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McKay’s Catalogue
By Steven Eramo
David Hewlett discusses his third year as Dr McKay so far and tells us what
he’s been doing on his holidays.
There’s a bit of sibling rivalry going on today in the Pegasus galaxy. Dr
Rodney McKay’s little sister Jeanie has come to Atlantis to
assist him and
his colleagues on an exceedingly tricky experiment. Having lost touch with
his sister over the years, Rodney is, at first, happy to see her. Of course,
it’s not long before his ego starts to drive a wedge between them. How do
they resolve their issues? You’ll have to watch the third season Stargate
Atlantis episode McKay and Mrs Miller to find out. However, it’s
obvious that David Hewlett, who plays Dr McKay, is enjoying the on-screen
sparring match, especially as his real life sister, Kate Hewlett, is guest
starring as Jeanie.
“It was a big challenge, of course, deciding on how McKay would behave
towards his sister,” says David Hewlett, taking a break in between filming.
“That’s something Martin Wood [the episode’s director] and I discussed at
great length. After all, my character is someone who is used to always being
right. McKay also has a tendency to snap at people and is constantly
assuming that they’re
not as intelligent as he is. That’s the dynamic he has
with Samantha Carter [Amanda Tapping], who is in this episode as well. She’s
introduced to McKay’s sister and suddenly you’ve got this situation where
Sam is like ‘Oh my God, she’s solved this problem before
her brother’.
Meanwhile McKay’s reaction to his sister’s work is one of ‘Well, its all
right I suppose,’ but deep down he’s thinking ‘How
did she do that?’
“In McKay’s mind, he’s done the legwork and really committed his entire life
to his profession. As such he’s become part of Atlantis.
His sister,
however, just happens to speak the language of mathematics and has this
innate flair for it. One day she’s playing at home with her children and out
of the blue solves a scientific conundrum that she sees no practical use for
but it is, in actuality, and
interesting theorem that bridges parallel
universes. For laughs, Jeanie posts it on the Internet and it attracts the
attention of Stargate Command. So my character’ job is to persuade her to
sign a nondisclosure agreement and give us a hand implementing her theorem.
Sadly I can’t reveal the precise repercussions of all this, but suffice to
say we discover that the parallel universe has a few more things running
around in it than we expected,” smiles the actor.
“Funnily enough, this is a very scientific episode in that it deals with an
awful lot of the Science Fiction elements of the show, but it’s
also one of
the most character-driven stories we’ve done yet. There’s this incredible
family dynamic between McKay and the rest of the team and then his sister
comes along and they’re like ‘She’s quite nice. Why can’t we have her around
all the time?’ It’s a pretty neat
story, and Kate is fantastic in it. She’s
almost as good as me,” jokes Hewlett. “Seriously, it’s a pleasure to work
with Kate, especially
as I was personally responsible for trying to stop her
from acting. When she first said ‘I want to go to theatre school,’ I was
like ‘Are you nuts? Get a real job and forget this acting stuff.’ I did
everything I could to dissuade her from acting, but, quite wisely, she
ignored me,
and things could not be going better for her.”
Although Rodney is unlikely to admit it, dealing with his sister is a piece
of cake for him compared to what he goes through earlier this season. When
Atlantis ended last year with the cliff-hanger episode Allies, he and
Ronon (Jason Momoa) were taken prisoner and cocooned aboard a Wraith hive
ship after and alliance with the Human life-force sucking creatures went
horribly wrong. Season Three opens with No Man’s Land and the two are
exactly where we left them.
“After a four month hiatus, you’re very quickly reminded that you’re back
working on a Sci-Fi show as you sit in a small wooden box
that’s been
covered in plastic, goop and tendrils, and people come in and wrap things
around your neck while Wraith walk by,” notes Hewlett. “Actually, it was a
great way to kick off the season, especially as Jason and I hadn’t had very
many scenes together. I just
love our characters’ interaction because
they’re complete opposites. McKay has this attitude with Ronon of, ‘You’re
such an idiot, but please don’t hurt me’. It’s a lot like the relationships
I had in real life with some of my fellow students in high school. I’d mouth
off to
the big guy and then leap into my locker, close it and say ‘I’m just
saving you the trouble’.
“McKay has definitely taken that stance with Ronon where he’s more than
happy to scoff at this guy’s Neanderthal approach to
diplomacy. However,
when my character is stuck in a spot like the one he’s in at the start of
the season, there’s no-one on Earth he’d rather be with than Ronon. The
guy’s a killing machine, and if you’re going to survive it’s going to happen
with Ronon by your side.
“So that was a lot of fun, and this episode, as well as the following one,
Misbegotten, are huge. There’s so much going on in the
first two
hours of this year, including the return of Michael [Connor Trinneer]. He’s
such a wonderful addition to the whole Atlantis
concept. With him, you have
this Wraith who walks the line between his race and Humanity. Sometimes he’s
an ally and other times
he’s an enemy. He’s like a rogue Wraith, which isn’t
easy to say fast,” chuckles the actor. “I think he’s going to be a really
fascinating character and I’m glad the writers brought him back.”
Rodney McKay comes face to face with someone who could be his egotistical
equal in the Season Three Atlantis episode Irresistible. “Richard
Kind [Dr Gary Meyers in the 1994 Stargate feature film] plays Lucius
Lavin, the leader of this alien world and someone who is surreptitiously
instigating a type of root or herb that makes him, yes, irresistible,”
explains Hewlett. “So men respect him, laugh at his jokes and think he’s the
best thing in the world, while women fall at his feet in the hopes that
he’ll marry them. One by one, our Atlantis characters begin to succumb to
this rather obnoxious and yet somehow strangely alluring gentlemen. All I
could think of was McKay,”
he laughs.
“At first, everyone’s attitude towards Lucius is one of, ‘Who does this
moron think he is?’ But it’s not long before they change their
minds and are
like ‘He’s so great. Wow, look, he gave me a gourd.’ Colonel Sheppard [Joe Flanigan] and McKay have been away
from Atlantis and when they return they
aren’t immediately affected by Lucius. However, McKay is then left along
with him and is soon singing his praises too. Of course, he’s obsessed with
the fact that Lucius has six wives and they’re all gorgeous. That’s the
first
thing McKay focuses on. So it’s a well-crafted character-driven piece
where you have this interaction of everyone all the time. The one problem
with stories like this is that they take forever to shoot. You’ve got six or
seven characters on-camera all the time and the
director tends to want to do
coverage on everybody, which means you’re there filming for hours. So that’s
why its nice to actually get
along with your fellow castmates, because if
you didn’t you’d all be dead. Or unemployed, which is pretty much the same
thing when you’re an actor.”
With Season Three of Atlantis scheduled to premiere in mid-July on
the US Sci-Fi channel, Hewlett is enthusiastic about what fans
can look
forward to seeing. “it’s going to be a really good year,” says the actor. “I
know Rob Cooper [co-creator/executive producer]
talked about wanting to
develop more of a bond between the characters, and that’s definitely the
case in the third season.
“What I like about this year too is that our heroes are back to causing more
problems than they solve, especially McKay. Unfortunately,
he just keeps screwing up for some
reason, but hey, that’s okay, especially if it helps make for a good story.”
Full Breakfast
This past January, David Hewlett directed his first big screen project, A
Dogs Breakfast, the screenplay for which he also wrote and
which is
based on an idea that he and his long-time girlfriend, producer Jane Loughman, came up with. The film introduces audiences to Patrick [Hewlett],
who is none too pleased when his little sister Marilyn [Kate Hewlett] brings
home her TV star fiancé Ryan [Stargate Atlantis’s Paul McGillion].
Patrick is determined to end their engagement and willing to go to any
lengths to do so.
“I think its safe to say I will never write, direct and star in a movie
again because it’s insane,” says Hewlett. “There is absolutely no
way to
wrap your head around everything. At the same time though, I loved every
minute of it. One of the things I discovered as a
director is that the
smartest move you can make is to surround yourself with people who know
their jobs and then let them get on
with it. I was extremely fortunate to
have several crewmembers from both Stargate SG-1 and Stargate
Atlantis collaborating with me
on this project. And of course we had
Kate and Paul who are just fantastic in the film.
“It was an amazing learning experience and a fun one as well, it’s certainly
given me the itch to make more films.”
Thank you to McKayRocks
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