I was raised on 'Get Smart' and 'All in the Family' and 'M.A.S.H.,' and certainly when 'Cheers' came along, that was a big one.

So this ["Grant MacLaren"] was a chance to sort of go back and do a more leading man. But instead of just solving crimes like a CSI show, this leading man is, like the other travelers, not who he appears.

I'd done a pilot [of Townies] with Caroline Rhea [Pride & Joy] that didn't go anywhere.

I was working with David Warner and John Rhys-Davies, who is from the Indiana Jones movies.He's a very strong, strong presence, and so I had to assert myself.

I made Lost World in September of '91, and by the end of that year, I was living in Toronto.

Brad Wright, who created Grant MacLaren, had me in mind. We'd actually worked together 20 years ago. He wrote an episode of The Outer Limits that I was in in '96 or '95? So we'd been aware of each other for years. I'd lived in Vancouver off and on, where he's based. And it just came to me, and I'm always looking for something different. Perception was a different show than Will & Grace.

I had played many gay characters before, but they were finite - guest characters in TV shows or characters in plays.