Valley Talks About “Human Target”

If you’ve been watching Fox lately, you’ve probably seen promos for the upcoming series, “Human Target.”

Starring Mark Valley, who may be best known to readers for his role last year on “Fringe,” the series is based on the DC Comic of the same name and centers on Christopher Chance, a private contractor/security expert/bodyguard who is hired when a threat cannot be solved through normal means of protection.

The series is getting a special kick-off on January 17th, wedged between Fox’s coverage of the NFL playoffs and the return of the hit series “24.”  It will then settle into its regular time slot on Wednesdays, following “American Idol.”

Fox is showing a lot of faith in the show.

And the producers have been showing a lot of faith in Valley’s skills beyond acting.  Valley said he’s been called on to do some “crazy s***” since production began.

“Generally, the way … the way I find out about them, it’s like, ‘Mark, can you ride a horse?'” Valley tells SciFi Wire. “‘Yeah.’ ‘Mark, what do you know about hacking into, you know, onboard computer systems?’ ‘Ah, nothing.’ ‘OK, we’re going to need to train you for that.’ ‘Mark, can you walk on your hands?’ ‘What? Why don’t you just tell me what the episode is about? You know?'”

And while Valley has been called on do some extraordinary physical stunts, he said the most intimidating thing he’s had to do so far came in the pilot–learning Japanese.

“For some reason that was probably—that was one of the scariest things I had to do,” Valley said. “Because it was a lot of Japanese. And I had someone teach me, and [it] actually kind of piqued my interest. I wanted to learn more Japanese, but that feeling was fleeting. Because I never really got back into it. But, yeah, it was a lot of Japanese.”

In a later episode, Valley finds himself handcuffed on a speeding motorcycle. “I’m not really good at riding motorcycles, to be honest with you, but they wanted me to ride one in this, so I learned,” he said. “The instructor didn’t want me to go out of first gear. I did go out of first gear, but that was probably the scariest thing I did, yeah.”

Valley also has to play a monk in a monastery in a coming episode. “I probably shouldn’t go too much into it but, yeah … —all I know is I had to be fitted for a cassock,” he said.