Heroes star Milo Ventimiglia explains why he turned down the opportunity to appear in the reboot Heroes Reborn. Ventimiglia played Peter Petrelli on the original Heroes series, which was created by Tim Kring. Running from 2006 to 2010, the show focused on seemingly ordinary people who discover that they possess extraordinary abilities. With an ensemble cast, the comic book-inspired drama examined how the newfound abilities changed the characters’ lives and followed those characters as they worked together to stop catastrophic events.
Five years after Heroes ended, a 13-episode continuation of Heroes debuted. Given the title of Heroes Reborn, the continuation takes place one year after a terrorist attack as the people with extraordinary abilities are being blamed. Kring returned as executive producer, writing a few episodes. Several characters from the original Heroes also came back, including Peter’s mother, Angela Petrelli (Cristine Rose), but Ventimiglia was not involved with the project. In a new interview, the actor shed light on why he chose not to make an appearance.
Mario Lopez, the host of ON with Mario, asked Ventimiglia if he would ever want to take part in a reboot of Heroes. In his response, Ventimiglia indicated that Heroes Reborn already served as a reboot of sorts. In his quote, which can be read below, the actor explained that he declined the opportunity to reprise the role of Peter and criticized the reboot for treating the original characters as unimportant. In the end, Ventimiglia said that he didn’t want to be a part of something like that felt like a “bait-and-switch.”
“They brought it back or four years ago, they brought it back, and it was called Heroes reboot, revival, re-something. I can’t remember the name of it. But it kind of… I’ll be honest, it came in my direction. I was asked to be a part of it. But it didn’t feel right. You know what it felt like? Honestly, it felt like the powers that be believed that the creative was bigger than the characters. And what I find is TV audiences connect with characters, right? Because they see themselves being that character. And what it felt like was they were wanting to use Peter Petrelli, in the beginning, to pull everybody in.
You’d be like, ‘hey, look, we got the crew back.’ And then Peter Petrelli is going to go away for a long time and then pop back up at the end. I was like, ‘Yeah, but what happened to Peter?’ You want to tell a story about Peter or Claire or Hiro or you know, Mohinder Suresh or Nathan Petrelli? Or, you know, anybody else? Like, that’s great. But Matt Parkman? I don’t know. I mean… there are so many characters, so many different things, but it just didn’t feel right to me. It felt, personally, like a bait-and-switch and I wouldn’t want to deceive the audience or the fanbase of Heroes just by being a part of it in, like, the tiniest little ways.”
Ventimiglia’s remarks speak to the ongoing issue of how to balance what a reboot accomplishes, in terms of including the past but also paving the way for new stories. In the years since Heroes Reborn was released, the trend of reboots, remakes, and revivals has only grown more common as established worlds are utilized with the goal of drawing in new audiences. In some cases, as with Gilmore Girls: A Year In The Life, which was a revival that Ventimiglia did return for, the results contain just enough bright spots. But in a lot of other cases, the new version fails to match up with what came before.
That was perhaps even more clear with Heroes. As a show, many argued that it peaked with its first season and should have remained a limited series. As it continued to expand, with more mythology and even more characters, it continued to move away from its relatively straightforward original conception and the series certainly suffered as a result. The short-lived attempt at a reboot, which received generally lukewarm reviews and faded from the public consciousness rather quickly, proved Ventimiglia’s instincts correct.
Source: ON with Mario