Summary: In-depth interview with Chris Owens (Jeffrey Spender) from a five-page layout. Chris discusses all his X Files and Millennium roles. From TV Zone 119 (October 1999): pp.44-49. By Steven Eramo, transcribed by Deslea.

Chris Owens: Good Looking, So Refined
TV Zone 119 (October 1999): pp.44-49. By Steven Eramo.

Transcribed by Deslea


Agent Jeffrey Spender has been the thorn in Mulder's side for over a year. But actor Chris Owens' association with The X Files goes back a lot further...

The past three years have certainly been banner ones for 37-year-old Canadian actor Chris Owens. He has guest-starred three times on The X Files as well as once on its sister show Millennium, and also played the recurring role of FBI Agent Jeffrey Spender on The X Files. He had been living in Vancouver only a few months when he was called in to read for the part of the young Cancer Man, and made his X Files debut in the Fourth Season story Musings Of A Cigarette Smoking Man. Because he was unfamiliar with the character, the show's production office gave him tapes of several episodes to watch prior to the start of filming. Owens did not even meet the person behind Cancer Man, William B. Davis, until the final day of shooting.

"William had come in to do some work on the episode that day as well," recalls the actor. "He was walking towards me and I happened to be holding one of those Morley herbal cigarettes because we had just finished filming. The first thing he said to me was, 'Oh, my God, you don't actually smoke those things, do you?' and then he sort of levelled me with a look and said, 'And you're not tall enough.' He has a wonderful sense of humour but a very dry delivery."

Past Associations

Musings Of A Cigarette Smoking Man traces the nicotine-loving conspirator's origins from his assassinations of Presiden John F Kennedy and civil rights leader Martin Luther King to his participation in everything from fixing a Super Bowl game to covering up evidence of the existence of extraterrestrial life on Earth.

"He's a mystery to even me in some respects," explains Owens. "I think what he really does is he sort of plays powers against each other. In the last episode of the fifth season, The End, he arranges things in such a way that he pits Agent Spender against Mulder (David Duchovny). So instead of using his power directly he lurks in the shadows and plays one against the other and I think that's how he gets his leverage. Is he good? Is he bad? It's anyone's guess."

The actor briefly reprised the role of the young Cigarette Smoking Man when Mulder experiences flashbacks involving his sister Samantha's abduction in the fourth-season's penultimate tale Demons. He was particularly pleased to have had the opportunity to work with one of the show's producers and veteran writers, Kim Manners, who also directed this episode.

"Kim is just great," he claims. "He has a tremendous amount of energy and runs a tight ship when he's directing. I really enjoyed how he collaborated with us in the flashback sequences. He set up a scenario and then rehearsed with us and allowed us to improvise a little bit around that. I love the way they cut it all together with the flashing lights. It was interesting to see the Cigarette Smoking Man interact with other people since he was pretty much on his own in the previous story I did."

Dark Frontier

Owens took a respite from being the bad guy and switched to the side of law and order to play Deputy Bill Sherman in the second-season Millennium episode Monster. The story deals with the topical issue of child abuse and is set in a small Arkansas town in which the owner of the local daycare centre is accused of that crime. Sherman, whose little girl is one of those being cared for by this woman, must help Frank Black (Lance Henricksen) and Lara Means (Kristen Cloke) prove her guilt or innocence. The episode is much darker in tone than the previous two X Files episodes in which the actor has appeared.

"When I first began watching Millennium I thought, 'My, God,' because it has this fascination that draws you in but looking at all those body parts and murders can be disturbing," he notes. "What's kind of tough with this story is that it involves small children and corrupting their innocence, so that's a difficult issue for people to handle. However, I honestly feel that Glen Morgan, who also wrote Musings Of A Cigarette Smoking Man, did a terrific job dealing with such sensitive subject matter."

From Monster To Monster

From villain to hero to man-made monster, Owens returned to The X Files as Mutato, the penut butter-loving creation of Doctor Pollidori (John O'Hurley) in the Fifth Season episode Post-Modern Prometheus. Playing a cross between John Hurt's character in The Elephant Man and Eric Stoltz's in The Mask proved a wonderful acting challenge for Owens. However, the actor found working with a prosthesis to be a double-edged sword.

"Toby Lindala, the show's special effects make-up artist, and his people are just so talented and patient and they do a really great job," he says. "My first day at work I was in the make-up chair for around seven hours and when they finally finished with me they weren't going to use me in a scene for another four or five hours. I was so excited when I finally got to the set but then I heard Chris [Carter] say, 'Okay, now we don't want to see his face.' I think the first thing I did where you can see the full make-up is the dancing sequence. I guess Chris wanted to keep my appearance a bit of a mystery to the viewers for as long as possible.

"Because they glued the latex right to my skin every day, it allowed for subtle expressions to be seen. So I didn't feel as if I were under layers and layers of mask. The other thing is that a mask gives an actor so much to work with and, with the rest of the prosthetics and the outfit, lends itself to developing your character. Of course, there are varying degrees of difficulty depending on what you are wearing and how they have it on you. I can only imagine what it's like to go through that process consistently as a Star Trek character or on a feature film where you're filming for weeks at a time. I think I was on this shoot for nine days and for seven of them I was in full make-up, so it was quite a challenge."

On The Case

Owens moved back to The X Files to play Jeffrey Spender, a fellow FBI agent who crosses paths with Mulder and Scully (Gillian Anderson) in the two-part story Patient X. Spender first meets his colleagues when they visit his mother Cassandra Spender (Veronica Cartwright) who claims to be an alien abductee. Mulder's continued prying into Cassandra's background angers Spender, who wants to help his mother but refuses to jeapardise his career by being labelled 'a believer'. In the concluding episode The Red And The Black, Mulder is surprised to learn just how much he and Spender have in common.

"My character kind of falls in the middle of Mulder and Scully in terms of his experience," explains Owens. "By that I mean that Mulder, of course, has beliefs of which Scully is more or less sceptical as a scientist. Spender's in between the two in that he thinks his mother might have experiences an abduction, so that sort of leans him towards Mulder. On the other hand, he can't really believe she was abducted because there isn't any scientific evidence to support this. So in that regard maybe he's more like Scully."

Seeing In The End

Spender returns to butt heads with Mulder in the fifth-season finale The End. In this episode he's been promoted to special agent and assigned to investigate the shooting of a Russian chess player, a case from which he requests that Mulder be excluded. The agent does not know that the Cigarette Smoking Man is responsible for his elevated status and that he has plans to continue manipulating his life whether he likes it or not.

"Again, I think that the Cigarette Smoking Man is going to play off the fact that Spender is a sceptic and that Mulder is a believer and try to pit us against each other in that way," he says. "I don't know what the relationship between my character and those of Mulder and the Cigarette Smoking Man will be as time goes on. Right now with Jeffrey Spender I have the unique challenge of not knowing exactly where he's going. When you get a script for a film or a play you have the whole story so you know how it ends as well as where it starts.

"So The X Files is a different kind of creative challenge where I'm just trying to be open to wherever the tide may take me. The one thing viewers can be sure of is that Spender is ambitious and determined and he's not about to let anyone get in his way."

Father Figure

Before the end credits roll on this episode the Cigarette Smoking Man shocks Spender and the audience when he reveals that he is the agent's father. This puts Spender in an awkward and very dangerous position as he must now choose where his loyalties truly lie. In the Sixth Season opener, The Beginning, the agent is chosen to take over The X Files from Mulder and Scully. However, rather than focus on his new assignment, Spender plots to discredit Mulder on orders from his father. He gets some help from Mulder's former partner, Agent Diana Fowley (Mimi Rogers), who, unbeknownst to him, is also in league with the Cancer Man.

"It's interesting how that relationship developed," says Owens. "It was initially hinted at that Spender and Diana may have had something else going on in terms of a common philosophy, but that ended up not to be the case. I wasn't exactly sure where Chris [Carter] was heading with that, you know? He might have been trying to set up a bit of a red herring to make viewers believe that the two were in cahoots. Basically I think Spender was beginning to feel as if Mulder and Scully were ganging up on him, so the logical thing for him to do was to forge a friendly alliance and Diana seemed willing."

Over The Rainbow

Owens brushed up on his German accent to play a Nazi officer in the time-travel saga Triangle in which Mulder battles the Third Reich aboard the Queen Mary. "I really had to listen to William [Davis] to try to figure out when he was finished speaking. Fortunately, a German actor, Kai Wulff, was also playing a Nazi and he helped me with my German pronounciations. I worked like crazy to get things right but this story was a lot of fun to do."

In Terms Of Endearment Spender seems genuinely concerns when a Virginia deputy asks him for help on a case that appears to be an actual X File. However, the agent then reveals his true colours when he disposes of the case file in a paper-shredder. "At this point, Spender is getting tired of being pushed arouns and forced to work on the X Files, something in which he has no interesr. This gets him thinking, 'I wonder what kind of compromises I have to make to get ahead in this business,' and the next thing you know he's dealing with his father. It's a short scene but it gives viewers and indication of where Spender is at."

"The situation between Spender and the Cigarette Smoking Man finally comes to a head in the episodes Two Fathers and One Son," continues Owens. "I loved working on this two-parter because it really gives Spender the chance to grow. He's busy making discoveries in almost every scene. 'What do you mean my father is involved in these horrific experiments? What do you mean there are rebel aliens? I didn't even know there were aliens!' Spender wants to be on his father's side but after leaning more about his clandestine activities he comes to realise that he's the enemy.

"Unfortunately for Spender, he ends up being shot by the Cancer Man, but we never actually see the body," says the actor. "True to how The X Files operates I don't know if there will be further developments or what Chris [Carter] has in store for my character. Will he wake up in the same isolated cabin in Quebec as his father did after he got shot two years ago? We'll have to wait and see."

The actor was recently seen in the feature film Disturbing Behaviour directed by David Nutter who has also directed several episodes of The X Files. Owens relocated last year, along with The X Files, from Vancouver to Los Angeles and plans to remain there for a while to explore acting opportunities.

"Even if Chris Carter uses me at some point, I'll still have plenty of time to spare so I'm meeting with various people and learning more about what's going on in town. It's a challenge, but one that I'm enjoying," enthuses the actor.

-- by Steven Eramo