Profile : This Cain Is Able

Dean Cain, who plays the Man of Steel on ABC’s hit series “Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman,” is something of a superguy in real life.

He’s the host, writer, director and executive producer of “Off Camera With Dean Cain,” airing Monday on ABC. The one-hour special finds Cain offering an intimate look at what celebrities do in their time away from the cameras. He plays soccer with “Melrose Place” star Andrew Shue, spends a day at the home of NBA Rookie of the Year Chris Webber and engages in a little beach volleyball with Team Nike and his girlfriend, pro volleyball player/model Gabrielle Reece.

“I’m responsible for everything on screen,” says the strapping Princeton graduate, who once dated Brooke Shields. “Everything that’s on the screen is my decision. So it sinks or swims with me. I don’t pretend that it’s deep. In retrospect, I would have gone a little deeper with some questions I asked people.”

Cain found playing the role of interviewer not that difficult. “We have common ground as actors and performers, so we become sort of friends,” Cain explains. “We also have common ground because we know what it’s like to be interviewed. The facades really do drop in that environment.”

The environment for this interview is the conference room of Cain’s Santa Monica-based production company. He arrives a half-hour late but is so friendly and apologetic for the delay that it’s easy to forgive him for not being able to “get it together,” as he says, this morning.

Cain interviewed the nine celebs involved in “Off Camera” during his weekend breaks from “Lois & Clark.”

“I would take a day and go shoot,” Cain says, gulping down a breakfast shake made by his assistant Anita, who happens to be a Princeton grad. “The thing was my head wasn’t as clear as I’d want it to be. We had a lot of problems with the network as far as booking the talent. They had specific talent they wanted us to book. For a lot of these people, we couldn’t match up my schedule with theirs or they didn’t want to do the show. A lot of people were skeptical because it hadn’t been on before. And until you see it, you don’t really know what it is.”

Other actors just didn’t have anything to say or have any hobbies. “They’d say, ‘I just don’t do anything.’ It’s, like, ‘What do you mean, you don’t do anything?’ Everybody has something to do. It seems kind of disconcerting, I guess, because I have so many interests outside of acting. But I always have.”

The most difficult aspect of making “Off Camera” simultaneously with “Lois & Clark” was finding the time to edit the special. “I would work 16 hours at ‘Lois & Clark,’ walk across the street to this post [production] house and we would edit for eight hours. Honestly, I would get about an hour’s sleep.”

Cain, who played pro football with the Buffalo Bills until he was sidelined by a knee injury, acknowledges he has a tendency to push himself “really hard because I want to do so many things. This is an opportunity to branch out as a writer, as a director, as an executive producer. That’s exciting for me.”

Equally fulfilling for Cain is writing scripts for “Lois & Clark.” He penned an episode last season and is currently writing one for the upcoming one.

“Lois & Clark” ended its second season in May on a high note. After initially stumbling in the ratings against CBS’ “Murder, She Wrote” and the much-ballyhooed “seaQuest dsv” on NBC, “Lois & Clark” took flight last season. The series’ cliffhanger found Clark asking Lois to marry him.

“The show has got so much heat now,” Cain says enthusiastically. “I have been there when we have been on the bubble. Where it’s, ‘OK. You are going to get canceled.’ You lose all pretensions and you say, ‘We are not doing the business. People are not turning on the TV to see my face.’ The reason I have this company and do a million things outside is so I don’t have to depend on being an actor. I can now write.” Cain’s also on the verge of inking a multi-feature film deal.

Cain acknowledges he was apathetic about the series early last season, when there was no progression in the relationship between Lois (Teri Hatcher) and Clark. “Each show sort of stood on its own,” he recalls.

Until “Tempus Fugitive.” In that fanciful episode, Lois and Clark traveled through time and Clark revealed his true identity to Lois. “Things started to happen between the two characters,” Cain says. “There is now a progression in their relationship. There’s something happening. That’s the magic of the show, that something goes on between the characters. We ended the season with Clark on his knee proposing to Lois. We shot this great ending last season we didn’t use. I pray we start this season with that.”

This fall, “Lois & Clark” will have new competition. With “Murder, She Wrote” and “seaQuest” moving out of their Sunday slots, CBS is countering “Lois & Clark” with the sitcom “Cybill” and the new comedy “Almost Perfect.” And NBC has sent two of its popular Thursday comedies, “Mad About You” and “Hope & Gloria,” to do battle with the duo.

“We are the incumbents now, which is interesting,” Cain says with a smile. “We are still underdogs, which is OK. I prefer to be the underdog and then kick butt!”

“Off Camera With Dean Cain” airs Monday at 8 p.m. on ABC; “Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman” airs Sundays at 8 p.m. on ABC.