Matthew Settle can't seem to resist historical dramas and period pieces. "I'm drawn to them like a No. 2 pencil on paper," the star of TNT's Into the West says. "There's just something about them that I love. When it's done correctly, it feels like time travel."
Settle has done quite a bit of time tripping in his 10 years of acting: He has been in Westerns, in World War II dramas (including the celebrated miniseries Band of Brothers), in a '20s-era gangster movie. He even portrayed a 1960s Warren Beatty in The Mystery of Natalie Wood.
But the sensation of being "lost in time," as Settle puts it, was never more profound than the experience he had during the making of Into the West, the epic miniseries that spans decades while chronicling the opening of the American frontier.
"There's a scene where my character is being received into the Lakota family," says Settle, who plays pioneer Jacob Wheeler. "Chief Bald Eagle is sort of the emcee of this scene in the teepee where they accept me. And in real life, this Chief Bald Eagle guy was in the 82nd Airborne, served in Normandy and was wounded on D-Day. In that moment, during that scene, I really felt I was lost in time. It was really emotionally overwhelming."
Settle's initial reaction when approached about starring in Into the West, however, was one of reluctance. "Traditionally, Westerns are stories about good guys and bad guys," he says, "and that really doesn't interest me." But once shown that this miniseries tells parallel stories (not just of manifest-destiny-empowered settlers of Anglo-Saxon European descent, but also of Native Americans who lost so much), he was eager to be involved. Settle originally auditioned for Skeet Ulrich's role (Jethro Wheeler, Jacob's younger brother). But he ended up as Jacob, the son of a Virginia wheelwright whose wanderlust takes him West.
"One of the great things about Into the West is that the people stop being Indians and pioneers and they transform into humans," Settle says. "We get to find out why did what they did, right or wrong. And amazingly, our investment as viewers has us switching loyalties from time to time. I think it will help give us greater understanding of the human condition. And hopefully it will cause us to be more interested in -- and more tolerant of -- other cultures in our modern time."
In Settle's case, the multi-generation saga also forced him to recognize how ignorant he is of his own roots. "I'm kind of cut off from my own family history," he admits. "My family, generations back, is an Irish-English-Welsh mix background. But I grew up in the Bible Belt, where Christian or Bible ideals sort of consumed any cultural history of my family in Europe. Learning more about these people and their roots in Into the West has made me interested more in my European past. That's something I have a hunger to explore now."
In an effort to achieve authenticity even in subtle ways, Settle and Ulrich actually went to wagon wheel school before production began. "We learned how to make wheels and we learned how to shrink an iron tire onto a wheel hub," Settle says. "It's interesting to consider the idea that a wheelwright in the early 1800s dealt in cutting-edge technology, whereas today, if you do that, you're a preservational craftsman."
Indeed, the world has changed so much since the 1800s, he says, that it's downright surreal. And Settle wonders whether we have lost something precious along with every technological advance. "It seems like everything is machine-made these days. It makes you appreciate the real craftsmen. The love that goes into something that's handmade is felt by the person who uses it. And that's something that I think we're missing when we get something that's technically perfect, but impersonal and soulless."
Not that Settle, who got his show business start selling records in the Dollywood theme park, is contemplating quitting his day job to make wagon wheels the old-fashioned way. "But you never know," he says. "If I fail at this career, I can go back to Dollywood. They've got a wainwright and wheelwright shop there."
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by David Martindale
