Sam Witwer knows a thing or two about monsters. He’s probably most famous for his role in The CW’s Smallville, where he played Davis Bloome – aka, the Kryptonian creature Doomsday. His other genre credits include the Cylon-fighting Raptor pilot Crashdown in Battlestar Galactica, and providing the face and voice for Starkiller in the insanely popular videogame Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. He can currently be seen playing the vampire Aidan in the US remake of Being Human. “He’s trying to live a normal life after 200 years of being a sociopath,” he tells Bryan Cairns.

Looking at your CV, you seem like the go-to-guy for nice chaps with dark tendencies…

I look like a guy with major problems? (Laughs) I don’t know what that’s about. Maybe it’s something about the way I look thing or something I bring to my performance that makes people go, “Oh, this guy is disturbed!” They’re certainly challenging roles to play and never get boring. That’s good news.

What makes Aidan such a tortured soul?

Well, the torture comes from the fact he’s trying to get off the junk. We’re playing the vampire thing as if it’s a drug addiction. He’s trying to live a normal life after 200 years of being a sociopath. He’s not proud of what he’s done or the impulses he has, so he’s trying to change that.

Sally has her fiancé, Josh has his sister – what ties Aidan to his humanity?

He’s always had a spark of humanity inside. We see little hints of that throughout the series as we go back and meet Aidan at different points in his life. It never really went away entirely, but he basically covered it up.

What ties him to humanity is his nature; he’s actually a good moral man. It’s just that he’s been put in this horrible circumstance of vampirism and he has to deal with that.

Did your previous role as Davis Bloome/Doomsday on Smallville help you get into that Jekyll and Hyde mentality?

Yeah, I suppose so. Aidan is a lot more fun than Davis Bloome. We allow for some levity to happen, as you’ll see. He has quite a broader personality and is a little more dynamic than Davis. Certainly, they’re both monsters who are trying not to be monsters, which is really interesting and dramatic for me to play as an actor.

We’ve been treated to so many incarnations of vampires over the years. What’s been the hardest aspect of bringing a bloodsucker to life?

I’m not really aware of what’s been done so I can’t really compare it to anything. I haven’t seen the Twilight movies, and I have my own take on what a vampire should be. It’s not really influenced by anything out there.

What is the show’s approach to the vampire mythology?

If you want to kill Aidan, you have to drive him through the heart with a wooden stake or cut his head off, or both just to make sure. We can walk around in daylight, but we’re not really comfortable doing so, which was not unlike my college years!

We’re faster, we’re stronger, our senses are heightened, and we also have certain hypnotic powers. It doesn’t necessarily guarantee that all of us are good at them. Furthermore, if we’re not drinking lifeblood across the board, we’re not as strong as we could be.

Those are the rules we play by. And because Aidan is trying to kick the habit, he’s been drinking out of bagged human blood. It’ll keep him alive, but it won’t necessarily do anything great for him. He’s weakened in just about every way.

What can we expect from Aidan in upcoming episodes?

The rapport between roommates strengthens. The funny thing is me, Sam [Huntington] and Meaghan [Rath] immediately bonded when we met. We not only immediately liked each other but knew how to work with each other. For that reason they obviously hired us, but during the shooting they actually asked us to tone down the chemistry! They wanted to make sure we gave the sense that we didn’t really know each other at first and didn’t know how to talk to each other. I’ll be interested to see what fans of the British series say because that starts off with them always together and with lots of clever banter between them.

As the season progresses, the funny stuff becomes funnier, the sad stuff becomes sadder, and the intense stuff becomes more intense. As we know, Aidan is dealing with the Rebecca situation, and that becomes way more complicated too.

In Smallville, you played the iconic villain Doomsday and now you’re once again playing a character that already has a devoted fanbase. How much do you take to heart what people say about your interpretation?

It’s just like Battlestar Galactica. When that aired, no one expected it to be a big success or one of the best shows ever made, yet no one ever really talks anymore about how much crap was said about it to start with. Back then, that was a real argument.

So basically we’re going to get trashed, we’re going to get beat up. However, what I’d like to remind everyone is that we’re not looking to replace the British version. I love what I saw in that first episode. I stayed away from the other episodes because I didn’t want to unintentionally mimic what Aidan Turner was doing, but I’m looking forward to eventually seeing the rest of the series.

The thing is it’s a big win/win if you’re a fan of the British series. Because if we succeed and people like what we do, we’ll be bring a larger audience to the show. And if we fail, the success of that show will continue.

It’s something the producers of the British show are fully aware of. I was talking to [the producer of the BBC version] Rob Pursey about this. He’s all for it. We’re not trying to steal anyone’s thunder; it’s our hope the Being Human name will just grow stronger with whatever it is we do. In terms of which one the fans like better, that is simply up to them…

Being Human (US) is currently airing on Monday nights on SyFy.