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Interview with David Hewlett
On this
warm Vancouver morning, David Hewlett is feeling a little hot under the
collar. That’s no surprise considering he’s covered
from head to toe in a
spacesuit. The actor is filming scenes for Stargate Atlantis’s first
season finale 'The Siege' in which his character
Dr Rodney
McKay takes a space walk. In between shots, a member of the crew helps
Hewlett over to his chair and off with his helmet. Wiping the sweat from his
brow, the actor takes a much needed drink of water. It’s not the most
pleasant of working conditions but Hewlett is still all smiles. By the
afternoon he’s shed the spacesuit and is much cooler, not to mention more
comfortable.
“This is
the first time I’ve worked in an outfit like that,” says Hewlett taking a
break in his trailer. “I’ve done wirework before which is
frankly never much
fun. It’s like wearing metal boxer shorts and someone is giving you an
atomic wedgie, only with steel cables. The gentlemen out there will
understand. You come home with the most bizarre bruises which are impossible
to explain unless you’ve
been dangled
by cables. I won’t be doing that on Atlantis though for a few more days.
“Today, I
worked on a parallelogram, which is just a pole that you strap one leg to
and then they pull you up in the air and it’s like you’re floating. In my
case I did it in a 90 pound spacesuit. They’d bounce me off a few things,
then [director] Martin Wood would say ‘cut’ and they’d lower me back down to
the ground. In between takes I had to lean against something because the
backpack is so darn heavy.
The fact of
the matter is these suits are designed for weightlessness, not wandering
around a hot set. Once I was in it though it was easier for me to keep it on
because it takes so long to get into. The suit has a neat liquid cooling
system, you just plug yourself in and
cold water is
pumped through the suit, so your top half becomes rather chilly. It’s a
weird feeling, almost like you’re dying.
“I have to
watch out because if I make any smart-ass comments or start to complain,
Martin threatens to put me back in the suit, “ jokes the actor. “Seriously,
everyone here does a great job of keeping you as comfortable as possible
when you’re doing scenes like this. However it’s worth a little discomfort
because the end result looks so good. It’s like childbirth. You forget the
pain and go 'Oh look the baby is so
cute. I’d have another one in a second'. Not that I’ve given birth myself,
I’ll leave that to the ladies. Although maybe on the
show my
character can give birth to some kind of alien baby. When that happens we’ve
not jumped the shark as the saying goes, we’ve hit it, or the shark has
jumped us!” he laughs.
If Dr McKay
ever found himself in the situation just described by Hewlett he’d no doubt
have plenty to say about it. Besides being
Atlantis’s resident
techno-genius and one of Earths foremost authorities –along with Stargate
SG-1’s Colonel Samantha Carter – on wormhole technology the scientist
can also be a bit of a complainer. That said, Hewlett guards against going
too over-the-top with
such traits.
“There’s a
fine line between remaining true to the original McKay from SG-1 and
making him one of the leads on Atlantis,” notes the
actor. “He can
only be obnoxious for so long. I think it’s both a challenge and a pleasure
to also delve into some of the more sympathetic sides of the character. One
of the things you invariably learn in life is that there’s no black and
white. As much as you want to say, ‘This is a bad
person and this is a good person’, there are redeeming qualities in everyone
and annoying ones too.
“I truly feel
that McKay is an Everyman in that he’s a hero as well as a coward. He’s a
devil and a saint. The guy is all over the place.
Like all of
us, there are times when he has the strength to do what he needs to do and
times when he doesn’t. An aspect I’ve always
liked about
McKay is that he never backs down on whatever opinion he goes with. He’ll
stick to his guns no matter what, whether he’s right or wrong.
Something I
really appreciate is that the writers and producers will come down to the
set and say ‘OK, McKay did some angry annoying stuff the last time around.
Now let’s go a different route with him.’ In that regard there are some
great episodes coming up in the second half of the season that I hope people
will enjoy. One is called ‘Letter from Pegasus’, where we delve into
what’s going on in our
characters
heads, including McKay’s. He’s got some funny moments as well as poignant
ones. Again, it’s that wonderful dichotomy where McKay has this sort of
arrogance mixed with self- deprecating humour and they wrote it so
beautifully too.
Hewlett
chuckles when asked about McKay’s relationship with his fellow Atlantis
team-mates. “There’s a curious understanding that’s happened between
everyone, unbeknownst to him. At first when I did McKay-isms – for example,
when he snaps at people or cuts them off – you would see those reactions,
which were fun and totally natural. However as time as gone on people have
become used to McKay so now it’s almost like ‘OK, here he goes. We’ll let
him finish and then we can get back to what we were doing’. They just expect
him to get snappy now.
“You
wouldn’t believe this, but I recently pulled a McKay-ism on my girlfriend
Jane. I snapped my fingers at her. I don’t remember doing it, so clearly it
was on a subconscious level, or should I say unconscious one. However now
when I get home she gives me a 45-minute grace period to get him out of my
system. Can you imagine living with McKay? Luckily for me Jane is a saint!
“Getting
back to the shows characters, I’ve found it fascinating watching them
interact and react to various situations. The strength of this series really
is in the fact that you have these contemporary people dealing with these
amazing situations. It’s that whole sense that there are these incredibly
incomprehensible events going on around them that our heroes have to comment
on, be confused about and, on occasion, laugh about.”
While
filming Atlantis’s Season One finale, the actor also spent some time on the
Stargate SG-1 set for its eighth season finale, 'Moebius'. “I
was so flattered that they brought McKay back,” says the actor. “Its only a
couple of scenes but its very clever how they get
him there and
I love what he says once he’s there.”
Like his
fellow cast-mates, Hewlett is delighted with Atlantis’s success and
they all agree that SG-1 has played a major role in that.
“This
harkens back to something Newton once said which is, ‘I’ve seen so far
because I’ve stood on the shoulders of giants’. SG-1 is
the reason why
our series is doing so well. They got us on the playing field and now we’ve
got to carry ourselves.”
Seal of
Approval
Although
Stargate fans were already familiar with Hewlett from his work on
SG-1 he wasn’t sure how they would react to McKay
becoming a regular on
Atlantis. “When I first became involved in Stargate people
told me ‘They’ll be conventions and fans will want
you to sign
things’. Well I had this vision of me sitting at a table whistling at people
as they passed by and asking them, ‘I’ll give you five dollars if you’ll
pose with me in a picture so I can convince my dad that I actually do work,”
jokes Hewlett.
“In many
ways I think the fans feel the same way about McKay as the other characters
in the show do. It’s a real love/hate thing. I’ll get letters from people
saying ‘I really hate McKay. Please send me an autographed photo’. Others
will say ‘When I first started watching the show I didn’t really like McKay,
I still don’t but I love watching you,’ so either way people are talking
about him, and that’s a good thing.
The Right
Start
An actor for
over 21 years, Hewlett first began practicing his craft back in high school
by working on stage and in front of a camera.
“What I
consider to be my first professional gig wasn’t exactly professional,” he
explains. “A guy at high school approached me one year at the end of
term and said ‘I’m making a film this summer, would you be in it?’
“I’d seen
him around school before and he was in my classes but we never hung out
together. I had some time so I said ‘Sure’. It was this little film called 'Exam'
and it was directed by Vincenzo Natali, who went on to do Cube,
Cypher and Nothing which is the latest film
we did together. Vincenzo and [writer] Andre Bijelic invited me into their little group and I
never left. We spent the entire summer shooting 'Exam' on 8mm film
and it was about a student who loses it during a math exam, shoots his
teacher and ends up running out into traffic.
“The reason I
consider this my first professional gig is because it taught me all I know
from how to hit my mark to how to work under extreme pressure where you
literally have one take to get it right. So before I even set foot onto a
professional film set I was armed with
all this
knowledge.”
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