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SFX Magazine - 173 Ask Grace Park what her best memory is from playing Lt Sharon Valerii on Battlestar Galactica and you're likely to get a dozen different answers. "That is so tough," she'll say, before rattling off a string of highlights from her time on the award-winning sci-fi epic. But ask Park to name her least favorite memory, and be prepared to duck as she opens fire on what's become her signature costume- a green-and-gold flight suit.
"Filming in the rain in those flight suits..." she sighs to SFX, as we chat with her in her trailer on Battlestar's Vancouver set. "You're like, 'These are rubber! They're totally waterproof!' The rain hits your head, slides down your neck, and it goes into the suit. And it's ice cold. Then you're out there in the rain, and you're just damp and clammy all day. those are not good in the heat. They're not good in the cold. They're not good in the rain. When are they good? Pretty much when you take them off!"
Park pauses, and looks over at the bane of her existence, as it hangs ominously on her closet door. But when she continues, the upbeat young actress can't seem to harbour ill will for long.
"I think," she confesses, "after being in the brig for a year, the first time I zipped up that flight suit - having those pins, having the gun belt on - it felt good to be back. I realized it had been a long time since I put it on... They're pretty cool. How many times in real life can you walk around in rubberized head-to-toe, green and gold, and feel good about it?"
Park's description of her suit is, in some ways, indicative of her overall experience on Battlestar, a show that's brought her fame and success, even as it's struggled to find an audience wide enough for it's ambitious, metaphorical take on contemporary world politics. Ironically, as Park describes it, it was Battlestar's cancellation that maximized the cast's enjoyment of the show.
"Knowing it's the last season, I want to go out with a bang. Not personally, you just want that for the story. And I don't doubt we're gonna do that. But there's a lot of really interesting pieces at play. I think a lot of the actors have let go of any vestiges of 'I want it to be all about me'. You realize everyone has a role - the Final Five, the Cylons, the humans. There are many, many different relationships. It can't just be about certain people all the time. It doesn't make it fun. People love to explore - 'What's going on in the hangar deck? What's going on with the knuckledraggers? What's going on in the colonies?' I think that's truer to real life."
Equally true is Sharon's relationship with her husband Helo and their baby girl, Hera- the first human-Cylon hybrid. "I do think that they're going to stay a family unit," she says, "in comparison to a lot of the other families that are breaking down. I think it's nice, because it's an interracial marriage. (I don't mean like Asian and Caucasian- definitely Cylon and human, which is the metaphor for all the different races.) I would like there to be some conflict between them. Because I think it's more realistic. It looks like a model marriage, but I want to know what goes on inside - where is the conflict? How do we get to know these two a bit better? And also a little bit of action under the sheets.
Why is it," she adds with a laugh, "that unless the characters are messed up we never see them together? What kinds of messages in Battlestar sending?"
The message that Sharon sense, however, is, according to Park, best illustrated by the new name she received last season - Athena, after the Greek goddess of wisdom...
"They took the name from the old Battlestar," she says, "and I felt honoured to have two names from before. It took me a while to get used to it. But it's like Apollo - it's a link to Adama, being more like a daughter, oddly enough. I think the name is perfect for her. She's done a lot of growing up. She's had a lot of forgiveness that she's had to do for her own sanity. I'm sure there's a lot of things that she hasn't forgiven, but she had to do quite a lot just to be able to live, because there's something more important than her anger, which was her family - which was survival. That prize is more important than revenge or vindication. That's not an easy choice."
Park claims that Battlestar has also kept itself on course. "We're not out there trying to get everybody to watch our show. Because we're trying to keep the integrity and what we're trying to say in the storyline. That's the most important thing. If you start just bending to what the audience wants, they can see that, and that's when the stuff starts to die sometimes. You give what the audience wants, and then what's left to watch?
"But if you don't," she laughs, "sometimes people just kind of keep hanging on. It's like a bad relationship, you know? Nothing like rejection to keep people coming!"
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