An Interview with Zachary Quinto
Matt Richenthal
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After making his triumphant return to Heroes last week, Zachary Quinto sat down with TV Guide for an interview.
The actor discusses how quickly his career has gone from the depths of Hollywood to the summit...
Zachary Quinto: It's all very dreamlike, though Trek is feeling less so as it draws nearer. We're getting ready to shoot in a month, and I just had my first fitting for my Vulcan ears. It felt incredible, and in that moment there was a huge shift for me. Suddenly it was real, and I was like, "OK! Let's get this thing going!"
TV Guide: In a wild twist on Heroes, your serial-killer character, Sylar, has lost his powers. Will this help humanize the monster?
Quinto: Not really. Sylar's plans for ultimate power have been derailed, but that doesn't give us a chance to know him better. If anything, he's the same guy but even more driven and obsessed and in a place of absolute hunger: "I want my power back! No time to waste!"
During this struggle, he'll align himself with the twins, Maya [Dania Ramirez] and Alejandro [Shalim Ortiz], and they'll go on a journey to New York to find Mohinder [Sendhil Ramamurthy].
TV Guide: Do some fans root for you to slay as many heroes as possible?
Quinto: Oh, yeah! There's a group that calls itself the Sarmy — or Sylar's Army — that's dedicated to the support of my character, and they don't like it when he's disparaged. Their slogan is "Every villain needs a legion of evil supporters." But what's funny is they do great charity work. It's never bad to have an army.
TV Guide: Is it true you were ready to drop out of showbiz when Heroes came along?
Quinto: I was in the depths of despair to the point where I couldn't get out of bed. I was about to turn 30, which is a notoriously tumultuous time for people, and I was dealing with career obstacles that were profound — a real existential crisis. I was asking myself, "What's the point of all this? Why am I even in the game anymore?"
TV Guide: But you'd already had a few cool roles by that time — Tori Spelling's gay BFF on So NoTORIous and CTU analyst Adam Kaufman on Season 3 of 24. Weren't you encouraged by that?
Quinto: So NoTORIous was great fun but had no far-reaching appeal. 24 did have that, but I was an information disseminator who was very expendable on a show that doesn't have a lot of character depth. Until Heroes happened, I'd never played an amazing character on a really great show that a lot of people watched.
Matt Richenthal is the Editor in Chief of TV Fanatic. Follow him on Twitter and on Google+.
