Why Roy Scheider Trashed SeaQuest DSV During Its Second Season

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The late Roy Scheider left behind a long resume of great work, but he ended up highly displeased by his time on SeaQuest DSV. A two-time Oscar-nominee, Scheider is best known for playing Chief Martin Brody in Steven Spielberg's 1975 classic Jaws, and its sequel Jaws 2. Scheider also starred in several other classics, including The French Connection, Marathon Man, and All That Jazz. He also took the lead for 2010: The Year We Make Contact, a somewhat contested sequel to Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Roy Scheider was also known as a man who didn't mince words, once admitting that not even The Devil himself could've talked him into returning to play Chief Brody inJaws 3, after having a terrible time working with director Jeannot Swarzc on Jaws 2. Scheider wasn't a man who suffered fools either, and those who he found to be foolish often weren't spared getting on his bad side. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing in some cases, as Scheider also wouldn't let himself be pushed around by studio executives.

Related: How To Watch Every Jaws Movie

By 1993, Scheider was in his early 60s but still actively working as an actor, and ready for a new project. He signed on to play lead character Captain Nathan Bridger on SeaQuest DSV, a sci-fi show that counted his old Jaws director Steven Spielberg as an executive producer. Unfortunately, by the middle of season 2, the star had grown to hate SeaQuest DSV, feeling that it had become "childish trash." The star of a major TV show being so blunt about his opinion of it in public is nearly unheard of, but it turns out Scheider had good reasons behind his comments.

WhenSeaQuest DSV began, its mission statement was to be smart sci-fi, setting itself not too far into the then