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| Subject: Waynes Newest interview | |
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Author: NieMMY |
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Date Posted: 18:08:40 07/22/02 Mon Don't say I never do anything for you! I bolded the bits about Harvey, because they stood out after what just happened - however the Scorpius bits also make interesting reading now we're six episodes into season four... He's Ahead of the Game Wayne Pygram took his four Farscape episodes and ran with them. When he signed on to play the uber-nasty villain Scorpius in the last four episodes of the show's first season, Pygram vowed to do his damnedest and leave the rest to fate. Fate, as we all know now, was and still is kind. In fact, it was far kinder than Scorpius would ever be to an enemy in his sights. But in tackling the role at the time, in the moment, Pygram looked not to the future but the past, and not to Science Fiction but to baseball legend. "The producers gave me the role with the little tag that 'There's the potential for this character to go on, maybe,'" the actor recalls. "So I did my thing, which I call the Babe Ruth bubble concentration self-commitment number. Babe Ruth was in a children's hospital and he met a young boy who was dying. He told the boy he'd hit a home run for him. At the next game, he goes up to bat, points to the crowd n the outfield and sure enough he hits the ball straight to where he pointed. That kid was the happiest kid on the planet. What most people don't know about Babe Ruth is that not only did he hit the most home runs, until Hank Aaron came along, but he also had the most shutouts - as a pitcher - as well. But they don't remember him for that. They remember him for pointing into the crowd and saying, 'I'm going to do this'. And that's what I did. I do that quite often in life. I got my four eps and I said, 'I'm going to make this so good, I'm going to hit this so far out in the stands that they can't go on without me'. So, after one episode, I saw the excitement that the character generated and I thought, 'Somebody's going to take me aside and talk to me soon'. And they did. They couldn't say, 'You are on board for the entire run of the show,' but I certainly knew I'd be involved in series two. I did the same thing in series two. And things fell into place for me. "So I didn't have any idea that it would happen, but I kind of made it happen," Pygram adds. "As I said, it was one of those great situations where everything fell into synchronicity. It was me, Wayne, the actor and my physicality and the way I work. It was the costume. It was the work I was given. The first four episodes were fabulous, particularly the first two. Working with Ben Browder, from day one, was fabulous. They gave me bits of gold, diamonds really, and I ran with it. The more I do on the show the more I think I'm a big chunk of the fabric, a big piece of this show and its future. I could end up disappearning next, but I won't. The show will often go off in tangents that don't involve me, but Scorpius never really goes away. I still have my Scorpy clone, which satisfies other areas for the audience. There are other ways for me to work without my actually playing Scorpius. So the whole thing has evolved beautifully. There are a lot of people to thank for that, but it started with my Babe Ruth thing. I hopped in my bubble and said, 'I'm going to smack this out of the park. They cannot go on without me.' It was a very Scorpius-like thing to say, actually." Audiences love baddies almost as much as they love goodies, and Scorpius is a baddie among baddies. He looks evil. He sounds evil. But what's the deal here? Why do 'Scapers love Scorpy? "Well, I think I surprise people," Pygram replies. "I look for surprises. I think he's cheeky and I am cheeky in the role. So I get to have fun and I think the audience has fun watching me work. He's got a level of superiority. He's arrogant. He's of a higher intelligence. He's also a very honest sort of character. Scorpius has come from a culture and a society where he does not have morals, at least through our eyes. But he's not immoral because he doesn't have morals. So I think the audience thinks he's naughty. And I think people really get entertained by the idea of 'What's he going to do next?' He'll surprise people. As an actor, I've got a huge palette to play with this character. I'm forever looking for new things. You may well see Scorpius playing vulnerable, but if you did he'd be showing that side for a reason. He'd be doing vulnerable. At times Scorpius becomes like an actor. He will give you what you want. The audience will be surprised, but eventually they will be in on it, and they will be in on it before the person in the scene with Scorpius. So the audience is with Scorpius in a moment like that, and I think that's pretty enticing for the person watching the character, watching the show. It makes them feel quite close to him. So I think I have that going. I get them on board to what's going on before the person in the scene gets it." It's often true of villains that they don't retain their lustre, their dark magic, forever. Audiences frequently tire of them. A show's writers sometimes, somewhere, drop the ball, either by over-humanizing the character, or keeping it too one-dimensional. None of that's happened yet with Scorpius. He remains as threatening and three-dimensional today as he did the first time he popped up on screen looking for all the world like an S & M skeleton. "I have faith in the writing team and their taste and where they want to take him," Pygram comments. "I certainly wouldn't want to keep on doing the same thing. I don't want to keep him as this staunch villain who always wins and is basically always on the hunt. We have to see other elements, whether it's through his back-story or through his ability to be a chameleon. I don't worry about Scorpius going soft, but I would be worried if the writers just continued to give me the same sort of stuff we started with. And they haven't. They've broadened him. But I go back again to that Babe Ruth thing. Ruth hit the most home runs, but he also had the most strikeouts. He had a great success rate, but also a high failure rate. I don't think I have the highest failure rate, but sometimes the ball doesn't get all the way to the wall. We might have a bit of a miss, but that's okay, because at least we had a crack at it. "I find it really interesting, as we continue, to go further, in liberating a script rather than just doing a script," he continues. "When I'm given a script, the script is a map for me. So if I can find something on the map that's not on the page, I will. And most of our directors, especially the ones who have been with the show since series one - the obvious names, Anthony Prowse, Rowan Woods, Tony Tilse, Ian Watson - have total faith in me. They know I go to play. When we have other directors who are in for the episode I have to win their confidence because they bow to the script, and that's all they've known in the past. Farscape is a very liberating and free environment to work in, but not everybody feels that freedom. You only win that freedom by being on the show for some time and gaining your stripes. So I'm forever looking to liberate the script as opposed to just doing the script. I know, at times, I challenge the writers, but when they see the cut and the see the chances that the directors and the actors have taken, it usually works. It's delicate. I can fall off the tightrope at times. But that's what the director is there for, to prop me up, say 'You've gone a bit too far there,' and shove me down another avenue. The character going soft has never been a concern, but I would hate to go to work, get my script and have to make today just like yesterday. I want every day to be different. I want every day to be a challenge, not just for me, but for everybody around me." Which brings us to Season Three. Scorpius has been front and centre, back and side, left and right, up and down. He has been, as Pygram notes, there even when he wasn't there. He's been tormenting Crichton, both in the flesh and in his mind. He's still chasing the wormhole technology the Peacekeepers need at long last to defeat the Skarrans, who, as was revealed in incubator, tortured the young Scorpius. "What I really loved was in the early part of the season," Pygram recalls. "I loved seeing more of his capacity of what he could do with mind control and physical control, ie. the opening episode (Season of Death) with Grunchlk (Hugh Keys-Byrne). If you recall, Grunchlk wsa the guy who ate his own finger. I love those elements of Scorpius, that he can get inside people's heads and get them to do things, get them to chew off their own finger, get them to torture themselves and babble on about it. I love that. I love his mind control capabilities. It's all about controlling others. I can't say much about series four, but you will see the chameleon at play. That's all I can say. But it's the same thing. It's his ability to get a result with people not even knowing he's doing something crafty. It could be Scorpius getting inside somebody's head, literally, or it could be in a much more general way, where people think they're actually winning. 'We're winning here. We're winning.' And Scorpius is thinking, 'No you're not.' That's a very powerful thing to have, the ability to control others. Right now, one of the Scorpy clones is gone, but there were two and one will remain. I will say that the one that will remain is the more playful Scorpy clone, the guy who does allegory, the guy John goes to to escape, to get away from his reality. He becomes like a mate to John, a sounding board. So he will be around for a while." Pygram has to go in a moment, but before he hangs up the phone the actor is asked to consider what he's yet to play as Scorpius, what he may or may not know about Scorpius that he's simply not had a chance to express on screen. "Mmmmm, that's good," Pygram says, relishing the challenge and sounding dangerously like his Farscape alter ego. "That's tough. I want to see him put all of his demons, the things that have made him, to bed, whether it's Skarran torture or his relationship with the Peacekeepers. I want to see him resolve all his issues, put it all to bed so he could be free. He's a lot of things, Scorpius, but he's not free. He's like someone who's been forged into something. He's actually forged himself into this being that he is, this superior, higher being, but that resulted from the things that happened to him. It would be great for him to have a life outside of that discomfort, outside that much pressure. Putting all his demons to bed might mean destroying the Skarrans. It won't be easy." And with that Pygram lets loose a sinister Scorpius laugh. (Ian Spelling)Typed out By Nural Clone ,Flogged By NieMMY :P [ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ] |
