Monday, May 13, 2002

RALPH HEMECKER DOES TIME WARP WITH WITCHBLADE

By Rob Allstetter/The Comics Continuum

What can Witchblade fans expect in the second season of the series on TNT?

Says executive producer Ralph Hemecker, "Nothing is what it seems. Everything is connected. And any question has many answers."

Cryptic enough for you? But what else would you expect from a man who led viewers through a roller-coaster ride of a first season, just to end it with Sara Pezzini using the Witchblade to turn back time, effectively starting the show all over, from square one?

Thirteen new episodes of Witchblade - Top Cow's first realized project in Hollywood - will begin airing on Sunday, June 16 with two episodes. Yancy Butler returns as Sara Pezzini, the New York City police detective who acquires the Witchblade, a mystical gauntlet.

Also back are Will Yun Lee as Danny Woo, Sara's partner; Anthony Cistaro as Kenneth Irons, the billionaire obsessed with the Witchblade; Eric Etebari as Ian Nottingham, Irons' mysterious henchman; and David Chokachi, the rookie cop who really is something more. John Hensley, who guest-starred in many episodes as Gabriel Bowman, a young proprietor of an artifacts store and web site, officially joins the cast this season.

And, of course, Hemecker is returning. He's been on board since the summer 2000 pilot as Witchblade's show-runner and guiding force behind the scenes of production in Toronto.

He reveals a few details about the next 13 episodes, at least setting up the second season, which starts out with episodes called "Emergence" and "Destiny" that continue Witchblade's tradition of intriguing, one-word episode titles.

"Where it picks up is at the end of the first season, which is actually back at the beginning, if you follow," Hemecker says. "She rewound time, so we're actually going to start the season a little bit before Sara has the Witchblade, take her through the point where she gets it and then go to the point where she's about to go into the Rialto Theater with Danny Woo and decides not to. At that point everything changes."

But how much can one decision change things? Quite a bit, Hemecker says.

"Like Kenneth Irons says in one scene, 'Man cannot touch the petal of the nearest flower without altering the course of the furthest star,'" Hemecker says. "So by the mere act of deciding not to go into the Rialto Theater because she's has this moment of premonition and/or déjà vu, everything else changes. Danny Woo stays alive and the entire ripple effect changes everything that happens after that."

According to Hemecker, Sara will have random moments of déjà vu about what she experienced in the first season as she goes on a different road of discovery.

"She'll still be unraveling mysteries of the blade," Hemecker says. "But this year her quest is going to be more about how to use it and less about where it came from."

But what will the time rewind mean in terms of all the characters from the first season?

"Probably some will reoccur, but a lot certainly won't," Hemecker says. "We're not going to be re-treading the same terrain.

"It's not hard to do. There are still many interesting story opportunities. It's actually pretty cool."

The White Bulls -- the vigilante group of the cops whom Jake infiltrated and were a crucial part of the first season -- won't be a big element in the second season. "But Jake will still have the same basic agenda," Hemecker says.

Roger Daltrey of The Who guest-starred last season, and Yancy Butler's father, Joe Butler of the Lovin' Spoonful, will appear in the opener. Several other guest-stars will likely show up in Season 2.

"We're putting on some feelers right now, and there may be one or two returns from last year," Hemecker says. "We will see Gallo (played by Conrad Dunn) again, who got killed in the pilot, but is now still alive. It would be great to see Roger Daltrey again, but we haven't confirmed that is going to happen. But there's a good possibility, and we're feeling out new guest-stars for this season."

One constant in the whirlwind of Witchblade has been Butler, whose work ethic draws praise from everyone on the show.

"Yancy's really smart. She's really tough. She's really athletic. She's really funny. She's a great actress," Hemecker says. "From where I sit, she's pretty much the ideal Sara Pezzini. And I've said this a lot of times and I'll say it again: She's got a real great combination of toughness and vulnerability."

Beginning with the Witchblade pilot movie, Hemecker has said his goal is to capture the essence of the comic books. As a little homage, one of the first-season episodes concerned a comic-book artist and had numerous pages of Top Cow art featured.

"We go back to the comics all the time," he says. "I think those guys really created an interesting world to draw upon, so we're always looking to the comics for inspiration.

"We're pretty much going to stick to the original characters, rather than introduce other characters from later issues of the comic book. We pretty much pulled from the first seven or eight issues of the comic book."

Under Hemecker's guidance, Witchblade brought a unique visual style to television and even produced some The Matrix-like effects.

"We'll probably do some of that same stuff," Hemecker says. "We're R&Ding some new effects for this year. We'll pull a bunch of stuff that we did last year, but we'll evolve it throughout this year, playing around with some of the stuff."

Hemecker was heavy-handed in the writing of Season 1, but is backing off a bit.

"I will probably delegate a bit more this year. I have an excellent writing staff," he says. " I'm still going to write a few and hopefully direct one or two. I've got more people involved in working on scripts this year.

"Last year was pretty serialized. We're going to go a bit more standalone this year. There will be plot threads that carry through all of the 13 episodes, though."

And just like last year, there will be surprises - maybe even some setting up a third season, Ralph?

"It's a little early too tell, but it would be great if we got a third season," Hemecker says. "I mean, we have tons of stories and a lot of directions we can go into if we get picked up for a third season."