TV Guide Interview with Jeanne Wolf
BRUCE BOXLEITNER
AKA: Babylon 5's Captain Sheridan
In terms of job security, the role of Babylon 5 station commander hasn't exactly been the most enviable gig recently. But actor Bruce Boxleitner steered his crew through a tumultuous fourth season, playing a precarious leadership role both on and off the set. Jeanne Wolf recently talked with Boxleitner, who is breathing much more easily these days. -- John Walsh
It was pretty touch and go there for a while, wasn't it?
Last year, when it suddenly became possible that we might have to wrap this story up in four seasons, we did the last episode. Now, fortunately, it won't be. We'll hold it, and it will become Season Five, Episode 22, or Season Six, Episode 22, or whatever, depending on how far we go.
On a sci-fi show like this, with such a strong cult following, how do you handle the inevitable Star Trek comparisons?
You know what? Hey, that's a wonderful thing because Star Trek is the forerunner of all these things. And it's ironic, because it was canceled in its second season. And it was brought back for one more season by NBC, because there was such a fan outcry, and then they canceled it right after that. And now they've had a 30-year legacy off a three-season show. It's amazing.
But I'm happy as anything to be going into a fifth season. [TNT picked up the show after four years in syndication.] I just wanted to finish -- if this is the finish -- what we started. Not only for the sake of the story. This day-to-day struggle, never knowing what would happen, was a lot of wear and tear on us. The crew, for example: People were saying, "Look, it's summer, this is the time when TV shows start to crew up. Are we gonna go or are we not gonna go? Will we have jobs? What's the story?" And the whole thing was necessarily so secretive. I'm just glad to know.
Did people come to you, thinking that since you're the captain, you'd know what was going on?
Everybody came to me. "Bruce, have you heard anything? I got a job offer and I gotta know, you know?" I heard that constantly on the set and I honestly didn't know anything. It was embarrassing. So what I would do is go to [series creator] Joe Straczynski or [producer] John Copeland and ask them what was going on. And they'd see me coming and try to duck down another hallway, you know? These guys are even secretive to me. And I'm the captain. I mean, it got to that point because they knew exactly what I was going to say. I've been through this before on other series. It's never pleasant.
What happened when you finally got the word that you had been picked up? I got sort of a wink from John Copeland. And I wanted to run down to the set and tell everybody. But we had to wait because they had planned to make a formal announcement about it. But I knew there would be a lot of happy faces at work the next day. Where's a telepath when you need one?
The telepaths were kept far away from the information, I think. But some of the kids in this crew were just hanging on. I've never been involved in a show where there was such a personal commitment from everybody who worked on it. It makes that set a great place to come to work. Did this experience bring you all closer together? Definitely. We're not on a [studio] lot, so we're not around a lot of other people. So this space station that we've created is it. We don't see anybody else but each other. And you begin to feel very isolated out there. At least on a studio lot you can go to the commissary. If we were over in Burbank we'd see the people on ER or what have you, and you'd feel a part of this studio community. Did the fans make a difference to you? They were our lifeline, those fans on the web sites. We have e-mails tacked up all over the corridors at the studio. Sometimes they go on for pages, and sometimes just a quick couple of lines. But we put that stuff up there so people can read what fans are saying about the show. And the rumors, oh, they have been rife. How do the fans act when they meet you?
It's funny. They treat me like the captain. They're kind of like very shy when they come up to me. They always think I'm going to bark some orders at them or something. It's amazing, to do a question and answer session in front of, I don't know, 2,500 people. What do they want to know?
Oh, everything. They'll ask, "Now in episode so and so," and they'll say the title and I forget the title to every one of them. They know it, though. "Now when you said such and such to so and so, what were you really thinking, because I thought you'd say..." And sometimes, honestly, I can't remember the episode. How has Captain Sheridan changed since you first started playing him? I've tried to be a little more fallible. It's very easy to be Buck Rogers in this kind of a thing, and what I've always tried to be is just a little bit more human. To have some human flaws. That's all you can really do, is just be truthful. Joe Straczynski has written, what, maybe 44 episodes of Babylon 5? He's written two full seasons of this show. That's got to be some kind of record. I think he studied me enough and has gotten a sense of me. And put it in there. I think Sheridan is sometimes a little arrogant. Sometimes he's impulsive when he should be more restrained. He has a bad temper sometimes. He has a wonderful sense of humor, and a childlike wonderment still about space and about contact with alien worlds. He still is like a little boy. Are you a science fiction fan? I've been reading more than I used to. It really engages your imagination, which is important when you're working on a show with special effects. If all you've got in front of you is a blue screen, you have to imagine the most incredible things. Science fiction is a much more entertaining type of material than, say, Melrose Place.
Science fiction is about hope, ultimately -- about the future. No matter where we go we bring our troubles, our problems, our idiosyncrasies, but we're explorers by nature. When you look up at the stars now, do you have a different notion of what's out there?
Oh, yeah. I even have a big telescope now. I have a baby boy. And what it really makes me think about is when I was 19 and I ran out on that July 20 night back in 1969, and looked up at the moon, and knew that there were Americans on it. I remember it was a hot summer night and I was visiting my girlfriend in Peoria, IL. And we ran outside in wonderment looking up at this incredible moon. Humans had made it. And I look at my son and wonder what he will see when he's a young man.
Thanks, Bev!
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