|
David Hewlett
Stargate Atlantis’ Cranky Canuck, Rodney Mckay Speaks!
by Sheldon A. Wiebe
Recently, I had the opportunity to
chat with David Hewlett about the fourth season of Stargate: Atlantis, and
the how the changes affect everyone’s favourite curmudgeon, Rodney McKay.
While we talked mostly about season four of Atlantis, we got into horror
movie geek mode; talked a bit about Doctor Who’s impact on his life, and
also chatted about the making of his latest film, A Dog’s Breakfast.
It must be getting hectic for you. Well, it’s getting to that time of
year. It’s my least favorite time of year, when all the episodes seem to
converge towards the end. For some reason, they all seem to be McKay heavy
episodes at the end of the season. I think it’s a ratings ploy.
I hope so!
What episode are you on right now?
Well, I’m so confused, because this week we will shoot four episodes. I tend
to spout technobabble and then claim that the wrong alien race is attacking
us because I’ve got the wrong episode. Let’s see… seventeen and eighteen are
done, so this would be sixteen… and nineteen… y’know what? I don’t know.
[laughs]
Believe it or not, we started shooting Miller’s Crossing about four months
ago and we’ve just finished it on Monday. When you get Joe Flanigan and me
in a scene, it’s impossible to schedule second unit shooting because we’re
just all over the place.
I’m thinking that continuity must have been a bitch.
You bet. One of my favorite things is to tell people to watch my haircut in
that room and then come into this room. Suddenly it’s ‘Hey! Look at that!
It’s over the ears! Y’know, it’s receded.
It’s magic!
It’s the magic of film.
So… fourth season. It must feel good to be a regular for the fourth
straight year.
It’s great! I mean, it doesn’t feel like four years. It sounds cliché, but
it’s so quick. I vividly remember this all being brand new. And now… it
still feels brand new, which is always a bit of surprise. I think that’s a
good sign. I mean, if I was incredibly bored, we’d probably really be in
trouble.
It sounds like the legendary family feeling from SG-1 has infiltrated the
Atlantis set, too.
In what way?
Everyone gets along; the work goes quickly; everyone has fun. I mean
generally speaking – because there will always be “those days…”
And, y’know, those days are sometimes twice as fun as the days that aren’t.
It really is a good bunch. I thought you were going to… the other thing
about SG-1 is that they all got pregnant at the same time, which is exactly
what we’ve done. [laughs]
Didn’t want to go there, but, yeah…
Family really is a very good term for it, because I arrived in Vancouver – I
don’t live in Vancouver; I’ve never lived in Vancouver – I came up from L.A.
and never had any shock of a new city because with Stargate comes friends
and a social scene right away. I just fell straight into it. It was
fantastic.
The Stargate Safety Net…
It’s like joining a… it’s almost like a retirement home – it’s got
everything there for you!
Including ice cream parties.
Exactly. Y’know, Tupperware parties… it’s the dullest set because we’re all
so damned domestic. But when you’ve got Jason there – as I guess they had
Chris Judge [on SG-1] - to keep things [lively].
Last season ended with another
unique thing. James Blish eat your heart out, this city didn’t just fly, it
went into hyperspace.
Exactly. No messing around!
That’s one for McKay. All Sam ever did was kill a star. McKay took an
entire city into hyperspace.
Oh, yeah! It’s a great start to the season, because it’s quite literally a
new beginning. We’re lost; we’re powerless; we’re a million light-years from
help. It makes for a lot of excitement.
In the first two episodes they throw absolutely everything at us. We get
asteroids, Replicators – death, destruction… and then flying cities. It’s a
great way for Joe [Mallozzi] and Paul [Mullie] to start the season – with
all guns blazing.
I read on GateWorld that there was a radical injury that threatens Dr.
Weir’s life…
At the end of last season, there was the big explosion as that beam grazed
the side of the tower, and that knocked her for a… it was quite a
spectacular stunt, actually. Everyone was there – we were all hiding in
Weir’s office, away from the glass – as this woman got hurled down the
stairs. It’s a miracle recovery, shall we say.
With Torri leaving the series for however many episodes, she’s moving to
a recurring role is she not?
It’s kind of like Paul [McGillion]… you never know when she’s going to be
back. That’s the thing with science fiction – nobody actually dies. There’s
always a way to bring people… there’s always a way to bring favourite
characters back.
If nothing else, they can Ascend.
Exactly. And you can come back again, too, apparently. I used to worry about
being blown up but now I’m not so worried anymore. [laughs]
I could come back as an evil robot or something…
As she leaves, Amanda Tapping joins the cast as a regular and I have to
ask, how does Rodney handle this?
Not well. [laughs]
When it comes to Rodney and Sam, first there’s the crush that refuses to
die [Hewlett laughs], and then there’s the fact that on SG-1, he was either
completely wrong, or not quite right. Now he’s had three seasons of being
the go-to guy. So, how does that dynamic change?
It definitely has a bit of a bumpy start, because there’s two levels to the
discomfort that Rodney has with Sam Carter showing up. There’s the obvious
question of intelligence – because everything is a contest to Rodney McKay –
you have to be the best at everything you’re doing. So there’s that aspect
of it, and that is somewhat solved in a way, because, much to his chagrin,
she’s in charge. So, basically, he has to do what he’s told… which is
difficult for him, and he does whatever he can to squirm around that.
I think one of the funniest things for him to start the season is trying to
explain his new life to Sam Carter, given that he almost has more history
with Sam than Sam does, if that makes sense. Because he’s been trapped in
Puddlejumpers and hallucinated her existence and had whole episodes of
repartee back and forth that she’s completely unaware of. So, strangely, he
has an even richer social interaction with her than even she’s aware of. So
there was definitely some fun stuff to play with at the beginning of the
season to get that ball rolling type of thing.
Amanda’s at least partly responsible for me being on Atlantis. She allowed
me to play and have so much fun on SG-1 when I was guest-starring that I was
able to imbue the character with some stuff that they wanted to see back.
So, as always, it’s a pleasure to have her there to act with.
The great thing is that we tend to have the same kind of sense of humour, so
we scurry off to the corner of the set to come up with little things we’d
like to have going as sub-text while we’re chatting with each other in our
techno-jargon stuff.
I’m like the luckiest sci-fi nerd alive because I have two of the most
iconically cool female characters to work with in Amanda Tapping and Jewel
Staite.
For a Firefly fan it’s like, y’know.. it’s like SG-1 and Firefly and Rodney
in the middle. I’m loving it. We start shooting an episode next week, I
think, if I’ve read the schedule right, which is just Dr. Keller and Rodney.
That’s going to be some fun to play with.
I’m the envy of every nerd alive.
Including me! [laughs]
Including me! I envy Rodney McKay! [more laughter]
I guess the big question is this: will Rodney get something right that
Sam didn’t during this season?
It’s one of those weird things that… they’re managing to walk that line,
which is, basically, that we’re working together. Not to be too diplomatic
about it. The fact is that Sam, as good as she is, is not as Atlantis-savvy
as McKay. She defers to him on a lot of the stuff that’s going on.
Her position here – the tightrope she has to walk – is between being a
military commander and being a scientist. So she has enough to cope with
without having to deal with all the nitty gritty scientific stuff, and then
also keeping McKay in line. If he’s mouthing off too much, she’s going to
have a problem with that.
That sounds like the comic book
superhero solution: Incredible Hulk versus Thor. Who wins? It’s a draw!
Exactly. Well, it’s a draw for now. We’ll have to see what happens. Come the
end of the season, we may end up battling it out. [laughs]
Which brings us to Stephen Culp – also something of a sci-fi guy.
He’s a guest star with us on Miller’s Crossing and was fantastic. He makes
the best sort of non-villain. He’s a villain whose raison d’etre is just…
wrong. He has all the right intentions… it’s the road to hell is paved with
good intentions? He just makes all the wrong calls.
Any chance of his coming back?
Who knows?
That would be interesting. After all, he has a bit of a sci-fi
background… a little show called Enterprise…
Yes, indeed. We’ve had a couple Enterprise guys, now, what with Connor Trinneer as Michael.
Does Michael appear in season four?
He does indeed. And it’s so crazy. You know, Connor, who’s the sweetest guy
alive, playing the biggest villain. It’s so funny, because all these guys
who play jerks generally aren’t. That’s a thing I’m finding.
That’s what I hear about you – David is a pussycat and Rodney’s a big
jerk.
I don’t know about that! [laughs] I don’t think anyone could be as bad as
McKay and survive.
You give him something that makes him lovable. That’s all I’m going to
say.
Those are the characters I like. They’re the ones that are the most
interesting. You see it in shows like House and Boston Legal, where you have
these great characters.
I think today’s audiences are savvy enough to like the unlikable characters.
There’s always been a draw to the… um… suspect characters. They’re always
more fun to play, too.
It seems that curmudgeons are in.
That’s it!
It’s their turn! The nerds have had their go. Now it’s time for the
curmudgeons.
Moving along, how much play do the Replicators get this season?
The Replicators are pretty huge this year. And if not the Replicators, then
the Nanites that make them up. There’s a lot of use of them throughout the
season. We’re trying to crack open, and explore, and figure out how these
things work.
We get into some pretty suspect territory because we’re going where the
Ancients have gone before – and we’ve seen what a disaster they made of it.
How does the advent of the Replicators affect that whole Wraith thing?
The interesting thing about that is… a race to see who’s most useful to us,
basically. There’s a lot of piracy of technology from both races, now, and
there’s also some neat little alliances that start happening in a bid to try
to set one off against the other. Lots of politics in season four… lots of
not-so-diplomatic approaches to survival.
Frankly, we’re forced to do whatever we can to get out from between these
two huge warring factions. We’re just the little humans in between.
Politics. Stargate. Who’da thought? [laughs]
It’s funny, though. It’s one of the things about Stargate that I’ve always
liked. No matter how science-fictiony it gets, it’s still rooted in
characters in the here and now. They’re still characters who don’t take it
for granted that they’re being attacked by alien races – and still find it
peculiar.
And they still find the “Gosh! Wow!” moment, too.
Oh, yeah. Lots of those.
Every time they turn around, they’re in a place they’ve never been to
before.
Exactly… even if it’s all in B.C. [laughs]
With filters…
They do give up on the filters after awhile.
It’s a wooded planet!
[Laughs] There’s lots of those. If we shot in L.A. there’d be lots of
deserts.
Back in season three, I read an interview where you said you’d like to
have an episode where Rodney was mute for some reason – something about
having to resort to body language and facial expressions…
I think it’s more laziness than anything else. [laughs] The amount of
dialogue I have to learn and spit out is a little overwhelming, so there are
definitely days where I wish I was Ronan.
As an actor, I seem to have found myself a rather interesting niche – the
fast-talking technical expert. There are definitely easier niches, but God
bless that niche. It’s certainly a fun and wonderful way to earn a living.
Have you ever pitched any ideas for an episode?
Not really. You’ll be chatting with the producers and “hey, what about this;
what about that? I’ve never gone as far as Joe [Flanigan] and sit down and
work out a storyline with them. They’ve got a whole team of writers and it’s
very hard to come up with something that they haven’t either been working
on, or are working on.
It’s one of things I’d love to do at some point, but right now, I’m having
enough trouble learning them all – let alone coming up with them. Though,
coming up with them would be cool because then I’d know what I was going to
say.
The reason I ask is because you’ve got these two little films that have
made a certain amount of impact – Nothing, and A Dog’s Breakfast, and a lot
of people like them. I haven’t seen Breakfast yet, but Nothing was just
incredibly funny.
It strikes me that, if you liked Nothing, you should like A Dog’s Breakfast.
It’s not nearly as out there, but it’s certainly that same sort of
fall-down-hurt-yourself humour.
Almost 'Theatre of the Absurd'.
We weren’t quite as absurd with Dog’s Breakfast, but it’s still pretty zany.
That’s for sure.
They strike me as being the… sort of perfect response to the pressures
and demands of doing a weekly TV series. Does that make them kind of
cathartic in some way?
Dog’s Breakfast, definitely, but Nothing was long before Stargate. Frankly,
I was dying for regular employment at that point. Dog’s Breakfast allowed me
to do something completely different – to steal Monty Python’s line.
It’s not one of those things that I get to do on Stargate – or anywhere
else. It’s one of those things where… I don’t think people know that I’m
that much of an idiot. I just thought it was important to get that out
there. And to flex some different muscles.
Directing is something that I’ve always been fascinated by and never really
had the opportunity to pursue. As a kid, we used to do it – not direct – but
make these little films with Vincenzo [Natali] who went on to make Cube and
Nothing and Cypher and stuff – but he always looked after the directing side
of it, and I had friends who were directors and that’s what they did. I was
the actor, and the more I got involved in the acting, the more I became
involved with the script stuff – that’s where the story credit comes from
for Nothing.
Because of Stargate, I now have this big chunk of time every year where I’m
not working – and I don’t have to worry about not working. It just felt
silly not to try to do something. The first year, I went around and
auditioned for other people’s films – and then I started wondering, why
don’t I… Once you’re known for the Stargate stuff, those are the kind of
roles you go in for.
You play that kind of character in the majority of your work so, why then
would you want to do that in your free time? So I just thought it would be
better to come up with something, and it went really well with the
directing. And the writing was something that I had been doing for years but
had never really pursued properly.
It just seemed like a smart way to try my hand at something else. It was a
really amazing experience. I literally had one of those life-changing
moments when we’d finished the shoot and begun the post-production, where I
suddenly went, “I love this! This is what I want to be when I grow up.” It’s
a whole different set of skills – and yet, the acting really helps all of
them.
That makes sense from a storytelling point of view.
Yeah, it really does. As an actor,
that’s what you’re doing. You’re taking someone else’s writing and
embellishing with personality and depth that may not be on the page.
Exactly. Some writers are better than others at fleshing that stuff out for
you, but that’s your job for the most part – to make those lines sound like
they’re yours. It’s kinda fun to go the other way and take your own lines
and try to make them sound a little different. It was an amazing experience.
The original idea was that I was going to go out and buy a couple of little
handi-cams and get a couple of friends together and just shoot the thing as
a little experiment in writing, directing and editing and that kind of
stuff. The more we thought about it, the more we… I brought my girlfriend –
now my fiancée – in on it. She was our producer on the film. And when she
started looking at it, she said, “Look, we’re not native to Vancouver. We’re
going to need some help getting this crew together.”
She went and talked to John Lenic, who really liked the script and said,
“Let’s give this thing some legs and do it properly.” The next thing you
know, we’re making a real film!
It was a shock when we did the first reading and I realised that I’m in
charge of this giant machine.
It’s real!
Yeah, it’s like the biggest little movie, ever. We made it for nothing. It
was entirely self-funded; it was just friends and family. I put up the
lion’s share because I thought, “I don’t want to risk someone else’s money
on this thing.” I wanted to be without the pressure of someone else’s money
while I looked to see if this was something I could do.
I now feel confident enough to approach it as more of a business. I can say,
“Look, I can do this. Let’s go make movies.”
There’s another one I’m working on now. We’ll see how things go. There’s a
couple things up this hiatus. I’m hoping that one of those things will be
the birth of our first child. That might eat up a bit of time.
Congratulations.!
Thank you. But I am hoping to get behind a camera again, because it’s
already been too long.
What’s the new film about?
The new one is definitely more of a horror comedy. I’m a big fan of the
classic zombie horror films…
You’d love Slither, then…
I haven’t seen Slither, yet. I met one of the big rubber characters. I had
to go get a head cast and he was sitting beside me, but I haven’t actually
seen the film, yet.
If you love zombie movies, you must see Slither.
It’s also comic as well, isn’t it?
It’s creepy and it’s funny.
Great! That’s the kind of stuff I used to love. I loved Evil Dead; I loved
Fright Night. It’s just that I loved that kind of stuff. And then,
strangely, I’m a fan of these Home & Garden kind of home renovation shows.
In this bid to become kind of the Martha Stewart of horror, I’ve combined
the two. It’s about a design show that goes into this house to give it a new
life, and it ends up waking the dead.
Love the premise.
It’s a lot of fun to write. I’m halfway through it now, so we’ll see how
much time I get to sit down and write the rest of it.
Have you settled on a title, yet?
Right now it’s called Design of the Dead.
That’s perfect! Don’t change it!
It just seems in keeping with the Romero films, and the obvious likeness
would be Shaun of the Dead, as well. That was sort of an honest appreciation
of zombie films – and I just want to make a funny one.
Watch out Fido!
Exactly. I’m very curious to see that one ‘cause I’ve heard a lot about it.
It’s almost as good as Slither. That’s two brilliant films there.
Well, I’ll add it to the Netflix list.
Last question – as a Doctor Who fan, I was just wondering – if Russell T.
Davies offered you a guest villain role, would you jump at the chance?
[laughs] And if so, what kind of a villain would you like to play?
I don’t know if I’d want to play a villain. I always kinda wanted to play
The Doctor. [laughs]
Actually that wouldn’t be a bad choice.
Doctor Who was one of the reasons that I’m an actor. As a kid – at that
stage of my life – when I suddenly realised that… when I went from wanting
to be a Timelord to wanting to play a Timelord, was I discovered that you
could actually do this for a living.
It was Jon Pertwee and then Tom Baker, as I got a bit older. I love to work,
so Doctor Who would be sort of a fun, circular, cyclical kind of thing. But
would that mean it’s over then? If I go from wanting to play Doctor Who as a
kid to Doctor Who now, I might as well just retire.
It didn’t stop Christopher Eccleston.
That’s true.
He went from being The Doctor to being a Hero.
That’s right. He’s doing Heroes now, isn’t he?
He was recurring last season, but I don’t think he’s doing this season.
He’s in demand.
He’s also in one of the best zombie movies ever made, 28 Days Later.
Absolutely right. See how this all ties together?
Yeah, it’s the six degrees of separation… in zombie films.
Precisely. Well, sir, thank you very much for your time.
A pleasure, indeed. And hey, if you wouldn’t mind mentioning it – if people
want to know more about the movie – the website is www.adogsbreakfast.com.
Alrighty. I can do that.
If you can put it in, that would be great because one of the things that I
discovered in doing this, that I enjoyed is just…I’ve been doing some
blogging and doing some online marketing stuff – and discovering that
Stargate fans have been a big… they’re practically their own marketing
division, now… designing their own t-shirts and posters and stuff. It’s been
a lot of fun to interact with them.
Thanks, again. It’s been a great deal of fun.
A pleasure, indeed. I’ll look forward to talking to you again.
|
