Morgan Weisser on his battles against becoming Space's resident milquetoast
In creating the characters for Space: Above and Beyond, Glen Morgan and James Wong positioned Nathan West as a pivotal centerpiece, the romantic hero. West joins the Marines with the noblest of intentions - finding his steady love, Kylen, believed lost after the aliens' attack on an Earth colony.
But the storyline soon became a handicapping liability for the character in the eyes of many viewers, and actor Morgan Weisser vocally objected.
"I was fighting since the pilot to take the wimpy edge off the character," says Weisser. "It was a cliche. The creative team never seemed very confident with it, and they never really went all the way with it, so it was always rather wishy-washy.
Adds Weisser, "It made the character way too soft. The character was a milquetoast, too squeaky-clean."
Says co-creator Glen Morgan, "We haven't been able to come around to Morgan's side on this, and he hasn't been able to totally come around to ours."
Morgan's writing partner and the show's co-creator, James Wong, admits, "We put him behind an eight-ball in the beginning of the show, and that took away from his character, so we slowed things down."
The writers put the Kylen storyline on the back-burner and returned to it only periodically. Meanwhile, they went to work establishing other motives for West's character. But for many, the damage had already been done.
"There was a period there, on show six or seven, where there were [network] forces out there that said, 'Kill him during sweeps,'" says Morgan. "But we said, 'We like Morgan [Weisser], he's a terrific actor. It's our fault, we haven't done the storytelling right. So we put that [storyline] off until the end of the year, and we did everything from show nine to make West darker. We gave him humor, and then we did Stay With the Dead, and suddenly those same forces were going, 'Man, he's good. You can't knock him off.'"
Stay With the Dead was followed by a storyline involving West's younger brother's joining the war in the episodes Toy Soldiers and Dear Earth. The cumulative effects of these episodes established an identity for West that went beyond his loss. Now, all that remained was to put a cap on the Kylen storyline.
"Glen and Jim really wanted to tie that up," says Weisser. "The audience needs that. But it's really been slowly tied up for me over the course of the year. My focus has shifted. I joined the military initially to get to Kylen and wasn't really involved with the 58th, but then you're thrown into battle and through all this I've developed a family and a purpose and a system of beliefs that's very different."
But while Weisser was clear that West was moving beyond his grief, he often had to convince others of it. "We had directors who came in and wanted to have the dogtags [Kylen gave me] in a shot, and I had to remind them that I gave those away. That's done."
"They're reunited," says Morgan of the story's resolution, "but then you get that train-station goodbye scene, where he has to go back to the war, and she has to return to Earth."
Weisser was ultimately satisfied with West's development, and recognizes the season's arc as his character's maturation into manhood. "Each of the characters, I think, represents different aspects of Glen and Jim's personalities," he says. "Glen has that real sort of adolescent, punk-rock edge, which in some ways is Cooper, but he also has a heartfelt sense of ideals, and I think that's where my character comes in.
Adds Weisser, "But to do that stuff with a real directness and strength, and to not come off as too sensitive or wimpy - that's been the real trick with the character."
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