Rockne walked out onstage with red duct tape over his mouth; after carefully removing it from his mouth (and mustache), he grinned and commented, "Henson gave me this."
"Obviously this would [have been] a great venue for an announcement, if one were ready..."
"I should really be home right now, writing hour #3..."
"Henson still dotting i's and crossing t's, but if it were possible to read between the lines, ever..."
[wild applause]
"You're applauding for the show, but you're really applauding for yourselves, too. Hang in there."
Ten years ago this Fall, Rockne, Brian Henson, and Alex Rockwell were first discussing doing a 'ship show'. Rockne thought, here's my opportunity to do a ship show, sort of my own Star Trek as it were.
"It was right around this time that I was writing the original pilot; I turned it in to Fox in early '94. Fox liked the script a lot, bless them, but science fiction costs a lot (which is why we're not on the air). You can't go shoot out in an alley and so forth. It was literally expensive to shoot just a pilot."
They crunched the numbers, and determined that they needed a minimum of 11 episodes to justify building the show's sets, etc. Fox was young at that time, and could only ask for a few background scripts. David Kemper was brought on board at this point. The Creature Shop in London built maquettes for some of the alien characters (Pilot hasn't changed much from that original design, but Zhaan was originally male).
By the time they got everything put together, Fox had already committed to SPACE ABOVE AND BEYOND. As time went on, they kept dragging out the scripts and maquettes, and looking for an opportunity. Rod Perth finally gave them a committment for a full season on SciFi, which was just a fledgling channel at that time.
Originally, Moya was to be full of strange alien creatures. But Brian Henson said, "You really can't show multiple aliens on this budget", which is how it bacame just the five original prisoners on Moya.
"I have an addiction, I must admit. I'm addicted to chapstick. Is anyone else here addicted to chapstick?"
In the pilot episode, Crichton and Aeryn escape and go down to the Commerce Planet to call the Peacekeepers. In the original script, John tried bartering with an alien shopkeeper to use the phone. He pulls out all his fancy technical IASA gear, but in the end it's the chapstick - the alien takes the chapstick and hands him the phone. Wait a beat - John thinks, I'm 80 billion miles from home, where am I going to get another chapstick? But that had to be dropped from the final draft.
When John and Aeryn escape their cell and are racing around Moya, John was supposed to throw open a door and find two mechanical alien characters (not DRDs, but mechanical) with tools, building a smaller version of themselves. And John was supposed to say, "Go back to screwing." They had to trim that as well.
At the time, doing the show with an Australian cast was an unknown quantity. They considered casting from London as well. It got down to Ben and someone else; the other guy was more of a Scott Bakula type, but didn't have the wantonness that Ben had. They both auditioned for the network. The network told Rockne and DK that they wanted to see 50 more actors. Rockne and DK went off and talked over coffee, and they said to each other, "Ben is the guy. He's smart, somebody to talk to, somebody who gets it." They went right back up to the network offices, and sat on the network guy's couch until he came back from lunch, to tell him Ben was the guy.
They would often bring any potential Aeryn into the Henson studios to read with Ben. The first time they saw Claudia on tape, it was from an Oz series, she was in a short short skirt and heels, running down a dark street at night. "We certainly have the schwing factor."
"A special hello from Brian and DK. Both of them are not here; I can't tell you why they aren't ... although both of them are in Sydney at the moment, and I will be on the phone with them tomorrow on a conference call with 25 other people, although I can't tell you what the conference is about..."
The original script was huge. Sixty seven pages is the size of a selling script; it certainly shouldn't be seventy pages or higher.
"We considered taking ... there's so much material to get out in the premiere and you want the characters to show themselves what they are ... talked about filming a two hour premiere or a two-parter, but we finally decided a one-hour premiere was best. Getting the Australian and American styles of tv making to mesh takes time."
He still can't tell what venue might air the continuation; it may not actually be determined yet. He would definately participate as a writer and exec producer on anything that might come next.
Audience Member: Farscape has shades of grey - true/false, right/wrong, good/bad are not just simple concepts. In the beginning, did you plan on that for Crais, or did it just evolve?
Rockne: I'd love to say I planned it, but no. In terms of the tone of the show, it was just a lot of things coming together. Things I'd worked on in the past, DK was in the same place, as far as what we were ready to do. Rod Perth left, Steven Child took over SciFi and he didn't know what to expect other than muppets; he told us to keep making it darker and weirder. Crais was going to be in it all along. The difficult thing is using him without losing the impact. So we delayed bringing him back until like episode eight, and we had Scorpius waiting in the wings.
Audience Member: During the development phase, [United Nations] peacekeepers were active in world military conflicts. Was there any connection, in choosing that name?
Rockne: No, I just picked names of things, I liked the fact that "Peacekeepers" was such a misnomer, and always thought it would be nice to show how they got that name.
Audience Member: SciFi cancelled Farscape saying they could make two programs just as good, and when are we going to see them?
Rockne: SciFi's new regime came in and said, "look, we could come up with two award-winning shows for the money we're spending on Farscape". The guys who said that were young guys with a lot of hubris, and I'm not sure where they are now...
Audience Member: How much did experience with SeaQuest and Alien Nation influence your choice to stay away from networks?
Rockne: I like to pretend there really is only one season of SeaQuest...
The networks wouldn't touch it, and now it's so expensive to do that networks just can't do science fiction shows anymore. In terms of prestige, it would be nice to be back on a regular network, but in terms of being able to do really different stuff, I'd rather stay with cable networks.
Audience Member: How much was John Crichton's character influenced by Chuck Yaeger?
Rockne: None. First and formost, I wanted John Crichton to be a scientist, someone who'd gone up on the shuttle on science missions, I didn't want him to be a military guy.
Audience Member: Where can we see any of your Twilight Zone episodes?
Rockne: I don't know where the Twilight Zone eps I worked on are today, or whether they're even available for syndication.
Audience Member: Would it be possible to do a show like Farscape on the iTunes model?
Rockne: We were around 1.5 million [dollars] US per episode. Once the cast starts to get there, that's where your biggest expense is. But that's an interesting idea.
Audience Member: On your past shows, you've often brought the same actors back several times. Might we see old cast members from previous shows on Farscape?
Rockne: I would love to, believe me. We were planning in year one to bring a lot of American actors down, the network wanted American accents and faces. As time went on, we realized the very nature of the fact that we have John Crichton as an alien in the universe, and Ben as an alien in Oz, we realized that that was something to work with. We really avoided stunt casting. So, I'd love to, but I don't know that that's necessarily ever going to happen with Farscape in the future.
The most exciting things that happened to Claudia this year? She learned how to synch her palm pilot to her computer:
There I was trying to do Graffiti, and I got pretty good at it. Big event in my life in October!
I have all these photos eating lumps of candy in my mouth ... talk amongst yourselves for a second. [reaches for bottle of water] Now it's all stuck in my molars...
I've been putting myself through absolute hhh-ell this year, doing "hot yoga". They're really tough in LA - I've done it a couple of times in LA. The theory is that you get better benefit if you do it in heat. It's designed for people who don't really do yoga, so it's ostensibly really simple poses ... [pause] Hmm. These people are watching you turning red, and they're saying "Breathe only through your nose, it'll be easier on your heart." If you eat less than four hours before, it's a serious pain because it repeats on you.
The teachers have to learn to talk you. They have to talk for 90 minutes, without repeating themselves, and they talk you through the practice. I'll work myself into a state thinking about it, making up excuses not to do it. It's amazing what the mind will do to you.
The challenge of the heat is really good, both as an exercise and a metaphor for my life. So this is the experience that I've had this year, I've been having a good long talk with my mind, getting it to chill out. The hotel I'm staying in has a class, and I was sitting quietly and preparing. The teacher came up to me and said "Are you meditating?" "No, I'm just sitting quietly."
Finally this year I've learned to meditate and I thoroughly recommend it, even if it's only for two seconds. Vikram is meditating with your eyes open (except for the dead body pose). They tell you to look right above your nose when you close your eyes, focus on this spot on your forehead between your eyes. The teacher says "Whatever thoughts you have, acknowledge them, and let them on through." It makes you feel crosseyed!
Someone on Farscape tried setting up yoga during lunch break; I'm sorry, but food is far more important to me than sticking my elbow in somebody's face...
We had quite a good time on Farscape. What about this year? [sits and considers] Yeah, that's right, I'm going to do a crash course on the final part of my yoga because I might be busy ... And if I am busy, then later on I'll be able to explain to you guys what I had to give up in order to be busy, because right now it wouldn't make any sense...
God, it's hard for me to keep secrets!!!
Well, I might see him [Anthony] soon...
Ah, THE SIMPSONS ... my boyfriend watches far too much of it. Even the repeats. The only chance I'll have of ever getting the remote in my hand is when it's cancelled forever. He gives me this look: "It's a one in a million chance that THE SIMPSONS is on, and I've got to catch every nuance."
It's so hard to say 'Farscape', no one understands us. They think we're saying 'Fire Escape'. We say, "No, Farscape, this is very different."
"Oh, the show with the blue lady. Are you on it?"
I'm sorry, I know when you're doing Yoga you're supposed to lose your ego, but I say, "Am I on Farscape? Excuse me, I am Farscape!"
I think I'm quite dull when I haven't been working. I have been working, just not on Farscape, and it's such a different pace. Read Ben's introduction to the season four book; I'm amazed that we managed to get as much done as we did. Or will? Or not ... [singsong] I'll never telll ...
When it rains, it pours. It was a really strange year. I spent some time here in LA at the beginning of year. It's really interesting, it's the same language supposedly, but it's a really different culture.
Aussies are very proud. I'm proud of Australia, and the longer I spend away from Australia the more Australian I get, the more patriotic I feel, even though I sound less Australian. My mum told me when I was youuunnnggg-er (I'm such an actress!), "You wait and see. You go and travel the world, you have a look at the way people live, and you'll realize what an incredible lifestyle we have here in Sydney." And it's true. I turned up here in LA in the summer and I looked at the ocean and it was like ... if I squint my eyes, is it kind of blue?
I really recommend it. Take the 14-hour flight and learn meditation so that you can get through it, and it's just amazing. Statistically, most Australians have seen more of the rest of the world than of their own country. When you get to Oz, see as much of it as you can. I've seen a lot more of America than of Australia, I've never been to the west coast of Australia.
[Compared her visit to vineyards to an ep of ABSOLUTELY FABULOUS when the women taste wine in France.]
"Someone's stolen the fucking steering wheel..." That was me, in Napa. I don't drink, really - a glass and a half and I'm gone. Call a cab in Sydney if you can't drink more than one and a half glasses of alcohol, and that's me.
If you go to Trader Joe's, you can get Hahn's beer [an Australian brand] there. If you go to an Australian screening, they'll give away Hahn's for free. My boyfriend was so excited when we went to Trader Joe's and it was on the shelf.
Claudia: If anyone has questiones...that's European for questions...
Audience Member: Are you going to do a CD?
Claudia: Maybe.
Audience Member: At what point did you decide to be an actor?
Claudia: I was thinking about this the other day. Our school system goes kindergarten, to transition, to primary. They were casting a play in transition, so I must have been 5 or 4, and I got cast as the lead, and I think that's what gave me the bug. It's hard to recognize talent at that age; I think I was cast because I just never shut up. He who was the loudest got cast. It was a nativity play, and I played the cleaning lady like a sort of wise janitor. I had this broomstick as a prop, and I was the segue between these vignettes.
If it wasn't for the primary school, I wouldn't have continued acting. There was a very prestigious boy's school, and for a couple of years we were selected to be their sister school for the musicals. The headmaster of the boys school was the brother of a famous composer or conductor, and they had a great hall like the Sydney Opera House, with great musicians, so we were brought up in this environment. I asked for an autograph of this one guy who went on to win a medal at Uni, and he composed this little Symphony on the program.
It's amazing that I get paid to do what I do, compared to these guys.
Audience Member: What did Aeryn feel for John before she fell in love? What did she feel for John before falling in love with his twin on Talyn?
Claudia: I spent my whole life hoping love at first sight is real. Mmm, I'm in looove - it's the best, isn't it? It does exist, and certainly in the dramatic realm I believe it. It was love at first sight without a doubt, but Aeryn wouldn't have known that because she wasn't brought up to understand love; she fought this large, ugly, frightening feeling inside because she didn't know what love is. It was when they consummated it that she understood it. On Talyn is when she really finally understands love.
Don't worry, she loved him all along. It was like she changed.
Audience Member: There's rumors that you know how to sing, but we've never heard one little note.
Claudia: Ben and I used to sing little ditties to each other on set...
Audience Member: Well, that's very fine. That's not good enough! Even if it's just scales, prove it!
Claudia: It's like Ricky's in the audience on Jerry Springer. I find it very hard to enjoy...
I promise you that if I do [sing] it will be for you guys...and I will. It's a promise, and I will stick to it, that I absolutely will sing for you some day, I swear it on my life. You can have a pint of my blood and my first born if I don't.
Audience Member: Could you name two or three differences between filming in the U.S., and in Australia? What are the differences between crews?
Claudia: We filmed PITCH BLACK in Australia, but I haven't actually worked on a film set in America - yet. I've done a lot of voiceovers for animation and stuff like that.
When you're working with profesionals who love what they do, it's a sort of brotherhood, and they're just incredible to be around. The first major job that I did, about 10 years ago, I was devastated when I had to leave them. They were like family.
I'm a bit of a gypsy; it's in my soul, I love traveling and meeting new people and working with them.
I don't think that actors are the same all over the world. I think LA is a slightly different breeding ground. I don't know how to play the game here, and I don't think I want to. I go into meetings and I crack a joke, and everyone's saying, [pause] "Oh, that's funny. She's so funny." God, drill a hole in the floor and suck me through ...
There are unbelievable artists here, so much history and it's inspired so many of us around the world. I think Ruby Wax said "Celebrity is the disease of our age." In Hollywood today, they breed stars, not artists. I don't know how to relate to an actor who has no technical skills or who can't analyze a scene, and I don't understand that. It's a phenomenon.
You have to ask yourself the question when you go into the business. In Oz it's really hard to make a living as an actor, and I'm lucky. At this point in my career, I can make money in America and Australia. I'm willing to travel for work, and because I'm also a Euro citizen, I can work in Europe - that sustained me for a number of years before Farscape, because it's just sooo hard to make a living at it in Oz.
I want to stay close to my friends and family. Am I greedy, do I want money? Or do I really want to keep doing something that I love? I get frustrated, I want to apply what I learned on Farscape. The older I get, the more comfortable I am in my own skin. I can't wait to play a woman in her late 20s or 30s, who's allowed to be late 20s or 30s.
It's weird. They see the show reel and say, "You're funny! You're adorable! But to tell you the truth we don't know what the hell to do with you."
I've done some really cool stuff over the past year, but I've got the taste to play roles like Aeryn. There have been roles written just like Aeryn that I've turned down, because I know that if I do it you'll go to see it, and I don't want to make you guys ashamed of me. I swear on my life, I think about you when I look at a role.
It's hard to take jobs now because the production values are lower [than Farscape]. You know what the budget is, and you know they're not going to be able to deliver. I'll find something that really inspires me, because I don't think actors are really nice to work around if they don't believe in what they're doing.
Audience Member: Any upcoming projects?
Claudia: I haven't done anything on screen. Lots of voice-over and animation work. Important to focus on her voice, because it will stand her in good stead in the long run.
I love doing it. It's important for me to focus on my voice career right now; it'll tide me over when I get to the point of people asking if it's time for that [makes stretching motions like a facelift] and I'm not doing that. I say that now ...
I put money away since Farscape, so that I never have to say, "do you want fries with that?" ever again!
Australia's been really dead, and I've been trying to work in Australia to be near family. It's the worst employment situation in Sydney in 15 years right now. It was hard to get rolling after being told on the last day of shooting season four that I was unemployed.
It's been a quiet year, but it hasn't been uncreative. I did voicework for [the computer game] EVERQUEST. My boyfriend loved D&D when he was at school and plays lots of computer games - he's a geek, yeah, he's one of us. I wanted to send a message because they said yeah, we'll send him a copy. I wanted to record a special message for him, so that it would cut off after two hours, when it's 2 a.m., telling him, "turn it off and come to bed." They said, "Oh, you're funny!"
I really wasn't prepared for the weather [in LA]; everyone said it was great, and they were right. New York is probably my favorite city of all time. People say it's better to live in New York if you're either really, really young or really, really rich, and I'm neither.
I have to introduce someone to you ... I've been keeping a secret for half an hour. [bounces up and down, as Ben Browder joins her onstage, carrying a guitar case]
Claudia: I went to a country wedding. A Sydney country wedding has to be experienced. People get very drunk, and I'm one of those people who absorb being drunk without actually drinking. I was going to do this interpretative dance for the locals ... no, really! [Ben bounces up and down] How you doing?
Ben: [points at guitar case] Are you going to play that?
Claudia: I'm going to do an interpretative dance ... Screeeewww you!
Ben: How're you guys doing?
Claudia: Ben is very sweet, very obliging, so I always take advantage. He's very shy, and won't tell you that he's been very busy in various things.
Ben: I'll tell them later.
Ben passes her the guitar, and merriment ensues as they get everything set up, mikes adjusted, wires connected, strings tuned, etc. At some point, Ben hops down offstage and makes himself at home in the front row of the audience, where he proceeds to goof around.
Claudia: This is going to take a lot longer if you all do shenanigans! [still tuning guitar] Ben, calm down.
You guys know [the song] "Smelly Cat" from FRIENDS? This is so much worse... [fan runs up and drops a dollar in her guitar case] I got paid! Does that mean I've turned professional before I've even started? [audience starts flicking their lighters]
This is the story of a girl who was given a guitar ten years ago, and had her first lesson last week. Now this girl - oh geez, "oh you're adorable!" - and this girl used to sing years ago and there was this big booming voice that came out of her, and girls would turn at look at her in choir, and tell her, you're just so loud! So everyone expected this girl would go on and become a musician, she used to pick up a wind instrument and be good at it. And when this girl had her first guitar lesson last week, she learned only three chords ... but if you like rock'n'roll, you only need three chords.
So anyway, let's cut to the chase. The girl loved music, but lost her confidence and stopped singing, for a number of reasons, and even though everyone expected her to sing, she went a different path. She was a performer, but she wasn't singing. She listened to music and loved it, and as much as she listened to music, it was so deeply in her soul that she wanted to get back to it. So she worked on a show with a sweet man, and they would sing together. Apart from singing quite badly in the shower, she thought she had to get her act together, and it was going to take a lot of courage, a lot of insanity, and more than one guitar lesson.
She learned that it's actually very hard to sing and play at the same time, but she wanted to learn how to accompany herself so that she could have some support. There's a message going around from the Dalai Lama, and it says you should learn the lyrics to your favorite song. This girl learned the lyrics to her favorite song - it's an Australian song, that's practically the national anthem, and it's avant garde and an interpretative piece. So, the one thing she did ask when she decided to get up on stage and sing: cameras and tape would be distracting. She wanted no photos and no taping, and if it were a disaster, there would be no record and it would be her one and only performance.
Claudia proceeded to perform the song, Throw Your Arms (Around Me), which she did beautifully; her voice is smooth, smoky, rich, and absolutely wonderful to listen to.
I thought the greatest act of love I could give to you would be to torture you for three and a half minutes...
Hi! [shuffles notecards] Oh yeah, I can't do this without notes. Before I came down here, I got an email from Henson, with talking points. This is what I did with the talking points ...[one by one reads the cards, then tosses each into the crowd]
- They are negotiating with Brad Pitt to play Crichton, and they don't want to jinx it.
- They are negotiating with Kermit the Frog to play Rygel ... Nah, they're negotiating with Jonathan Hardy to play Rygel.
- Farscape is filmed in Australia. Any announcement has to travel backwards across the International Dateline, which could disrupt the natural space-time continuum, and destroy the known universe.
- We got a call from Homeland Security, and the Scarran threat is real. And my wife told me that.
- Any announcement could destabilize the world latex market, and create a worldwide depression.
- The truth is, Kemper is evil.
Every year, the past years I've done this, we get all this great stuff [from the fans]. It's piling up, and it's a great expression. This year I decided I wanted to give something back. I've been up in Canada, and I've been working with this girl [Tricia Helfer] who plays the evil Cylon agent on the new Battlestar Galactica miniseries. ABC is doing these "Behind the Camera" productions; we've been working on Behind the Camera: The Unauthorized Story of 'Charlie's Angels', and they said I could give this away. This is what I've been doing. [holds up a promotional poster titled 'The Six Million Dollar Man'", showing himself looking disturbingly just like the title character] I'm playing Lee Majors!
Ben invited three folks who run unofficial Ben Browder websites (Angie, BritAngie, and Danielle) up onstage, and gave each of them a copy of the poster.
It's been well over a year since Black Friday - or Saturday, depending on which side of the Date Line you are. The outpouring has been amazing. Farscape continues to be the most phenomenal thing that ever happened to me, and you guys have been an enormous part of that. All of us are standing here, and we're crossing our fingers.
Audience Member: What was your most memorable Farscape moment?
Ben: I've had the question a couple of times, and every time I have it I come up with a different answer. The one that pops to mind right now is the last day, when I stood with the crew for last time, and told them that I would be haunted, and there hasn't been a day since then that I haven't thought of them.
Audience Member: If you could be any other character on the show, who would you be?
Ben: I'd be Rygel. He's got the best working conditions, he's got more people looking after him, and he is the star of the show.
Audience Member: What was your favorite food? Where did you go to high school? And how has Farscape shaped you?
Ben: Given the fact that I've been shooting in Texas, and I'm going back tomorrow to shoot something, anything with carbohydrates.
High school ... I went to Meyers Park High School, in North Carolina.
I've been acting for a very long time, a scary long time. I started doing plays when I was 12. You go through an up-down cycle in Hollywood, it's brutal on people's egos. Farscape gave me faith that got me through the down times, that the next 8-9 months won't be so bad. It taught me to say, "she'll be right, mate".
Audience Member: My 70 year old mother has a crush on you.
Ben: Rock on, man! 70 years old...I'm going to play Vegas!
Audience Member: Have you written anything?
Ben: I have scribbles all over pieces of paper in my house that haven't been put together. Until I finish [writing] a script, I don't talk about it. There ain't nothing done yet, if that's what you're asking.
Ricky [Manning] is in the audience, and he's laughing. We get together and talk about writing. I sit down writing a piece, and it's about these two rednecks in the hills and all of a sudden Rygel floats through the window on his chair. It takes Farscape characters a long time to wash out of your head.
Audience Member: You get almost a marriage with the fanbase. Did the long-term fan relationship enter into your mind during the casting?
Ben: You don't have a clue what you're getting into. When I was a young man thinking about being an actor, I never thought about standing in front of you guys. People can say, hey, it's a genre show, but there's no way to prepare for you guys, I'm sorry.
Audience Member: What is the most bizarre thing that you've drawn experience from on Farscape?
Ben: It had to be when Rowan Woods as Big Zhaan milked his breast. When I wrote it, it was bizarre, but when I saw it and the cup was coming towards me, AAGH! At that moment I went, okay, we just lost a third of the fanbase. Zhaan is a mother figure, right? We took all of the figures and we twisted them. We'll see that later, and you guys can be as appalled as I was when I faced it.
Audience Member: The magazine said your favorite music is funk. What funks you out? What do you listen to?
Ben: I was heavily influenced by Johnny 'Guitar' Watson, in his funk stage ... Hollywood Funkadelic ... Sly & The Family Stone.
My parents were clubbing during the Memphis soul scene. It's scary to watch my mother out there with her butt going...
I was surrounded by it as a child. I started with Ray Charles in the late 60s, and just rolled straight through. Funk just rocks, man.
Audience Member: How long did you have to wear the stockings [in SCRATCH 'N SNIFF]?
Ben: An entire morning. We had to duct tape them to my legs. I have hair on my legs! I don't know how you women do it! Or men!
Audience Member: Can you do the girly scream [from SCRATCH 'N SNIFF]?
[Ben does the girly scream - not quite as funny without the fishnet stockings visual, but still dang amusing]
Audience Member: Was Talyn-John lying when he was dying [INFINITE POSSIBILITIES: ICARUS ABIDES], that he couldn't see Aeryn?
Ben: I had in my head that the world was sort of dimming around him, not blind but dimming as he went. No, I just lay there and went blind. That was a hell of a scene!
Audience Member: Two years ago you didn't know what a vorlag was and now there're some in the audience.
Ben: Look under your chairs!
Audience Member: [with regard to Ben's use of pop cultural references] I spent four years waiting for John to say, "I have a cunning plan!"
Ben: Great, I'll call up Kemper. I missed that one, didn't I? How did I miss that? I'll keep it in mind. Keep your eyes and ears tuned to this station.
Audience Member: When John was split, there were two. Being that Talyn-John was smarter than Moya-John, did he negotiate for two contracts?
Ben: I'm Moya-John! No, I didn't get two contracts. That splitting of Crichton, on one hand is a stroke of genius, and on the other the kiss of death. If you want more ratings, you do not split your main character. It's hard on the part-time viewer; they tune in one week, and say, "Wait, I watched last week, he died! This must be a rerun!"
Kemper was insane! He's a genius. I've never been on a show with cojones like that. It was great. It also gave the people who wear latex and paint a break, some time to recover. I completely understand Ginny not being able to continue with it. It was sort of practical on one level, and brilliant on the other.
As far as loving Talyn-John more, how a story endows the character (and this comes back to the writing) is the most critical thing for the actor to have. It can be witnessed in slight differences between the two Johns, and the incredible difference in how people reacted to them. People's responses were radically different to the two Johns because of what the writers did, even though the actor doesn't play them that disparately. It's complex TV, and it's a credit to our writing staff.
Audience Member: In MENTAL AS ANYTHING, did the thought of potholders ever cross your mind? Why didn't John use the shirt to catch the key?
Ben: The shirt was his only protection. If he'd taken off his shirt, his back would be unprotected against the hot wall of the cage. And it also would have charred over the grate and been useless... Truth is, I don't like taking my shirt off!
The great thing about the Farscape crew is that they never come up with a good idea the first time, or the second, or the third, and finally they just run with it and it comes out cool.
Audience Member: Some fans have described season four as the 'Season of Crichton's Ass'. How does it feel, being a sex object?
Ben: I don't know how these things get started!
I guess it started with the Brindz hound. I went off on a ten minute vamp, of which about one minute remains. It was just me and Andrew Prowse on the set, no other people there watching, and I probably overstepped the bounds of good taste. It was one of these deals where, what do you do to lure the hound in? C'mon, you want some of this! I could get beyond the point of embarassing myself.
We do something once, and think, why don't we do that again?
As to being sexy, I was looking at a green spot; it didn't cross my mind until afterwards, when I went ooooooo... It's scary to think what's out there, given the Australia black market for outtakes...
Audience Member: Which was harder to write: GREEN EYED MONSTER or JOHN QUIXOTE?
Ben: The pieces are so different, and I wanted to talk about JOHN QUIXOTE later. In a way, GREEN EYED MONSTER was more difficult because it was my first time going to fisticuffs with Kemper. We were actually standing in the parking lot, throwing rocks at each other: "I love that line!" "You've got to lose it!" The second was harder to make work within the context of what the audience knows. But the first was probably the harder, overall.
Audience Member [a little girl]: Would you like to be married to Claudia?
Ben: Oh, man, are we getting into alternate realities? No, I'm very happily married to my wife. Fair question, but I have a beautiful wife that I've had for not long enough, and we've had 17 years together. She's fantastic. No offense to Claudia, but I've got what I want.
Audience Member: With regard to your History Channel series on Hannibal: how many episodes, and when can we see them?
Ben: We only did the pilot. I haven't heard whether they will do additional episodes, or when the pilot might air.
Audience Member: What would John Crichton tell his kids, when they ask, "How'd you meet Mommy?"
Ben: That's a dang good question, isn't it? "First time I met Mommy she kicked my ass, and she's been doing it ever since." Sounds like a typical marriage!
Audience Member: Is your family still in [auto] racing?
Ben: My two brothers are still racing late model stocks; they're running at Hickory and Caraway [racetracks]. I went down and watched them race. My youngest brother continues to say, "dude, B, man, you gotta come drive for me."
Audience Member: Did Scorpy really hit your head on the table?
Ben: Yeah, he did. I didn't get a cut lip, but I had a sore cheekbone, really swollen, and bruised. Wayne gets into it. I asked him, "Wayne, don't push my head, I'll guide it." All that pain and screaming, that was real, not acting. But it doesn't look as good on camera as half the stuff we fake, "that's not real, he's overacting!"
Audience Member: What do you miss from Australia?
Ben: I miss the Oz surf ... I miss blunnies [type of shoe, which he was wearing onstage], I have to have friends smuggle them across the border ... I miss Tim-Tams [brand of cookie] ... And I miss my friends.
It was a difficult transition back from Oz. America's changed since 9/11, and, now that I've got the pulpit, not all of it's for the good. Claud and I were there [in NYC] on 9/11, we saw the buildings come down, we were there. My greatest worry was not me, I called my dad and told him I was okay.
The people in New York reacted in the way they should react, like a small village. It became a community in a way that was the most amazing transformation that you've ever seen, caring for one another, sharing cell phones, caring for the person sitting next to you, it was one of the most remarkable experiences I've ever had.
Since that time, when I come back, I notice Americans are much more stand-offish, and very afraid. We should not be afraid. I'm not saying we shouldn't be careful, but we should be reaching out to each other and looking out for one another, and be brave in the face of things that we're afraid of. Fear, and acting out of fear, will be the death of this country.
[standing ovation from the audience]
Audience Member: You left a lush, moutainous area, and went to something just about as different as possible. Do you miss it?
Ben: I do miss North Carolina, and I do miss my family. I've been hopping my way around the world for a couple of years now - London, New York, LA, Australia. When you're a young, starting actor, you can't afford to hop on a plane and go home.
It's weird, when you get off the plane in Australia, you feel that you're home. It's that kind of place. They're okay with y'all, and they say reckon. It's a good thing.
I still miss the South, I still miss my family, and I still don't get home as often as I'd like.
Audience Member: I just married a Brit - do you have any advice?
Ben: Ohhh, man, you're in trouble now. Wait until July 4th, you get to kick her out of the house!
You will think you're talking about the same thing. Not the normal male/female disconnect, you'll think you're talking about the same cultural thing. You're not. You're telling her, "that's quite good, baby" and she thinks you mean it sucks. Your best bet, if you can get away with it, is to ask her, what do you mean? "You want to marry Claudia Black?" "What do you mean?"
Participants:
- Ben Browder
- Gigi Edgley
- Jonathan Hardy
- Paul Goddard
- Ricky Manning
Ricky: How did the concept evolve? Because that wasn't what you originally pitched.
Ben: My original pitch on this episode was that it was a fairy tale...
Gigi: Fairies, fairies, fairies!
Ben: ...being told in the Uncharted Territories. The problem was, integrating what we would recognize as a fairy tale in such an alien setting. At one point I posited to DK that the characters in the game were real, in an alternate reality. He torpedoed that. I understood later. Our people are not the good guys in the eye of a lot of folks, they're the bad guys, and I wanted to show that.
I wanted to bring some people back, like Paul and Ginny. Gigi wanted to do some action stuff, so I wanted to give her something that let her be fiesty, with the swordplay. So I cobbled it all together, and it was so big. It was hard to cut down; the first cut came in at 60 minutes. I asked Ricky what I could cut, and he said. "I don't know." If you could see the 60 minute version, it's exquisite.
Ricky: I think I said cut the Crais.
Ben: Oh, I know, you said cut the elevator. You can't cut the elevator, Crichton's the bad guy!
Ricky: We had a lot of discussion in addition to the fairy tale. With the destruction that they've left behind them, our characters aren't seen as the good guys by a large chunk of the galaxy. Ginny comes back and drives a stake into Crichton's heart about all the people who have died.
I just want to state for the record that Ben wrote every bloody word in this episode. It's very rare for that with a freelancer, it's very rare that one of us doesn't take a pass at it, either light changes or major carpentry. We went to green, which is what, five drafts? Not bad for Farscape.
Ben: Not bad unless you're writing at 3:00 a.m., when you're shooting the next day!
Paul: I recall how I got involved with it. It was at a BBQ at Ben & Fran's after season three. Ben was discussing this episode with DK, and they started talking about how they'd twist the characters in some way to turn them on their heads. They talked about the man in the iron mask, and some wild ideas, and the outcome was that Stark's mask was on the other side.
I thought nothing of it, but a few months later I got a call from Ben saying he wanted me to speak a sonnet. I'd just decided to learn all the Shakespearean sonnets (although since then I've only learned one!) so I thought it was a fantastic idea, but it was quite a risk to have a Shakespearean sonnet in a sci-fi episode. The producers were a little concerned that it would go on too long (it was three pages in the script). I told them I can go as fast as anything as long as it was clear.
Jonathan: How can it take up three pages? It's only 14 lines! Did you realize that a Shakespeare sonnet rhymes A-B-B-A?
Ricky: Yes.
Jonathan: Well, I'm lying! Hah hah hah!
The episode begins playing on the screen behind them. Sikozu approaches Scorpy's cell, carrying John's chess set.
Ben: The opening scene almost went [onto the cutting room floor] in the final cut.
John sits in the transport pod, musing over memories of Aeryn.
Ricky: Oh, it's a recap.
Ben: It wasn't a recap, it was something we did all season long.
Back to Sikozu outside Scorpy's cell, as they play chess through the bars.
Ricky: Now we go to the A story, which is always Scorpy and Sikozu.
Chiana: Come on, come play these games with me.
John: Games? Looks like, some kind of sick... root.Ben: "Root" has a different meaning in Australia. [it's the equivalent of "frell" - Ed.]
D'Argo strides down a corridor on Moya, as he tells John that there's a problem with Scorpius.
Ricky: One of the discussions that we had was about what kind of costume D'Argo should be wearing.
Stark rushes onscreen, calling out, "I'll save you!"
Paul: I loved it, I was playing the hero.
The CGI castle appears.
Ricky: The Olympic stadium parking structure was where a lot of this was shot, so that they could get some height in the shot. We put the CGI over it.
The television set falls off the castle wall onto Crichton.
Ricky: If this looks like an homage...it is.
Ben: I think originally it was going to be a couch, but Tony Tilse insisted on it being a TV set instead, because it was a way to meld the shooting styles used in combination throughout the episode. I think the conversation was about how the Princess was constantly redecorating.
How much do you stay in the game world? How do you come back to reality? We used these really weird cameras on long poles, and it really gets integrated when it's used on the television set. That was Tony Tilse at his most clever.
Ricky: Tony loves to go big and broad and colorful.
Shot of John and Chiana standing in the transport pod, twitching under the control of the game.
Gigi: Tantric!
Ricky: So they're lost in the game, so what, what does that mean? We wanted to show some framework showing danger. Otherwise, they could play all they like with no damage.
Stark tosses a goose aside as he opens a filing cabinet drawer.
Ben: The goose is Tony Tilse.
Ricky: It's not actually Tony Tilse.
Ben: His idea!
Stark recites the Game Instructions Sonnet.
Jonathan: You'd have to keep replaying that.
Ricky: Keep an eye on the lighting through out the episode, because there are lots of important contrasts, especially weird.
John: I have some questions...
Ben: ...which is exactly what the audience is thinking at this point. "What the hell are they doing?" ... Chiana was moody because of all the stuff with D'Argo, and I wanted to write something where she was having a good time.
John and Chiana switch levels, to a parking garage scattered throughout with free-standing wooden doors of various colors. A VW bus is parked nearby.
Gigi: There were fights on the set over who got to keep the bus after the shot.
Male Zhaan emerges from the minibus.
Paul: My Goddess!
Gigi: In this punch coming up, on the pool deck, he (Rowan) actually knocked me out for the day.
Male Zhaan knocks Crichton flat.
Ricky: Yeah, when he wound up to punch Crichton, he cocked his elbow right into her, knocked her right out of the shot.
Ben: One of the cool things was that we had so much detail, because of the production crew. When you give someone something they've never done before to do, you get more out of them. Rowan gave so much more ...
Male Zhaan begins milking his breast.
Ricky: That wasn't a special effect, that was all Rowan.
Chiana crouches over John's prone form.
Ricky: People are always straddling Crichton...
Crichton begins to convulse, Chiana screams, and Male Zhaan goes a little nuts at the steering wheel.
Ricky: Notice the camera styles - the split screens, the sideways angles, anything we can do to add to the unreality. Speaking of which ...
Rygel appears, shooting flames out his backside.
Ricky: One could write an entire thesis on Rygel's emissions on this series. Chris Murray, our pyrotechnician, everybody! Otherwise known as Crazy Chris. We used that fried head about five times, didn't we? It's necessary to keep some sense of a threat of danger running through this.
John and Chiana come face to face with D'Argo, Jool, and...Chiana.
Gigi: This was real confusing, the day we shot this.
Jool and Chiana hang suspended in a round cage.
Gigi: Tam [Tammy Macintosh] and I did a bit of method work on that before we shot.
John pops out of the game environment, and resumes communication with D'Argo, aboard Moya.
Ben: D'Argo is back in this section as Stark last saw him. It was hard to hide the absence of Granny & Sikozu on Moya. Notice that nothing more recent than Stark's last visit with the crew is mentioned; he game doesn't get anything unless Crichton or Chiana says it first.
Ricky: We get a lot of information that's only critical in retrospect when the viewer tries to make the logic work.
The Ogre appears.
Ricky: This is what Lani was talking about, when he was grateful for not having a character with prosthetics. He had a great time, but he had a lot of stuff piled on him.
John and Chiana reboard Moya, meet up with D'Argo and Aeryn.
Ben: This is Aeryn from season three, here.
Ricky: I think it was a dollhouse somewhere back in the first draft.
Ben: All the characters are in costumes from season three, when Stark last saw them.
Ricky: Complicating life was that, this was an episode we were trying to shoot in nine days instead of ten. We used the parking structure a couple of times for different things, a lot of Moya. It's not the problem of building sets, but switching between them takes production time, for travel and logistics for the crew. So, it's hard on the writer, justifying if a switch was really necessary.
DRDs fire on John and Aeryn in Pilot's Den.
Ben: There was also an attempt to make things seem familiar. The entrance on that scene is a complete repeat of John and Aeryn's entrance in THE WAY WE WEREN'T.
Ricky: Also, if the scene doesn't look like Farscape, the audience is going to smell a rat. We tried to keep that scene as typically Farscape, if there is such a thing, as we could, to avoid tipping our hand to the audience.
John awakens in one of Moya's prison cells.
Ricky: And again, partly by design, this plot going on here mirrors what we had going on the season plot line enough that we thought maybe we could fool people for a couple of minutes.
Scorpius lists the torments Crichton has resisted in the past.
Ricky: But not the vibrator! No-one can resist that.
Ben: It's the jackrabbit.
Ricky: Guy Gross does a lovely job here, juuussst keeping the tension going in the background.
Chiana whispers to John through an access door.
Ricky: That little dog door in the corridor came in so handy, a number of times.
John: When I take him down, you have to find a way to hogtie everybody.
Gigi: Sounds fun! [grins seductively]
Ricky: We were already worried about timing at this point, and had everyone talking faster.
Ben: That's about a quart of ketchup on the floor. No, really, it was just a quart, but it made the whole place smell like a hamburger. It was very difficult keeping the game characters ambiguous, while waiting for information to be revealed.
John: The unifying symbol is under my left foot. Would you like to see it?
Ricky: Your left foot? I've already seen your left foot, John.
Aeryn Sun: Nothing else matters. I just ... want to be with you. [kisses John]
Gigi: Stick it in!
Ricky: No, we cut that line.
Green door appears in Moya's maintenance bay.
Ricky: [to Ben] Why green?
Ricky: We also talked about doing some morphing here, but it was one of the things that had to go for budget reasons.
Act ends, and screen fades to black for commercial break.
Gigi: I miss Farscape!
Ben: Patience, grasshopper.
Male Zhaan sits in the open door of the VW bus.
Ben: Rowan was doing his APOCALYPSE NOW bit, there.
John runs over Rygel with the VW.
Ricky: Rygel really should stay away from that parking structure.
John and Chiana return to D'Argo's lollipop room.
Gigi: I was trying to play Chiana with a few more glitches in her system. A few more head twitches than usual.
Chiana appears, tied up like a suckling pig.
John: Chiana, what's Aeryn's secret?
Ricky: It's a brand of lingerie.
Gigi: All in a day's work.
Ricky: Method acting?
Gigi: Always.
Ricky: Whenever you give actors swords, you take your life in your hands.
Ben: This was a really dangerous day.
Gigi: It was so scary...fantastic!
The swordfight rages in the castle tower.
Ben: Claud gave great color commentary.
Ricky: And now Guy is making it sound like the ending...now what's happening?
Ricky: We reused that basic penthouse structure several times in season four; when you have a nice round room, you just keep redecorating.
John deliberately falls from the castle wall.
Ben: Boy, was I pissed when I saw Vanilla Sky after I wrote this.
The real Zhaan emerges as John cleaves Male Zhaan in half.
Ricky: Part of the reason we put Rowan in earlier, was that we knew somehow it would leak that Zhaan was coming back, and we thought using Rowan might diffuse that. Virginia was kind enough to not put her name at the top of the show; that's a dead giveaway.
Ben: We didn't know the SciFi Channel was going to say, "a special ep with Virginia Hey"!
Ricky: We knew Sci-Fi would say she was coming back, they aren't interested in surprise, they just want eyeballs. How many episodes ended up with "We're not dead yet", and how many ad breaks were "we're all going to die"?
Ben: Multiply by 88?
Ricky: 87.
Noranti advises John as she's cooking.
Ben: I really liked writing for Grandma.
Ricky: This was so much fun, and she just caught the Farscape spirit immediately. When we were starting to write the blender scene in COUP BY CLAM, we approached Melissa [Jaffer] to see if she was okay with it, and she was like, "Oh, yeah!"
John accepts the drug from Noranti.
Ben: Writers on Farscape are always trying to write Crichton as smart. Here's proof positive that he's an idiot.
John walks toward Aeryn in the hallway.
Ben: We kept coming back to this spot in the hallway.
Ricky: Writers have to put things in because the board on the wall say it's time in the season. That's an extra burden on the writer.
Aeryn: I hear I was a princess.
Ricky: Here's the shippiest tag we've ever done. There should be a plaque on the wall here...
Ben: ..."Aeryn Sat Here."
Screen fades out at the end of the episode tag scene.
Ben: Everyone did a great job with really impossible material. It was fun watching it. Thanks, guys!
David: The last time I saw Raelee it was here in America, in Baltimore.
Jonathan: I could never quite believe that in playing a muppet - and I don't see him as one - one could do so much, and bring you around the world to meet so many people. I thank you, everybody. Thanks, all of you.
David: What's it like hearing Rygel dubbed into another language?
Jonathan: Very odd. I've seen him dubbed in German. They dub everyone; [to David] you've been dubbed in Germany! They get careless sometimes, like someone will say "Nighty-night", and they translate it as "Ninety-nine", which sounds like some kind of Kama Sutra position.
David: It's my favorite. Thank goodness I'm flexible.
Jonathan: It's particularly odd to see it captioned in Serbo-Croation, in Cyrillic. [delivered commentary on St. Cyril and the history of the Cyrillic alphabet] This is enormously important to understand about the history of Eastern Europe. You'll be pleased to know that in Belgrade, Farscape is shown at midnight, with Cyrillic subtitles, on their second channel.
David: Speaking of Cyrillic (isn't that a beautiful segue?)... All these people come up to you at the end of the season, at the wrap party, and you've never seen them but they've been staring at you all year in Editing and CGI, so they think they know you. In the Computer Graphics department, they worked out the language on the Command Carrier, and it says "Mother ****ers".
Either David or Jonathan made some reference here to the writer Robert Rankin, author of (among other titles) NOSTRADAMUS ATE MY HAMSTER and WEB SITE STORY: "science fiction, quite frightening stuff".
Jonathan: It's amazing how these people think they know you. I was in a Chinese Chuckaway one night, we were all lined up, and this guy in front of me says, "Hi, how are you?" He'd seen me on television. It's amazing how these people think they know you. People become extremely fond of you, or hate you.
David: The first time in the U.S that someone recognized me from the show, it was a waitress in a coffee shop, and I was more excited than she was.
Raelee: I was standing at a bus stop. This guy was really excited because he had 72 hours worth, and I didn't understand what he meant. We get on the bus, and he pulls a bunch of Farscape DVDs out of his knapsack. He's so excited because he's got all these videos to watch. I'm sitting and I'm just hoping they don't look at me, and oh my god, and finally they get off and I think phew, dodged that one. And then I hear a deep voice in my ear, and I didn't realize an older gentlemen was sitting right behind me, and he says, "They didn't realize you were among us. But I know who you are, Sikozu Shanu..." Then he gets up, he's a guy in a long trenchoat, and he walks off the bus. True story!
Jonathan: I signed two autographs for officials before I got out of the airport. How they recognized me as Rygel: I'm quite short.
Audience Member: If you were duplicated, what would you do with it?
Raelee: Can a twin be invisible? I would have an invisible twin! And she's all powerful, and she can climb up the walls and stand in the corner and be completely invisible and become a fantastic voyeur, and she'll have to come home and tell me all about it.
David: I have one, I keep him locked in the trunk.
Jonathan: Having seen the Mattress, the obvious question is how many of you's is required to change a lightbulb. I have enough problems with one and I couldn't stand the competition, so I would have to kill him.
Audience Member: Could you do Elvis?
David, who once played Elvis in the musical ARE YOU LONESOME TONIGHT, sang the first verse of "Heartbreak Hotel" in an excellent impression of The King.
Not to be outdone, Jonathan then sang the first verse of "I Am The Very Model of a Modern Major-General" (from THE PIRATES OF PENZANCE) at breakneck - but clearly articulated - speed.
Audience Member: How does a New Zealand sheepherder find his sheep in the long grass?
Jonathan: Delightful ... but we can't mention it, all of the sheep in New Zealand are in mourning today, because Australia beat New Zealand in rugby yesterday.
Raelee: [jumps up in wild excitement] Get out! Really? ALL RIGHT, WE WON! What was the score? [dances in agitation as Jonathan refuses to tell her; the score is eventually called out by a member of the audience] 22-10, yeah!
Audience Member: What was it like coming in as the new kid on the block?
Raelee: It was very scary. You join any group of people that have bonded, and you are worried. I hadn't watched much SciFi, and I didn't know how much of a screw it could be. But everybody (apart from these two!) was really accommodating, really lovely, helped me a lot.
Audience Member: Since all of you sing, if they had done a musical version of Farscape, what kind of music would your character have sung?
Raelee: Smoky blues jazz, lying in front of Pilot's console, in fishnets and stilettos. Jonathan would have done some flappers song...
Jonathan: No!
Jonathan sings "Nessum Dorma" (from the opera TURANDOT) in full throat.
David: I don't know, the secret world of Braca ...
Raelee: Braca would have been the emcee from CABARET, with the gold tassels.
Jonathan: The clue to what he would sing is what he was wearing under that uniform.
Raelee: Oh, a soprano then.
Audience Member: What were you thinking when watching Sikozu on Scorpy's lap?
David: Hmm. Two's company, and three's ...
Raelee: A really good time!
David: You're thinking of the squeegee.
Raelee: [laughing] Shut up!
David: That's what they'd use, because the leather clothes all used to go "squeak-squeak", and they used to lube us up.
Raelee: Let's have a little bit of decorum! [laughs helplessly]
Audience Member: Was the homo-erotic subtext between Sikozu & Chi, and Scorpy & Braca, intentional?
David: I loved it when people would read into the character.
Raelee: Braca's a survivor. In a nuclear war three things will survive: cockroaches, [missed second item], and Braca.
Raelee: Early in the season, Gigi and I and Tammy were toying with going down the path with sort of a slash idea, but never brought it to ...[long pause] climax. But who knows, when Farscape comes back perhaps we will.
Audience Member: Current projects?
Raelee: You probably won't see me, because I'm trying my damndest to get a bookstore set up in Sydney. There isn't a lot of [acting] work in Australia, it's sort of being taken over by reality TV right now.
David: I've spent more time in America than I have in Australia. Right now I'm working on a visa, so that I can work here. I've spent six months traveling around America.
Jonathan: I've been very busy, ever since I was born, which was in 1742. I've always wanted to go to my father's grave on Crete. I went round Europe doing some small Farscape things, which was wonderful, it made it possible for me to get to Crete. For the first time in my life I got to call somebody "Dad", which was amazing because I'd never seen him and he'd never seen me. I'm also working on my film THE SILVER TREE, which I wrote, and I got to play King Lear in a film version. New Zealand does some incredible things, like THE WHALE RIDER.
Raelee: If she [the young female lead in THE WHALE RIDER, Keisha Castle-Hughes] doesn't get Best Actress, I'll just give it away!
Jonathan: Apart from that, I'm getting more like Rygel as time goes on: I had a ring put round my stomach, so I now have two stomachs.
Audience Member: Did you find out about Sikozu's powers when you got the script?
Raelee: To a point. I knew a lot of what was going to happen towards the end of the series, not necessarily details, but I knew something fishy was going on. It was nice because I got to be sneaky! I needed to see it in writing to get the details straight.
Audience Member: Where would you like to see your characters go?
Jonathan: We have several ideas. One is RYGEL P.I., where he walks around with a glove puppet that looks like Tom Selleck. We thought of a remake of DOOGIE HOWSER, as Rygel M.D. without responsibility. I think Kemper had the idea that there was a child from Ben and that woman with long black hair, and they moved on and the child was adopted and brought up by Scorpius and Rygel.
David: I think Braca will be satisfied with Admiral or King of the World!
Jonathan: I think he'll have a huge film career as Lorraine Braca.
Raelee: When we left the series, Sikozu and Scorpy had sort of set themselves up for some porn in spaaaaaaaace. I would like to see her come back as his Princess.
Audience Member: Favorite phrase?
Raelee: When you're going through hell, just keep on going. That's Winston Churchill.
David: I'm king of the world!!!
Jonathan: Never kick a man when he's up, he can fight back.
We didn't attend this event, but stlscape passed along a really nice comment:
The auditorium supervisor who had been escorting one of the stars, mentioned to a small group of fans on Sunday that, at the cocktail party the night before, the stars had been paid for 20 minutes of their time and they stayed for two hours.
