who portrays our favorite, multi-dimensional character on Heroes: Noah Bennet (aka, "HRG).

Here's what he had to say on last season's development's and what's in store in the coming months for this Company Man...

Did you always think that H.R.G. was a bad guy? What was your take on him?
Jack Coleman: All I knew from just reading the pilot was, I figured he was a very menacing presence, undoubtedly working against the interests of these super-powered people. ...

As you get to know the character more, you realize he has killed people. So I knew that he was kind of a malevolent presence. But I also figured that he also probably really loved his daughter. But I knew early on that the overall feeling you had to get when you saw him was, somebody who was kind of a menacing presence.

How do you keep a serious, menacing edge to him? We saw him really change in the first season.
It was a concern -- that I didn't become soft and warm and fuzzy. But that gets dispelled very quickly [in Season 2]. I think the morally gray aspect and the questionable methodology will rear its head again quite quickly.

The story of H.R.G. was interesting in the first season - how this guy who's done so many questionable things decides that he does really love his daughter Claire (Hayden Panettiere) and put her first.
I think I got lucky in that they didn't really have long-range plans for the character. ... I think they liked Hayden and me together, and decided [to go in that direction].

So was H.R.G. possibly going to be the big bad villain, but then they took a turn because of what they saw with you and Hayden in your scenes together?
I think so. And I think they realized that they would do an origins [of H.R.G.] episode, and you would see that, as bad and scary as he can be, there's also the part of him that's very protective and really loves his daughter. So they did this fantastic back story ... that I was stuck in this job which put me at odds with my own daughter and I had to make a stand.

What is his mission now?
That I can't talk about.

Is there a fear that Claire will someday find out more than he wants her to know? Obviously she knows he's not just a paper salesman, but she also doesn't really know everything he's done.
I think in Season 2, most of the secrets from Season 1 have been divulged. I don't think he's going out of his way to tell her everything. There's lots she will never know. And that's the kind of guy he is - he loves her to death, but he's not going to sit down and pour out his heart and tell her everything he's ever done, because she would never be able to look at him ever again if she knew everything he had ever done.

But Season 2 is a new mission; it's a new series of secrets and lies. It's a whole different thing.

Jack Coleman, the actor that portrays plays Noah Bennet (also known as HRG/ Horn-Rimmed Glasses) told SCI FI Wire that his character will still have a dark edge to him at the beginning of the second season.

"It makes it very clear, in the very first episode of this year, he's not defanged," Coleman said in an interview at the Television Critics Association summer press tour on July 17. "He's still a dangerous guy. I think it's clear that he would move heaven and earth for Claire, but you don't want to cross him. He is a dangerous guy. ... He's a big-picture guy. He's a guy with a plan, and certain things may have to be jettisoned in order to make that plan work."

For the record, Mr. Bennet is probably our favorite character. Few roles on TV have this much depth to them.

Coleman revealed that in the second-season premiere of Heroes, which picks up four months after the events of the season finale, his character has been reunited with his adopted daughter, Claire (Hayden Panettiere), and his wife (Ashley Crow) and son (Randall Bentley).

"The Bennet family has relocated," he said. "I can't tell you exactly where. And it's a new world. The secrets they keep from each other are new secrets. The old secrets have all been divulged. We're not retreading the old ground. But there's old ghosts. Old habits are about to rear their ugly head in a very dramatic way...

The Bennets are together to start, but in a very difficult, awkward circumstance that they all have to try to deal with. And it gets pretty sticky pretty quickly."

Coleman also said that his character will continue to be one of the few on the show without any superpowers.

"I love that I don't have any superpowers, for two reasons," he said. "First of all, less prosthetics and less time in a harness. At my age, there's only so much time in a harness you want to spend. But the other thing, I really like having a character that has to survive by his wits. I mean, every time you see Sylar and HRG face each other, I mean, Sylar flicks him around like he's a bug. So he's not a guy who's going to be able to handle the dangers of the world that he's in physically. He has to do it through his guile and carrying a really big gun."