"I shed my inhibitions like my clothes in 'Tooms'"

A number of Hutchison's roles in the past few years have come from writers/producers Glen Morgan and James Wong [see The 11th Hour interview with them in our first issue], who first worked with Hutchison when they penned the early X-Files episode "Squeeze".

"What appeals to me about working with Morgan and Wong?" Hutchison ponders. "They hire me. Seriously though -- Morgan and Wong have been beddy beddy good to me over the years. Not only did they insist I play Tooms on The X-Files when the director of 'Squeeze', Harry Longstreet, didn't want to cast me, but then they wrote a sequel for me ('Tooms'), wrote a recurring role for me on Space: Above & Beyond [as Elroy-EL], tracked me down to play Polaroid Man in the second-season opener of Millennium, and then went to bat for me at CBS to play a regular on their hoped-for series, Skip Chasers.

"I owe these guys my SAG card, fer chrissakes. Morgan and Wong are tops. When they believe in someone or something, they'll carry the torch. I can't sing their praises enough. When I went in to shoot my first episode of Space, the director kept taking me in an opposite direction [than] I wanted to go with Elroy-EL. Basically, he was a 'faster, funnier, pick-up-the-pace' kind of TV director. After rehearsing the first scene with Joel de la Fuente [who played Paul Wang], Glen Morgan came up to me in the make-up room and asked how it went. I said, 'I'll be honest with ya, Glen. With all due respect, it sucked. This director is killing my Elroy.' Without missing a beat, Glen said, 'Ignore him. Go in there and do what you want. I trust your instincts.' Now, that's a rare producer. Morgan and Wong are two of the most creative, gifted, loyal, imaginative, good-hearted producers/writers/directors on the scene. I'm privileged to be a part of their 'posse' and honored to call them my friends. I'd do anything for those guys."

"Anything" includes going above and beyond the call of an actor's normal duties: Hutchison went so far as to do one of his final scenes in "Tooms" completely nude and covered in slime, though the original plan was to have him wearing a dog-catcher's uniform.

"I shed my inhibitions like my clothes in 'Tooms'," Hutchison philosophizes. "Sometimes one has to get naked to strip down to raw truth. If others don't like it or find it offensive, oh well -- you can't please all of the people some of the time, but if you try sometimes you get what you need -- or something like that."