While nothing can top the overall excitement of Dragon*Con there are always a few moments worth capturing. Three very popular guest panels the entire weekend consisted of Joss Whedon’s “Buffy” and “Angel”, and Robert Cooper’s “Stargate SG-1” and “Stargate Atlantis”. The ballrooms were packed to capacity and if you didn’t get in queue or your seat early there was a good chance you weren’t going to get in at all, they were so popular. The years of these classic shows have not waned on the fans by any means. Buffy may have ended in 2003 but its cast is just as popular today and the inclusion of Liz Rohm, who fans haven’t seen very often, was a huge hit. And even though Stargate SG-1 concluded its 10-year run this season, and Stargate Atlantis continues on, that span has created fans who have encouraged a new generation to discover what has spanned a decade. With continual banter from the panel that kept sides splitting and enlightening questions from the audience the hours may have flown by but the genuine respect and appreciation from both sides were felt and would never cease to end.
On Friday at 1:00pm at the Hyatt hotel fans gathered in the Regency 6 & 7 ballrooms for an “Hour in the Buffyverse” with actors James Marsters (Spike), Juliet Landau (Drusilla), Elisabeth Rohm (Det. Kate Lockley) and Ken Feinberg (the Chaos Demon).
How did your working on Angel come about?
Elizabeth Rohm: “I was living in London and I didn’t know that this world existed. I did my audition and it turned out well so then I got a chance to talk to Joss Whedon, who is awesome, and it kind of sealed the deal. But I didn’t do it as well as these guys did…”
James Marsters: “You weren’t completely corrupted.”
ER
: “No, but I wanted to be… and then I got stuck on Law & Order!” (laughter from the audience)
JM: “Oh!”
ER: “I really wanted to do the scene with Spike and Drusilla.”
JM: “It’s not too late.”
What was different in doing a Sci-fi show like Angel and doing Law & Order?
ER: “Sci-fi is so much more fun, every single day to go to Angel was a blast and it’s just a lot more fun. You really had to be much more serious on Law & Order. I had a lot of fun working on Angel, so I miss that.”
JM: “The writers miss it too. I was talking to David Fury and he was working on 24, which is a really good show, and he’s like, ‘I hate it! I want to say let’s have a demon come in. And they always tell me Noooo. Bite the criminals, can I bite the criminals?’” (laughter)
What was it like working on Sci-fi and Without A Trace?
JM: “I’ve only done one episode of Without a Trace, and it was only two scenes, I had a lot of fun. There were people in the crew who worked on Buffy so it was a little bit like coming home, it was really fun. When you’re doing Sci-fi you can run with it, be out there, blood caps, you know – it’s all boy fun. And then when you’re a cop you have to pull your gun and be all scared if the bad guy jumps out at you but it’s its own challenge. That’s what I love about those cop shows. Characters are best defined through action – to figure out who a character is in a movie you watch what they do, what they choose to do not how they reveal themselves just laughing it out. But that is more expensive and it takes more time to write that so in television, more often than not, if a character is going to reveal themselves they’re going to blab everything out to somebody near the kitchen sink. And you get tired of that. What I like about the prime shows it that they’ve just completely stopped trying to make characters. All of the characters kind of sound the same and there’s no attempt to even differentiate them. What they do is they hire actors, and the actors give their own personality to it and then by the time they film and edit it they’re very much different characters because there’re different people playing them. But there’s no kitchen sink within a thousand miles so you get to define your own character.”
ER: “Plus there’s something very cool about how you go to work, all of us in our different jobs, and you don’t really get to know the people you spend tons of hours with every day for years and years. It’s kind of like a weird loneliness going to the office. And that’s what these procedural shows really capture is how we work together, we know each other, we save the day together but we don’t know anything about each other. At least Law & Order was really like that, you’d know someone for years but you wouldn’t know if they were an alcoholic like (the characters) Lenny, or a sex addict like Serena.” (laughter)
JM: “What is Sam Waterston really like?”
ER: “He is so nice. He’s like this Bohemian; he’d come in after hiatus with his hair long on his face. He’s truly like a liberal hippy type.”
JM: “Yeah!” (laughter from the audience)
What are you doing now? What’s your favorite music and what do you listen to before a sex scene?
ER: “It’s called Masters of Science Fiction, did you guys see it? I did it with Terry O’Quinn and Stephen Hawking was the narrator, it was a mini-series and each of us did an hour movie. I just got finished a film that Bernard Rose, he directed The Candyman, Immortal Beloved, so I did that with Angelica Houston and Danny Houston. I think that will come out next winter. And as far as music and sex goes, you know guys, (whispers) I can’t tell you. (shouts from the audience about her ring) Oh I’m engaged. (applause) But now that I’ve met Spike, everything’s off!” (more applause)
JM: “I am working on an album, it’ll be twelve tracks and it should be ready before Christmas. Torchwood and Without a Trace, and PS I Love You is coming out with Hilary Swank, that’s going to be good, don’t blink when you watch PS I Love You, don’t blink! Usually I play my own music in the trailer, (laughter) no seriously before a scene to keep relaxed I’ll play guitar, but before a fight scene it’ll be Everclear or Nirvana. Before sex scenes? Al Green. I’m up for anything; I don’t need much to get me going.” (big laughter)
Juliet Landau: “Okay! I’ve been really busy in a lot of different things than normal for me and cool. Gary Oldman directed a music video and he asked me to direct ‘the making of’ and it turned more into a mini-movie about his creative process. He really loved the film and it’s been a really cool experience. We had fifty-hours of footage and basically condensed it down to a 20-minutes movie. And he shot the entire video on a Nokia cell phone, but it’s a $2,000 cell phone so we have an incredible picture but one of the things that’s really neat about the film is a lot of the footage is like being inside his head from his POV because he gets the gem of an idea and then you see him go with it and carry it out.”
ER: “What was the band?”
JL: “The band is a Jewish Hip Hop band. And the name of the band is Chutzpa. I also launched a website called JulietLandau.com. I am doing what Amber (Benson) did, which is raising money for a short film that I wrote, via the web site, by selling Drusilla figures and other cool merchandise. Basically I’ve written this short that I’m going to play seven different characters in, and direct, I know I’m insane. I just finished a movie called Darkness Visible with a director I’ve worked with before and I’ve worked with Sean Young, we’re playing sisters. I did a project for HBO that James Scott released and I directed. It’s been very busy and good. Let’s see, music… I always do work with music and it’s always different for different characters. In terms while acting for Buffy for Dru I actually listened to a lot of Sheryl Crow.”
JM: “My Favorite Mistake.” (laughter)
JL: “And you would think that somebody would know you, after 200-years.”
LR: “I took piano lessons for two months and I had to learn a sonata by Beethoven that I played throughout the movie, and having seen Immortal Beloved I felt intimated tremendously, and Gary could play and I couldn’t play, and I did it! (applause) I could play piano but that’s all I could play! (laughter) I couldn’t play chopsticks but I could play the Pastoral sonata. And Danny and Angelica Houston were (so nice), I hadn’t done many movies because I’ve done a lot of TV so that felt kind of like a bigger moment.”
ER: Did you ever work with your father (Martin Landau - famous character actor) ?
JL: “In Ed Wood we had one sequence when we’re together. And it’s this very bizarre scene where we’re in a laboratory and I’m in a wedding dress and my dad is a mad scientist. So he puts me in a trance and I walk into the table and he gets distracted by Angora and starts whipping him with a big whip and I look up at my dad and I’m like, ‘is this surreal or what? This is a little odd.’ (laughter) Then I did a movie called Carlo’s Wake and my dad played the patron like he was dead and we were all at his funeral so I never ‘worked with him’, I actually worked with a cast of his dead body. I didn’t realize it, with the makeup on it was very realistic, and when I got to the set I was like, ‘Oh my God!, (laughter) this is a comedy and this is not funny,’ I have to say it was awful. I felt like I was going to my dad’s funeral everyday.”
On Saturday at 1:00pm at the Hyatt hotel there was buzz in the Centennial I ballroom as an unexpected addition to the convention was announced. “Pitch Black: an Hour with Claudia Black“ featuring actress Claudia Black (Vala Mal Doran) of course. Even though she was 8-months along in her pregnancy she was eager and pleased to have this opportunity with her fans and they in turn greatly appreciated it.
What was it like when you came to Stargate SG-1 as a regular cast member?
Claudia Black: “Which is such a fantastic privilege for an actor to be in a position to have all that at your disposal and then the opposite of that was on Farscape, it was almost every man for himself but everyone was suffering from some incredible performance adversity, from the puppeteers of 6 people trying to get Rygel into a room. Brian Henderson would come in and say, ‘How come Rygel hasn’t been in any scenes lately,’ and then he would direct and be like, ‘oh my god I get it.’ (laughter)
“For me it’s been a very different experience not having that same responsibility of being a leading lady as I did on Farscape, who was a very serious character and a very serious responsibility. Vala I just sort of got to walk in and mix it up. But the common thing is definitely — I think it’s the same the world over, that’s what I hope for anyway and I haven’t found an exception for this rule yet — sets are a place where we have to work hard, they have to enjoy themselves, and they have to have passion about what they’re doing otherwise it’s a complete waste of their time because you rarely see their families. But that was the nice thing as well on Stargate, because the directors would say, ‘nope not doing overtime tonight, it’s about family time to go home,’ that’s the show I was working on at that time.”
One really important question, Michael Shanks or Ben Browder?
CB: “You want me to be honest do you? I don’t think I’ve ever attempted to answer this question. Well a mother is never supposed to pick favorites and neither is an onscreen lover. They are both equally delicious, not from experience of taste. (laughter) They’ve got similar work ethics and they’ve got brilliance upstairs, and creative, and interesting, and funny, and they were both very protective and supportive of me. And that reflected in my performance. I think if I had done an outrageously crap performance on one show and vastly different on the other you might start to think perhaps there’s circumstances surrounding that. I felt equally supported, I felt in both instances that we’d be friends if we’d met socially and I wouldn’t have survived in either environment without either of them. I’m a really lucky girl to have bounced off one show, one very tired working relationship with Ben to then suddenly be with Michael.
“When I first came to the set, he was walking past, and someone said, ‘Michael’s really glad you’ve come to work with the show,’ oh cool and I’m standing there waiting to do a fight rehearsal and he walks past and I thought he had seen me but he kept walking and I thought, ‘ohh – he’s one of those.’ (laughter) He hadn’t seen me at all and he came up, ‘Oh hi, it’s really nice to meet you, I heard Canadians are so sweet.’ (laughter) Okay I’ve got to get that thought out of my head, now he’s a completely different person to the way I suppose you were. I was so impressed because straight away Michael was contributing and sharp in the same way, let’s make it better, lets make it work. I went up to him because I was on the other side of the fence this time, I wasn’t a leading lady trying to make guests comfortable, I was the guest and I remembered on Farscape being internally grateful for people who would come in every week – just the look of wonder in their eye first of all at the costumes, and the sets and the detail you’d never really see. The guests would come and say, ‘this is amazing, what a fantastic opportunity to work in this environment, you’re so lucky,’ they were helping to lift us. I’m not sure what I can bring to the table so I asked him, ‘what aspects of your character haven’t you been able to explore, what can I do for you to help you bring that out? Hose can I serve you?’ (huge laughter) Then we started working. I don’t think he’s giving his real credit for timing or the leading man that his is, or the comedian or the action hero.”
On Friday and Saturday the Hyatt hotel was an explosion of anticipation as the Centennial ballrooms of I, II and III were transformed into Stargate Commend for what could only be titled as “The Mega Panels“. The panels featured actors from both Stargate SG-1 and Atlantis with the highlight being the incomparable Louis Gossett Jr (Gerak), along with Alexis Cruz (Skarra), Corin Nemec (Jonas Quinn), Jason Momoa (Ronan Dex), Paul McGillion (Dr. Becket), Vanessa Angel (Anise) and John De Lancie (Col. Simmons), Lexa Doig (Dr. Lam), Michael Shanks (Daniel Jackson), and Christopher Judge (Teal’c)
What helped you prepare for your roles?
John De Lancie: “I blew dope and drank bourbon.” (laughter)
Alexis Cruz: “I’m bi-lingual, sometimes just by myself.”
Corin Nemec: “I’m just suddenly bi.” (laughter)
Paul McGillion: (Scottish accent) “I’m uncomfortable ” (more laughter)
AC: “For me Skaara was pretty straight forward. When I jumped into Skaara I made a decision to really put him out there as very much the arch type of an idealistic young hero. There was no apologies about it, it was very straight forward, I wanted to go as far as I could with that, this was the young mans call to adventure and that’s exactly the tale I wanted to explore with him. When it got into Klorel then it started getting much more shadier – one, I was playing off what Peter Williams was doing with Apophis specifically, and I figured if this is going to be this guys’ son, I modeled him after a 14th Century French Prince, one of these very decedent heirs to the throne who had no business being an heir to the thrown. And he was most certainly bi-alienistic.” (laughter)
CN: “I really don’t like bananas that much.(laughter) But boy do I like the ones I’ve been given the last few years! Especially the 10-pound bag of candied ones I got in London one time. Yes, 10-pounds, 10-pounds of candied bananas. It was unbelievable.”
PM: “I have 500 baby turtles at home. (laughter) Thank you! With my character Becket, initially they wanted a character with international flavor to him and I was born in Scotland so I thought I’d do a Scottish accent. The casting people wanted me to do an English accent instead but I felt that in the pilot it had a really comedic flavor to it and I felt the Scottish was the way to go so I brought that flavor to Becket. So they decided to go with another Scott in the skies so to speak, God bless James Doohan. (applause) So that was a nice opportunity for me and I think every character is a little extension of yourself to a certain degree, I think that in acting you bring a little piece of yourself to every role. So I’ve got a-we bit of Becket in me. I’m even more sensitive. (laughter) Maybe not.”
JDL: “I don’t have any deep dark secrets about the character I played. I didn’t even remember the character, until someone reminded me. (laughter) Well that said, I worked for weeks preparing…(laughter) So I can say something that I actually do know a little bit about I agree that if you don’t bring yourself to the roll, any role, whatever the case may be you might as well not be acting. And the director might as well have hired someone else. So bringing oneself to the role is really important and any roles that the four of us up here have played have embodied something of who we are.”
What actors would you like to work with?
AC: “Clint Eastwood”
PM: “I’d love to work with J.J. Abrams. A particular role that’d be a lot of fun to play. Actors - I’ve also been a big fan of Tim Roth I think he’s a fantastic actor, and Sally Fields. And just getting good writing, I think any actor likes to have a good script, when you have a good script it’s a great chance for you to play an appropriate cool character.”
What was the most difficult part of becoming your character?
CN: Someone like Jonas Quinn, the most difficult part of that was putting on 25-pounds to get big enough to act along side Chris Judge without disappearing in his shadow. I spent 3-months just working out and drinking weight gainer shakes and everything else I could do in order to put on the weight that I thought was right for that part and for that show. That’s probably the most difficult thing I’ve done for preparation in terms of that otherwise most of it is a lot of fun. I have a film out on DVD right now from Lions Gates called Chicago Massacre which is based on Richard Speck, the serial killer from the 1960’s who murdered all the nurses and he’s a real, dirty, ignorant Texan and that was a lot of fun to create that type of character and make him charismatic. Because when I play bad guy rolls I always try and find what’s good about them, what makes them a normal person, that when you meet them on the street you don’t know that that person is necessarily a bad guy. It just varies.”
AC: “I’m a big Sci-fi fan. I proudly wear my geek badge. I encourage and induct others into geekdom. In terms of preparation, I’m perfect. (laughter) There’s different things you do depending on the character, obviously some things you don’t do, I’m sure Corin didn’t go around killing people to prepare.
CN: “Oh, I did!” (laughter)
AC: “In general I found all the hard work happens in between rolls because you have to bring pieces of yourself to it. My theory is that very much our souls are like prisms and all you’re really doing is, for each roll, you’re shifting the way light reflects on it to show the different sides of our human souls. So you’re constantly filling this roll with your own humanity or inhumanity, or lack thereof or however you want to refract that light. I’ve taken a lot of different jobs in my file that I do just to get a sense of how other people live. I play a lot of role-playing games as well. (applause) That’s been a huge help for me in sharpening your imagination and story-telling skills and putting that idea of seeing other slices of life and constantly exercising that in a way that’s not professional. It’s not getting paid, it’s just about doing homework, like an artist would just doodle all the time, if you’re constantly doing that by inches and degrees you’re going to get better until when you get the part you’re pretty much ready to fit in there, you have an entire collection of experience.”
PM: “I like a turkey sandwich. I do sit-ups, I do jumping jacks and wind sprints. (laughter) And I’m ready, I’m ready to roll. I watched Star Trek when I was a kid, Doctor Who a bit. (applause) Like we talked about getting good scripts, when you get good scripts then you can really sink yourself into the character. But it’s a lot of you, you put a lot of yourself in there and that’s what hopefully shows off on the screen. So just be honest when you’re out there, just be honest. It’s hard for some people, (looks at Jason) cheeky little bugger.” (laughter)
Louis Gossett Jr.: “My first day of the shooting of Stargate I had this elaborate costume on and I had to figure out a way to hide the microphone so the soundman asked, ‘can I get a level Mr. Gossett?’ and I said, (in a garbled voice) ‘testing, one, two, three, four…’ (applause) He put a new battery in and then asked if he can have another level. (same garbled voice) ‘Okay, is this better?’ Finally I had to fess up and get on with the show.”
Chris sometimes Teal’c can be very stoic and you are a very lively person, do you find it hard to remain emotionless when doing certain scenes?
Christopher Judge: “Uhm. (laughter as Michael Shanks concentrates to hear this answer) Well, it may seem on film that I’m motionless, but there’s always one part of me moving. (laughter and applause) Everyone up here has worked with me, and I may be the most annoying actor in Hollywood. I don’t really care, and I screw around until ‘action’ and then to about 10-seconds after that and so when we do scenes, to me it’s more about the fun of it rather then my learned thespians up here. These people are real actors, I’m just a personality.” (laughter)
Michael Shanks: “Ya know… through a combination, at least for the first five years of the show, of Botox and being hung-over to the point of sleeping that was highlighting Teal’c’s emotionless state. (laughter) You think I’m joking. I don’t know how many of you are aware of how Kelnoreem was created… but I’m not joking! We’re doing a briefing room scene, I think in the second season and he’s just hung over beyond comprehension and the director – in the wide shot – is like, ‘what the hell are you doing, it’s like you’re sleeping.’ He say, ‘no, Teal’c ’s meditating.’ (laughter) I’m not lying.”
CJ: “That is the truth. I said Teal’c wouldn’t be interested in what these Earth people have to say. He’d be in his own world, commuting with his symbiote. (laughter) And they went for it! (more laughter) So drink up!”
Was it more difficult playing Daniel at the beginning of the series when you came back?
MS: “I think it was more difficult playing it in the beginning because, I hate to say it, I imitated James Spader for the screen test and the audition and when I found out how long the show was starting to go for I when, ‘oh, shit’, I’m going to be doing an imitation of another actor’s work for the rest of my career. (laughter) So at some point I decided to make a few changes and the character’s evolved along the way but I think it was more difficult to reconcile how am I going to do this and evolve the character – it wasn’t black and white – it was a slow evolution but I had a real dramatic moment when I realized we were going to do this for awhile, oh god help me.”
Alexis, you were one of the few people who made the transition from the film to the TV show.
AC: “I think that they called everyone to do the series, I was the only one who was desperately out of work so what the hell, yeah okay. (laughter) That was pretty much it.”
CJ: “I’ve had the pleasure of knowing Lou going on 20-years and a lot of my behavior on set is because of Lou. He’s such a warm, inviting man, and when Beau first came on, Beau wasn’t accustomed to the way we do things and our tom foolerly drove him to distraction. But Lou and Beau have been friends since 1969, and the first day Lou came on set he gave Beau the gears like nothing I’ve ever seen and from that day forward Beau absolutely loosened up and became one of the biggest pranksters. And to be able to have our sort of lunacy and to have it solidified by people with Oscars and Emmys is really wonderful and we thank you for allowing us to share that.”
LG: “Acting is so much better than working that when it ceases to be fun I’ll go drive a cab somewhere because this is fun.”
Did the hair come before the role or vice versa?
Jason Momoa: “It came before the role, I’ve had it for 5-6 years. I did it for a movie I wrote, and I did it for myself and for different rolls because you can get trapped in things. Someone who looks like this I’m not playing a doctor for the rest of my life, I’m gonna go around killing people. That and it kept tangling up and I don’t like to clean myself.” (laughter)
PM: “Yeah, he’s fun to hang out with. I was surprised Jason was signing autographs, I’m like, ‘I didn’t know you could write.’” (laughter)
How do you keep Michael’s feet on the ground?
Lexa Doig: “All it takes actually is 2-3 poopy diapers… ‘honey can you go to the store I forgot something.’ He’s a good guy, mostly.”
MS: “When she’s standing there when you have your son and he has his first – I have two daughters who are older – and my son, I had no experience with that from this perspective before. Usually it goes down, and I was changing the diaper and this fountain came over my shoulder and all the way down. And she’s the first one who saw it and just started laughing instead of saying, ‘honey look out!’ I knew I’d be fine.”
Was it hard putting together the various clips for the 200th episode?
MS: “It was a lot of fun. The only one that was a bit of a sticky point was when we were spoofing Farscape. Obviously Ben and Claudia are there and it’s kind of this sensitive ground, now Claudia kind of turns and, ‘whatever.’ Ben was a bit more tetchy, (laughter) but he was open to doing whatever. It wasn’t until the last day where - he was supposed to be playing the Crichton character and I was supposed to be playing the Stark character – and Claudia actually piped up and said, ‘well it’s Vala’s fantasy shouldn’t that be the other way around,’ and all of a sudden Ben said, ‘okay then we can do this because I don’t want to spoof a character that I played for years and adore.’ We had a lot of fun spoofing every genre and especially ourselves.”
For more pictures please visit HERE.
- In 1999, Kristy Bratton teamed up with professional web designer VirginiaObeius to co-create the 'definitive source for Angel' website,CityofAngel.com, offering a fresh behind-the-scenes look at the series asnever before seen by its fans. In the course of the five years whichfollowed, Ms. Bratton wrote over 75 articles for CoA covering the gamut ofentertainment from conventions as the San Diego International Comic Con,London's Starfury events and Dragon*Con. Spotlight features on thecreative force of "Angel" included Joss Whedon, David Greenwalt, TimMinear and Marti Noxon. Highlight features on actors Andy Hallett, AmyAcker and Stephanie Romanov, plus Behind-the-Scenes features on makeupartist Dayne Johnson, set designer Stuart Blatt and stunt coordinator MikeMassa. Ms. Bratton's photography work has been published in the OfficialBuffy/Angel magazine by Titan. She has written for the Official StargateSG-1 magazine with features on Don S. Davis, Peter DeLuise and CarmenArgenziano. Her daily inspiration is the memory of her beloved, femaleyellow lab, Tobi who has a cameo in Tom Sniegoski's novel, "The Fallen:Leviathan." www.CityofAngel.com