Before playing Father Jack Landry on ABC's "V," returning Tuesday night at 10, Joel Gretsch was hunting aliens as agent Tom Baldwin on USA's "The 4400."
    
And then there was his role in USA's "Taken" which involved, oh, aliens. Are you catching a theme here?
     
So what does Gretsch do when he's not trying to uncover some sort of evil plot hatched by reptilian beings from another planet? He stops by to chat with Fanboy, of course.
   
First off, congrats on "V." The ratings have been great and people seem to love it. What drew you to it?
     
Oh man, we're having such a fun time doing it. It was a great script. I read the pilot and it was really...I dunno...often you get a lot of scripts and some flow with you and some don't. This one was a nice read and it was very compelling to me. And also I knew that ("The 4400" creator and writer) Scott Peters was involved. So it had a lot of great stuff going for it.
 
Were you a fan of the original series?
     
Well, I was aware of it. Not as much as some of the fans who have come up to me who are just completely obsessed with it.
 
So who is Father Jack?
     
He's a Catholic priest. He's a man of faith. He's a good man. I saw him as a guy who became a priest for all the right reasons. He really wants to make a difference with people. He's complex. There's more than meets the eye with Father Jack. And now with the V showing up, that's the part that gets exploited. It changes all of us.
 
The Father Jack story line is my favorite of the series. You have this man of faith thrown into such an uncertain situation. He sees the good in everyone but in this reality it's the old "X-Files" mantra of "Trust No One."
     
That's fantastic. (Laughs) Well said. You have that man of faith and when that changes, ya know, in the pilot I say, "This wasn't in the Scriptures." In the end of the pilot when I'm sitting there with Elizabeth's (Mitchell) character on a rooftop, these two unlikely partners, right now, at this particular moment, there is no one else we can trust.
 
You mentioned Elizabeth Mitchell and I'm a huge "Lost" fan as well. How is she to work with and how do you see the relationship between your priest and her federal agent developing?
     
It's hard not to gush about Elizabeth. Even my wife is like, "Whoa, slow down a little bit." She is the consummate professional and the kind of actress everybody dreams to work with. She's the total package. As for our characters, Scott Peters said to me a while ago, "Jack's a priest but he's also a man." That's a part of all of us that you can't negate. I mean it's not like there is any romantic feelings there but who knows what's underneath. Because of the circumstances, it's made things very intimate and that's a great thing to play off of.


 
You've done a lot of sci-fi. Do you gravitate towards that?
     
It's weird. It's not something I ever set out to do. My earlier stuff was like "The Legend of Bagger Vance" or "The Emperor's Club." I was very selective of the jobs that I would take and it wasn't that I had t pick and choose it was just that my passion went towards something. But I would work, and then I would not work for some time because I was so particular. And then one day a friend of mine just said, "Go to work. Just keep working. Open up the possibilities." Strangely, a lot of those possibilities have been sci fi. And my God, the fans are just intense.
 
Do you actually believe in aliens?
     
I've said this before, but in the movie "Contact" with Jodie Foster where she says it would be an incredible waste of space, that's how I feel. Boy, it's narcissistic to think that we're the only ones so why not?
 
I loved the "The 4400." I've read a few places that compared it to "V" in the sense that Father Jack and Erica Evans equates to Tom Baldwin and Diana Skouris and the uncertainty of who to trust.
 
Sure, I'll go with that. Why not? I think there is...uh...yeah. Yeah. How's that for an answer?
 
How would you have ended "The 4400"?
     
That's a hard one to answer. We had Ira Behr, the showrunner on the series, and was a flippin' genius. He was an extraordinary storyteller. We would go to dinner and he would just throw ideas out off the top of his head that were so riveting that to bring up something now would pale in comparison. I think it was compelling how it ended to a certain degree but we had a great cast. There were so many great things that we could have done and I can't even begin to think what they might be.
 
So Father Jack or Tom Baldwin, who's the bigger tough guy?
     
I think Father Jack's gonna surprise you.

Speaking of Father Jack, last we saw him he was in a pretty bad way. As we get ready to pick back up, what can we expect from Father Jack and the resistance in the future?
     
I think there is that big thing about the fact that Father Jack was stabbed. Something is gonna happen that I think will interest the fans about how he comes back. That changes you, ya know? His life was almost taken away. The resistance becomes more important to him. Time becomes more important. Everything becomes more valuable. Father Jack is not sitting around. At any moment, there are things that are happening that he has to do now. And, uh, yeah. I can't really give much more away.