By Hend Seif El Din
Photos Credit: Darren Tieste
You were last seen in Lifetime’s Liz & Dick, where you played the role of Richard Burton; did you enjoy playing Burton’s role?
Yeah, I loved it. Playing Burton was an opportunity I hadn’t expected and was thrilled and honored to take on. He was a childhood idol of mine, and it was very important to me before accepting the role that I thought I could pull it off.
You starred in the film opposite Lindsay Lohan, how was working with her?
Working with Lindsay isn’t the easiest of prospects. What comes with Lindsay is a lot of scrutiny and attention that doesn’t necessarily benefit the project and doesn’t always make it any easier for anyone to get their job done. The producers were clever in their casting of Lindsay in that she brought an enormous amount of free publicity and, as an actress, she shared some key attributes with Elizabeth Taylor. They were both child stars; they both had a history of struggling with substances; and they were both brought up in an industry where everything is given to them and where they experience a very artificial environment in their formative years.
Was playing the role of Burton a challenging one?
The further I got into playing the role, the more of a challenge I realized I had in front of me. Initially, it was all about the voice. Burton is credited, among all actors, as having the most distinctive voice of the 20th century. That was a big task. Once I got into the research materials however, I realized how far apart we were in terms of facial gestures and physicality. The more I explored Burton as an actor and as a man, the more respect I gained for the virtuosity he had in his craft and his grace and elegance.
Moving on to Defiance. This is your first SciFi project, correct?
It is. I’ve done quite a bit of genre television in the United States – that seems to be my niche. Lost, True Blood and even Ugly Betty in its way are all genre shows. Sci-fi is an extension of that. Defiance being the first has been the best entrée into science fiction that I could have hoped for. I’m in love with the form, the opportunities and the freedoms that science fiction provides all of us as storytellers; to go beyond the usual narratives I find in “vanilla” procedural or family-based dramas.
Do you enjoy working on Defiance?
I love it. I can’t wait to get to work every day, and I never want to leave. Luckily, they keep me that busy!
Tell me about your character, Joshua Nolan.
Joshua Nolan is a man who has seen the best and worst of everything and has come to the decision to trust no one other than himself. He’s a pragmatist. He believes in justice – not necessarily the law – and in what’s right rather than in people. This often brings him into conflict with any and all of the power structures that surround him.
What about Nolan’s relationship with Irissa…tell me more about that.
These two have found each other through adversity and their common bond is their pain. They’ve both been savaged by the world. They found in each other the only person they are willing to trust with their lives, and they look to each other above anything or anyone else.
Do you enjoy working with Stephanie Leonidas?
I love working with Steph. As an actress, she has been such a wonderful surprise; her characterization of Irissa and the relationship between father and daughter are the beating heart of the show for me.
So how is it that a human can, or is “allowed to” raise an alien daughter? How does Nolan even find her?
How Nolan found Irissa will be revealed as the series progresses. As to how he is allowed to adopt her, who’s gonna stop him? This is a disorganized and chaotic world where children are left to fend for themselves. We will discover that Irissa is not the only character in Defiance who was abandoned or mistreated as a child.
What’s the dynamic between the two characters?
The dynamic is father/daughter, mentor/student and soldier-to-soldier.
What’s it like working on Defiance?
Defiance is the most exacting project I’ve ever worked on. There is so much detail in the mythology of the show that everyone from all departments, is compelled to constantly check, recheck and reevaluate everything we are doing lest we accidentally change the logic of our world. At first this was mind-bending, now it’s one of the most enjoyable parts of making the show. It brings everyone together, keeps us all alert and reminds us that we’re not rehashing an old idea…that we’re coming up with something new.
Take me through a “regular” day on the set of the show, although I doubt that it’s “regular” at all!
My day? I get to work about 30-45 minutes before crew call, run into hair and makeup [and keep that as short as humanly possible] and go back to my trailer and put on my wardrobe [that’s pretty easy – it’s usually the same one]. Next, we will usually be called down to rehearse at crew call the first scene of the day. We’ll work out what’s going to happen and how for the crew so that they can figure out where to set the cameras, lights, where to get sound from and what’s going to be in frame. Our time is split pretty much in thirds between our back-lot where the town has been built, green screen and location and what scenes we do will depend on where we are. On a typical day, we’ll get through five to seven scenes, and the day will go between twelve and fifteen hours of shooting. My favorite is shooting in the back lot at night. There’s just something magical about having the whole town built around you that immerses you in the world.
I know that a lot of the work is done with the green screen as the background, do you find that easy to work with, or does it come with its own set of challenges?
Green screen was a big learning curve for me. I hadn’t done very much of it before Defiance. I feel like I’ve done my masters degree in green screen after season 1. We have such a wonderful visual fx team supporting us that it makes it easy to trust what you are imagining around you will actually come to fruition. We work with a lot of storyboards and some mocked up animated sequences on a laptop to show us what will be there in the final product. The joy is then in playing like a child again and truly imagining the world around you.
On a scale of 1 to 10, how much coordination is required to make a Defiance scene happen?
I’d give it a 9. Our sets and environments are complex, most of the equipment/machinery we use we have built, there are always a lot of questions to be answered about the logic of anything we’re doing, and often we’re speaking in languages that have never been spoken before, using gestures, wearing clothes and interacting with
technologies which all have to be negotiated with in order to simply shoot the scene. Add to that green screen, special and visual effects, and a tight shooting schedule, and you have a nine.
How would you describe the show?
I would describe Defiance as an immigrant drama set in the near future of the frontier ruins of a society, which has been transformed forever.
What about the Defiance video game? How does it tie into the series?
The game and the show coexist in real time, in the same world and the same universe; they simply exist in different cities. This is the most elegant solution to the problem of combining both media that I could imagine. The game takes place in San Francisco and the Bay Area; the show is set in the former St. Louis which has been renamed Defiance.
Won’t it be a bit too challenging to try to actualize the video game? Is it even possible?
There are a number of major elements of the video game that we have actualized in the show and vice versa. It is perhaps the most challenging undertaking from both sides of production. It is key though to remember that the show and the game exist individually. It would be mundane and boring to repeat the videogame in the show and, judging from videogames made of television shows that I have played, creating a videogame based on the plot of a television show creates something very limited too. Both are stand-alone products.
What’s your favorite part of the show?
My favorite part of the show is the action. One thing I love about Defiance is that even though we’re trying to tackle green screen, character drama, special effects and science fiction and everything that goes along with it, we still manage to squeeze in an enormous amount of action. For me as an actor, that’s the fun stuff. Nothing better than getting in a good fake fight, knowing that even if you lose badly it’s all make-believe!
