Post by koenigrules on Jan 9, 2005 14:08:09 GMT -5
Here's some interviews you might find interesting if you have not checked out our NEWS home page:
www.journalnow.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=WSJ%2FMGArticle%2FWSJ_BasicArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=1031780061840&path=!news!entertainment!television&s=1037645508994
Battlestar Galactica's Back by Tim Clodfelter
Actress Grace Park is doing double duty on her new TV series, Battlestar Galactica - but she isn't getting double pay.
"I think I should talk to someone about that," she said with a laugh.
In the series - which will make its debut at 9 p.m. Friday on the Sci Fi Channel - Park plays Sharon "Boomer" Valerii, a fiesty fighter pilot on an enormous starship called the Galactica. She and her fellow pilots protect the remnants of humankind from attack by evil robots known as Cylons. The Cylons were created by humans to act as their servants but rebelled, obliterating most of humanity in the process. The Galactica leads a ragtag fleet of survivors as they evade the Cylons and search for a new home.
Boomer doesn't realize that she is actually a Cylon "sleeper agent," an exact replica of a human being who has been planted in human society with no knowledge of her true purpose - to act as a saboteur when the Cylons need her.
If that weren't a complex enough twist, Park is also playing a duplicate of Boomer in a second storyline that takes place back on Caprica, one of the human colony worlds wiped out by the initial Cylon attack.
"It's so exciting," Park said of her dual role. "It's giving me hoops to jump through and rivers to go up. I think I'd like to have had a few more years of acting under my belt.... It's very difficult and challenging." She recalls one of her costars, veteran actor Edward James Olmos, telling her, "You've got the hardest role on the show."
Park said she found the Boomer on Caprica particularly fun to play.
"She gets to do all the action," she said. "The other one gets to be all conflicted and miserable, which is probably more like I actually am."
Park was born in Los Angeles and moved to Canada when she was a child. After earning a degree in psychology at the University of British Columbia, she became a model and then an actress. She was one of the stars of the popular Canadian teen drama Edgemont and has appeared in episodes of such shows as The Outer Limits, Dark Angel and The Immortal.
Because of her studies, she tends to psychoanalyze the characters she plays.
"After you've studied a certain subject so much, it becomes part of how you perceive the world," she said. "It's inherent in the way I think."
Battlestar Galactica started as a TV series in 1978 and was remade last year as a four-hour miniseries by the Sci Fi Channel. It became one of the highest-rated miniseries on cable TV in the 2003-04 TV season. A condensed three-hour version of that miniseries will be shown at 8 p.m. today on NBC to whet viewers' appetites for the weekly series and allow people who missed the Sci Fi Channel broadcast a chance to catch up.
The weekly series picks up a few days after the events of the miniseries, as the human refugees fight fatigue and struggle to keep one step ahead of the Cylons.
Olmos stars as Commander Adama, the gruff leader of the Galactica. His crew includes his son, Lee "Apollo" Adama (Jamie Bamber), who frequently clashes with his father; Kara "Starbuck" Thrace (Katee Sackhoff), a wisecracking ace pilot; and Colonel Tigh (Michael Hogan), the troubled executive officer.
Other prominent characters in the show include: Laura Roslin (Mary McDonnell), a politician who has become the de facto president of the survivors; Dr. Baltar (James Callis), a brilliant but troubled scientist who was manipulated by the Cylons into helping them destroy civilization; and Number Six (Tricia Helfer), a sexy Cylon who seduced Baltar and appears to him in hallucinations.
Some fans of the 1978 version of Galactica complained about extensive changes in the new version of the show, including changes of gender for many characters.
"The original was quite male-heavy," Park said. "The females were the disco queens in the back, looking hot with their hair and nails and all."
In the original series, Boomer was a man and was played by Herb Jefferson Jr. Park met him last year at ComicCon, a science-fiction and comic-book convention in San Diego.
"He was sitting at a table doing autograph signings," she said. "He had no idea who I was at first, but he gave me a big old hug. He was super nice."
&
www.eclipsemagazine.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=1258
And Now, Direct From Battlestar Galactica - Boomer Talks To EM!!!!
Despite the controversial recasting of key roles as women, last season's 'Battlestar Galactica' mini-series did sufficiently big numbers for the SciFi Channel that they gave the go-ahead for a weekly series. Grace Park was cast in one the gender-shifted roles - a rather key role as it turned out. With the series set to premiere on Sci-Fi on January 14th, interviewing the charming Ms Park seemed the logical thing to...
EM: You have racked up quite a list of credits in a fairly short period of time, from working on a quirky series from The Two Barrys [Sonnenfeld and Josephson], to recurring roles on 'The Immortal' and 'Jake 2.0, to the Gemini-winning mini-series, Human Cargo'. Mostly, it seems, you've worked on science fiction and fantasy projects. Do you have a preference for them, or is that just the way things have happened, so far?
GP: Location, location, location. Being in Vancouver there's a buffet of sci-fi shows to fill up on and I'm chowing down and gettin fat on BSG.
EM: I note that you have a degree in psychology, and once danced for twenty straight hours. That's a pretty odd combination. Obviously, you have the energy to handle the schedule for working on a weekly television series, but does your degree inform the way you choose your roles, or your performance once you've been cast?
GP: Psychology's given me a perspective of and fascination with people's behaviour and what motivates us. But when it comes to performance, though psychology will help, often the best things will come up organically and my job is then to get outta my own way and let things happen. That's not so easy as it sounds!
EM: How did the role of Sharon 'Boomer' Valerii come to you?
GP: I auditioned like any other job. Originally I auditioned for Dualla, then Starbuck. Finally, they didn't know what to do with me so they gave me this tiny part to play of Sharon.
EM: I think a lot of people were surprised when the 'Battlestar Galactica' miniseries turned out to be so good [though they probably shouldn't have been, considering that Ronald Moore had just done some amazing work on HBO's 'Carnivale'].
The biggest twist, in the mini-series, was that Cylons have evolved and now look like us - and Sharon is a Cylon sleeper. What did you think when you finished reading the script and saw that?
GP: What the hell? When did they change the ending like that? Did they do that after they cast me? And what does that mean? [Then this huge mischievous grin spread across my face... Mwah ha ha ha!]
The full interview can be read at the website listed above.
Enjoy,
KR
www.journalnow.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=WSJ%2FMGArticle%2FWSJ_BasicArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=1031780061840&path=!news!entertainment!television&s=1037645508994
Battlestar Galactica's Back by Tim Clodfelter
Actress Grace Park is doing double duty on her new TV series, Battlestar Galactica - but she isn't getting double pay.
"I think I should talk to someone about that," she said with a laugh.
In the series - which will make its debut at 9 p.m. Friday on the Sci Fi Channel - Park plays Sharon "Boomer" Valerii, a fiesty fighter pilot on an enormous starship called the Galactica. She and her fellow pilots protect the remnants of humankind from attack by evil robots known as Cylons. The Cylons were created by humans to act as their servants but rebelled, obliterating most of humanity in the process. The Galactica leads a ragtag fleet of survivors as they evade the Cylons and search for a new home.
Boomer doesn't realize that she is actually a Cylon "sleeper agent," an exact replica of a human being who has been planted in human society with no knowledge of her true purpose - to act as a saboteur when the Cylons need her.
If that weren't a complex enough twist, Park is also playing a duplicate of Boomer in a second storyline that takes place back on Caprica, one of the human colony worlds wiped out by the initial Cylon attack.
"It's so exciting," Park said of her dual role. "It's giving me hoops to jump through and rivers to go up. I think I'd like to have had a few more years of acting under my belt.... It's very difficult and challenging." She recalls one of her costars, veteran actor Edward James Olmos, telling her, "You've got the hardest role on the show."
Park said she found the Boomer on Caprica particularly fun to play.
"She gets to do all the action," she said. "The other one gets to be all conflicted and miserable, which is probably more like I actually am."
Park was born in Los Angeles and moved to Canada when she was a child. After earning a degree in psychology at the University of British Columbia, she became a model and then an actress. She was one of the stars of the popular Canadian teen drama Edgemont and has appeared in episodes of such shows as The Outer Limits, Dark Angel and The Immortal.
Because of her studies, she tends to psychoanalyze the characters she plays.
"After you've studied a certain subject so much, it becomes part of how you perceive the world," she said. "It's inherent in the way I think."
Battlestar Galactica started as a TV series in 1978 and was remade last year as a four-hour miniseries by the Sci Fi Channel. It became one of the highest-rated miniseries on cable TV in the 2003-04 TV season. A condensed three-hour version of that miniseries will be shown at 8 p.m. today on NBC to whet viewers' appetites for the weekly series and allow people who missed the Sci Fi Channel broadcast a chance to catch up.
The weekly series picks up a few days after the events of the miniseries, as the human refugees fight fatigue and struggle to keep one step ahead of the Cylons.
Olmos stars as Commander Adama, the gruff leader of the Galactica. His crew includes his son, Lee "Apollo" Adama (Jamie Bamber), who frequently clashes with his father; Kara "Starbuck" Thrace (Katee Sackhoff), a wisecracking ace pilot; and Colonel Tigh (Michael Hogan), the troubled executive officer.
Other prominent characters in the show include: Laura Roslin (Mary McDonnell), a politician who has become the de facto president of the survivors; Dr. Baltar (James Callis), a brilliant but troubled scientist who was manipulated by the Cylons into helping them destroy civilization; and Number Six (Tricia Helfer), a sexy Cylon who seduced Baltar and appears to him in hallucinations.
Some fans of the 1978 version of Galactica complained about extensive changes in the new version of the show, including changes of gender for many characters.
"The original was quite male-heavy," Park said. "The females were the disco queens in the back, looking hot with their hair and nails and all."
In the original series, Boomer was a man and was played by Herb Jefferson Jr. Park met him last year at ComicCon, a science-fiction and comic-book convention in San Diego.
"He was sitting at a table doing autograph signings," she said. "He had no idea who I was at first, but he gave me a big old hug. He was super nice."
&
www.eclipsemagazine.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=1258
And Now, Direct From Battlestar Galactica - Boomer Talks To EM!!!!
Despite the controversial recasting of key roles as women, last season's 'Battlestar Galactica' mini-series did sufficiently big numbers for the SciFi Channel that they gave the go-ahead for a weekly series. Grace Park was cast in one the gender-shifted roles - a rather key role as it turned out. With the series set to premiere on Sci-Fi on January 14th, interviewing the charming Ms Park seemed the logical thing to...
EM: You have racked up quite a list of credits in a fairly short period of time, from working on a quirky series from The Two Barrys [Sonnenfeld and Josephson], to recurring roles on 'The Immortal' and 'Jake 2.0, to the Gemini-winning mini-series, Human Cargo'. Mostly, it seems, you've worked on science fiction and fantasy projects. Do you have a preference for them, or is that just the way things have happened, so far?
GP: Location, location, location. Being in Vancouver there's a buffet of sci-fi shows to fill up on and I'm chowing down and gettin fat on BSG.
EM: I note that you have a degree in psychology, and once danced for twenty straight hours. That's a pretty odd combination. Obviously, you have the energy to handle the schedule for working on a weekly television series, but does your degree inform the way you choose your roles, or your performance once you've been cast?
GP: Psychology's given me a perspective of and fascination with people's behaviour and what motivates us. But when it comes to performance, though psychology will help, often the best things will come up organically and my job is then to get outta my own way and let things happen. That's not so easy as it sounds!
EM: How did the role of Sharon 'Boomer' Valerii come to you?
GP: I auditioned like any other job. Originally I auditioned for Dualla, then Starbuck. Finally, they didn't know what to do with me so they gave me this tiny part to play of Sharon.
EM: I think a lot of people were surprised when the 'Battlestar Galactica' miniseries turned out to be so good [though they probably shouldn't have been, considering that Ronald Moore had just done some amazing work on HBO's 'Carnivale'].
The biggest twist, in the mini-series, was that Cylons have evolved and now look like us - and Sharon is a Cylon sleeper. What did you think when you finished reading the script and saw that?
GP: What the hell? When did they change the ending like that? Did they do that after they cast me? And what does that mean? [Then this huge mischievous grin spread across my face... Mwah ha ha ha!]
The full interview can be read at the website listed above.
Enjoy,
KR