Almost Paradise: Christian Kane Says His New Series is Here to Take You on a Vacation [Exclusive Interview]

Known for his roles on Angel, Leverage, and The Librarians, Christian Kane is returning to our television screens with a new series from Dean Devlin and Gary Rosen, Almost Paradise.

The series follows Alex Walker (Christian Kane), a US DEA agent who is forced into early retirement because he’s developed life-threatening hypertension. He decides to move to a tranquil deserted beach he remembered visiting in the Philippines many years ago.

But when he arrives, he not only discovers the area has changed, but he finds himself drawn into cases where he uses his skills to put away the bad guys that cross his path.

I recently had the chance to chat with Kane about his role on the series, what it was like filming in the Philippines, and what we can expect from his character when it comes to fight scenes and music.

Kane began by sharing a bit about how he became involved with the show in the first place, which comes down to his working relationship with co-creator and executive producer Dean Devlin. 

“I’ve worked with Dean Devlin for thirteen years now. He created Leverage, he created The Librarians, and a funny story is I came in about five and a half years ago, and Dean asked me to have lunch,” Kane recalled. “This was after Leverage, and he said, ‘Hey, do you want to do a show called The Librarians?’ I said, ‘Hell, yes’ and he goes, ‘Good, because I wrote the role for you.’ He literally wrote the role for me, which doesn’t happen all the time in Hollywood, so that was very much an honor.”

Even then, though, Devlin already had another project in mind for the future.

“He looked at me across the table, he goes, ‘I’ve got another project,'” Kane continued. “He goes, ‘It’s awesome, but you’re just too young for it.’ Cut to five years later, when we had finished The Librarians, he goes, “I think you’re ready” and told me the storyline. He’s had this in his pocket for about ten years, and I jumped at the opportunity. I was not only working with Dean Devlin again, but it was action-packed and a lot of drama, a lot of emotions, and so I jumped at it. Not to mention, I got to go live five months on an island resort.”

Being able to film in that location was something Kane felt grateful for as well.

“Listen, there are only a very few people in the world that get to do what I do, what we do. It’s winning the lottery; it really is. There are a lot of talented people out there that maybe never get the opportunity. Just to be an actor is something to say in itself, but to be an actor and to get to go do a series in Southeast Asia on this beautiful island, that’s something that only a handful of us get to do, so I was very fortunate.”

Kane also shared what it was like filming in the Philippines and working with everyone on the show. 

“It was fantastic. It’s very hot in the Philippines and someone who’s hot-natured like me had a little bit of a hard time acclimating and stuff because it’s very humid as well, but then you show up and I was literally the only American there. The whole crew is Filipino; the rest of the actors were Filipino. It wasn’t culture shock. I had been there before, but these people are so, so sweet and they work really hard and they became my friends and family,” he said.

“I never felt like an outsider. They never once made me feel like an outsider or even an American. It just became a family, so it was really great. A lot of times that doesn’t even work, not everybody gets along on any set, and for us to all get along and become a family and work as hard as we did, the hours that we did, it really, really paid off, and it shows on the screen.”

That setting is also one of the things that sets Almost Paradise apart from other shows.

“There’s never been an American series filmed in the Philippines. I feel like we know what Korea looks like, we know what Japan looks like and we know what China looks like because we’ve seen films that they’ve been featured in. We’ve seen some shows that people have gone there, but nobody really goes to the Philippines.”

Kane also feels that  Almost Paradise’s premiere is something positive in a time where many are feeling scared and helpless. 

“Not only are you getting an action drama thriller that Dean Devlin’s at the helm of, you’re also getting to take a vacation, man. Right now in this time that we’re all in, entertainment can really do a lot of good for us all. In a time like this, entertainment has always been sort of a savior, because you get to escape what’s going on in the world and not only do you get to do that with our show, but we take you on a vacation.”

“Somebody was like, ‘Do you feel comfortable promoting something right now when all this stuff is going on?’ I told myself, I said, ‘I worked really hard on this. Everybody that I worked with in the Philippines worked really hard on this, and I owe them to get this out there. We’ve got to take the best shot that we’ve got.’ Then I started thinking, ‘Wait a minute, I shouldn’t have to apologize. I’m taking everyone on a vacation to the Philippines, which most people have never been, every week, and I’m honored to be the tour guide.’ That’s the way I look at it and that’s the fun way of watching it.”

Luckily, they were able to finish filming the first season of the series and head home before the airport was shut down. “We did get the last episode in the can Thursday before they shut down Manila airport on Friday. Me and Dean Devlin flew out — we were hearing the gates close behind us in Manila,” he said. “The beautiful thing about it is it just happened to luck out with that Thursday, before they shut down Manila that weekend, we actually wrapped the season.”

Kane has played several memorable characters, so we also talked about what makes Alex Walker a bit different from the others.

“If you’re a fan of some of the stuff that I’ve done, which, I have to say, basically that boils down to a fan of Dean Devlin — Eliot Spencer on Leverage, all my characters were their heart on their sleeves. But they always had their sleeves rolled down. That was what was fun about this. What’s fun about this show, is that this dude, he takes potshots, he gets hit in the face, he gets hit in the heart, and he just keeps up and keeps coming and he covers up a lot of emotional insecurities with comedy. That’s what I think is fun about it, because we still have the action, which is always going to be there, and you still have a lot of emotion that goes on,” Kane explained.

“This is what’s fun. This character is very dynamic, and if you like the roles that I’ve ever played, you’re going to love this guy, because I’ve kind of rolled all of them in the one, which actually makes him a completely different character than I’ve ever played.”

While Almost Paradise is an emotional drama, it’s also heavy on the action. Kane talked a bit about the fight scenes on the series. “Dean always writes me as a heavy guy in that situation, which I love.”

“Eliot was very precise on Leverage,” he said. “Now, when I got the role of Jake Stone on The Librarians, Dean said, ‘You have to change your style of fighting. You can’t fight like that.’ I went back to kind of how I grew up as a bar fighter, and so then I changed my whole thing with a more of an open stance.”

“Dean was making fun of me because we were doing the fights and I would be in the middle of the fight and I would cut it, and I’d be like, ‘No, I can’t do that, that’s Eliot or that’s Jake’ so I had to come up with his own style of fighting. A lot of people think, ‘You’ve got to change characters with your acting to play other characters.’ I really have sort of accidentally done it through the style of fighting. [It] sounds really weird — sounds like a guy thing to say, but if you watch it, they all have their own style of fighting, which makes them different characters.”

The emotional side to Alex Walker is the part of the character that will really draw audiences in. Kane described the character in a bit more detail. 

“All he wants to do is just relax and he’s unable to do it,” Kane noted. “When he’s trying to sit on the beach and read a book his watch goes off because he just can’t handle it — it stresses him out. When he’s in the middle of a case or when he’s in the middle of a fight for his life, he doesn’t stress out.”

“It’s also fun to root for the guy that just can’t win. The guy just cannot win. Every time he gets up, they beat him down some more, and I always liked the characters like that when I was growing up watching TV, and so I hope that the rest of the world enjoys this guy.”

The watch Kane refers to is what Alex has to wear to monitor his hypertension, which is a major issue for the character.

“I didn’t know a lot about hypertension before I started doing the research on it. It’s a killer. It’s the widow maker. It’ll take you out when you don’t even know what’s going on. It’s something that’s very dangerous and we don’t make light of it,” he noted. “As the season goes on, you see him get progressively worse with everything that’s happening.”

 Almost Paradise also manages to balance the action and humor while presenting serious and topical issues. “It is lighthearted, there’s a little comedy to it, it does get emotional, but we touched on some pretty tough things that are out there,” he said. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rs9PMQ3dsD4

When Alex is thrown into working with law enforcement on the island, he finds himself working with Kai Mendoza (Samantha Richelle). Kane talked about the dynamic between these two characters and what we can expect from their relationship throughout the season.

“Well, he doesn’t want to be involved. That’s the funniest thing about this show that I find — that’s the best dynamic about the show. He doesn’t want to be involved and she doesn’t want him involved. He’s really good at what he does. He usually messes up whatever cases she’s working on and she’s trying to build a career in that department. He’s already built this unbelievable career that he’s trying to get away from, so she doesn’t want him there, he doesn’t want to be there, yet they still have to do this stuff,” Kane explained.

“He gets under her skin and he notices that early and that’s all he tries to do, is just bug her. I mean, in her eyes she’s actually annoyed and really doesn’t like the guy. In his eyes, he’s making that worse because — when we were little kids, you didn’t flirt with the girl. You didn’t run up and kiss the girl on the playground; you pushed her, because we thought they would like us more, as stupid boys. And that’s what he’s doing. I think that he’s flirting with her and she just doesn’t realize it yet.”

Christian Kane fans are probably also wondering if we can expect any music from him on Almost Paradise. Well, Kane had an answer for that.

“Dean Devlin had promised the fans before we started that there was going to be some music for me on the show, and he always makes good on his promises. So there is some singing and some guitar playing on it. I can’t remember what episode, but I can’t wait for that because I know people have stressed the fact they’d love to see that.”

There’s another way that Kane said his character on Almost Paradise differs a bit from other characters he’s played, and it has to do with food.

“There was always an underlying chef in most of the roles that I played for Dean, and this one he wanted to steer clear of that. I actually go the other way. So this guy’s more of a meat and potato type of guy. Literally he’s having to deal with the cuisine over there, one of them being balut, which is a fetal duck egg. Everybody’s trying to get him to eat this stuff that he just can’t stomach. So it’s going to be exactly the opposite of the other characters I’ve played.”

Speaking of Filipino cuisine, Kane shared some of the foods he enjoyed eating while he was in the Philippines. Pancit, a dish with glass noodles was among his favorites, as were the bananas and other fresh fruits. But there is one thing he already misses.

“They have these little limes that are only indigenous in the Philippines that are called calamansi. And these limes taste like a lemon and a lime and they’re very small, and they put them on all of the food over there. They’re so great. I actually got home and I’m trying to order some seeds right now to see if I can grow them at my house,” Kane said. 

“But the one thing that I’ve found, there’s a lack of hot sauce in the Philippines, and it pisses me off,” he joked. 

There’s a lot that Kane is proud of when it comes to Almost Paradise, but one thing he’s especially excited about is how well it comes together, even in the early episodes.

“We ramped up so quick on this show with the chemistry between the actors that it really does make for fun TV. A lot of times it takes five episodes to build that, sometimes a whole season. It didn’t on this one, it came together so quick,” he stated. “It’s off and running by the time you hit Episode 3, and so that’s what’s going to be fun for people.”

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Be sure to catch Christian Kane on Almost Paradise, premiering Monday, March 30th at 10/9c on WGN America.

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