Lex Medlin plays Owen French on Lifetime’s highly-addictive fan-favorite show
Drop Dead Diva that airs Sundays at 9p. His character ended last season with his life in peril after he caught his fiance’ Jane kissing a co-worker on their wedding day. You see the Judge had heart issues and seeing Jane kissing Grayson was too much for him and his heart to handle. To make matters even more interesting for Owen’s character just as it appeared he died, Dead Jane’s soul decided to come back to Earth after a few years in heaven.
Most people, like me, assumed that Dead Jane would go into Owen that was presumed to be dead, and we were wrong. So I wanted to know from Lex was he like, “oh no I am going to be playing a dead woman trapped inside a man’s body?” He told me, “I wasn’t thinking, ‘Oh no’, I was thinking, ‘Oh wow! Owen is going to become Jane. That was my initial thought to where it was headed.” Then he explained, “Actorwise I was very much intrigued to possibly play that. But then I know the show’s creator and I knew it could possibly not go that way. So I called (the show creator) Josh Berman and said, ‘You got to give me a heads up, whichever way you go you need to let me know. If I am going to play a woman, I need that two months of prep.'” Well when the show was finally picked up after it was cancelled, Berman and Medlin had dinner together and he found he would not be Dead Jane in Owen’s body.
While I liked the aspect of what could’ve been, he told me not everyone felt the same way. He said, “It’s so strange to me because there were a lot of people who were not happy with that and there were a lot of people who were. I was fascinated by how polarizing that reaction was.” Then he added, “I was open either way. But I am not going to lie to you, the actor part was drooling a little bit to playing a woman.”
So now we know that he isn’t playing Dead Jane in Owen’s body, we are starting to see the ramifications from that kiss between his ex-fiance’ with her soul’s mate Grayson on his failed wedding day. What will we be seeing from Owen in the next few weeks, Lex couldn’t tell me much, but he did say his character will be going through a lot of emotions this season now that he has seen first big love kiss another man. Owen is really struggling with the loss of Jane and Lex hints that the Judge might not be dealing with it in the best of ways. In fact tonight he has a monologue at the end of the show, that he tells me, we should look out for. He says that after you hear it, you will get to see where his character is going over the next few episodes.
So when I asked him where Owen will wind up this season, he told me, “You know what to be honest, I don’t know exactly where it’s going to end up. I’m just as curious as you guys, I am waiting for the next few scripts to see what happens. But I don’t think it is going to be what anybody expects.” Then he elaborated, “I have learned that much from Diva, just when I think it is going to be one thing, it is something else. Which I think is great.”
So he learned you never know what is going to happen next on the show, but has he learned anything by playing a judge on it? He laughed with his response, “At the end of the day, I definitely wouldn’t hire me to represent you for anything. Not unless you enjoy prison.”
In his next role Lex Medlin will be playing someone who puts people in prison and not because he represented them. He’s starring as Officer Kennedy in the upcoming straight-to-DVD movie The Little Rascals. He is looking forward to seeing how the film turns out because it “was basically a month of 6 children and a dog beating the hell out of me.” Something his 6 year old daughter and I are also anticipating as much as he is.
But for now we will watch him every Sunday at 9p on Lifetime’s Drop Dead Diva.
