The Man Against Medellin : Alex McArthur Plays a U.S. Drug Agent Who Busted the Big One

Although Alex McArthur plays an American drug agent stationed in Bogota who helps bring down the Medellin cartel, he got no closer to Colombia than Miami.

McArthur stars as Thomas Vaughan, a composite of two Drug Enforcement Administration agents, in the miniseries “Drug Wars: The Cocaine Cartel.” NBC televises it in two parts Sunday and Monday nights.

“One of the agents was still in Bogota when we were filming, and the other now heads the DEA in New Orleans,” McArthur says. “The one in Bogota invited me to Colombia, but the production company nipped that in the bud. He did come to Miami, and I spent a few days with him. He was very helpful. The agent in New Orleans was tied up on a case.”

For security reasons, producer Michael Mann took his crew to Madrid, Spain, to film the Colombian scenes.

The miniseries tells of the American-Colombian effort to topple the cartel headed by drug lords Don Pablo Escobar Gaviria and Jose Rodriguez Gacha.

The struggle unleashed a war of narco-terrorism in Colombia. Escobar is currently in a luxurious prison camp he built himself. Gacha was killed by Colombian police in 1989.

“It was very dangerous work for the drug agents and Colombian officials,” McArthur says. “Pablo Escobar was like a Robin Hood in his country. He helped the poor and inspired loyalty among his workers. But he also had at his disposal a gang of thousands of teen-age boys to enforce his orders.

“Vaughan got many death threats and people around him were assassinated. He found a few good souls in the military, and through them he was able to gain information. To this day it’s a very dangerous job.”

“Drug Wars: The Cocaine Cartel” also stars Dennis Farina, Julie Carmen and John Glover. Paul Krasny directed from a script by Gordon Greisman and Gail Morgan Hickman. It is a sequel to “Drug Wars,” based on the book “Desperados” by Time magazine correspondent Elizabeth Shannon.

McArthur also stars in the upcoming NBC series “The Fifth Corner.” The show is in production, but no premiere date has been announced.

The new series has been described as “The Fugitive” for the ‘90s, but McArthur says, “It’s unlike anything that’s ever been on television before.

“At the start of the pilot I wake up in bed in a foreign country with a dead woman and I have no idea who I am,” he says. “When I return to this country I’m met at the airport by a limo driver who says he works for me. I meet other people who call me by different names.

“I’m a man who has amnesia, but I have six identities. Some people lead me to believe I’m an assassin, others a mercenary. Everything I learn leads me to believe I’m a bad guy.”

He eventually learns he works for a large corporation as an international industrial espionage agent. McArthur says the producers plan to take advantage of world events and occasionally film in foreign countries.

“What my character decides to do is continue working for the corporation, but use his skills to do good,” he says.

“I held out doing a series for a long time,” McArthur says. “I really wanted to do feature work. But I see actors doing movies now who took the series roles I passed up. In this I get to use makeup and play six different roles. After this, feature work should be a piece of cake.”

McArthur was working as a cabinetmaker in New York when he did some work for Chen Sam, a publicist who represents Elizabeth Taylor.

“I came to Hollywood with her,” he says, “and she introduced me to a casting agent who introduced me to an agent.”

It was a brief appearance in the Madonna video “Papa Don’t Preach” that got McArthur attention and helped launch his career. He played the father of Madonna’s unborn child.

However, McArthur is probably best known as Duell McCall, a gunslinger in the NBC “Desperado” series of Western movies. McArthur, who “grew up on horseback,” appeared in five “Desperado” movies and was inaugurated into the Cowboy Hall of Fame.

He was raised on a farm in Pennsylvania and today he lives on a one-acre site where he can raise horses, sheep and chickens.

Last year he played a police officer in the movie “Shoot First: A Cop’s Revenge.”

“I was a vigilante cop,” he says. “It was the first cop I’ve ever played. I usually play the bad guy. You have more leeway to play a bad guy because you can cross the edge. When you play a cop you’re representing a law enforcement agency and it’s tough to cross the edge.”

“Drug Wars: The Cocaine Cartel” airs Sunday and Monday at 9 p.m. on NBC.