Kenneth Johnson

The day after she had the locks changed, she began shooting the NBC miniseries V.

Director Ken Johnson knew his young star was troubled.

I think that there were, there were a couple of days when, uh, I saw that, that Dominique wasn't quite there, um, on the set, uh, where I could feel that there was something else distracting her and something else going on.

And, uh, a couple times I asked her, uh, "Is everything okay?" You know, "What can I do to help? You having trouble with a scene or what?" And she would say, "No, it's personal.

We exchanged greetings.

George said his brother was also in the ICU and he had been there the night before when Dominique was brought in.

Another man introduced himself to us as Ken Johnson, the director of the pilot Dominique was working on.

Waiting nearby was a young actor in the same film n- named David Packer, his eyes red from crying.

and he sort of schooled me in the art of being the leading man, the thought processes and the way to, uh, hold yourself and the way your character might, uh, I might respond to things and things like that.

So when I met Ken Johnson and Ken Johnson met me and when he saw my work, he said, that's the guy I want to play the role.

When I actually met the network, as we used to do in those days, you had to meet the network.

I walked into this little tiny cubbyhole of an office, no bigger than a telephone booth, it seemed, whereas I was expecting, as usually happened, to see a whole phalanx of people executive types sitting up going now who is this and uh let's see let's see him do some of his work you see yeah but in this case we were in this little cubbyhole and i think it was jeff sagansky who was the head of cbs at that time if that's where we would nbc i mean at that time if that's what we were doing and uh ken johnson was going to read with me to demonstrate how right i was for this role and he read both parts he read the part that he was supposed to read and then he would read my part that I was supposed to read.

And then he would read my part.

And every time he read my part, he would look over and say, isn't he great.

Do you know the story? Do we talk about that? Why they changed his name to David Banner in the TV show?

I think I've done a couple of interviews with Kenneth Johnson, who created that show and also created the miniseries V, but not any of the sequels.

And because he wants that distinction, he doesn't want to be responsible for anything that followed.

And I can't remember what the reason was, though.

The Hulk was the curse that he lived with, and Banner was the ongoing character featured.

Stan Lee and Jack Kirby created the comic book character in 1962, but producer Kenneth Johnson reshaped him for his television debut.

Bruce Banner became David Bruce Banner, as it said on his tombstone.

More of that and on.

Yeah.

It was directed by Kenneth Johnson, a name we have seen before.

He is a writer-director focused mostly in science fiction, having started on TV shows like The Bionic Woman, awesome, Incredible Hulk, awesome, and V, awesome.

Then he chipped over to movies like Short Circuit 2, not great.