Lindsay Wagner as Warehouse 13's Dr. Vanessa Calder. Photo copyright of Syfy.
While they may appear to be indestructible, even TV characters need medical attention every now and then. Our heroes on Warehouse 13 are no exception, but given their top secret jobs, including dealing with often dangerous Artifacts, they cannot just stroll into any doctors’ office or nearest emergency room. Fortunately, these government agents can turn to Dr. Vanessa Calder for medical assistance. When it came to casting this recurring role, the Warehouse 13 producers approached Emmy award-winning actress Lindsay Wagner with an offer to step into Vanessa’s shoes and she happily accepted.
“I actually didn’t even know about the show at the time,” says Wagner, “but then I watched a couple of episodes and thought, ‘What an interesting and fun premise.’ When I first became involved, the series hadn’t been on the air that long. It was in its second year, and they had only done, I believe, 12 episodes in the first season, so I’ve enjoyed watching them grow as writers conceiving and evolving the characters as well as the actors growing into their roles. They’ve developed the characters so beautifully on the program and the work they do now is just wonderful.”
In Wagner’s Warehouse 13 debut, the season two episode For the Team, Dr. Calder is called in to treat an ailing Artie Nielsen (Saul Rubinek). Unknown to anyone, the Warehouse agent – who has a bit of a crush on Vanessa – has secretly been using an Artifact every year to grow back his appendix, thus requiring Dr. Calder’s services. This particular episode gave the actress the opportunity to demonstrate more than just her expertise as a performer.
Dr. Calder (Lindsay Wagner) and Artie Nielsen (Saul Rubinek). Photo copyright of Syfy.
"I think what stands out most in my mind about this episode is that the show’s writers actually researched the work that I’ve been doing over the past eight years or so,” she notes. “I run workshops and retreats that focus on holistic healing as well as body, mind and spirit connectiveness. One of the writers looked at my website - www.lindsaywagnerinternational.com - and knew about or was at least somewhat familiar with one of the techniques I teach, which is a ‘tapping process,’ where you tap on your acupuncture points.
“It’s just an extraordinary method for healing negative feelings, old wounds and even physical pain. That’s one of the reasons I started doing the work that I do. I encountered some amazing types of healing modalities that as of yet are not commonplace, but in my opinion should be because they helped me so much.
“The Warehouse 13 writers came up with this little funny moment where Dr. Calder does the tapping process on Artie. I don’t know if you remember the scene where she asks him, ‘Are you doing your tapping?’ She then starts to tap on his face and chest. That’s a real technique that some people know as EFT [Emotional Freedom Technique], while others just call it tapping. The writers wrote it into this episode, but the way they did it wasn’t accurate, so I asked them, ‘Do you mind if I make this my own and do what I’d actually do.’ So they gave me the freedom to adlib a little bit and make it more accurate, as if I were coming in and treating Artie. That was really fun for me, along with, of course, working with Saul, who is such a consummate actor.”
Dr. Calder (Lindsay Wagner) in the season three Warehouse 13 episode "Love Sick." Photo copyright of Syfy.
The official Warehouse physician, Dr. Calder works for the CDC (Center for Disease Control) as her cover, which means that she, too, leads a double life. “Dr. Calder does what she does in a very covert fashion in regards to the outside world, as do the Regents [the executive board of the Warehouse],” says Wagner. “So obviously she has to walk a very careful line with the CDC, which is a pretty heavily institutionalized organization. Vanessa is very good at what she does. If she weren’t an excellent doctor in the traditional way, then she would not be working for the CDC. They don’t take just anybody.
“So she’s highly intelligent and talented as a doctor, but her skills go far beyond what is considered traditional and acceptable, if you will. She has one foot in each world and not only understands energy but also that everything is energy, which is what the Artifacts and how they interface with people is all about. This energy exists, and as they write in a lot of the episodes – for example, the one that was on last night [No Pain, No Gain] – a person’s thoughts can affect an Artifact.
“If you were to talk to Dr. Calder, she would probably say that what you think affects everything. It affects your life and how it unfolds, it affects your relationships, and it affects your health. That’s why I have such a good time playing this character, because these are the types of things that I talk about in my workshops. I try to help people to see that some of their limited thinking processes are sabotaging their health and well-being as well as manifestation of their life, and how they can go about changing that.
Lindsay Wagner as Dr. Vanessa Calder. Photo copyright of Syfy.
“Outside of work, I think what has grown with my character is her willingness to open up and have a relationship. The same is true of Artie. It’s difficult for people who work in our government agencies like the FBI and CIA, because they can’t just walk around saying, ‘Hey, this is what I do for living.’ That’s certainly something that the Warehouse agents and Dr. Calder can’t do, either. So when a human being finds someone who they can be completely open with, that truly is a gift. As much as some people like to remain an island, it just doesn’t work because we’re social beings. That growth and opening up of Artie’s and Vanessa’s relationship is something that can only help bring about a growth in them as people.”
Dr. Calder’s services are required once again during Warehouse 13’s second season, when the reactivation of the lost Warehouse 2 in Egypt causes Mrs. Frederic (CCH Pounder) to fall ill in the episode Buried. Then in season three’s Love Sick, she teams up with Artie, Claudia Donovan (Allison Scagliotti) and Hugo Miller (Rene Auberjonois) to deal with an Artifact that has transformed into a computer virus and is turning people into clay. The physician’s latest appearance is in this (fourth) season’s Fractures, in which the evil entity called Alice escapes for a second time from Lewis Carroll’s looking glass and turns Vanessa’s and Artie’s night out on the town into a nightmare.
“Artie and Vanessa have taken their relationship to another level and have been spending personal time together,” says Wagner. “In this episode they’re headed towards one of their rendezvous, but then Alice arrives and starts wrecking havoc. Over the course of the story, Vanessa has a very troubling time when she’s possessed by Alice, and Artie has a rather surprising response to that.
(L-R): Vanessa (Lindsay Wagner), Artie (Saul Rubinek) and Hugo Miller (Rene Auberjonois) in "Love Sick." Photo copyright of Syfy.
“Acting-wise, I would say the same about this episode as I would about all the others that I’ve shot with Warehouse 13, which is that they’re just an incredibly nice group of people to work for. They have a nice crew and a nice group of actors who are helpful to one another and fun to be around. The levity that’s in the show’s writing is also present on-set. They’ll joke with each other, even in the middle of the night when you’re still shooting, which is really important.”
Actress, producer and published author, Wagner has worked for over forty years in the entertainment industry and during that time has amassed a long and impressive list of feature film and TV credits. Although she became interested in performing at a young age, the actress waited until she was a little older before seriously deciding to pursue an acting career.
“For a while I wanted to be a psychologist, but I found that difficult because I was dyslexic,” she explains. “At that time they didn’t really know how to help dyslexics, and getting through those types of courses was very hard, so I kind of gave up on that.
Vanessa's (Lindsay Wagner) and Artie's (Saul Rubinek) evening takes an unexpected turn in the season four Warehouse 13 episode "Fractures."
“I began studying acting very early, around 12 years old, and not because I wanted to be in the industry but because I used to baby-sit for James Best. He was an actor [now semi-retired] as well as an acting coach for working actors, and he had this group that he worked with. One day he invited me to join them just for the heck of it, and I just kind of took to it [acting]. At one point James said to me, ‘You’re such a natural at this and you could do this very easily, but don’t do it until you grow up.’ I asked him why and he said, ‘Because it’s tough on kids who work a lot, to have any sort of normal life.’
“Back then, in particular, it was so unbalancing [for child actors] and it still can be if the family isn’t really stable. My family was having a lot of problems at the time, so it would have been quite hard for me to have a really solid support system as a child going into acting. So James was just inviting me into his group to try to learn to open up and express myself a little bit.
“Fortunately I listened to him and didn’t really make my decision to go into acting until later on. I asked James, ‘How will I know when I’m ready?’ and he said, ‘You’ll just know. When you feel like you have at least one foot solidly on the ground, then that’s the time to do it. If you’re as successful as I think you could be, you’re going to need to have your feet on the ground in order to survive the business. James was absolutely right. When I was 22 I woke up one day and went, ‘Wow, I’m ready.’ It happened exactly that way. No one planted a seed in my head or anything like that. James also told me, ‘Keep studying between now and when you decide you’re ready, and you won’t have to go through years and years of stuff in order to become successful.’ He was right there, too.”
Actress. producer and published author Lindsay Wagner.
The Paper Chase, Nighthawks, Ricochet and A Light in the Forest are among the actress’ big screen credits. On TV she has appeared in a number of made-for-TV movies and miniseries including The Incredible Journey of Doctor Meg Laurel, The Two Worlds of Jennie Logan, Scruples and The Taking of Flight 847: The Uli Derickson Story as well as guest-starred or had recurring roles on such series as Adam-12, Rod Serling’s Night Gallery, The Rockford Files, Kate & Allie, The Division and Alphas, in which she reprised her role of Dr. Vanessa Calder.
Wagner is perhaps best known by her fans, for her starring role as Jaime Summers in The Bionic Woman. Looking back, what was the most challenging part of working on that series, and what did she enjoy most about playing that character? “The challenges were more learning how to apply the acting that I had studied for so long into film, and learning those types of techniques in the beginning,” says the actress.
“After that, the challenge wasn’t about the acting, but that the [working] hours were so inhumane. Seriously, it was worse than it is today because back then we didn’t have two [film] units. We had one unit and did everything, including the stunts, because we couldn’t separate the shots. So for example, I would have to do the takeoff as well as the landing on a jump. Rita, my stunt person, would do the actual stunt, and depending on how it went, we’d then film the landing part with me, whether it was up or down, and it all had to fit together kind of flawlessly. We didn’t have all the technological things that we have today to be able to fix things. Series TV is tough enough, but when you’re doing that kind of stuff and you can’t really separate unit one and unit two and have them simultaneously doing their part, it makes it even tougher.
Lindsay Wagner as Jaime Summers - "The Bionic Woman."
“As far as what I enjoyed the most, the producers were extremely collaborative, and that was really a joy for me, working on helping develop the stories or tweak them and made the dialogue my own. Ken Johnson [series producer/director/writer] has a great sense of humor and we decided at one point that we were not going to be the same old boring serious cop show. We wanted to bring more fun to it, so we injected humor whenever possible, and Ken was able to write circumstances – especially once he learned my sense of humor – where I was able to do my shtick or eye rolls or other [humorous] things that I did. I enjoyed that a great deal. People often don’t think of me as having a sense of humor, but if you look back on the series, there was a lot of fun stuff. It’s just that I somehow ended playing in strictly dramatic stories. I’m not a comic type comedian, but my mother is very funny and so is my sister. There’s a lot of humor in my family and I grew up with that, so I appreciated Ken’s obvious talent to write and for us to be able to do these espionage stories and still bring humor into the storytelling.”
While glitz, glamour and fame are certainly among the perks associated with becoming a successful actor, Wagner equates a rewarding career in the industry with something far less superficial. “For me, it’s if people really get something out of a particular TV or film project that I’ve done, as opposed to it being considered just momentary entertainment,” she says. “If you look at the body of my work, most of it is human issues-oriented, and if people can come away with something that has helped their life a little bit and learned something about themselves that can help enhance their life, then that makes this [acting] worthwhile for me.”
Steve Eramo
As noted above, all Warehouse 13 photos copyright of Syfy, and all other photos retain their original copyright so please no unauthorized copying or duplicating of any kind. Thanks!
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