In today's Sci-Fi Blast From the Past, veteran stage and screen actor Beau Bridges talks about working on the series finale of Stargate SG-1 playing General Hank Landry as well as the two straught-to-DVD movies Stargate: The Ark of Truth and Stargate: Continuum. Enjoy!
The Goa’uld, the Ori, the Lucian Alliance – these are just some of the hostile alien factions that Stargate SG-1’s General Hank Landry has dealt with since taking over as head of Stargate Command. Like his predecessors, he has done everything in his power over the past two years to help keep Earth and the rest of the Milky Way galaxy safe from extraterrestrial attack. The general’s tour of duty, however, recently came to an end, at least on the small screen, as SG-1 finished its 10th and final season on TV. In the series finale, Unending, the SG-1 team and Landry are trapped onboard the Odyssey when Colonel Carter uses a time dilation field to protect the ship from being destroyed by the Ori.
“I really liked how the writers handled the last episode,” enthuses Beau Bridges, who plays General Landry. “I thought it was masterfully done. They had a great deal to attend to, especially given everything that had happened over the years on the show, and I think the fans were looking for some answers. As is the usual style of Stargate, they left the door open at the end in case they wanted to do more stories. And, In fact, as most people know, we came back this year and shot two movies [Stargate: The Ark of Truth and Stargate: Continuum].
“As far as Unending, I felt that it did answer a number of questions and brought things together. I loved the whole idea of the ship being frozen in time, with the oncoming blast from the energy weapon just inching towards us, and everyone growing older. We had a lot of fun with it. I thought they [the writers] delved more into the human side of our characters, which doesn’t happen very often with all the action going on. That’s always nice as an actor as it gives you more to invest yourself in. Over the past couple of years, the writers and I have gotten to know each other, and, for example, they know I love growing things – I raise orchids at home – so they wrote something along those lines into the story for my character. So I enjoyed that, and, of course, General Landry going into outer space onboard the Odyssey. He doesn’t get to do that too often.”
In Unending, General Landry and SG-1 age 50 years as a result of time passing at a normal rate within the confines of the Odyssey. That meant some early mornings spent in the make-up chair for Bridges and the rest of the SG-1 cast. “During my career I’ve done a lot of not only old age make-up, but special effects make-up as well, and it’s really changed quite a bit over the years,” notes the actor. “It used to be that they would put these big foam pieces on you. Those types of prosthetics were very ungainly and heavy on your face. Also, if you had to wear them for an extended period of time you would end up with big abrasions on your skin from where the prosthetics had been applied.
"Nowadays it’s a totally different ballgame. They use very thin prosthetics which are applied in little pieces. I actually didn’t have too many of those [prosthetics] on me for Stargate. They work with your own skin as well, ‘pinching it’ together and putting various type of make-up on it to coagulate the skin and give it an older appearance. A great deal is done with shading, too. If I remember, for Unending, I also had to wear a bald cap, which goes over the top of your head, and then they put a wig over that to give my character very thinning white hair. That was pretty much the deal. The entire process sometimes took two or three hours, but the people in the make-up department are friends of mine, so I didn’t mind sitting there at all.”
What challenges did Bridges find working behind the old-age prosthetics? “I didn’t have to wear the mask for any particular length of time, and I didn’t have much dialogue while wearing it either,” he says. “I think there were only a couple of shots with me in the make-up, including one where my character is staring out a window of the Odyssey at the energy beam coming from the Ori ship. That was a long shot because it wrapped all the way around the outside of the ship and sort of looked in at me, but, again, I didn’t have much to say.
“When I played Richard Nixon [in the 1995 made-for-TV film Kissinger and Nixon] I wore a full mask where just my eyes showed. I spoke a lot for that part, and I was also playing an actual person who everyone knew, so I had to do the best I could to capture his voice and mannerisms. I discovered that to get all that across to an audience, I had to kind of behave beyond how I normally would physically. Once I got used to it I was fine, but it was a challenge. Perhaps subconsciously that experience served me well when I did those few scenes with the old age make-up on Stargate.”
Production on season 10 of SG-1 wrapped at the beginning of October, 2006, and Bridges remembers the final day of work on Unending very well. “It wasn’t terribly emotional, but you could certainly feel that we had been together for quite a while,” recalls the actor. “This business is funny in that I’ve found it’s like a bunch of little births and deaths. With every job there are new people, you make good friends, get close to them – especially with SG-1 where most of the people had worked together for 10 years – and then you part company. What’s also true, though, in this business is that a lot times you come back around and work again with people who you thought you never would. As difficult as it is, it’s also, I think, very healthy because that’s really what life is. Life is a collection of beginnings and endings.”
Along with his involvement in the SG-1 series and both DVD films, the actor also had the opportunity to guest-star on SG-1’s sister series, Stargate Atlantis, season four of which begins airing on the Sci Fi Channel in the States at the end of September. “I had a ball on Atlantis,” says Bridges. “I did, I believe, three or four episodes in the last couple of years. I like the cast, they’re good folks, and again it gives Landry the chance to step out of the usual place of his office or the SGC control room and mix it up with a different team. It also allows me to touch areas that my character normally doesn’t get into, and usually on a really human level. I hope they continue to make that show for a while; maybe I’ll get to do more episodes.”
This past spring, Bridges returned to Vancouver and Bridge Studios to reprise his role of General Hank Landry for both direct-to-DVD Stargate SG-1 movies. “The Ark of Truth was fun because SG-1 deals with the Ori, who get their comeuppance, which I think the fans will be happy about,” says the actor. “The second film [Continuum] I enjoyed maybe a bit more because we get to see another version of General Landry in a different plane of existence. That’s something they’ve done before on Stargate, but my character has never really been involved in it.
“So you have a Landry who’s basically retired and not wanting to be pushed into the forefront of the action. He can’t understand why the others are getting so whipped up about everything. I had a great time with that. They wrote some wonderful scenes for me and we shot them out at one of the local airports. The U.S. Air Force flew some of their F-15 fighters up for the second movie and we got to meet the pilots. It was cool.”
“Martin Wood directed the second movie, and he’s been with Stargate forever. I always like working with him. He’s got such vitality and is full of great ideas. Martin also has a lot of confidence now that he’s done this for so long. I’ll be interested to see where his career goes from here. Hopefully we’ll make more Stargate films and he’ll continue to direct them.
“Of course, Robert Cooper [SG-1 executive producer and Atlantis co-creator/executive producer] wrote as well as directed The Ark of Truth. I was directed by him once before last season and I think he’s very talented. Robert is passionate about the creative side of things, and I think directing is just a natural extension of writing. If you’ve written a piece and you’re directing it, that’s a good thing because you clearly have a strong sense of the story you want to tell.”
When it comes to his more down-to-Earth work, the Emmy-award winning Bridges recently received another Emmy nomination for his recurring role as Carl Hickey, Earl’s (Jason Lee) father on the hit NBC sitcom My Name is Earl. “That character is a total departure from General Landry. I mean, I was hurling gerbils in one of the last episodes I did,” chuckles the actor. “It’s just a crazy off-the-wall comedy which I’ve always loved doing.
“I have a film coming out with Sarah Jessica Parker called Spinning Into Butter, and I did a movie with Mischa Barton called Don’t Fade Away, which will also be released soon. So it’s been a busy year for me so far and, thankfully, it’s not over yet.”
Steve Eramo
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