The one, the only Dr. Rodney McKay (David Hewlett) in Stargate Atlantis. Photo copyright of Syfy.
It has been a little over two years since Stargate Atlantis’ Dr. Rodney McKay last traded good-natured barbs with his friends and colleagues as well as acerbic quips with various alien bad guys as he helped protect the Pegasus Galaxy along with Earth’s own galaxy from some of the deadliest of extraterrestrial threats. For multi-talented David Hewlett, who played Atlantis’ egotistical genius and occasionally affable scientist, it has been a time of delving into several new creative ventures on the big as well as small screens. One of these gigs is the role of Hunsiker in the upcoming hush-hush feature film Rise of the Planet of the Apes.
“One of the most fascinating things for me about working on this film was the number of non-disclosure agreements that you had to sign. You had to basically sign one every time you were given a call sheet,” jokes Hewlett. “As for the job itself, it was absolutely fascinating, especially for a nerd like me. It wasn’t a big part, but I just wanted to go in for it. After all, this was Planet of the Apes.
“When I auditioned I knew nothing about the film because they wouldn’t tell you anything about it. Even the characters’ names were changed, so in the movie you didn’t even end up with the same name that you had in the audition. I hope I won’t get into trouble for divulging this, but in my audition it referred to an animal. For example, in the script it read, ‘The animal approached.’ So the director [Rupert Wyatt] said to me, ‘When the monke….um, the animal approaches.’ I said, ‘Wait a minute, you said, monke… It’s a monkey, right? Is it a monkey?’
“So we were sort of laughing about that, and, of course, he was also on-camera doing the auditions, so he was very good about sticking to his animal guidelines. What a lovely guy Rupert is. He's just amazing and I was so impressed by him. Rupert directed this fantastic low-budget prison drama movie called The Escapist in England, and then pretty much went from that to Planet of the Apes, which God only knows what the budget is.
“After I got the part, I signed about 10 different non-disclosure agreements and then they gave me the script. I immediately read it and it was really good. It has all the action and everything else that you would expect from a Planet of the Apes movie, certainly in this day and age, but what I was most impressed with was the characters – it’s a character piece. Yes, it has to go through a giant movie-making ‘machine’ before it eventually makes it to the screen, but the script I read was quite a poignant story about family, trust and all sorts of issues. I actually got kind of teary reading it.
“And then when you see Andy Serkis [who plays Caesar in the film] doing his thing, it’s unbelievable. I have a three-year-old who doesn’t have that kind of energy. This guy was running around with a camera attached to his face doing performance capture. It wasn’t motion capture. They weren’t capturing the motion of his face, they were capturing performance. The Weta [Digital] guys out of New Zealand and technology they’re using is mild-blowing. Basically they’ve moved motion capture and performance capture into the real world. It’s no longer limited to just the set. You can go out into the wild and shoot this type of stuff. I’m probably going to get in trouble for saying this, but the technology they’re using is way ahead of anything that’s been out there before.
“Again, as a nerd it was such a fantastic experience, and to top it off I got to work with John Lithgow. Oh, my God, talk about an amazing guy with amazing stories, and the loveliest man. One thing I’ve discovered is that the bigger people are in this industry, the nicer they are, and John is an absolute charmer. No, charmer is the wrong word – he’s got a big heart. We’d hop into the [transport] van after shooting wrapped for the day, and John would suddenly hop out of the van because he forgot to say goodbye to one of the sound assistants.
“So I got to work with people like him and it was just a few days of absolute heaven. I had such a good time and I can’t wait to see the film. I don’t know if you’ve seen the trailers yet, but the footage they’re showing is just gorgeous. Of course, there’s not enough Hewlett for my taste,” notes the actor with a chuckle, “but the trailers look gorgeous. I also can’t wait to see what Rupert Wyatt comes up with next. I cannot say enough how impressed I am with him. He’s got this giant movie with apes, helicopters, action sequences and all sorts of other things going on that you see in the trailer, but his focus was always on the actors.
“I was shocked. To be fair I haven’t worked on a lot of mega-budget movies, so maybe they normally do have time for that stuff, but I was amazed at how much Rupert and even the producers were interested in the performances, and I don’t mean in a meddling way. They were excited about performance.
“It’s so funny to be in a movie that you would think is all about CGI [computer-generated image] and this incredible motion capture stuff, but these guys were equally interested in how this movie was coming together from a story as well as character standpoint. That was amazing, and quite a change from TV. With, for example, Atlantis, we were racing through the scripts because of the schedule. You’re shooting half of a feature film every five days, so to work for five days on one little sequence in a movie is such a pleasure. I see why people prefer to work on features as opposed to TV. It’s exhausting while you’re doing it, but you don’t have to go home on the weekend and come back on a Monday morning and start all over again. It was also a treat to get out of the scientist genre and play a very different type of character.
“Whew, I’ve probably told you too much already, but basically that’s all I’m probably allowed to say. I can’t really go into who I am in the film or my character’s involvement in it, but suffice to say I will certainly be one of the first people in line to see this movie. It’s not your usual summer blockbuster in that it’s not non-stop action and no plot that doesn’t make sense and goes from one visual gag to another. You truly connect with these characters…and these animals.”
From monkeys…um, animals, to dealing with an altogether different type of creature, Hewlett ventured overseas to Bulgaria last year to shoot Morlocks, an upcoming Syfy Original Saturday Night Movie in which his character of Radnor along with others fight for their lives against an horrific Sci-Fi nasty. “Ah, yes, the madness, or should I say Mad Matt [director Matt Codd]; I just knew him as Mad Matt in Bulgaria,” jokes the actor. “I love that guy to bits. He’s so wonderfully crazy. Matt was out there making a 100 million dollar movie for something like 100 dollars, and Bulgarian dollars, literally, for that matter. Everything that could go wrong pretty much did, but despite that, he was just amazing. Matt was very good at rallying the troops and I genuinely enjoyed working with him.
“I saw some footage when I went to do ADR [automated dialogue replacement], and the film looks terrific. I can’t believe what they’ve managed to pull off. Yes, it’s a Syfy Saturday movie, so it is what it is, but at the same time I think Matt has outdone himself in the genre. It looks great and it has a terrific cast. They were such characters. I love working with the Brits, They are so down to Earth and funny and they do what I like to do on-set, which is goof around right up to the last second and then, bang, they snap into character and nail it [the scene]. They don’t take it too seriously and they don’t take themselves too seriously, either. As a result they’re the best people to work with. And Robert Picardo [Richard Woolsey on Stargate SG-1 and Atlantis] was there, too. He was fantastic and such a great person. If you’re going to spend some time in Bulgaria he’s the guy to do it with.
“I’m curious to see how this one turns out. Again, it’s a Syfy Saturday movie, so everyone knows what they’re getting, but that said, I think you’ll be seeing some fantastic blood explosion effects. I was introduced to what is called a ‘blood cannon’ on Morlocks, where they basically shove a bunch of stuff into an air cannon and then fire it at your face. My first experience was one day when I walked onto the set and they said to me, ‘OK, we’re going to do this blood cannon effect.’ I said to them, “Why would you call it a blood cannon and then tell me you’re going to fire it at my face. It seems like a bad idea.’
“These big Bulgarian [special] effects guys are sitting there on the set with this cannon, so I look at it and it’s these two giant containers of compressed air that feed into a funnel. They just put stuff into the funnel and fire at you. I said to them, ‘That looks like it’s a little bit too close,’ They said, ‘Oh, OK,’ and picked it up and started moving it back. I, of course, had a little hissy fit, and said, ‘Wait a sec. How can you not know for sure whether or not it’s too close?’ I mean, they were pointing this thing at my face, the one thing that, for some odd reason, pays the bills.
“So I said, ‘I’m not doing it until we’ve done a test first with eye protection.’ Obviously they couldn’t do the test on me, so Matt recruits his poor friend who’s helping him out and sticks him in front of the cannon. They fire it off and he gets hit with one little piece of sponge. It was a complete disaster, and I was all happy because I was like, ‘See, I saved you guys. If we shot that you would have had to fix my wardrobe as well as make-up and shoot it again.’ In other words I justified my hissy fit,” says Hewlett laughing.
“When they shot the next test, they upped the ante a bit and nailed him from head to toe with blood and gore. The effects guys were like, ‘That was great!’ I said, ‘OK, fine,’ so we shoot the scene and it was me and poor Christina Cole [Kelly], who’s the female lead in the film, and again, a terrific British actress. She’s extremely talented and can do anything. Christina is standing beside me as we get hit by this blood cannon. It’s absolutely freezing outside and even colder in the studio, and once they fired all this [fake] blood and guts at us, Matt said, ‘Great, that’s a wrap for the day.’ Suddenly, all the power in the building goes out.
“We’re staggering around in the dark with flashlights, covered in freezing gore. There’s no light, there’s no hot water in the showers, so we drive back to the hotel and arrive looking like we’d just been spat out of a blender. Believe it or not, it was actually quite amusing.”
Taking a respite from the Sci-Fi and Fantasy realm, the actor played the guest-starring role of Dr. Thurton Egan in two episodes of the recently cancelled CW network series Hellcats. “it was really important for me to get back in the room and start auditioning again because it had been a long time, not to mention the fact that in my old age I’m getting grumpier and pickier about what I go in for,” he jokes. “My agent said to me, ‘You’ve got to do something outside the Science Fiction realm. This series shoots in town [Vancouver] and you’re here, so why not go in for it.'
“So I read for the role, got it and it was fun. It was just a silly little part playing a friendly eccentric pharmacist and it was such an interesting experience because it was such a different show. Science Fiction is one thing, but for want of a better word these ‘kids’ shows, or these teen shows makes me feel so old. I was basically there to make them all look younger and more beautiful by comparison. So I get on-set and there are these very smart, pretty and together TV stars if you will. I’m guessing they’re maybe in their late teens, early twenties, and they just have it together. They have a great business sense as well as know how to deal with the fans, and they’ve got a huge number of fans.
“It was quite an eye-opener talking with them and seeing how savvy they are about the business compared to what people like me were at that age. I wanted to be James Dean when I was that age. I was running around with motorcycles and cigarettes and trying to look cool. But they’ve got a real sense of how to work the business, how to talk to people and how they should behave on-set. So it was really interesting and sort of humbling in a way, too, because I’d stepped out of a genre that I’m very familiar with and sort of known for, and into a genre where I’m the ‘old’ guy. I’m kind of like that 40-year old actor who shows up to be a day player. Again, though, I really had a good time and I know I’ve said this over and over again, but I love being on sets. It’s my element and I feel like it’s where I shine. It’s actually one of the reasons I got into directing, because directors are on the set more than the actors. I love that world.
“So Hellcats was a great deal of fun, and I’m surprised how many people noticed it. I didn’t make a big deal about it because I didn’t know much about the program, but I’ve definitely impressed some of my young nieces and nephews by being on that show, so my work is done.”
Last but certainly not least, Hewlett had the opportunity last year to reprise his role of Dr. Rodney McKay in the second season Stargate Universe episode Seizure. Surprisingly, his albeit brief return to the Stargate franchise was one that he initially met with some trepidation. “I was really nervous about going back,” admits the actor. “It’s almost, for want of a better analogy, being expelled from school and then coming back to teach.
“I was a little apprehensive going in because it was a new cast and a whole different show. As such, I made sure to watch a bunch of episodes to get a sense of what was going on. One of the things that always annoyed me with Atlantis is when a guest-star would come in and say, ‘I don’t watch the show.’ I’d always think, ‘Look, we’re paying you good money, so do your homework.’
“Going into SGU I knew that it had a very different tone, and that worried me because McKay is funny, do you know what I mean? Whether he wants to be or not, the character is funny, and I like to think that he is real and the comedy is out of the reality of the situation. At the same time, McKay doesn’t quite fit into SGU. However, when Brad Wright [series co-creator/executive producer] gave me the script and we talked about it, he told me that McKay had been written tame enough to work within the framework of SGU but also without losing too much of who the character truly is. I think they did a good job at that.
“What’s interesting is when I first got on the set I definitely felt a little weirdness from people. Like we first did when we started on Atlantis, this cast got a lot of flack at the time about the fact that they had replaced Atlantis, and they were in a much tougher situation because they did replace Atlantis. We didn’t replace SG-1. As I had to keep saying over and over again, we were a complement to SG-1 throughout the same time. They got a good two more years out of that show while were on at the same time, right?
“So I picked up a little bit of initial weirdness on the SGU set. They were all very sweet and very nice and very welcoming, but I definitely felt that they weren’t sure how I felt about things. One day I was doing a scene with Lou Diamond Phillips [Colonel David Telford], and in-between takes he said to me, ‘So, you don’t mind us eating your sandwiches anymore.’ I was like, ‘What?” and Lou jokingly said, ‘I read that in an interview. Everyone knows what you said.’ In an interview I’d said, being typically Hewlett, that I hadn’t as yet watched SGU because they were eating my sandwiches. It was a joke. With me it’s all about the food - food and resentment - and Lou called me on it. I said to him, ‘Wait a sec. You guys have to understand that we talk like that with one another about each other and our own show. That’s just our thing.’
“Let’s face it, Atlantis was cancelled and we weren’t always the nicest about SGU. You can’t help it, though. It’s very difficult not to feel like you were replaced; the franchise carried on and they simply replaced the actors, but that’s not what they did. SGU was a very different show, and on top of that, its cast didn’t have what the Atlantis cast had, which was the SG-1 guys to talk to. You could go to someone like Michael Shanks [Dr. Daniel Jackson] and ask him, ‘What the hell? Why is this like this?’ or, ‘Why do people do this?’ and he’d tell you, ‘Don’t worry, that’s the way it works on Stargate.’ Amanda Tapping [Colonel Samantha Carter] was great at that, too. The SGU guys didn’t have that. They were thrown into this world where they were acting their guts out and then going online and reading comments from people who were berating the show.
“It was really tough for them, and I’m so glad I got the chance to work on their show because I think they got to see that I certainly didn’t have any ill will towards them, and we’re all jobbing actors and we’re all a part of trying to make this thing work. I have to say, too, that, I really like Lou Diamond Phillips. In fact, we ended up going to his kid’s birthday party a couple of weekends later. He’s a lovely guy, but obviously was a little miffed, along with a number of other people, about the fact that I’d said something that quite upset them. However, once I got to the SGU set I was like, ‘Now that you’ve met me, do you understand that it was an off-the-cuff, snarky comment.’ it’s what I say, it’s what I do. My humor is basically based on self-deprecation and demeaning other people.
“So from more than just an acting standpoint, it was really good to get in there and meet these actors and see the people behind the show and discover how great they all are. Again, though, SGU was a very, very different show. It definitely had a totally different feel from Atlantis and it was not one that I felt as comfortable with. I felt like I was a guest-star on SGU. I didn’t feel a part of it, if that makes any sense, and not because of anyone’s attitude towards me, it’s just the nature of the beast. McKay is from a completely different world, but it was really nice of Brad Wright to bring me back. He was very happy to have me there, and I got some closure in a way. I felt like if the show had continued that McKay would have come back and could have fit in.
“In some ways it sounds more like a social visit than an actual work environment, but there was actually some work involved, too, when I was shooting Seizure. Oh, and Robert Picardo, How could forget him. He was there, too. We seem to do like a traveling double act. Bob really enjoyed himself and they loved having him, of course. Again, it was such a weird experience because it wasn’t Atlantis, and I don’t mean that in a bad way. I think the biggest issue that SGU had is that it was called Stargate. If it was just called Universe I think they would probably have fared better because there wouldn’t have been those expectations from the Atlantis or SG-1 fans. It was Stargate but it was a completely new take or tone to the franchise, and I think that made it very difficult for them. Ideally I’d have loved to have been doing Atlantis while SGU was on. That would have, to some extent, helped as well I think. It wouldn’t have been like ripping off a Band Aid and it perhaps would have given SGU the time to become what it wanted to be.”
As is always the case with Hewlett, he has a number of other irons in the fire along with his wife, producer Jane Loughman, including the much talked about Starcrossed web series. “We’re actively pursuing Starcrossed,” enthuses the actor. “I’m working on a feature length version of it, and, in fact, have finished a first synopsis or beat-by-beat of what happens as a feature film. So I got to write a backdoor pilot, basically.
“We were approached again by Syfy about a Starcrossed web series, and what they’re saying, which I think is a smart thing, is that, look, we get a lot of shows pitched to us about unemployed Sci-Fi actors, What they like about Starcrossed is that it’s not about the actors, it’s about the show, and the making of a Sci-Fi show, so we had to figure out how to make that financially viable on the web.
“We came up with the idea of producing a low-budget TV movie up in Vancouver. We’d then be able to use some of the footage from that as well as scenes shot specifically for the Net and come up with the 10 webisodes. That way we would wind up with basically feature film production value on these webisodes as well as a full-length 80-minute backdoor pilot that could be aired as a TV movie. And I’ve got to say that Syfy has been fantastic. They’re trying to frantically figure out all the paperwork, while we’re frantically trying to get a feature ready to go. And we’re pursuing various different additional funding options internationally as well.
“I’m also working on this little feature that’s basically set on one spaceship. It’s kind of The Blair Witch Project meets 2001: A Space Odyssey, which can be shot relatively quickly and in a very sort of low-tech way. It’s a space ghost story, so I think it would be interesting. I’m a big believer in the fact that you should have a million irons in the fire; if something takes off, you go with that, and it something falls apart with that, you’ve got other things to work on."
Steve Eramo
As noted above, photo copyright of Syfy, so please no unauthorized copying or duplicating of any kind. Thanks!
Woo-hoo! Thank you so much, Steve, and David Hewlett, for a charming interview. Best wishes.
Posted by: Kelly Szentgyorgyi | 06/17/2011 at 05:08 AM
I had sworn off SyFy's Saturday-night-specials, but David Hewlett's I'll check out.
And the new Apes.
But still... I really, really miss Atlantis.
Posted by: BMc | 06/19/2011 at 01:25 AM
Incredible interview! I love David Hewlett and this reminds me why. The snarky humor, the funny stories, it's all here. So David... Thanks for the fun read!
Posted by: Caroline | 06/19/2011 at 08:24 AM
Yes. I really, really miss Atlantis too ...
And David Hewlett promised 100 seasons of Dtarget McKay ... LOL
Posted by: Dinabr | 06/20/2011 at 03:32 PM