Two actors cast in the upcoming series Andromeda landed their roles without an audition, but a third actor not only had to audition to win her part, she had to play three roles simultaneously.

In this SPACE.com exclusive Dispatch From Andromeda, Don Lipper speaks with Gene Roddenberry’s Andromeda co-executive producer and head writer Robert Hewitt Wolfe about casting the new guard of science fiction TV stars.

Robert Hewitt Wolfe: Well, we wrote the part to the actor.

SC: Oh really?

RHW: So my image of him was exactly who he is. [Laughs.]

SC: Why did you write it to him?

RHW: Well, there were two parts that were written for specific actors. Obviously, we knew Dylan was going to be written for Kevin [Sorbo], and Tribune said "we have this wonderful actor [Keith Hamilton Cobb] and we think that you should fit him in if you think that there’s a way to put a part for him into the show, you should put a part for him into the show."

So I met Keith, and obviously I saw immediately both in terms of the acting ability, he’s a classically Shakespearean-trained actor, and just also in terms of physical presence, he’s a very striking person. And there was already, in the mythology of the universe as I was developing it and as we were all talking about it, a very obvious way to go with casting him. So it was sort of a no-brainer.

SC: So, as a writer, having two actors specifically in mind when you’re writing different roles, do you borrow from what you know they’ve done before? How does that help you or affect you when you’re writing a character?

RHW: Well, it’s a little bit of both. You try and tailor the role to the actor and you also trust that the actor is an actor and can embody a role that you create for them. So, it’s not just trying to re-create previous performances of the actor. It’s really writing a character with the actor somewhat in mind.

And then frankly we’ve been adjusting here a little bit since we’ve seen Keith start to play the part and shading a little bit more, because we hadn’t actually seen him play this part. One of the actors actually saw him do Shakespeare in Washington, D.C., but that’s all. As we talked about before, it’s all a synergistic process. A little synergy between the actor, the part and the writers, sort of all working together.

SC: To digress from Tyr for a second, did you have discussions with Kevin about Dylan, as far as how he related to Hercules and what he had done before, and different directions he wanted to go in?

RHW: Yeah, we had lunch together a couple of times, we definitely talked about all that stuff very early in process, about what I was thinking what was there in what Gene had written and what Kevin wanted to do. And frankly, there were a lot of intersections and it was a fairly painless process, really.

SC: Keith we’ve seen on General Hospital, but he doesn’t really have the same sort of baggage that Kevin does, as far as Hercules goes.

RHW: Correct. Yeah, there aren’t a lot of people out there who have a prejudiced or pre-formed idea of what they’re expecting from him. Obviously, there are a lot of soap fans out there who very much connect with that character and are very interested in what Keith does next. But it’s not the same level of expectation or pre-formed opinions as with Kevin.

SC: So Keith obviously didn’t have to go through an audition process, right?

RHW: No, Keith didn’t because his part was created for him.

SC: Did he give you any direction for things he wanted to do with the part?

RHW: Oh, sure. Yeah. I didn’t have as many opportunities as I did with Kevin ‘cause Keith was off in Washington DC, doing Shakespeare. But he certainly has brought specific notes to what we’re doing.

SC: You said that he surprised you and that there were new things you were doing with Tyr. Could you tell me what those were?

RHW: He has a tremendous amount of stage presence and a lot of times he can pull something off with a look, so he doesn’t need the line. And he knows that, and we now know that as well, so we can give him screen moments and he doesn’t need to say anything, but he can convey a great deal just by acting. He acts quite well without dialogue, so we’ve been giving him those kinds of moments.

RHW: We always had wanted it to be a woman, in the most basic sense of things. Just from the long tradition of ships being called "she", although there are definitely ships in the Commonwealth that are "he’s."

We interviewed a lot of people and were sort of looking for someone with an ethnic background that reflected the diversity of humanity. We wanted to look at every actor we to see to find the best one, somebody that could embody all the different shadings of personality and emotion that Andromeda has. Someone who was tough enough, that when they said the words, "Turn off you weapons or be destroyed", you would believe that she meant it and had the capability of doing that. But also someone who could show the care and concern and all that other stuff. Plus, once we give her the human body, that’s a new experience for her. So we wanted somebody who could reflect that confusion and feeling her way through a new situation.

SC: What about the audition?

RHW: We read a million people for all these parts. We auditioned in Vancouver, Toronto and Los Angeles. We did multiple sessions. We flew people to Los Angeles to read. It was an exhaustive audition process for all the roles. But as a result of that, we have a really wonderful cast. I think it was worth all the work we put into it.

SC: Was there anything she did that just blew away the competition?

RHW: The audition scene was quite difficult because the audition scene for Andromeda was where Andromeda was doing a scene with herself in three different bodies. It was a scene with the human body, the artificial intelligence hologram/blue screen shot and one of the android bodies where they’re basically having an argument. So she had to play them each sequentially and give them each distinct personalities and different attitudes and keep track of all the eyelines and do all of those things that you have to do when you do green screen. Luckily, Lexa’s done a fair amount of green screen work before and sort of knows what goes into that and she was really able to give those characters three different distinct personalities.

So, that was one of the things she did right away as she was doing her read, and she read in Toronto, that let us know that she would be a very strong candidate for the part. Obviously, we wanted to find the best actress for the part, and I think we succeeded quite well. Now Lexa will read this and she’ll get a big head, but that’s O.K. I’m just kidding. She’s really sweet. She’s a really nice person.