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Patrick Bauchau: Xposé Special
Caring or self-serving? You're not sure about The Pretender's Sydney, as Patrick Bauchau tells David Richardson.
From Xposé Special no. 9 -- September 1999
by David Richardson
Good and evil are never clearly identified in The Pretender. We know that Jarod (Michael T. Weiss), the consummate genius who was snatched as a child by The Centre, is on a mission to help the weak and abused in society. However, the band of characters who work for that organization -- Sydney (Patrick Bauchau), Miss Parker (Andrea Parker), Broots (Jon Gries), Mr. Parker (Harve Presnell), Brigitte (Pamela Gidley), Mr. Lyle (Jamie Denton) -- are not so easily classified.
For Bauchau, that's part of the joy of starring in the popular series, which begins its fourth season on NBC soon.
"Sydney is the moral conscience of the show," the actor explains, "but at the same time he was the head of the program in which Jarod was brought up. I would say he's tainted; in other words you're never quite sure how sound his morals are. He might suddenly become a morally gray character again. That leads him to being pretty much an ambiguous character -- not a villain in the way a lot of the people in the Centre are -- but definitely ambiguous which is a very rich area to live with."
Sydney's story goes something like this: born in Europe to Jean and Greta, he has a twin brother Jacob. During World War II, the family was taken by the Nazis; the children became subjects of eugenics experiments and the parents were sent to the gas chambers. Sydney and Jacob survived, traveled to America, and were both eventually employed by The Centre, which at the time was devoted to philanthropic projects. Yet over the years the organization began to exploit the innocent in the name of profit. Jarod was taken from his parents and raised by Sydney, his intellect sold to the highest bidder. When Jarod escaped from the Centre, he remained in contact with Sydney and in recent episodes -- "Parole" and "Flesh and Blood" -- they have pooled resources.
"Jarod cannot separate himself from the Centre in a certain way," considers Bauchau. "That's where his umbilical cord keeps taking him. Jarod is incapable of really taking leave from the Centre because that's essentially his home.
"In this season I've been closely involved with him in at least two episodes where we worked together to achieve certain ends. In a certain way we've gotten much closer and yet Jarod still likes to take his distance from what in his head is obviously a torture situation.
"Sydney is essentially teamed with Jarod in an inextricable father/son relationship -- inextricable in a sense that they are not father and son. In a certain way their relationship is impossible to resolve."
The executive producers of The Pretender, Craig Van Sickle and Steven W. Long Mitchell, have gone to great lengths to ensure that their ensemble of larger than life characters do not become caricatures. Gradually we have come to discover the complex past history of each one of them. In Sydney's case we've encountered Michelle (Leigh Taylor-Young), the love of his life, who worked at the Centre -- until she was forced away. In season three Sydney was introduced to their son, Nicholas (Darren Kennedy) who would later fall into mortal danger.
"Sydney's relationship with his own son is fairly remote because he never brought him up," defined Bauchau. "He feels somewhat guilty about it but somehow his own son is more on a back burner than Jarod. This was very well played in ["Flesh and Blood"e;]. That was quite an interesting episode."
The relationship between Sydney and Jarod has developed over three decades. It's a complex history of which edited highlights are saved for posterity. Over the years, Jarod's simulations were stored on disc -- and flashbacks are regularly incorporated into episodes, in which Alex Wexo plays the younger Sydney, and Ryan Merriman plays the child Jarod. For these scenes, Bauchau dubs over Wexo's voice with his own.
"In a certain way I am sorry to be imposing my voice on the work of a very good actor," sighs Bauchau. "I feel a bit guilty, but guilt is one of the essential keys to Sydney anyway! I guess in France the same situation occurs, where they dub it into French and the same actor plays my voice and young Sydney."
Was Bauchau aware of this rich history waiting to be untapped when he first joined the series?
"There were hints and we could take an educated guess at the direction in which this might go," he says. "For the detail, like you, I learn it from week to week. The creative invention of our writing team, particularly of Steve Mitchell and Craig Van Sickle, is endless. They can create twists that absolutely boggle the mind."
As Bauchau is keen to point out, his character is not the only one to have benefited from some excellent storylines in season three. An ongoing story arc found Miss Parker falling in love and contemplating leaving the Centre, while Broots teamed up with Jarod in "Betrayal".
"Miss Parker has become much richer this season," he enthuses. "She has really blossomed in quite a remarkable way. Broots is the same. Andrea Parker and Jon Gries have both become much richer and in that way I think the writers and directors have had much more to work with."
Season three began with a bang for Sydney, after he planted a bomb intending to destroy the Centre. He survived and escaped blame, but there was a cost. Burned in the blast, the psychiatrist temporarily lost his eyesight. That storyline played out over the first few episodes and Bauchau ensured that he researched the behavior of a visually impaired person.
"I was working with someone who was writing a script about blind people," he says, "so the two things coincided at that time."
Asked to define how Sydney has developed over the past year, Bauchau admits it has been an interesting time.
"His dark side dominated the finale of last year," says Bauchau. "Then in this season he's been mostly a pretty loveable character until we get to the finale where suddenly doubts overtake us again. What is he up to? Is he really going to join up with a new program in the Centre that looks even murkier than the one before? Or is it all just a trick in which he is conniving with Jarod?"
That feature length episode, "Donoterase," proved to be an absolute gift for devoted fans of the series. It was revealed that The Centre has been developing a cloning program, and they have successfully grown a duplicate of Jarod.
"It's quite a striking episode," enthuses Bauchau. "It's the finale of finales."
No doubt about it, The Pretender just gets better and better. As the Xposé letters page proves there is a vast fan following for the show although, unlike other fantasy series like Buffy The Vampire Slayer, The X-Files and Star Trek, the marketing potential remains untapped. There are no Pretender videos, books, toys or even conventions. But maybe that is a phenomenon just waiting to happen...
Asked to define why the series is so popular, Bauchau responds immediately. He's obviously received plenty of feedback from devoted fans.
"It's connected to the situation of Jarod being locked out of the Centre: having escaped, and yet having his roots in the Centre. That aspect is something that a lot of people can identify with -- sort of being on the cusp of a childhood situation, yet having torn oneself away from it.
"I think also the inter-relatedness between the past and the present through each episode, the simulations on disc, give us access to Jarod's past and how it determines some of the elements of the weekly situation he is dealing with. It creates a very exciting mix. The writers have found a very exciting way of presenting material, and they've found a combination where all the time you want to find out a little bit more. They have a way of stopping just having given you some clue, and it's only taken up much later in the season. It's always a tantalizing thing."
So where does The Pretender go from here? Van Sickle and Mitchell have the whole show mapped out in their heads for at least another two years and syndication rights were recently purchased by TNT. The demand for the series is there but in the world of television nothing is certain...
"The mysteries of the networks are probably as complex as the mysteries of the Centre," laughs Bauchau, "but I wouldn't be surprised if there was another couple of years in there."
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