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'Carnivale' Packs up its Tent for the Season
« on: Nov 25th, 2003, 4:24pm » |
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'Carnivale' Packs up its Tent for the Season
By Kate O'Hare
"Carnivale," the occult drama set mainly within a traveling sideshow during the Great Depression, has taken its own sweet time in revealing the secrets behind its unsettling story lines.
And don't look to its leading man, Nick Stahl, to give up any major surprises as "Carnivale" wraps its first season Sunday, Nov. 30, on HBO. The young actor and his castmates are still awaiting word as to whether there will be a second season for their series.
"I probably shouldn't tell you too much, or the writers will come after me," Stahl says, "but there is some closure, in a way.
"There are some real changes that take place, but it definitely leaves some big things up in the air. We'd definitely need a second season, because some things are left hanging, but certain characters do go through fundamental changes by the end of the season, which I think is very cool."
"Carnivale" premiered in September to mixed notices, and the show's generally bleak tone and very deliberate pacing have drawn criticism from some reviewers. Critics have been unanimous, however, in their praise of Stahl, who gives a galvanizing performance as Ben Hawkins, an 18-year-old fugitive taken in by the carny folk. This enigmatic young man has mysterious healing powers that come with a terrible price, and Stahl inhabits the character so vividly that viewers can sense Ben's personal pain and world-weariness even before he opens his mouth.
It's a complex performance, especially for an actor who has yet to turn 24, but Stahl says he instinctively connected with Ben as soon as he read the pilot script for "Carnivale."
"I've learned to trust my instincts when I read something, and usually my first impressions are the strongest," the Dallas-reared actor says.
"It was important to me that this was a period piece. In order to sell the reality of this character, I knew I would need to get rid of what I think are modern tendencies people have as far as how they walk and talk. I think a lot of actors forget about that when they do a period piece, and it always gives them away to me.
"For me, this character was living in a very different time from our own, and had had experiences and qualities that could definitely come through in the cadence of his speech and the way he walks. I made a big effort to incorporate all that into my performance."
"Carnivale" marks Stahl's first TV series role, although he did a few TV movies earlier in his career. It was a little disconcerting, he admits, playing a character in the middle of such strange events but not knowing from script to script where Ben was heading.
"I read the script, and it was unlike any TV show I'd ever seen," Stahl says. "I wasn't a huge fan of television, in that there wasn't a show I'd watch every week, no appointment shows. I was just more a movie fan.
"But that's one of the things that appealed to me about that first script. It was a very cinematic 'read.' We spent six months filming the season, a real marathon.
"It was very exciting, because every week we'd get a new script, not knowing at all what was going to happen. If we asked them directly, the writers might tell us something, but it was like getting gold from them," he laughs. "But every week, it just seemed to get better and better, so that offered its own rewards. It was a lot of fun to see it play out."
Stahl started on his career course at age 4 when he became so excited by a children's play his mother had taken him to that he immediately announced he wanted to be an actor. After several stage appearances, he made his professional debut at 10 with Robert Urich in the TV movie "Stranger at My Door." Another TV movie with Pamela Reed quickly followed, then Stahl was handpicked by Mel Gibson for a co-starring role in the 1993 feature film "The Man Without a Face."
Since then, Stahl has proven his diversity in projects ranging from Terrence Malick's combat drama "The Thin Red Line" to art-house films such as "In the Bedroom" and the controversial "Bully" to this year's sci-fi action blockbuster "Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines."
Somehow along the way, Stahl even wound up on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera house, playing the spoken role of Puck in a 1996-97 production of Benjamin Britten's "A Midsummer Night's Dream."
"I stumbled into that because my agents told me it was a Broadway play," Stahl laughs. "Actually, this is an ultimate example of how L.A. relates to theater -- or doesn't, I should say. So I show up, thinking it's a play, and I find out it's an opera, but I decide to audition anyway.
"Somehow I got it, but then I immediately wondered what I had gotten into because it was two and a half months of grueling rehearsal. It turned out to be fun, though. At the end of the show, they 'flew' me offstage, which had always been a childhood dream. I'm, uh, over that now."
While he waits to hear whether "Carnivale" will get a second season, Stahl is enjoying his first real down time in nearly three years.
"I don't think we are going to hear [a verdict on 'Carnivale'] anytime soon, so I am looking at some other film stuff, trying to find something good, which is no easy task," he says. "I have been happy just to kick back and relax. I don't feel desperate. I don't suffer too badly from the actor's curse where you work, then panic until the next job happens because you think you'll never work again.
"I don't particularly want to be a 'star,' he continues. "I just want to be good at what I do, first and foremost. All that notoriety and stuff is kind of a sidebar and completely out of my control. I do feel in control of things like the amount of effort I put into something, and that's something I can affect, so I try to focus on that.
"The rest of it tends to be so political that I try not to even think about that. I mean, it's great to be acknowledged for the work you do, and part of me wants that, and I'd like to have the clout to get certain roles I've missed or help get a certain project made. That gives you real options in your career, because you quickly learn that so much of this business is a popularity contest. But I plan to continue doing this, and it would be nice to be able to earn a living at it."
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