GateWorld: So Atlantis, we haven’t talked in well over a year. Obviously Atlantis has been cancelled.
Kate Hewlett: What?!! … I’m just kidding.
GW: Yes! You know good and well. Thoughts? Reactions? “They shouldn’t have cancelled it!”
KH: I was very disappointed, but I think that five seasons is a pretty great go of things and I think it’s a nice time to end. All of my favorite shows, I think, ended sooner rather than later.
I’m excited for David. I’m excited for what’s going to happen next. I’m disappointed because it was something that I really, really enjoyed doing and it was something I looked forward to every year. But yeah, we’ll see what happens next.
GW: Yeah. He is not going to have any problem finding something good. I’m convinced that he’s going to be the next Doctor Who.
KH: I don’t know! That would be incredible, obviously. It’s funny, I feel the same way. I have no doubt that something — I’m knocking on wood, can you hear me? I have no doubt that something wonderful will happen for him. He’s amazing. He’s a great actor. He needs Dexter. He needs to be the lead in some really awesome, quirky, dark show.
GW: Yeah. Sadistic but sexy and funny.
KH: Yeah, he can do the funny. [Laughter] Yeah, I’m very, very excited for him. And I think he’s going to go to LA for a bit, so I think that’s a really good move.
GW: That’s great. And you are an Auntie! I don’t think we’ve ever talked about that before. What was that like?
KH: Well there are hundreds of them now! They’re babies everywhere! My sister had twins, and then my other sister had a baby, and then David had a baby, and then my sister had another baby. They’re everywhere. I can’t even keep track of them anymore.
It’s fun! I see the twins a lot, because they’re in Ontario, but I don’t really see the other kids too much which is disappointing because I feel like I don’t know them. I’ve only met Bas[tain Hewlett] twice. He’s adorable.
GW: Oh he is! He’s too cute. What are some of your favorite overall single moments from this journey of the show? What pops into your head?
KH: The bar at the Sutton Place.
GW: The bar at the Sutton Place?
KH: They put you up in the Sutton Place Hotel. I think “The Shrine” was my favorite experience, even though all of the experiences were really great. “The Shrine” was such a fantastic script and I felt so lucky to be in that episode.
The thing that was nice about it to was I got to work with everybody. In a way it’s nice that that was my last episode because I got to work very closely with the whole cast, and that’s never happened before.
GW: Yeah, that’s a good send off isn’t it?
KH: It really was. And I think the moments I always remember, and my favorite moments, are always the laughter. There were a lot of giggling fits and things on “The Shrine.” It’s just fun to get to know people in that way and be silly with people.
Obviously the first episode was pretty crazy, just because everything was so new. I just couldn’t believe I was there. But I was too terrified to enjoy it, I think. I felt like I was in a dream the entire time. Just like, “What is going on?” I’ve seen this on TV and now I’m here and my brother is over there wearing a Canadian flag on his arm. It was just the strangest. And like, aliens.
GW: Duplicate brother?
KH: Oh my God. Maybe it was just the first couple of days. More than anything the first couple of days I was just in total shock.
GW: It wasn’t the jet lag?
KH: That was a big part of it. And the fact that I was doing another series at the same time, so I was playing a different character. But it was scary. It was a really big part, and it was so much fun. It was so much fun working with Amanda [Tapping] and David. It was great. But I think by the fourth time there I felt comfortable.
GW: Well the first time coming in this character has been a part of the show, at least in her name only, since the first season. They had thrown this ball around, “Rodney is a great character so we want to explore some of his back-story. We’ve established that he has a sister. We had better really cast a kick-ass sister.” That’s got to be intimidating. Aside from the fact that he’s your actual brother!
KH: Yeah! It was intimidating, but I think in those situations I guess that’s part of the shock. You can’t think really about all of that. You just have to learn your lines and go in and do the work. It was all the stuff surrounding it that I think made me realize how big this was. Even just the first GateWorld …
I don’t know if I told you this last time, but after I found out that I got the part within a couple of hours David sent me an email, and all he wrote was “It begins.” And he put a link and it was GateWorld, and it was my photo on GateWorld. It was like, “Hewlett’s sister cast as Jeannie Miller!” And from that moment on everything changed. It’s been a really wild few years. It really has.
GW: There’s nothing to say that you won’t have a chance to be a part of Universe at all as a guest starring role. It’s probably not going to happen, but you never know.
KH: I don’t know. I have a bunch of friends who have auditioned for the show, and they seem to be going very young. I think it’s the new, hip, Stargate Jr. I think that I don’t probably fit into that but I would love to. I was secretly hoping they’d be like, “We need to bring someone over. Who could it be?”
GW: Early on that’s what I was hoping for. That you would be cast. One of the hallmarks of the franchise so far has always been, it always felt like when they created a new team they have someone who was intimately involved previously.
Obviously with SG-1 it was Jack and Daniel, and with Atlantis it was Rodney. When they brought Universe about I figured that they’d have someone to carry the torch and honestly I hoped that would’ve been you.
KH: Yeah. It would’ve been really cool.
GW: But you didn’t audition for any of the parts, or you didn’t audition in the hopes of them pushing Jeannie over to that side either?
KH: I didn’t audition. I left my agency about a month ago so I don’t have representation right now. I can’t even imagine the stuff that I’m missing. It’s kind of terrifying. But that’s all been happening during that time. So I don’t know if it would’ve been something.