Stephen Baldwin Gives Us a Scare

When we heard that Stephen Baldwin was replacing Shannen Doherty as host of Sci Fi Channel's Scare Tactics (starting with the reality hit's third-season premiere tonight at 10 pm/ET), we came down with the giggles, not the jitters.

But, as Alec, Billy and Daniel's brother tells TV Guide Online, the job doesn't call for him to be frightening, just himself. "You have to have a certain sick sense of humor to get the show. That's why [I think the producers] called me. They said, 'The show has gotten gnarlier — you'd be a perfect fit [as host]!'

"Besides," he adds with a laugh, "there are a whole bunch of people out there who think that I'm very scary!"

That said, the 38-year-old actor, whose films have ranged from the sublime (The Usual Suspects, with Kevin Spacey) to the ridiculous (Bio-Dome, with Pauley Shore), may be a more natural fit with Sci Fi than he even realizes. Already, the budding mogul is in discussions with the cable network to produce and star in a new series, the details of which he insists are top-secret: "Think The X-Files — that's all I can say right now."

In the meantime, the lone Bush booster among the very Democratic Baldwin brothers is eagerly anticipating our upcoming presidential election. With three members of the clan in the opposing camp, doesn't that make family get-togethers kind of, um, tense? "Let me answer that question as politically correctly as I possibly can," the two-time Celebrity Mole also-ran begins. "I'm not in any camp. I'm independent, and the position that I've taken in the past few weeks is faith-based, not political. I believe that, now more than ever, the next president of the United States should be a guy who is connected to God.

"I'll put it to you this way," he continues. "I had a very famous celebrity approach me about a month ago and say to me, 'Hey, are you excited, Stephen? Are you ready for Kerry/Edwards?' And I said, 'I'm going to do something different this year; I'm going to support the candidate that I believe has the most faith.' And that celebrity looked at me, sort of cocked his head to the side like he was seeing a Martian and said to me, '[Faith] in what?' It sent a chill down my back."