 
GW: Yeah, Rick really made that clear for us at Comic-Con.
BB: Well, it was an experience. Thirty-five below is an experience for going to the loo, for sure.
GW: So when they offered this to you ... I know a couple of the cast who will go unnamed at this point said, "No, you won't catch me there."
BB: The Arctic is not for everybody. But I loved it.
GW:Did you know you were going to love it first thing?
| 
Browder and Amanda Tapping take a stroll across the Arctic ice. |
BB: No, my first day there, when you step outside, you go, "I could die right now. I just have to make it to the mess hall." You hunker down against the wind and make your way to another warm spot. I was concerned the first day. I thought, "What am I doing here?"
GW: Concerned for yourself? Like whether or not you could get through it? Or concerned for the people around you?
BB: No, I was concerned for me, I think. I thought I was going to wig out or something. It's just an assault on the senses. It's something entirely different. You realize it's dangerous.
GW: It's a hostile environment.
BB: You suddenly are dependent upon all the people around you. You realize that you really don't know how to go to the bathroom. You have to learn how to triangulate with a negative fifty mile-per-hour wind. Just the simple things.
I have to go chip ice out of this chunk of frozen ice I'm standing on. I don't know how deep the ice is and below me is three thousand meters of sub-freezing water and there's polar bears. If I need to go to the bathroom I need to take a light for the polar bears. It's overwhelming when you first arrive.
By the third day, it's your world. There's no contact with the outside world. It's just you and those people doing what you do outside on the ice. And by the time you leave, you don't want to leave. You feel like you've abandoned your family or something. It was really a quite remarkable experience. It was stunningly beautiful. It was really quite phenomenal.
GW: You went up there to shoot Continuum, did anything else ...
BB: We didn't shoot it there, we did it all back there on the sound stage. [Laughter]
GW: Well, I mean, did anything else come about, for you personally, that you went up there? Did you learn anything that you didn't expect to, did you meet some people, some really cool people, that you just think "Hey, wow!".
BB: Well, I had an experience that will be never be replicated for me in my lifetime. 5
GW: Until Continuum 2.
BB: Yeah, until whatever the next thing is. No, it's such a rare opportunity to do something like that. How do you qualify it? How do you quantify it? How do you express something which is, that shifts your entire perspective?
You say "Well, I learned that polar bears are dangerous." Well, I knew that already. I learned that your hand can freeze to a piece of metal. You know you get burns when you grab the metal. When you experience something it's difference from knowing it. So for me, it's more of an experience that lives somewhere in the grey matter, and in the circulatory system. [Laughter]
Mitchell in Stargate Continuum. | |
You need to be sitting outside in -40 degree when you watch the footage! That was one of the things when you watched it, the footage from a personal perspective, does not do justice to environment, or to the experience. Sometimes when you watch something you've done, the magic of Hollywood exceeds your personal experience. This was one of those occasions when the personal experience far exceeds the actual footage. It was a gift.
GW: I've talked with a few people, over the years, big Farscape fans, a lot of Farscape fans in Stargate. They say "You know, I liked Crichton, more than Mitchell. Crichton was psychotic, he was nuts, and Mitchell was the straight guy, "Yes sir, no sir". I mean, Crichton offered you a great deal of acting range. You never knew what you were going to go into, I imagine, when the next script came in, what he could do.
BB: No, no idea.
GW: Was that, and I want to phrase this very correctly, this is, I don't want it to sound like Mitchell sucked or anything, because Mitchell didn't suck, I enjoyed the character, but Mitchell….. Crichton, and I said this to you a long time ago, Crichton had his heart to go on. He was an astronaut, and Mitchell was a military guy.
BB: Mitchell was more restrained than Crichton. Crichton was on the ragged edge all the time, was literally going insane through the process of the series. Mitchell's focus was on his job, and on the fun of his job. But Crichton's focus was on survival, and on the creation of a family. So, the emotional stakes for Crichton are higher than they are for Mitchell. And quite frankly, Crichton was the center of a series.
GW: Yes, exactly, and Mitchell was in an ensemble.
BB: Yeah, Crichton was, everything began and ended with Crichton on Farscape, for the most part. There wasn't an episode that I wasn't in, whereas everyone else on the series would miss at least one or two episodes. So, it was the beginning and the end of the story. It was Crichton's story. Whereas Stargate is the story of the gate, and of the team, and members of the team obviously can change over time, not always for the better, but not always for the worse. Mitchell's place in that story is what's smaller than Crichton's place in the story of Farscape.
GW: Right, exactly.
BB: Farscape was all about the leather. The leather, the bondage, the torture! They're completely different kinds of beasts.
GW: Would you find yourself befriending someone like Mitchell or would you find yourself being attracted more to Crichton, if you guys were buddies?
| 
"I think Mitchell would be a better friend. Crichton was too messed up! "
|
BB: I think Mitchell would be a better friend. Crichton was too messed up! Crichton got to the point where he probably would have shot you before he talked to you!
GW: Well, considering the stuff he went through!
BB: Or done something to get you into horrible trouble. He was going to make the mistake that caused havoc for everybody. The liking and disliking of the characters, that's an external viewpoint. I kind of liked Mitchell. I didn't mind that he wasn't crazy, it was kind of nice not to play crazy. It's actually exhausting playing crazy for three and a half years.
GW: So dynamic.
BB: Well, it's fun! Yeah, it's fun. I don't know if it's the only thing you want to do in your whole life as an actor. Mitchell had different kinds of challenges, but also at the end of the day you work within the context of the script and the story and what is needed for the story.
I'm not sufficiently distant, really from either one of them, to judge the success of the characters. That's for the audience, and it always will be for the audience to judge. Some people will like it and some people will hate it.
GW: You're just playing your part, and it's up to someone else to say "I like it," or "I don't".
BB: And they will. Even if it was dead awful, somebody might like it, my Mother might. My Mom will tell me "I didn't really like that." Well, OK. Other people loved it, my Mother hated it! What are you going to do? Who are you trying to please, your Mom, the general audience? I don't know. I'm just trying to play the role.
|
|
|
