Joshua Jackson was only nine years old when the movie “Fatal Attraction” was released in 1987.
Now, nearly four decades after the debut of the original thriller, the Vancouver-born actor will reprise the Dan Gallagher role made famous by Michael Douglas in a new series on Paramount Plus.
“I thought I was more familiar with it than I actually was,” Jackson told the Star about the original movie, which saw Gallagher engage in a torrid affair with Alex Forrest (memorably played by Glenn Close) before killing her in self-defence.
“I had created a kind of fiction of it in my head that was a blend of the zeitgeist portion of it. So I was actually shocked when I went back and watched what the actual film is, and it is an excellent film.”
Jackson said he was immediately drawn to a new chapter of the story that sees Gallagher trying to reclaim his life after being imprisoned, because it presented a chance to examine how society’s values have changed from 1987 to 2023. It also afforded him the time a television series provides to fully flesh out a character, something a two-hour movie would never be able to.
“We have the opportunity in television to actually get into her (Alex’s) perspective. Like, what makes this woman tick? Who is she? Where did she come from? And then also on his side: does he have remorse for his action? Does he ever take accountability? He’s the one that pushed the first domino.”
Jackson, whose impressive list of credits include playing Charlie in all three original “Mighty Ducks” movies, Peter Bishop in “Fringe” and Dr. Christopher Duntsch in “Dr. Death,” truly became a household name 25 years ago after taking on the role of Pacey Witter on “Dawson’s Creek.”
The multi-layered lead role in “Fatal Attraction” stood out to the actor because of the character’s moral ambiguities and because of the concurrent timelines he got to explore.
“This man cheats on his wife and that’s an action that not only causes damage right now, but it causes damage through time. Now let’s go 15 years down the line. What does it mean to your daughter that she knows her dad cheated on her mom? What does it mean to your ex-wife that she had to go through this terrible public shaming and being forced to raise her kid by herself?”
Many shows don’t explore characters after their initial arcs, but that is what makes the nouveau “Fatal Attraction” unique.
“Normally the story gets to the climax and then the story ends,” said Jackson. “We have an opportunity to yadda yadda yadda the middle and then we come back for the second portion.”
While Gallagher is just as despicable now as he was back then for his affair, the character manages to illicit some sympathy for having to deal with his mistress’s acts of unrestrained impulse. That begs the question of whether Dan Gallagher is the hero we should be rooting for or the villain we should be rooting against.
“I guess it depends on how empathetic you are as a person. I don’t know that I would. I don’t think he’s a protagonist.”
Infidelity is material that Jackson is quite familiar with. Before this, he co-starred in “The Affair.” In that instance, he played someone who was cheated on instead of the cheater.
When asked why audiences continue to respond to scripts that explore infidelity, Jackson said it’s something anyone in a relationship has at least thought about, regardless of whether they acted on it or not.
“I mean there’s the obvious titillation factor. We’re always drawn to the forbidden fruit. I think it’s just very human.”
For fans of the original “Fatal Attraction,” there are plenty of Easter eggs throughout the series. Some of these are more obvious than others and include keeping the character names intact, an omnipresent white rabbit and a car being burned by chemicals.
“I think it would be foolish if you didn’t want to tip the hat,” Jackson said. “It’s an iconic movie right? We were all respectful of the fact that someone had laid down this track for us and given us the world that we are playing in.”
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