From Assassin to Acolyte: The 4400's Chad Faust

In the opening moments of The 4400's very first episode, Chad Faust's character Kyle ended up in a coma. However, that hasn't stopped the actor from playing an important role on the series through the years, as Kyle soon woke up, and went on to be a pivotal character at several points throughout the series. Possessions -- including being made into a would-be assassin -- time in prison and more would follow for Kyle.

Kyle's imprisonment tied in with Faust being mostly absent during Season 3 of the USA series. However, for the current fourth season of the show Faust has been back on The 4400 as a regular, becoming more closely involved in the plans of the Messiah-like Jordan Collier (Billy Campbell) than ever before. Plus, having taken promicin, the drug that gives the 4400 their powers, Kyle's also developed his own special ability, which has an unusual manifestation; a girl named Cassie (Tristin Leffler) who only Kyle sees. Cassie serves as a guide for Kyle, telling him where to go and what to do, in order to help Jordan.

While he was in the midst of filming Season 4, I had the opportunity to speak to Faust on the set of The 4400. Sitting inside Faust's trailer, the actor discussed the twists and turns his character has taken through the years, and what could be next for Kyle.

IGN TV: How is it to be back this year?

Chad Faust: It's different. It's interesting. The character has changed a lot. He's matured. It's fun because he's gone through so much and now he's decided to take action. One of my frustrations with the character over the years is he's such a reactive character - he's reacting to all this phenomenon around him and one thing I've always been looking for in him is what does he want in the face of all this? Not just to avoid it or to have a normal life or whatever, which I just could never get behind. And now he's going after something more extraordinary, which for me is easier to relate to, and that's what I'm excited about this year.

Chad Faust as Kyle Baldwin in *The 4400*

IGN TV: Your character has gone through so many transformations. Is it fun for you to read a script and go, "Oh, okay, now I'm an assassin?"

Faust: Right. It is fun, yeah! But it's all through the funnel of who Kyle is and definitely, as limitless as his potential storylines can be, the character himself is actually quite specific. And so that's been the struggle is going through all these different places and finding the way that Kyle would be that. The kind of assassin that Kyle would be or the kind of born again that Kyle would be and trying to give him he respect that I would want to give himself.

IGN TV: You mentioned being "born again" and it's been interesting seeing Kyle become an acolyte as it were to Jordan Collier.

Faust: He is, but he's having some advocacy against it also. That's been interesting, because it puts Shawn and I on reverse sides of the war, which has been fun to play. And now Kyle's adapting to his own ability. I'm having these shamanistic visions with Cassie. But who knows where this could go? This could be the future screwing with me again. I think that's why there was a certain amount of reluctance to believe in it on Kyle's part, because he's been screwed over so many times by The 4400 and something that seems as real as your own hand can be an illusion five minutes later. Yet he wants to be a part of something significant now, because he said, at the end of last season, "I've been running away from this my whole life, and now it's time for me to actually be who I've been fated to be." And now he's really going forth in that direction, but of course there's some reluctance because he's been screwed over so many times and it's so hard for him to trust. That's kind of where I'm approaching the character from, though it's not necessarily on the page like that.

IGN TV: When you finished Season 3 and filmed Kyle taking the promicin, were you excited about the prospect of him getting a power?

Faust: Well, at that point I wasn't even sure if I was going to come back. I'm on a year to year basis with my contract now. And I wasn't sure where the show was going or where my career was going and what I was going to be doing. I was just sort of leaving it up in the air and then they said "Do you want to come back?" and they told me where things were going and it sounded exciting, so here I am. But I wasn't sure. I was so out of it last year that I didn't even know what promicin was until I got here. Part of my deal, because I was doing other projects, was that they had to shoot all of my stuff last year in two days. So I was literally in and then out 48 hours later. Pra-me-cin I was calling it - I didn't even know anything that was going on! In fact, I still haven't watched all of Season 3. I watched the last three episodes, and they were great; especially the last one, I really liked. So I was a little out of the loop, but now I've been filled in. I've been playing a bit of catch up, so I hope my work hasn't suffered for it. But I guess Kyle's always playing catch up, so it's kind of appropriate. He's always trying to keep up with everybody.

IGN TV: So you shot all of your Season 3 stuff at once, including when we saw you in prison earlier in the season?

Faust: Oh yeah, all of it. Basically, I shot the last day of one episode and then the first day of the next episode. And then they got me for that one shot for the last episode; they just captured that one shot.

IGN TV: In the first season, you end up in a coma a few minutes in. Did they reassure you and tell you "Don't worry, you're coming out of it?"

Faust: [Laughs] They would tell me daily, "It's coming, it's coming!" Each script I'd get, I'd be like "Come on, man!" And then of course, by the end of episode 4 I finally woke up and then I was like, "Okay, now what's gonna happen?" And then when I got episode 5, I was delighted, because that was just fantastic character development. At first I didn't know how to play the character, because I'm trying to connect to a character who's completely disconnected, and I was like "How do you do that?" I was in my hotel room pacing and trying to figure out what to do and I realized he was under a completely different logic and so I was rearranging all the furniture in my room, and I put it upside down. I don't even know what I was doing! I was getting so mad, and I was trying too fast, to get some mental clarity, and also to try to lose some weight 'cause he would have atrophied muscles and everything. And I got so angry that I realized, oh my god, this is the character! He's trying to figure out who he is and it's driving him nuts, and he's trying to create some kind of order that makes sense to him and he doesn't know who to be or what to think. So I just played the character the way I felt in that hotel room. [Laughs] But before that, when I was in the coma, it was fun because I knew it was coming, but I was just sort of dormant and I'd go in as tired as I can be, so I'd just fall asleep. I actually snored during one of Joel [Gretsch's] close-ups.

IGN TV: [Laughs] That must have been interesting!

Faust: Yeah. I didn't know him that well at the time, and I thought I might have freaked him out, but he was cool with it.

IGN TV: Have you asked the producers "No more comas or jail stints"?

Faust: Right. Well now I'm waking people up! There's been a lot of reversal of things that have happened before in this season, which I hope works.

IGN TV: You've gotten scenes with a lot of different members of the cast this year.

Faust: Kyle's like a whore! This season I have scenes with everybody, which is fun, because usually I have scenes mostly with Joel or Patrick [Flueger], and those are still two of my favorite people to work with, because we have such great relationships. But now it's fun to have scenes with Isabelle [Megalyn Echikunwoke] and Cassie.

IGN TV: How is it working with Billy Campbell?

Faust: I love Billy! My favorite moment with Billy Campbell is him doing the address to the public as him being the second coming of Christ or whatever. And you see him in this black suit, very done up and very respectful. But then they shot it from the chest up, and he's sitting there, and underneath the table he had like khaki shorts and Birkenstocks on. That's so Billy Campbell. He would be reading his book The 4400 and Counting, but really it's just the dust jacket and inside is some book on sailing or something. That's just so Billy. He's here, and he's having a great time. It's so fun to work with him, because he doesn't seem to take himself too seriously, which makes him a lot of fun, because he's really just here for a good time.

IGN TV: Kyle hasn't had any luck with relationships.

Faust: I keep waiting for it, I keep waiting for it. They told me this is the year that Kyle's getting sexed up, but I haven't seen anything yet. I thought that maybe Cassie was going to be it, and that didn't seem to work. There's Isabelle, but I don't know if anything's going to happen there, because she's my cousin's ex-fiancée. I thought maybe at first, because we were out at the cabin together, and I thought "Okay, hold on…" But at least so far we've been right down to business.

IGN TV: Have you ever asked the writers about the greater meaning, if any, behind the fact that it was Kyle, not Shawn, who was supposed to be abducted?

Faust: I don't think they know. When I first realized that Jordan Collier was going into this second coming of Christ moment, I said "Hmm… Jordan Collier... J.C.!" And they said, "Yeah, we lucked out on that one!" So I don't think they know. I think there are some beautiful little coincidences that are flukes. But that's kind of the cool thing about it, is that when you don't have this huge scope on the show, you get to kind of take it one step at a time, and they try to make each step as interesting as possible. But obviously the greater idea, from day one, was that this was a war in the future that was being fought in the past - in the present day, and now that's actually come quite to the surface. But I kind of like getting each script and not knowing; I think if I knew all of what was going to happen, I would lose interest.

IGN TV: What kind of fan interaction do you have from the show?

Faust: It's interesting. Most of the fan mail I receive is from Germany or France. I got one from Taiwan recently. Finland is a big one, and the eastern United States. I got this really funny one the other day. This woman said that I was "capable of mass seduction." And I thought "Wow, that's quite the compliment! That's kind of fun!" And then Joel waves me over and goes, "Dude, look at this fan mail I got!" Sure enough, Joel's apparently also capable of mass seduction! You get some interesting ones. Most of the time people are really great. They're invested in it. I seem to be the one person on set who gets called by their character name more than anybody else. I always get called Kyle, and I kind of get that in my letters too. It's funny, when I was in Paris last year, I got stopped on the street all the time. It was big there!

IGN TV: What would you like for Kyle as the show progresses?

Faust: Well, a girl! No, I'm just kidding… well, not really. It's always fun to have make out scenes. But no, Kyle's always been such a vulnerable character, kind of like a pinball in a machine, and I want him to come out of that, and come into his own. And then change the world from that perspective. One, as an actor, I'm just kind of getting tired of playing the pinball in the machine. And two, just as a character, I think it's time for him to be an adult. And I think it's going there, as I accept this whole path. He can really be a more specific human being, which I think will be good for him. Maybe because I'm a human being too also going through that similar growth, where I've just sort of been this actor in the works and now I'm going "Who do I want to be? What kind of artist do I want to be?" I want that for him too.

The 4400 airs Sundays at 9:00 pm ET/PT on USA.