Sci-Fi Entertainment

BRUCE BOXLEITNER SPACE COWBOY by Robert Martin
Sci-Fi Entertainment Magazine April 1996 Volume 2, Number 6

It's fairly easy to distinguish Bruce Boxleitner, actor, from his on-screen persona as John Sheridan, commander of the beleaguered stellar outpost Babylon 5. While the latter has his hands full with interstellar war, treachery within Earth's own ranks, and the nexus for both conflicts under his command, the former has just celebrated, on New Year's Day, the first anniversary of his marriage to actress Melissa Gilbert and, on October 6, the birth of their first child, Michael Garrett. Where Sheridan longs to be free of the politics and treachery of the Babylon 5 station, Boxleitner considers his association with B-5 to be a professional high point - though he acknowledges a certain show-biz stigma is still attached to syndicated drama.

"I wouldn't trade the opportunity to work in this splendid creative atmosphere," he says, "or with this particular mix of wonderfully talented people, for anything."

But there are similarities between the two as well. The sense of "boy scout" honesty and straightforward enthusiasm that seem an intrinsic part of the fictional Sheridan are also evident in Boxleitner. Like Sheridan, Boxleitner is a "flyboy"-an enthusiastic pilot and earnest student of the history of flight. And, given that he is also an enthusiastic reader of science fiction, he wonder is not that he has the lead role in Babylon 5, but rather what could have delayed his full-scale entry into the genre after his small, but pivotal, role as the title character in Disney's Tron in 1982.

"It just never came my way before," says Boxleitner, who heretofore was primarily known for his work in the series Scarecrow and Mrs. King, and a long list of television miniseries, including many set in the old West.

"I'm not by birth, or by how I was raised, a cowboy kind of guy," Boxleitner says. "I was raised in a small town and I spent a lot of time on my grandfather's farm, so I was around horses and cows and such, but I was by no means a cowboy. But I've always loved Western movies and television shows, and I've watched them all. And I always wanted to do them, so I was very lucky."

Luck took the form of a guest shot on the long-lived series Gunsmoke during its final season in 1975, shortly after the young actor arrived in Hollywood. "One of the producers on that show was a wonderful gentleman named John Mantley," Boxleitner recalls, "who later produced a show, How the West was Won, and he cast me as James Arness's outlaw nephew; that went on for about three years, and l got a good little reputation through that."

It was not long afterward that Boxleitner created the character of Billy Montana in the ratings blockbuster The Gambler (1980), starring Kenny Rogers, heightening his visibility in the TV movie realm. Boxleitner's most recent telefilm appearances, in The Gambler V (his fifth repeat of the Billy Montana role) and in Gunsmoke: One man's Justice, testify to Boxleitner's loyalty, and strongly suggest that the experience of working with this man is considered worthy of repetition.

It was, in part, Boxleitner's past work with its producers that brought Boxleitner aboard Babylon 5, the Fox series airing in the United States. "I knew some of the people," he says. "I had done a Western with Doug Netter and John Copeland, and they're great people to work with."

That Western was Wild Times (1980), a miniseries that still occasionally shows up on television, cut to feature length, and remarkable for its cast combining "Golden Age" Western veterans, including Ben Johnson, Pat Hingle, and Harry Carey, Jr., with the new breed represented by Sam Elliott and Boxleitner.

"But it was Baylon 5 itself that drew me," Boxleitner continues. "I happened to come across the show one Sunday night, and thought, `Hmm, what they are doing here is interesting.' And it sort of stuck with me."

"Some time later, I was speaking with Darla, who's been handling my fan club for years-back to the days of Scarecrow and Mrs. King - and doing very fine job, I might add. Darla told me she'd been to a science fiction convention. And I said, 'what are those?' "

"She explained what they are to me, and asked if I knew of this show called Babylon 5. I told her I had seen a couple of shows and liked it, and she said, they were all talking at the convention about how the lead of the series is leaving, and everyone's wondering who the commander of this space station is going to be. She says, 'You should get your agent on that.' And I said, 'Well, thanks, Darla, but that really isn't how things are handled here. But thank you for the tip.' "

"Then a couple of weeks later, I got a call, asking if I would have a meeting with Doug Netter, John Copeland, and Joe Straczynski-whom I had never heard of-and I said, `Well, yeah, can I see a script?' "

The scripts sent to Boxleitner were the first three of the second season of Babylon 5. "What I loved about the show and the scripts was, of course, Joe's writing, and the fact that they were in a continuing saga, engaged in the creation of this sort of mythology. There was the sense of a very believable history that never really happened. So that was a powerful draw to me." "And there was also the fact that the show is shot in L.A. At this point in my life, I was tired of constantly running up to Canada, or to other states of the union, to shoot one or another miniseries, living out of hotels, at a time when I was deeply into a relationship with Melissa; one or the other of us was constantly visiting the other on location. Then, too, I have older sons from a former marriage who I was missing a lot. It is so rare, nowadays, for a series to be shot in Los Angeles, and it's getting rarer. So it seemed that this answered a lot of questions for me, particularly where my personal life was concerned."

"And the last reason is, I wanted that role-I wanted to be the commander of a space station, to be the space cowboy. So I had the meeting with them, and it was wonderful- like old home week. They showed me around the studio, and I was instantly sold. I said, 'Where do I sign?' "

As Joe Straczynski's five year arc for the series unfolds, the cast of the show is, in some particulars, as ignorant of future developments in the ongoing saga as any viewer; and Boxleitner seems to enjoy the surprises in the narrative as much as the fans do. "One of the nicest surprises for me," he says, "is in the relationship between Sheridan and Delenn (Mira Furlan), and where those two characters are going. I was really surprised as I saw these two start getting closer and closer, in this almost childlike way. Sheridan isn't developed too much in terms of personal relationships; I'm sure that's intentional-he's having to get close to somebody again now after the loss of his wife. And I think audiences will be even more surprised as that develops. And the relationship between Sheridan and Kosh will develop more, as the Shadow War steps up more and more. As you know, Joe likes to turn things on their heads, he enjoys that. The remainder of this season is going to be quite exciting in that way."

At the time of our interview, Boxleitner had just begun studying the scripts for this season's momentous two part episode, tentatively titled "War Without End," which will guest-star Michael O'Hare as Commander Sinclair, who filled Sheridan's post through the first season.

Boxleitner and O'Hare have never met, and the actor confesses to some nervousness about the on-set chemistry. "It's going to be strange," he admits. "Among the fans, there were some people who were quite upset that he left. But I guess that we're on a much more equal footing now-I've actually done more time on the station now an he has."

"But I've heard nothing but good things about him. I've just started reading the scripts for those episodes, and I very much like the warm relationship between the two characters. It's an amazing pair of scripts, though I wonder how we're going to do it. They're two of the most complex scripts we've ever done.

"You may have noticed that, this season, Joe is writing all of the scripts. It's an amazing amount of work, but he is an amazing fellow. Joe has read a lot of the great science fiction and fantasy sagas over the years, and they've greatly influenced his own approach."

"Last year, I said to him, 'You've got this whole rich tapestry of story worked out, with so many dimensions and so much depth to it. What was the germination of this? Where does is sort of thing come from?' He gave me a copy of Lord of the Rings, and he asked me to please read it over the hiatus. I did, and I started to see some parallels, and some very interesting things."

"I happened to remark on this in an interview, and Joe read it and said, 'My God, it sounds like I'm a plagiarist!' Well, no, I certainly didn't mean it that way. This was merely one example of the kind of literature that inspired Joe to do this, and he's read very widely in that field."

Boxleitner's own tastes in science fiction are in part inspired by the films that have particularly affected him; 2001 inspired him to read every work by Arthur C. Clarke, and he cites Blade Runner as inspiring him to seek out the works of Philip K. Dick. Right now," he says, "I'm reading Gene Wolfe's Shadow of the Torturer; the first half of his 'Book of the New Sun.' It's quite an interesting saga - though it's set hundreds of years into the future, it's almost a sword and sorcery story. The next book I'll be reading is John Varley's Steel Beach, which Joe strongly recommended to me, saying 'Read it! Read it! Read it!'"

Although few of the castmembers share Boxleitner's enthusiasm for SF ("which is fine"), he nevertheless believes that his interest and acquired understanding of the genre aids in his work within the series. It also helps him to appreciate Straczynski's unusual efforts to bring literary standards to bear on a work of televised SF. "And we also have Harlan Ellison, let's not forget him," Boxleitner points out. "He recently gave me a signed copy of his City in the Edge of Forever script which is about to be published. He's a wild character, but look at the amount of work he has done. I was familiar with his work when I joined the show, but I had no idea that he was a veteran TV writer as well, writing detective shows, Westerns, and all of that."

Babylon 5 is now at the midpoint of its five-year story line which, according to Straczynski, means two more seasons and it's done regardless of ratings or following. It is Boxleitner's intuition that the show may enjoy its greatest popularity in the "afterlife" that will certainly follow. "We're already sold for 1998," he says, "when TNT will start showing the series. I believe that, by 2000, we'll have a bigger following than we do now, if only because TNT is on everywhere. There are times when we feel it would be nice if Warner Brothers would put themselves just a little bit more out there in support of the show. But we're on at such odd times in certain parts of the country, it can't be a help to us."

"I understand that this kind of science fiction isn't everyone's meat; for the broad-based public, it's `there's a guy with a rubber head - what is that all about?' But I do believe that if we were on every week at 8 o'clock it would be a completely different story."

While Straczynski has eliminated any hope for the continuance of B-5 beyond 1998, he has allowed that a spin-off-an unrelated story that may share the B-5 universe-is a possibility. Boxleitner indicates that, if such a spin-off does come to pass, he's quite open to the idea of participating. "But, while Joe has said that, he has also said that this is absolutely it- that this show is exactly what he wanted to do, and he has no desire to see any such continuance happen. We'll have to wait and see."