(Please follow the link for the complete interview excerpt.)
Tuesday March 03, 2009
James Callis interviewed
Scientist, traitor, politician, prophet… there's more to Gaius Baltar than a drunken, self-interested flirt, as we found out when we chatted to actor James Callis at Starfury's Battlestar Galactica convention. Born in London in 1971, Callis is also known from his role in Bridget Jones's Diary. There's a big interview with him in the next SFX special, on sale tomorrow, but here are some snippets that didn't make the newsstand edition:
SFX: When you were preparing to play Baltar, did you go back and re-watch the 1970s original?
Callis: "I didn't need to go back to view the 1970s Battlestar again because I just remembered the original Baltar so well. I wasn't very comfortable about being this person - very determined not to be the same! John Colicos was phenomenal, actually, and I don't know how many times I saw it at an age of around seven or eight. I owe John Colicos in the original Battlestar a big debt. As soon as the word 'Baltar' was mentioned, I knew exactly who that was. There's this idea about meta-culture: why is Baltar instantly such a big deal in our series? Well, he's a big deal in our series because he has this inherited name from another show back in the '70s, where we know this man as a megalomaniac beast. He was really evil. Do we think, 'He's gonna be like this guy because that's his name'? He's an archetype. He fulfils this function. But essentially that hasn't happened in our show."
Battlestar Galactica Special
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