Fox's 'Lone Star' Portrays Character's Dual Reality

Rita Sherrow - Tulsa World

"This is a house of cards. You don't get to live in it." -- John Allen, father of Bob in "Lone Star."

It's a reality Bob/Robert Allen has to face in Fox's new drama "Lone Star," which will have its premiere at 8 p.m. Monday.

You see, Bob is a charmer, a schemer and a bit of a dreamer who straddles two worlds for a specific reason: He's a con artist.

In Houston, he's Bob, the hard-working hubby of Cat (Adrianne Palicki), the only daughter of an ultra-wealthy oilman. He has so impressed his daddy-in-law that he's been asked to join the Thatcher family oil company -- despite the concern of one of his two brothers-in-law.

Miles away in Midland, he's Robert, the perfect All-American boyfriend of naive Lindsay (Eloise Mumford) who puts on backyard barbecues while bilking local investors, including her parents.

In reality, he is the hugely successful son of a con man (David Keith).

Playing that dual role is newcomer James Wolk, a native of North Farmington Hills, Mich., who graduated from the University of Michigan School of Music a mere three years ago. He worked in his father's shoe store

and as a DJ before he made his debut in the Hallmark movie "Front of the Class," playing a gifted teacher with Tourette's syndrome.

"He is himself in both places," Wolk explained in a recent shared teleconference with the show runner and co-executive producer, Amy Lippman. "He does tailor the way he interacts with people in Houston. He has to demand the respect of an oil company. He has to demand the respect of a man like Clint Thatcher, played by Jon Voight, and, as anyone knows, to demand the respect of Jon Voight, you've got to hold yourself up high.

"When he's in Midland, he can take more of a breath. He can relax, or so he thinks at this point. He is himself altered a little bit in each place in order to get what he wants, in order to make these people believe in him and go with him on this journey."

It's a role that Lippman said was originally written as an older character.

"He (Wolk) had like a warmth and a directness and a charm and a charisma that made us rethink what it meant to have an older actor in the role," she said.

"He's a new face. He's a new talent and he can inhabit this character without other people thinking 'I've seen him do this' or 'I've seen him do that.' I think ... there'll never be this moment in time for him again where people don't know who he is."

The "Lone Star" pilot is probably the sexiest, slickest and most intriguing of this season's TV pilots. Shot on location in Fort Worth and Dallas, it has been compared to TV's classic prime-time soap "Dallas," but it's so much better. As an actor, Wolk is so convincing he could probably sell anyone shares in a gas well that is really nothing but an empty parking lot.

Even so, his character is a con man bent on separating people from their money. But he is human: not all good and not all bad and flawed enough to break the cardinal rule of keeping work and personal personas separate, a slip-up that could bring all the cards tumbling down.

Cat was his mark for a big con years in the making. The plan -- get inside the family company and milk it dry. But he fell in love with her. His getting involved with Lindsay was a fluke, explained Lipmann. Midland was the site of one of his smaller cons of selling oil and gas leases, some of which he sold to Lindsay's parents. But, when he met her, he again couldn't help falling in love.

"When John (his father) says 'You've made the mistake of playing yourself,' that means that you've exposed yourself. You've opened yourself up to those people. It's hard to con people and walk away when you have a real emotional connection to them."

Wolk said the connection was probably intensified by a longing to fill holes in his life:

"While he does believe he's in love with them (both women), he never had wealth as a child growing up, and the Thatcher family and Cat are this posh luxury lifestyle. ... Lindsay and her family are an American family ... and Bob didn't have that growing up, either. "

Lippman said the difficulty in writing and for the character in this kind of show will be keeping up the "cons" for seasons to come.

"It's a very complicated premise, and he's certainly the most complicated character we've ever written because he's got a lot of demons," she said. "He comes from a very dysfunctional past. He's striving for a really honest, functional future and, in the present, he is extricating himself from one world to be free to go into the other.

"It is very, very difficult."

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