John Shea (7/93 Lois & Clark)
Excerpt from Times Union 7/27/93: John Shea | Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman
NEW: A SUPERMAN WITH CHEEK
STEVE BORNFELD Staff writer Date: Tuesday, July 27, 1993
The guy in the tights is back -- with a few modifications. "We can't do the same special effects that you can see on the big screen," says Deborah Joy LeVine, creator of ABC's upcoming fall series "Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman."
....
Michael Landes plays cub reporter Jimmy Olsen, Tracy Scoggins is catty society editor Catherine "Cat" Grant and John Shea will pop up as arch-villain Lex Luthor.
© Times Union
Excerpt from Variety 8/30/93: John Shea
1993-94 PRIMETIME AT A GLANCE
Variety Staff August 30, 1993 | 12:00AM PT
Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman
Sun., 8:00 60 Roundelay Prods../Warner Bros. TV
EP:David Jacobs; CEP: Deborah Joy LeVine; SP: Bryce Zabel; CSP: Dusty Kay, P:Mel Efros, Thania St. John
Teri Hatcher, Dean Cain, Lane Smith, John Shea, Tracy Scoggins, Eddie Jones, K Callan
© Variety
Excerpt from Variety 9/10/93: John Shea
Review: ‘Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman’
September 10, 1993 | 12:00AM PT Brian Lowry
The intro has Clark Kent (Cain) arriving in Metropolis, where, after joining the Daily Planet, he’s thrown together with Lois Lane (Hatcher) - a cool, career-obsessed knockout. Investigating a sabotaged space launch, the two soon cross the path of Lex Luthor (John Shea), a ruthless entrepreneur who wants to exploit space for private gain.
....
The show also boasts a nifty supporting cast, with Shea menacing as criminal nemesis Luthor, Lane Smith as blustery Planet editor Perry White and Callan and Eddie Jones offering down-home charm as Ma and Pa Kent.
© Variety
Excerpt from Sun Sentinel 9/11/93: John Shea
`Superman For The '90s'? Pass The Kryptonite!
September 11, 1993|By TOM JICHA TV/Radio Writer
Cain and Hatcher are well supported by Lane Smith as the brusque editor of the Daily Planet, Perry White; John Shea as Lex Luthor, a charming villain with whom the social-climbing Lois is smitten before being swept off her feet by Superman; and Tracy Scoggins as "Cat" Grant, the Daily Planet's society writer who would love to get her claws into Clark without even knowing about his extraordinary alter ego. An interesting sidelight: Smith's most memorable TV role was as Richard Nixon in The Final Days and Shea's breakthrough came as Bobby in the miniseries Kennedy.
© Sun Sentinel
Excerpt from Entertainment Weekly 9/17/93: John Shea
SUNDAY SHOW TO WATCH LOIS & CLARK ABC, 8-9 P.M.
By Benjamin Svetkey Published in issue #188 Sep 17, 1993
''Clark and Lois will definitely fall in love and eventually get married,'' promises LeVine. ''It could happen in the fifth month or it could happen in the fifth year, depending on how long the network lets us stay on the air.'' Or depending on whether Lex Luthor (John Shea) foils their plans.
© Entertainment Weekly
Excerpt from New York Times 10/9/93: John Shea
Review/Television; NBC and ABC Take On CBS and Lansbury
By JOHN J. O'CONNOR Published: October 9, 1993
Meanwhile, the powerful archvillain Lex Luthor (John Shea) gleefully plots endless ways to destroy Superman.
© New York Times
Excerpt from The Daily Collegian 11/18/93: John Shea
'Lois and Clark' packs a pocket full of kryptonite and a hot wonderboy
Posted: Thursday, November 18, 1993 12:00 am Scott M. Harris
Other cast members include Lane Smith (Perry White), Michael Landes (Jimmy Olsen), and John Shea as Superman's arch-nemesis, Lex Luthor. Not the world-conquering villain that he was in previous incarnations, Shea's Luthor is more of a billionaire tycoon, the third richest man in the world.
© The Daily Collegian
Excerpt from Chicago Sun-Times 11/28/93: John Shea and The Free Lance Star
Article: John Shea Relishes Evil Role
Chicago Sun-Times November 28, 1993 Author: Scott Williams
NEW YORK As the evil financier and archvillain Lex Luthor of ABC's "Lois and Clark," actor John Shea is perfectly willing to steal from the poor, trip old ladies and swipe lollipops from big-eyed children. But there's one thing he will not do. "The hair stays," said Shea, grinning. He won't shave his head to portray the traditional, hairless Evil Scientist depicted in DC Comics' tales of the Man of Steel. And it's not Shea's vanity. "Hey, this is the '90s. Do you think a billionaire like Luthor couldn't get himself a full head of hair?" Shea points out. "Lex Luthor has got to be a modern villain.
"What you know about villainy at this point in your life is that things are not what they seem. Villainy wears a suit," he said. "So my idea was to look like Cary Grant and to think like Richard III. That's the fun."
....
Luthor is anything but boring. "When I first started working on him, I bought three volumes of the collected works of Nietzsche," Shea said. "What I discovered was that Lex Luthor is a modern Superman who, by his will, has made himself.
"And now, at the top of his game, he's bored. The greatest moment in his life was when this guy flew onto his balcony! 'At last, I have a worthy adversary!"
Shea appreciates, too, that bad guy Luthor gets some great lines. He recalls a scene in a future episode with the lovely Morgan Fairchild, whose character has invented a perfume that makes people express their basic urges. "She says, 'Lex, what about...us?' This as she wraps her arms around me and I'm lighting a cigar. 'You were an itch,' I say. 'You've been scratched.'
"The crew was biting their thumbs to keep from laughing."
Shea also is pleased that his show's writers are letting Luthor's relationship with Lois Lane develop, as he put it, "into some twisted areas." "You can see why Lois Lane would be attracted to somebody like Lex Luthor. He's everything that Clark Kent isn't," he said. Shea hopes his return to New York will let him tackle some of the stage roles he's craved all these years. He'd like to do Hamlet before he gets too old for the part. Meanwhile, there is Lex Luthor. "Sure it's pop art, but I'm trying to bring to it some Richard III, some Nietzsche, some deeper resonance," Shea said. "And while it lasts, I'm going to have a good time."
© Chicago Sun-Times
Excerpt from Los Angeles Times 4/10/94: John Shea & Orlando Sentinel 4/25/94
Also Starring : Villainy, Thy Name Is Lex
April 10, 1994 | SUSAN KING
The guard behind the desk at ABC's offices in Century City stares intently at the man standing in front of him. A look of recognition flashes across the keeper of the gate's face as he picks up the phone to call a network rep. "The gentleman from 'Superman' is here to see you," he tells her.
The man, dressed entirely in black, smiles at the guard. "My name is John Shea. And I'm no gentleman."
Well, at least not the two-faced gentleman he plays on the ABC series "Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman." Though Teri Hatcher and Dean Cain are delightful as Lois Lane and Clark Kent/Superman, it's Shea's deliciously evil Lex Luthor that gives the series its zing. Handsome, charming and incredibly vile, Lex is one of the richest men in the world. He wears designer suits, smokes expensive cigars and lives in a posh penthouse apartment, which overlooks Metropolis. And he adores Lois Lane, who, in turn, adores Superman. Shea's sexy Lex is far removed from Gene Hackman's baldheaded bully of the popular "Superman" feature films.
Sipping on a cup of water in a reception area at ABC, Shea is engaging, articulate--and exhausted. He's been filming into the wee-small hours all week and was working until 2 this morning. But his exhaustion soon evaporates when he begins talking about Lex. "Lois & Clark" marks the second series for Shea. Four years ago, he starred in the short-lived CBS show "WIOU," in which he played the earnest news director of a TV station.
....
"I kept reading scripts when they sent me 'Lois & Clark.' I wanted to play the bad guy, but didn't want to play him as a conventional bad guy. I didn't want to play him so that you knew he was a bad guy. I saw an opportunity to do this with this character."
Shea found executive producer Deborah Joy LeVine's pilot script witty and original. "I read it before I went to bed and woke up the next morning and saw a way to do it. I saw Lex as a combination of several characters I played."
First, Shea says, he needed to define villainy in the '90s. "What we learned in the '80s is that it comes in pleasing guises," he explains. "It would look like Donald Trump or any politician in Washington. Corporate villains are these guys who look good in suits and have dinner in the White House. They can do a tango, but underneath there's this thing going on. I thought this guy should be a combination of the Cary Grant character I played in 'Notorious' and Shakespeare's 'Richard III': Somebody who looked like Cary Grant and thought like Richard III."
At his audition, Shea discussed his ideas about Lex with the studio and network. "They said, 'You got the job.' I think I convinced them it could be played that way."
Shea believes Lex sees himself as a "super man." Before shooting the pilot, he read Nietzsche's "The Will to Power." "It basically says the real 'super men' are the guys who are self-created by a force of will, who can bring themselves to power. In my opinion, Lex Luthor is a 'super man,' somebody, who by the force of his will, has drawn himself up from the streets and created this empire. Lex Luthor has built himself to this position on top of the world looking over his kingdom and he is bored. There's no one to test him anymore. He would love nothing more than a challenge, and so this guy flies in from another world."
Shea maintains Lex really does love Lois and will even pop the question to her during the series' two-part finale on May 1 and 8. "If you are a control freak as Lex Luthor is, what's the worst thing that would happen to you? You would fall in love. I'm in love with her and it's the worst thing to ever happen to me. She really likes (Clark/Superman) and it spurs my competitive edge even more. Love for me is my Kryptonite. It's my Achilles' heel. I've been fairly invulnerable to this point, but suddenly feel vulnerable because someone has gotten to me. It's a dangerous thing."
Though Lex is a dangerous man, Shea likes him. "What I found sympathetic about him is that he can't help what he does," he explains. "I think Lex Luthor is a sociopath. Sociopaths are a social cripple. To continue the metaphor of Richard III, Lex Luthor is a psychological hunchback. He can't help the fact that he's deformed. In some way, he is to be pitied."
Lex, Shea says, lacks a conscience. "It turns out a sociopath is someone without a voice that says, 'This is right. This is wrong.' He's motivated solely by appetite, and he weaves an unconscious web around his victims to satisfy his appetite. Once the fly falls into the web and the spider consumes the fly, then, of course, there's a moment of hedonistic pleasure and satisfaction. Then the appetite begins again. This is Lex Luthor."
"Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman" airs Sundays at 8 p.m. on ABC.
© Los Angeles Times
Excerpt from Philly.com 5/9/94: John Shea
How Does Lois Tame That Mane?
by Ellen Gray, Daily News Staff Writer Posted: May 09, 1994
* How come Lex Luthor (John Shea) has a full head of hair?
* How does Teri Hatcher get her hair to look like that?
The answer to the first is obvious - if Shea shaved his head to look like the comic-book villain, he'd hardly be a plausible rival for Lois' affections.
© Philly.com
Excerpt from Toronto Star 5/21/94: John Shea, posted by amac on Lois and Clark Message Board
By Jim Bawden Toronto Star May 21, 1994
"I think all along I have secretly wanted to play villains,'' smiles devilishly handsome John Shea, who is the new, improved Lex Luthor in TV's Lois And Clark. In town to promote his series, which is struggling in the ratings, Shea says he accepted the part of the archvillain only after the producers agreed with his take on the character. ``I had played Cary Grant's part in a cable TV remake of the movie Notorious,'' he says, ``so I used some of the charm, that suaveness. I decided Luthor must be dressed in the latest Armani suits. The news has taught us that today's bad guys can be seen at the White House or on Wall Street in their pinstripes, so I felt his look would be a facade for what was poisonous underneath.
``The old comic strip portrait of evil was out of date. He shouldn't be bald and smirking. He should be subtlety itself. People would be drawn to his powerful personality as some are attracted to serial killers. I mixed Cary Grant with Richard III, whom I'd played on stage. But Luthor would have no physical imperfections. Only by peering into his soul could one glimpse the hunchback of megalomania.''
Just what is it about TV villains that makes viewers tune and savor every misdeed? Shea figures it's the cynicism of our times that turns such rogues into anti-heroes. ``They misuse the system and get away with it.'' But most TV baddies are larger than life figures and offer escape from our everyday humdrum existence. Shea says a mousy villain who took no pleasure in his corruption might be closer to the truth, but would turn viewers off.
Novel interpretation
Series creator Deborah Joy LeVine interviewed Shea at length and was clearly fascinated with his novel interpretation. She wanted a true rival to Superman hunk Dean Cain, one who Lois Lane (Teri Hatcher) could clearly be drawn to. ``And I wanted out of my leading man mold,'' Shea explains. ``I felt trapped by this image of sensitivity Hollywood had given me. I suppose it started with the movie Missing (1981) which had quite an impact. And I had fun playing variants on the liberal nice guy but I could see a dead end coming up. So lately I've been injecting meanness into my roles wherever I could. And Luthor defines nastiness.''
Shea says the response has been overwhelming and he's glad he made the change. He'll be taking his son to Little League games in New York City where he lives and get mobbed by youngsters who recognize a great knave when they see one.
....
Shea was satisfied he'd established a high ``TVQ'' (identity) and had just moved back to New York's SoHo district (wife Laura Pettibone is a fine arts photographer). Then the script for Lois And Clark showed up. Accepting meant continental commutes back to his family on weekends. ``I saw Luthor as a villain for the '90s. He could have made the Bush-Reagan cabinets. At the end of the first season he has married Lois and acquired The Daily Planet. Then things get twisted so my best work is ahead. He's as dangerous as they come; rapacious, devious. I think of him as a giant bird of prey, endlessly circling.''
© Toronto Star
Excerpt from Sun Sentinel 6/19/94: John Shea
Hatcher Plays A Modernized Lois Lane
June 19, 1994|By HARRIET WINSLOW The Washington Post
In the two-part season finale, the dashing but sinister Lex Luthor (John Shea) asked Lois to marry him. Series creator and writer Deborah Joy LeVine explained why Lois hesitates, despite Luthor's ardent and expensive wooing: "She's someone who's basically saying to him, `I already have a family, and that's the Daily Planet.'''
© Sun Sentinel
Excerpt from Los Angeles Times 7/17/94: John Shea
TV's 'Superman' Undergoing a Planetary Shift
September 17, 1994|DANIEL CERONE
In last season's finale of ABC's "Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman," Lois Lane's fairy tale wedding to Lex Luthor was rudely interrupted when police barged in and revealed Luthor's involvement in the criminal underworld. After a brief chase, Luthor leaped from the balcony of his penthouse apartment. His untimely exit turned out to be merely the first in a parade of sweeping cast and crew changes that mark a new comic-book direction for the series, which launches its second season Sunday night.
....
"We don't want to change what really worked well last year. The Lois and Clark repartee and banter is funny and clever. People like it, and we want to keep it," said executive producer Bob Singer, who directed a couple of episodes early last season before replacing Jacobs. "But by the same token, when we come up with a villain, we want to make him a little more credible--a job for Superman--to heighten the action and suspense and to provide more jeopardy in the show," Singer said. "We're going to try to mix the villains up more this year. That burden really fell to Lex Luthor last year." In a sense, Luthor, played by John Shea, was symbolic of the creative split that emerged last season on "Lois & Clark."
"I was very interested in keeping Lex Luthor, exploring his character, making him a regular part of the show," said LeVine, a former story consultant on "Equal Justice." The network felt differently. "You can't keep bringing back the same villain week after week. At some point, Superman needs to vanquish the villain," said Brian McAndrews, vice president of current series programs for ABC.
© Los Angeles Times
Excerpt from Deseret News 7/28/94: John Shea
THERE WILL BE SOME CHANGES THIS SEASON ON `LOIS & CLARK
By Scott D. Pierce, Television Editor Published: Thursday, July 28 1994 12:00 a.m. MDT
What we do know for certain is that Superman will be facing a wider range of villains. Lex Luthor (John Shea) is somehow going to survive the multi-story tumble he took in the show's final episode of last season, but he'll appear in only a few episodes this coming season. "I think that was conceptually a tough thing to do, to have the same bad guy every week," Singer said of last season. "I think in our minds, and probably in the audience's minds it's like - when are you going to catch this guy?"
© Deseret News
Excerpt from Entertainment Weekly 9/16/94: John Shea
1994 Fall TV Preview Sunday It's survival of the fittest as 'Lois & Clark' battle Darwin, Bart & Jessica
Published on Sep 16, 1994
* Other changes: Evil overlord Lex Luthor (John Shea) will appear only sporadically (he apparently did survive that high-rise dive he took last season), replaced by a bevy of new nogoodniks, including the Sound Man (Michael Des Barres), who wreaks havoc with high-frequency waves.
© Entertainment Weekly
Excerpt from Reading Eagle 12/25/94: John Shea
She-TV
By Ron Miller
LeVine said she also was told to get rid of villain Lex Luthor (John Shea), to dump actors Tracy Scoggins (Cat Grant) and Michael Landes (Jimmy Olsen), to make Lois sweeter and give Superman more action scenes.
© Reading Eagle
Excerpt from The Columbian 2/8/95: John Shea | Chicago Sun Times & Indiana Gazette
LEX LUTHOR'S BACK, ANGRY
February 8, 1995 | SCOTT WILLIAMS
Watch out, Superman. Your archnemesis Lex Luthor has risen from the dead. He's back, he's bad and he's . . . bald! "It was my idea to make him bald," said John Shea, the actor who played the evil billionaire as a charming sociopath in an Armani suit. "Last year it was Cary Grant and Richard III," Shea said. "This year, no more Cary Grant."
Fans of ABC's "Lois & Clark" will recall last season's finale, when Superman thwarted Luthor's evil designs on Lois Lane. Rather than face imprisonment, Luthor leaped to his death from the penthouse suite. Luthor was street pizza. An acute case of asphalt poisoning. End of story? Nah. We saw Luthor's remains encased in a "cryogenic suspension chamber," a hedge against the day when scriptwriters might need him. That day came sooner than expected. Warner Bros., which had sold "Lois & Clark" internationally, found that viewers everywhere wanted to know what REALLY had become of poor Lex.
....
When his phone rang with an offer to reprise Luthor on "Lois & Clark." Shea was torn. "You can't kill off Luthor. At least, I couldn't," Shea admitted. "He's just too much a part of Superman's world." When the producers gave him script approval, Shea happily came aboard. "The writers really rose to the occasion," he said. "I came up with certain story elements, they came up with others, and we put this thing together."
The new Luthor in Sunday night's episode has come down in the world, Shea said. "This is the man who had it all, falls from grace and eight months later comes out of a coma and wakes up, like Lucifer, into a hell," he said. "He's stripped of his power, stripped of his money, and stripped of his reputation as the golden boy, the philanthropist and politician. The public persona has been torn off," Shea said. "In addition to stripping him of all material things, I thought that it would be great symbolically to strip him of his hair."
Comics fans will note, too, that Shea's baldness also brings Luthor into registration with his namesake in DC Comics' tales of Superman. Shea's character is a desperado who literally lives underground, in the sewers, he said. "What is he to rely on? He has no money. All he has is whatever he's got inside: How much heart he's got, how much wit - and his rage," Shea said.
And, of course, all that rage is directed at Superman. Shea's explanations grew more impassioned when he describes Luthor's feelings about the big guy in the blue tights and red cape: "The worst thing about Superman is that he's a trust fund baby," Shea said almost contemptuously. "He's somebody who's inherited everything and earned... nothing! "Lex Luthor is the true superman, in the Nietzschean mold: The man who, through will and imagination, has created an empire unparalleled on Earth - and lost it all because of a... trust fund baby!"
Instead of his Armani suits and Cuban cigars, Luthor is reduced to stealing clothes off dead men. He wears black jeans, a T-shirt, an Army surplus jacket, a baseball cap - and he's bald. "Here's what I discovered about being bald: It is an amazing aphrodisiac," Shea said. "You become a predator. You become slightly reptilian. Snakelike. Dangerous. And, therefore, sexy." "The man who shaves his head is sending out a signal that he's gone extreme at some level," he said, grinning. "And sexually, that's an exciting concept for women - I'm told. "I didn't do it for that reason, but it has that side effect."
© The Columbian
Excerpt from Entertainment Tonight 1996: John Shea
John Shea: Entertainment Tonight
Jerry Penacoli: Arch villain Lex Luthor is out to really mess things up in Lois and Clark's life. John Shea's character, the notorious Lex Luthor, has burst onto the scene again. This time to make sure that the honeymoon is over, and fast.
John: Last week, you saw that, you know, that Clark is supposed to marry Lois. And you know that he didn't because I cloned her, and he married the clone. I do things because I'm motivated by great passion. And in this case, it was the passion of a great love.
Jerry: Well, love and the idea that he can destroy Superman.
John: When Lex comes back, the stakes are raised. And you have this kind of mythic confrontation between good and evil. You know, he's the ultimate good, and I'm the ultimate evil.
Jerry: When Shea wasn't busy scheming and plotting, he took a few moments out to give us a peek at Lex Luthor's secret underworld.
John: Okay, like all good animals, I have a lair. And this is Luthor's lair. Come on in. These here are boulders that have fallen down here at the end of this kind of apocalyptic episode that we just shot. It's not a place where you'd want to spend a lot of time, but it's a place where we can have some fun. I heard something...wait.
Jerry: If you think these guys are gonna get off the hook that easily, think again. There's talk that John Shea's Lex Luthor is going to be causing a lot more trouble around Metropolis next season. At Warner Brother's Studio in beautiful downtown Burbank, I'm Jerry Pentacoli for Entertainment Tonight.
Comics Continuum 8/28/01 & Cinescape 10/6/01: John Shea
JOHN SHEA ON LOIS AND CLARK REUNION
John Shea, who is currently starring in the upcoming syndicated Mutant X television series, addressed speculation about a possible reunion for Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman. "There are no Lois and Clark projects that I know about that are planned," said Shea, who played Lex Luthor in the ABC series. "If there were to be, I would probably be part of them." Shea was addressing a question during the Mutant X panel at the Canadian National Expo in Toronto over the weekend. "Teri Hatcher, who played Lois, was just in town shooting a film. She and I stay in touch all the time," Shea said. "We've talked about doing something maybe down the line, but at the moment there is nothing planned."
....
Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman continues to air in reruns on TNT.
© Comics Continuum
Excerpt from SFX 1/02: John Shea, on John Shea Fans
SFX January 2002 interview
He was the other Lex Luthor that wasn't Gene Hackman. What is it about the letter X for John Shea?
....
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 could never 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."
© SFX
Excerpt from Sci-Fi Talk 1/24/02: John Shea
John Shea on Sci-Fi Talk
Tony Tellado
Tony: And, of course, you have experience with playing, on the other side of the coin, playing Lex Luthor, of course.
John: Yeah, that was a blast.
Tony: Yeah.
John: I loved playing Lex Luthor, and that was also coming out of the comic book world. What we tried to do in Lois & Clark was to make these comic book characters three dimensional, to make them human beings.
Tony: Yeah.
John: And not to give them one-dimensionality, which would just wear very thin very quickly in a television series. It would be okay in a movie, you know, but when you're dealing with twenty-two, or however many you have, fourty-four episodes that we're going to make, you know, you want the characters to be as real as possible so that the audience can relate to them. And they can feel for them, and they can come to understand them. So what we share in common, I think, with Lois & Clark is this effort to make the Mutant X characters also three-dimensional human beings.
Tony: Yeah.
John: What is different is the tone, I think. I think Lois & Clark was treated more as a romantic comedy than action, you know?
Tony: Yes, yep.
John: There was a lot of comedy and romantic comedy in Lois & Clark. Ours is much more a cross-genre piece.
Tony: Yeah.
....
Tony: Earlier this year, I had the chance to interview Michael Landis, who was Jimmy Olsen on Lois & Clark, of course.
John: Yeah.
Tony: And he says, "I didn't get to work with John that much on the show, but later on, I got to work with him, and I really am glad for that experience." And he's really enjoyed working with you. He's spreading his own wings a little bit with his own show, Special Unit 2.
John: Is he?
Tony: Yeah.
John: Oh, great, he's a great guy.
Tony: Yeah, so he enjoyed that. There was actually an interview I saw, just getting back to Lex momentarily, where you said something that really caught my eye about how you looked at him. You said, "I looked at him as like, Richard III and playing in that way." And I said, "That's it! He's right! That's perfect!" And that's what you brought to that character. And not to mention there was one episode where you tested Superman, and you had to say all those lines, like 'faster than a speeding bullet' and all that stuff.
John: Yes, yes.
Tony: And you did it with a straight face, and you did -- you made it believable. I really enjoyed the way you portrayed that.
John: Yeah, thanks, man, I had fun. I try to envision Lex Luthor as a cross between Richard III and Donald Trump. He would look like Donald Trump, you know, like a really cool billionaire, in a tuxedo, you know, living in a penthouse in the world's tallest building, lording over his, you know, empire. But inside, of course, he'd be a twisted and wounded in a funny way. Sociopathic, without a conscience, just kind of driven by appetite the way Richard III is, one of my favorite characters in Shakespeare.
© Sci-Fi Talk
Excerpt from John Shea: 3/18/02 SciFi Weekly
John Shea's acting genes have taken him from Eugene O'Neill to Mutant X
By Kathie Huddleston
However, for sci-fi fans, he is most notable for his complex performance as Lex Luthor in the ABC series Lois and Clark. Shea chatted with Science Fiction Weekly about stupid science fiction, Lex Luthor and playing the good guy.
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How did you get started working in science-fiction television?
Shea:....For many years I was just doing serious dramas and then after that Lois and Clark brought me back into that world.
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And you played Lex Luthor.
Shea: It was a great character. But what was great about Lois and Clark and the reason why I went after that character and ended up doing the job was because they had an interesting take on the science fiction. Which is that it was treated seriously, first of all. It was treated as a drama, but with almost romantic comedy overtones. In the sense that there was this kind of comic roundelay between Lois and Clark and Luthor, that I really loved playing. And there was a wit to the writing.
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There was some romance between Lex and Lois.
Shea: As well there might be, because the truth about bad guys is that you don't know that they're bad until they sting you. Most bad guys in your life are guys that seem to be good guys. The thing about villains is that they never look to be villains. So I thought in the modern villain, from what I've seen in politics in Washington and what we know about corporate America and Wall Street, is that the villains of the world are guys who are really well dressed and usually power brokers. They're guys who have a kind of rapacious appetite for whatever it might be that satisfies them, but they also border on psychopathology or sociopathology. That is that they have no conscience about the little guy. They simply go after what they go after without any of the conventional restraints of common morality, which constrains somebody like Clark Kent and well-meaning human beings. Lex Luthor didn't have those restraints, and that's what made him very dangerous. And we've certainly seen this in the fall of Enron, where those guys were Luthor-like characters, captains of industry in powerful soaring glass towers looking down on the plebeians who work for them down below. Masters of the universe who, in the end, were robber barons and ended up stealing from the poor to feed the rich. And that's the kind of guy that Luthor was.
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Why did you start out as a regular on the series, but eventually became a recurring character?
Shea: I did every single episode the first season. I was living in New York when I shot Lois and Clark and I was commuting to Los Angeles every week to shoot. It was very difficult on me and my family. So I asked them if I could get out of my contract at the end of the first season, and they wouldn't let me out altogether, but they let me diminish my participation so that I only did certain episodes that were called Lex Luthor episodes and were usually three-part things that were during sweeps and they were kind of special things. But then suddenly it allowed them to write all these other new villains and made it much more interesting. And gave me a break and I was able to then create Southie.
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How long did the series last?
Shea: I did it on and off three seasons. But while I was doing Lois and Clark, I wrote a couple screenplays, but in particular Southie, which I ended up directing.
© SciFi Weekly
Excerpt from Zap 2 It 4/6/04: John Shea | Sun Sentinel 4/10/04
'Mutant X's' John Shea Goes West
By Kate O'Hare (Tuesday, April 06 03:38 PM)
Shea made his feature writing and directing debut in 1998 with the gritty Boston-set drama "Southie," starring Donnie Wahlberg ("Boomtown") and Rose McGowan ("Charmed"). Under "it's a small world after all," McGowan's boss on "Charmed" is executive producer Brad Kern, who cut his genre teeth as a writer in the 1990s on "Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman," which featured Shea as the Man of Steel's nemesis, Lex Luthor. "One of the reasons I wanted to do 'Lois & Clark,' " Shea says, "is because of the action-adventure and special-effects aspects of it. So I've had a tremendous education.
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Shea also keeps a weather eye on the newest incarnation of Superman, The WB's "Smallville," and on the small screen's current Lex Luthor. "I met Michael Rosenbaum in London this past summer," Shea recalls. "We were both there as part of a big sci-fi convention. I had a great time with him, and he and I hatched a lot of possible scenarios where we could come back together [on 'Smallville']. I'd like to work with him. He's a great guy."
© Zap 2 It
Excerpt from 7M Pictures 6/2/05: John Shea
Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman - The First Season" DVD Review
by Chris Alexis
John Shea makes an excellent Lex Luthor. He’s handsome, charming, very smooth. In fact, he comes across very much like the devil - just what Luthor is in many ways. This is the only time that Luthor has been portrayed with a full head of hair (not counting the wigs worn by Gene Hackman in the movie series) - but it makes sense. If a man were so rich, such a part of high society, and had access to such incredible technologies - wouldn’t he have found a way to have a full head of hair? Makes sense to me.
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What works especially is the love triangle between Clark, Lois and Lex. The show doesn’t just use kryptonite to show Superman’s vulnerabilities.
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Other than that, there are two featurettes. One is simply a retrospective with Cain, Hatcher and John Shea, as well as some of the producers. They discuss how great shooting the show was and it’s problems of course, especially the ever changing cape Superman wore.
© 7M Pictures
Excerpt from IGN 7/14/05: John Shea
Lois & Clark - The Complete First Season: The classic superhero's mid-90s show debuts in a super new DVD set.
by Filip Vukcevic July 14, 2005
And finally there's John Shea as Lex Luthor. True, he's not bald, but he doesn't have to be. He manages to exude genius, intensity, and darkness every second he is on screen. Shea gives a very nuanced and exciting performance; you truly believe this man can be both the king of Metropolis and its number one enemy at the same time.
© IGN
Excerpt from KSite TV 6/3/12: John Shea
TV Flashback: Lois & Clark: The New Adventures Of Superman Comes To The Hub
Craig Byrne June 3, 2012
John Shea also appeared in that first season as a Lex Luthor who was too rich to allow himself to go bald.
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There are still gatherings of Lois & Clark fans, and those fans will surely be happy to see that the Hub cable network will tonight start airing Lois & Clark, beginning with the series premiere at 8PM.
© KSite TV