The Devil incarnate or good at heart?  We meet The Pretender's Mr. Parker - aka Harve Presnell.

By David Richardson.

He's a character that exists at the very heart of The Pretender myth, yet even after three years we still know very little about him.  Mr Parker is the man who founded The Centre, a scientific organization intended to help cure some of the ills in society.  Then one day The Centre went bad; child geniuses were abducted and their abilities used for profit.  Mr Parker's wife, Catherine, died in mysterious circumstances.  And, while he still remained chairman, Parker lost the reins of the company to the ruling Triumvirate.

But is Mr Parker at heart a good guy or a bad guy?  When XPose recently visited the set of The Pretender, we asked actor Harve Presnell.  "Parker is an open-ended creative effort," Presnell responds, as we chat in his trailer adjacent to the soundstage.  "You can go any direction you want with him...  He's probably manipulating everybody, but all for the good.  "The keys to this character are his relationship with his daughter [Andrea Parker; he may be manipulative but he's doing all of it for a reason.  His wife was murdered, you don't know really whether Lyle [Jamie Denton] is his son yet or not, although he accepts him as his son."

A softer side to Parker was revealed in this season's At the Hour of Our Death, when he reveals that Faith, a young child once held at The Centre, was actually his adopted daughter.  The girl was dying of leukaemia, and so he and Catherine attempted to ease her suffering.

"He is family first," Presnell continues, "although he certainly plays fast and loose with his daughter and other people who are associated with him.  He is a master at motivating people for whatever reason."

A veteran star of the Broadway stage, Presnell boasts an incredibly impressive list of credits that includes the movies Saving Private Ryan, Fargo, Face/Off, Paint Your Wagon and The Unsinkable Molly Brown.  On TV you may have seen him in Star Trek: Voyager's The Q and
the Grey or the Lois and Clark episode Dr. Sam Lane.

A farmer at heart, Presnell commutes to Los Angeles in his own private plane- a two-hour return journey.

"I never look at a script as a potential income," he asserts. "Never. I know that can take care of my children and grandchildren if I don't have a job in this business.  I can, and always have, made decisions based on [the quality of a script].  If there's nothing there, if there's no writing, then I will stay away from it.  I don't care how much money is involved." 

Mr. Parker initially appeared during the show's first season, as the mystery surrounding the death of Miss Parker's mother began to unfold.  Presnell accepted the role for the episode Keys, and soon discovered he liked what he was reading.

"I had been offered a lot of sitcoms and stuff like that and I had fooled around with maybe doing a character in a series," Presnell says of winning the role.  "Fortunately this one came along and I did a couple, which I really liked.  I liked the people and I liked the shooting schedule, and the first year I did it I was kind of intrigued by the writing."  Presnell was also delighted to find that the shooting schedule fitted in perfectly with his commute.

"I shoot everything that I do in a day here, all my stuff," he explains. "Next year it'll be different
because they're trying to expand the character and get more of a storyline.  It depends whether I ask for too much money and they kill me off!"  

Most actors, when they take a part, will research their character's background.  One might imagine things were a little more difficult in the case of Mr. Parker, whose deliberately enigmatic past has yet to be fully uncovered.

I depended on the way they had written the character in the beginning," the actor recalls.  "I remember looking at it and thinking, "This guy really doesn't have any foundation."  So I invented a foundation in my own head, which came from my grandfather and my uncles and people I've known.  It doesn't have to be written down.  This is a very tough cookie, very tough.  If I met a character like this guy I'd be very careful.  He's dangerous.  He's not only brilliant, but physically he's intimidating.  He's very bright and very good with people, so he's the head of a corporation that what they do... I don't know for sure.  I know they're into the leading edge of technology and his whole philosophy is having immediate access to accurate information.  So he's step ahead of everybody.  But Jarod he can't catch."

Mr. Parker has certainly had his fair share of storylines during season three.   At one stage, his daughter even became convinced he was dying, because of the new medication he had been prescribed.  The good news is he is fit and healthy.  The bad news: the tablets were viagra.  And he's taking them because he has fallen in love with the young and beautiful Brigitte (Pamela Gidley) who Miss Parker despises.  And Parker intends to marry the young woman...

"I thought that was fun," says Presnell of the revelation. "At times I'm not happy about sitting in a bathtub with a girl half my age, who I'm supposedly having an affair with.  But it worked fine, it was tastefully done.

"I love Pamela.  She's a wonderful actress and she certainly brings another dimension.  He's at the point in his life where he's silly enough to think that she actually loves him.

"Why would this man, who has been without a wife for so long, and still loves her, and filled his life up, end up marrying a woman who is a threat to his daughter?  Why would he do that?  He still says, 'My daughter is all.'  He likes being with Brigitte.  Is he doing it for a reason?  In my head there is a reason for him doing all of this."

Presnell reveals that the Pretender writers have been very generous in allowing him to alter dialogue, so that it sounds more natural.  Has the actor ever been tempted to submit his own ideas to the writers about how Mr. Parker could develop?  "No," he instantly responds.  "They don't pay me to do that.  I think, from them looking at the shows, they are now beginning to understand Mr. Parker how I understand him.  So they take their lead from past performances.  I don't disagree with their storylines; that's not my job.  If they do something that's uncomfortable for me, maybe there's a reason.  It's up to me to be uncomfortable."

As each successive season of The Pretender has come and gone, so the mysteries surrounding The Centre have been both and intensified might hope, with Presnell due to take a larger role in Season Four, character will finally show all of his true colors.  But will he join the 'gray' characters like Sydney, Miss Parker and Broots, or will he be an out-and-out bad guy, like Mr. Raines and Lyle? 

"I want the integrity to be there," stresses Presnell.  "For whatever reason The Centre exists in my mind; it's a real place run by a bunch of really strange people.  It may be financially driven, but where is the elite?  Who does he answer to?  The Triumvirate is three guys, but who are they? 

"We introduce one of them at the end of the season, but who are those people I answer to and why do I feel I have to stay a step ahead of them?  Why do I have to put my daughter in an embarrassing situation?  Maybe it's money."

With the series sold to TNT for syndication, it's guaranteed a run of four, maybe even five, years.  Producers Craig W. Van Sickle and Steven Long Mitchell already know the resolution to the whole arc, and it will certainly be interesting to see how these very bizarre characters all meet their comeuppance.

"I think Raines has got to get blown away," suggests Presnell.  "I love Richard [Marcus] and I want to work with him, because he's such a joy, but he's an evil son of a bitch, no question about it!"

Finally there is the question of Parker's relationship with Jarod, the titular Pretender, who spent most of his life as a captive of The Centre - only to escape as an adult.  Now Jarod is searching for his family, while The Centre is in turn searching for him.

"Jarod is a creation of this man, this philosophy, and he was so well created he escaped," defines the actor.  "His relationship with Jarod is very unusual and it will come to a head at the end of the season in a very well written script, where Parker finally has a confrontation with the one person who escaped The Centre.  He is bound to try and get Jarod back because he belongs to The Centre.  We get into genetic manipulation and cloning of humans, which is a current topic today.

"It may very well be that Jarod's father is not his father.  There is an attachment, a love/hate
relationship between Jarod and Mr. Parker."

Could Jarod eventually be revealed as a member of the Parker clan?  Now that's certainly food for thought...