MARK:

We're welcoming Joe Lando right now. Joe is co-executive producer and the star of a show called Higher Ground on Fox Family Channel and it has a really interesting premise for the show. Who came up with the whole idea for it?

JOE:

It was a combination of a man named Matthew Hastings and Michael Braverman. Matt Hastings came up with the concept, brought it to Douglas Schwartz who's the producer of Baywatch who then brought it to Paramount. Then Michael Braverman came on board, and prior to that they brought this concept to me and I said what I wanted out of it and didn't want and then we were looking for a show runner and Braverman came along who fitted perfectly, he created Life Goes On and Chicago Hope and worked on 90210 and it was a perfect fit we thought. We wanted action but we wanted really good writing and drama and stories that had something to say, not just fluff.

MARK:

Well this is definitely not fluff, there's some heaviness in the show

JOE:

You saw the Pilot?

MARK:

Yeah, I did.

JOE:

Oh great. Sometimes you talk to people who are interviewing you and they haven't seen it yet so it's hard to explain to them.

MARK:

No, I saw the screening and it's a really interesting show. It's about Mount Horizon High which is a kind of like an outward bound but ...

JOE:

It's a wilderness high school, that's what we call it. It's set in the Pacific Northwest in a town called Agnes

MARK:

It gives you a great chance to - - there are a couple of really interesting dynamics on the show which I really like. It gives you a chance first of all to bring us some really interesting characters and the kids that are there but also your colleagues there, um, Hannah and also I like Sophie myself, I guess you do too ...

JOE:

Mmmm

MARK:

Um, it's a really nice cast and it seems like the chemistry is right.

JOE:

Oh yeah, well we're on our 18th show right now but we clicked pretty quick and everybody found their characters and the kids all get along great. Some of them live together now and have a great rapport and some of them are a little more experienced than others but now it's just like we cast these parts and there's a perfect fit for everybody and I think we've got a couple of actors who are going to be breaking out of the show next year and ...

MARK:

I think that you're going to see Hayden Christensen going to make it on his own.

JOE:

Yeah. I think so too. Although that first episode showcased his talents more than anybody elses but the other shows come up and you know, A. J. Cook is an extremely good actress, everybody is really good.

MARK:

I remember when I first saw Party of Five, telling folks that Neve Campbell was going to be a huge star and people said you know, it's just a fluff show and she'll never be anything but I was right on that one and in this kid seems to have something about him that just stands right out. He's obviously a good looking guy and all that and that probably helps ...

JOE:

He's been doing this for a while and he comes to work, he's always prepared, he knows his stuff, he knows his character and what's going on and he has a riot playing that guy. Hayden's not really like Scott at all but it's a really good show and I'm very proud of it and I think it looks beautiful. We put all our money up there on the screen.

MARK:

How did you end up on Fox Family Channel?

JOE:

They were the first people who came to the series as serious pursuers. They really wanted the show. We had a couple of other people out there but they wanted us the most and they wrote the biggest check and they want this to be their flagship show.

MARK:

That's interesting. I think it's a great show and I think it's going to do well on Fox Family Channel but I thought this would have been a natural for Sunday night for CBS.

JOE:

Hmmm. Yeah, well I don't know. Maybe they shied away from it because I was in it or ....

MARK:

Because you were on CBS for quite a while?

JOE:

Yeah. Almost for 7 years.

MARK:

Your role as Byron Sully turned out to be a nice gig for you.

JOE:

Yes. It started off as just a little bitty part there and I was actually the first one cast on Dr. Quinn but the audience really took to Sully and to the whole show and it just got huge. But I know CBS wanted to change their demographics and change the look of their network and it ended up to be the right move on their part.

MARK:

Are you still in touch with anybody from the cast?

JOE:

Oh yeah! I'm pretty good friends with Orson Bean and William Shockley and a lot of the crew members and my path kept crossing Jane's while back in L.A. - I was just back there last week and I just never hooked up with her but I'm going to give her a call in the next day or two because there have been rumors going around that there'll be another Quinn movie but I haven't heard.

MARK:

How did you start in show biz? You're from Chicago, right?

JOE:

Um hm. I moved out here, or to LA I should say as I'm up in Vancouver right now, but I moved out to LA when I was 18 to become an actor and I thought if I could become a stunt man first I could get into the business but that didn't work out and so I just kind of bounced around Los Angeles for a few years and then I was a chef and then got a chance to get into acting class and an agent from William Morris saw me and hooked me up with class and hooked me up with getting some pictures done and I stayed with William Morris for a while but being a very young and inexperienced actor, they really couldn't do much for me and so I left there and had a smaller little more boutique agency which stayed with me for almost 7 years and got me my New York soap gig and that's where it really all began. That was 1989 and I went to New York ...

MARK:

That was One Life to Live?

JOE:

Yeah. One Life to Live.

MARK:

And you went to Guiding Light from there?

JOE:

No, then I went to Quinn actually. After about 265 or 365, I can't remember, episodes of One Life to Live. While I was on that show, they approached me, CBS, with a pilot development deal and I left with their blessings because they had ended the storyline with the woman who played my wife, left there and went straight two days later into Quinn. I read the script, loved it. It was the first script they sent to me and so I said I'd love to do this and they cast everybody else and Jane was cast like at the 11th hour. It was two days before shooting and they still didn't have somebody and all of a sudden boom, Jane fell into it and everything was just meant to be because you couldn't have a better Dr. Quinn. And then that summer, right after Quinn was picked up, Jeff Sagansky who ran CBS at the time asked me, called me up personally and said we have this idea we would like to cross some of daytime with nighttime and suck some of the core audience you had from the soaps into our show and visa versa and then fuse it back into Guiding Light which takes a hit in the summer in the ratings. And they made me an offer I couldn't refuse so I went to live in New York for 6 weeks and I did 24 episodes of Guiding Light. I finished that and literally came back the next day to LA and went back to work on Quinn for another 10 months and then went into a movie of the week and so I worked almost solid for 9 years until I got .... er ... fired, the show got canceled. And then I took a year off ....

MARK:

Did it scare you when that happened?

JOE:

Well, you know I understand why men die right after they retire. It's like you've been working so hard all your life, you get into this pattern. It's like it's not the job, it's not the money, it's just the going some place, having something to do, feeling like you're needed, you know? All of a sudden I didn't have that and I didn't have that structure in my life and I'd had it for so long. I kind of floundered for about two week and felt sorry for myself ... aw I lost my gig .... you know I was kind of expecting it because we had 6 years and that's more than you can ask for but they weren't as enthusiastic when we went down as they usually were, we usually put shows away for the following year and this was the first time we hadn't so I kind of knew but it still ... it took a little time and then two weeks after a lost my job my son came into this world and so I had this little baby boy and I took care of my wife and my son and all of a sudden all was forgotten. So for the next year I stayed at home and played dad. I had a couple of little jobs here and there but I saw him wake up in the morning, I saw him go to bed at night and we spent all day together, it was a great time so again, the timing was perfect ...

MARK:

And how old is he now?

JOE:

He's 19 moths old now. He had his first year birthday up here in Vancouver on June 3 and it's just been a great time and this has been a really good experience. I wanted to have some creative control in the next project that I did, that's why I waited for a while. I tried to get a couple of projects of my own off the ground, I had 3 different things and they didn't pan out, you know that's the nature of the business you're in, but right when the third one kind of tanked, in came Paramount with this offer for Higher Ground and I went into this meeting and said I don't want to it to just be an action show about a bunch of kids snowboarding and skiing and you know, running around and having sex. I don't want it to be like a lot of the shows I see on TV now. I want this to be something special. I don't want to be like a parent who stands in the background, you know like the Peanuts kids, the Peanuts parents, in the background. I want to have interaction with the kids, I want us to be all friends and relate to each other and they agreed, they said we want that here and we did a lot of research. We went to Idaho, checked out five of these schools in Idaho, interviewed hundreds of kids. I sat in group therapy with about 20 of these kids for two and half hours up in Idaho and the stories - when we walked out of there, me, Braverman, Schwartz, Matt Hastings and a couple of the other writers, we walked out of this group session and were just blown away. We thought we've something really good here and we've got stories we have to tell and when I told the kids that we were thinking about making a show about a school like that they all got really excited, these kids in this group and they thought it was really important and they said please be true to the spirit of what this is about and I think we're trying our hardest.

MARK:

I think it's coming across really well. Are you filming this in Vancouver?

JOE:

Yes sir. Beautiful British Columbia.

MARK:

Joe, reading here in your bio, I'm just wondering what this means to Hollywood actors when you become one of People Magazine's 50 Most Beautiful People which you were in 1993. Do you take it seriously? Do you get excited about it or do you just go ... it's ridiculous.

JOE:

Uhhhh, well you get excited about it because I mean, it's flattering, it's a great piece of PR, you know. I wish I would get it again. Seriously, obviously there are far better choices out there but it's more of a popularity contest. That year I was kind of around a lot. I was more or less a new face, came from the soaps, so ....

MARK:

Was Jane one of the most beautiful of that year too?

JOE:

No. I don't think she's gotten that.

MARK:

No?

JOE:

No. Hard to believe.

MARK:

It is hard to believe. I think you're going to see Hayden, or A.J. or some of these folks shortly.

JOE:

Oh yeah. You know, Kandyse is a beautiful girl. The black girl that's on the show. When she first walked into the room during casting she just like - our jaws dropped - it was like awwww - we knew that was the character we wanted for Katherine, she was so perfect. The girl who plays Juliette looks a lot like Liv Tyler to me and has a kind of Sandra Bullock look to her too sometimes.

MARK:

Kandyse is beautiful but there's an interesting story too, she's the daughter on the show, her character Katherine, is the daughter of two white adoptive parents and it really confuses her. And it's a realistic story. It happens to a lot of people out there.

JOE:

Well everyone of those students, the only character who is a combination of a bunch of people is Peter, my character. All the students otherwise are modeled after real life people. They are somebody that we met while in group up in Idaho or down in Southern California at the other schools we went to, or they are children of friends of the writers or somebody that the writers have known, or Michael Braverman has known so that's what's - like Shelby's character, A. J. Cook, she's a young girl whose biological father sexually abused her and the mother left the father, married again, step father came into the picture and he repeated the same thing to the young girl to the point where she left home at 15 and went out on the streets and got picked up and ended up in one of these schools. So that's a tragic story. I think Shelby who is nothing like A.J., or A.J. is nothing like Shelby in real life is a very straight girl. She's a Mormon. This was a real challenge for her to take this part and she had to talk to her parents about it too because she didn't want them to be upset by the character she's playing, she's very particular about what she picks but I'm glad she did and I think she's a real find too. She's wonderful.

MARK:

These characters certainly have a lot of possibilities as well.

JOE:

Yeah, Kandyse's character, the girl with the white parents, her story is about the drowning of her little sister, the biological daughter of the parents drowned in a swimming accident and that girl feels it's her fault, she was responsible and that's kind of what spun her out of control and she's the oldest of all the students and the one that will be graduating at the end of the season. The show has been set up so that the students like in real life will rotate in and rotate out. They work through, or they don't necessarily make it through the program. The parents pull them out or the kids just drop out, kids can't make it or they're able to learn the tools to survive and get their lives back together, regain their dignity and they graduate out and hope to go on and have a healthy productive life.

MARK:

But in the TV world I assume if these people are really popular, they'll be brought back either because they're repeating the thing ....

JOE:

No, we won't keep 30 year old teenagers on our campus.

MARK:

Well maybe they could become like Peter in terms of helping out like a clinical faculty member when they graduate.

JOE:

Yeah, that's also the reality. I mean when we went to these schools a lot of these counselors had been students, either at that school or one like that. They decided that's what they wanted to do with their life, but I promise you, even if they are the biggest stars around, will not come back, you know we can't keep all of ‘em ...

MARK:

Like Welcome Back Kotter ...

JOE:

Yeah, it's not going to stay like that ...

MARK:

Our guest from Higher Ground, you can check it out every Friday night on Fox Family Channel. Joe, good luck on your new show, I hope it works out well for you.

JOE:

Thank you very much.

MARK:

Take care.

JOE:

Take care. Bye Bye.