When it comes to acting, dying is easy, but comedy is hard — so says the old expression.

Playing Joxer the Mighty for six years on Xena: Warrior Princess, actor Ted Raimi got to do both.

The “lovable loser” character, not to mention Ted’s pitch-perfect comedy timing, were surely an essential element in Xena’s break-out success — and the inspiration for some of the show’s zaniest flights of fantasy.

But starting around the fourth season, the character deepened, and it was hard not to be touched by his unrequited love for Gabrielle — and his eventual death in the six season.

Ted’s brother is, of course, uber-director Sam Raimi (Spider-Man, The Evil Dead) — also one of the producers behind Xena: Warrior Princess. As kids, Ted famously acted in Sam’s Super-8 movies — and he still pops up in bit parts in his older brother’s films such as last year’s Drag Me to Hell.

We caught up with Ted at the recent premiere of Spartacus: Blood and Sand and managed to pull him aside for a few questions about his time on Xena, his genre-intensive acting career, and his reoccurring guest spot on Legend of the Seeker.

TheTorchOnline: How did the role on Legend of the Seeker come about?

TR: I was asked by my old pal Rob Tapert who cast me in Xena if I wanted to do Legend of the Seeker, so I said yes. Rob has a great eye for TV shows naturally, so I just jumped at it. I didn’t even look at the part – he really knows where my strengths are, and it was a blast.

Sebastian is this creepy map salesman who also peddles magic, and it was a great part. It was a hell of a lot of fun.

[This season] I went back to New Zealand to do another episode [airing February 20th], and I can’t reveal what happens in it, naturally, but suffice to say that he causes a lot more trouble than he did in the first episode. He does come in contact with the wizard, and this time I actually had a scene with Bridget and Craig, and it was fantastic. I had a wonderful time.

TTO: If they asked, would you do the show full-time?

Ted and Sam Raimi

TR: Oh, sure, if they asked me to Legend of the Seeker full-time, I wouldn’t hesitate to say no!

TTO: When you and Sam were kids out making your movies, did you really think you’d be able to do that kind of stuff as adults?

Ted Raimi: I can’t say for Sam, naturally, but I didn’t think these genre movies that I loved so much would ever be so popular. When I was a kid, this was only B-movies. This was only second-reels and stuff you see on TV. It never really reached the theaters in such massive amounts.

I think it’s a wonderful departure from movies in the 70s and 80s. We’ve gotten away from the harsh realities of the 70s, the goofiness of the 80s, the sort of blasé “removedness,” if that’s a word, of the 90s, and now we’re in sort of a fantasy play-world.

For me, this is sort of the golden age of movies and TV, and I’m very lucky to be living through it.

TTO: Are you particularly drawn to fantasy and genre projects, or is it just the crowd you’ve fallen in with, so to speak, that keeps bringing you to these projects?

TR: The former rather than the latter. I do sci-fi and fantasy, because I love it. I excel at the auditions because I think the producers can see I don’t think it’s just an alternative to porn. I actually really, really love the genre, and I’m really enthused about it.

When I go in to do sci-fi, I’m not just there performing it — I’m asking them where these concepts come from — are they scientifically viable? And as far away from Tolkien as you can get, fantasy-wise, is always mind-blowingly incredible. That’s one of the things I really love about Legend of the Seeker – Terry Goodkind came up with a wildly original set of characters. That’s what appeals to me about that.

TTO: How disappointed were you when they killed Joxer on Xena.

TR: I wasn’t disappointed. I knew it was the sixth season, and it was pretty much time for Joxer to go. But I was sad to see him go. I’d enjoyed my time there. It was a wonderful six years of my life – I’ll never forget it as long as I live. I made friends that will last me a lifetime.

TTO: What are you working on next?

TR: I just finished directing my first web-series. It’s an eight-part web series, it’s calling Playing Dead.  I’m very proud of it. It’s got some excellent talent that I’ve known in LA for a long time, and I’ve got the coolest bands from Detroit, Michigan.

A gal named Suzanne Keilly wrote it. I thought it was hysterical and could be done on a budget. It’s very cinematic and bitingly funny, so I couldn’t say no.

Watch Playing Dead.

Visit Ted Raimi’s web page.

Follow us on Twitter or Facebook.

How’s this for a premise for a web series? A loser named Neil is masturbating to a female elf in the game of The Legend of Zelda when he auto-erotic-asphyxiates himself and somehow ends up magically transported to a land of fantasy cliches.

Sure enough, it’s the idea behind The Legend of Neil, the hilarious YouTube-sensation-turned-online-sitcom.

When most of us watch television, we like to say, “This is so bad — I could so make a TV show much better than this!”

But if all the mediocre-to-horrible web series I’ve seen over the past few years are any indication, it’s a lot harder than it looks.

That’s why I was so struck by The Legend of Neil, which I found to be bust-a-gut funny — and why I was so eager to talk to the primary creative force behind the series, Sandeep Parikh, a 29 year-old Brown graduate who is the show’s creator, writer, director, editor, not to mention the voice of opening credits.

TheTorchOnline: Walk me through the process of the show’s genesis and creation.

Sandeep Parikh: My roommate claimed he could beat the original Zelda game in under an hour. I called bullshit and then watched and drank Coors Original as he played and also drank Coors Original. Don’t ask me why Coors Original has become our beer of choice at our house. It just has, and is irrelevant to the story.

Anyway, so he’s torching this game. Mind you, this game represents a solid four years of my childhood spent trying to beat the damn thing. I remember drawing maps, having cafeteria meetings with friends about different secrets and how to beat bosses, etc.

And here’s my roommate blazing through the game, collecting every extra heart piece, and going through each of the levels, killing the big bosses in seconds. It was like watching someone walk up to the girl of your dreams that took you years of groundwork to get to just to get a kiss on the cheek from, and him just saying one douchebag pickup line, and then defiling her in front of you.

Anyway, as I’m watching this, I start thinking how ridiculous the premise of this game is. So you’re an elf and you just wake up in the middle of the woods with nothing but a tiny shield. Who goes out with just a shield and no sword? Then you walk into a cave and there’s this old man who gives you a free wooden sword — convenient — and you’re supposed to kill actual living and breathing creatures with it. A blunt wooden sword against giant spiders that leap at you, doesn’t seem like very good odds.

So, the game just got funnier and funnier to me — as I become drunker — and before you know it, I’ve got the laptop open and I’m writing dialogue. In the morning, the sketch was still funny to me, despite my raging hangover, and I decide that I want to shoot it.

I sent the script to Tony Janning [who plays Neil] whom I worked with before on some other sketches, because I knew he’d play the perfect a-hole d-bag that I wanted Link to be and voila, there you have it.

Oh, and my roommate beat the game in 45 minutes.

TTO: How’d you finance it?

SP: Finance wise, we just paid for it out of our own pocket. Tony and I just threw in a couple hundred bucks each and we borrowed equipment from friends, and got everyone to work for free and stole our locations pretending to be student filmmakers. You gotta do what you gotta do to make it happen early on.

TTO: At what point did Comedy Central become involved? What IS their involvement? And what’s the current status of the show?

SP: So after we created the first episode we submitted it to this short-lived show on VH1 called Acceptable.tv. It didn’t make it on the show because by the time we were eligible the show was canceled. But it did win their podcast award for best sci-fi/fantasy pilot!

Man, if I had a dollar for every podcast award … I’d have 2 dollars.

So then I just put the video on YouTube because I thought it would do well there and, lo and behold, we got about 300,000 hits in the first few weeks.

Then I took the show to all these Hollywood types that I had met the year before pitching another project. This time I was armed with a following and measured success on the interwebs… and we got offers from the same people that rejected me before. The power of the internet!

Comedy Central came along and topped the rest of the offers and funded five more episodes for their new sister site Atom.com. The funding is pretty low by TV standards and most everyone still works for cut rates, but we genuinely enjoy our working relationship with Atom and Comedy Central. They really support the show, and aren’t intrusive with ridiculous notes. They’re all smart folk, many of whom have become really good friends. It’s a great home for Neil.

As far as the future goes, we’re hoping to do a season three with Atom. I feel confident that we’ll make it happen because they want to do it and we want to do it. It’s just a matter of figuring out whether we can come up with a situation that’ll reward all the cast and crew for the hard work from the first two seasons. So hopefully we’ll have a very exciting announcement coming real soon.

TTO: All my web geek friends talk about “monetizing” content for the web, but only a few seem to have done it. Does this thing pay for itself? Are you able to pay salaries, or has it been more of a calling card? And if it’s the latter, gotten any good gigs?

SP: As I said, we’re able to pay “web” rates to our cast and crew which is infinitely more than the nothing we were paying them before. So, I’m very happy that we can put something in their pockets. I wouldn’t dare call them “salaries” however. I’ve tried to put as much into the production as possible, keeping very little for myself, the idea being, as you say, that this will be a calling card for me.

I’ve developed great relationships with the folks at Comedy Central, and this along with The Guild [another web series I've worked on] has really put me on the map. I’m not sure which map yet, but a map.

I truly believe that this will lead to good things, and it’s been a great platform for me to show off what I can do… which is cast really funny people and make them do nerdy dick jokes.

TTO: You have a great sense of humor. I especially enjoyed the riffs on fantasy cliches. But unlike a lot of fantasy-comedy projects (*cough* Krod Mandoon *cough*), you don’t seem to just be recycling Monty Python gags. You seem to know the current genre. You do role-playing? Video games? On a scale of 1 to 10, just how much of a geek are you?

SP: First off, I love Monty Python and I’m sure I’m somehow stealing from them without even knowing it. I always catch myself making Holy Grail, Princess Bride and Army of Darkness references, and Neil is littered with them. Some are on purpose, some are by accident, that’s the way it goes when you watch a movie more than 100 times during high school and college which I did with all three of those movies. The jokes just become a part of your vocabulary.

I’ve been a fantasy lover my whole life. I wrote my college application essay about The Hobbit. I played Hero-quest and Magic The Gathering growing up but not much D&D.

Most of my time at temple as a kid was spent with my friends sneaking off and pretending to be wizards and warriors and inventing epic quests for each other, kind of a real life D&D that was sprung from our imaginations.

I play some video games, though I’m no Felicia Day [my co-star on The Guild and its creator].

I just beat Borderlands, I had a short-lived World of Warcraft addiction, but found that I didn’t have the time to grind. On a scale of 1 to 10, I’d say I’m a f*ckble, a 7… maybe a 6.

Wow, is it lame that I just quoted my own show?

TTO: No, but only because that line was so funny in the episode. Meanwhile, the musical episode was damn near brilliant — but also looked like it was AMAZINGLY time-consuming. Who was responsible for the music, and was the whole thing as insanely difficult as it looked?

SP: That musical episode was hell on earth, because we didn’t know what we were doing. But like everything else, you just power through it and figure it out as you go along. We didn’t know if any of our cast besides Felicia [who co-starred in Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog] could sing.

But we figured we’d just embrace whatever they could give us. Turned out that Scott Chernoff (our Gannon) could belt like an evil Pavarotti, Angie Hill (Zelda) couldn’t sing at all so we went out and got the amazingly talented Maurissa Tancharoen to do her singing voice. Tony and Eric Acosta (Wizrobe) were pretty good and Mike Rose (Old Man) I knew he could sing and dance well because he’s gay — c’mon some stereotypes are true, hey, I love curry — but didn’t know if he could sing as the Old Man or how that would sound.

Anyway, I enlisted my good friend Nigel Cordeiro to do the music for the musical because he has perfect pitch and can play anything by ear and I knew he’d work for hugs and high fives. But he too had never composed music for a musical. So it was really a big old cluster eff trying to make it happen.

Anyway, it all came together step by step. Tony and I writing lyrics, Nigel trying one melody after another. We knew which songs that we were going to parody, so eventually it all came together.

Then figuring out how to do it all visually in such a way that wouldn’t be boring was a huge challenge. Remember we don’t have the budget for backup dancers, or all this camera movement, cranes, etc. that most musicals have the benefit of employing. It was a big deal that we even got another actor to double for Old Man.

So, we had to just pretty much re-use the sets we already made for the rest of the show, and then choreograph a dance or two and hope that it would all come together. All in all, I’m really proud of the episode, and thank god Felicia was willing to be so deliciously dirty because that in itself probably got us half the views.

Felicia Day, in the musical episode (NSFW)

One thing that I have to say even though you didn’t really ask, is that I really must have done something right in a previous life to be able to be making a ridiculous show that combines all the loves of my childhood including my fondness for crude humor and inventive swear words. And to have it be successful and likely the proverbial “foot in the door” in the biz and to be making waves in an entirely new medium on the web… I don’t know, the whole thing is just so fun, a lot of work to be sure, but ultimately a total blast.

I hope your readers enjoy watching it as much as I enjoy making it.

Watch The Legend of Neil

Follow us on Twitter.

Now that NBC has five unclaimed hours of primetime on its hands, you might think the cast of Chuck is breathing a little easier. The show has found its voice, its footing, and its audience. It has even overtaken Heroes as NBC’s most successful fantasy series.

But when TheTorchOnline.com correspondent Michael Jensen visited the set during last week’s Television Critics Association Press Tour, he discovered that most of the Chuck team is still holding their breath.

They think they can, they think they can — but they’re not taking anything for granted.

Series co-creator Josh Schwartz told TCA reporters, “Our attitude remains the same … all along [it] has been to keep our head down, try to make the best show we can and hope people come and hope people talk about it.”

They obviously got their second wish: Thanks to the fan-led Twitter movement, #ChuckMeMonday, Chuck was the most talked about show of the summer. And now that it’s firmly in its third season, fans still won’t shut up.

“[It's] awesome to know that our fans didn’t just fight for us and bring us back,” Schwartz’s partner in creation, Chris Fedak, told reporters, “But they showed up. They didn’t just go, ‘Yay! You know what? I’ve got something on Sunday, I can’t.’ And then also they talk, [and other people hear their] voices and they go, ‘You know what? These guys have been shoving Chuck down my throat for two years. Okay, fine, I’ll check out.’”

(I admit to shoving Chuck down people’s throats — and threatening to torch my Facebook friends’ houses if they let the show get canceled.)

As happy as they are about their past success (and as superstitious about their future), the Chuck team seems most excited about the present. Yvonne Strahovski (Agent Sarah Walker) told Michael, “I’ve seen some of the episodes now, and I think they’re the best we’ve ever done.”

Fedak agrees: “It’s very much a new show. I mean, essentially it’s very strange. We’re in the third year of show to kind of relaunch it with a new concept like we’ve done. And I think it’s exciting for the viewers as well.”

While many viewers were giddy with Chuck’s transition to Intersect 2.0 in last season’s finale, they were worried that they might lose the adorkable nerd they’d grown to love. If Chuck’s antics in the first four episodes of the season didn’t put them at ease, Schwartz offered some insight.

“[Intersect 2.0] re-enforces his underdog status because the discrepancy between who he is when he’s a regular guy and then who he is when he’s flashing has never been greater,” Schwartz said. “And because those powers aren’t always ready for him. And because, you know, he still has his heart.”

He also has his kung fu powers.

I agree with Strahovski that Chuck is at its best this season. It has found the balance between drama and camp, between slick action sequences and pratfalls, between terrorism and romance. Chuck may have embraced his life as a spy, but he’s navigating many of the same obstacles (and people) as he did when he was just flashing top secret information.

Schwartz classified the show as “Heightened reality. It’s one foot in fantasy and one foot in satire.”

He also told the TCA reporters, “[Chuck's a guy] who’s battling the issues of insecurity and love and just trying to find his place in the world.”

Let’s hope that place continues to be primetime on NBC — even after they start filling up those five hour-long vacancies with new incarnations of Law and Order.

Lucy Lawless is not Xena.

On some level, we all know this; I interview actors all the time, so I definitely know they’re not the parts they play.

But when I interviewed Lucy at the Television Critics Association conference in Pasadena last July, I honestly wasn’t prepared for just how much she isn’t Xena.

Xena is somber, down-to-earth, and practical, haunted by her famous “dark” past; Lucy is cheeky, irreverent, and impish, always looking for an opportunity to cut it up.

But they have things in common as well: they’re both fiercely intelligent and very kind-hearted. And of course, they’re both statuesque and stunningly beautiful. At 41, Lucy looks sensational.

With Spartacus: Blood and Sand, a high-profile CGI-intensive retelling of the story of the ancient Roman slave that debuts next Friday on Starz, Lucy is showing the world yet another example of her considerable acting abilities.

She not the “star” of the show, but rather, a major supporting player. Lucretia, the wife of the owner of the training camp where Spartacus trains as a slave, is also very different from Xena: she’s flighty and superficial, at least at first, but also cunning and scheming. And as Lucy herself noted in our interview, she’s not particularly powerful, at least not at the beginning of the series.

Oh, and Lucretia is also often naked. The show includes some of the most graphic sex and violence ever to be seen in series television. One of the most-talked about scenes of the first few episodes will surely be the one where Lucretia and her husband have a conversation while both are being sexually serviced by slaves.

Does it ruin my professional credibility to say that it was a thrill to meet Lucy in person? Even better, despite my sky-high expectations, she did not disappoint:

TheTorchOnline: How is Lucretia different from Xena?

Lucy Lawless: The part is challenging for me, because I tend to go in a comedic direction. Just naturally, I want to make everything just [crazy noise]. I just want to party all the time.

[But] there’s really no room for that in this show. It has to be very minimal and very naturalistic to sell this world, to be really super believable, because in the show all the people take for granted things that today are very taboo.

TTO: Are you worried that your fans will be expecting Xena?

LL: No. I have a loyal bunch, and they’ve seen me do many, many things: some good, and some bad. I think they see me as Lucy and not as Xena. They’re not confused.

TTO: Unlike Xena, you don’t have a lot of action scenes.

LL: No. Woo!

TTO: So that’s a good thing?

LL: Fabulous!

TTO: Does that mean you don’t have to go to the gym as much?

LL: I do have to go to the gym! I have to be naked on screen. I’m terrified. I hate it. But if it’s right to fulfill a scene, and it’s what a character would do, you gotta go there, because that part, I’m an artist. No matter what my pathetic middle-class morals, I want to be truthful more than I want to protect myself.

TTO: I read you said that one of the things that attracted you to the role, and the show in general, was that it had complicated female characters, in a distant past when they didn’t have an opportunity to have overt power. What do you think about the female characters in the show?

LL: Well, women could still be major players [in Ancient Rome]. They could own land and that sort of thing. They couldn’t get a job in the Senate, but as with all politics, the people who exert the greatest influence are not always the people in the seat.

TTO: And that’s what’s going on here?

LL: It’s what’s going on everywhere.

TTO: Good point. You said she sees herself as the power behind the throne?

LL: I think she will come to see herself as that. It doesn’t start off like that. I didn’t want people to go, “Oh, there’s Xena in a different frock.” I didn’t want her to powerful, yet. She’s confident of her role, but I did not want her to come out of the starting block with the audience knowing what kind of animal she was. That would be an insult.

[But] she becomes more Machiavellian as things go against her and her husband. She thinks she’s right all the time. She’s forced to do these terrible things. She knows they’re not okay, but she doesn’t have any choice. If someone does something to upset the family business, her husband and the gladiator thing, then somebody has to die for it. She’s going to enable and cover and carry it off. She really shores up her husband no matter what. She’s survival of the fittest. And she loves her husband. The fact that they’re so damn dysfunctional is just adds a twist to the drama.

TTO: You told me earlier that you thought modern audiences might perceive her as a villain. That says to me that you’ve really gotten into the heart and head of the character — that you yourself don’t necessarily see her as a “villain,” you’re seeing the character from her point-of-view. How did you get to that place in her head?

LL: When you see all the terrible things, when people get unceremoniously killed in front of her, she doesn’t say, “He was slaughtered, he was murdered.” It’s just like, “Oh.” So that makes you think, “What motivates my character?” She has this relationship with death and bloodshed, but it’s really just like a complete disconnection, that zero empathy thing. She only empathizes with people on or above her station in life. And that’s very interesting to us who are taught to give a damn.

I guess there are a lot of people out there like that still. I’m not sure anything has changed here.

TTO: Is it hard to shake Lucretia when you’re done filming? Can you just walk away from the set or does it mentally affect you?

LL: No, but the sex things I do sometimes find it hard to shake off. There’s nothing like a sex scene to put you off sex. [laughs]

TTO: Is it better on the show that it’s both men and women who are naked?

LL: Yeah. It’s definitely better. If it was just women then I probably wouldn’t be interested in taking it. The fact is, that is truthful. If you’re sitting out there, I think it’s cool to be able to watch the show and fully explore that world at that time.

TTO: Whose idea was it to make it this explicit?

LL: The initial impulse came from [creators] Rob [Tapert] and Sam [Raimi] and Josh [Donen], who desired to make something that went so far. And then you have to find someone to fulfill it like [showrunner] Steven DeKnight, and then stars jump on board and say, “Yes, we have the cohones to make that.” Throw a lot of money at it. So many stations couldn’t, because that’s not their belief. They haven’t got the mandate to do that, they haven’t go the taste for it.

These guys are really very ballsy, and I hope it really puts their future on the map. I’m really so proud of this, so proud of every day’s work.

TTO: How long are the days on the set?

LL: Standard. Fourteen. Well, twelve on the set, maybe longer to get your hair done and stuff. Big hair show. Amazing design show for that.

TTO: At what point did you make the decision, “Okay I’m going to work with your husband Rob [who also created Xena] again. I’m going to commit to it.”

LL: I wanted to do it. And people in Hollywood were like, “Why? Why are you doing that? Spartacus sounds like Xena again. It’s like you’re going backwards.” And I was like, “I don’t know. It’s really good. Really good.” And they’re like, “Yeah. Okay.” They couldn’t know what I know about my husband.

TTO: So you have a lot of trust and faith.

LL: Yes, and I saw who was signed, I knew who was getting on board. The hardest thing now, because everything else is just top-notch, is the effects coming on time and being as good as the rest of the show, because that’s really important. We’ve got the right knowledge and the right technicians, but we’ve got seven or eight hundred effects shot per episode. It’s really painstaking, but we’ve got to get these episodes on the air quick.

TTO: I know you’ve spent the last ten years talking about Xena, but I run a site devoted to fantasy, and I confess, I’m astounded by the online fan base. They’re so enthusiastic, as opposed to a show like Hercules, that I don’t think made that leap. What was it about that Xena that has made it make that leap into iconic status?

LL: I think that friendship [between Xena and Gabrielle] is really pivotal. I think it centers on the friendship. That’s the curse of society. We’ve gotten a bit dispersed and a bit disconnected. We don’t live in small communities anymore. We don’t know our neighbors. Every man has to be a little hero just to get by. I think that touched on a yearning for connection and love, and for the everyday hero.

TTO: Did you have a sense when you were doing it that it would have the life that it’s had?

LL: I think I was so naïve I thought every show became a hit. [laughs]

But it’s gone beyond that now, Xena fans banded together and do “Feel the Love” Week. It’s the second week in October, October 8th. They go out and do something in their communities. They used to send stuff to my charity, and I got uncomfortable with that, so I said, “Look, do something, whatever it is, go out in your own communities and enrich that.” And they take that and practice it.

A doctor in Brazil performed, for a week, free palate surgery, to somebody put up a rail for the lady next door who was in a wheelchair, to I painted somebody’s nursery. Stuff that’s a force for good, and I think that’s really humbling. They’ve taken something which for me was just a great gig and mucking around in leather for six years, and made it something that has spiritual payoffs in their own communities.

Spartacus: Blood and Sand airs January 22nd at 10 PM on the Starz premium cable network.

Looking to buy something mentioned in this article (or any other media)? Support TheTorchOnline.com by purchasing it through this link.

Follow us on Twitter.

Craig Horner has had quite a year.

It wasn’t a year ago that he flew to New Zealand to star in his own show, Legend of the Seeker, the latest fantasy romp from the visionaries behind Xena: Warrior Princess, Rob Tapert and Sam Raimi.

And since then, his life had been turned upside down. The show has broken out as a solid hit and made plenty of fans (including yours truly; read my latest recaps of the show here and here).

Craig, an Australian native, has been at the center of a media storm.

But that doesn’t mean he has been a total trooper. Craig, 25, spoke to me by phone from New Zealand. According to a publicist, to determine the time there compared to the U.S., “You just subtract four hours and move forward one day.”

My math is terrible, but I think that means was up very early, and squeezing me in before a grueling day’s shoot.

But you never would’ve known it during our chat. He couldn’t have been more charming:

TheTorchOnline: I know you had a successful film and TV career in Australia before landing this role, but I’m wondering if you can’t relate to the character of Richard in that your life was much simpler a year ago, and then the producers of this show showed up and changed everything, just like with Richard.

Craig Horner: Oh, man, you hit the nail right on the head right there. It was just that big kind of leap into the next level of my career. I was forced to step up into the lead of a show with 22 episodes, move to another country, set myself up, and yeah, you couldn’t be more right. I’ve really grown up.

TTO: There are leads, and there are leads. You are in almost every scene, and it’s a very demanding role. How are you holding up?

CH: I’m holding up, man, I’m still going. I’ve got three weeks to go, and then I’ll probably collapse and vegetate and go into a coma. It’s been pretty full-on. It’s been long hours. There’s not a day when there’s not horse-riding and sliding and just running around. And every episode, almost every scene, it’s like the end of the world. And you can’t just walk through a scene where the whole world is at stake. You can’t just sit around and go, “What’d you have for breakfast?”

But it’s good. I love it.

TTO: Sometimes when I do something in life that I really enjoy, it seems like everything that came before it was leading up to that moment. Does it feel a little like destiny getting this role, a really good fit?

CH: You couldn’t be more right. You can only only live in the moment, and allow whatever the moment’s doing to move through you. But when I do look back on it, I was just being myself by using my imagination as a kid, and running through the house with a sword. And then I got into acting, and then I got into this, and I couldn’t do what I’m doing now without my enthusiasm for acting and sword-fighting and imagination and filmmaking and creativity.

Yeah, you’re right, everything’s led to this moment. Hopefully there will be more roles as well, but it’s a snowball effect.

TTO: I asked my readers to help me with questions to ask you, and I was really surprised by how many responses I got. A lot people asked what it’s like on the set. Who’s the biggest cut-up? Is it serious? Is it funny? What’s the tone?

CH: Well, we’re trying to shoot feature-film quality on TV turnaround schedules, so there’s not a lot of time for goofing around and blooper reels. Me and Bridget can’t come out and start jumping around. We just can’t do that, but we really want to.

There’s an element of pressure, but we try not to let the stress come in. But generally, everyone on the set is pretty chill. They’ve been doing this for ten years, since the Xena days.

TTO: So it is all the Xena crowd?

CH: Yeah, and Lord of the Rings. When you’re the lead of the show, you sort of set the tone of the set, along with the director. If the lead is a brat or a princess, and just a stuck-up idiot, then no one’s going to want to show up to work on that show. No one’s going to want to do his make-up or put his clothes on him.

People won’t care about the show or his character, and it’ll fall part. So I try to show that enthusiasm, but it’s not hard, because I’m genuinely enthusiastic about the show. Sometimes I can be tired, I can be exhausted, but generally I’m being enthusiastic, because I love being here.

TTO: I’ve heard Lucy Lawless say the same thing about her days in Xena, how being the focus of everything, she soon realized she was setting the tone for the whole set. Speaking of which, is there any chance she’ll guest on the show in the second season?

CH: I have no idea, but I can ask Rob [Tapert] and get back to you!

TTO: A lot of people asked me to ask you how you manage to stay in such great shape.

CH: For a year before I did this, I had a job where I played a character who was supposed to be a good shape. I think it’s generally a good idea for people to do some sort of bodybuilding or exercise, just for general well-being.

And I fell in love with it, so I kept with it even after that. Fortunately, when Legend of the Seeker came up, in the books, the character is supposed to be quite muscular and strong. So I had a reason to keep it up and amp it up even more. I love training five times a week, now I’m trying to [get in] two days a week.

You know what I did yesterday? I said to my runner, he drives Bridget and me home, she was running late, and I said to my runner, “Greg, pick me up, matey, I’m running down the road now, I’m getting some exercise!” And he was like, “Are you mad?” And I’m like, “Yup,” and I started running. The crew’s seeing the lead actor running down the road and going, “What the hell? Dude, do you need a lift?” And I’m saying, “No, I’m fine!”

TTO: In researching you, I quickly learned that you’ve becoming something of a sex symbol. How does that make you feel?

CH: I don’t think about it, to be honest. It’s great get to people’s attention, briefly, and then hopefully they can appreciate my acting. And I can bring them something, more than just eye-candy. But it’s all just fun and games, I guess.

TTO: I’ve noticed that the show is shot in HD, and you really see everything. Do you ever wake up with a zit and think, “Oh, God, I can’t go to work!”

CH: You know, I don’t even look in the mirror. I get up and go to work and don’t think about it. I’ve got a make-up artist, and they’re going to do my hair properly, to make me look decent.

And you’re right, for those reasons, once you start thinking, “Oh, I’ve got a zit,” you can’t go there.

TTO: Down that road lies madness. Do you have any idea what’s going to happen in the next season? Do you have any input, any idea?

CH: No one knows. I think they’re going to take the three months and sit and try to decide the arc. I don’t know, but I’m going to pitch to direct an episode. I’d really like to do that.

[Editor's Clarification: While the producers of the show are moving ahead with a second season and it is likely to come back, it has not yet been "officially" greenlit. It's a syndicated show, which mean commitments must be received from local markets. So far, 48 of the 50 top markets have committed.]

TTO: I know you said you’re going to collapse when the shooting is done, but do you have plans for the hiatus after that?

CH: I’m going to head over to Los Angeles for about two months with a friend or two. My new agency is there, and I’ll scope out what they want me to see, what’s going on.

It’s getting cold here now, so it’ll be good to head to a warm environment like Los Angeles.

TTO: Where’s your posse? Your friends must be back home. Are you single? Do you have a group of friends who travel with you, or do you just make friends wherever you go?

CH: It’s kinda cool. I am single, but I’ve got a lot of good buddies, I’ve got two or three good buddies, two or three really close blokes, really good boys, one from Brisbane as well as me, one from Rock Hampton. We all moved to Sydney to be actors together.

TTO: Have they been cast in the show?

CH: Yeah, I flew ‘em over, and they stayed with me for a month, and I got them on the show. Rory was a soldier, and Glenn was, like, the village idiot. It was nice just to have them on the set.

TTO: My final question. If you, Craig, talked to the Confessor, what do you think she would say you’ve learned in the past year? What wisdom have you gained about yourself and the world?

CH: I guess how to withstand pain. There’s a line from the show, I think from Zed, which is, “Don’t think about the past or what will be. See only what is.” And I’ve learned to do that, because I’ve been through a lot. I’ve learned to accept what is is what is.

Interested in buying The Sword of Truth books (or any other product)? Support TheTorchOnline.com by purchasing them through this link.

Special thanks to Eef, Ashley, Dana, Ethan, Stephen, Carmencita, LostinDarkness, Amanda, Caroline, Carrie, Annie, Bethany, Maria, Gina, Omar, and all the others who suggested questions, which I tried to incorporate into my own!

One of the things I most love about the Fox show Fringe , the second season of which premieres this Thursday, is the tough, no-nonsense character of Olivia Dunham.

But I recently had a chance to chat with Anna Torv, the actress who plays that character (and who also voiced and modeled the character of Nariko in the Playstation 3 game Heavenly Sword).

She surprised me, because she couldn’t have been more different than the character she plays on Fringe — and the fact that Anna, unlike Olivia, is Australian, born in Melbourne and raised on the Gold Coast, is the least of it.

In person, Anna is warm, open, and possibly even a little bit of a girly-girl — more than Olivia, that’s for sure. And Anna has a much better sense of humor (although — let’s face it — that isn’t hard!).

Still, the two women do share at least a few things in common: they’re both very smart and very dedicated to their jobs.

Now as much as I still love the character Olivia Dunham, based on my brief time with Anna, I like the actress who plays her a whole lot too.

TheTorchOnline: I love you and I love your character.

Anna Torv: [laughs] Oh, you’re just saying that.

TTO: I’m not. I might have said it even if it wasn’t true, but I swear it really is! She’s such a rich, well-rounded, kick-ass character, especially for a female in sci-fi. I’m assuming this is what drew you to the part in the first place?

AT: In the first place, yes, [that's what drew me] because that’s kind of what it was set up to be. But things shift and change in TV.

I know that things are shifting a bit in the second season. Peter’s character is becoming a lot more proactive.

But I love the writers for doing that, making Olivia sort of … masculine. Although she does have long, blond hair, so it was [okay]!

And the boy [characters] are like girls in that they talk about all their emotions. But I don’t know if that was conscious on [the writers'] part.

TTO: I think your character was a very brave choice. I mean, you are a very beautiful woman, but they’re not dwelling on that, emphasizing that.

AT: But not only that, I know that I’m regularly described as being very cold and very detached. But I go, “I don’t care you think that, because if I was a guy, you just wouldn’t say that.” Men can be solitary, be on their own, or just not speak.

TTO: Right!

AT: I think it’d be great for her to get a lover in every port!

TTO: Any relationship so far this season?

AT: Not so far, but I’m hoping!

TTO: Obviously, a lot of people have made a lot of comparisons between Fringe and The X-Files. How often does that come up while you’re making the show? Do the writers ever deliberately not do things, do you ever not play things a certain way, because you’re worried you’ll be accused of ripping of The X-Files?

AT: I just kinda do my own thing. But I wasn’t the X-Files fan that, say, Joshua Jackson was, so it doesn’t really enter into my head — outside of it’s extraordinarily complimentary to compare it to Fringe.

Although I do think they’re two very different shows. I think the Peter and Olivia characters aren’t the Mulder and Scully characters.

I know that the creators and the guys in the writers room are wanting very much to have Peter, Walter, and Olivia become a family. But what I’m not sold on, and what I would be interested in, is to watch Olivia become sort of a maternal figure to these two kind of “lost boys.” I think it’s a much more interesting way to go than Walter being the funny dad and Peter and Olivia getting together.

TTO: I could not agree with you more. So that’s not going to happen? Olivia and Peter aren’t going to get together?

AT: [laughs] I don’t know. It isn’t my decision. They give us the scripts three days before we shoot, so I have no information, except for episode five that we’re shooting on Tuesday!

No, as far as that relationship, that trio, goes, that’s what I would like.

TTO: Is it hard to keep track of the mythology of the show? Did they explain it all to you when you signed on?

AT: I didn’t really know what any of the mythology was going to be, outside of what was apparent from the pilot. The mythology, I think, is kind of easy to keep track of, because it doesn’t come up that much — sort of one [episode] on, one off, one on, one off.

But what I find hard to keep track of are the monsters of the week. That’s when I’m, like, “Oh, my God!” I’ll be doing a scene with a million different names, and I can’t remember if they’re a blood-sucking monster [or something completely different]. Half the time you say the names, but you never see the creature. You’ve got no visual.

TTO: What monster do you personally think is the scariest so far?

AT: The scariest for me was very very early on. There was a conversation in the lab where Walter started talking about the fact that he and William Bell used to make soldiers kind of like tomatoes. And I thought, “Oh, that’s scary, and that’s going to cause a lot of conflict, because that’s a real ethical and moral conversation.”

But the gore, I just don’t like it!

TTO: The one that gave me nightmares is when the orifices, the nose and the mouth filled up. That was such a horrible way to die.

AT: Well, I get desensitized because that darling guy that was playing that character was on set for ages, and we had to lead him all the way up the stairs, into the room where we were about to shoot.

I’m sure there’s a lot of things that I’ve forgotten, because I’m there all the time.

TTO: You’re Australian. Are there any difficulties in playing an American character that maybe we wouldn’t think about?

AT: Oh, yeah. The sensibility is so different. Sometimes I look at a line that really sticks, and I really don’t know how to deliver it. It might be right for the character, but it’s an American way that I don’t know.

TTO: Do you ask someone? I mean, it could just be a bad line!

AT: [laughs] It could be! But sometimes it’s the sensibility. I find it difficult to stand and say, “Aaarrh! You’ve got nothing on me, dude!”

TTO: Well, you’re nothing like you’re character, which means you’re a wonderful actress.

AT: Thank you!

Looking to buy the first season of Fringe on DVD (or any other media)? Support TheTorchOnline.com by purchasing it through this link.

Let’s face it: with Twilight’s teen angst and fresh-faced actors, it was only a matter of time until a Twilight-like TV series ended up on the CW — home of Gossip Girl and Smallville.

This Thursday, that show, The Vampire Diaries, finally debuts.

At the same time, the CW could have done a whole lot worse in who created the show than Kevin Williamson, the screenwriter behind the Scream movies — projects that completely redefined the horror genre simply by including characters who had seen all the horror movies, and knew all the cliches.

A few years after Scream, Williamson struck gold again, creating Dawson’s Creek, a TV show with more hyper-aware, hyper-literate teens.

In short, Williamson was pretty much the perfect person to bring The Vampire Diaries to life.

Kevin’s co-creator on The Vampire Diaries is Julie Plec, who he first met on the set of Scream and who has since worked with him on many projects, including the Scream sequels and Dawson’s Creek.

“I was [director] Wes [Craven's] assistant on Scream,” Plec says. “It was [Kevin's] first movie that ever got made. My first movie. I was 22, just out of college. We were two kids in a candy store, up in Santa Rosa, California, on location, making a movie.”

Recently, I got a chance to sit down with both of them and talk about The Vampire Diaries — how they almost didn’t make it because of the success of Twilight, how the show is, and isn’t, different from that project, and how vampire stories are really all about sex.

TheTorchOnline: Just how sick are you of the comparisons to Twilight?

Kevin Williamson: We’re not sick really, but we don’t know what to say. We can give you the studio answer, which is that they’re based on these books that were released in 1992 or whatever.

Julie Plec: The comparisons are difficult only in that you never want anyone accusing you of ripping something off. But because we have the source material that pre-dates Twilight so significantly, we feel confident that the story we’re telling is our own. But there is going to be a lot of that.

TheTorchOnline: How did the project come about?

Kevin Williamson: In the beginning when I read it, I didn’t want to be involved with it, because I felt like it was sort of a Twilight rip-off, no matter what came first. The premise was the same: girl falls in love with a vampire. But Julie kept saying, “Keep reading, keep reading!”

And then you realize that this is [much more] a story about a small town, about the underbelly of a small town, and what lurks under the surface.

TheTorchOnline: In the beginning, were you told, “Give us a project about vampires,” and then you searched for something that spoke to you?

Julie Plec: We were talking to [executives at the CW] about vampires and how much we love them, and one of us said, “We’d love to do a vampire show, but nobody’s going to do another vampire story.”

Kevin Williamson: And we don’t want to be the one that comes after.

Julie Plec: And they said, “Actually, we have a property that we’ve been dying to do. We absolutely want to do a vampire show, and we’d love for you to look at it, so we did.”

TheTorchOnline: It does seem like the perfect CW show, that if it didn’t exist, it should exist.

Kevin Williamson: That’s what we all thought.

Julie Plec: That’s why when people say, “Are you treading ground that is too familiar?” we say, “Specifically, on our network, it’s the perfect amalgamation of what they’ve been doing, that takes all the genres they’ve been dabbling in and combines them into one show.”

Kevin Williamson: It’s also different from the Buffy and Smallville and Supernatural model in that they’re sort of monster-of-the-week shows, and we’re not that. This is actually closer to Gossip Girl than that. In the sense that it’s a serialized ensemble teen soap with a supernatural element. It’s more about characters and romance.

TheTorchOnline: What do you think accounts for the ongoing fascination with these vampire stories?

Julie Plec: Bandwagon! [laughs]

For me, in a weird way, it’s less about vampires than it is about love. And when you’re telling a love story, the great love stories of all time are always about people who are attracted who are polar opposites. It’s about, “Who is that person who caught my eye across the room, and what is it about that person, why do they seem so different and why do I find myself so drawn to them? What is it about them that fills me up from the inside?”

When you have a love story that’s this powerful, and then you throw this genre element into it, with the great guy across the room who’s moody and brooding and sexy and dangerous, and also happens to be a vampire, then you end up with stories you can tell for days!

Kevin Williamson: I also think sexuality has something to do with it. We’re living in an age where Twilight is being read by thirteen year-old girls. There’s a sophistication to readers today. Subconsciously, they’re reading about sex, but they don’t know it. They’re reading about sex and sexuality, their awakening, and it’s all through the guise of this very safe vampire who goes and bites your neck and does nothing else. It’s a very safe form of releasing sexual tension.

There are those who say that you go to a horror movie so you can be scared and release all your hormones, so you don’t go out in the world and do “it.”

TheTorchOnline: You look at Buffy and Anne Rice, and it seems like a big part of most of these vampire projects is that they take on big moral issues. Is that something you plan to do with this show?

Kevin Williamson: We do deal with morality in the sense of right and wrong and control and betrayal and trust and friendship — all the great themes of coming of age will be told, but with life-and-death stakes.

Julie Plec: You look at Twilight, for example, and they notoriously are an abstinence metaphor, which is a really beautiful and ironic idea when you consider that vampires throughout literature have been a sexualized object.

Kevin Williamson: The seducers.

Julie Plec: We’re not saying we’re going down the abstinence road.

Kevin Williamson: At all!

Julie Plec: But it’s more about the idea of self-control, and finding your inner core, the morality that exists in you: “I have a choice here, I can take this very dark road and be a predator and I can be evil. Or I can fight those darker instincts, and choose to live my life on a clearer, stronger path.”

Kevin Williamson: Which is not his natural instinct. His natural instinct is to kill, and he’s fighting that every day. For the love of a woman!

TheTorchOnline: How closely are you following the books?

Julie Plec: I like to say that if you look at the gross content of the books, we’re following it incredibly closely. But if you look at the timeline, it’s varying quite a bit. We’re telling some of the stories a lot faster, some of them a lot slower. But the core relationships are very specific, and very much what we’re playing with.

We’ve got about five books that we’re hopefully turning into many, many seasons. The lead character in the books is actually dead by book three, she’s a ghost. It might take us a bit longer to do that!

There is a core fan-base for the books. And they’re mad that the lead character is not blond. So when you start there, there’s not a lot you can do.

TheTorchOnline: In Scream, the characters have all seen all the horror movies. In The Vampire Diaries, do the characters live in a world that’s familiar with fictional vampires? Are they aware of Twilight?

Kevin Williamson: A little bit. Look, this isn’t going to be Scream dialogue, or Dawson’s Creek heightened psychobabble. It’s going to be its own show. It’s based on a book, and we’re going to stay true to that book and those characters.

But yes, the characters live in the real world. They go to the movies, they turn on the TV at night. We actually wrote the scene yesterday when one of the characters finds out [the show's star] Ian Somerhalder is a vampire, her first question is, “Why don’t you sparkle [like in the Twilight books]?”

Julie Plec: And Ian says, “Because I live in the real world where vampires and sunlight don’t mix!”

Looking to buy The Vampire Diaries books (or any other media)? Support TheTorchOnline.com by purchasing them through this link.

When Lucy Lawless, star of the cult fantasy hit Xena: Warrior Princess, first heard that her character was going to be killed in the show’s 2001 series finale, she thought it was a terrific idea, but she has since changed her mind.

“At the time, we thought that was a really strong choice,” Lawless says in an exclusive interview with TheTorchOnline.com. “But I think it really hurt the fans. I wish we hadn’t done it, actually.”

In the two-part finale, “A Friend in Need,” Xena finds herself unable to fight a powerful spiritual being. In order to be able to do so, she allows herself to be shot full of arrows. Once dead, her head is cut off, and she is cremated. The episodes feature several relatively gruesome scenes of the decapitated body.

Later, after Gabrielle finds away to bring Xena back to life, the Warrior-Princess chooses to stay dead in order to make amends for past sins. The episodes end with Gabrielle, a full-fledged warrior at last, carrying on Xena’s legacy and also carrying the Warrior-Princess’ memory in her heart.

Some found the episodes touching, and in keeping with the theme of the series that Xena couldn’t ever really be “redeemed” for her evil past. But they inspired a furious response from many fans. Some were upset with the gruesome way she died; others were upset that she died at all.

“Absolute betrayal is what the majority of Xena fans felt after the show ended,” says Mary D. Brooks of AUSXIP, a Xena fan-site. “Feelings of betrayal and rage engulfed the Xenaverse and it was not a nice place to be. There was so much vitriolic anger and hatred towards Rob Tapert and Lucy. It was very disturbing and unsettling to watch the rage against them.”

“I laughed when I heard she got her head cut off,” Lawless says now. “It was such a strong choice — I’m perverse like that.”

But since then, Lawless has had a big change of heart.

“It’s all like telling a bad placed joke, or laughing at some other group’s expense,” she says. “You’re like, ‘Come on, it’s funny!’ But then it’s like, ‘But it really hurts people.’ And finally the penny drops and you go, ‘Oh. That’s why it’s not funny, because somebody is in pain.’”

When asked if her husband, Xena co-creator Rob Tapert, regrets the choice to kill Xena too, Lawless says, “Oh, I imagine so. He’s a very spiritual guy, and he’s become very wise over the time that I’ve known him.”

Lawless holds out hope that time has changed the minds of many Xena fans as well.

“Maybe with the time that has passed, the fans have become less disenchanted,” she says.

In the new SyFy Channel show Warehouse 13, Eddie McClintock plays Pete, the looser, laid-back half of the show’s Secret Service agent duo assigned to protect the magical artifacts stored in South Dakota’s mysterious Warehouse 13.

But in reality, right before being cast in the show, the enormously appealing actor was coming to a cross-roads. The 42 year-old Ohio native had been kicking around Hollywood for more than a decade, consistently working in guest spots on shows such as Friends and Felicity, and even starring in four short-lived shows of his own.

But he’d never “broken out,” and with two young kids, he had mouths to feed.

To hear Eddie tell it, things were getting pretty dire toward the end — so much so that, in a nice bit of synchronicity, it took future Warehouse 13 co-star Joanne Kelly to talk him down enough that he could even finish the audition for the show.

And like the plot out of an actual TV show, it may have been that moment they shared in the audition waiting room that led to their both being cast on the show in the end.

But hey, it’s better to let Eddie tell it:

TheTorchOnline: Congratulations on the fact that the show’s a hit. Are you surprised?

Eddie McClintock: I’m not so surprised, but relieved. This is my fifth series in twelve years, and I’ve never had a hit. I’ve been going and going. I like to think of myself as one of the more successful anonymous guys in Hollywood. I’ve continued to work, but nothing has ever hit. So when people use that word “hit” with me, I’m, like, I don’t know, because I’m gun-shy.

TTO: The actors all have great chemistry. Was there right from the beginning?

EM: It was from the beginning. I was coming off my seventh test refusal. I’d gone through six or seven [rejections] in a row.

TTO: Ouch.

EM: But you can’t let that show [on your next audition], or they’ll read it right away. I had gone in a few times [for Warehouse 13], and there was  a mix and match — there were six Petes and six Mykas. Which was depressing, because you expect maybe two. You see that and you say to yourself, “Wow, they still don’t know what they’re looking for.”

So I had gone in and came out, and I came down to me and this other guy. And the other guy was standing there, and the director came out and put his arm around him and they walked down the hall together.

And I said, “That’s it! I can’t take it!” I took off my tie, I took off my jacket. And Joanne [Kelly, my future co-star] was sitting there, Indian style in the chair, relaxed, which is interesting, because her character is so different. And she’s, like, “Dude!”

And I said, “No! You don’t get it! I have these two little boys, they’re like baby chicks, and I’m supposed to fly in and spit up the worm, and I got no worm, you know? And I can’t deal with that anymore.”

And then the producers come back and say, “Eddie, you’re coming back in.” And I’d already taken off my tie and jacket, and Joanne and I had been talking, and she’d basically talked me down, off the clock-tower.

And we were standing there reading, and she blew a line. She was supposed to call me a “showboat,” and she called me a “shoi-boit.” And then I made it into a robot thing, started acting like a robot.

You know, actors are terrified of screwing up in those rooms. We ended up making a thing out of this gaffe. And apparently when we walked out of the room, they said, “There it is.”

TTO: So the chemistry really was there right from the very beginning!

EM: [laughs] Yeah.

TTO: So why do you think this was the show that finally connected?

EM: I think there’s a certain amount of luck and timing. A large portion goes to the fact that the writers have created something that is right for right now.  I think people want to escape — the economy is terrible, people are losing their jobs. Who wants to turn on the TV and watch people shoot other people, dead bodies? That’s what life is, man.

Our show, you get to escape into this world where there are these unexplained artifacts. It’s funny, it has a heart, it’s about family, it’s suspenseful.

TTO: I think a big part of it is the humor. There’s been a lot of serious sci-fi fantasy, and there still is. I’m curious if you get self-conscious about the comedy on the set, if you were confident that everyone else was going to think it was funny?

EM: No! I had no idea. I usually do something, and if people laugh, that’s funny. They’ll say, “Keep doing that. Whatever it is, keep doing that.”

At the beginning, I don’t think we were sure, because you’re just finding the show. In the writing of the show, there’s not a whole lot of comedy that’s on the page. They don’t write the comedy, they just sort of let it come as we find it.

Jack Kenny, our executive producer, one of the producers on one my first show, [is] brilliant and really funny. David Simkins is the other side of it, he’s the sci-fi guy, he’s the gadget guy. So together they’ve been able to create this great blend of both.

But when Jack is on the set, and I’m working, he’ll come up to me and say, “Hey, try this.” Or I’ll come up to him and say, “Can I try this?” Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t, but I’ve think we’ve found a pretty nice balance.

TTO: So when do you go back to work?

EM: They haven’t picked us up yet.

TTO: But they will.

EM: I think so. But again, don’t get my hopes up!

TTO: Is there a particular moment you’re most proud of in these first thirteen episodes?

EM: The episode “Burnout” was probably the most challenging for me as an actor. I was faced with having to make a huge decision as a character, and then in doing so, having to make a huge decision as an actor. I would either fall on my face, or people would go, “Wow, that was really good.”

TTO: What was scene exactly?

EM: The artifact affects Pete in such a way that he makes a decision to take his own life. The scene leading up to that decision was very emotional and powerful for me as the actor and the character, and I’m pretty proud of just being able to trust [the moment]. It was  real milestone for me as an actor.

Warehouse 13 airs Tuesdays at 9 PM/8 C on the SyFy Channel.

When I first heard the premise of the new documentary series Out of Egypt, airing later this month, I was intrigued: an Egyptologist uses her knowledge of that country’s ancient history to try to draw connections between that civilization and other civilizations, including our modern world today. In the process, she’d come to some conclusions about just what it means to be human.

Pretty ambitious stuff for a TV program, even one on the Discovery Channel.

Then I previewed the first two episodes of the show (which we’ll be reviewing soon) and discovered it pretty much delivers.

Better still, I got a chance to sit down and talk to the host, Egyptologist Kara Cooney, quizzing her on the eternal appeal of Ancient Egypt, the “truth” about magic and ritual, and even the deep-seated reasons why many of us find science fiction and fantasy so compelling.

I interview a lot of people in my job as editor of this website, but very few of these conversations turn out to be as interesting or as far-ranging as this one:

TheTorchOnline: Explain to me our fascination with Ancient Egypt.

Kara Cooney: Oh, there’s a lot behind it. I’ve had to think about this a lot. I give talks on Egypt all the time. My poor Byzantine friends, they never get asked, because no one knows what Byzantine is!

I was one of the curators for the King Tut exhibit, and when people are pounding down your doors, you have to ask yourself, “What hell is going on?”

I have a three-part answer. One, it doesn’t hurt that everything’s made of gold. We value that, we understand it.

Number two, if I showed you an ancient wall relief, you would immediately understand that it was, for example, a cat. It’s instantly recognizable. The ancient Egyptians understood how to communicate through images better than anybody. Just enough enough information so you know what’s going on, but leave you wanting more.

TTO: Even language, hieroglyphs, the language of pictures.

KC: Even the language! “Oh, I can see that that’s a sandal and that’ s a dog and that’s a face, but what does it all mean?” It intrigues people, because people want to know more.

And it has for centuries. The ancient Romans wanted to know what was going on, the ancient Greeks wanted to know what was going on! People have always been fascinated by this.

Then the third reason: the ancient Egyptians aggressively and systematically dealt with the problem of death. And in our culture, we systemically deny the existence of death. We’re all about youth and beauty.

TTO: Now I thought that was a misconception we had, that the Egyptians were obsessed with death. I thought that’s what we assumed, because pyramids and tombs are all that’s left for us to see.

KC: You will read that in many coffee table books, but I disagree with that. Ask a different Egyptologist, and you’ll get a different answer. A lot of people say the Egyptians weren’t obsessed with death, they were obsessed with the continuation of life.

But the Egyptians understood that their lives would not continue in the way that it did on this earth. It was never like this life. They knew that death was not life. It’s not so simple as a continuation of life.

TTO: But why is that appealing? You’d think if they were obsessed with death, then that’s something we’d turn away from, since we’re so afraid of it.

KC: You would! And yet when I work in museums, I’ve seen people go up to these cases full of death human flesh and mash their faces up against it and get as close as they can.

Death is something that all humanity has to deal with, and it’s a hole in our modern-day culture.

TTO: So this is a safe way to look at death?

CK: It’s looking at death through a glass case. That’s what I think it is.

I think the Ancient Egyptians, because of their obsession with surviving life and going on to something else, I think we’re intrigued by that, we want a part of that. But I don’t think we know it.

TTO: In your show, you spend a lot of time talking about ritual and “magic.” But it seems to me the ancient world wouldn’t really think of magic as “magic.” If magic is just part of the way they see the world, it’s not “supernatural,” right?

KC: They did make a separation in a way. It’s arbitrary, you’re right, but magic is religious or ritual activity that has a concrete wish, desire, or conclusion at the end. So if I wanted you to fall in love with me, I would create a potion or walk around you three times to do some magical incantation that had a concrete benefit. Something that happened at the end.

Religion or spirituality doesn’t need a concrete benefit, something that happens — it can just be something you do make you feel better about the death of your loved one. So even the Egyptians did had a separate word for magic.

TTO:  Was there still a sense that what they were doing was supernatural, in that it was different from the natural?

KC: Now they’re you’re right on, because in the ancient world and in many Third World countries today, they don’t have such a separation between their daily life and their beliefs. Everything went together. When you’re baking your loaf of bread, that bread comes from the gods. In Ancient Egypt, that’s Orsiris who gave you that bread. You’re eating Orsiris. Where do you think the Christians got that one? But anyway…

The separation between daily activities and fervent religious belief, there was no disconnect, and there was very little doubt. There wasn’t any existential doubt — “Where are we going? What’s is it all about?” All the stuff that we’ve done to ourselves in the last two or three hundred years, since Enlightenment. So to speak!

TTO: So you just said something intriguing, that much of these beliefs still live on in the Third World.

KC: I think it’s very easy in the United States to look at fervent religious belief as primitive, and to denigrate it. And yet, they’re watching the Discovery Channel. When they see people with fervent religious beliefs, they’re almost jealously trying to consume it themselves. This is part of our our psyche, our humanity that we don’t have anymore. Which is why I think fundamentalism is making a huge comeback. It’s filling a hole.

And science fiction and fantasy, it’s not just entertainment. People are really seriously attached to this material in an emotional way. People are looking to the ancestors to fill that gap, and everyone has their own solution to it. So I think we’re a little ambivalent about it. On one hand, we look at it and say, “Oh, those primitive people,” but on the other hand, we have our lucky penny or we read our horoscope, or whatever we do.

TTO: Is that an essential component of magic: belief? If you believe it, does it work?

KC: Maybe. Placebo effect?

TTO: Well, maybe that’s the explanation we’d give it.

KC: I think that even if you don’t get the outcome you intend, I think the magical ritual has a healing effect almost every time. If you feel it’s helpful to you, yes.

I have a friend who’s a Wiccan. I may not believe that [the god] Diana is somehow going to change my life. I actually don’t believe the gods would intercede on my puny behalf, that’s not part of my belief system. But to watch my friend and his friends participate in that, I think is very meaningful. We’re trying to plug those holes, fill those gaps.

TTO: I completely agree with what you said before that for a lot people, these stories are their religion. In many ways, that’s true for me.

KC: You’re touching on a nerve here which is really interesting. People often assume I believe in the ancient Egypt religion — they assume I worship Osiris as a god, because I’m so passionate about these Egyptian beliefs. I don’t, but I don’t judge people that do. It’s fine. Why is that different from believing Jesus? Religious freedom is very important.

I can be incredibly interested about it, and passionate, and yet I don’t need go there myself. I have a different belief system.

TTO: Speaking about Egypt, for your point-of-view as an Egyptologist, what are some of the most infuriating inaccuracies?

CK: There are a lot of them, and I think people are starting to get sick of these kinds of things.

The biggest one out there is the aliens-built-the-pyramids [theory]. It’s inherently racist, this idea that these “primitive” people couldn’t have built the pyramids, because they’re too stupid and they don’t know how, that they needed the aliens to come down from on high to tell these people who are always in Third World countries, who always have dark skin. I mean, come on.

This incenses every Egyptologist I know. We do have a detached view, but we’re also protective of the ancient people, and there’s no reason to make this claim. There are much more compelling reasons for why the pyramids were build, and when. It’s interesting enough just in human terms.

I get all angry about the alien theory, but then I remember Carl Sagan’s book, The Demon Haunted World, and I remember people like stories. It’s not just that they like them, they need stories. When they see something like a pyramid in Mexico or Egypt, they get a little freaked out. And if they don’t have a story to help them explain it, I think they feel like they’re shaky ground.

TTO: But as you’ve pointed out, that tells us more about the people who believe that, their racism and their limited world-view, than it does about Egypt.

KC: People like simple explanations. They don’t like the hard explanations.

Kara’s show Out of Egypt airs Mondays at 9 PM on the Discovery Channel starting August 24th.

You’ve heard it a million times: the cast of a television show insist that they’re all the best of friends, and that the close friendship you see on the screen is exactly the way it is in real life.

It’s not until years after the show has wrapped that you learn the truth: that the backstage squabbling was far more interesting than anything you saw on-screen.

But the stars of the well-received new BBC America drama Being Human, about a vampire, a werewolf, and a ghost who share an apartment together, insist that they really are great off-screen friends. And after meeting them all and watching them interact at a gathering of the Television Critics Association in Pasadena, I’m convinced they’re telling the truth.

“We’re so different, all of us, quite different people,” says Aidan Turner, who plays the vampire, of his off-screen relationship with his co-stars. “Russell [Tovey, who plays the werewolf] can be quite extroverted sometimes, and I’m quite the opposite in weird ways. [Our tight friendship] just happened. It’s a funny thing. I did another series after this one where it’s about a brotherhood in Victorian London, and we knew we had to get along, and we did [but it wasn't the same]. I don’t know why it works, why you get on with some people, and sometimes you don’t.”

“No, I can’t stand them,” says Tovey when asked to confirm that he’s friends with his co-stars. “They’re horrible! They’re lying!”

But when he’s done joking, Tovey says, “We are friends. I’ve been spoiled. I did The History Boys, and there were seven other boys, and we genuinely got on well.”

Being Human is shot in the U.K. city of Bristol, and for the course of filming the series, the actors all live in flats next to each other.

“Even while filming, we’d all end up in one of our apartments,” says Lenora Crichlow, who plays the ghost. “For different reasons. They came to my apartment to eat, we went to Russell’s to watch TV, and we went to Aiden’s to chill out and listen to music.”

“It’s very much life imitating art,” Turner says.

Tovey is quick to point out, “We are different from our characters. In the show, Mitchell is the leader of the house, and we’re like the squabbling children. In life, well, Aiden’s effortlessly cool anyway, I’m a bit more scatty, and Lenora’s cool as well. So I probably am the one who’s a bit more screamy and shouty.”

“It’s such an easy thing to say, because you talk to any actor, and they say the same thing, ‘Yeah, chemistry was easy,’” Turner says. “But [the three of us] just get on, we’re just mates. We’ve been hanging out [even here at this conference] in each others’ hotel rooms, having drinks, talking, shooting the breeze. It’s almost that thing, immediately get comfortable with somebody, and you don’t need to talk, you can just hang out. I know when Russell is maybe not in the best of moods, and I wouldn’t even acknowledge it or say anything. We can just feel each other.”

Some actors make it look so easy, stealing every scene they’re in, generating laughs with gestures both big and small.

Of course, it helps if you’re as talented and experienced as Saul Rubinek, one of those long-time actors who everyone recognizes, but many people can’t quite name.

In Rubinek’s case, he’s appeared in everything from the movies Unforgiven and True Romance, to the television shows Star Trek: The Next Generation and Frasier (where he played Donny Douglas, Daphne’s fiance).

But more and more people are remembering his name these days, now that he’s been cast as Arthur “Artie” Nielsen, the hilarious, socially awkward caretaker on Warehouse 13, a break-out hit for the newly-renamed SyFy Network.

Recently, I got a chance to talk to the veteran character actor about whether he’s a geek in real life, how it might have been very embarrassing if the show had tanked, and the serious business of being funny:

TheTorchOnline: When did you realize that the show was going to be so funny?

Saul Rubinek: When they hired me. If they wanted the show to take itself seriously, they wouldn’t have hired me. Or Eddie McClintock, for that matter.

[The producers] always knew that they needed to have a grain of salt, they needed to walk a tightrope. If they take themselves too seriously, they fall over. If they don’t take themselves seriously enough there’s no tension in the show.

TTO: How much of the humor comes from the script, and how much do the actors contribute?

SR: The show’s are written, and the writers are wonderful, and they have a great sense of humor. And some of the jokes that look like they’re off-the-cuff are because the writers happen to be very funny, and we [the actors] try to make it look off-the-cuff.

That said, everybody’s been given an edict to let the actors loose a little. We’ve been hired to invest the roles with our own senses of humor, our own personalities, and our own dramas — we’re let loose on the serious side as well. Occasionally, if [we say] a funny line, if [executive producer] Jack Kenny is on the set, he’ll make it funnier, trust me.

TTO: Are you surprised that the show is such a big hit?

SR: I’m pleasantly surprised. I was hoping against hope that it would be, because I love doing it. If it’s a hit, that means we get to do more of them.

The executives are very happy. Look, it was their flagship show, rebranding an entire network, huge for them and for us.

TTO: In other words, it could’ve been very embarrassing if you’d tanked!

SR: Could’ve been, yeah!

TTO: From my point-of-view as a non-actor, it seems to me you have the best role on the show, because you get to steal every scene you’re in, but you’re not in every scene. True?

SR: I only have the fun of having a character that doesn’t have to carry the weight of the action the way Eddie and Joanne do. Luckily, they’ve thrown Allison [Scagliotti] to play Claudia Donovan into the mix, and it gives me kind of a daughter. Artie had no life, he’s been married to the warehouse, his children are the artifacts, he has no life. And now he’s got an ethical responsibility to this very young person, who’s brilliant and a trouble-maker.

We all are scene-stealers in our own way [on the show]. They’ve given us that opportunity.

TTO: Are you a geek in real life?

SR: I like to play chess, I’ve always liked good story. I haven’t run after sci-fi. I like science fiction if it’s well-written. I like so many different genres that I wouldn’t call myself a geek. I’m a lover of great stories, and I’m even more a lover of acting them out.