Book about reincarnation inspires creator of ‘Past Life’

By Robert Philpot, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Texas

Dallas-bred writer-producer David Hudgins hadn’t given the idea of reincarnation much thought when The Reincarnationist, a book by M.J. Rose, crossed his desk. He says he was immediately intrigued, and saw the potential for a TV series.

Then fate sent him a message. Well, Oprah Winfrey did, anyway.

“She was doing a series on [reincarnation], with Dr. Oz and this guy named Brian Weiss, who’s probably the foremost expert in past-life regression,” Hudgins says. “And she did a couple of shows where she brought people on and regressed them, and the way people responded to it really struck me. [I thought] ‘This is absolutely fascinating. I don’t know if I believe in it or not, but there is a world here and there are a ton of stories you can tell.'”

That epiphany led to Past Life, a new Fox show about a team of past-life regression investigators who help clients such as, say, a teenage boy whose strange behavior leads to the revelation that he’s actually the reincarnation of someone who died before he was born. The team is led by Dr. Kate McGinn (the believer, played by Kelli Giddish) and former New York police detective Price Whatley (the skeptic, played by Nicholas Bishop).

Although the set-up is immediately reminiscent of Fox shows ranging from The X-Files to Bones, Fringe and Lie to Me, Hudgins says he hopes to make the show — which he calls a very loose adaptation of Rose’s book — more than just a crime-solving procedural.

“We’re going to constantly ask the question ‘What if?,'” Hudgins says. Regardless of whether you believe in reincarnation, Hudgins’ life has plenty of “pasts” in it, in the resume sense. A look at a few of his “past lives.”…

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