Scott Bakula specializes in characters that exude a throwback masculinity tempered by a warm, easygoing trustfulness. It's not surprising, then, that Steven Soderbergh hand-picked the star of Quantum Leap and Enterprise for the part of Special Agent Brian Shepard in his fact-based corporate caper, The Informant!. Shepard is a good-natured lawman investigating a lysine price-fixing scandal, to whom it quickly becomes apparent that his star witness -- played by a doughy Matt Damon with demented abandon -- isn't exactly working with both cornholders intact. We talked to Bakula about the risks and rewards of playing the straight guy, his not-so-secret identity as an accomplished song and dance man, and the legendary magazine shoot that follows him wherever he goes.
You were a great Nathan Detroit in Guys and Dolls at the Hollywood Bowl this summer.
You got to see it?
I did, on a Saturday night.
Well, thanks. That was probably our best night. Sunday's wacky cause you start during daylight. So the first hour everybody's looking at each other. I'm looking at the audience, they're looking at me.
Everybody's eating.
Oh yeah, they're eating. Normally you can't see that. But in the light you're aware, and they're aware that you're aware.
It's like the world's biggest dinner theater.
[Laughs.] It is! But then the sun goes down and everybody goes, phew, OK. But it's pretty great. I've been lucky enough to do a few things there, and you feel such history. It's such an honor to be asked.
It might surprise people to learn that you got your start on Broadway.
Yeah. I left my hometown of St. Louis and I went to New York and I lived there for ten years. A lot of people don't know that I'm a singer -- that's my thing, really.
I guess you're one of the rare actors claimed by both musical lovers and sci-fi fans.
[Laughs] There's not a huge list there, you're right.
How did you come to The Informant!?
I had never met Steven before, I didn't know Matt. So I didn't go through those channels. One of the producers on it, Greg Jacobs, who's done 17 films with Steven and was his First Assistant Director on many of those as well, is a friend of mine. Our kids went to school together for a few years, and we coached soccer and baseball together. So I get this call from my agent, he says, "Are you sitting down?" And I said, "Yes. I'm driving." He says, "You might want to pull over." "What's going on?" "You're going to be the number two guy in the new Soderbergh movie with Matt Damon."
Obviously, I was shocked and thrilled. And he says, "Subject of course to you reading the script." And I said, "I'm pretty sure I'll be OK." So I asked him how it happened, and he said, "Greg called me. We've been working on this for a few months, and because he knew you, he asked that I not talk to you about it. In case it didn't work out, he didn't want it to be any kind of problem with your friendship." So I knew nothing. Both of them kept it from me until I got an offer. It was a great way to get a job, but of course I yelled at both of them, saying, "C'mon! We could have talked about this! If things were getting hairy I would have met Steve, I would have done anything I needed to do!
Had you ever been given a part without having to audition for it?
Yeah, but usually you at least have a meeting. Every experience is different. When I met Sam Mendes on American Beauty, I told my agent, "I'll do anything in this movie. I just want to be part of this movie. It's such a great script." So I went in with Sam, and I didn't read or anything, we just chatted. You have horror stories of going back and forth, too. I've been told, "You have the part, they just want you to come in so they can hear your voice and meet you." And I lost that one. But this one was a great gift -- it appeared out of nowhere, dropping out of the clouds.
What was your reaction after reading the script for the first time? Did it read as a flat-out comedy?
I have to be honest that I was tipped a little bit, because everybody had read the script but me. "It's the greatest script! It's not what you expect!" But even after I got to the set, I didn't know for the first few days what it was going to be. Obviously, you're working with Steven Soderbergh -- his track record speaks for itself. He's incredibly imaginative and artistic and a visionary, and so I didn't feel I needed to know everything to do what I needed to do. I just put myself in his hands. Matt was trying to figure out what he was going to do as well, and how he was going to play this guy.
To me, one of the great successes of the movie is the tone. It could have been a straight-ahead whistleblower, Erin Brockovich kind of thing. But Steven has done that already, and it wouldn't have been like him to go back and explore that same kind of energy in a film, and happily he hasn't.
It really is kind of Bizarro Erin Brockovich when you think about it.
[Laughs] It is. I think that's a testament to his filmmaking skills, and trying to find new ways to express himself. I looked around that set a few times and I said to myself, "Man. I hope we all end up in the same movie." There's so many different characters here and comedians and this and that, and he figured out how to make it all seem very real. I hope people are excited about because I am. It's different.
There are a bunch of comedians in the movie -- both literal and figurative -- and you're positioned as something of a straight man to them. How did you manage that? Does that role fit you comfortably?
It's a blast to be on a set with comedians, and it's also very hard to be on a set with comedians. Because they've got everybody cracking up all the time. The way it was put to me was that basically my character is the audience's way into the movie. I kind of struggled with that for a while in terms of what that really meant. I think basically it's that I believe this guy, and for a variety of reasons I went on this ride with him.
It seems like you were cast to look physically different from everyone else. It was sort of like, all these pasty, interchangeable white guys, and then there's you, who kind of has the face of the classic, film noir G-Man.
We went a little bit for the look of the real guy. That was his hair style and style of dress. He was very conservative, a bit of a throwback. It was such a small town, it almost had a '40s or '50s feel to it. And then he had all of the outside world crashing his party, really. He's just plodding along, doing his thing like a Columbo almost, keeping his nose to the grindstone. Ultimately that was part of his undoing -- he so, so desperately wanted this to be true, that he maybe didn't see the case as clearly as he would have in other circumstances.
The FBI is painted as yet another bumbling operation.
Unfortunately, everything in the movie is real. It was all documented extensively -- thousands of hours of interviews. These are the stories and character pieces that were all reported on and collaborated on. Truth is stranger than fiction.
So that Chinese restaurant scene really happened?
Isn't that classic? And I tell you, that day we could barely get through it. Everybody was killing themselves laughing. It was a good scene that [screenwriter Scott Z. Burns] wrote -- but again, it was straight out of the book.
When you started rehearsals, had Matt Damon already gained the weight?
We didn't actually have rehearsals. We all just showed up in Decatur and started shooting. I don't know if Matt had his full 30 pounds on by then, but he was well into 20, 25 pounds by then. He was having a ball. He had Doritos, anything he could eat that was fattening. He had done so many films where he had to be the perfect physical specimen, the Bourne stuff, this was kind of a great release for him. We'd be sitting at the bar at night, and he'd be ordering a dark beer. "Most calories! Most calories!"
I think that halfway through the movie he found out he was going to have to do reshoots on this other movie he had been working on. That meant that he was going to have to strip this weight off immediately; we were all wishing him well on that one. But he was enjoying it, and I have to say, there's a scene that's not in the movie, where he had to swim in a pool in Hawaii, and it was just hysterical.
Was he self-conscious?
Oh, no. He was loving it! He'd smack his gut and grab it. He was just having the best time. In this day and age people are always sneaking pictures, so the very next day his picture got out, by the pool without a shirt on. It was so funny.
Speaking of, I want to ask you about that iconic Playgirl photoshoot you posed for in the early '90s. How did that come about, and what's your take on it now?
First of all, as long as there was no full nudity I was fine with it. I can't remember what we were promoting -- Lord of Illusions? -- I can't remember what movie it was. You know, looking back it cracks me up. And I kind of look at it and go, what was I thinking? But that happens some times in this business, and thank goodness I kept my pants on. But you tell yourself, well, Burt Reynolds, he was naked. Didn't he do it with stockings on or something?
I think he did a Cosmopolitan magazine centerfold on a bear skin rug.
Oh yeah, something like that. You know, I can't go back and say I wish I hadn't done it. It was what I was doing at the time. When people show up with it in their hand to sign it, I get a chuckle out of it. I can't do anything without it coming back. You're signing a picture like this, a picture like that, and then -- boom! -- there comes that Playgirl. Oh yeah, look at that! I'll be darned. [Laughs] That was just one little chapter.