Alex O’Loughlin’s Guide to Moonlight Episode 1

This interview was done in September 2009 By Retro Ed at SciFi TV Zone. It is no longer online but I preserved it. ~Enjoy

Although Alex O’Loughlin has moved on to CBS’ Three Rivers, Moonlight, and his portrayal of vampire P.I. Mick St. John, is never far from his heart or the hearts of his fans. To this end, SciFi TV Zone is presenting a four part episode guide to Moonlight that features Alex’s comments on each of the 16 episodes making up the series. Look for parts two through four on Mondays for the next three weeks. 

Moonlight should never have worked. The critics hated it, dismissing the show with words like “anemic” and “derivative,” and deeming it nothing more than a genre stew consisting of such ingredients as Highlander (non-humans living among us in every day walks of life), Angel (vampire P.I. looking for personal salvation) and Beauty and the Beast (an impossible romance). Their cause wasn’t hurt by the fact that Moonlight’s original showrunner was Angel co-creator David Greenwalt, and its co-creator is Ron Koslow, who produced the Ron Perlman/Linda Hamilton live action Beauty and the Beast television series of the 1980s. But the critics were wrong. The show deemed most likely to fail (and quickly) confounded everyone as it quickly began winning its Friday night at 9PM timeslot for CBS not only in the ratings, but in the even more important demographics as well. Just as importantly, it seemed to spontaneously give birth to the kind of cult fan base that most shows can only dream of having; a cult base that continues to thrive passionately despite the fact that the series only lasted a single season. Alex O’Loughlin, who starred as vampire Mick St. John, was instantly embraced by the audience and remains one of the most popular members of the undead ever. The thrust of the series is the growing relationship between Mick and Internet reporter Beth Turner (Sophia Myles), despite the difficulties arising from their very different worlds. For his part, O’Loughlin remains proud of what the show accomplished and what it represents. “I got to be a part of a story I really liked,” he says. “And I’ve always wanted to play a vampire since I was a kid, and that’s not something that will necessarily happen again in my life. It was just a great fit and a great experience. It was also a stressful experience. We were under budget, we were always fighting for everything we needed. We weren’t the golden child at all, we were the one that had to constantly present reasons not to be shut down. “It was wonderful to fight for someting and keep it alive for longer than it otherwise would have been,” he continues. “It’s great to be a part of a success, even if it was for only a season. The thing is, we were able to tell some really important stories. It wasn’t just about these monstrous creatures and sexual romps. What we went for constantly is the big truth, for the human truth, the human story and that’s the reason we make films in the first place. We didn’t always hit it, but I feel that from time to time we did and that’s why we held on to the audience, because they sensed that truth.”

Episode 1 “No Such Things As Vampires” Written by Trevor Munson & Ron Koslow Directed by Rod Holcomb 

Private eye Mick St. John and Internet reporter Beth Turner come together while investigating a murder that is the handiwork of a professor using vampire lore to seduce college students. The episode was actually shot twice, its original pilot differing drastically from the final episode, particularly in the fact that with the exception of Alex O’Loughlin, the entire cast was changed. “The rhythm, tonally, changed pretty dramatically,” says O’Loughlin. “You put new actors in and new stuff is going to happen. They also changed the age of the characters. For instance, Josef [Mick’s best friend, also a vampire] changed from 65 to 25, which is a dramatic shift. Plotwise, there were a bunch of ideas in the unaired pilot that we stretched across a couple of episodes. “I think the final pilot episode felt compartmentalized,” he adds, “because we had to set our mythology up, to set up our rules. It couldn’t be 44 minutes of exposition and rule setting, so there had to be a story in there as well. But we had to set up this new myth of vampires, this new world of vampires and we had to introduce the primary characters. So we had a fair bit of work to cram into the first episode, which I think we did successfully.”