Alias Bad Boy's Secrets
It's not just viewers who are blown away by the twists and turns on ABC's spy drama Alias. Dave Anders — the show's British bad boy Mr. Sark — gets his share of surprises, too. Sark has gone from a mere recurring character in Season 1 to a major player in the North American cell of The Covenant last month. His rising status as a TV terrorist is quite an unexpected coup for this 22-year-old actor.
"In the first season, I didn't know how long I was going to be around," Anders tells TV Guide Online. "I [even] wanted to get Jennifer Garner's picture and autograph. On the picture, she wrote, 'To David: Welcome to prime time. Get comfy. You're going to be here awhile.' I was like, 'What the hell does she know? She knows something I don't!'"
Not bad for an Oregon native with only two professional acting credits on his résumé before booking Alias. (He'd done the Olsen twins' short-lived sitcom, So Little Time, and a straight-to-DVD thriller called The Source.) And Sark's role will keep growing, thanks to his new Covenant gig, a budding affair with Vaughn's double-agent wife, and finally getting a first name — Julian — after two years without one. "I'm being brought into the forefront of the show," he laughs. "I'll wear tight Lycra and heels, like Jennifer, and run up and down stairs."
Anders can't give up top-secret details on the new Alias episodes (beginning Sunday at 9 pm/ET on ABC). But he is willing to blow the cover on a few plotlines the show's scribes considered, yet never brought to the screen...
"Sydney and Sark were going to be related. But I think people caught on to that and it was kind of a mixed, lukewarm reaction," Anders reveals. "[Then,] Lauren and Sark were going to be brother and sister. They batted around the idea of us consummating the relationship and then finding out, but that's a little weird — even for Alias!"
What would he like to see happen to Sark? "I don't know if I could write it any better than the writers," Anders says. "I got my wish of a first name. Beggars can't be choosers."
