Interview: JAKE WEBER GETS SCARED OVER 'MEDIUM'

[weber_dubois22]

The actor talks about playing his character for six years and dodging the cancellation bullet
By ABBIE BERNSTEIN, Contributing Writer
Published 5/3/2010



Jake Weber, known for feature film roles in WENDIGO, U-571, the remake of DAWN OF THE DEAD and THE HAUNTING OF MOLLY HARTLEY, is now in his sixth season of playing Joe Dubois on MEDIUM. Joe, a science-minded engineer, is married to Patricia Arquette’s psychic character Allison, who uses her gifts to help the Phoenix district attorney’s office. They have three daughters, all of whom seem to have inherited some aspect of Allison’s otherworldly gifts. However, nobody foresaw that, after five years on NBC, the series would be cancelled, so that the fifth-season finale was a cliffhanger that saw Allison comatose in the hospital. Happily for all concerned, CBS picked up MEDIUM; the show is now airing first-run episodes on its new network Friday nights.

iF MAGAZINE: Would you have felt bad about where your character Joe was left off if MEDIUM had ended with last season’s cliffhanger?

JAKE WEBER: Not so much for my character, but there are two hundred and fifty people there with families and jobs that would have had a real hard time right now – it’s a tough time to be unemployed. It would have been nice if we’d known we were going to finish – it would have been nice to have some closure to it, rather than leave it on a cliffhanger. So many great shows have just ended like that. It would have been a shame to end it without having some sort of storyline that was satisfying for an audience. And also, it would have been sad for the two hundred and thirty people who worked on the show to all of a sudden be made [unemployed].



iF: Has this happened to you before?

WEBER: I worked on a TV show called THE STREET in New York City and I was out there doing the last scene of this episode and I was supposed to come up the next day and they just said, ‘That’s it, everyone go home, it’s done.’ It’s shocking, but it’s a tough business, it’s a lot of money to keep these shows on the air, and if they’re not performing, you’ve got to pull the plug.

iF: This may be more a question for the producers, but do you think having had this experience that if it looks like MEDIUM is going away again, there will be closure for the finale?

WEBER: Oh, I think so. I think if we know that that’s it, [executive producer Glenn Gordon Caron] is going to want to put some bookends on it. Their lives go on – it’s hard to close everything up when you’ve followed these people’s lives for five years. Whatever is going to happen, it’s going to go on. I don’t know how you can sort of bookend it like a mystery or something, like all of a sudden, [Allison is] not psychic any more or she falls off a cliff or something.

iF: Now that you’ve played Joe for going on six years, do you have any idea what he’s talking about when he has dialogue about his science work, higher mathematics and the like?

WEBER: Oh! [laughs] Did you ever see Spaulding Gray in SWIMMING TO CAMBODIA? Do you remember how he has to memorize all this jargon? He can only do it visually in the most strangely random way. That’s kind of how it is with Joe and all his scientific jargon. I happen to be a verbal guy and not a [visual] guy, and so it’s very hard for me to memorize all that stuff. You just have sound like you know what you’re doing, like you know what you’re talking about – you don’t actually have to [know].

iF: Have you ever attempted to research Joe’s work?

WEBER: No, he’s involved in solar energy. The conceit is that he’s doing something [innovative] in solar energy. There’s not actually a literal translation for it [because Joe’s inventions are at present fictional] – although it’s important that when we do scientific stuff in our equations on the board, I want them to actually mean something so it’s not insulting to people who actually do that for a living. It doesn’t take much to get a real equation on the board. I don’t have to understand it, but at least it has to be accurate. It’s like if you play a cop or something, or you play a fireman, you want to do justice by getting it as right as possible.

iF: On MEDIUM, psychic phenomena is real. Do you believe in psychic phenomena in real life?

WEBER: No, I have a very literal Western mind. There’s stuff that goes on there that I have no idea and cannot get my head around, but just because I don’t know it or understand it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. [As far as working on MEDIUM], they’re not paying me to believe in psychics, they’re just paying me to pretend to be married to one.

iF: Has anything surprised you in the relationship of Joe’s relationship with his daughters?

WEBER: You know, he’s a pretty stable guy, he’s a pretty solid individual. He sort of rides the highs low and the lows high. Obviously, the challenge of being in a house full of psychic women is daunting for any man, but he’s admirably calm in the face of some of these manic episodes. [Allison’s] character has all these wild things that go on and the girls are growing up and they’re psychic and he’s got a full plate but he seems to eat it piecemeal and seems to be able to digest it.

iF: There was an episode where youngest daughter Marie needed glasses, and Joe realizes she’s reading the optometrist’s mind rather than reading the eye chart …

WEBER: That’s right. It’s so bizarre. But is it more bizarre than a lot of other things in life? How does somebody discover that their kid needs glasses? It’s got to be something weird. I don’t know. I think he does the best that he can in a very foreign, alien world to him and because he knows that it’s alien, he’s pretty open-minded about it.

iF: There have been polls where Joe has been voted one of the best husbands on TV. Are you very like him?

WEBER: [laughs] I think my wife would attest to the huge dissimilarities between myself and this character. I have a three-year-old, so I’m learning patience. I’m very bad at math. [Joe is] very sort of buoyant and light. Maybe I’m a little bit heavier. It’s hard to talk about yourself in relation to your character. The minute he shows a sardonic, slightly wry, slightly teasing sense of humor, [that’s closer to home].

iF: Do you have a preference between the storylines where Joe’s dealing with his family and the storylines that are just Joe’s storylines dealing with his work?

WEBER: It’s all good. The more stuff that gets thrown at Joe, the more fun it is to play. I think the best storylines in the show are when Glenn Caron integrates the plot device, Allison’s work environment and the home environment. That’s when it’s most interesting – when they can dovetail those. That’s when it’s most fun, complicated and weird and I think that’s when the show works at its best.

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