"My wife and I went over to Paris," Rifkin recalls, "which was difficult, to do press for the show. Apparently, it's a huge hit in Paris. People stopped me on the street saying, 'Mr. Sloane, we love your show. You're an evil man.'
"The reaction that I get most on the street is, 'We love to hate you. Why do we like you? You're a bad man, but why do we like you?'"
In the first season of "Alias" -- which airs in a special 10 p.m. ET time slot on Sunday, April 11 -- Sloane was the boss and mentor of undercover agent Sydney Bristow (Jennifer Garner) at SD-6, supposedly a branch of the CIA. Sydney soon learned just the opposite was true, that SD-6 was evil, and she began working as a double agent for the CIA in hopes of destroying the organization.
Eventually, SD-6 was exposed, and Sloane went to jail, but that was hardly the end of the story. His connection to Sydney and her father, CIA agent Jack Bristow (Victor Garber), went much deeper than just SD-6. A tangled web of friendships, betrayals, love and death connects Sloane and the Bristows.
That's never been more true than this season, when Sloane, now a respected humanitarian and a double agent himself, admitted that he just may be Sydney's father, from an affair he had with her KGB-agent mother, Irina (Lena Olin).
"The secret is revealed but not revealed," Rifkin says. "It's half-revealed. I am that sort of pater figure on the show, but Sydney really hates me, and rightly so, in terms of her perception. For Jack and myself, Jack and Arvin were best, best friends, and the secret that comes out turns out to be a betrayal from Jack's point of view.
"To find out that somebody had an affair with your wife is a tough thing."
Making these sorts of complicated relationships work, Rifkin believes, is in large part a function of casting.
"At the beginning," he says, "we didn't know the extent of Sloane's malevolence. I don't know that J.J. [series creator J.J. Abrams] really knew. But somewhere in his crooked mind, he must have known some stuff. I think that's why he hired Victor and myself, actors who really aren't your typical series actors.
"We're both unexpected, and I think that J.J. saw something in us that he felt was appropriate."
Rikin feels that hiring him has allowed Sloane to move beyond the mustache-twirling, Snidely Whiplash sort of villain.
"I'm very careful about making sure that Sloane is not a one-dimensional villain," he says. "When J.J. and I first talked about Sloane, I said, 'I think most people think of me as playing Jack.' We didn't know then what it would turn out to be He said, 'No, I'd much rather have you play the villain, because one doesn't think of you as a villain.'
"Although I've played lots of villains, my nature is to be very open and very loving. That's just who I am. He sensed that I could bring some stuff to the character. Playing evil is not very hard to do, really, but playing evil and making it real and interesting and different is the challenge."
In Rifkin's mind, even Sloane has limits, and often they have to do with the people he loves (and yes, shriveled and spotty as it is, Sloane has a heart). For example, there was one scene on an airplane where Sloane, who had just lost his wife, Emily (Amy Irving), was having a conversation with Irina.
"In the script," Rifkin says, "they had written that there was some sort of sexual suggestiveness between Irina and myself. It was a moment of electricity. I was disturbed by it. Emily had just died.
"I went to the writers and said, 'She just died. It's enough trouble with me being a villain, but to have my ready to screw someone else -- forgive me -- right after my wife died, doesn't feel right for the character. Whatever empathy the audience has for Sloane is going to be gone immediately.'
"They got it. They totally understood. They said, 'You're right. That's not what we meant.' They're great that way."
Then, of course, there's Sloane's ongoing and obsessive fascination with the 15th-century Italian inventor, Milo Giacomo Rambaldi, who's sort of a take-off on Leonardo Da Vinci and Nostradamus combined.
"Rambaldi is more important than anyone can imagine," Rifkin says. "Rambaldi is Sloane's driving force. It changed his life. See, the thing about Sloane that's so interesting is he believes that whatever it is that Rambaldi teaches him, is for the good of the world. He really, really believes that, not in some crazy, maniacal, 'Strangelove'-ian sort of way. He believes the world will be truly, truly better for this. That's his M.O.
"He's not a stupid person, and he's not a sociopath, although some people tend to believe he's a sociopath. He's a man of clarity and a man of vision. He's very intelligent, and a little misguided -- like some politicians we know. I do think, ultimately, he does mean well. But power in the hands of certain kinds of minds is a very dangerous thing."
