I was lucky enough to be able to participate in a press question and answer session with Zak Penn (X-Men: The Last Stand, The Incredible Hulk), co-creator, and Warren Christie (October Road, Happy Town) who plays Hicks, about their work on the new Syfy series Alphas, which premieres tonight (Monday, July 11) at 10 pm.

They both had some interesting things to say about how Alphas are like regular people, how Alphas is not like other “extraordinary abilities” shows, and how the show has evolved.

Deadbolt.com asked:

Zak can you talk about the Alphas and how they’re a metaphor for tapping into your true potential as opposed to superheroes?

Zak Penn: Well interestingly, I mean, obviously when you do a superhero movie usually that is working on a metaphorical level, right, because no matter how Jean Grey’s struggle with turning into Phoenix is obviously so extreme but it’s operating on a metaphorical level.

I think with Alphas part of the point is these people’s abilities and problems are so close to reality that sometimes it’s not only not metaphorical, it allows us to actually tell the same human story.

You look at Hicks’ story. It’s pretty close to the story that any of us would have who have a talent that kind of we have trouble managing. Even look, there’s a long history of writers who have an instrument that they can access occasionally but when they can’t they turn to drinking or turn to other things to manage that problem.

And Warren can speak better to this but we really tried to keep both the upside and the downside of their problems so close to human that we end up writing stories that are, I mean, I don’t mean to get all semantic and a lecture about semantics versus metaphorical but it’s actually a real – it’s fun.

I mean, on the X-Men it’s pretty hard to write a story about Wolverine’s problems, paying his rent and working in a grocery store, whereas with Hicks those are real issues. Warren?

Warren Christie: And byproducts from what has led him up to this point in his life. Like Zak said, I think Hicks sees this as much more of a curse than a gift because he has known there has been something different about him but it seems to always have failed him at the biggest times.

So because of that, like Zak pointed out, because Hicks is so agile you can have something like a professional athlete. Professional athletes go through a lot of different things where they have these highs and then because of that they have these very big lows. And I think it’s that fine line and that balancing at that is what makes each of the characters so rich in the show.

Zak Penn: And also, yes and most professional athletes by just the thread that’s in there, like whenever you read about, I’m a big baseball fan, I’m a big sports fan. Warren and I have talked about this a bit.

But almost every professional baseball player, 70% of their job if they’re good is failure. Any good hitter, if they bat 300, 70% of the time they’re failing. So it’s something that Hicks is kind of coming to grips with that, you know, I think is real even for quite a few players.

MediaBlvd Magazine asked how Alphas will differentiate itself from shows like The 4400 or Heroes:

Zak Penn: For myself personally obviously I’ve worked on the X-Men franchise so even though it’s not a TV show it definitely had, you know, I have worked in the business of people with extraordinary abilities so I’m pretty familiar. But what I would say is first of all Ira Behr who is the show runner of our show and my co – and my partner in crime obviously, worked on The 4400 and so did a number of people on the staff and we have some people who worked on Heroes here and there.

We’re definitely aware of those shows. One of the things that we did set out to do from the very beginning, we always said as opposed to most of the shows that we’ve seen like this which usually start with let’s say a pretty heavy science fiction or fantasy premise, we tried to start from the standpoint, Michael Karnow and I when we first came up with the idea of what’s the most real version of this story we can tell? How can we start at the absolute reality of it and then build up from there?

And so, it always gave us this perspective of there would be times when we would accidentally arrive and we would go oh my God, that’s actually pretty close to something that happened on one of those shows. The difference is our guys are driving a minivan and they don’t get there and Gary has to be home by 9:30 and Hicks misses the shot and Harken has a heart attack.

So, that became the real differentiation point from those other shows. I think there’s a reason why the Marvel movies have been so successful which is there’s just something innate in all of us, that idea that a regular person could have abilities that fulfill some sort of fantasy or wish fulfillment in our head that is just so powerful that it endures.

People who don’t understand comic book culture for example who don’t get why do these people want to keep seeing these stupid comic book movies or why do they want to keep doing things about, you know, people with extraordinary abilities? They’re not getting that is our modern mythology.

I believe it was Neil Gaiman who astutely said, he might have said this to me actually but he made the point that the Marvel universe is the single largest work of contiguous or continuous fiction in civilization’s history. More than Greek mythology, more than the Bible, more than anything. It’s an enormous mythology.

And I think the reason for, and obviously DC is closed and all those other shows you mentioned. But there’s a reason why people want to keep watching stuff like that. It’s not because they’re dumb or they don’t know what else to do, it’s because it touches into something really profound that appeals to us.

I asked Zak how much the series as it is being produced now has changed from his original vision:

Zak Penn: It certainly hasn’t changed that much from the pilot obviously because it has been the same people and it has been pretty consistent. There has been some stylistic changes that are partly choice, partly necessity of trying to move quicker. Obviously you have a lot more time when you’re shooting a pilot.

If you go back to the original documents we wrote up it’s pretty amazing how similar it is because it seems like we’ve had two years of arguments with 25 different people about what exactly the show should be and it is weird to go back and look at our original pitch and it’s pretty damn close.

There’s characters, a couple of the characters have changed. Not Hicks for example but there are a couple of the other ones have changed because either who was cast or, nationality or other details.

But no, for the most part it has been pretty weirdly consistent which I have to tell you I have such a bad track record, you know, the first script I ever wrote was Last Action Hero so I was fired the day that they bought it. And when I went to see the premiere, I was looking around at my writing partner saying oh my God, what has happened.

And that has happened to me a number of times in my career where I have written something about a bunch of real people and I go see the movie and they’re all psychic now.

So that has been actually a fairly painful part of my certainly the early half of my career so it is kind of almost like a weird dream that I keep expecting to wake up from like I’ll turn on Alphas and suddenly it will be a wacky comedy. But so far that does not happen to me so good news.

Warren Christie: But the one great thing, obviously I don’t do any writing. The one great thing I have to say about Zak and Karnow and the writing team in general is as we have gone along they have always been very open to listening to us, just little things, you know, and making it as naturalistic as possible.

And then what great writers do when they have as a group is they so quickly found everyone’s voice that you see it changing and working their characters are really flushing out. I mean, they were – they just kind of tweak things and not – as they learn more about us as actors and the characters where they’re going.

And the little tweaks which may not seem like the biggest thing at the time has – to make it much easier on the actor and it really helps to solidify the voice of each of the characters.

Zak Penn: Thank you. Let me add to that. I have done a couple of improvisational movies and when I set out to do this show despite some protestation said I want actors who are able to improvise, who are able to ad lib where they will feel comfortable making the dialog sound naturalistic. I’m a little bit tired of like every line having to be a pronouncement.

So, the actors really do deserve a lot of credit. They all are very shy about admitting this but quite often, we’ll let them come up with stuff on their own and say that’s better than what we wrote. Let’s put that in there.

Because I feel like that’s one of the problems a lot of writers have is they get very precious about their words and, unless you’re Shakespeare, and I’m not, I know that sometimes happens, the confusion.

I feel like a lot of the character growth comes from each of these guys saying, you know, I was thinking, wouldn’t I do this and maybe I should say that. And we try to always be open to them and take it and it really has allowed the characters to evolve. But the vision of the show I would say has actually stayed pretty close to what it was. So I count my lucky stars.

I really enjoyed the pilot; see my review here. Kudos to Zak Penn, Warren Christie, and everyone involved in the show.

Alphas premieres on Monday, July 11 at 1/9c (that’s tonight!) on Syfy.