Tim Daly is back on TV in ABC’s new serial thriller The Nine, but before that series began, he made another venture into the film world. The fate of that film, The Skeptic, is still unknown but in anticipation of its eventual release, Daly gave us a preview.
You shot a film before the show?
"I have a film in the can called The Skeptic and I haven’t seen it so I can’t tell you about it. It was a great script. I don't know where it is. It’s in some editing room someplace and I really look forward to seeing it. It’s a really interesting psychological thriller."
Hopefully it’ll come out while The Nine runs. What is your role?
"I play a guy who’s sort of a self-centered lawyer who lives in a smaller city and he inherits this house. He moves away, he separates from his wife and moves into this house that he believes belonged to his aunt. I don’t want to give it away but it’s a psychological thriller about a guy who’s haunted and you never really know whether he is haunted literally by ghosts or just by his own personal demons, but he has sort of a cathartic breakdown and has a lot of realizations about his life and his past."
You went into it as an indie with unsure distribution?
"The distribution has not been set. I have no idea when that might happen."
Do you prefer TV to film?
"There’s a common misperception in the public and a lot of times with journalists that there’s a difference between television and movies. And there isn’t. It’s the exact same thing. There are film cameras, there are crews, there’s lighting and there’s acting. The only difference is - well, sometimes not even that. I did this thing for HBO called From the Earth to the Moon and they certainly spent as much money on that as they do on a feature. I go to where the material that’s available to me that I think is the best. That’s been largely in television. That’s sort of I guess partly luck of the draw and partly where my path has taken me."
A positive difference is getting to play a character longer?
"Yeah, that’s a blessing and a curse. It’s sort of distressing to me that all the things that I’ve done in the last 10 years or so which have been really interesting. I’ve had a great time. It’s been very fulfilling to me artistically, and people still want to talk to me about Wings. I’m like, ‘Come on, I know I did that for a long time, but educate yourself about my career, please.’ [laughs] So there is that danger that you become locked into people’s memory as one character."
So far, the writing has not left Daly with any questions. “The thing is when you’re acting in anything really, whether it’s a TV show or a movie or a play, actors always have a lot of questions about why their character is behaving the way they are. The immediacy of television is that you have the writers right there to be able to ask them that. That’s why when you do a play you have a long rehearsal period because you’re able to delve into all those questions and answer them for yourself because the author a lot of times isn’t there. So we’ve been lucky enough to be able to have the writers in close proximity so that when we have questions that come up, we go to them. They’ve been very good about working with us to answer things or to change things if there is no answer."
