This week’s W.Y.O.S.T. subject is Stacy Haiduk (pronounced “High-Duke”). And the answer is no — she has never been in a Star Trek show. But she’s had feature roles in a few other sci-fi franchises. I wanted to work another woman into the list, and she was someone who quickly came to mind. She pinged my radar all the way back in 1988, when at the age of 20, she was cast in the role of Clark Kent’s childhood friend Lana Lang (the female lead) in the Superboy series, which ran for four seasons.
Prior to this, Michigan-born Haiduk had studied dancing, singing, and theater, appeared in some music videos, and did some commercial work. After Superboy was cancelled prematurely in 1992, due to ongoing legal battles between Ilya Salkind and Warner Brothers, Haiduk wasted little time finding work. Her piercing blue eyes and red hair helped her stand out from the crowd, and in 1993, she landed a major role as Lieutenant Commander Kathryn Hitchcock on SeaQuest DSV. Which, let’s face it, was really just Star Trek underwater, with Roy Scheider as captain and Peter DeLuise as Data. Right? So maybe in a way, Haiduk really was on a Star Trek show?
At any rate, Haiduk left SeaQuest DSV after the first season, when the shooting moved to Florida and she didn’t want to follow. In hindsight, this could have ended up being a David Caruso move, but as it turned out, the series only lasted another season and a half. I never actually watched the show, so I can’t say whether this was a good thing or a bad thing. But two years later, Haiduk landed on my radar again, as Lilly Langtry on the short-lived FOX series Kindred: The Embraced. Which, as I discussed in last week’s Brian Thompson profile, was a great show based on the White Wolf role-playing game “Vampire: The Embraced”, starring C. Thomas Howell, which dealt with clans of vampires with wildly conflicting agendas. As Lilly Langtry, Haiduk played the primogen of the romantic, art-loving Toreador clan, which more than any of the other clans was based on the Anne Rice style of vampire that was so popular at the time. Sadly, the show was cancelled after only eight episodes.
It would be a decade before Haiduk landed another regular job. In that time, she had a recurring role as the mother of Jake’s son on Melrose Place, as well as one-shot roles in high profile shows like Nash Bridges, The Profiler, Charmed, Brimstone, The Sentinel, The X-Files, ER, CSI (New York & Miami), NCIS, Crossing Jordan, and Cold Case. Interestingly, there seems to be a progression during this period from mostly sci-fi shows to mostly procedural/cop shows. Which makes it all the more fitting that in 2006, she arrived on the geek scene again in the popular TV show Heroes, playing not a superhero or a supervillain, but an FBI agent. She appeared in six episodes, all in the first season, and it’s uncertain if we’ll see more of her character in the future.
During 2008, Haiduk had an ongoing role on the soap opera All My Children, a leading role in the horror flick Within, is in production on a sci-fi project called Level Seven, and is slated to appear on the TV shows Prison Break and Life in the fall. She and her husband currently live in California.
Learn more about Stacy Haiduk …