Marc Blucas almost spent this TV season dead. In the pilot for “Revenge,” a new ABC drama starring Emily Van Camp, Blucas was cast as her father, whose death sends Emily scurrying out to kill or destroy everyone responsible for it.
In the end, though, he decided to stay among the living, which is why fans won’t see him on “Revenge” after all. (He was replaced by James Tupper of “Men in Trees.”) Instead, they can see him Wednesday nights at 10 right now on “Necessary Roughness,” the USA hit that stars Callie Thorne as Dr. Dani Santino, a psychologist who helps athletes get it back together.
Blucas, who will be familiar to many viewers from the TV series “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” or the movie “First Daughter,” plays Matt Donnally, a trainer for the Hawks, the team that hired Dani.
He also had a one-night stand with Dani, a moment that creates ongoing romantic tension, usually in a good way.
“I hope this show keeps going,” says Blucas. “I’m having a very good time.”
Playing a trainer on a sports team isn’t a complete stretch for a guy who played basketball at Wake Forest with San Antonio Spurs all-star Tim Duncan and says he still becomes unavailable for any other activity when a Spurs game is on.
He also says the producers have let him help shape Matthew.
He wants to do a little bragging: He’s working on USA Network’s “Necessary Roughness,” while his buddy is not working — for now.
“I’m out there every day doing my thing and my friend is just sitting home,” said Blucas, who plays the potential love interest of the lead character. “I need to make that call.”
That friend happens to be NBA superstar Tim Duncan, whose sport is locked out with no return in sight. Blucas and Duncan played together in 1994 for Wake Forest University.
While Duncan made it to the NBA, Blucas tried and failed. Then Blucas took off for Hollywood, this time trying and succeeding.
The gallery has been updated with HD screencaps of Marc in last week’s episode of Necessary Roughness entitled “Who’s Team Are You On” and this week’s episode entitled “Losing Your Swing”. Enjoy the new additions.
Inform Callie Thorne that fans of USA Network’s Necessary Roughness (Wednesdays at 10/9c) are starting to fall into two camps — “Team Matt” and “Team Nico” — and she beams with schoolgirl excitement. “Is there really something like that happening?!” she marvels. “Oh. My. God. I love it!”
Well yeah, sure, but which team does she herself tend to cheer for? Who is the better match for Dr. Dani — the rugged trainer for the Hawks football squad (played by Buffy alum Marc Blucas) or the enigmatic “fixer” who solves the players non-mental problems (played by Gilmore Girls vet Scott Cohen)?
Putting her alter ego’s love life on the couch, Thorne starts, “The pros for Dani being with Matt is that there is a lot of laughter, which she has been missing in her life. And with Nico, it’s the excitement and the mystery. Put together, they might make the perfect man, and that’s why I think shes attracted to both of them. They both sort of represent these two very real kind of men that would she would thrive in a relationship with.”
As for her own pick to “win,” Thorne answers with a laugh, “I’m just rooting for a relationship! I would be excited about either.”
“You see so many different personalities and mind-sets in the world of sports, just like you do with actors,” Marc Blucas, Necessary Roughness co-star, pointed out over breakfast in Los Angeles last week.
And he should know, seeing as how the actor who may still be best known for his role as Riley on Buffy the Vampire Slayer used to play for a professional basketball association in England. Needless to say, despite his new USA summer drama having him step into the world of football instead, he should be pretty familiar with the overall sports’ themes nonetheless.
“When I read this, obviously I responded to what the idea was and the characters,” Blucas said, acknowledging the connection to the high stakes, heightened world he inhabited once in his real life and does so again now in his reel one.
“[But] then I go in to meet these people, and the Powers That Be are the nicest– their moral compasses are spot on. Obviously they are talented, but they are nice first, and in a situation like this where the role was so much a part of my life before, I thought not only ‘Hey, I could bring something to it,’ but also that I’d lived this life before for a long time,” he admitted.
The gallery has been udpated with HD screencaps of Marc in this week’s episode of Necessary Roughness entitled “Dream On”. Enjoy!
Well, they just dove head first into the new relationship between Matt and Laura, didn’t they? They aren’t really my cup of tea, but it’s simply because I find the character of Laura a bit too prickly and all business. What about you guys? Anyone else disappointed in the lack of Nico and Nico and Dani interaction in the episode? They usually have such fun scenes together. And what about TK? Do you think his feelings about not being the little boy’s father will resurface at some point because of how he was brought up? Guess we’ll see.
While Necessary Roughness certainly centers on the character of “Dr. Dani,” the supporting players lend a crucial hand in keeping the show’s personal relationships off the field more compelling than the games played on it. Former basketball pro Marc Blucas co-stars as Matthew Donnally, an athletic trainer and Dani’s primary love interest; for Blucas, this role gives him an opportunity to approach his craft from a more familiar perspective than he’s used to.
“A lot of times, as actors, you want to play against type,” Blucas began. “I want to be the ex-con with the shaved head, with the tattoos, smoking, drinking, killing people. And this particular story struck me because it was the opposite; the apple wasn’t falling far from the tree. I had a sports background, I went to college on a basketball scholarship, got to play professionally, was around athletic trainers specific to this role in this world for so long that I was like, ‘Hey, this is something where I feel like I can elevate not just the character but help with story because it’s a world I know so well,’” he explained. “I lived this, it was a passion for the first 20 years of my life, it’s going to be fun to try to bring it to life.”
USA has done it again. The top-rated cable network is expected to extend its current streak of renewing every freshman series with pickups of Suits and Necessary Roughness. I hear the renewals of the two series should come within the next few weeks as both shows are wrapping production on their first seasons.
USA’s hot new summer drama Necessary Roughness started strong with one especially key relationship: that of Dr. Dani Santino (Callie Thorne) and football coach Matthew Donnally (Marc Blucas). They meet in the pilot episode, a chance encounter in a bar, but they find they have a very real connection. Their night together turns into something a bit more lucrative for Dr. Dani, as she inspires Matthew to bring her aboard the team as therapist to the stars for a particularly troubled played. But ever since that first night, they haven’t quite grown and evolved as a couple as many fans were perhaps assuming. Or perhaps even how the actors were assuming.
“We’ve got to be careful because Dani and Matthew had one night,” Blucas reminded when we caught up with him this morning in Los Angeles. “It was a great night; they got along; [but it was still just one night]. The way that Callie and Marc have always approached it is we’re of this age now…where we’ve met someone we’re interested in and we want to give it a shot. We’re not in love; there’s no scoring. We’ve tried to balance that right, like, those looks of longing are like ‘This is something that could have been great.’ If there’s a moment where she’s having fun with someone else, ‘Damn, that should have been me; we should have given it a shot’.”
But it is not just Dani who may be keeping one eye on her options. In fact, her even doing so is very much a result of the fact that one of Matthew’s exes has come back into the picture. Enter Andrea Anders, who blew into the show as a force to be reckoned with, not only as an actress challenging the others but also as a character challenging Dani to step it up if she really wants something with him.“As we all know, stable relationships on TV are boring,” Blucas laughed. “It’s nice to have to interject an ex or jealousy or bring some other dynamic in. And for me, it’s nice to differentiate those relationships.”
