On Friday at 5:30PM, cast members of Battlestar Galactica (BSG) joined moderator Tony P. Henderson in Hyatt Centennial II-IV for an hour of questions and answers. The audience responded with cheers and thunderous applause as Henderson announced guests Tricia Helfer, James Callis, Edward James Olmos, Mary McDonnell, Grace Park, and Aaron Douglas.
The first questioner explained the Dragon Con Bunny Hutch and asked the guests how they would dress up for such an event. McDonnell replied that she would dress as a Cylon because “I spent six years wondering, ‘where do they get those clothes?’ while I always wore that same suit.” Helfer said she had once done a Playboy cover and so could go as herself.
The next questioner asked whether anything amazed the actors on the first reading of a script. Olmos answered that the best such event was at the reading of the story that revealed the five previously unknown Cylons. Michael Hogan, who played Colonel Tigh, slammed his script onto the table, announced, “This is bullshit,” and walked out. Douglas added that the actors’ reactions were the same ones they used while filming the revelation scene.
The subject then turned to which scenes the actors read in their auditions. Most of the panel didn’t remember, but Callis said he and Helfer read on January 6, didn’t get a call back until March, then read, had a work session, and did a studio test. He described the studio tests as brutal. They’re held with every potential actor in the room, and those who don’t make it are told then and there, in the room. “It’s tough to come back from that tap on the shoulder in front of everyone,” he said.
Callis added that he auditioned five times for Baltar. He and Helfer were the last ones cast and the first ones filmed.
When asked about their favorite episodes to film, Douglas quipped, “One I wasn’t in.” McDonnell cited the episode “33,” which was the first episode of the first season. She felt that it conveyed “the urgency of being chased, of what we were inside of.” Olmos seconded that.
Callis’s favorite was the episode that had him being tortured in a tank all day. Park doesn’t have favorite episodes so much as favorite scenes. She mentioned the one in which Helo, played by Tamoh Penikett, had to kill her character Athena. She described him as looking “really rugged.”
Douglas mentioned the episode “Dirty Hands,” which has his character, Chief Tyrol, discussing all that has happened with McDonnell’s character, President Laura Roslin. He described McDonnell, with apologies to their colleagues, as the finest actor he had ever worked with. “She looks in your eyes,” he said,” sees into your soul, and then reaches in and messes with it.” As the audience laughed, he added, “A scene with her changes you.”
One questioner observed that the BSG cast feels like a found family, which is what Dragon Con is to him, and asked how that came about for the cast. Olmos said he was “stunned by the script,” which he considered original and memorable. If the actors would understand all of it, he felt, the show could run five to ten years. Not everyone in the cast had the experience of working in a long-running series, though, so he asked everyone to meet in his trailer before they filmed the scene that included the now-iconic phrase, “So say we all.”
He told his colleagues the things they did in this episode needed to register as truth to them, that the series would likely run for five years, so the things they did on the first day needed to register at the end of that run. Callis added that Olmos advised them to think of BSG as a five-year movie, not a television show. Young actors, he said, try to do a lot because they don’t know how long they’ll be on, but Olmos advised them to “keep some powder dry,” and not try to do everything at once.
McDonnell believes Olmos helped create mutual trust among the actors. Her character had to be in opposition to others, but the actors realized they were “in this together.” They felt safe and became true friends because of what Olmos had done.
Callis noted that he had never been on a show where every person in the cast wanted to support every other, as this cast did. They are in touch outside of conventions and are in each other’s lives.
Returning to the subject to the “so say we all” scene, Olmos said his speech in that scene was difficult because the cast hadn’t had much time together. It was the second scene shot, with only Helfer and Callis working the morning before. He thought it was “a crazy place to start” because it was an emotional scene, one in which everyone needed to feel they had a shared past. Callis put in that the script called for Olmos’s character to say, “So say we all” once, but he ad-libbed the two repetitions, which “galvanized” the scene.
When asked whether the actors had trouble letting go of the characters they had played so long, Park replied that she was about to shoot another show and realized she was “glitching” because she hadn’t processed the death of her character Boomer. “You have to grieve to go on,” she concluded.
Helfer said she didn’t know that she ever had actually let go of Number Six because she continues to talk to her castmates about the character. She did let go in that she was happy to play other roles after five years because she had “the BSG family behind” her.
As the panel wound down, an audience member asked the actors what they currently are reading or watching. Helfer last watched Lioness Season Two, and before that, Beef. McDonnell favors espionage shows or Ted Lasso. Douglas replied that he was enjoying watching Callis in Slow Horses. Douglas added that he wanted to thank the production team of EastEnders for keeping Jamie Bamber too busy to come to Dragon Con. Because Bamber couldn’t come, Douglas said, “I got to.”
The last questioner asked Olmos what role he is most known for. He first mentioned Jaime Escalante, the high school math teacher he played in Stand and Deliver. That film is one of the most viewed of any made in the United States. He noted that the teacher he played was dedicated to motivating his class. Olmos also cited The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez, a film set in 1901 Texas and also based on a true story. He loved the character he played. He added that this is the only fictional dramatic film the United States Historical Society includes among its resources because of its documentation of life in that period.
As has become traditional for Battlestar Galactica panels, the program ended with Olmos leading the audience and panel in a three-peat of “So say we all.” The rafters rang with it.
