Actor David Strathairn says he was drawn to Syfy’s new series Alphas because his role as Dr. Lee Rosen is something he’s never explored before.

“It’s something I’ve never explored, developing a character that could have mutations anywhere along the road that would be embraced or not,” he tells the Kansas City Star. “It’s a real wide landscape of character development. Then I really liked what they’re trying to do with the series, which is to explore people who have these neurological anomalies that are very plausible.

“It’s not, by any means, a superhero sci-fi thing. It’s dealing with very day-to-day problems we all have,” he adds. On the series, he plays a scientist overseeing a government project to ferret out people with singular abilities.”

Strathairn has had a long and distinguished career in TV, movies and on-stage.  He says that an actor is like a transmitter.

You’re a medium, a conduit of finding a better way to get to an audience’s subconscious so that you can awaken something special in them. There’s so many ways to do it,” he says. “Now we can do it technologically, music has forever been the best way to do it. But dramatic literature is difficult because how do you get in there? How do you engage somebody’s mental and emotional faculties at the same time? And being a conduit for that is a huge challenge.”

Alphas premieres Monday night on Syfy at 10 p.m. EST.