This was published 9 years ago
Robert Patrick talks Scorpion, the real-life Walter O'Brien and the fans of Terminator
Like most working actors, Robert Patrick has a very shrewd approach to choosing projects. He goes where the good people are.
When the script for Scorpion, a new action drama about a group of geeks who are recruited to crew a high-tech problem solving unit, landed on his desk, he saw a few key names attached: those of producers Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, director Justin Lin and writer Nick Santora.
Intense role: Robert Patrick as Agent Cabe Gallo in Scorpion.
"I saw Nick's name, Orci and Kurtzman, I had worked for CBS before when I did The Unit and they had treated me well and the script, by Nick Santora, was phenomenal," he says. "I think, seriously, in the race right now TV has got the edge on film as far as opportunities to do great writing, great stories and great characters."
But in the end, he is also very practical. "I'm an actor, I love to work, I look for opportunities to work, I look for opportunities to work with talented people," he says. "Prior to Scorpion, I was working with Robert Rodriguez on the TV series From Dust 'Til Dawn. When I realised my demise was coming, this opportunity came up."
The series, despite its somewhat heightened premise, is curiously based in fact. The show's main character - Walter O'Brien, played by Elyes Gabel - is a real-life geek whose IQ has clocked 197. For reference purposes, Albert Einstein's was 165.
As a kid, he infamously hacked into NASA's computers. As an adult, he owns a company, Scorpion Computer Services, which is staffed by "geniuses" and consults governments and corporations on international security matters.
The television version is a smidge more "TV": in the pilot, O'Brien and a team of geeks stop a potential air disaster at LAX from a makeshift headquarters hastily set up in a diner.
Patrick plays Agent Cabe Gallo, the security agent tasked with managing O'Brien and his motley assortment of geeks Toby Curtis (Eddie Kaye Thomas), Happy Quinn (Jadyn Wong) and Sylvester Dodd (Ari Stidham).
In a curious turn, the real Walter O'Brien is a consultant on the show. He has been front and centre as the US network CBS has wheeled out the show's producers and stars to the international media. And he is present on set, where he offers the writers a conduit to his world. At least as far as the non-disclosure clauses in his company's contracts will allow.
"Walter is an interesting guy to say the least," Patrick confesses. "The real Walter, he's a really cool guy. I enjoy him very much. And I am not as intimidated by him as I thought I would be. He has a way of handling himself with real grace and humour."
Like all new TV projects, Patrick says, you go in with "a very optimistic attitude towards it and you hope for the best with everything you do. The creative life doesn't always work out where what you read is actually what you get so it can be a challenge.
"But to answer the question, this particular script, when I read it I was blown away by it, I felt like I'd never really read anything like it before," he says. "You meet your cast mates and you hope they share your enthusiasm. And you meet the director and crew and you try to make the best damn thing you can."
Though Patrick has a long list of credits to his name, he remains in some ways forever associated with the role of the T1000 Terminator, which he originated in Terminator 2: Judgment Day. He even reprised the role for the T2 3-D: Battle Across Time and for cameos in the films Wayne's World and Last Action Hero.
Patrick, who still appears at conventions and meets Terminator fans, notes his demographic is "getting mature, but also younger than me, and then there are the kids discovering it, and the franchise. And there's the little kids whose parents are turning them onto it. They stand in awe of the T1000, [though] I look a little older."
That particular role, he says, he will "forever carry with me, and I am proud of it because it's a damn fine film. I have been doing this since 1984 and people recognise me from Identity Thief, or The X Files, or Gangster Squad ... the body of work is out there and people have different things that they respond to."
Scorpion, Ten, Sunday, September 28, 6.30pm.