Ari Stidham talks ‘Scorpion,’ making Sylvester ‘real and honest’
The new CBS show Scorpion has found an audience, earning an additional nine episodes for season one and actor Ari Stidham details the process to bring a team of geniuses to life and give insight into his character Sylvester, a human calculator with a photographic memory.
“It felt like I just rolled the dice and got my dream job, honestly,” Stidham said in a new interview last week. “This is where I’m at right now. I’m pretty grateful for the entire experience…I’m just really happy to have a job right now!”
The WNY Papers writer notes that Stidham is adding fans daily with his portrayal of Sylvester and Stidham credits writers/executive producers Nick Santora and Nicholas Wootton for crafting Sylvester saying they”really get in their with us and say, like, ‘Come to the writers’ room; talk to us about what you think of these possible arcs that we’re looking at.’ I mean, Nick Santora comes to us and says, like, ‘Here’s what we’re thinking about your character,’ and he pitches it to us like a salesman. I mean, it’s just the greatest, because you get to see this character grow.
“The input that I have is more just how do I keep him as grounded as I possibly can, and make him real and honest,” he tells NY Papers in the Tuesday article.
Scorpion is a five-member team of supergeniuses hired by Homeland Security to work on couter terrorism assignments or solve complex crimes in “unconventional ways” the article notes.
“I think, once we found that middle ground – like really during when we shot the bio-hacking episode, the second episode that aired, I think we really found the middle ground of where he lives: Having anxiety and OCD, but also being able to overcome it to achieve the greater good,” Stidham said. “The fact that there’s a hero in all of us. … If you are mentally enabled, you can actually use your powers for good and be a hero, and that’s a huge theme in our show.
“Kind of discovering where that drive came for Sylvester was really important, because with high anxiety and OCD, you can’t touch things with germs. How can you go after a gun if you really don’t even touch bathroom door handles? But you have to kind of find where you can break through it to save somebody’s life.”
“That was really important for me – finding that line where he decides to overcome,” he said.
Check out the full interview HERE
Scorpion co-stars Jadyn Wong as Happy Quinn, Katharine McPhee as Paige Dineen, Ari Stidham as Sylvester Dodd, Eddie Kaye Thomas as Toby Curtis, Elyes Gabel as Walter O’Brien and Robert Patrick.
Scorpion airs Mondays at 9 p.m. on CBS.
