Dark Matter's Kal Varrick a.k.a. Six (Roger Cross). Photo copyright of Syfy/SPACE.
Most people have at one time or another walked from one room to the next and completely forgotten what they were looking for. Imagine if you awoke from a deep sleep and had no idea who you were or how you came to be in your current surroundings. That was the situation facing the Raza crew in Dark Matter’s first season opener. It was soon revealed that all but two of them were escaped criminals being hunted by the Galactic Authority, including Griffin Jones a.k.a. Six. A member of the Procyon Insurrection, he was part of the rebellion against the GA, and had unknowingly participated in the mass murder of 10,000 people onboard a space station.
In fact, Griffin Jones ultimately revealed himself to be Lt. Kal Varrick, an undercover GA agent who betrayed his crewmates and turned them over to the authorities in the closing moments of the show’s season one finale. Creatively, this surprising turnabout was met with great excitement by actor Roger Cross, who plays Six, and presented him as well as his character with quite the inner moral struggle to deal with onscreen.
“When I first found out about Six’s true identity I thought, ‘Hmm, this could be fun,’” recalls Cross. “Would Six now become this guy who ends up hunting his friends down, because at the time I didn’t know where my character’s story was headed. At the same time, I was also bummed because we spent the entire first season establishing and building this bizarre dysfunctional family. It had become them against the world, and now we’d broken that family up. That camaraderie would not really be the same, but, again, it gave our writers the chance to open up some new storytelling avenues.
“I remember shooting those scenes in last year’s finale where the GA guys storm onboard the Raza. At one point, Melissa O’Neil’s character of Two is lying unconscious on the floor. When they were setting the shot up, Melissa looked at me and said, ‘Give me your phone.’ So I did, and she took this low angle badass picture of me with my mask on, which I still have on my phone. Funnily enough, I looked almost like a Star Wars Storm Trooper,” jokes the actor.
“Looking at that photo, I thought, ‘It’s going to be interesting moving forward how we deal with this.’ To Joe Mallozzi’s [series co-creator/executive producer] credit, he was able to twist it around so that although Six did betray his friends and turn them in, it was for the right reasons. He wasn’t just a cop who was out to make a name for himself. My character felt a great deal of guilt over what he had done. Earlier in the season, Six had the chance to prevent a second mass murder, and he didn’t. He couldn’t live with that, and as much as he loved his crewmates, they didn’t realize they were a danger to themselves. If you recall, there’s the scene on the Raza shuttle where Four [Alex Mallari Jr.] tells Six, ‘There are lots of things you could have done to stop us, but didn’t, so you’re just as much to blame.’ On top of that, my character cares a lot about Five [Jodelle Ferland]. He thinks that she deserves a shot at a real life as opposed to being around a bunch of criminals who are running from the law. So Six is trying to stand up for himself while also giving this young lady the chance at a decent life.”
In Dark Matter’s season two opener Welcome to Your New Home, Two, Three (Anthony Lemke) and Four are imprisoned in the Hyperion-8 Maximum Security facility. While the GA attempts – without success –to extract information from the ship’s android (Zoie Palmer), Five is kept in protective custody and One (Marc Bendavid) is released and resumes his old life. Six, too, returns to his old life and active duty alongside his friend and fellow GA officer Lt. Anders (Jeff Teravainen), but given the circumstances, it was hardly business as usual for Six.
“in this episode and the one that followed [Kill Them All], I got to take my character to a place where there was controversy and the realization that he’s screwed up and now has to make up for that,” notes Cross. “It was a wonderful [acting] challenge trying to play the nuances of Six still believing in what he did, but also having to admit that at the end of the day he was wrong. Here was the Galactic Authority, who Six believed stood for something and who he trusted to bring justice to the universe, but was, in fact, basically just a group of hired thugs. Meanwhile, it was the big corporations who were paying them and pulling the strings.
“The first two episodes this season also allowed me to share some terrific scenes with Jeff Teravainen. He’s a great guy, a real gentleman and a talented actor who’s willing to go the extra mile and do whatever needs to be done in a scene. Our onscreen relationship is a really interesting one in that Lt. Anders is, in a sense, Six’s only conduit to his real past. This is the person who my character is trusting for information, but then as Five points out, ‘Yes, he told you this and that happened, but how do you know he’s telling the truth? Maybe it’s a lie or things didn’t exactly happen that way.’ Six really is kind of screwed because unlike the others, he can’t download his memories. They haven’t been stored anywhere, so he truly is starting from this point on. Six is off to a pretty rocky start, too, given that he betrayed the only people he trusted and who trusted him.”
In Kill Them All, Six is mortally wounded when he helps his friends escape from Hyperion-8. His injuries are so severe that Two and the others are forced to place him back in stasis until such time that they steal the necessary supplies so that Devon (Shaun Sipos), who escaped with them, can operate on him. Devon manages to save his life in We Were Family, and as Six regains his strength, he must deal with the guilt he is feeling as well as work to win back the trust of those he betrayed.
“You can do wrong and say, ‘I don’t care,’, or you can wallow in self-pity and think, ‘I’m just a bad person,’ and drink yourself into a stupor. The brave thing to do, though, is to try to make amends and move forward,” says Cross. “As Three said, ‘Get busy living, or get busy dying. Don’t just sit there and wallow in the past and wonder what could have been. Instead, do something about it that will give your life some purpose.’
“So if you think about it, Six is actually in a strong position, because he’s decided to stay with these people and do whatever it takes to make things up to them. I think what bothers him the most, and he says it in one of the episodes, is that Five is one of the reasons Six did what he did. As a result, he has hurt her the most. She feels betrayed and will never really trust Six in the same way again, so it’s going to take a lot of work on his part to change that. He also feels guilty about the fact that although he didn’t kill One, because he turned them in, One was accessible and ended up murdered. So given everything my character did and the subsequent fallout, it’s going to be easier for some to forgive him, than it will for others.”
Along with Devon Taltherd, the Raza crew was helped by fellow inmates Arax Nero (Mike Dopud) and Nyx Harper (Melanie Liburd) with their escape from Hyperion-8. Although they have since parted company with Arax, both Nyx and Devon remain onboard the ship. Needless to say, Six has to interact with them as well and establish two new relationships.
“However shaky the poor guy’s hands were, Devon operated on Six and saved his life, so my character has to be thankful to the guy,” says Cross. “At first, Six was a bit upset because he thought it was all over and was ready to die, but Devon saved him, so maybe down the road, Six will be able to help him out. As for Nyx, she’s a criminal, and Six is a cop, so there’s some interesting interaction that goes on when they’re around each other, a lot of which is done with body language,” says the actor with a chuckle. “It hasn’t as yet gotten to the point where the two of them are chummy, but watching it try to build towards that is quite entertaining.
“One of things I really like about this season is that you get to see the softer side, or maybe vulnerable side is more accurate, of some of these guys, and sometimes that’s what brings people together. When you expose the wounds that you have in common it helps you relate to one another. There’s a very nice scene later this season involving everyone, but, in particular, Two and Six. I’m curious to see how that turned out. There’s some crazy stuff coming up for all of our characters, and I have to say I’m pleased with where Six ends up at the end of the season.”
Besides zipping around the universe onboard the Raza in Dark Matter, Cross has been very busy working on a variety of other projects. “I was able to spend a few weeks shooting a role in [the upcoming feature film] War for the Planet of the Apes,” he enthuses. “I also worked on a cool gaming project with Neill Blomkamp, who directed District 9. A little while back, we put out a teaser photo of me wearing a VR [virtual reality] suit and helmet. I’ll be doing a second project with Neil that is just hilarious and quite different from anything anyone might expect. I’m really looking forward to seeing peoples’ reactions to that. I’m also voicing the characters of Green Lantern and Swamp Thing in the upcoming Justice League animated movie, which was a tremendous amount of fun."
Steve Eramo
Dark Matter airs Fridays @10:00 p.m. EST on Syfy US and Canada's SPACE Channel (check local listings for other days/times). As noted above, photo copyright of Syfy/SPACE, so please no unauthorized copying or duplicating of any kind. Thanks!
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