Melrose Place, the series featuring TV’s most dramatic apartment complex, returns to Canada tonight, bringing with it only a fragment of the buzz CW’s other reincarnated TV series, 90210, received when it premièred this time last year.
Part of the problem is lowered expectations: after a record number of viewers tuned in for 90210’s pilot, people dropped off for the remainder of the season.
The other, and more severe, problem is that this ‘90s revival fails to target one specific audience – something 90210 struggled with all season long. The result was disappointment for both shiny new viewers and nostalgic fans, as well as the eventual ousting of the series show runners to introduce newer and more dramatic content.
Has Melrose Place learned from its predecessor’s mistakes? The flashy pilot episode, which introduces viewers to seven new tenants and two revamped original characters, is filled with nostalgic fodder fans know and love, but also showcases dizzying music, rapid scenes and hipper dialogue that are enough to send any epileptic into a frenzied seizure state.
With so much going on, one thing for sure is that it’s hard to get to know the new residents. TV Guide Canada caught up with series star Colin Egglesfield (All My Children), who plays sous-chef Auggie in the series, to get the deal on his character, discuss his transition from soap star to prime-time star, and to find out what he thinks about the show’s water-cooler potential.
TVGuide.ca: Hey Colin, so with eight episodes under your belt, is the show just as crazy busy as the pilot was?
Colin Egglesfield: Yes, yes. But it’s been going good. By now we’ve worked out a lot of the kinks and we’ve got a better idea of who our characters are and our relationships with each other. It’s exciting to show up every week and read the scripts and find out what’s going to happen.
TVG: How does that differ from daytime?
CE: Daytime, you’re shooting about 90 pages of script every day and here we’re shooting about 90 pages of script every seven days. So with soap operas, you’ve got four cameras running at the same time and here we generally run two cameras.
But with soaps, you’re doing your masters and your close-ups all at one time and then you have to move on. With this, you can do seven or eight takes for your master and then whatever it takes to get what you need out of the scene. You have a lot more time to light it better, to rehearse it and explore it better. It’s definitely refreshing to have the time to invest in the scene and make it the best you can be.
TVG: Are there any difficulties in working with such a large ensemble? Is it hard to find an outlet to showcase Auggie?
CE: So far there hasn’t been. I guess the only difficulty has been trying to stay consistent with who my character is and how he would react in certain situations or how he would behave with different characters. This is something that as we go along the writers will get to know my personality and Auggie’s personality and what he would or wouldn’t do.
There have been times where I was just like, ‘This is not what my character would say. He wouldn’t be as open and forthright with this information.’ And the great thing is the writers and producers are really open to having that dialogue and collaborating and making it as good as it can be.
TVG: You’ve never worked on a pilot from conception to full-season before – what’s that journey been like?
CE: Yeah … this is my fist pilot that’s actually gone to air. It’s such a process to get to even filming the pilot and getting cast in a pilot, so to actually go to air is really exciting and fulfilling.
TVG: At the Melrose Place session during [the Television Critics Association press tour] you were probably the only cast member at the time that even had a recollection of the original series. Is that still the case, and have you caught up?
CE: I can only speak for myself. We had our première party Saturday night and in the gift bags was the first season of Melrose Place. I was in my trailer last week and I popped it in the DVD player, but I had to stop watching it. It was weird seeing the same complex with these different actors and people there. I started filling my head up with ideas.
I feel like it’s best to keep it separate because this is a completely different show with different characters. Granted we have four returning characters, but I don’t think it helps me knowing what they were like 12 years ago. In real life I wouldn’t have known them. It’s better to have a clean slate.
TVG: Does the show focus more on the new characters or is there a balance between the new characters and the old ones?
CE: The focus has been primarily on the new characters, but the older characters are definitely woven into our storylines. People who watched the previous version are going to be curious because they have their favourites and people are going to want to see them. They do play prominent roles in this newer version, but it focuses on the relationships between these new seven tenants.
TVG: Where does Auggie fit it in with the other residents — what makes him memorable and what’s his relationship with Sydney Andrews [Laura Leighton]?
CE: I meet Sydney in Alcoholics Anonymous. She basically became my pseudo-sponsor and helped me get back on track to realize I could become a chef. She was someone who helped me get to where I wanted to go, but she wasn’t able to keep herself clean and she relapsed.
I’m someone who is trying to stay clean and do the right thing. In a sense I take on the older-brother role with some of the other tenants like Violet [Ashlee Simpson-Wentz], who is naïve and comes in fresh off the bus from the Midwest. Same with David [Shaun Sipos], whose character is, like, 22-years-old, making some of the mistakes I made, and I know I can kind of help him prevent from making.
Then with Riley [Jessica Lucas] and Jonah [Michael Rady], the couple who are engaged to be married, there’s definitely a love triangle that’s going to be starting up between us pretty soon.
TVG: Uh oh! That’s interesting because in the pilot it looked as though Auggie and Violet had sparks, not like you would be her big-brother figure.
CE: That’s the thing, at Melrose anything can happen, and I’m jut amazed at how much does happen in the episodes we’ve filmed so far. It almost seems like a whole season worth of stuff.
TVG: Other than the complex itself, are there any other gathering places for the characters? Is there a new version of Shooters?
CE: Yeah, a restaurant called Cole, that’s the restaurant I work at. Violet actually gets a job there eventually and that’s where we have Ella’s [Katie Cassidy] birthday party and everyone comes to be seen and to see. It’s like the hottest restaurant in town and one of the mainstay locations.
TVG: The original Melrose had this massive water cooler effect, and you guys are coming off the heels of the new 90210, which also had a huge water cooler effect when it started last season. Do you think this Melrose fits into that buzz category or is there a danger in the fact that it’s coming in 90210’s shadow?
CE: I don’t follow that; it’s something that’s hard to comment on. It would be great if people the next day liked our show enough to want to talk about it and blog about it, tweet, which is cool. It would be phenomenal if people took to the show and responded the way they did to the previous one. But that’s totally out of our hands and you can only hope for the best. We’ve got enough in the show to definitely have people talking. The potential is there.
TVG: So why should people tune in?
CE: People are going to be excited to see what will happen in the updated version. Not only is there this murder mystery people will tune in to see, but they’ve shot it in a cool, film noir way. Visually it’s really cool to watch. There’s a lot in the pilot that will set up a lot of stuff to come. People from previous versions will be excited to see the characters and newer viewers will take to it and be excited to see what us newcomers are up to as well.
Thoughts? amber@tvguide.ca
Melrose Place debuts Wednesday, Sept. 9, 10 p.m. ET, Global, and airs Tuesdays, 9 p.m. ET, on The CW.
Have a TV question? Check out the latest Ask Amber or follow Amber on Twitter
Follow TV Guide Canada on Facebook