Robert Hewitt Wolfe: He’s
great. He’s very, very cool about sitting in the makeup chair. We actually
did a cast on him before he got the part so that he would know what it
was like, what he was getting himself into. He’s done a lot of martial
arts, so he just sort of mediates in the chair while they put the makeup
on. So far, so good.
SPACE.com: How long
is he in the chair?
RHW: That depends.
Some days longer than others, but a couple hours basically.
SPACE.com: Why would
it be longer? Because if he’s in a long shot, you’re not gonna show the
detail?
RHW: We’re still in
a learning process in applying the makeup and we’ve had a couple days that
things haven’t quite gone the way we wanted them to go. But we’re getting
better at it and generally that’s the pattern. The more often you apply
a specific set of prosthetics, the better you get at it, the easier it
goes on for everyone concerned.
SPACE.com: There is
a story about Next Generation and Michael Dorn where he was on the
call list for that day and he sat in the makeup chair, and he got on his
makeup, he was in makeup all day, and at the end of the day they used him
for one shot which was him saying "Yes, Captain." Evidently Dorn got understandably
upset that he had to be in makeup all that time and that afterwards they
started to reschedule the production, to a certain extent, around Michael's
makeup. Are you doing some of that?
RHW: Obviously we’re
scheduling as much as possible to minimize anything like that. Not just
the actors who are in makeup but just in general we try to avoid calling
someone in for just one line. It happens -- sometimes it’s just unavoidable,
but whenever possible we try and avoid it. We try and schedule so that
when they come in they work a lot.
But then we don’t want to
keep them in makeup for 15 hours either. So there’s a balancing act that
the people who make the shooting schedule take into consideration when
they are trying to work all these things out. It’s a process but so far
so good.
SPACE.com: And now
a writer’s question. Traditionally on Star Trek, you would have
an A and a B story. On an ensemble show like ER, you have C, D and
E stories. Right now, you’re in the beginning stages, so you have to be
more of the A B story; further on in the run will you have more? When you
were doing DS9, how many stories would you do?
RHW: Generally, whatever
was called for. You’d have to look back at Deep Space 9. We didn’t
have any hard fast rule that we had to have an A and B story, or an A,
B and a C story. There were certainly many episodes that we did have an
A B story structure, there were even some where we had a C structure, but
there were equally as many shows where we only had one story and that was
basically it. We’re not playing it by hard and fast rules. We’re trying
to do what’s right for each episode individually.
SPACE.com: What’s
ahead for Andromeda as far as the production goes? What types of
shooting, new cast members or guest stars?
RHW: Well, we’re still
chasing as little bit of casting for one of the episodes that we have in
mind. Kevin’s wife [Sam Jenkins] is a very talented actress and will be
starring in one of our episodes coming up. That will be fun, the two of
them having the chance to work together again.
We’ve got some episodes that
show what the Commonwealth was like in its glory days. They’re all good
-- I can’t distinguish between them. It’s like picking your favorite child.
SPACE.com: Are there
new writers coming on that people would know?
RHW: Well, we’re freelancing.
We’ve had a two different pretty well known science fiction novelists write
episodes for us. That’s Steve Barnes, who’s writing his episode right now
even as we speak. He was here [a few weeks ago] picking up notes.
And then Walter Jon Williams
who’s already turned in his episode. He’s a very well known science fiction
novelist. He’s a Hugo and Nebula nominee. His script is very nice.
SPACE.com: Any other
names coming down the pike? Any old Trek writers?
RHW: Uh, no. They’re
all employed!
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