BEVERLY HILLS, Calif — Ray Wise is perfectly cast as Satan in the upcoming CW series "Reaper" — and I mean that in the nicest possible way.

Wise plays the Devil — you know, the guy who rules in hell — in the very promising new series that's scheduled to premiere Tuesday, Sept. 25.

"We looked high and low for the right Devil, I have to say," said executive producer Debra Spera. "We had spent a lot of time looking at many actors and their portrayal of the devil.

Then executive producer Tom Spezialy suggested Wise, "and we were like — 'Oh my (gosh), perfect,"' Spera said. "Ray walked in and smiled at us, and that was it."

He does indeed have a devilish smile, by the way. He can both make you laugh and creep you out a bit when he smiles at you and says, "I just think the Devil finds all of you very amusing."

"Reaper" is sort of an action comedy, with the emphasis on comedy. Sam (Bret Harrison) learns on his 21st birthday that, before he was born, his parents sold his soul to the Devil. (There's an explanation; they're not bad folks.) The Devil doesn't drag him away — he puts Sam to work retrieving souls who have escaped from hell.

As written by the "Reaper" staff and performed by Wise, the Devil doesn't seem like such a bad boss. He's sort of charming, sort of funny — but there's definitely an iron fist inside that velvet glove.

"It doesn't serve the Devil to be evil, to come at you with horns and a pitchfork," said creator/executive producer Michele Fazekas. "His purpose is to tempt, to cajole, to get you to do bad things. So if he's scaring you off, you're not going to listen to him. He is going to be solicitous. He's going to be your buddy to get you to do evil things."

"Ray Wise is a bad hombre, OK?" said executive producer Mark Gordon. "Don't let him fool you. (The Devil) is not such a great guy as he seems."

"And anything he says could be a complete lie," said Fazekas.

There are some echoes of the most evil character Wise said he's ever played — Leland Palmer in "Twin Peaks." Which is one of the many things he said he's drawing on to play this part.

Including, "Oh, I guess 37 years of acting and about 400 movies that I've seen," said Wise. "(I'm) pretty much remembering every devil that's ever been done on the screen — big and small — then forgetting all about that and doing my devil, which is a combination of probably me and every other character I've ever played, from Caligula Caesar, the mad emperor of Rome, to Leland Palmer, to a variety of villainous and terrible people.

"But I play a lot of good people, too, and so I can inject some of that into the devil, too."

All of which he combines into a character who's funny and threatening at the same time. As Harrison already discovered when the two were doing a "Reaper" scene.

"We were just sort of fooling around, and I really let him have it," Wise said.

"I got a little scared," Harrison said. "He yelled at me, said some profanities, but then I realized he was joking after I ran into the bathroom, crying."

"Because I do have a darkness inside me," Wise joked.

Tyler Labine, who plays Sam's buddy, Sock, said a lot of it comes from Wise's "huge grin." And that makes him more threatening than the aliens Labine faced on his last TV series.

"I mean, you've gotten a good look at this guy," he said. "Just Ray Wise, period, is more scary than 'Invasion."'

---

E-mail: pierce@desnews.com