Eric Stoltz: From a Blank Slate to Caprica and Grey's

Starting this Tuesday night during the cabler's usual reruns of Law & Order, TNT - in tandem with producer Dean Devlin - will present Blank Slate, a new, 20-episode "micro-series" about Anne ( The Patriot's Lisa Brenner), a young woman who stands accused of killing a federal agent. Since she has amnesia, Anne instead is forced into a top-secret program that tries to solve murders by implanting memories from the deceased into living people.
Eric Stoltz stars as Detective Sullivan, "an FBI guy who is, I would say, 'demoted to an assignment that is less than he believes he is deserving of,'" says the actor. Meaning, he is charged with snooping into this whispered-about fringe-science project.
But wouldn't this cutting-edge lark actually help the feds fight crime? "Ostensibly," says Stoltz. "That's what my character is led to believe. But he starts to doubt it, and becomes a thorn in the side of the people behind it."
In addition to its presentation as interstitials, Blank Slate also will be available at the TNT.tv broadband channel, and ultimately assembled together as a two-hour movie. "We shot it in several different formats," says Stoltz, "taking into consideration television, the Internet.... all of the new media." If popular, "We could do sequels, which could be a great thing for all of us. It was a really good bunch of people."
Stoltz's current slate also includes the Battlestar Galactica prequel movie/backdoor pilot Caprica - in which he plays the creator of what one day evolves into the Cylon race (or, as he puts it, "the Bill Gates of the future").
He also is directing an episode of Grey's Anatomy, which he deems "a more massive undertaking" than, say, his previous behind-the-camera work on Boston Legal and Law & Order. "It's the difference between driving a bus and riding a bike - and on that bus are 17 unbelievably talented people," he says. "[ Grey's] is an embarrassment of riches. It's quite mad, in a delightful way."
Stoltz, of course, is not at liberty to divulge what his Grey's episode entails, but he will say this: "It is really wonderfully character-driven, featuring a lot of people falling in and out of love." (Awwww....) "I'm very happy with the way it's going." - Matt Mitovich