Eye - October 27, 2005
INTERVIEW Donnie Wahlberg
With New Kids on the Block now 11 years gone, Donnie Wahlberg has escaped the career path that leads to The Surreal Life. While he hasn't achieved the A-list status of brother Mark, the 36-year-old actor has acquitted himself honourably in movies (The Sixth Sense, Southie) and TV (Band of Brothers, Boomtown). This weekend, he stars in Saw II, the first of three projects he recently shot in Toronto. (He also made Silence with original Saw director James Wan and plays a CIA operative in ABC's 9/11 miniseries.) Ironically, Saw 2 reconnects him with a teen audience he's avoided since ditching the baggy t-shirts . And with the rise of Entourage, the HBO comedy inspired by Mark's posse, some folks have assumed Donnie inspired the older-brother character Johnny Drama. He set us straight while taking a break from the 9/11 shoot to promote Saw II.
What's it like to face the demographic that used to belong to NKOTB?
I was at the movies with my 12-year-old son a few weeks ago and they showed a trailer for Saw II. The high-school kids in the theatre are all screaming and rowdy. It's fun to be around that again. I kind of take myself too seriously sometimes as an actor -- that's probably a defence mechanism because of my music career . When this film came along, I was like, "I don't want people criticizing me for selling out, but you know what, man? I want to have fun." Plus, my son wanted me to do it.
Why was Saw such a hit?
There's a combination of reasons but people tend to overlook the simple ones. The feeling you had when Cary Elwes is screaming because he can't reach the cellphone and he thinks his wife and daughter are about to be killed, that affects people -- if you have a family, that's gonna make you sick to your stomach. When I watched it, I thought, "Damn, if someone had my wife and kid, I'd saw my foot off right there."
Some people may presume you inspired Johnny Drama on Entourage but that's not the case. Who's the real Johnny Drama?
I introduced Mark to him. When I was producing Mark's first record, he was back home getting in trouble. Meanwhile, I'm investing a quarter of a million dollars into his music career. I knew I had to get this kid off the streets. Johnny Drama was a struggling actor from Boston. I hired him to move back, stay with Mark and train with him. Ultimately, Mark became a hugely successful actor and Johnny Drama stayed a struggling actor who was Mark's house guest. It's a weird thing. Nobody asks me if I'm Johnny Drama as if it's an insult. But I was never part of Mark's entourage -- Mark was part of mine. JASON ANDERSON