I finally have a bit of a breather and some time to get back to posting Sci-Fi Blasts From The Past. Again, these are interviews that previously appeared in print only and never on-line. Today, I look back at my chat with Robert Picardo on the set of Stargate Atlantis about playing Richard Woolsey. Enjoy!
A rather solemn Richard Woolsey walks up a ramp and into the Atlantis gate room, pulling a small suitcase on wheels behind him. He stops to talk with Colonel Samantha Carter, who is standing in front of the active Stargate. After a brief exchange, the I.O.A. representative walks through the “puddle” and the gate shuts off. As Carter turns to leave, Colonel Sheppard arrives.
“Woolsey gone?” asks Sheppard.
"You just missed him,” says Carter.
“Damn. And I really wanted to say goodbye,” says Sheppard, rather sarcastically.
The two colonels turn and walk off together in conversation. “Cut, and print!” says Stargate Atlantis director Andy Mikita. It’s the final shot of the day on the fourth season episode The Seer, and the end of another workweek for Robert Picardo. The actor is in Vancouver filming what will hopefully be the first of several appearances as Richard Woolsey this year on Atlantis. Unfortunately for his character, this has not been the most pleasant of trips to the Pegasus galaxy.
“As the representative of the I.O.A. [International Oversight Advisory], Woolsey carries a certain amount of intimidating power,” explains Picardo. “This time around, he’s here to assess how Colonel Carter [Amanda Tapping] is doing, having taken over command of Atlantis and the expedition here. She’s been in-charge for three months now and it’s up to my character to review her progress. Well, he sees Carter in a crisis situation and, once again, allows his fear get the better of him and attempts to wrest control from her.
“Woolsey tries to pull rank on her and orders a defensive course of action that could probably lead to a much bigger problem. Luckily, Carter has the cooler head. It also turns out she’s right. In the final scene of the episode, which we just filmed, my character basically acknowledges the fact he overstepped his bounds and was wrong. Woolsey asks Carter how she knew it, but she didn’t. It turns out she was taking a calculated risk, the repercussions of which could have been enormous and tragic. So the two part company with a sort of mutual respect and him pretty much saying, ‘You were right this time, and I’m not going to blow your cover. I’m only going to put the good part of the story in my report.’
“It seems my character remains the kind of government guy who comes in, annoys those who are doing the real work and taking the real risks, tries to tell them to do it better, and has to be shown that he’s wrong,” chuckles the actor.
The Richard Woolsey character made his debut in part two of the season seven Stargate SG-1 episode Heroes. Back then, he was an agent for the N.I.D., a civilian branch of the U.S. government. As with his most recent visit to Atlantis, Woolsey’s presence at the S.G.C. (Stargate Command) was far from welcome. “In this story, Woolsey was more or less a straightforward bad guy,” recalls Picardo. “He was brought in to question a command decision that had had tragic results when Dr. Fraiser [Teryl Rothery] was killed. My character was there to stir up the pot and everyone was very much on the defensive.
“As an actor, what was fun for me was that I came in for one day, did all my scenes back-to-back and got to meet the entire SG-1 cast. So personally it was a very pleasant experience, but I was playing a pretty contentious guy who the rest of the characters were suspicious of, especially General Hammond [Don S. Davis], because he was the one who was ultimately responsible for what had happened.
“Woolsey was then brought back as a minion if you will for Vice President Kinsey [Ronny Cox] in the episode Inauguration,” continues the actor. “This was the beginning of the audience seeing that he was genuinely motivated by positive impulses. My character honestly felt there should be civilian overseeing of secret military operations. That was a very important job he had to do and it didn’t much matter to him whether or not he was popular. Woolsey believed that he was really representing the public trust.
“Of course, when Woolsey realized he was being manipulated by Kinsey, who had kind of dark intentions, he stepped back. My character then took a very personal risk and gave information to the William Devane character [of President Henry Hayes] that revealed just what Kinsey was up to. As a result, Woolsey had the opportunity to show that he does have integrity, even though his methods can sometimes be abrasive.”
After events in Inauguration, Woolsey left the N.I.D. and later accepted a watchdog position representing the I.O.A.’s interests at the SGC. In doing so, he had no idea of the adventures, or the dangers, that awaited him. For example, in the season nine SG-1 story The Scourge, Woolsey and a group from the I.O.A. join the SG-1 team on a tour of the Gamma Site, only to be menaced by a swarm of carnivorous alien bugs. This is one of Picardo’s favourite Stargate appearances to date.
“When you take someone like Woolsey, who’s basically very intimidating in a conference room setting, and put him a real situation, suddenly he’s scared, cowardly and all those types of things, which is terrific fun for me to play,” notes the actor. “I suppose that’s the one thing that always reminds me of playing The Doctor on Star Trek: Voyager. That character was programmed for emergency medical use, but when you took him outside his area of expertise, he didn’t have to act heroically. The Doctor could be afraid, he could complain, he could display all these negative qualities in the midst of everyone else who had to be brave and true.
“So you get to reveal another side of your character, which the audience can find amusing, and then when the chips are finally down you can rise to your best self and be kind of a hero in spite of yourself. That was a great deal of fun on Voyager, and I had the same type of opportunity in The Scourge, where the Woolsey character, who had been very authoritative when behind closed doors, unexpectedly found himself in a life-and-death situation, and he’s afraid. That’s subsequently happened to him one or two other times, including when Woolsey was spun over to Atlantis, and particularly last year in the two-part story The Return.
In the aforementioned The Return, Woolsey and General Jack O’Neill (Richard Dean Anderson) are trapped alone on Atlantis and must work together to help retake the city after it’s invaded by the human form Replicators. “I got to be Tweedle Dum to Richard’s Tweedle Dee,” jokes Picardo, “which was a hoot because Woolsey is just the type of person who annoys the hell out of him. Richard has such a wonderful sense of blasé and irony, and when you put that next to someone who’s in full-blown panic, like Woolsey, it’s bound to be funny. Talk about a match made in heaven.
“I loved the scene where O’Neill has to go underwater and Woolsey is panicked about being left alone. He’s like a little girl, and I don’t mean to alienate any female readers, but my character is so scared because he thinks if O’Neill dies then he’s really all alone. I particularly enjoyed that moment of panic. I also liked when O’Neill saddles Woolsey with two guns, and they let me adlib the line, ‘I can do this.’ Like he can be Rambo, too, and then, of course, he can’t. It’s sort of a misdirect to the viewer. You think Woolsey is going to step up to the plate, be given the guns and succeed, but, in fact, fails. I thought that was great.
“Oddly enough, I had met Richard Dean Anderson many times over the years, and even though I’d made several appearances on SG-1, the two of us never had a scene together. So to finally get to hang around with him and work with him on Atlantis was an absolute pleasure.”
Prior to shooting Atlantis’s The Seer, Picardo appeared onstage in Los Angeles playing the lead in Arthur Miller’s Broken Glass. He also collaborated with the New England Orchestra on a tribute to Ira Gershwin called Pardon My English. Among the actor’s recent TV roles are guest-spots on Cold Case and The Closer, and he has four independent feature films due for release in the not-too-distant future, including P.J. starring John Heard.
“I also have a new website, robertpicardo.net,” says Picardo, “along with robertpicardo.com, both of which I encourage people to have a look at. I’m now on My Space, too, so I’m completely available on the Internet,” he smiles.
Despite Woolsey’s misstep in The Seer, Picardo hopes his character will be back again this year on Atlantis. “Every time I get a script I always flip to the end to see if they’ve killed Woolsey off,” jokes the actor. “He’s still alive and well, which is definitely a good sign.”
Steve Eramo
Comments