Here are the interviews I conducted on the flight deck of the U.S.S. Midway during the Stargate: Continuum Comic-Con red carpet premiere. Check out Gateworld for more coverage of the event.
Shaun Farrell: What can you tell us about the miniseries you’re developing with the Scifi Channel?
Ben Browder: Going Homer? Still developing it. We’re still figuring out what it is Scifi wants versus what we had pitched to them with the first outline. My writing partner is currently in Australia directing a series, so we’re exchanging emails and continuing to work on the outline. Hopefully we’ll get a script very soon. It’s exciting, but it’s a slow process.
As soon as the writer’s strike happened, it’s pens down. That’s six months. Then a few months later, Scifi got notes, so it’s more about the scheduling and getting all the pieces together.
SF: What is your writing process like? How do you work with your partner?
BB: Some stuff I do on my own. I tend to do the big, broader ideas — the stupid ideas, I call them. And then Andrew goes, “That doesn’t work.” And I say, “Yeah it does. You do it like this.” And then we argue about it until we find something that works. On my own, I just slap the stupid idea up there and then I go forward.
SF: Which do you enjoy more: writing or acting?
BB: Writing is good because you can do it on your own. It’s frustrating because you do it on your own. Acting is great because it’s there. It’s performance oriented. You do it and you’re done. Then you second guess it, but you can’t go back and touch it again. They’re completely different mindsets.
The first thing I wrote that I performed it, I remember hearing the words from the cast for the first time and I didn’t recognize them. I thought, I didn’t write that, what are they doing? I realized I did write that, but what an actor does to a writer’s words is always disconcerting. The first time I did my own stuff I forgot most of my lines, because suddenly I’m having to rediscover them in a different way. It’s a very interesting process.
(Martin Wood stepped in at this point to tell a story about peeing on Ben Browder’s hand in the Artic. A survival buddy’s obligation. Don’t ask me. Back to the interview.)
SF: Can I ask you a question about your subtext process? How do you develop your subtext as an actor? Do you write it all out before you make any choices on your lines?
BB: I used to write copious notes, and I then found that I would get locked into those notes.
SF: You couldn’t think outside of them?
BB: No, it’s just that once it’s on the page and you’re looking at it, you’re constantly reminded of the thought you had before. It depends on the working situation. In a really good working situation, you come in, you know the words, and the scene unfolds for itself. It happens with what you know, what you know about the situation, and what’s going on between the characters. For instances, when I was working on Farscape, I would come in and I would just wait to see what Claudia Black did and play off of that.
(At this point, Beau Bridges grabbed Ben’s backside, and they moved down the red carpet. Ben lamented that they didn’t have it on video, but I was there. I saw it. Sorry, Mr. Bridges, and thank you, Ben, for your thoughtful answers. Moments later, Michael Shanks stood before me.)
Shaun Farrell: After ten seasons and a couple of films, Daniel Jackson has been thoroughly explored, but what is one unexplored area of the character that you would like to see explored in future installments?
Michael Shanks: Oh, God! I would like to see a little more delving into the character’s origins, his back-story. I was always curious what made this guy the social misfit that he is — so obsessive and dedicated. I would like to see some of that explored, but whether or not it does I’ve had such a great opportunity with this character. To go crazy seventeen times, to have multiple personalities — it’s an actor’s dream to be on a show like this. I can hardly ask for anything more. But if they were going to do anything, I’d like to see a little bit more of that.
I’d like to see a little bit more interplay with some of the characters that we rarely get to see, and l’d like Rick and I to have a last hooray with them. Things like that. Doing those again is always fun, but in terms of things we’ve never done before, a little bit of his back-story.
SF: We know what happened to his parents, and I’m blanking on trying to come up with more than that.
MS: Me, too. We know a little bit about his education in terms of his personal back-story, but there’s more to investigate and play with.
SF: You do some writing. Did you write about your own history for the character?
MS: When I first started I was keen. I would go to museums and look at Egyptian artifacts and all sorts of stuff, and as time wore on and we created our own mythology for the show, any historical work that I did was thrown out the window because we were rewriting history for our own purposes.
In terms of background for the character, I took what I could from the Spader portrayal in the movie and stole what I could, and added a few tidbits that the writers years later would change, so I started just taking the script pages and saying, “Tell me. I’ll follow you.”
Reporter: Do you wish you had more time to explore the characters?
MS: The one thing about science fiction, and especially our show because it’s an action show, the first thing that has to go when you’re writing and directing is character development. And that’s why we’ve seen so little of it. It’s always about the resolution of the problem, and the confrontation, and the conflict. The movie [Stargate: Continuum] has such a nice clip to it that I understand why we couldn’t delve too deeply into where these characters are going. And I think that Brad, to his credit, wrote the [injury to Daniel Jackson in the film] as a solution to a problem that he hadn’t foreseen when he wrote the original draft, which was I couldn’t go the Artic. So he had to justify Daniel not going on this long walk to see the submarine. I don’t know if he fully realized what a great opportunity for an actor it gave me. He was worried that I’d think it sucks, but I thought it was awesome. I get to really do something. I would have loved to delve deeper into that kind of thing, just what he goes through and the ramifications. But the show is what it is, and if you delve too deeply into that, you take away from the pacing. A lot of people have said that they would like to see more from all of the characters about how they established themselves in this new life. Again, it’s one of the great sacrifices that we have to make it an action epic, but there are always more movies and things like that to explore.
SF: Knowing and hoping that there are more films in the future, how does that effect you as an actor? Do you aggressively seek other roles, or do you hold back a little bit so you can be available?
MS: The only thing it does is make myself and my wife think twice before leaving Vancouver because we love living there. We have a great family life there. It’s a great thing to have. It’s a great group of people. It’s always wonderful to go back to it. It becomes a little bit of a tap dance because you want to move on with your career, but at the same time this is so comfortable and you’re so used to it. But now it’s gotten to the point where this is great, if it goes on longer, fantastic, but we really have to get on with our careers. So, Christopher broke out the pen and wrote his scripts, and I started auditioning for everything under the sun again. We’ll see what happens, but we’re always happy and welcoming to come back to the Stargate universe.
(Thank you, Michael, for your kind attention. It’s amazing really. There was so much happening on that red carpet, but when Michael and Ben and Amanda where answering my questions, they focused solely on me, blocking out every distraction. Having worked on a few films myself, I know where they developed those skills. Amanda Tapping stepped up to me next.)
Shaun Farrell: Working on two TV shows and two films, how have you balanced your work life with your family life?
Amanda Tapping: It’s a crazy thing. It’s all about weekends, and the trick for me is as soon as I walk through the door, work is nonexistent. The cell phone turns off, the computer turns off, and I try to do all my homework in the car, parked on the side of the road, (laughter) or in my trailer at work. And I have Olivia come visit me as often as she can. I was really blessed in the first eighteen months of her life. She came with me to work. She was in my trailer, I fed her, so she was with me all the time. Consequently, she’s a really happy, well-adjusted, secure little kid. The hardest thing for me is when I miss a day. If leave for work at five o’clock in the morning and get home at nine o’clock at night, I’ve missed an entire day of her life. Now she can talk on the phone, which is cool, but it’s a hard juggling act.
Thankfully for me right now, shooting Sanctuary is a short season. We’re shooting thirteen episodes, so I know it’s a finite amount of time.
SF: But you also have double duty because you’re producer and the lead. How is that going?
AT: It’s awesome. It’s a huge learning curve and a ton of work. I don’t have a spare moment in my day. That’s the truth of it. As an actor I always thought, “I have to go into my trailer and memorize my lines for the next scene, and I’m so busy!” Bullshit. Seriously, now I don’t even have lunches, I’m doing interviews and meetings every second of every day. But how lucky am I? I’m not complaining. It’s just the way it is.
Reporter: Why did Sanctuary go from web to TV? Did you get a lot of feedback on it?
AT: We got a huge amount of feedback. We had over four million hits on our website. We just started getting this good, worldwide buzz. The truth of the matter is, we would have loved to stay on the web, because I think that’s where the fan base is, and we really wanted to do the full interactive convergence of all media, but it’s impossible to monetize. I think we’re about three years ahead of our time.
SF: You’re setting the stage.
AT: We are. We’ve actually had a lot of people follow in our footsteps, and we’ve been able to help them. But right now television is a great place for us. We have the money and time to do the visual effects and to render the show the way we want to do it. It’s a bigger, better Sanctuary than what we saw on the web. I’m actually really proud of that. I’m glad that the transition was natural, and it’s a good place for us to be.
SF: We’re being told to stop talking to you.
AT: Stop talking!
SF: Thank you very much.
AT: Thanks, guys.
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