In the upcoming movie “The Secret Life of Bees” (starring Jennifer Hudson, Dakota Fanning and Queen Latifah) Tristan Wilds portrays Zack Taylor, a young, idealistic teen growing up in the tumultuous racially charged sixties during the height of the civil rights movement. As a young black man trying to find his way to becoming a lawyer, Zack works part-time for the Boatwright sisters who introduced him to a world of bee keeping, love, sisterhood and a forbidden friendship with Lily Owens (Dakota Fanning); a young white girl on a quest to find out the truth about her dead mother.

I had a chance to sit down and chat with Tristan about his role in this film, bringing “The Wire” to a close and his newest adventure on The CW’s smash hit remake of 90210 - which airs Tuesday nights at 8pm.

EM: You are known for HBO’s “The Wire” and most recently the revamped 90210, so how did you get involved with this film?

TW: My manager told me about the movie at first. Then after I read the script we got a call for it and it was Gina (Gina Prince-Bythewood) and she said she thought about me for the part and she wanted me to come out and audition for it. One thing lead to another!

EM: Have you read the book?

TW: Actually, I did. It was funny because I read it in the eighth grade. It was on the summer reading list. I did Cliffs Notes through it so I didn’t really “read” the book until I was formed with the role so I went back to read it, really read it and understand the character thoroughly get the gist of the whole story.

EM: How was it working with such a powerful cast of women where you were one of only a few guys that had a primary role in the film?

TW: It was amazing to be around so much female power. It’s weird, it’s tangible even, you can feel it. It’s crazy, it gives you such a good feeling. You always feel at home you always feel safe. Just like my character in the story, he always felt safe around because they had so much power…togetherness. You would catch me on set days when I wasn’t working just to be around them.

EM: It is emotionally draining to do scenes like the one in the theater where your character is ripped from his seat by an angry group of racially charged men? Do you find that it makes you emotional filming them?

TW: Definitely. Especially since you have to get emotional, you have to build up so much emotion and then have it yanked out of you just like in real life. If anybody goes through that you have so much emotion and every time you’re getting pulled or every time you cry. Yeah man, it is emotionally draining but it’s our job.

EM: Have you seen the film yet?

TW: Yes, I’ve finally seen it and it’s amazing.

EM: When you see a scene like the movie theater, what is your reaction? Because it’s obviously different when you are filming and then when you see yourself in it.

TW: You know, the way that it was edited and the way that it was all put together and how it sinks so well with the book…it kind of made me swell up inside. It was a proud feeling. I can also step out of myself and see that this is a really good movie. It almost made me cry.  I didn’t cry…

EM: It made ME cry! I was a hot mess.

EM: As your career is really starting to take off, how do you feel about the progress of what you’re doing? Because in The Wire you go from playing Michael, a character that’s a drug dealer who has to show no emotion to this film where you have to produce a lot of range and the teenage love interest?

TW: It was fun. It was fun to step out of the character of Michael. I mean I love Michael, Michael was a great character and he was so great to play but I like to play…I still a kid at heart so to get that chance to play inside of a character and have fun with it, have as much fun as like with it…it’s just a lot of fun.

EM: How is it different being on a set like this compared to a set like 90210?

TW: Umm…a lot more ladies! No, no, no…on the set of 90210 because we’re all around the same age and we’re all pretty close nit it’s more like a school environment. Every time I go to work it’s like school. You never know what’s going to happen, you always play pranks on each other, it’s really stuff like that. Coming on a set like this with such an aura of family it’s more like going to a family reunion or the feeling that you get when you see your family on Thanksgiving. You know?

EM: You sang a little in this movie. Do you have any plans to start a music career?

TW: Maybe a little bit. I’m writing a whole lot of music right now but eventually I probably put something out there.

EM: How was it working with Dakota Fanning?

TW: She’s amazing. Words can’t even express how amazing that little girl is. I can’t even say little girl because she is so grown up. She made me look at myself and say dang, I’m a little boy! Yeah, she’s amazing.

EM: We’re so use to thinking of Dakota Fanning as this little girl. So how was the kissing scene? Was it awkward at all?

TW: You know what was funny; it was a lot more awkward for me than it was for her. She took it like it was nothing like “come on now I’m ready, let’s do this” and I’m like “I hope I kiss her right, are my lips nice are they moist”…but it came together really nice.

EM: Preparing for the role of Zack, this takes place in the sixties during the civil rights era did you do any research, talk to your family (Tristan’s grandfather was present at the interview)?

TW: Of course talking with my family and Gina made sure that we all had our research down pat. She gave us books, she gave us music, DVDs to watch, websites to look at…just all different things that would just throw us back into the sixties…how the sixties were in the south. It was a lot of research done on all of our parts; from getting the talking down, the different dialects, what they listened to, how they acted, all of that down to the smallest nook and cranny. It took a lot of preparation but we got it done.

EM: Do you think you pulled off the South Carolina accent?

TW: I hope I did!

EM: I have to ask you about the bees.

TW: It was a weird thing to start because we first did bee school and I’m learning how to do it and it was all cool but then Gina said you guys have to be experienced bee keepers and I’m like yeah, yeah, that’s alright, and that’s no problem. Then she was like you gotta take the gloves off. What? Take what off? So yeah, we had to learn how to handle the bees with no gloves. After a couple of tries and getting stung about twice I got to the point where it was cool. I was able to let bees crawl on my fingers without being scared.

EM: One of the main themes of the book was that bee keeping is a metaphor for life. Do you believe that?

TW: Oh definitely. The bees as a whole and just bees being mainly females and that they work so hard it shows the dynamic of women, especially the Boatwright sisters. They work so hard to produce all of this honey, to produce the sweetness for the world.

Interview by
Tiffany N. D’Emidio
Originally Posted 10.14.08

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Last week I had a chance to participate in a Q and A with Josh Bernstein, the star of the Discovery Channel’s new adventure show Into The Unknown.  Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to make the call, but our friends over at Media Boulevard and Deadbolt.com did the interview. Here’s the full transcript.

With this show, can you tell us just a little bit about the process of deciding what to cover on Into the Unknown and really at what point did you get involved? Do you come up with ideas or do you get involved after the research is done and just become the pretty face in front of the camera? How does that work?

Josh There’s a pretty large group of people at both Darlow Smithson Productions and at Discovery Channel that contribute ideas. I think we went through about 130,140 different show or episode ideas before we narrowed it down to these eight. And the criteria for selection are pretty specific. There needs to be a central mystery or some question that I can explore for the duration of the hour. There needs to be some sort of compelling and hopefully attractive question. Then the locations must be beautiful because we’re shooting in high definition. There has to be an adventurous component that allows me to be hands on.

I’m an executive producer, so I’m involved in all aspects. I came to Discovery to create a series. It’s not like anything that has been given to me saying, “Here, be the pretty face.” It’s far more involved in each episode. Obviously, when it comes time for the research and the preproduction, I’m in the field filming while they’re working on the next few shows. So once the show is green lit by the network, then I’m given the notice saying the next episode, let’s say, three months from now, four months from now is going to be on elephants in East Africa and I’m given the research materials and then I have some time to get up-to-speed.

So how much filming, or how much time actually goes into the filming for what becomes an hour of TV?

It’s usually two and half weeks, sometimes three weeks between flights from, let’s say, not that they all start out of the U.S., but from New York to location, then on location. And then I usually do two shows back to back, sometimes I did three. So you figure two, three weeks and then another two, three weeks and then back for a few days and then off again. It goes like that for the course of eight months. I started December 1^st and I just finished a few weeks ago.

I was just curious, what did you find out about gladiators that really surprised you?

I didn’t know there were female gladiators, although I don’t know if that made it into the show tonight. I didn’t realize that they were mostly vegetarian, which is surprising. That’s one of the data points that we got out of the strong team analysis that we looked at, their bones. I didn’t realize that even though they were lowest of the low in terms of the status and hierarchy in ancient Rome, they also could be simultaneously glorified as celebrities. It’s an interesting paradox. Obviously Hollywood has to focus on the stories to create a blockbuster, but there’s a lot more to the reality of day to day life of gladiators that I found fascinating. Plus the role that Christianity played in the decline of the gladiatorial games, I wasn’t aware of the religious connection.

Now you also mentioned that the locations need to be beautiful because of HD. Was that always possible? You’re in the desert and stuff sometimes, so it doesn’t really look that nice.

Really? Oh no, I like deserts. I think the cameraman, the DP’s job is to make the show visually exciting. That’s what I meant more than we don’t only shoot in beautiful locations, but we want the cinematography to be compelling and to support the sense of bigness that we hope this series represents. So even if we’re in a dark cave in Egypt exploring Akhenaten or the 18^th Dynasty, we want it to be shot in a way that makes you want to say, “This is incredible and I’m even more grateful that it’s in high definition.”

I was also wondering, did you overlap, did you revisit places that you’ve already been to for Digging for the Truth?

Absolutely, yes. It’s hard not to, so yes, I did a show in Peru where I’ve been to Peru several times. But I was exploring a region and a culture that I had not explored previously, the Chachapoya, the Cloud Warriors episode. Egypt, of course, I’ve done, what, seven, eight shows in Egypt for Digging, and worked with Dr. Zahi Hawass many times. I even explored the 18^th Dynasty. I looked at Nefertiti; I looked at King Tut, but I never really focused on Akhenaten. So if there’s any overlap that’s direct in the sense that I’ve already done this, we just shoot it down and I don’t do that episode. We just move on to the next idea. It’s important that I feel like I can engage intellectually and honestly with whatever material I’m exploring.

So, Josh, can you talk about—I know you’ve seen a lot of really neat things, really fascinating things with this. What’s been your best experience between this show, or the last show, whichever had the best experience in it for you?

It’s hard to define best experience because there’ve been so many. Unless you have a specific best in mind, I think that every show offers something that I take away and then hopefully the viewers will connect with, whether it’s Noah’s Flood, I got to scuba dive the site called Atlit-Yam off the coast of Israel. It’s the oldest Neolithic and best preserved Neolithic site in the region, oldest man-made well in the world. You wouldn’t know it. You can take a boat ride over it and not know it. It’s 25-30 feet below you at the ocean floor. That’s a moment for me, being able to go with the leading archaeologists in the region and to explore and look for human remains that have not surfaced in 8,000 years.

Being on safari in East Africa, exploring the issues behind elephant attacks and why these elephants, which are normally gentle creatures, are now enraged and killing humans. I think safaris are always incredible. I’ve been fortunate enough to have gone on a few in the past, but to do it with cameras and to try and talk to elephant experts with an issue that’s very real, also that was one of the best experiences I’ve had.

On any of the shows have you ever really found yourself just totally surprised at how they turned out? Or does it pretty much end up the way you, I guess, anticipate it will?

Well, there’s flexibility in the storyline, so that there isn’t, like you must say this and I must do that. We have to keep it honest and real and allow the flexibility of the interviews to take us where they go. When I was doing the show, the last show that we finished wrapping a few weeks ago, “Life on Mars,” we were at NASA and Jet Propulsion Laboratories while the Phoenix Mars Lander was sending data streams back to all the scientists and engineers and technicians. We didn’t have any idea, when they were just discovering the ice that was sublimating and what does that mean if there’s that much water on Mars, could there be life? Those interviews, there was no way to anticipate what was going to be said. It was just like if this, then that, and if this, then that. The show could go basically anywhere, especially when it came to exploring for extremophiles and new life forms. That was the cutting edge opportunity, so we like to keep things open. Certainly if things don’t go one way, but they go another, then in the edit we make it the best story possible.

There are eight episodes, is that right, for the first season?

Yes.

And then, so is there a second season planned or are you going to go back to filming right away here or do you know?

I need a break. I’m going to take a break. I’m doing press right now and with the premier episode tonight, obviously the Olympics are on, so we want to wait a little while for viewers to return from August vacations and come back to TV. But I think over the next few weeks we’ll evaluate how the series is doing and then the network and I will sit down and figure out, do we want to go with a second season? I think we’re all hopeful, but we have to be cautious.

With the Noah’s Ark one or actually any of the religious stuff that you do, is there ever a worry about ticking certain people off?

Yes, of course. There has to be because there are people who are going to be offended that you’re evaluating the word of God and questioning it in any sort of way. But I faced that before when I did King David or King Solomon or any of the biblical stories that I explored on Digging. I’m respectful of that. I understand it. I think I’m very clear both at the front and in any conversations that I have with people that when it comes to biblical studies, it’s fairly binary. Either you think it’s all God’s word and shouldn’t be questioned at all, or there’s interpretation there. I’m in the latter camp. I think that exploring the Bible, it’s a fascinating story, some of it grounded in history, been proven by archaeology and some it perhaps still to be proven.

When it comes to Noah and the flood, that’s the second oldest story. The only thing older is basically Adam and Eve and then Cain and Abel. So to get anything that’s that ancient to prove that in the landscape is an uphill challenge. That’s a battle. But I was up for it. I think it’s still—it is unusual and a bit curious that so many cultures, Judeo-Christian and others in the Mediterranean have this same story. Why is that the case? If everyone says that someone was shot on the corner and then got hit by a car, if everyone says that then you think maybe it really happened. Same thing, but this is so many thousands of years ago, maybe there’s some truth to it and it’s worthy of my exploration.

Actually you mentioned you went to Israel for that story. Did you also go to, where’s that place, Mount Ararat?

Mount Ararat in Turkey, I did. I’ve been to Turkey and to Armenia exploring—we decided to fall on the Armenian side, so we’re certainly within view of Ararat and we shot up there. But we went to a church that believes they actually have a piece of the Ark. That’s where the show begins and from there to the Holy Land.

And we know about the—there’s the gladiator one, the Noah’s Ark one, and there’s only eight. Can you let us know what the other six are?

Sure and if I forget or if you want more detail, I’m sure Discovery has this in their press kit and someone can send it to you in detail. I don’t know the raw order, but Gladiators, Noah’s Flood, there’s one called Cloud Warriors on the Chachapoya culture in northern Peru, pre-Inca culture. I went and explored their mysterious disappearance. Timbuktu, I went into Mali, the fabled “City of Gold” to find out if it truly was as rich as legend would tell us. Akhenaten, the … heresy, the pharaoh of the 18^th Dynasty who overturned all of the pantheon of Egypt to create monotheism. There’s another episode, Elephants, I think I mentioned before, elephants attacking in Kenya for no reason that people understand; Papa New Guinea, the dying wish of the chief of the Inca people in the Chachapoya village said no one has been mummified in 50 years. It’s a sacred tradition for us. I was the last person to do it to my father. I’m about to die. I want to teach my sons how we used to mummify. And so we came in with our cameras to document that. Then the last episode I mentioned briefly was Life on Earth, could it have come from Mars?

That sounds pretty cool.

Yes, it’s good. It’s a diverse series. We’ve got certainly some history, archaeology stories to reestablish my walking through that landscape. But then we expand it and I think we’ll continue to in the seasons to come.

In the beginning you mentioned that you and the production staff, it takes a lot to figure out which ones you’re going to do on the series. Is there any that you didn’t get to do in Digging for the Truth that you brought over?

No, well, I hope I get to Ankara a lot. That was on my list. Timbuktu, I was happy to go to. I know that Digging did that in season four and so that was, yes, I’d love to go. I was jealous when they called me from Mali and said, “Guess where we are?” I think it’s a little different series in that we don’t want to replicate Digging. We want to bring a fresh face to it; the same face, but a fresh feel.

Josh, I wanted to ask you about the Boulder Survival School. I know you’re still the CEO and president of that. Do you do any of the training still, or get back to Boulder ever for that? There’s kind of a local connection, our main office is in Boulder, Colorado.

Oh, nice. Yes, Boulder, Colorado is fantastic. I lived there for nine years and certainly I’m still involved with BOSS, although it has to be mostly virtual. I was there last week checking in on things and working with my staff. I was there earlier in the season for the preseason staff training, just to remind everyone and make sure we start off on the right foot. But most of my conversations are via e-mail or teleconferencing because I’m typically overseas more often than not. But I have a great staff and all my senior instructors and field directors are more than competent. If anything, they appreciated that I’ve given them the freedom to run the school and lead trips without my being there.

As you were growing up, when you were growing up in New York did you ever expect that you’d be doing something like this? It seems like you can’t get much different than a city—

Yes, a city. No, not really. I don’t think anybody anticipated this. I think we’re all still, everybody in my family is looking at the media storm that this series is generating and are sort of a bit befuddled at how someone who, I’m a fairly private person and yet there’s a public persona that is accessible and being marketed. My family is, we all come from a long line of educated readers, we like to learn, we like to talk about concepts and ideas, and being able to do that on TV is satisfying.

But as a kid, I wanted to be a wilderness guide. I thought I would be a wilderness instructor. I never even thought I would own the school. I just wanted to be a guide. Then in my 20s, I became more of an entrepreneur and established a career in the outdoor industry and that took an unusual path towards television, and here I am now. But I’m not as interested in the publicity side. Like being on camera is not the end all, be all of how I define myself or value myself. I like to learn and I like to teach and Discovery Channel is a great place for me to do that.

So did you get a lot of grief or teasing from your friends about the “Sexiest Man Alive” stuff?

Endlessly! My God, yes! My fraternity brothers from college are always more than happy to chime in whenever there’s anything that’s worthy of it, but that’s good. It keeps me real.

I know a lot of people probably reading this, they’ve seen the Digging series you did. How is this different from that? Is this just more glitzy or bigger or how would you describe the differences between your two series?

I don’t think it’s more glitzy. It’s not something that I ever felt that I wanted or needed in a series. I’m not a big fan of glitz. I think that certainly there is a bigger budget and a more ambitious goal. Digging for the Truth had limitations in that it was limited to archaeology and within the confines of History Channel, which would always look back for stories. Discovery Channel is a much broader concept and a much bigger network, so my ability to encapsulate or represent what the values of Discovery are allows me to go places that Digging couldn’t. I would have never done a story on elephant attacks in east Africa for Digging for the Truth, the same with Life on Mars and Life on Earth and any connection between the two.

I think Discovery Channel last year had such tremendous success with the Planet Earth series that they were looking for, this is when my series was being born and conceived and developed, so let’s make this show represent the core values of the network. Let’s make it ambitious and bold and exploratory and international. Let’s go places where others can’t go and bring home stories that are truly fantastic. That was never the goal with Digging for the Truth. Digging for the Truth just sort of happened. It was a success just by accident. This one we focused on making it the biggest, best series that it could be.

I only have one more quick thing and then I’ll let you go. You like to search for the truth and I was just wondering what are your thoughts on that recent Big Foot story coming out of Georgia?

You know if the timing was right, maybe I could explore that a bit further. I do think it’s fascinating that Big Foot, Sasquatch, Yeti, the different terminology that exists in other parts of the world, there does seem to be some pervasive story of larger than life, even the Abominable Snowman, there seems to be something out there that people look to. I have not done any more research than just reading about it on the Internet. I don’t know what’s in the freezer. I don’t know what the story is about these guys who have claimed to have shot it and seen others. I do think it’s certainly water cooler conversation worthy. I don’t know if it could hold up to a full hour of credible analysis. But if the story is still kicking around when I get back in the game for season two, maybe I’ll go down there and take a look.

Now that I’m older, wiser, and actually have a little spare change my new thing is I like to travel when I can. I mean real travel and real vacation, not attending a convention. There’s an interesting new Social Network for travelers called Tripwolf. The site is your standard Web 2.0 style experience. You can upload your vacation pictures and videos, invite your friends, join discussion groups and the really neat feature is you can build your own custom itineraries. I’m going to be using the site over the next few days to plan out my upcoming weekend trip to London. I recently caught up with the CEO of Tripwolf Sebastian Heinzel.

Sebastian Heinzel (30) is the co-founder and CEO of tripwolf. He is a passionate globetrotter who has traveled to 65 countries and a former journalist who understands what producing good content is all about. After studying economics in the UK, Spain and Austria, he pursued a career in journalism, reporting from every corner of the earth for top German media outlets such as "profil", "Die Zeit" and "Spiegel Online", finally ending up in New York. He contributes not only eight years of experience with both “old” and “new” media to tripwolf, but also wide ranging managerial background – from managing a development project in the Peruvian Andes to serving on the board of one on Austria’s biggest pulp and paper companies. 

EM: Can you tell us what Tripwolf is?

Tripwolf (http://www.tripwolf.com) is a new social travel guide that covers the whole world and aims to be the leading Web 2.0 travel guide. It
combines professional editorial content with user-generated content from globetrotters worldwide. tripwolf is backed by MairDumont, Europe’s
largest publisher of travel guides including Baedeker, Dumont and Marco Polo. Through collaboration with tripwolf,  MairDumont has taken the
unprecedented step of putting all of its high-quality content - covering more than 200,000 destinations and points of interest - online for free.

EM: What distinguishes Tripwolf from other travel sites?

What makes tripwolf really unique is the integration with existing social networks - which makes it really easy for users to join and to get
benefits like personal travel recommendations from your friends. You can import your Facebook profile and your Facebook friends, and you can log in
with your Facebook account. Also, you can build and print your own 10-20 page travel guide to take along, with simple drag & drop  - based on your
individual preferences and recommendations from friends and local travel experts called “trip gurus”.

EM: What made you want to go the Social Network route?

It simply is the future, there is no going back. When traveling, you don’t want anonymous information from strangers. You want tips from people you
know and trust - your friends! A social network is the perfect tool for that.

EM: When starting a Social Network, how do you get traffic and then get people to start submitting material?

First of all, we have information on more than 200,000 destinations and points of interest already, so there is no "empty disco" effect, users
don’t have to start from zero. Just with PR and viral marketing we got our first 10,000 registered members already. And we are enticing them to
contribute by organizing competitions for example. Currently we are running a competition together with a photo community, lomography.org, to
find the best travel photo.

EM: At the moment you seemed focused on vacation photos, what made you start with that and not video?

Photo cameras are still more widespread than video cameras, and we wanted to make sure that we have user pictures for most destinations on Earth:
This is important for the first impression users get on tripwolf.com. We will put a focus on video later on.

EM: What is your financial model?

Mostly advertising, plus affiliate partnerships with booking partners, earning us a commission if a tripwolf user books a flight or hotel.

EM: What is your background with startups?

This is my first start-up, but Alex Trieb, the tripwolf co-founder, has ample experience with startups: He contributes over 10 years of internet
and software industry experience to the tripwolf team. During his bachelor studies at Boston University, he began his career by working for the
initial dot.com era in internet consulting and startup companies. His responsibilities ranged from business development to product and
technology development successfully building several companies from the ground up.

EM: Will you always be user generated content, or do you plan on hiring travel writers? Can I be one? (just kidding)

We actually have travel writers working for us already, some of them former Lonely Planet writers. When they write a text on tripwolf.com, it
is "locked", meaning it cannot be edited by other users anymore. We will actually have a meeting with 30 of them tonight in the Idlewild bookstore,
a travel bookstore near Manhattan’s Union Square.

EM: You recently sent out news that you’ve gained 10,000 users in the first month. How are you getting the word out?

We are working the blogosphere very hard. Also, the tripwolf seems to be running on his own already: We ended up in Canadian TV, in German radio
and on New York’s thrillist-newsletter without us even doing anything for it. People simply like tripwolf and like to speak about it - which makes
us very happy :)

EM: There’s been a lot of talk lately about the problems with monetizing Social Networks and that advertisers are scared to have their brands associated
with User Generated content, how do you see Trip Wolf solving that problem?

This problem is certainly much less pronounced in the travel space. The travel ad space is very established and well-monetized, and user
preferences are very clear which helps advertising: If you are a tripwolf user in NY surfing our Cairo pages, it is very straightforward to offer
you a flight New York-Cairo. Also, we are monitoring our user-generated content closely, and so far people are only contributing travel-related stuff.

EM: From a technical standpoint, what platform are you using and why?

We built it all ourselves, it’s a Perl-based Modeler-Viewer-Controller-Controller System Architecture designed for scalability and reliability.

EM: Where do you see Tripwolf in the next year and five years?

In one year we will be the leading online travel guide for Europe, and in 5 years for the whole world! :) Generally speaking, I think the trend to social networking is here to stay, especially in travel. People don’t have much holidays, and travel is expensive, so people want really good recommendations because they don’t want to be disappointed. And surveys show that more than 70% of people get information from friends & family before they decide where they travel. that’s something that we reflect on tripwolf: you don’t get recommendations from anonymous users you don’t know (or from one travel
guide book writer, for that matter), but from your own trusted sources. I think online travel agents (from expedia downwards) will have a very
tough time over the next few years. It’s hard for them to build up a credible and trusted community, and they can only compete with even
cheaper prices. At the same time, customized, tailored offers for individual travelers will become more important.

Stars of THE SCORPION KING 2: RISE OF A WARRIOR, Karen David and Michael Copon are true rising performers in the entertainment business, with lucrative careers in TV, film and music. Filmed entirely on location in South Africa, this made for DVD (which debuts August 19, 2008) sequel was directed by renowned film and music video director Russell Mulcahy.

The story concerns a young warrior named Mathayus (Copon) and his love interest Layla (David) as they try to reclaim their kingdom from the black magic warlord Sargon (Randy Couture). During their adventures, they encounter a menacing Minotaur – half-man half-bull, travel across many lands — including Egypt, and are trapped in a cryptic underworld, presided over by the sinister vixen Astarte (Natalie Becker).

Both set to emerge as major stars, David and Copon worked tirelessly through the short intense production schedule for THE SCORPION KING 2. Here they reflect on their roles, their careers, shooting and training on location, and working with acclaimed director Mulcahy.

How special was it for you as actors to play in an exotic fantasy like this?

COPON: For me it was the fact that I’ve always imitated The Rock and people think I’m a younger version. Being able to play his son is really crazy. Four years later, I’m playing him. Just being a warrior in a film is every guy’s dream.

DAVID: And to play a kick –butt action heroine was fun for me to play. I’ve been fencing for some time and always wanted to find a role where I could use it.

Did you have to get into any special shape beyond what you normally do for the film?

COPON: I’m in shape regularly, but I put on 15 pounds for the film. I ate protein shakes and wanted to build size so that next to Randy Couture I wouldn’t look like a puny boy. Just good to always keep working out.

DAVID: Michael has a stricter regime than I do, but when you are traveling so much for work, it gets challenging to keep in shape. I do push-ups on set in the middle of takes. We were working in the gym getting up to par. A lot of what we are doing is high adrenaline. In this type of film, you have to know what you are doing as second nature. The fight sequences are so intricate. It was hardcore but intricate.

COPON: You only have a month or two [of filming] to show everything that you got. After, there is nothing else you can really do. You are doing everything that you can really really fast.

Have you ever been compared to Brandon Lee in THE CROW? What is your ethnic background?

COPON: I’m working on getting the rights to his life story – based upon his death in that film. My dad is Filipino and my mom is German. The Filipinos started off as Aborigines, so they are now mixture of races and cultures. My mom was born in Kentucky.

DAVID: My mother is Chinese and Himalayan and my father is Indian with Jewish ancestry. It’s interesting – growing up - you just want to fit it. You just want to be American or Canadian. I get told to this day how good Mathayus and Layla look together on screen!

COPON: It can be a benefit – we never fit into a category while auditioning. No one really knows what we are. We are embarking on a new revelation.

Karen, one of your best scenes in the film was going through the tunnel to confront the Minotaur. What was that like to shoot?

DAVID: That Minotaur was pretty big! I have a confession to make: Layla and I are a bit different. She walks through any shade of darkness. For me, the set was so realistic; I was telling Michael that I was a little bit scared. You hear Russell [Mulcahy] in the background, but you felt like it was real.

How was Russell Mulcahy as a director in creating your performances?

COPON: He took the time with Karen and myself. He made sure that we knew the script front and back. That we were all seeing the same thing. He was very compassionate and an actor’s director. He wanted us to feel great so that we would perform better.

DAVID: He was like a little boy – it was lovely. This is a man who had just great success doing the early Duran Duran music videos. His eye for the visual beauty of a shot – there is a lot going inside that mind.

COPON: He comes up with a way to create something special.

What was the vibe like shooting this film in South Africa?

DAVID: The sets were so amazing that they built – it’s just unbelievable. We felt like we were there. On top of that to have the backdrop where we were. It was such a beautiful place. We got to do as much as we could on our days off. What a beautiful place to be making a great film.

COPON: A lot of the locals were living in a third world aspect of it. That brought me back to even how these Akkadians were living back in the day. The culture of South Africa is completely different. It brought me to a whole new world and made me a better actor.

EM Interview by
Scott Essman
Originally posted 8.18.08

So here’s the thing, a few weeks ago USA Network contacted me out of the blue and said hey, would you like to come down to Miami for a little Junket for Burn Notice. I was like hells yeah - even though I had no idea what Burn Notice was. But I’m always up for a free trip. Then after a few round of emails, I asked are they paying for it. Nope, had to pay for it out of my own pocket. But I was still going to go. After boning up a bit on the show (as much as I could - considering all the power outages in the last two weeks), I got even more excited. The show is just a really cool, fun riff on the "spy" genre. We had such a good time during the day and I got so much material that we’re launching a Burn Notice page later this week. And it’s been ages since there was a show set in Miami (that I watched.) So during the press day, we interviewed 10 different people and it was in the air. Jeffrey’s presence was felt throughout the day, he is the star of the show and everything is on his shoulders. The cast and crew spoke glowingly of him and when you meet him in person you can understand why. He’s drool worthy, funny, charming, and amazingly down to earth. Oh yeah, he even has a great dog.

Jeffrey Donovan: Alright, all of you should not be drinking any soda. No soda. No soda.

Panel: [laughs] Uh oh!

JD: How’s it going? Have you had a good day today, so far? You got to interview everybody exciting so far…

Panel: We’ve been waiting for you!

JD: It’s all downhill from me. All downhill.

Panel: Sharon Gless talked you up a lot.

JD: Oh, my mama. My mama. [laughter] Isn’t she amazing?

Panel: She said nothing but lovely things about you.

JD: She’s been like a mother to me down here. She is so great. Her and her husband, Barney – you know famous producer – they’re just so great. I wish they were my parents.

Panel: She seemed like she’s pretty much adopted you.

JD: Yeah, she has, she has. I’m filing papers next week.

Panel: Everyone said you don’t sweat, what’s the secret to that?

JD: [laughs] Who’s everyone?

Panel: Everyone. [laughter from all]

JD: Well, it’s like the yogurt, it’s like a running gag now. It’s not that I don’t sweat, I don’t look like I sweat. I can’t do this job without thirteen to fourteen hours of energy per day, you know? So, what I did… I got in pretty good shape last year but I got in better shape this year. And I don’t mean just working, I really looked at my diet and how athletes train to peak during a game? Well, they’re looking at a sustainable energy of three hours, let’s say, well mine is thirteen hours. So I started talking to a nutritionist about that and learned a lot about diet, learned a lot about your body as an eco-system and a furnace at the same time and how all the organisms live with the food and burns, blah, blah, which will never get printed… But, anyway, your body is an engine and I just want it to run as efficiently as possible so that I can have sustainable energy in the dip because, if I’m in every scene and I give my all to a scene with Gabrielle, I don’t want to walk in and short change Bruce or Sharon. So, I try to parcel out my energy throughout the day and I realized everything has to do with diet and that’s my fuel. So, long answer is that my diet allows me to burn energy the most efficient way throughout the day so I never get hot.

Panel: Did you have to radically change your diet to do this?

JD: Uh, no. My diet was like 80% there then I met with a nutritionist and talked it out and showed him what my day was like and he said, “You’re doing pretty good, just I would eat more of this in the morning and this is what you should have throughout the day and blah, blah, blah…”

Panel: The stunt coordinator said you’re naturally good at the stunts and the props guy said you’re naturally good with the guns so… were you in fact a spy at one time?

JD: I owe them so much money! [lots of laughter] Man! Uh, no, I’m like a jack of all trades but I’m not great at any one thing. I mean, at any thing, I’m just good at a lot of things. And because it’s a TV show and you have a true— I mean, Charlie Props is a MacGyver, I mean that guy’s really MacGyver. He’s unbelievable. So he’ll do it and I just have a particular ability to watch something done once and I’m able to repeat it [snaps] right away. Like lines, I never know my lines before I walk into a scene and I’ll have the script and I’ll rehearse with you and I’ll know that I sit a certain line and I kinda of move over here [gestures] on a certain line. And then I’ll memorize it physically from that and as soon as we shoot, fifteen minutes later, I’ll know three pages of dialog. I don’t know why but, then, I don’t know – we just shot – I don’t know one line now. It’s all gone. It’s like a toilet, it just flushes away.

Panel: How did you get this role?

JD: [knowing look] Everyone’s been asking that, right?

Panel: [laughs] No, but I’m wondering… [more laughter]

JD: That’s great. There’s a lot of confidence now…

Panel: No, I’m serious, how did it come…

JD: I met with Matt Nix. The script was sent to me from USA, they wanted to work with me again. Bonnie Hammer and Jeff Wachtel, they had done Touching Evil with me. So I went and met with Matt and did a couple of scenes for him. He basically said, “You’re my guy.” And that was it. It wasn’t that I was that great, it was my take on the material. I didn’t know all my lines, I didn’t have everything right. He just saw my angle on it and my angle was: Bring levity to a serious situation and be real serious about something that’s real casual.

So, saying hi to Mom was like, [lowers voice, straightens face, real serious] “Mom.” And that was an intense moment. [laughter] And when I’d walk into a knife fight, I think in the second episode, he comes out with a knife and I stop him and he comes out with a second knife and I’m like [surprised look of delight], “Wow, he’s really good.” [laughter] So that kind of levity I brought and I ad-libbed a little bit and he knew I wasn’t do it to be funny, I was doing it to kind of sell this character to him, saying, ‘This is my angle on it.’ And he bought it and USA was already on board so it was kind of an easy fit. And we were really lucky to strike gold on our first season with ratings and reviews. Hopefully we can repeat that this year.

Panel: Sharon said you went to her for advice. What kind of advice did she give you?

JD: Well, she’s been around the world in so many different roles and so many different series but mostly it was about Cagney & Lacey. How do you do this role, any role – a specific role like hers or mine, for such a long time and not burn out? And she kept on talking about how it was always everyone else. It’s always about, “Well, I don’t want to let anyone else down.” So she was really great, kind of sage advice about knowing that you’re part of a team and just keep thinking that, that five guys go out there and play in the NBA finals – and the Lakers got spanked, Go Celts! – but you’re part of a team. It’s funny, I don’t know if you read the New York Times today, the sports section is about Doc Rivers coaching style is all about selling ‘team’ to superstars. And you’ve got Bruce Campbell, Gabrielle Anwar, and Sharon Gless and then a little guy named Jeff Donovan. So I’m like, “Oh, what the hell am I doing…” They all think it’s my show, they keep telling me that, but I said, “No, it’s our show.” Because I can’t play Michael the way I’m playing him, without how great their energy is towards me, making me who I’m supposed to be.

Panel: How do you keep your head on straight knowing that so much is riding on you— it’s a team but…

JD: Wow, you guys are just killing me here. [laughter] No one had said that yet… [laughs] Umm, it’s almost a joke on this set. I drive my bicycle – I have a bicycle because it’s just easier to get back and forth from set – and a grip will yell out, “Don’t fall.” A teamster will walk by and go, “You’re messing with my children’s education.” I mean, and it’s a joke, but they’re serious! To know that 300 people are employed every year, not because of me, but because of the show is a great responsibility to know, don’t let anybody down. That’s why I worked out so much on the off-season. I got healthier. Because if I do a sick day then the show shuts down and loses $125,000 a day. I had a film in Cannes and I wanted to go. They told me it would cost them $250,000 because they had to pay everybody while I was away and there was no scene they could shoot without me.

Panel: What’s your take on Michael? Is he truly stuck in Miami? Is he starting to adapt to it, how do you see it?

JD: He is stuck in Miami for a couple of reasons. Not just because of the burn notice but I think he’s stuck in his life. He’s been running away from who he is for so long and his family and now he’s been thrust back into his family because of his work. His work allowed him to get away from his family and his work is forcing him to now be with his family and that’s a real interesting dilemma. Miami is Michael’s Gilligan’s Island and, if he ever gets off that island, then the show’s over. So there is a type of conceit that you have to just go with that he’s stuck in Miami but, for a viewer, like “Don’t ever leave Miami” but, for Michael, “I got to get the hell out of Miami.” So that kind of conflict I think is perfect for the show and I don’t think it’ll ever leave.

Panel: Season two, though, it seems like it’ll be a different dynamic. Now that he’s sort of taking orders as far as Tricia Helfer’s character is concerned. How does season two find him? What is the new dynamic?

JD: I guess you’ll have to watch. [laughter] Ummm, did you talk to Matt Nix? What’d he say?

Panel: He said, “Jeff’ll tell you anything you want to know!” [laughter off Jeff’s look in response]

JD: No, he didn’t.

Panel: He said to ask about your shortened version of Law & Order… So we want to hear that before you go.

JD: [laughs] Great.

There always has to be the bad guy that is against Michael. It can be Tricia. It was Phillip Cowan in the first season. It’s Carla this year. I don’t know who it’ll be next year or if there will be or if it’s always Carla. I don’t actually know but there’s always going to be a kind of manipulative secret force that is forcing Michael to do things he doesn’t want to do. But the great thing about Matt and all the writers and what they do is that Michael accepts the job under those conditions but somehow manipulates it to his own benefit. It’s easy to write a show where, and I actually like this show, Prison Break. Two guys, they’re in prison, they have to break out. Well they did [laughs], remember? Now what do they do?

What Matt is going to try to do, and I think it’s great, is that there’s always going to be some force that keeps him in that little aquarium and all these different fish keep going in, some of them predator and some of them prey. It’s his way of just keep surviving, just keep swimming, don’t ever stop, you know? I don’t know if that answers it but it’s the best I can do.

Panel: How is it working with Tricia? I know you’ve only done couple a days together…

JD: I’ve only done a couple of days. She’s great. I really haven’t gotten to know her that well. Her dynamic is unique in the sense that I’m now face to face with a force that’s keeping me down and I have to just keep getting information from her whether she knows she’s giving it to me or not and that’s going to be the fun spy stuff.

Panel: Did you do a lot of research to prepare for this?

JD: I read a lot. I’m more of a reader actor than a seer actor. I think I went and saw three movies in the last six months. I’m not a big TV and movie guy. Matt and all the writers have seen everything and they’ll say, “Hey, you remember on…” I watched stuff as a kid but, when I research a role, I just kind of read. I read about spies, I read biographies, autobiographies, fictional stuff. Anything that just showed me the world that these people had to live in. I’m less concerned with a person but more of the environment they have to survive in. I extrapolate from that how I would do it, what are the circumstances that are similar with Michael and I go from there.

Panel: Because it seems like everyone we spoke with today – I was trying to find the one method actor – and it seems like everyone is kind of laid-back and just kind of takes it as it comes. Does that make for a better working environment? That you’re not dealing with people who are really intense?

JD: I think the demands of a TV show, especially this one, wouldn’t allow a type of – in the worst sense – method actor. Because we’d constantly be waiting for them to shift their method to the scene but these are pros, everyone on the crew as well, and you’re just dealing with everyone really good at their game. So just play your game, expect that everyone else is going to catch the ball that you throw to them and, uh, occasionally someone just goes above the rims and dunks… on the Lakers’ ass! [laughter] And then everyone’s really happy.

Panel: I can’t tell, are you a Celtics fan?

JD: [laughs]

Panel: Sharon said that at first it kind of freaked her out a little when you just wanted to go without rehearsal but now she’s really getting into it and that it’s fun for her to go at a faster pace.

JD: Well, Sharon… we rehearse, don’t get me wrong, we do a rehearsal. What she means is we won’t rehearse, rehearse, rehearse then decide ‘oh, there it all is, now let’s shoot what we know it is.’ I’m more of a believer in rehearse so that we are all on the same page but we haven’t decided what we’re actually going to do in the scene. So that when we actually go through it, it’s actually being created right in front of the camera and that’s what you capture. Then you cut it together and find out what you have, rather than deciding beforehand, planning it all out, shooting something that has now become stale and now you have to artificially bump it up in post and edit and blah, blah, blah.

Sharon is so much better than she thinks she is. So she wants to feel secure before she acts because she wants to please – because all actors want to please – but she’s so much better than she knows she is that her rehearsal is ten times better than most people’s prepared. So what I do is I encouraged her and I asked Matt, “Let’s just do it and see what happens.” It’s a riskier way of working but I think the gains are greater.

Panel: How does that compare to your working with Bruce?

JD: Umm, similar. Bruce likes to rehearse to know where everything can be just the same as Sharon. I’m just less concerned with it being right. [laughs] I don’t know why, I’m just less concerned and they haven’t fired me yet so I must be doing something right. I’m just less concerned…

Panel: When you ad-lib on the show, do you allow to improvise and ad-lib or is more like the writers’ are like, “Stick to the script.”?

JD: It depends. If it’s a story point, I won’t ad-lib. I am story first, character second. In my thinking. You’ll never hear me say, “Oh I think it’d be kind of cool if Michael…” That’s thinking my character is more important than the story. My whole agenda, every time I walk on set, is what is the event in the scene that is utterly crucial the audience get? As long as we know we hit that, everything else can be played with. So, if I walk in, and the scene is something like I sit down and I need to get information from you and that big information is ‘it was a red car,’ now we know, right? We’re all on agreement? Yep, the red car was the thing. So now when I come in I can play around with how I come in, what’s my attitude towards you, I can ad-lib a little bit at the beginning, maybe at the tail, maybe there’s a funnier button to it. Do you know what I mean? So it’s not like, “Oh, I’ll ad-lib every scene.” It’s what can withstand improvisation but never at the expense of the story.

Panel: Well in the case, then, say when you’re sitting with Bruce and – I know you both can probably like improvise and banter back and forth – do they let a lot of that slide and go into the show?

JD: We banter, it’s funny, you’re very smart. Bruce and I can banter ‘til the cows come home. It’s an easy thing for us—and he listens, he’s a really good actor—I’ll say something, he’ll respond to it and the scene is over and he’ll continue and we’re just, “Blah, blah, blah.” What the writers and producers have learned is let us do that. That doesn’t mean they’re going to shoot it, doesn’t mean that they’re going to use it, but it’s informing, not only us, but it’s informing everybody of where is the limit of the scene. We’ll all hear it, we’ll all, “It’s spilled over, we can’t go that far.” But the only way you’ll know it is if you jump. That’s what I’m saying, it’s risky. Just jump into it. I mean, I’ve fallen on my face so many times and things are funny and people are like, “Well, why’d you do that?” I’m like, “I don’t know.” But then the next time I won’t do that but because of that choice it will inform an actual line and that line pops for some reason.

Panel: At what point do you do narration, do you have the narration in mind when you walk into a scene and you know this is your voiceover stuff? Have you already done the voiceover stuff and know it?

JD: I usually do the voiceover stuff at the end of the episode, of the shooting. Last year was brutal, last year they put the narration anywhere I had a break and I never had a break. So they found that when I would finish one scene and they literally had to move from my loft to here, I would have five minutes before rehearsal because it took that much time. And right behind that ‘Food & Drink’ sign is an ADR sound room and I would run in there, put on the headphones, do two pages of voiceover, and then run back. And it became so much that I actually very sick. I got tonsillitis and a huge bronchial infection. I was out in the middle of a scene, I couldn’t talk anymore. It was about halfway through the season. And I was talking like this [imitates talking with no voice] and I was trying to act, like that. And they said, “Well, we should probably send you to the doctor but, uh, we’re trying to get this shot.” [laughter] And, literally, going, “We could always just dub it later.” [more laughter] And I was like, “I gotta…”

So I went to the doctor and he’s like, “You have tonsillitis, you’re almost getting bronchitis, I’m checking for pneumonia…” So I go home. They sent me alone – you know with a driver – I went back to my apartment and I laid down and I assumed everyone knew but they’re calling going, “Are you coming back?” [still imitating having no voice] “I’m not coming back.” “You sound really sick.” “Because I am!” [laughter] “Alright, take tomorrow off.” “Thanks! Wait a minute, tomorrow’s July 4^th, everybody has that off.” They gave me July 4^th off and I had to come back July 5^th and I showed up on set, I gargled with salt all morning to get it clear, and then they shot me with B12. And I just…

Panel: So you did the whole show on steroids.

JD: [chuckles] Yeah, basically.

Panel: What would you say is the most dangerous or most challenging stunt that you’ve performed?

JD: What’s interesting is that it’s not what you think. I was going to say that in the pilot I rode a motorcycle in the first scene and it was a dirt bike, which are big knobby tires which only grip in the dirt not on flat surfaces but it was cobblestone. So, I told them I rode, which I do, I was spinning it around doing all these fun things. Then one time the director, in the middle of the shot, went, “No, go that way.” [motions the other way] And I tried to turn and I laid it down and I tore my ankle open. And I was like, “Oh yeah…” And everyone’s scared and, you know, “Hundreds of thousands of dollars…” And, you know, they wrapped me up and said, “Get back in there.” [everyone laughs and says it with him] So that would seem like that was the one but it wasn’t. It was the second to last season finale episode where I meet Phillip Cowan on the roof and he’s shot? Well, he was right in front of me and he had an exploding pack which is, 9 times out of 10, is very inert and it doesn’t really do anything. It just usually explodes and then the blood comes out.

Well, for some reason, it exploded and there was a coagulated piece of blood and paper that was about the texture of Play-Doh that came out of the explosion at about 300 feet per second and went right into my mouth and blew my mouth open and it was just all inflamed. It was like a golf ball, if you put a golf ball in your lip that’s the size. And, if it had gone two inches above, I would have lost my right eye, without question. If you go back to that episode, after that scene is a phone conversation where I’m telling Nate to come get me. Well, I have it right here [holds an invisible phone over the upper-right side of his mouth] because I’m covering a huge blood clot that had collected right underneath my nose and they were icing it in between scenes because I had to shoot the rest of the day. So that was the most dangerous thing…

Panel: Does that make you leery of doing other stunts?

JD: Not other stunts because I don’t mind laying a motorcycle down, I don’t mind twisting my ankle doing a run because I’ve done all these things. I’ve had glass shatter and cut me all up my arm. I don’t mind that stuff. That kind of stuff, I just should not have been in that position that should have been a stunt man. I want to do all my own stunts and now I can’t do any of them because of that. Because something like that – everyone was surprised – but, of course, who expects something to go wrong. Everyone’s thinking, “Well we’ve done all the precautions…” That was the most dangerous thing that happened last year.

Panel: You have some great action hero moments in this show. They just showed us the scene from the first episode of season two where you’re trying to break into a place and, when it goes wrong, you pull this giant Terminator-sized gun out of the bag.

JD: [laughs] A grenade launcher!

Panel: Yeah and you do this thing where you throw the propane tank and blow it up. When you’re filming that stuff, do you sometimes just go, “This is pretty bad ass…”?

JD: Yeah, yeah, that’s pretty cool. I like that stuff, I like that stuff a lot. But I like the propane tank better than the grenade launcher because anyone can carry a big gun. But to design that thing, to throw it, to know you have to hit it at a specific thing and rotation… that was pretty cool.

Panel: Do you show that stuff to your family and go, “Don’t piss me off!”

JD: [laughs]

Panel: Do you feel like MacGyver sometimes? Do you like the MacGyver aspect of the show?

JD: Yeah. Umm, I never feel like MacGyver because… I love MacGyver, I grew up on MacGyver. MacGyver did things that were, for the most part, implausible. That was kind of a fantasy show. I looked at MacGyver before I did this. I watched this and said, “How is this going to be different?” Everything we do on the show, you can actually do in real life, that’s what’s neat about it. And what I really like about it is that we try to take responsibility if we introduce anything to the audience that is dangerous, like an explosive device. That we always hold back a key ingredient that without that keeps it from working.

But everything we do— There’s an episode coming up actually, and I don’t think I’m revealing anything, but I make an x-ray machine in my trunk and you can actually do that. And that’s pretty cool. I mean, this is stuff that they work their butts off to research and you can do it. It may take a little longer than what we do it but what Matt’s saying is that, “Make sure on this show you can do everything, we just do it in a condensed time.” That’s what’s fun about it.

Panel: Do you think you’re going to be able to do this and keep it up at the same pace for the long run, for another 5 or 6 years?

JD: I was just asked that today in another interview. My honest answer is that I’ll do it as long as my body doesn’t give out. But that doesn’t mean I get old. [laughs] My body may give out after two, three seasons because it’s just so physically demanding. I’m trying to stay healthy. I’m always trying to stay a step ahead of this role. In my first season, I knew a hand full of dialects and accents. I have a black belt in karate and six/seven years of aikido. That was good for the first season but I wanted to get better. So, in the off season this year, I took ju jitsu for three and a half months. I studied ten other dialects that I’ve never really studied before. I hired a nutritionist. So, you know, I’m just trying to stay above it and as long as I do that I’ll probably have some longevity with this role.

Panel: Do you think people realize the physical nature? I mean, it’s one thing to say, “Oh, I’m an actor…” but do you think people know—

JD: No one has any idea how hard this job is and they don’t understand how dedicated I am, or any of these actors are, to this job. I just have to be – not more dedicated – I just have to have a dedication to a lot more facets and a lot more areas. The irony is… I make it look easy and it’s the hardest job I’ve ever done. [chuckles] So, I love that you guys – and I can tell that all of you actually like the show and are fans of it – but, in some ways, the people who like it doesn’t realize how hard it is to make it look this easy.

Panel: Well Fred Astaire and Charlie Chaplin said the same thing; they worked so hard to make it look so simple.

JD: So simple.

Panel: It’s just funny that it’s fun, escapist television but that much work goes into it.

JD: Yeah and our goal in this show, at least Matt and I’s, is how do we take something that everyone has seen for years, standard spy thriller/action/comedy show, and bring levity to it. That’s, I think, difficult without making it campy. MacGyver was, in some ways, campy. The A-Team was an action comedy, campy. You never believed it, did you? You never believed The A-Team actually was real.

Panel: Only when I was eight.

JD: Well, yeah, eight. You wanted to be "B.A." Baracus, with the chains. [makes a gesture toward his neck where the chains would hang if he had him as laughter sounds] But I think, 9 times out of 10, you ask any Burn Notice fan, “Do you think it’s real?” It is, meaning that the world Michael Westen lives in and is doing things in, is real, he’s actually doing… I don’t think people are deluded but I think that people will buy it. That is so hard, so hard to do, and that’s what we try to do. Not every episode, every day. Every day we walk into a scene going, “Would this fly? Would this really go down?” And, then on top of that, “How do we make the audience smile?” That’s basically our mantra.

Panel: So everyone says this is a really fun set, can you give us some examples? And I still want to hear your Law & Order thing.

JD: I wish I had anecdotes, I don’t have any. I mean, “The other day, Bruce…” I don’t have any. I don’t. It’s just, everyone’s really good at their job and with that confidence of allowing people to do their job you get a comfortability. People make jokes, people laugh, people will be sarcastic, just like any work environment. Everyone feels like we can joke around and we’ll still get our jobs done.

Panel: Does having such a small cast foster that sense of community?

JD: Well, what’s interesting is that I hardly see Bruce, Sharon, and Gabrielle. And Bruce hardly ever sees Sharon, Gabrielle, and me. We do have scenes but a lot of it is the A-story which is all going off with where the espionage is and what’s behind the burn notice. And then the B-story is all the guest stars and how do we help them out. It’s really a rotating family, it’s never feeling like we’re all just there— it’s not Seinfeld where we’re there every week like it’s just the four of us.

[Editor’s Note – You really have to see Donovan do this, it’s funny as hell.]

Alright and I’ll leave on the Law & Order thing. So, umm – and it’ll ruin it for you for the rest of your life – so typical premise is that they find the guy (law) and they arrest him and the order is the judging, right? So they, “Where were you the other night?” “Oh, I was with family…” “Uh, well, we’ll see if you like the family at Rikers because you’re going away.” [Jeffrey does the entire Prosecutor bit with the yelling and slamming his fist on the table..] So they get him up on the witness stand and say, “You killed that young girl.” “No, I never killed that girl.” “We have photographs of you actually being with that girl at the mall one hour prior.” [lawyer getting angrier but accused still cool] “I was shopping, I may have been next to her but I never ever touched that girl.” “We actually have an eyewitness [raising voice and banging table to make point] that saw you raping that girl!” [accused breaks down] “I didn’t mean to hurt her! I just was – I loved her!”

And that’s it! That’s Law & Order.

Thank you for coming out here and taking the time out of your busy schedules. I really appreciate the support you give our show.

[Editor's Note]

There were 5 other folks who were part of these interviews - IGN, Fanbolt.com, TVSquad, theTVAddict.com, and ramblingsofatvwhore.com.

EM Interview
By Michelle Alexandria
Originally Posted 06.10.08

Our resident Studio Plant (who hates it when I call him that), has landed a plum interview for us at Eclipse. He sits down with the great Ridley Scott. I had a chance to watch him direct a scene for the Television show Numbers last year and it was pretty surreal watching him work. He’s the Executive Producer of the The Andromeda Strain. You can read Scott’s fabulous interview after the break. 

QUESTION: Why did your production company decide to get involved in The Andromeda Strain?

RIDLEY SCOTT: We do quite a lot of television. There is a show called Numbers which is now in its fifth year. I think it is one of the smartest shows on television. Somehow we get away with a mathematical equation every week. There has also been The Gathering Storm with Albert Finney as Churchill, RKO 21 and we have just finished Churchill At War with Brendan Gleeson because Albert said he did not want to do Churchill again. But Brendan has turned out to be a very, very good Churchill. This year we also did The Company, which is fundamentally The Good Shepherd. So we do for television things that would not necessarily fly as a feature film. For instance why would you necessarily think that Winston Churchill would be commercial? The opinion five or six years ago was that audiences did not like history films, but now I think that is changing rapidly. We are so short of good stories that a lot stuff is now addressing history and fact is always much more stranger than fiction. I am a history buff and I love to re-examine things.

The Andromeda Strain was one of the films that got my attention way back when – as did On The Beach and The Day The Earth Stood Still, which are all classics. I think they have just re-made The Day The Earth Stood Still. So we thought that The Andromeda Strain would make a great mini-series. At one point we thought of it as a film but people were not so interested and there were contractual things with the studio. So we decided to make it as a mini-series. I have mentioned the three most interesting films – The Andromeda Strain, The Day The Earth Stood Still and On The Beach – that would address science fiction…prior to 2001: A Space Odyssey, one of the films that opened the door for me. Those three films were done almost at the peak of the Cold War, so when you are talking about things like alien invasion that is clearly a metaphor for our insecurity at that particular time when we were worrying whether the Russians would come or if they would drop the bomb. That paranoia was held in place for almost 30 years.

Today The Andromeda Strain seems just as potent because there is a combination of things – what we have done to our planet and global warming. Under that massive heading there are questions about whether we have really done it or whether it is reversible or not. Then there is what have we done to ourselves politically, religiously, economically. We have really messed up in several measures…and fundamentally a lot of it is greed. So that is where my science fiction comes from because we don’t watch it, very quickly we are approaching what would have been under the heading of science fiction is becoming fact. The worst will happen!

QUESTION: The timing does seem right for this version of The Andromeda Strain because it makes you think this is all possible?

RIDLEY SCOTT: Entirely and not only that, the more uncover about the environment…. At one stage I was going to something called The Ebola which would examine the ‘big daddies’ that suddenly come for no reason out of nowhere, descend on a community, wipe out 90 to 100 per cent, stay for a few weeks and then, inexplicably, go. I got very close to making it with Jodie Foster. I went to this place in the Carolinas called USAMRIID, which is a military facility, which is a seven-acre laboratory – SEVEN ACRES! - Which apart from anything else protects the health of the military wherever they are and also monitors world health and conditions. When something kicks in, they are usually the first out there - I bet they are circling Burma right now – waiting for some terrible outbreak of something. It is almost like a military task force of doctors, which can tell a nation that they are coming in to control the outbreak. The film’s thesis was the more we rip down rain forests and disturb places that have not been touched for millions of years, we are going to uncover things that have been dormant. Ebola was a dormant thing that was believed to have come from a cave in Kenya. Also it is not irrational to believe that from time to time small particles land on Earth. Thank God they are not big ones. These particles burn up as they enter and they are tiny pieces that are probably not worth thinking about – but what kind of bacteria are they carrying?

QUESTION: There are even Biblical references when an infected soldier screams that it is the end of days. So there is a suggestion that man has ignored God’s warning?

RIDLEY SCOTT: The way the Celtic nature takes me means that I tend to look towards the interesting and dark side of things and the dark side of things frequently go hand in hand with the truth. Right now I own two Prius cars and an SUV Lexus – I have no other cars – and I am gradually getting myself into the position of being sensible in every possible form because I think we may have done it! People say I am so depressing, but I am not depressing, I am being factual. And it might not be your children’s children – you might see it yourself. There was a newspaper article about how a guy would look after himself and his family in a heartbeat when things suddenly change. It is simple…you go home at night in January, the worst possible time of the year, there is a storm and all the power goes out. Have you got candles? Have you got matches? No, you are going about in the dark at the entire mercy of when the lights might go back on. It is THAT simple. So I am systematically thinking about the next 20 years and beyond…making that cottage entirely solar or using wind power.

QUESTION: Michael Crichton – who wrote the original novel The Andromeda Strain – is such a prolific writer. Are you a fan of his work?

RIDLEY SCOTT: Yeah he has always got these great notions. He comes up with the key to the engine and he also has these great ideas that are closely linked with fact. He takes fact and stretches it just a little bit to make it almost fantastical. Most of the things that he has thought up are happening or will happen. I think a lot of scientists sometimes look to the very best of the best science fiction thinkers. We were talking about replicants and replication 25 years ago [in Blade Runner] and then 12 years after Blade Runner the Senate made application to genetically replicate sheep. What they wanted to do was start cloning what would be the perfect animal for consumption. So if you can replicate a sheep, you can replicate a human being. Science fiction frequently is a visionary notion that actually is probably definitely going to happen.

QUESTION: It seems that in your version of The Andromeda Strain you have kept many of the same themes that were in the Robert Wise 1971 film?

RIDLEY SCOTT: It is such a classic, so why change the engine! Mikael Salomon directed this and it is the second thing for the company. He did The Company and did that so well and so creatively that I asked him if he wanted to do this. He is now going to do a film for us. The writer is starting the script now and it is under the heading of Oceana and it deals with what we have done to the ocean and that the ocean has rights.

QUESTION: You directed Blade Runner and Alien, which are seminal science fiction films. Why have you not done more science fiction films?

RIDLEY SCOTT: I am going to do one. I waited for a book for 20 years and I have got the book. I am not going to tell you what the book is but that film is going to probably be written within the next month. That will definitely be what I do next after Nottingham, the Robin Hood film that I am doing now in England.

QUESTION: Are you working with Russell Crowe again on the Robin Hood film?

RIDLEY SCOTT: I am, I just finished with him and Leonardo di Caprio on Body Of Lies, which is now going to be called A House Of Lies. It is pretty good, I am very happy with it. In Nottingham Russell is the Robin Hood figure.

QUESTION: Your work with Russell Crowe has been brilliant.

RIDLEY SCOTT: Well it makes life a lot easier if you know each other. You can cut the crap.

QUESTION: Russell Crowe has said you are very gifted and you obviously feel the same about him?

RIDLEY SCOTT: I know that he is gifted. There are a lot of good actors out there but very few gifted ones.

QUESTION: Are you still planning to make Blood Meridian?

RIDLEY SCOTT: We got it down as a screenplay and the problem is that it is so savage. But that’s what it is. If you did it properly it would be an X-certificate. But you can’t apologise for the violence and you can’t quantify the violence and you shouldn’t try to explain the violence. It is what it is…an exercise in brutality, savagery and violence. For the most part it is probably relatively accurate. It shows the flipside to Dances With Wolves of how the United States was probably taken. It was taken by the throat.

QUESTION: Do you still manage to get home to the UK as often as you would like?

RIDLEY SCOTT: I am still what I call a UK resident. But I have done four films in North Africa so I am never here. But I do love London and that’s where I am right now. But I don’t get here as much as I should or could.

QUESTION: Do you have a favourite place in London?

RIDLEY SCOTT: Hampstead, I live there.

QUESTION: Why have you decided to make another film about Robin Hood?

RIDLEY SCOTT: I think it is a challenge in the sense that with a few exceptions they were never any good. So it is wide open to be made properly.

QUESTION: What were the circumstances that led you to re-cutting an extended version of Kingdom Of Heaven?

RIDLEY SCOTT: You can get gradually adjusted in a lengthy production when you start to preview it. Previews are purely a guidance system, a tool and no more than that. The danger, when you take a high budget movie and preview it and the previews are not as good as they should be, is that you start to think that the film may be too long or it’s this or that…You can start to tear away what you had. It happened with me when I did Blade Runner. I think Kingdom Of Heaven was the last time it will happen because now I will not cut them. One has to be one’s own critic. After all I am just about as experienced as just about anyone on the planet right now at making movies.

ENDS

On Friday, I had the opportunity to take part in a teleconference with Starbuck, herself - Katee Sackhoff, of the Peabody Award-winning Battlestar Galactica. She talked about her reaction to the mind-bending prophecy that Starbuck was a harbinger of doom; which is tougher - love scenes, or fight scenes; who she thinks Starbuck should wind up with [if indeed she wainds up with anyone...]; how she’d like the series to end for Starbuck, and much more.

Battlestar Galactica returns to the Sci Fi Channel Friday at 10/9C.

Note: There were some reception problems, so there will be an occasional word or phrase missing [replaced with the word unintelligible].

Starbucks gets all kinds of action on the show. Which is tougher for you, a fight scene or a love scene? And is there anybody left among the cast that you really want to have one or the other with?

You’ve got to start out with a good one too. I’m sitting across the table from my boyfriend right now. I would say that the sex scenes are a lot harder than I think anything that I’ve ever had to do on the show. Because it’s not natural, it’s just odd, it’s very odd. It makes you kind of feel cheap. Like you’re being paid to or being allowed to in a sense cheat on your significant other. It’s very weird. It - so that definitely is weird. But the fight scenes are really easy and they come pretty naturally for me to be honest. But, so no I can’t - I mean, who would I want to fight on the show? Still thinking about not wanting to do the other thing with. I don’t know. I think I’ve fought everybody. I think, you know, I can’t think of anyone. I haven’t fought Sharon so I’ll go ahead and say that. I think that a fight between Eddie and I would be pretty interesting.

How cool and gratifying has it been that you won over those fans who were first skeptical and negative and on a larger scale how cool and gratifying has it been that this show, this version gained so many fans in general?

It is completely gratifying in a sense. I think for the full, you know, the full reason that it’s nice to have people identify with the character that you’re playing and appreciate the work you’re doing. I don’t think I went into this trying to win over the old fans because I think that you can’t ever please everyone… and I didn’t want to focus on people that were all ready in a sense, you know, spewing negative energy at me. So I just kind of, you know, did what I did and it’s nice to know that they’ve, you know, some of them have been converted but, you know, and I guess it is a little gratifying to know that, you know…

For all the people who said I couldn’t - you know, that it wouldn’t work with a woman. It’s kind of nice to know that it did work for sure.

When did you start realizing that people that - audiences that were reluctant to accept Starbuck as a woman, what of the character do you think helped turn that around to make people accept Starbuck as a woman?

I think what - honestly what made people accept Starbuck as a woman was that she was just such a interesting character. You know I think once people put their guard down as far as the preconceived notions of what the show was supposed to be and just allowed it to be really good science fiction, I think that’s also probably the same time when people accepted Starbuck for being a woman was when they stopped thinking of the old show. Which is, I don’t know, you know, it’d be hard to figure out when that probably happened but, you know, probably after the first season. That cliffhanger at the very end that probably got all the fans hooked.

What should we make of the positioning in that terrific Last Supper picture of the BSG cast? For instance, you’re with Anders and Lee is alone, Six is in the Messiah’s position. Are there any hints there you can tell us about?

No. You know it’s interesting that everyone thinks that there’s something hidden in that Last Supper photo like if you look hard enough you can find there’s hidden messages in it. To be honest I think we would have had to have been in on it to create a hidden message and we were all just there having a photo shoot. So, I don’t, I mean, it is interesting the way people are standing for sure, I mean, you know, the plastic sheath with Anders is interesting but - so I don’t know. And the fact that they made Tricia the messiah is pretty interesting too. But, you know, I wish I knew what they were thinking and I know - that would be a question for Lana Kim, she’s on the line.

I wanted to ask about (unintelligible) flashback to last season when Starbuck was temporarily killed off. It seemed like after that happened it was sort of confusingly handled in terms of your interviews, you know, hinting whether or not you were actually gone and the show’s reaction to it. Looking back do you sort of wish it would have been handled a little bit better and not mentioned it at all. Is there anything you would have played differently?

I’m trying to figure out what, like as far as…

In terms of the spoilers I guess more than anything else. It seemed like, it seemed like when Starbuck was killed, people were already expecting her to return already, it doesn’t seem like there was an element of surprise for various reasons. Do you think in a way it could have been handled better both either in the show in terms of the post show handling?

I don’t know. I mean, I know that you can only keep a secret a secret for so long. I know that as soon as I showed back up at work, it was going to be on the internet but back up at work and also, you know, I mean, I do think they should have left me out until the very end. I think bringing Starbuck back in episode 16 kind of like, what the hell was that, you know. Why not, you know, wait until 20. But, you know, I guess, in Ron’s mind he had a bigger cliffhanger and I guess, you know, to have a bigger cliffhanger than Starbuck coming back from the dead is, you know, only Battlestar Galactica could pull that off. So, you know, I don’t know. I mean, would definitely have told the main cast from the very beginning, you know, having to deal with all of that with the crew and the cast and you know, it was really - it’s not something that I’d like to do again. That’s for sure.

I wanted to talk to you about how you’re feeling now that the show is ending and how the rest of the cast is feeling.

Well, I can’t speak for the rest of the cast so I don’t know how they’re feeling. As far as how I’m feeling, like, it’s interesting. Like, you know, there’s a side to me that actually, you know, the selfish side of you that wants to go on and, you know, play different roles so there’s an excitement, that kind of, I think brewing for everyone in a sense, you know, we kind of, you know, get to go off and play these new characters or, you know, hopefully and, you know, that’s why you became an actor is to, you know, to not play the same character for ten years.

So it’s kind of nice, I think that it is sad just because I don’t think - the work environment on Battlestar Galactica is absolutely amazing and I don’t think it’s something that comes along a lot and, you know, I’ve done so many canceled television shows I can tell you that it’s not normal to enjoy going to work and to enjoy the people you work with. So I know that that - chances are I’m never going to find that again so that’s sad as well. But you know as far as moving on with the show, I don’t think that’s really - I’m really going to feel the pain of it until the very end.

What do you feel like the impact of the show has had maybe on the SciFi genre for the channel?

Well Battlestar Galactica did for SciFi was, you know, they treated it like a reality, you know, that what was so interesting about our show is that we never relied on the science fiction of the show to drive the show. We relied on the drama and the human condition and those really important questions. That’s what we depended on for the show and because the show, you know, could move it along and most science fiction shows rely way too much on the, you know, the bells and whistles. So I think that it kind of opened doors in science fiction to realize that, you know, regardless if it’s - science fiction is just a setting. It’s not a show, you know, it’s a setting. It’s where something takes place, it’s not, it should never have been what the show is. And I think that finally for the first time what the show has probably done is that it proved that that could be done.

Did you know that Starbuck would become such a popular and kind of an iconic character when you signed up to do this?

Oh of course. I didn’t even know the show, you know, would become as iconic as it is. It’s become - it’s taken on a life of its own and become something completely different than what I ever thought it would. I thought is was just going to be a paycheck. And so no, I didn’t know Starbucks would ever, you know, become what she’s become. I think that, you know, so many things had to come together to make that a reality. You know, I think that the writing was perfect and the way that, you know, they wrote Starbuck was perfect and so, you know, a lot of things had to - all the planets had to align to get this to be perfect. So, I don’t know. A very interesting question, yeah.

At the end of last season a couple of the actors playing the final five Cylons weren’t too happy at least initially to find out that they were Cylons. But if Starbuck turns out to be a Cylon or an agent of the Cylons, will you be pleased or displeased or indifferent?

Well I think the reason the four actors were upset about being Cylons is that I think, you know, you play for years making choices as a character and then to realize all those choices you made would have been different had you known. It’s interesting, it’s kind of like, you know, you get the wool pulled over your eyes for four years and then lo and behold, you know, your character’s something completely different. So that’s, you know - but I would be completely indifferent. I think, you know, I have love for this character and I think we all do as far as everyone for their character on the show, but I - they were pretty angry. I still think Michael Hogan hasn’t come to terms with it. I don’t think he’s ready to accept it yet. So…

I’ve got to say you really blew me away on Bionic Woman and I think you’re great on Galactica. How did you juggle these two great characters at the same time and what do you like about these sort of, you know, action heavy sci-fi roles?

I always had to remind myself of who I was, because I think that the two characters were so different but could have been played so similar. I always had to make sure that I knew where I was and let go of the other story line, even if I was working on both shows in the same day. So for that, you know, Starbuck comes so easily to me now that even the lines and the dialogue, I don’t even memorize the dialogue anymore. I show up to work, I (unintelligible) to the writers but now they know my way of speaking so well, or so much, that Starbucks dialogue is just so easy to memorize, and it’s - that’s the writing. But Bionic Woman, I always had to talk myself into it and make sure I was where I was supposed to be. And as far as the strong characters are concerned, I, you know, I have this deep affinity for these characters. They - I think that I’ve reluctantly turned into the go-to tough girl in this business and I’m ready to do a job that requires no blood and guts and ghosts or anything. So, a nice little romantic comedy with James Mcevoy would be fantastic.

Could you talk a little bit about how this season we’re going to handle the marriage between Starbuck and Anders?

If I knew, I would tell you. I have no idea. You know, we are at episode 14 right now in shooting - in our shooting schedule and I am no closer to being able to have any questions answered from last season than I am now. So - or, you know, then than I am now.

It’s not really being played up then?

You know I think that - without giving too much away here, I think that there are more important issues being dealt with right now on the show for these characters than what Starbuck is and how her marriage is. There’s a lot of really heavy things happening right now and I think that her marriage to Anders is the least of her concerns. But at the same time it would be interesting to ask those questions, you know, because we don’t identify this thing as a person. Is her marriage even legal? I don’t know. You’re asked all those questions that everyone would probably want answered and probably would never get an answer unless I did one of the webcasts. (Unintelligible) questions but yeah.

But as far as me handling it, if it ever gets broached, I, you know, I think Starbuck is starting to feel compassion for the things she hates the most, I think, because she as everyone on the show is starting to realize and these are the major questions of, you know, humanity and what the show, you know, has always kind of asked, is that if you found out tomorrow that, you know, your best friend or your mother or something was a Cylon, you know, say it that way, would it make your experiences that you had with that person or thing less important to you?

No, it’s the same emotion, the same feelings, the same thing that you had experiences with. They’re just different than you always thought they were, it doesn’t mean that it is less, it’s just different. And I think that that’s, you know, something that they’re starting to remember. And as far as Starbuck coming back (unintelligible) family or my boyfriend died, I would do anything to have them back. So, you know, I mean, do people care any more what you are as long as you’re there? That’s an interesting question, so…

Your boss, Ronald D. Moore, is directing I think his first episode now or just recently and have you worked with him and how was that?

I’ve got to say he’s the first director I’ve ever worked with that after every take he says thank you. And I noticed that because it’s not something - I think what the crew does, what an actor does, at times can be overlooked because it’s what we’re supposed to do and to have someone thank you after every take is very interesting. I found that, you know, after a take I stood a little taller, I was a little happier and I was like wow, that must have been really good. Even though I didn’t ask him because God forbid, he said no I was just saying thank you, but that was shit Katee. You’re going to have to go again. So he was a great director. Granted I only had one scene with him but one thing that I noticed that I’ve never had happen before and it goes to - speak to his character as a person. He’s a fantastic man.

I know that your character is one of the more rebellious, impulsive characters on the show. After, you know, playing Starbuck for four seasons, have you picked up any of her, you know, hard core habits or anything like that? Or her love of poker or anything?

No, I still have never played a game of poker. I still don’t smoke cigars. It’s - you know, I haven’t picked up anything from her I don’t think. You know, I mean, if I was to say that I picked up something it would be that, you know - I can’t think. I think that her strength and her conviction is something she believes in is pretty interesting.

I would like to be able to emulate that. And then just her belief in what she has to say is really impressive. I think so many times women in general, but, you know, people as well, apologize before they say things for fear, you know, like we give a disclaimer, like this is going to sound stupid or - and I know there’s women do that all the time, like forgive me for asking this question but like the question doesn’t have any merit, well every question does. And I think that that’s something that I’ve learned from Starbuck is that, you know, there really is and my mother used to say that as a teacher, like no question is stupid, there are no stupid questions, there’s only stupid answers. That’s what my mom used to always say so - so that’s something that I hope to take from Starbucks.

And as far as the fan base of the show goes, you know, are you surprised by the number of fans that the show has gotten or have you gotten any, you know, really surprising fan mail from someone that you wouldn’t expect to like the show?

No, not really. I think the most interesting thing is when I get mail from high school or their parents or something and they’re like, hi, Katee just wanted to say hi, we still live in the same house, you know, come on by. That’s interesting when a friend of mine doesn’t know how to get a hold of me and sends my mail to my publicist. I’m like, what are you doing, just call my parents, you idiot.

I’m wondering if you could speak a little bit about Starbuck’s sort of mental state going into season four and what finding Earth really means to her?

She’s very fragile, you know, she’s extremely lost. We’ve never seen Starbuck so alone and so lost. And she’s a little distressed, not only because of the way that people are treating her but because of the questions that her coming back has raised in her own mind. And as far as - what was the second part of the question?

Just what finding Earth and the sort of mission that she’s on.

Right. I think it’s her revolution. I think it’s her end. I think that she’s putting so much weight and so much weight on this one thing, this one task that she believes that is her destiny that I think she wouldn’t let anything stand in her way, anything, which I think when that is the case, you’ve got a very scary person on your hands when they’re unwilling - completely unwilling to sacrifice everything to accomplish something. That’s scary. So I think that we’re going to see a lot from her this season that isn’t - kind of like a shell of her former self, at the same time a lot of her doing things that you don’t necessarily don’t agree with. So…

And have the producers told you what exactly happened to Starbuck during her supposedly dead time?

No, we’re on episode 14 and I’ve read 15 and nope. I don’t think we’ll figure that out until the last second.

What I’d like to know is when you saw the script for Razor at the end where the Cylon Hybrid makes the prophecy that Starbuck is a harbinger of doom, what was your initial reaction and as the season has progressed, how has that reaction changed? Either strengthened, lessened or whatever?

I think that when I read that very end I went of course she is. Like, what else could happen to Starbuck, I’m like, come on, you know, lay it all on me. The worst possible thing and there you have it, fantastic, she’s going to kill everybody, great. I think that that is something that has been carried through the entire season so far. As far as whether or not anyone knows, you’re going to have to wait and find out on what it really means, you know. It could mean so many different things.

What is the best memory or experience that you’re going to take with you from your time on Battlestar and then also what one physical thing or prop or piece of the set would you take with you if you could to remember the show?

That’s easy. I’m getting in my flight suit with my helmet and my gun belt and driving home. I’m going to bronze that f-ing thing, I swear to God. I’m going to bronze it and put it in my bathtub so every time someone comes over and showers, they have to stand next to that flight suit. It was hell for so many years that it’s only appropriate that I get to take it with me. Granted I have to drive over a border so maybe I’ll put the guns in the trunk and write prop on them. But shop at the American Government, that’d be great. I think that - and the beginning part of that question?

Your best experience or memory.

You know, the cast and the crew. I have made so many friends on the show, you know, I mean, Steve McNutt our VP has been like my dad for five years and constantly telling me to be safe when I’m with Michael, constantly. So I think that, you know, and then also the friendships that you form that are through the show but you are able to maintain outside of the show. That’s really important because when you do a show you have these grand plans of staying in touch with these people and nine times out of ten it never happens.

You know I haven’t spoken to Richard Dreyfuss or Marcia Gay Harden, you know. I did a show with them for years so, it’s, you know, you never do. Unless you find a common ground outside of the show, those friendships don’t last. And so I think that what I’m really proud of is my friendship with (unintelligible). I’m very proud of that, it’s my first adult friendship I guess, like the first friendship I’ve developed as an adult that hasn’t been a friend since I was, you know, 17. And so I’m proud of that and I’m proud that we’ll be friends forever or for a long time at least. So…

When you and the cast are sitting around, do you ever theorize on who the final Cylon is going to be and also will we find out before the end of this first run of episodes?

I think that, you know, we’ve been told who it is. I personally don’t believe it. I think that that’s something that’s going to be kept to the very end, you know, and I don’t think that it would be smart to tell people because inevitably things always get out on the web and to have to have to keep that secret for a year, I think Chris maybe should shoot maybe like five different endings. And whichever character doesn’t get (death) they should just make that the final Cylon. You know, it’ll be like, you know, some random character from the first season that had one line. It’s fine, you know, that’s who it’ll be. No, so… I don’t know. We do talk about it sometimes but as far as who it is, I don’t think any of us will know for sure until we see it on television.

Okay, so it won’t be in the first run then?

No. I don’t think so. I haven’t seen the episodes though and I don’t pre-read scripts so I couldn’t tell you. I personally don’t know who it is, no.

How do you think your character’s journey or as well as the other characters’ journey of this drama parallels to the reality that people live that everyday and what things might people learn from watching it?

I mean that’s hard for me - in general or how her military life is…

How she’s progressed throughout the whole entire saga.

I don’t know, you know. People always ask me this question how she’s evolved and she has. I think that she’s finally someone you can depend on and I don’t think she was before. But I think what keeps her going — and if this is what people can take from her — is her desire to love and her desire to have people love her keeps her going. You know, her relationships with Adama and Lee has really kept, has really kept - probably kept her alive and I think that that’s something that’s very important. You know, I think that that’s extremely important. You know, I’ve talked to a lot of soldiers who say that, you know, what keeps them going is that they get to come home. So, you know, it’s that go to speak to any relationship that, you know, we’re happiest and most willing to accommodate I guess life and all its ups and downs when we have love in our lives.

Ron Moore has said that he’s not interested in doing a Battlestar feature film. Do you think you could change his mind and if so would you be interested in doing that film?

No, I wouldn’t want to change his mind. I think he’s right.

You know, he said it best at the (PCA), I don’t know if you were there but or got that but what he said was that what would end up happening is that you would have to focus on, you know, one or two characters and, you know, what’s so brilliant is that it’s been a four-year movie and the time to tell these stories about each person individually and really have you become invested in those characters and to do a two hour movie or a one and a half hour movie I think takes away from that what we’ve been able to do for so long, you know, it really does take away. I mean, I don’t, you know, how do you pick which two characters and when you pick those two characters are you going to flip off the other 17 main characters on the show, like how do you define, you know, what to do.

I think he’s right, you know, plus at the same time, you know, as a performer — excuse me, sorry, sorry, I’m downstairs in the lobby here — I think that, you know, I don’t know, plus like whatever I was going to say is that when I even actually am done with the show, I’m done with the show. I - you know, as much as I love the job or don’t love the job the last thing I want to do is come back and do it again, when I’ve already done it. Granted, you know, talk to me in five years if I haven’t worked. We’ll see. But, you know, as of right now I have no desire to do it - to do a movie.

Just think of sort of the tail end of season three it seems as though Starbuck was sort of moving more towards being a spiritual figure instead of, you know, a more action oriented figure. You were having visions, you were kind of, you know, having a more spiritual experience. How does that affect how you play the character and do you think that that’s something that’s going to be developed in the new season?

It doesn’t affect how I play the character to be honest. She’s always been religious and it’s not that she’s changed, it’s that she’s opened up her eyes and allowed something else to come into her life, you know, she’s the same person. It’s just another aspect of who she is, but she’s the same person. It really hasn’t changed the way I play her at all.

If you were in total control of how your character ended up toward the end of this last season, what would you have your character - how would you have your character go out if you don’t know…

Die.

You’d like to have her die? How would you like to have her die?

I don’t know. Maybe something will blow up again on the ship. I don’t know. I just, I don’t that there is anyway to end it with her being happy. You know, what I do wish for her is peace, you know, in whatever form that comes in I’ll be happy with it. But that’s what I want. I want for her to finally have a sense of calm in her life. That would be very interesting and whether it comes with death or, you know, some kind of transcendence of some sort, whatever happens that’s what I want for her.

Throughout your work on Galactica what maybe have you learned most as an actor would you say from your time on the show?

I don’t know, you know, I think every day is a learning experience. Every day you learn something new and I don’t really think I’ll know the gravity of that until I’ve stepped away and taken on another job and I’ll do something that will just come naturally and I’ll go oh wow, I learned that on Battlestar.

You know, what I learned from Marcia Gay Harden and Richard Dreyfuss and Peter O’Toole when I was working with them. I mean that was, you know, an amazing work environment when I did the show with them and I don’t think I realized what I had learned from them until years later. So I think that’s kind of what it’s going to be so…

I know that, you know, the Admiral has basis for like a father figure for Starbuck for a very long time and I wondered, you know, in the previews that we’ve seen, the official previews that have been released, you know it seems like the Admiral really doesn’t know what to believe of Starbuck upon her return and is initially very skeptical. How does that, from someone like him, affect Starbuck and her mental state?<