Back to Frank Black - Lance Henriksen on Millenium

The good people over at Back to Frank Black have got a campaign going to get the great actor Lance Henrikson (Aliens, The Terminator, Near Dark) back on a big or small screen as Frank Black in the excellent Millenium. They recently posted the first part of a three part interview with the man himself (some highlights below).

Head on over and show your support. I always felt Lance was a superb actor (if you didn't know he was going to be the original Terminator and went around with foil on his teeth with James Cameron to get the studios interest) and should be in a lot more classic movies.

BACKTOFRANKBLACK: Do you think the return of Frank Black is a possibility? Are you still interested in playing Frank again - you were very optimistic at the conventions this past year.

LANCE HENRIKSEN: Yeah, I know, I would absolutely love to do it and I really think it is a possibility, but it's really up to Frank Spotnitz and Chris Carter.

BTFB: If Frank Black and Millennium returned in some form, what would be your preference in the form it would return and why?

LANCE: A movie would be very different. With a movie you have an end in sight - you can gear your energy for it, but when you have a [TV] series that goes on for ten and a half months - there is no way to really have that "end in sight" because you know you'll be coming back next year. It's very tiring.

BTFB: So would a movie be ideal?

LANCE: Yeah. Ideally.

BTFB: Can I just ask you about Frank's gift? Another fan favorite for debate. Chris has said on the DVD it was originally intended in season one to be simply a depiction of Frank's intuition, yet even in season one there is a flavor of something more mystical going on. Were you briefed on this possibility?

LANCE: Well let me say this: you know how a great chess player works, right? They study, they study, they study - they know all the moves of different great chess players? I always felt Frank Black had morphed into a person who put abstract loose ends together in his head in a way that other people couldn't. He could take threads of an idea and they would suddenly appear to him almost a linear story. In other words, walking into a room he would see pieces of a puzzle like a great chess player and he would string them together. And that's what I always thought - that the Gift was intellect and intuition - not psychic. I don't know how you would describe a psychic actually - I couldn't describe one - except a gift from God, like Moses talking to him or a luminary or some stuff. To me, it was something much more.. kind of pragmatic.

I always felt Chris understood that I didn't want to judge anybody. I didn't want Frank Black to be a judge or a puritan who sat on the edge of "this is good/bad". No Gift would work in your brain if you had judgments going on. The Gift was only about discovering the intent and the function of what was happening.

Discuss in the Forum