How bad has it gotten for Katee Sackhoff?
The “Battlestar Galactica” actress has had a bronchial infection for a month, so she’s had to cut down from her usual pack-a-day habit to just a few cigarettes every day.
But she’s not complaining. During a phone call from the show’s Vancouver set, Sackhoff says she’s enjoying herself on “Battlestar,” despite the crazy hours and the fact that she occasionally finds herself coated in alien goo.
“It’s funny, the cast, we really have become a family in a sense, especially since a lot of us aren’t from Canada and it’s turned into kind of a second home for us,” says the actress, who plays the hot-shot pilot Kara “Starbuck” Thrace in the updated version of the ’70s show. On the set, there “isn’t really a minute to relax,” says Mary McDonnell, who plays President Laura Roslin.
In the second season of the show, which premieres at 9 p.m. Friday, “we’re all spread out on different planets,” she says. “Last year, we were all kind of working together; now we have to go out to dinner together to see each other.”
The show, which premiered its first season in January to critical acclaim and record-breaking Nielsen numbers for the Sci Fi Channel, was such a hit that the network ordered 20 episodes for the second season, up from the normal 13.
All the actors say they relish the challenges of the season ahead, in which the 50,000 humans in the “Battlestar” fleet will continue to try to outrun the deadly Cylons, a race of machines that can look human and which were, in fact, invented by humans.
Edward James Olmos says his character, Commander William Adama, a tough career military man, undergoes a transformation in Season 2. Being shot in the gut by a Cylon–which he was in the Season 1 cliffhanger–will do that to a guy.
“On this journey, he’s that much more vulnerable. He dies twice on the operating table,” Olmos says, adding that people who’ve had near-death experiences are more emotional.
It’s that focus on the human condition that has made “Battlestar” stand out from the genre crowd, McDonnell says.
“The thing I love most about ‘Battlestar’ is the question it’s raising. … How do we perceive ourselves in relation to ‘the other’?” she says. “That is the essential question to me of our planet.”
Sci Fired up
The Sci-Fi Channel kicks off its Sci Fi Fridays this week with debuts of three of its most popular shows–“Stargate SG-1” at 7 p.m., “Stargate Atlantis” at 8 p.m. and “Battlestar Galactica” at 9 p.m.
“SG-1” gets a new look this season as “Farscape” alums Ben Browder and Claudia Black join the cast, which loses Richard Dean Anderson. Former “X-Files” star Mitch Pileggi and “North Shore” hunk Jason Momoa join the “Atlantis” cast.
For more of The Watcher’s interviews with cast members from these shows, go to bancodeprofissionais.com/watcher.
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Edited by Curt Wagner (cwwagner@tribune.com) and Kris Karnopp (kkarnopp@tribune.com)
