Remember Jarod from The Pretender? The guy who could walk into a hospital on Monday, a courtroom on Tuesday, a police station on Wednesday, a cockpit by Friday, and… you get the point. Somehow he managed to convince everyone he belonged there. That was Michael T. Weiss. He’s now 64. Back in the ’90s, he anchored NBC’s cult hit, The Pretender, created by Steven Long Mitchell and Craig W. Van Sickle for the network’s Thrillogy action block.
The story was addictive. Jarod, kidnapped at age five by a shadowy think tank called the Centre, gets raised as a human problem-solving machine. A “Pretender.” Give him a profession, and he’ll master it. Doctor. Lawyer. Pilot. Soldier. Scientist. Journalist. Fireman. Anything. The catch? His simulations don’t stay in a lab. “South Pacific simulation #118” helps blow up a ship carrying 133 people. An outbreak model contributes to 46 Ebola deaths. Once Jarod figures that out, guilt kicks in. He runs. Cue four seasons of him helping strangers while dodging recapture, guided by the only father figure he ever knew, Sydney, played by Patrick Bauchau.
It sounds like The Fugitive with a brainiac twist, and in the late ’90s, that formula worked. Procedural structure, conspiracy arc simmering in the background, flashbacks to a stolen childhood. Still, the show never quite stuck the landing. After cancellation, TNT rolled out two TV movies in 2001, The Pretender 2001 and The Pretender: Island of the Haunted. Fans wanted closure. They got loose threads. In 2013, the creators revived the story in books and graphic novels, but by then the momentum had cooled.
Weiss, though, didn’t disappear (check out his IMDB here). A Chicago native, he studied at Second City in high school, earned a B.F.A. from USC in 1984, and first broke out as Dr. Mike Horton on Days of Our Lives. He tackled dual roles in Dark Shadows, shared scenes with Drew Barrymore in 2000 Malibu Road, and earned indie cred in Jeffrey and Oliver Stone’s Freeway. He also voiced heroes in Justice League and played Tarzan in The Legend of Tarzan.
Off-screen, he puts the same intensity into activism. As a board member of the Earth Communications Office, he pushes practical change. “I believe that everybody on the planet, should take responsibility for their own little planet– their home. If everybody would change one or two things about their life, we could make a drastic change…”
That’s not Jarod talking. That’s Michael T. Weiss. Sometimes it’s hard to seperate the two.
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