Are there more hot tub scenes coming up?
Oh, yeah, there’s definitely more hot tub scenes. There’s a lot of them. It’s amazing because Jaime’s such a pro. She’s got such a gorgeous body and everything but the outfit that she’s given leaves not much to the imagination… but a little bit. She’s very brave in that sense. Any actress who gets in the tub and get their clothes off sometimes can be quite difficult, but me and Jaime have a good rapport. We get on very well.
A lot of the scenes in the tub [are] like a family would talk in the kitchen. There’s that sort of after dinner you do the kitchen talk. Datak and Stahma they do their wheeling and dealing, most of their chats are done when they’re bathing because Castithans bathe three or four times a day. It’s one of the main things that they do. They love to bathe. Also there’s a Castithan way, you’re not supposed to bathe alone as a Castithan. You always have to be with somebody. So the mind boggles.
You’re wearing makeup also, so how long does that last in the water?
No, it’s a very good question actually because I’ve seen it on other chaps. You can run about set, it stays on you. Soon as you get in the bath, it’s okay but for some reason as soon as we start rolling, it’s a complete nightmare. It stops dripping off you. You’ve got a lot of the makeup guys coming in, the girls just trying to make you look as if it’s your skin. Sometimes it’s not just from the neck down.
When you’re in the tub, it’s the whole body. Jaime was getting in the tub, we’re standing up moving around, making love, whatever we do. So it can be quite time consuming when you’re constantly standing up and someone’s putting makeup on your backside.
When there’s a character with such a rich mythology, maybe double with both the show and the game, do you just thrive on that as an actor?
Once again that’s a great point. There is such a mythology within this production from the game, set in San Fran, Defiance now, formerly St. Louis. There’s these characters that have come from another planetary system. Seven races. David G. Peterson who’s created all these languages, he’s also worked on “Games of Thrones,” there’s the Castithan language, there’s the Irithian languages.
There’s a real depth to this show which, there’s some great science fiction shows out there, But I think with this show, as you said, mythological past and potential future which is ahead of us in this production, the sky’s the limit as it were. So I think everybody’s very excited about that.
There’s a real three dimensional, four dimensional-ness of the characters are really well fleshed out. A lot of the alien characters, their problems are human problems, are things that human beings, people who watch this show can relate to, so I think that’s going to be interesting as well, and a good drama.
It’s not just about aliens attacking earth. It has a lot to do with an exodus, a massive one, the potato famine in Ireland for instance, the Highland Clearances in Scotland, the Italians, people coming from the east going to the west to find a better life. A lot of what happens in Defiance is mirrored by what has happened on earth.
When you’ve had a role where you don’t get that much material to work with, what do you do?
Normally you turn it down. No, I’m kidding.
I don’t think you do. I think you have to work with it.
No, you don’t [turn it down]. No, the imagination always comes in. You always have to create that backstory. I do anyway. The objectivity, where do I come from, where do I want to go? But with “Defiance,” there has been a good sort of mythological background to this show, but at the same time, all of us created the show as well. there’s religious physical blessing yourself in Islam or morning prayer, or Judaism.
With the aliens, we all have to create that as well because how do aliens bless themselves? How do they pray? All of that just came from the actor. It was sometimes on the spot. Think of something.
I was on the golf course playing a round on the weekend. A friend says to me, “Monday we’ve got to do this Castithan handshake. What are we going to do?” Me and my friend Ryan said, “Why don’t we try this? It’s kind of different.” We asked the director and producers and they’re like, “Yeah, put it in.” You’ve got to just do it with belief, do it with commitment and hopefully it’ll look good.
But it’s amazing that there is a lot of backstory, but at the same time the actors and the directors are creating the world we live in. Sometimes on the spot as well. It’s that sort of spontaneity which I think is going to give it a freshness and a good vibe.
You’ve played characters in some major movies. Do you bring that much to it even if you’re only in one scene?
Oh yeah. I said to somebody before, being interviewed when we were on set, I’ve never worked on a production on a television show, I’ve done movies like Blade 2 or Underworld or Gladiator, that feels as big as a feature film. “Defiance” for me definitely has that scope, has that impact that many movies that I’ve done in my life seem to have.
I think right now, the film industry is going through not a complete lull, but it’s changed in the last 10 years quite dramatically, financially as well. I think a lot of the television that’s been coming through is equal, if not better than a lot of the movies that are out there. For instance, “The Walking Dead” is a genre show that has to do with zombies, but it’s also so much bigger than that. It has to do with people surviving, human beings relating to each other to try and move on and survive.
Hopefully “Defiance” is going to have that impact as well. It’s the science fiction genre, but I think as you said, with the mythological background of it and the depth and the characters and the complexity of the world that we live in, with the game and the show, it can become more than a science fiction show.
