Another of the new shows previewed by ABC at the 2012 Television Critics Association press tour was 666 Park Avenue, a supernatural drama that will follow Once Upon A Time and Revenge on the network’s sure-to-be-successful Sunday nights. Before we go in to what some of the cast — which includes Terry O’Quinn and Vanessa Williams, so how can you go wrong there? — here’s the official description for the show courtesy of ABC:
What would you do to have everything you desire? Step inside “666 Park Avenue,” New York’s most seductive address. We all have some burning needs, desires and ambitions. For the residents of The Drake, the premier apartment building on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, these will all be met – for a price – courtesy of the building’s mysterious owner, Gavin Doran (Terry O’Quinn). But be careful what you wish for, because the price you have to pay is your soul. ABC’s wickedly sensual, sexy and spine-tingling new drama about fulfilling our deepest desires, “666 Park Avenue,” will air Sundays from 10:00-11:00 p.m., ET.
When Jane Van Veen (Rachael Taylor) and Henry Martin (Dave Annable), an idealistic young couple from the Midwest, arrive in New York City, the glamorous center of industry and media, they are offered the opportunity to manage the historic Drake. Jane, a small town girl with big ambitions, always knew she wanted to be an architect. Henry, a member of the Mayor’s staff, is grounded, intelligent and tenacious. They are lured by the intoxicating lifestyle of New York’s wealthy elite.
Gavin, who has many skeletons in his own closet, is at the height of his world and commands the dark power of The Drake. Olivia (Vanessa Williams), his beautiful but enigmatic, supportive wife, wears her elegance, wealth and position in society as armor… but cracks will slowly be revealed.
Jane and Henry not only fall prey to the machinations of Gavin and Olivia, but unwittingly live in the dark embrace of the building’s supernatural forces which endanger the lives of its residents. These include Brian Leonard (Robert Buckley), a young playwright pining for his early success and promise. Brian’s wife, Louise (Mercedes Masöhn), is a rising hot star in the world of fashion photography. Alexis Blume (Helena Mattsson) is a troubled young woman who is the picture of obsession — what is her real connection to Gavin, and what part will she play in Brian and Louise’s life? Tony DeMeo (Erik Palladino), The Drake’s doorman, is the eyes and ears of the building. And then there is 14-year-old Nona Clark (Samantha Logan), who has a blossoming psychic ability, allowing her to look into the future of her fellow Drake occupants.
Sexy, enticing and captivating, home to an epic struggle of good versus evil, The Drake maintains a dark hold over all of its tenants in this new, chilling drama, tempting them through their ambitions and desires.
“666 Park Avenue” stars Rachael Taylor (“Charlie’s Angels,” “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Transformers”) as Jane Van Veen, Dave Annable (“Brothers & Sisters,” “Reunion”) as Henry Martin, Mercedes Masöhn (“The Finder,” “Chuck,” “Three Rivers”) as Louise Leonard, Robert Buckley (“One Tree Hill,” “Lipstick Jungle”) as Brian Leonard, Helena Mattsson (“Iron Man 2,” “Nikita,” “Desperate Housewives”) as Alexis Blume, Erik Palladino (“U-571,” “ER,” “Murphy Brown”) as Tony DeMeo and Samantha Logan as Nona Clark, with Vanessa Williams (“Desperate Housewives,” “Ugly Betty,” “Shaft,” “Soul Food”) as Olivia Doran and Terry O’Quinn (“Lost,” “Millennium,” “Hawaii Five-0,” “Alias,” “The West Wing,” “Jag”) as Gavin Doran.
Based on the book series by Gabriella Pierce, “666 Park Avenue” is executive-produced by Matthew Miller (“Chuck,” “Human Target”), David Wilcox (“Fringe,” “Life on Mars”), who is also the creator, Gina Girolamo (“The Secret Circle,” “The Lying Game”) and Leslie Morgenstein (“Gossip Girl,” “The Vampire Diaries,” “Pretty Little Liars,” “The Lying Game,” “The Secret Circle,” “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants”). The pilot for “666 Park Avenue” was written by Wilcox and directed by Alex Graves (“Fringe,” “The West Wing”), who was also an executive producer. “666 Park Avenue” is from Bonanza Productions Inc. in association with Alloy Entertainment (“Gossip Girl,” “The Vampire Diaries,” “Pretty Little Liars”) and Warner Bros. Television.
O’Quinn and Williams play the mysterious Gavin and Olivia Doran, and Gavin’s mystery might bring back flashbacks to O’Quinn’s memorable role as John Locke as LOST. When asked about always playing those types of characters, Terry O’Quinn points out that LOST didn’t start out that way. “I think in the last couple seasons it turned into that,” he notes. “That being said, I find these kinds of characters have a lot of secrets, better secrets. Good guys are a little bit more wide open. These people are a little more mysterious. Even if you don’t know what the secrets are, you can play it that you have a lot of secrets, and that’s pleasant.”
Vanessa Williams, who recently had success with roles on Desperate Housewives and Ugly Betty, says the script is what attracted her to 666 Park Avenue. “When I read the script for the pilot, I loved the world,” she says. “Without giving a lot away, which most of you have seen the pilot, the first pages where you see the violinist playing, and you see the blood start to trickle down his fingers, and then they cut to Olivia and Gavin Doran watching him at the philharmonic and cut back to him and packing up his violin and rushing to a cab and running back to the building – I was completely taken from the very beginning, and I said, wow, this is compelling. It’s in a city that I love, and I’m glad to be shooting back home, and it’s a world that I wanted to explore. It’s the Upper East Side. It’s luxurious. It’s a couple that are very powerful. I thought about the Madoffs immediately because they were extremely wealthy. They had incredible land holdings all over that people knew about and knew that they had a great amount of wealth. And then we all saw the dark side and what happened and how they created their empire,” she says.
She compared the Dorans’ power to that we see in the real world with people like Donald Trump. “I saw that kind of power as part of Gavin and Olivia’s world,” she explains. “And it’s a little bit more like Wilhemina where she worked her way up to the Upper East Side echelon, but this is the same type of world but a much different feeling. And also going back to the tone, I think it’s our duty as actors to keep it as realistic as possible so the suspense is there. So you’ve got tension with relationships. So if an elevator door opens, there’s some surprise, and it doesn’t have to do with a special effect, but there’s an element of suspense that people are always on edge. And that’s what’s on the page. That’s what the director allows us to do, and that’s what our jobs are as actors in this particular genre, but also the tone that we’re setting,” she says.
Creator David Wilcox admits that 666 Park Avenue is “absolutely” influenced by the works of Stephen King. “Who can’t be influenced by Stephen King when you’re working in the genre?” he asks. “But it’s also so much more than that. We were influenced very much by, I think, clearly “Rosemary’s Baby,” films of the ’70s and ’80s that were much more psychologically driven horror, movies like “The Shining,” “The Omen,” even films like “Blue Velvet” and “Jacob’s Ladder.” And this was sort of, for us, kind of the juice that we were looking at and trying to pull that into the show to really make kind of a twisted, fun, dark show that still has this kind of edge, wish fulfillment and an aspiration and yet with a great twist,” he says.
As for the Dorans, he says he thinks that audiences will find that they are very bad, but with a caveat: they’re very human, as well. “It was very important in creating this show that the characters not be two‑dimensional, that they have some complexity to them, that we could really go places with them and see this series as many, many seasons and get a lot out of that. So we don’t know a lot about the Dorans yet. As the show progresses, we’re going to learn a lot more about them. And I guarantee they’re not what you expect,” he says.
So will the story of 666 Park Avenue be soapy, with continuing stories, or will they be standalone? Executive Producer Matthew Miller lays it out.
“I think the idea is to give, in every episode, a little bit of both parts of the title, so there will be a little bit of ‘666,’ a little supernatural, a little bit of Faustian bargain, and then a little bit of Park Avenue, which is the earlier question about how does the show fit into the ABC family, and it’s like, this show does have ‑‑ it has soap. It has seduction. It has wish fulfillment. It has a lot of those qualities that other ABC shows possess,” Miller says.
“The way that we’re going to try and structure the majority of the shows is that it will have a slightly serialized element, but we’re also going to explore different resident deals along the way. And whether those deals last one episode, three episodes, four episodes, you want to feel any given week like you could be learning about a new resident of that building, and sometimes those Faustian bargains will be a more accelerated case, like in the pilot with the character that wanted his wife to come back. Sometimes they will be told over three or four episodes. Sometimes with the case of, like, Henry and Jane, they’re involved in their own seduction, but that’s just sort of a longer story. It’s like a long con, almost, that the Dorans are playing on them. And then to the point about the Dorans, that’s certainly something that we want to unfold slowly and carefully through the course of the first season and however long, how many seasons we can stretch it out for, but those are questions that are really fun to let the audience in on. Are they human? Is he the devil? What is at the foundation of their relationship, which, for us, we’ve always talked about, is their love for each other, which is very pure and very real and helps to ground them as characters regardless of the supernatural elements,” he continues.
666 Park Avenue premieres Sunday, September 30 on ABC. Come talk about the show on the KSiteTV Forum! Here are some images:
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666 PARK AVENUE - "666 Park Avenue" stars Rachael Taylor as Jane Van Veen, Dave Annable as Henry Martin, Robert Buckley as Brian Leonard, Mercedes Mashn as Louise Leonard, Helena Mattsson as Alexis Blume, Samantha Logan as Nona Clark, with Vanessa Williams as Olivia Doran and Terry O'Quinn as Gavin Doran. Based on the book series by Gabriella Pierce, "666 Park Avenue" was written by David Wilcox, who is also an executive producer along with Matthew Miller, Leslie Morgenstein, Gina Girolamo and Alex Graves. The pilot for "666 Park Avenue" was directed by Alex Graves. "666 Park Avenue" is from Bonanza Productions Inc. in association with Alloy Entertainment and Warner Bros. Television. (ABC/ANDREW ECCLES) TERRY O'QUINN
