David James Elliott has played plenty of men in uniform over the years — military officers, lawyers, cops — but in Revival, he trades in his usual procedural footing for something far stranger.
The new SYFY series, premiering Thursday, June 12 at 10/9c, drops viewers into a small town in rural Wisconsin where the dead suddenly return to life — only they’re not monsters. They look and act like they always did. Mostly.
Elliott plays Wayne Cypress, a sheriff, father, and exasperated voice of reason trying to keep the town — and his own fractured family — from falling apart.
While his daughter Dana (Melanie Scrofano) investigates the phenomenon as a local officer, Wayne sees everything she doesn’t say.
That includes whatever’s going on with her and the CDC liaison — and maybe even his other daughter, Em, who’s resurfaced with a few secrets of her own.
We sat down with Elliott ahead of the premiere to talk about stepping into genre for the first time, playing a quietly observant father, and why he sees Revival as a little more real than it might appear.
Elliott may be best known for courtroom and action-heavy roles, but with SYFY’s Revival, he steps into unfamiliar territory — and he’s more than ready for it.
“I’ve never really delved into this genre, the whole sci-fi world,” he told me. “Though I was a fan. In my younger years, I read sci-fi. I read a lot of sci-fi. I read the script, and I thought it was a terrific script, and I loved the character immediately. And so after that, I was it.”
Wayne Cypress isn’t your typical genre character. As the town grapples with the impossible, he stays grounded — partly out of duty, partly out of sheer stubbornness.
He’s a man who doesn’t flinch easily, even when the world around him starts rewriting the rules. For Elliott, that blend of steady presence and emotional complexity was part of the appeal.
“He’s the anchor of the family,” Elliott said. “But he’s an anchor that’s dragging, certainly, when this story comes in and the ship is being pushed towards the shore or the rocky coast.”
Elliott found plenty to relate to in the character. “I have two kids of my own, so that was relatable. One’s a girl and one’s a boy. They’re 10 years apart, so there was the divide, very similar.
“I worked for my father in my youth, and I remembered how frustrated he would get with things that I would do. I’d crack the car up or the company car… It was fun to sort of play the opposite of that.”
He also drew from personal experience with chaos. “I’ve certainly had chaos in my life, in my real life. And the fun thing about what we get to do is we get to put ourselves in environments and in worlds where we would never be. So that’s the fun part of being an actor.”
When asked if he ever found himself channeling his own father during the show’s more exasperated parenting scenes, he didn’t hesitate: “Absolutely. I was channeling him in the frustration scenes with Dana.
“I mean, my old man… and in my own frustration as a father with my son. My son is a little more immediate. He’s 10 years the junior of my daughter, and he’s still in college. So there are still some frustrating moments. Easy to relate to.”
One of the quiet joys of the performance is Wayne’s knack for observing — he notices more than he says. Elliott enjoyed playing that layer of the character.
“Wouldn’t it be great always to be that observant? It was great. That’s part of the depth of this piece. It is not a one or two-dimensional piece. There are so many levels that can be played in this. And so it’s really fun to have that kind of depth.”
He also tied it back to his training.
“We did an exercise when I was in theater school where you would have to walk into a room and you’d be in there… you were allowed to be in there 20 seconds or something, and then you walked out, and then you had to write down all the things that you took in that were going on in that room.
“And it was something that, apparently, we were told at the time, certainly detectives do. It’s something that they work on.”
As Revival toggles between emotional realism and supernatural madness, Elliott said he gravitated to both sides of the performance challenge.
“I always love playing emotional reality and being true to that moment. I’m sort of a guy who wears his heart on his sleeve. What you see is what you get with me. So I’m pretty emotionally available most often. So that’s a familiar place for me to work from.”
But he also relishes the absurd.
“I love playing the fish out of water. I love playing the guy who’s just besought with things that are completely out of his control, because there’s a lot of opportunity for comedy in that, I think. And… It’s fun to put myself in that situation when it’s not real. Certainly not fun when it’s real.”
And he sees the show’s themes as having broader resonance. “It’s a crazy world we’re in right now, and stuff is coming at us at a million miles an hour. Look at AI and all of that madness that’s happening.
“You just go, good God. So Revival can also be a bit of a metaphor for where we are presently. There are certainly zombies on the streets with all the drugs…”
Whether metaphorical or literal, Elliott’s Wayne gives Revival its emotional grounding.
“Conflict is so interesting. And there’s no end to conflict in this piece — interior and exterior, familial and just in the world and the town and all these wacky characters and the madness that keeps unfolding and growing and twisting and turning. It was a fun piece, fun to watch.”
Don’t miss David James Elliott as Wayne Cypress when Revival premieres Thursday, June 12 at 10/9c on SYFY.
We’ll have more exclusive interviews with the cast and creators leading up to the premiere, including Melanie Scrofano and Romy Weltman, and showrunners Aaron B. Koontz and Luke Boyce.
If you’re into mystery, family drama, and just a little bit of the bizarre, you’ll want to stick around.
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