Tell us about a normal day on the set.
A normal day on the set of Farscape... If there is such a thing on Farscape! Whoever was a 'human face' on the show would be most likely to be on set first, for the first and last scenes of the day because they had to observe a turnaround for everyone. The actors who were in heavy make-up like Gigi Edgely, Virginia Hay, and Anthony Simcoe would still have to come in very early but they wouldn't be on set until much later. So [I was] getting up as late as possible, but still had to be on time for my pick-up.
The first season we starting filming at Fox Studios which was a total luxury because most people working on the show lived within 5 minutes of it, walking or driving. It was very central and they were fantastic purpose built studios. Then we moved out to these sheds in Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔbush: no air conditioning, roofs that creaked, when it rained there was unbelievable noise, when the sun was out there was unbelievable noise from the creaking, there were planes overhead... It was an incredible environment to work in, which then meant re-voicing a lot of the work - about 98% by the end of the first full season.
So normally Ben and I would come in, and shoot for how ever many hours until lunch. It was all about lunch for me! I would just count the hours - it was like being back at school - and have an enormous lunch to re-fuel. Unless we were doing stunt scenes, because if we were doing a fight sequence at the end of the day I'd try not to eat too much because you get quite ill. Lunchtime, if we were lucky, we had to ourselves and, if we had to, we would do interviews.
Most days, by about season two, if I wasn't horizontal for about 5 minutes during the lunch I just did not think I would make it through. I don't know how Ben did it: he had more resilience and more staying power than anyone. Part-way through I actually turned to him and said, 'I've realised what you do now,' and he said 'What?'. I said 'You mentally prepare to do this show for 50 years, so that if we only do it for five you've got plenty of energy left in reserve.' He said, 'Yeah that's basically how I operate'. So, a normal day for most of us was to be tired, barely be coping, and for Ben [it was basically] smooth sailing.
