Macleans- Canada
Battlestar Galactica—Secrets Revealed!
Wondering who the last Cylon is? Or whether the fleet will find Earth? BSG cast members dish on the show's final season.
Patricia Treble

3-27-2008
 

Macleans.ca sat down with two Battlestar Galactica stars—Katee Sackhoff (Kara “Starbuck” Thrace) and Grace Park (Cylon No. 8, a.k.a. Sharon/Athena/Boomer)—who shared some secrets about the upcoming fourth season, starting April 4 on Space.

Macleans.ca: For somebody who hasn’t watched Battlestar Galactica how would you describe the show?

Katee Sackhoff: It is science fiction second and political drama first and it’s a show largely based on the human condition.

M: What can fans who haven’t seen the new episodes, beside Razor, in more than a year expect?

Grace Park: Get ready to find out what will happen to the “final four” because they are still in the fleet and they’re still by the side of [Admiral Bill] Adama and [Laura] Roslin and they can do just about anything. Are they going to crack? Are they going to go against the humans. Are they going to hide out? Are they going to reveal each other? It’s all the same story lines picked right back up. And all the exciting bits and pieces that you were waiting on the edge of your seat screaming “I can’t believe it’s going to take so long to see the next episode.“ It’s all back.

KS: And don’t miss a beat. This is the end. This is the culmination of everything we’ve worked for in the last five years. You say everything you have to say in the next 20 episodes because you don’t get another chance. So they don’t want to miss anything – it’s going to be a big fun ride.

M: Speaking of the “final four,” one is your ex-husband…

KS: My love slave, as I like to call him…

M: There’s no doubt they are four Cylons, this is not a Bobby Ewing “dream in a shower” thing? They are Cylons?

KS: Yes. As far as we know.

GP: Anything can change. That’s a very definite maybe. I think they’re Cylons

KS: I do too. They’ve been accepted by the Cylons into the Cylons.

GP: Yeah that’s true. We already have too much footage—we can’t go back. We’re a limited budget.

M: How much do you know about how the series is going to end?

KS: Nothing

GP: We don’t know what is going to happen in the next episode

KS: I don’t even know what I am, and we’re on episode 14.

GP: We’ve been waiting

M: What are you going to miss when the show is over?

GP: The collaboration. To have these juice storylines come down the pipes, scramble over them with the other actors and then come together and shoot it. But also the [actors] because we both work so intimately with them. We’ve gone from the miniseries, where both Jamie [Bamber, who plays Lee “Apollo” Adama] and James [Callis, who plays Gaius Baltar] were both singles, now they each have kids and are married.

KS: Grace got married. Tricia [Helfer, who plays Cylon No. 6] got married. I kept a boyfriend for more than two years.

GP: We grew up.

KS: We did. We were so young.

GP: You look back and say ‘Holy we were such babies.’

KS: I’ve done enough television to know that Battlestar Galactica may not be a once in a lifetime opportunity, but it is an opportunity that doesn’t come along many times as an actor. I’ve come to rely on the writers and you know they’re going to deliver, that every episode will be spot on.

M: Do you ever get the script for an episode and say “What the frak!”

KS & GB (in unison): All the time. [laughing]

KS: Every script.

M: You don’t have an inkling of what’s coming down the line?

KS: We do know who the fifth [and final] Cylon is, but…

GP: Is that for real, though?

KS: With the writers’ strike, so much time has gone by that don’t tell me they’re not going to change that, because you know it’s going to get on the Internet? If all of us know…

GP: Patricia in makeup said it isn’t— it was to make us think that.

KS: But they’ve already brought that person. They have them contracted now.

GP: Really? No!!

M: So you’re not the final Cylon?

KS: No. I was told from day one: ‘the only thing we know is that you aren’t a Cylon.’

M: Grace, have you ever become confused with all your Cylon incarnations, as the show goes back and forth between them? There are so many now.

GP: Yes. And I have to write out their storylines to figure out what they’ve come through and then remember: this character hasn’t met Gaius Baltar ever before, she’s not the same person that when they did the lottery and Helo [Agathon, now Athena’s husband] gave up his seat for Gaius. We have to constantly re-evaluate relationships and places. There is a lot of confusion.

M: What’s your favourite incarnation?

GP: I think it would definitely be Athena. She’s gone through a lot of stuff. But Boomer had a lot of fun stuff right off the top—she’s so dark and heavy.

KS: I think Athena is the most evolved, too.

M: Athena broke with the Cylons, joined with the humans, repeatedly confronted with the worst of humanity – the president stole her baby, humanity wanted to wipe out her race with a deadly virus – why does she stay loyal?

GP: For love and hope. She really does love Helo. It’s evolving with her experiences, and I don’t think she can really even explain it. It has to do with love and it also has to do with survival. She made a choice. She went in a direction. She knew she was in a very special position, she was the first and only Cylon to have a baby with a human, and then she didn’t want to give it up to science, to give it up to the Cylons. And so she went forward and I don’t think she re-evaluates it all the time. She is a robot, she is programmed, now she’s becoming a soldier. She’s not a scholar being presented with ideas, being asked to think.

M: Katee, what do you personally like the best and hate the worst about Starbuck?

KS: I love her vulnerability, that she’s so damaged, largely at her own hand, and that she’s comfortable in her own pain. It’s interesting to play a character that is good on her own. She’s so complicated yet she knows what she is.
The thing I dislike the most is her belief that she’s straightforward. She’s straightforward with everyone but herself, she’s so willing to tell other people what she thinks of them and what she thinks of the situation, but the last thing she would tell someone is how she’s been affected by something. If it was me, she would have been with Apollo a long time ago, but that’s not interesting.

M: Who should she end up with?

KS: None of them

GP: Oh!!

KS: I told [executive producer] Ron Moore a while ago ‘please God, do not wrap up her storyline, put it in a box, put a pretty little bow on it and hand it to me’ That’s not who she is. This is an extremely flawed woman who is not happy when things are easy, when things are good and she will never be the woman who sits at home with a baby and loves a husband. That’s not her. She’s better and happier when she has a struggle. And if she does walk off into the sunset, it needs to be on her own, still searching.

GP: Cool.

M: We’ll see a struggle?

KS: A tremendous struggle. Whether or not she’s a Cylon, she’s going to be asking herself all the same questions that the Cylons ask themselves.

GP: I think it’s her time. We’ve watched Starbuck go through a lot. She is in a position to start making choices for herself. She can stay exactly the same but I think she’s in a new space, having gone and coming back, there are a lot of questions being asked about her, I think it’s time for her to start answering those for herself.

KS: She finally realizes that she’s relied on so many people for an adequate opinion of herself…

GP: Has she?

KS: She has. She’s always needed approval and she’s always sought love, whether it be instant gratification or some sort of an emotional connection. I think for the first time since we’ve known her, she’s going to have to finally just believe in herself.

GP: That’s pretty cool

KS: When it comes to everything other than flying—that’s the one thing she’s always known she can do.

M: I’ve done a quick calculation. More than half of the 12 models of humanoid Cylon are Canadian. Does that say something about our “foreignness?”

KS: Well you guys are like Switzerland!

M: Should we be proud? Should we be worried?

GP: I play a Cylons, so I say we should be proud. Look at the evil Cylons. Look at the humans for hmm sake!

M: Why are the woman far more ruthless than the men? For example, President Roslin vs. Admiral Adama

KS: This is such a feminist show, I’ve said it for so long..

GP: It is a story about war and war is about destruction, the opposite of creation. So the last thing you’re going to have are the women embracing that creative nurturing side. The men aren’t doing it, the women are acting and being treated just as men, they are fighting alongside each other.

M: There are women fighting and dying in Afghanistan and Iraq. Was it a deliberate thing for the show?

KS: I think it was a coincidence that it happened all at the same time, but I do think we can draw parallels.

M: This is a dark show. Are you going to have a funny episode in the fourth season?

KS: They tried once and it didn’t work.

GP: It was Eddie’s [Edward James Olmos plays Admiral Adama] episode. They had a dinner party and there were jokes going on but people were asking ‘What is this?’ They didn’t know what to do with it.

KS: I told them they should have done a musical like Buffy.

M: Do you think your character will be there when they get to Earth?

GP: She better!

KS: I don’t know

M: Is our Earth their Earth?

GP: I don’t know

KS: [Laughs and smiles — says nothing.]

GP: She’s totally giving it away.

KS: I don’t even know what I am. How can I know anything about that!

M: When will the filming be wrapped?

KS: The middle of June

M: Any hints you can drop about the upcoming season?

KS: Starbuck will have some unlikely allies in the coming season.