SciFiAndTvTalk

Defying Gravity ' s Ty Olsson - Daydream Believer

[caption id="attachment_2621" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Ty Olsson as Defying Gravity's Rollie Crane. Photo by Kharen Hill and copyright of Fox Studios/ABC"][/caption] International Space Organization (ISO) Astronaut Rollie Crane was a man on top of the world. After five years of training, he was ready to command a team of three other men and four women, including his wife, biologist Jen Crane, on a six-year mission to explore the other planets sharing Earth's solar system. Then, suddenly, Rollie's dream was snatched away from him and his long-anticipated journey to the stars was over before it even began. While he could not dispute the reason behind this,it was no less discouraging and heartbreaking, especially having to be separated from Jen. However, as he later tells a colleague, Rollie has to follow his own advice to "suck it up" and get on with his job. Sharing his burden is Ty Olsson, who plays Rollie in Defying Gravity, and while both the character and the actor suit one another, things could have turned out much differently. "When my manager and I first got wind of this project, I put myself on tape because I wasn't available for the actual audition," says Olsson. "From that tape, the show's casting people brought me in for a live audition, and I ended up trying out for three different roles. I think I put Maddux Donner on tape first [a role that ultimately went to Ron Livingston], then I read for Ted Shaw [Malik Yoba], and twice for Rollie. My last audition was for Ted, and it's funny because I remember [executive producer] Michael Edelstein saying, 'Oh, I think the Ted character is perfect for you.' Then, of course, Rollie was the one that came down the pike, which, honestly, I think is a perfect fit." In Defying Gravity's first season opener, Rollie and a fellow member of the Antares crew are called back to Earth prior to the actual start of the mission. Both men are found to have a previously undiagnosed heart condition and there is no other recourse but to ground them. Ted Shaw is chosen as the Antares' new commander, while Rollie is reassigned as capsule communicator. Rather than experiencing the mission in-person, he must watch it unfold from in front of a monitor in ISO's Mission Control. Like his fellow actors, Olsson was suitably impressed when he saw Rollie's working digs for the first time. "I think you get a feel for the creative minds behind a project when you walk onto the sets for the first time, and when I saw Mission Control I thought it looked like a movie set," recalls the actor. "I was just blown away by its level of detail and that of the Antares set. It's comforting to look around and think, 'OK, they put the money in the right place. This is a really good set to play on.' That's easily my first memory of working on Defying Gravity. I'm sitting in the [production office] board room right now and looking at the dozens of drawings and pictures on the wall of the Antares bio lab, the medical bay, the flight deck, Mission Control, etc. It's unbelievable the amount of work and creativity that has gone into preparing this series, and it shows on the screen. "Besides the sets, I can't talk about our first episode without mentioning [director] David Straiton. He is the wackiest and funniest dude and he has such a cool creative energy about him. When you start a new show you don't know what the people who are running the ship will be like. And from David, you get a sense that he's a guy who allows you to play as well as make bold [acting] choices and doesn't pigeonhole you into his idea only of how a scene should go. So I felt like everyone from the bottom up had the same type of creative energy that flows together. Our camera crew is the same one that worked on Battlestar Galactica and in my mind are some of the best in the business. "When I saw those guys were signed up, and I got to meet David, and I'd already met Michael Edelstein, I knew I'd be very happy working in this place for the next five or six months. I'm very critical of the stuff I'm in, but I have no qualms about saying that this is a top-notch show and one that came together quite well. I mean, you look at the first episodes of some shows, even huge hits, and think, 'Wow, they weren't really gelled there.' Some first episodes never look as good as the ones that follow, but I have to say that ours looks really tight." Fans of Defying Gravity know that its story is told in present day/Mission Control time as well as in flashbacks. So besides seeing Rollie at work, you also get to see him during training for the Antares mission, which is when he and Jen (Christina Cox) first met. As one of "the boys," Rollie joined his fellow astronauts for beers at the local watering hole, and even took part in a bet with their female colleagues that he and the other male astronauts could overcome the effects of a libido-inhibitor patch designed for use during their mission. While he is still just as good-natured, loyal and kind, Rollie has grown since his training days, which has allowed Olsson to show more facets of his character. [caption id="attachment_2725" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Rollie Crane at his post in Mission Control. Photo by Sergei Bachlakov and copyright of Fox Studios/ABC"][/caption] "When I originally auditioned for Rollie, I was told that they [the show's producers/writers] were going to go a different way with the character and make him a little goofier and a bit of a nerd," he notes. "I gave them a version of that when I read for the part, but later on when I got the job and read the first script. I realized that Rollie wasn't really like that. So I decided to kind of go against that and made him somewhat stoic, very professional and, for lack of a better word, a quarterback. I wanted him to be the high school quarterback/all-American type of guy who is always above-board and could be relied on to get the job done. The character read to me like someone who should be commanding a multi-billion dollar space mission. "So that was an acting challenge because I was coming in with something performance-wise that I hadn't really shown them. Luckily, an episode or two into shooting, Michael said to me, 'We really like what you've done with your character.' I thought, 'Whew,' because you're never sure how something like that is going to turn out. "The other thing I've tried to layer into Rollie, in particular during the flashback sequences, is to make it seem that he was much more easygoing and a bit wilder in his younger days. I think he experiences a lot in the five years heading up to the mission that kind of change him. Again, you never know how it's all going to play out, but in my mind Rollie is much goofier and younger in behavior in the flashbacks than he is in present-day as the former commander of the Antares. So that's been tricky, to kind kind of keep that in my back pocket and not make my character one level all the time. You don't want anyone to come across as one-dimensional, so it's a matter of trying to keep him all those things that I've talked about, but also make him a real person with flaws and who occasionally has chinks taken out of his 'armor.' Also, we haven't pinpointed 100% when Rollie found out about Beta, but I'm guessing it was fairly late in the preparation leading up to the mission, and something like that has to change your outlook on life a little bit." The aforementioned "Beta" that the actor referred to is, in fact, an unseen enigma that appears to be manipulating events regarding the Antares mission. It is inferred that Beta is responsible for the medical condition that led to Rollie and Chief Engineer Ajay Sharma (Zahf Paroo) being removed from the mission. This also meant that Rollie's and Jen's outer space "honeymoon" would not take place. Instead, they spent some time alone together on the Antares observation deck before Rollie returned home to Earth. "I think Rollie had a crush on Jen from day one," says Olsson. "When it comes to relationships with the opposite sex, that's one area where he's not the star quarterback who whisks women off their feet. He's not a great pick-up artist. I think he's slightly shell-shocked by Jen as well as a little love struck in the early days and slow to take action. Part of that could have been that he was a superior officer within the [mission] program at the time. Rollie is hopelessly in love with her, though, and falls for Jen early on. The chemistry between them is fun to play, and Christina Cox is terrific to work opposite. She's very giving and listens as an actor, and the two of us have had a great time exploring who these two characters are as a couple. "Christina and I have had some wonderful scenes via video conferencing between Jen on the Antares and Rollie back on Earth, and the funny thing is we don't actually do the scenes together. I don't remember which episode it was, but I was doing one of these calls with Christina on the other end and, of course, they hadn't shot her portion of it yet. We did it a few times, and one of the great things about [director] Peter Howitt is that he has this belief that an actor should be able to do one take for himself - even if it's terrible, even if it's stupid, even if it's in another language - which is awesome. "We did the scene as scripted and then I asked Peter if I could do one [take] for myself and he said, 'Sure.' So I just let it rip, and I'm sure it was my best take of the day. That's something I truly appreciate as an actor. When a director trusts you enough to say, 'Have a freebie. This one's for you. Do whatever you want,' that, as an actor, is gold for me." [caption id="attachment_2726" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Rollie onboard the Antares. Photo by Sergei Bachlakov and copyright of Fox Studios/ABC"][/caption] A husband, father and actor, Olsson was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, and, like many people in the business, never imagined that he would one day make this his career. "I actually went to a performing arts high school, and from grade nine onwards I did two hours of drama a day. So I had the [acting] bug, but because I was never one to think what tomorrow might bring, I never considered this as a possible profession," explains the actor. "It wasn't until my final year of high school, when I still had no idea what I was going to do with my life, that it dawned on me that everyone else was trying out for theater schools and I thought, 'Wow, people can actually make a living at this. That's awesome. I'm going to try it, too.' I've lived a somewhat blessed life in that way, having been pushed and nudged in the right direction and I'm very grateful for that." The actor chuckles when asked about his on-camera debut. "My wife loves to tell this story. My first paying job ever for movies or TV was The X-Files [season five's Kitsunegari] when the program was at the height of its popularity. I came home from work and my wife asked, 'How was it?' And all I could say was, 'The catering was amazing! They had steak, prawns, salads, fruit, desserts...' My very first professional day as an actor and the biggest thing I had to talk about was the food," jokes Olsson. "Daniel Sackheim directed this episode, and he's a super-intense guy. I told him years later when I worked with him again that I thought he was going to have a heart attack on The X-Files. I remember doing a scene where I was supposed to grab a doorknob and open the door as part of a spooky X-Files storyline. We did 14 takes, and I began to sweat and get really nervous. I wondered, 'Why do we keep doing this over and over? What the hell am I screwing up?' "I think it was one of the crew who finally noticed that I was starting to sweat, and he leaned over to me and said, 'Don't worry, it's not you. He [the director] thinks he's shooting a feature [film].' I was like, 'Thank God,' because I was going crazy trying to figure out how I could get something like that wrong. Those were the glory days, though. I was on that set for five days shooting the opening teaser and I had a blast." Olsson has since appeared in several made-for-TV movies as well as miniseries and guest-starred on dozens of other shows such as Dead Man's Gun, Cold Squad, The Outer Limits, Tru Calling, The L Word and Eureka. The actor also played the recurring roles of Captain Aaron Kelly in Battlestar Galactica and Danny in the Stephen King miniseries Kingdom Hospital. "I was a huge fan of Battlestar Galactica and all the people who worked on it, so I was thrilled whenever I got a call from the producers telling me that they were bringing Captain Kelly back," he says. "It was a fun show to work on and a bit stressful as well. This was a group of people who worked together for years and shot dozens of episodes, and I'd come back and have to remember how to pronounce some of the technical terms. I loved the challenge, though, and when I did the show, I also did my homework to make sure I was up to speed on everything. [caption id="attachment_2727" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Mission Control Flight Director Mike Goss (Andrew Airlie) and Rollie. Photo by Sergei Bachlakov and copyright of Fox Studios/ABC"][/caption] "Kingdom Hospital was a great show to work on as well," continues Olsson. "It was weird as well as creepy and creatively really on the edge in a lot of ways. My character of Danny was a paramedic and most of my scenes were with Ben Ratner, who is terrific to work with. I first met him during, I believe, a second callback for the part. The casting people were pairing actors up to read and they put us together. Ben and I chatted in the hall for 30 seconds, went into the audition room, did the scene, and the director looked at us and asked, 'How long have you two been working together?' It was one of those instant chemistry things where Ben and I just hit it off really well, and that's always a bonus." On the big screen, Olsson's credits include Lake Placid, Missing in America, Elektra, The Day the Earth Stood Still and X2: X-Men United as Mitchell Laurio. "A job like that is a dream come true insofar as getting to work with all those people with such amazing careers," says the actor. "I was telling someone not too long ago that I put on 35 pounds in three weeks for this role. When I was hired, I was told, 'Hey, we want you to go on a beer and pizza diet.' Well, you don't have to tell me twice. I already admitted how much I love the catering at work. "Wardrobe took my measurements three days after I got the job and I told them that I was going to put on some weight. When I went for my first costume fitting there was something like a three-inch gap between the button and buttonhole of my pants. I came back three weeks later and there was still a gap because I'd gotten that much bigger, so they had to switch pants. On the first day of filming, there was another three-inch gap, so they had to let the pants out again. After Ian McKellen [Eric Lensherr/Magneto] found out I'd put all that weight on, he would come over to me every day, pat my stomach and ask if I needed anything from craft services," laughs the actor. Around the world, there are people who begrudgingly get up every morning and go to work, but Olsson is not one of them. "I'm so lucky to be doing something that makes me happy," he enthuses. "I like to audition, I like to work, I like to be on-set and I love the creative process and problem solving. I also enjoy surprising people and being the guy who doesn't look like an actor but who has a great deal to offer. "Growing up, I was a daydreamer, and my daughter is the same. It makes me so happy when she says, 'I'm going to bed early because I would like to daydream before I go to sleep.' That was me to a tee. I used to love to lay in bed and daydream, and now I get to make those daydreams my career. I should have been born in a different time, too. I've always felt I was in the wrong time-line, and this [acting] is my way of finding those alternate realities that I fit into." Steve Eramo Defying Gravity is produced by Fox Television Studios and OmniFilm Productions, in association with the BBC, Canada's CTV and Germany's ProSieben. As noted above, all photos by Kharen Hill or Sergei Bachlakov, so please no unauthorized copying or duplicating of any form. Thanks!

Defying Gravity ' s Andrew Airlie - In Control

[caption id="attachment_2456" align="aligncenter" width="225" caption="Andrew Airlie as Mission Control Flight Director Mike Goss in Defying Gravity. Photo by Kharen Hill and copyright of Fox Studios/ABC"][/caption] What if your job required you to go away for a very, very, long time, say six years? And what if that journey would take you far, far, away from your loved ones and all else that is familiar to you, say, eight billion miles? You would want someone who was on the ball and with plenty of experience watching your back, right? On ABC's new Sci-Fi drama Defying Gravity, that person is Mike Goss. As flight director of the spaceship Antares, his post is Earth's Mission Control where he oversees a team of eight astronauts on a journey to explore Venus as well as other planets in our solar system. Production-wise it was almost down to the wire when the show's producers offered actor Andrew Airlie the chance to step into the shoes of the calm, cool, collected and by-the-book Goss. "I came into the [casting] process a bit late into the game," notes Airlie. "I don't think the casting directors had suggested me to [executive producers] Michael Edelstein and Jim Parriott because at the time I was under contract to another series and wasn't really available to audition. However, it was getting, I believe,down to the wire and they still hadn't nailed down anyone for Goss. So casting directors Heike [Brandstatter] and Corren [Mayrs] suggested me to the producers and brought me in to audition. "So it came up quite suddenly, and I didn't know much about the show other than the 'DNA' of it, which was that Michael Edelstein and Jim Parriott were two of the executive producers and I was familiar with their work and reputation. I also knew that Ron Livingston [Chief Engineer Maddux Donner] was attached to the project, and I'm a huge fan of his work. I thought, 'Well, all that's a pretty good start.' "When I went in to audition I hadn't read the full script, only the two audition scenes, but I thought the writing was terrific and I really liked the character. He's so different from most of the roles I play. Very often I'm cast as the nice guy, and Mike Goss isn't especially worried about being a nice guy. He has an enormous mission to run and he's not interested in making friends or having others think favorably of him. He's a get-the-job-done-type of guy and that intrigued me. So I went in and had what I thought was a good audition, and Jim and Michael must have felt the same way because they said, 'OK, get him. ' As it turned out, the other series I was working on didn't get renewed, so I was able to come over to Defying Gravity and I couldn't have been happier." Born in Glasgow, Scotland, Airlie was around nine or ten years old when he began thinking about what he would like to do when he grew up. Acting was on the list, only not at the top. "I always had it in my mind that I was going to be a professional soccer player until I turned 30 - which when you're 10 years old means you're an old man and pretty much done as a player - and then immediately become an actor," he recalls. "Both my parents loved the cinema and as a child they took me to films a lot. And as so many children sitting in a dark movie theater and looking up at the screen, it was magical and I wanted to be up there, too. [caption id="attachment_2457" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Mike Goss tries to work out a solution to a problem threatening the Antares mission. Photo by Sergei Bachlakov and copyright of Fox Studios/ABC"][/caption] "I kicked around on the edges of professional soccer and player semi-pro for a couple of years, but then I realized that I was a dime-a-dozen kind of central defender player and decided instead to pursue an education. I went on to get my undergraduate degree and a Masters in international relations and was accepted to Columbia University to begin a PhD. I was 26 or 27, and the summer before going to Columbia, I said to myself, 'I've got to give acting a shot, otherwise 20 years or so from now I'm going to regret it.' "I wrote to Columbia to ask for a year's deferral, and then naively went out, got some headshots taken and wrote a very scholarly-sounding letter to all the agents in Toronto saying that I wanted to pursue acting. I had three meetings and two of the agencies offered to take me on. I chose one and the next day they sent me to audition for a beer commercial. I got the job as well as the next two I went out for. I thought, 'This is a lark. It's like falling off a horse,'" jokes the actor. "Of course, there were lean patches after that, but I got off to a pretty good start. My third job was a campaign for Cathay Pacific Airlines and I went to Hong Kong for a month and it was so much fun. From there I began to make contacts and found out who I should study with. So I took classes and then started to climb the ladder with bit parts, then small principle roles, followed by principle roles and worked my way up that way." No stranger to moviegoers and TV watchers, the actor has appeared in such feature films as The Freshman, Fear, Final Destination 2, Fantastic Four and the upcoming Dear Mr. Gacy. On TV, Airlie has appeared on dozens of series including The Commish, The X-Files, The 4400, DaVinci's Inquest and Mysterious Ways. The actor makes his Defying Gravity debut in the show's first season opener. His character of Mike Goss is seen prepping the crew of the Antares for its mission. Audiences also see his involvement in a prior expedition to Mars where he ordered Maddux Donner and Ted Shaw (Malik Yoba) to leave their fellow astronauts behind. This has led to a somewhat strained professional relationship between him and Donner, and in the first episode, both men have a heated verbal exchange, and later on, Goss is on the receiving end of Donner's fist. All this proved immensely satisfying for Airlie to play. "That first episode remains one of my favorites," he says. "My character was involved quite heavily in it, and when we were filming it there was all this new energy. This project was new for everyone, and everyone wants to set the bar really high with their first episode, so I just remember everyone bringing their best work to the table. Not that that hasn't continued since, but you can really feel it when everyone is on the same page and you're not in the dog days of filming and the cast and crew are tired. The energy was just extraordinary, and also everyone was trying to find the tone of the show in a collaborative way, so it was fantastic. [caption id="attachment_2460" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Mike Goss at his post in Mission Control. Photo by Sergei Bachlakov and copyright of Fox Studios/ABC"][/caption] "I also had the opportunity to do a number of scenes with Ron in the series opener, more so than in later ones because his character is up in space and mine is back on Earth. The only other opportunity is in flashbacks, and Mike Goss tends to be slightly less involved in the flashbacks, so having those early scenes with Ron was a fantastic experience because he's just gold to work with. The scene where Donner punches Goss was great to shoot, as was the one where my character chews Donner out after he jumps the British reporter. That's one of my favorite scenes, and I remember thinking on the day we shot it, 'Wow, I hope we got all that,' because we did it at the end of the day and it was kind of a crushed and compressed scene. However, when I saw it in the final cut, I loved it. The way [director] David Straiton composed it and the way our camera guys shot it through some of the steel railings and from a lower angle worked so well. Everything that scene needed was there, so hats off to those guys." While Mike Goss may not worry if people like him or not, he still has to carry himself in a professional manner while on the Mission Control floor as well as maintain a certain rapport with those around him. "Mike is someone who is married to the space program - it comes before everything else, so friendships aren't especially important to him or on the forefront of his mind," explains Airlie. "That said, his relationship with Karen LeBlanc's character of Eve Shaw has certainly warmed up a little bit. In the beginning, especially in the flashbacks, he is quite resentful of the fact that someone with no scientific or astronaut training or other serious professional credentials is assigned as sort of his equal. On some levels, Eve may have higher security access than Mike's, or certainly as high as his, and I think it annoys him that he has to work with an individual who he doesn't respect on a professional level. "Mike's other primary relationship is with Maddux Donner, and I've really enjoyed exploring that, especially in the flashbacks where we've tried to show that Mike isn't a hard-ass for no reason. He doesn't personally dislike Donner and, in fact, I've tried to make it clear that Mike does acknowledge that Donner is one of the best astronauts he's ever worked with. It's one of those things where when someone rubs you the wrong way, quite often it's because of a characteristic you wish you had, or had more of, you know? With Mike and Donner, it's the fact that Donner is a maverick, and Mike probably resents as well as envies that. "So he may not ultimately respect Donner the way that he should, but Mike knows that Donner is as good, if not better, an astronaut than he was, and it's probably that maverick sense and his ability to follow his gut that bothers Mike. My character won't make the gut instinct call. He knows what the procedure is and what the book says you should do every step of the way. Mike won't deviate from the book, and Donner will. So that's been a real pleasure to play with Ron, and in a couple of scenes I've tried to make Goss push Donner to a couple of cliffs to try to get him to step over the line. Hopefully it will come across that my character isn't doing that just to be a jerk, but rather that he's testing Donner and trying to make him an even better astronaut." It is revealed in the first two episodes of Defying Gravity that there is a mysterious presence - referred to as "Beta" - that is the real guiding force behind the Antares mission. However, only Mike Goss, Eve Shaw, her husband Ted, who is in command of the Antares, and a few select others are aware of this. As the first season unfolds, this unseen force pushes events in a specific direction, and Mike has to roll with the punches. [caption id="attachment_2462" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Mike Goss and Eve Shaw (Karen LeBlanc) watch as events unfold onboard the Antares. Photo by Sergei Bachlakov and copyright of Fox Studios/ABC"][/caption] "What I've come to realize with Mike as we go along in these first 13 episodes is that he's coming to grips with the fact that he's a control freak, but he's not going to be able to hold onto that control the way he always thought he could," says Airlie. "He's not going to be able to manage every moment of this mission the way he wants, but he's never going to give up on the hope that he can. Early on, I think my character was a little more frustrated in his experiences, especially having to work with Eve and the role she plays in the mission. In some of the latter episodes, though, he's been slightly more collaborative with her and more accepting of the fact that you simply cannot micromanage a project of this scope and size. So I'm trying to find those moments just to show added shades of this character and make him a little more accepting of that reality." Prior to Defying Gravity, Airlie appeared on Reaper. He played John Oliver, who, together with his wife (played by Allison Hossack) sold their son Sam's (Bret Harrison) soul to the Devil in order to save John, who was gravely ill at the time. "I have a warm place in my heart for Reaper," says the actor. "I truly loved my time on that show. When I originally asked my agent to pursue the role of John Oliver, the [script] specs on him were rather vague. He was more or less described as a 50-ish Dad who doesn't quite get it. "I had my first audition with the producers, who had several callbacks for the role, and they ended up casting me. When we shot the pilot, the very first scene is where Sam wakes up on his 21st birthday and his parents are having a conspiratorial argument of sorts at the bottom of the stairs. When they see Sam, John says to him, 'Hey, Sam, you look great. I'll be there in a minute.' We rehearsed the scene, locked the cameras and the director, Kevin Smith, walked over to me at the last minute and said, 'Dude, they told you about this guy, right?' I said, 'No, not really,' and Kevin said, 'I love what you're doing, I really do, but I just thought I would give you one other thing to think about - Dad is probably not human.' Then he turned to the crew and said, 'OK, roll sound! Action!' "So for me, that remained one of the challenges, certainly in the first season, where from an acting standpoint I was never really told what my character's background was. I knew he sold his first-born son's soul to the Devil, but it was never confirmed to me until literally the end of season one that he'd probably been here [on Earth] before. They also didn't quite go so far as to tell me that Dad was going to be a demon. That was something [series creators/executive producers] Michele Fazekas and Tara Butters intended to delve into in year two, but for whatever reason, we didn't get to do that. Again, that presented an acting challenge for me, but overall I absolutely loved my time on the show." In the first season Reaper finale Cancun, Sam and Mr. Oliver look to be headed for a one-way ticket to you-know-where when they are buried alive by a group of disgruntled demons. "Working on this episode and, in particular, the burial scene was much more enjoyable than I thought at first," says Airlie. "I was slightly anxious going into that scene and wondered how we were going to do it right and not make it look chintzy, but the director and everyone involved walked me through it. The day before, they showed me the mixture of dirt and very soft peat moss they'd be using. And you can only rehearse something like that so much because it's a big deal to dump that much dirt, then gather it back up and dump it again. We'd have to get by with maybe two takes at the most. [caption id="attachment_2465" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Mike Goss and Eve Shaw agree to disagree. Photo by Sergei Bachlakov and copyright of Fox Studios/ABC "][/caption] "So they ran two cameras and Bret and I had a blast having dirt dumped on us. It was one of those scenes where half your job is done for you because you don't have to act much. Dad had taken a large spade to the back of the head, so I'm supposed to be unconscious, and for Bret, his character was fighting to keep him and his Dad from being buried alive. I was pleased in the end when I saw the scene. It did look quite believable." Lucky for Sam, he is saved by two of his ex-neighbors-turned-demons, while Mrs. Oliver comes to her husband's rescue and digs him up. Because Mr. Oliver is a demon he cannot die, and in Reaper's second season he reappears as a zombie. That allowed Airlie to reinvent his character, with a little help. "The make-up process was slightly daunting at first," he says. "Initially, it took three-and-a-half hours, and in subsequent episodes, they refined the process and got it down to two-and-a-half hours and then an hour and a bit to remove it all. "The other sort of big physical challenge with playing zombie Dad, certainly in the first couple of season two episodes, were the contacts that I had to wear. Once I popped them in, I couldn't see where I was going. I could see lights, but not people or objects. So in those first two episodes I had to somewhat limit my movements, but after that, they left the pupil in my left eye clear so I could see where I was going. "Acting-wise, the trickiest thing in season two was trying to find the right tone for Dad, and we kept receiving mixed notes about what that should be. You want your character to hang together and be coherent, and there was a lot of comedic opportunity with that particular storyline, but, unfortunately, I don't think we got to explore all of it. Just the same, though, I had a ball playing a zombie. Reaper was a pleasure to be a part of and I was sad when I found out that it wouldn't be continuing." In the summer network TV doldrums of inane reality series and reruns, Defying Gravity is a welcome oasis and one that Airlie hopes proves popular with viewers. "Jim Parriott has a fantastic, long-term story arc planned that you wouldn't believe," he enthuses. "I don't want to give anything away, but what I was really impressed with and jazzed about was the pace at which things move along, especially after episode five. There's always the danger that you can draw things out, like a mystery or a secret, and play on the patience of audiences, but Jim doesn't do that. Wait until you see the second half of these first 13 episodes. Things just gallop along, and it doesn't feel forced or too fast, either. It's a fantastic story and I hope we get the chance to tell more of it." Steve Eramo Defying Gravity is produced by Fox Television Studios and OmniFilmProductions, in association with the BBC, Canada's CTV and Germany's ProSieben. As noted above, all photos by Kharen Hill or Sergei Bachlakov and copyright of Fox Studios/ABC , so please no unauthorized copying or duplicating of any form. Thanks!

Defying Gravity ' s James Parriott And Michael Edelstein - Up, Up And Away

What do TV shows like The Bionic Woman, The Incredible Hulk, Forever Knight, Grey's Anatomy and Ugly Betty all have in common? If you said James Parriott, you are right. The veteran executive producer/writer has lent his considerable talents to these and countless other TV series over the years. In 2003, he and executive producer Michael Edelstein, whose credits include Hope and Faith and the hugely popular Desperate Housewives, worked together on the short-lived series Threat Matrix. More recently, they teamed up again to exec produce Defying Gravity, a Canadian-made space thriller that makes its Stateside premiere this Sunday at 9 p.m. EST on ABC. Set in the not-so-distant future, Defying Gravity was inspired by Space Odyssey: Voyage to the Planets - a fictional docudrama produced by Impossible Pictures (the same creative minds behind Walking With Dinosaurs) for the BBC. It follows the crew of the spaceship Antares, an international team of eight astronauts (four woman and four men) who embark on a six-year mission to explore Venus as well as other planets in the solar system. Their journey is being monitored closely by Mission Control back on Earth, but only a handful of those involved are aware of the very real dangers and mystery surrounding this mission. Defying Gravity is not so much Sci-Fi as Sci-Fact and served up with a large helping of human drama, all of which is part of Parriott's and Edelstein's original blueprint for the series. "Michael saw Voyage to the Planets on the Discovery Channel, and I then happened to see a rebroadcast on the Science Channel and thought, 'This is extremely well-made and cool. There's something here,'" recalls Parriott, who, along with Edelstein, took time out from their day to talk about Defying Gravity on the show's Vancouver-based set. "In this business you're always looking for a new arena for a drama. I mean, there are thousands of law shows and thousands of medical dramas, a lot of which are very, very good, but you're always thinking, 'What's the next arena?' "So after watching Voyage to the Planets I got really excited and, right after the [2007] holidays, I ran down the hall to Michael's office - we were both working at Disney at the time - and said, 'What do you think? If we throw in a little Grey's Anatomy along with a little Lost, this could actually work.' Because it has an international crew, it felt like an international show and, therefore, would have a broad appeal. It would appeal to Sci-Fi fans, but the drama part of it would appeal to those who have no interest in Sci-Fi. Michael and I looked at each other and said, 'This could be the one that really works.'" [caption id="attachment_2289" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Ron Livingston (as Maddux Donner) and Malik Yoba (as Ted Shaw) in Defying Gravity. Photo copyright of ABC Television"][/caption] Continues Edelstein, "What appeals to me about working with Jim is that he's all about the characters, and I just thought if someone was going to tackle this, give it to him. So Jim took this idea, put it to his brain and months later Defying Gravity came out of that. It was somewhat different from our early conversations, but I think it's richer and more compelling, not to mention addictive. We've been very selective about who we've shown the pilot to. Recently, I had an older female friend from London visiting me and I didn't think she was our demographic at all. However, she watched the pilot, got hooked and wanted to watch more and more late into the night. We're hearing stories like this from everyone who has seen the pilot. "To Jim's credit and that of the other writers, they've come up with, once again, an addictive show. There's just layer upon layer of mystery, and the amazing thing about the characters they've created is that you can go to any one of them for a story and you can fall into their world and find those multiple layers. So that's been a thrill, and I get really excited when I read the scripts. I think the challenge, obviously, is to build a show of this complexity, and from day one Jim told me, 'Michael, this is a space show. Space shows are incredibly hard to produce.'" Says Parriott, "I started out doing The Bionic Woman, The Six Million Dollar Man and other Sci-Fi and complicated shows with [visual/special] effects. And I told Michael, 'This isn't a medical show. This isn't Desperate Housewives. This is [outer] space we're getting into. Aren't you scared of getting into space, and on a budget?'" Says Edelstein, "I came up here in early November [2008] and since then I've been back home less than ten days in seven months. Initially, Jim was going to be up here a week or two, maybe a month, and he's been here at least three weeks a month, but it's been a ton of fun. Vancouver is a beautiful city and it has a great film community. We've inherited a wonderful group of people to work with and are settling into a nice groove." [caption id="attachment_2290" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Paula Garces (as Paula Morales) and Christina Cox (as Jen Crane) in Defying Gravity. Photo copyright of ABC Television"][/caption] Defying Gravity's international cast is led by Ron Livingston (Antares flight engineer Maddux Donner), Laura Harris (geologist Zoe Barnes), Malik Yoba (Antares commander Ted Shaw), Christina Cox (biologist Jen Crane), Florentine Lahme (pilot Nadia Schilling), Paula Garces (pilot, scientist and onboard documentary producer Paula Morales), Eyal Podell (psychiatrist and medical officer Evram Mintz) and Dylan Taylor (theoretical physicist Steve Wassenfelder). Overseeing the entire operation back on Earth are Andrew Airlie (Mission Control Commander Mike Goss), Karen LeBlanc (scientist Eve Shaw), Zahf Paroo (flight engineer Ajay Sharma), Maxim Roy (flight surgeon Claire Dereux), Ty Olsson (capsule communicator a.k.a. cap comm Rollie Crane) and William Vaughn (assistant cap comm Arnel Poe). Episodic director Peter Howitt also plays BBC journalist Trevor Williams. In creating such a large and diverse group of characters, Parriott took a page out of his Gray's Anatomy days. Once the onscreen players had been named, he and Edelstein then began casting the roles. "We wanted to create characters who are sort of archetypes," explains Parriott. "On Grey's Anatomy you can point to those characters and say, 'That's the pretty one who was the model,' or, 'That's the Asian girl who's the hard-ass,' or, 'That's the guy who is...,' etc. You create characters who, at first, the audience might not necessarily identify with, but at least they know who they are. I tried to do that with Defying Gravity in order that the characters would be very specific, and even a little bit stereotypical at the start, so you'd think, 'Oh, I recognize him, or her.' As the series goes on, you then give your characters different dimensions and continue to expand upon all that as the viewers get to know them." Says Edelstein, "In terms of casting, we went through an exhaustive process. That really was a luxury, and I think it took us five months to cast the show. We cast out of Los Angeles, Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal and even Germany. Jim and I were up at five in the morning to audition actresses via teleconferencing and it was great. That's when we found Florentine and she's been fantastic. The funny thing is Jim and I have very different tastes in things, and we found that the right person for a part would be the one where we both overlapped. There are actors who Jim zeroed in on right away and it took me a while, and vice versa. It's been terrific casting this series together because we both looked for different things, and I think I speak for Jim and myself when I say that we're both thrilled with who we have on the show." [caption id="attachment_2291" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Mission Control Commander Mike Goss (Andrew Airlie) and scientist Eve Shaw (Karen LeBlanc) watch intently back on Earth as the Antares mission unfolds before their eyes. Photo copyright of ABC Television"][/caption] As the actors were being auditioned and cast, the cosmetic elements of Defying Gravity, including sets and costumes, were also being designed and built. "We were fortunate to find some incredible department heads, including our production designer, Stephen Geaghan," notes Parriott. "He has a tremendous amount of Sci-Fi experience and is also meticulous as well as wildly knowledgeable about [outer] space, and he brought his enthusiasm to the job. By the time we met, Stephen said we were already two weeks behind. We didn't start construction on the sets until mid-October [2008] and we began shooting mid-January [2009]. So it was a Herculean effort, and there was a Christmas holiday right in the middle of it all as well." Continues Edelstein, "There was very little stage space in Vancouver when I initially came up and scouted around. This [a portion of Bridge Studios] was, I think, the only stage really available, so we took it. Unbeknownst to all of us, Stargate Atlantis has left this massive steel cage-type set behind. Lucky for us, Stephen had the good sense to say, 'Hey, let's keep this. We can strip it down and turn it into something else.' So he built Mission Control around it, which was fantastic because on our budget I don't believe we could have achieved the same results from scratch. "We were also lucky to get Monique Prudhomme, our costume designer, who has a wonderful background in feature films. She received rave reviews for her last movie, Terry Gilliam's The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. We just thought that Monique had a great vision and she jumped headlong into research for the show. For example, with our EVA [extra-vehicular activity] suits, our white spacesuits, she looked at the new direction that MIT believes NASA will be going in next with their pressure suits. So Monique did some hardcore research and then she had to figure out how to make the suits 'work.' In real life they cost something like a million dollars apiece. Obviously we couldn't do that, but Monique figured out a way to make something that looks great on-camera. "Our whole idea going into prep was, 'This needs to feel real and be believable.' One of the things that Jim and I learned at NASA is that the space shuttle, which had its first launch, I believe, in 1981, was built using solid-state technology. It was technology from the late 60's and 70's. The thing is, NASA has a great deal of redundancy in their systems. Once they lock into something they don't necessarily update as new technology comes along. The International Space Station is run by 46 computer chips, because when NASA first designed it, they knew peoples' lives were at stake, and that meant its systems had to be very reliable. So early on, Jim figured out that if Defying Gravity is set in 2055, the technology would probably be from the late 2020's to 2030." Says Parriott, "We looked out to 2020 and decided that that's what we were going to do. Of course, everything on the show is from what we think will happen looking forward. I actually think some of our technology is behind 2020. It could be better in [the real world] 2020. In our case, though, what you see on-screen all depends on our budget and how much money we can put into the show." [caption id="attachment_2292" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Zoe Barnes (Laura Harris), Steve Wassenfelder (Dylan Taylor) and Nadia Schilling (Florentine Lahme) on the Antares observation deck. Photo copyright of ABC Television"][/caption] Adds Edelstein, "Budget-wise you don't get all the money in one lump. We had to take our episodic budget and use it to chip away at [building] the sets. The sets that you see now were not that evolved when we began shooting. However, we've slowly been able to put it all together and, fortunately, the studio has been very supportive of our vision. That's what's made this whole thing possible. It's a lot of hard work and people solving one problem at a time. Every day we've continuing to learn about the show. At the moment [late May] we're shooting episodes 12 and 13 and we're still learning things insofar as what we'd like to do in season two as well as ways to improve the show." Story-wise, the 13-part first season of Defying Gravity is divided between the present day, as the Antares travels towards Venus, and the past, with flashbacks to when the astronauts were in the gruelling selection and training process. Although the show's characters are not aware of what lies ahead. Parriott has a definite plan for where this story is headed. "Before we started filming, we had outlines for all 13 episodes,'" says the executive producer. "I'd basically arced out the entire season, which helped us a lot of terms of production and knowing what we needed to build. Beyond that, I wanted to do two things. One, in our ninth episode we have a major reveal, and it's a cool one that catapults you into the next part of the season. Also, having started in Sci-Fi, I know Sci-Fi audiences are demanding and I wanted to be demanding of myself, which meant I needed to know where the series was going. I didn't want to jump the shark; that was very important to me. So I know the ending to the show. I know season by season where it's going and the big [story] beats along the way. That's crucial for the Sci-Fi audience, in particular, and audiences in general." Continues Edelstein, "My time is valuable as is everyone else's. There are only so many hours in the day to watch TV, and if someone wants to look at our series, then I feel extremely flattered that he or she wants to spend their time watching something that I'm a part of. You have to take that commitment to your audience seriously. It's sort of a covenant that you make - you give us an hour of your time and we're going to entertain you, we're going to move you, and we're going to keep your interest." [caption id="attachment_2293" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Evram Mintz (Eyal Podell) and Nadina Schilling (front) along with Zoe Barnes and Jen Crane (back) sit through yet another training course. Photo copyright of ABC Television"][/caption] Says Parriott, "It has to be a show that I want to watch, too. I think that's also part of the criteria. If you're making a program that you wouldn't want to watch, then you're kind of a cynic who's just out for the buck. We started out in a very calculated, dare I say cynical place of, 'OK, [outer] space, that will have a broad appeal.' But then as you start to write it, you fall in love with it and your characters, and you become passionate about it. We've very passionate about this project now, and I think all the actors and the crew feel the same way." Adds Edelstein, "Episodes eight and nine changed everyone. After eight, everyone was like, 'What happens next?' And after nine it's just been a mad sprint to the end of these first 13 episodes. It's a very cool show and certainly not like anything else on TV. I feel the same way about Defying Gravity as I did about Desperate Housewives. When we first came out with Desperate Housewives there were no drama/comedies on the air and people didn't know how to react to it. Some people said that men would never watch a show called Desperate Housewives and there were those who wanted to change the title. With Defying Gravity we've made a show that's interesting and unique as well as compelling, and we're hoping it finds an audience." Says Parriott, "I always say keep your eye on the ball. Make the shows as good as you can make them, and make the scripts as good as you can make them. That's the joy of something like this. I find I'm the happiest when I'm in the cutting room or when I'm writing. The time just flies by because you're doing what you love. The true reward is in the actual doing. And then in the larger sense, it's in the relationships that you build making a show. These last two episodes have been bittersweet. It's kind of sad and the cast as well as the crew are feeling it,too. They're like, 'Why does this have to end? Do we have to go home?' It really has become a very happy family and one of the tightest-knit groups I've ever had the pleasure of working with." Steve Eramo Defying Gravity is produced by Fox Television Studios and Omni Film Productions, in association with the BBC, Canada's CTV and Germany's ProSieben. As noted above, all photos copyright of ABC Television, so please no unauthorized copying or duplicating of any form. Thanks!