'Third Watch' actor goes from cop to collar

By Catherine Foster, Globe Staff, 6/14/2002

Jason Wiles, who normally plays the hard-boiled cop Bosco on ''Third Watch,'' will play a young seminarian with a past in ''Mass Appeal,'' at the Cape Playhouse. The Catholic world of the play is familiar to the former altar boy from Kansas City. He went to a school where a priest was later found to have abused 20 to 30 boys over 10 years. It's not lost on Wiles that a play about a friendship between a priest (played by Malachy McCourt) and a seminarian, despite being a comedy, is going to have certain overtones in the current scandal.

''Obviously, that's the first thing that's going to pop into people's minds,'' he says. ''It's scary. It's a crazy evening of theater. But I just feel the play is about what you believe and staying true to what you believe.''