What's Behind 'The Cape'?

We visit the set of NBC's new superhero series

By Don Kaye
Special to MSN TV

Nestled in the heart of downtown L.A. is the Los Angeles Theatre, the last of several great movie palaces built before 1931 in this city, its 2000 seats making it at one point the biggest such venue in town. It's seen better days for sure -- while there are scores of amazing details in the architecture of the place and its vastness still holds a flash of its glory days, it has not been used for screenings since the '90s and is badly in need of restoration. It's used now primarily as a filming location (Christopher Nolan shot some scenes for "Inception" in the place) and today MSN is here to watch the shooting of a scene from NBC's new superhero drama, "The Cape."

"The Cape" is the brainchild of creator and executive producer Tom Wheeler, and stars Australian actor David Lyons ("ER") as Vince Faraday, a good cop who is framed for murder in the corrupt town of Palm City and appears to be killed while fleeing capture. But Faraday survives, and with the help of Max (Keith David) -- leader of a criminal gang disguised as a circus troupe -- transforms himself into The Cape, a superhero from his son's favorite comic book. Intent on reuniting with his family, Faraday begins fighting the many evil denizens of Palm City's criminal underground, chief among them Chess (James Frain), who in his real identity as corporate magnate Fleming is slowly gaining control of Palm City's police force and prison system.

Like the character of Batman, Faraday is a human being with no special powers -- he can't fly or blast heat rays from his eyes or anything like that. But unlike Batman, he doesn't the money or resources to arm himself with high-tech weaponry and vehicles. The result is a show that director and co-executive producer Deran Sarafian hopes will have the flavor of a comic book combined with the grittier approach of a movie like "The Dark Knight." "I'm a big fan of 'The Dark Knight' and loved the approach," says Sarafian, who is directing the episode that's shooting today, called "Cape's Day Off." The director adds, "What I'm trying to bring is the same feeling as 'Dark Knight,' but with Tom Wheeler's wry sense of humor, which is darker than even the action sequences."

We get to sit behind Sarafian and watch along with him on the monitor (positioned on the theatre stage) as Faraday creeps through the abandoned theatre's rows of empty seats, accompanied by Orwell (Summer Glau of "Firefly" and "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles"), a young blogger fighting for justice in Palm City who makes an alliance with The Cape. As they stop so that Orwell can examine some injuries Faraday sustained earlier, the dim lighting and close camera angles as Orwell's hands lightly probe Faraday's wounds practically scream sexual tension.

Or maybe not. "There's no sexual tension there because Vince loves his wife, but there is a true connection between the two characters," Lyons tells us via phone a few days later -- because shooting ran late on the day of our visit, neither he nor Glau were able to pull away for a few minutes to talk. "They are often in very intimate circumstances, and there's an innate tension there that Vince will never let out. She is a beautiful partner and they have a tender and often volatile relationship, but it's also a working relationship and that's the line that Vince draws."

Lyons himself says he's "reticent" to call himself a leading man, and even less inclined to think of himself as a superhero, but admits that he had to take a chance on both when the opportunity to star in "The Cape" came his way. "I told the casting director when I went in, 'Listen, I'm gonna play this as if I was in this situation, and then we can put a suit and mask on top of that and see what happens," recalls the actor. "But that's the only way I could see to play it -- play the human first and then try to play the superhero much later."

Lyons says he also was drawn to the idea that Faraday is a more vulnerable crimefighter than the ones you find in the pages of, say, DC Comics. "He's not someone who's impervious to emotional or physical pain, and that's what made him interesting to me. He has a background of police and military training and knows how to handle himself, but he's also a guy who's very much driven by his love for his wife and child. Everything that drives this guy is not about solely doing the right thing, but doing the right thing so that his son can grow up in a good environment. He's a guy that uses his fists because he has to, not because he wants to."

Lyons' co-star, Glau, might be able to show him a thing or two about fighting, since both the characters of River Tam in "Firefly" (and its film spinoff "Serenity") and Cameron in "Terminator" were adept at kicking butt. That makes Orwell a big change for Glau, as she tells us on the phone shortly after we speak with Lyons. "She's willing to throw down, but she's not always going to win," says the soft-spoken Glau about her character. "It's fun to see her walk in with her pencil skirt and high heels, and then end up fighting in the back of the kitchen with a murderer. She'll go for it, but she just barely scrapes by all the time."

Like Lyons, she sees the relationship between Faraday and Orwell as far more complex than what one might typically expect. "Those relationships that you can't clearly and cleanly define are the most dynamic in my opinion, because they reflect real life," she offers. "Orwell has to constantly struggle with her feelings about Vince, because she knows he is so in love with his family and so dedicated to being with them again. I think there's a part of her that can't help but look at him in a way that she can't pursue. It's a beautiful challenge for me as an actor and one of my favorite parts about my role, because it's not the easy 'she likes him and he likes her and they're eventually going to get together.' It's a more complicated dynamic."

One of the other aspects of "The Cape" that Glau is enjoying is the chance to work with an array of talented guest stars -- Frain, Thomas Kretschman, Mena Suvari, Vinnie Jones and others -- lining up to play the show's rogues gallery of villains. "We're getting really, really strong guest stars to come in," she says enthusiastically. "My favorite guest star is Richard Schiff. He's come back again and again and they keep writing for him. I really wanted to work with people who inspire me and make me better, and this keeps happening every week. We keep having people that I've admired for years, who have a really strong body of work and who are obviously responding to the story we're telling."

Although not much is known yet about the show's various villains, it's been determined that British tough guy Jones plays a baddie called Scales -- so named because of a gruesome skin condition -- while Suvari plays one called Dice in the episode of the same name. "We have female villains, male villains, crazy villains, a pair of villains in the episode we're doing today," Sarafian tells us earlier on the set. "That's part of the fun. Going back to some of the great comics, it was always fun to read about new villains for the first time."

What Sarafian, Glau and Lyons all hope they're doing -- with Faraday and Orwell's back stories, the Palm City setting and the lineup of colorful villains -- is creating a new superhero mythology without relying on a pre-existing history in comic books. "It's great to create a character from the ground up, but it's also a daunting task because there are so many amazing characters out there with so much rich mythology," says Lyons, who admits he's fairly new to reading comic books himself. "The way Tom has created this world is almost Tolkienesque in its detail, in the way he talks about it, the characters, even characters that don't exist yet. So through his guidance and Deran's guidance, it's been a real journey creating this original superhero character."

Don Kaye covers movies, TV and entertainment for MSN.com.