Are You Screening - Interview Victor

It’s Continuum finale day, and along with a quick sneak peek, I have an interview for you. The show has been exciting all season long, and I have to admit that some of these Syfy endeavors (like Lost Girl) are among my favorite shows. Perhaps not the absolutely deepest things television has to offer, but they’re a lot of fun, and I don’t miss them.

Below find coverage from a press call with stars Rachel Nichols and Victor Webster, along with Executive Producer Simon Barry. You’ll get some teases about the next season, and some deeper elements of the show came to light.

What’s you take on this one? Are you watching? 

Do you have any particular favorite moments from this past season that you would like to talk about?

Rachel Nichols: Okay I’ll jump in.

Simon Barry: You jump in.

Rachel Nichols: I’ll jump in. It’s a question where I’m really like yes, because it almost changes every time I answer the question because I’ve either seen an episode recently or I remembered something that I forgot.

The end of episode two is one of my favorite and Jon Cassar directed that episode and I’m in the precinct and I’ve been sort of – I’ve been jailed and I watch Dr. Fraser reunite with his wife. But, you know, everything from meeting my grandmother played by Katie Findlay in episode five, or episode eight when I kind of go robo-Kiera, those three moments that I chose are very different but they’re all favorite moments just because they really stand out in my memory.

Simon Barry: I know what Victor’s favorite moment is.

Rachel Nichols: The shower.

Simon Barry: Getting attacked in the shower in episode seven.

Victor Webster: I liked the behind-the-scenes version of that one better.

Simon Barry: Go ahead Victor I was just kidding. I’m sure you have other favorite moments.

Victor Webster: Oh no, I mean so many things stand out about the show like Rachel said. I watched a lot of it on my computer the first time and then when you watch it on a big screen television you just miss so many things that you notice all of a sudden. And I love the moments between Rachel and I when I’m dying in the last episode and I’ve been shot and great emotional moments, episode seven when we were out on the balcony of the police precinct and having this heart-to-heart conversation about trust and partnership. Those are some great scenes. Obviously, Kimani has done some great fight scenes; I’m a very physical guy so I love that. Those are some things that stand out to me.

Is there anything from the next season that you guys can talk about or tease about even if it’s not specific?

Simon Barry: Yes, well, I can certainly say that this season is really we get now to play a lot of the relationships of the characters out in a way that we didn’t get to do in season one and there’s a lot of dynamics.

As you know everyone now has stakes in this game and as those stakes become chips that can be played, everyone has a point of view about how they can best take care of themselves and also control their own destiny. And actually that covers almost every character.

Information comes to light, people make alliances, people split up and break connections and so a lot of the positioning of these characters comes down to how they’re going to control not only their lives in the present but also in the future. And so control, power and those themes run heavily through season two.

Victor, even though he’s only known her maybe a month and Carlos knows that Kiera lies to him at times, what do you think it is about her that makes Carlos trust her?

Victor Webster: She gets the job done. She may not be completely truthful but I believe that she’s doing it for confidentiality reasons and she’s not allowed to disclose information to me through Section 6 and what she says she’s going to do she does. I may not agree with the means by which she does them but her results speak for themselves so I have no reason but to trust her because she makes stuff happen.

Is there a goal at some point to thrust Liber8 into the front and come forward and become hero-like figures with Kiera being the obstacle in their way? 

Simon Barry: Well it’s an interesting…

Rachel Nichols: I’m going to let Simon take that one.

Simon Barry: Yes, it’s an interesting question. I mean, I think that because we’re keeping perspective alive in this show that really I’m not editorializing necessarily what anyone should think about these guys and their direction and their purpose, although we are certainly telling the story predominately through the eyes of Kiera and Kiera’s experience, which is what grounds the show and I think makes the show relatable.

We’re always trying to tackle arguments from different points of view and we’re trying to be intelligent about our neutrality instead of just being lazy about it. So we try and bring two sides of every argument to bear if we can.

I think that at a certain point I may not be the person who decides that, it may be the audience who decides that that’s happening because they may just be tapped into that and be focused on that and that’s what they’ll see whereas other audience members may not. And I think that’s kind of the goal of the show is to allow for people to take sides and see the truth and the meaning that is relevant to them. And I’ll try and stay out of the way of that if I can.

Simon, I was wondering what inspired you to take away Kiera’s suit for as long as you did? Was it budgetary considerations or a creative move to prevent it from becoming a crutch? 

Simon Barry:  I think we were very conscious in season one that the suit could easily be a get-out-of-jail-free card in a lot situations and that in the interest of having Kiera adapt to her new surroundings and deal with the realities of being 65 years in the past, it was a better from a character perspective to have her have to deal with certain things head on and then get her hands dirty as opposed to finding a way around things. So that was absolutely a conscious choice.

But, we also liked the idea that the suit’s – in damaging the suit we could also create kind of that paradoxical connection to Alec being able to fix it and also learn things about the future that may actually play into who he becomes. So in a way it served many purposes to not have her in the suit. It also created that opportunity to have the suit come back into play which is always a nice moment too.

So we knew early on in the breaking of season one that the suit was an opportunity, but also a liability and we have to sort of balance that and that’s kind of what our solution was.

Tahmoh Penikett’s character was pretty interesting and the whole storyline with Carlos and Jim and the end of the friendship and what was going on there. Are we going to see more of that in season two?

Rachel Nichols: Good lord I hope so.

Simon Barry: We love Tahmoh and if/when he’s available we would love to get him back on the show, so we’re going to make efforts to do that. I can’t promise it because a lot of it has to do with other things that he’s doing so we’ll try.

What is up with Kiera’s husband? Are we going to find out more if there’s something – I just feel like there’s something going on with him and I don’t know if we’re going to see anything more about that in the future scenes.

Simon Barry: Well there’s something going on with him all right. I have no idea what it is but I don’t trust the guy as far as I can throw him.

Rachel Nichols: I don’t know what it is because I’m on a need-to-know basis here and I have no idea what’s going to happen with my husband. This is why I look forward to Simon answering this question.

Simon Barry: No we’re definitely going to resolve more details about Kiera’s husband Greg and his involvement with (Sad Tech) and Alec Sadler in season two. That’s something to look forward to.

Obviously Kiera can’t come out right now and tell Carlos everything that’s going on but will she be able to reveal  some things?  

Simon Barry: Yes, we obviously want to get to a point where we’ve mined him not knowing and sort of dealing with their relationship based on trust and faith to the point where it makes sense, and then to move on from that point. I can’t tell you exactly when that’s going to happen but I think that we’re all in agreement that it’s best for their relationship to evolve at a certain point, we’re just not locked into when that’s going to happen.

What’s been your most challenging so far?

Rachel Nichols: Well, I know for me it’s this sort of, it’s this interesting balance because Kiera Cameron is from the year 2077 and she knows everything about the year 2077, it’s the world in which she lived and she comes back to the year 2013 about which she knows nothing and has to be completely sort of reprogrammed and re-educated at 65 years in the past. Me, Rachel, clearly I have no idea what 2077 will look like and it’s certainly not where I’m from and I am from 2013.

So it’s this very interesting balance between this – out of, you know, fish out of water character when we’re here in 2013 because Kiera has to feel often times, although she’s a fast learner, as though this is a completely new scenario for her, even though I exist in 2013 and for me when we go to the future, it’s living in a different world that I’m supposed to know like the back of my hand.

So, that balance has been complicated and in the most interesting way and thankfully, you know, I have Simon to help me out with my barometer, new things, old things, strange things, funny things, key phrases I don’t understand, you know, episode III rock, paper, scissors, apparently we don’t play that game in 2077. So it’s been a challenge and a really interesting challenge. 

I read that Kiera was originally written as a male character, so at what point was the decision made to change the lead from a male to female and how did that affect the rest of the show?

Simon Barry: Well, the truth is, it was never written. We never actually wrote a script with a male lead. The very, very earliest pitch for this show had a male character in Kiera’s role but as soon as I entered the development process with the Canadian broadcaster Showcase and met with the executives there, the idea of converting (Kyle), as it was originally, to Kiera made complete sense and actually was a great contribution early on and, you know, at a certain point you go into the process where the idea is driving everything forward and certainly the broadcasters responded to the idea of what the show was.

Continuum seems to be part science fiction and part police procedural. How do you balance those different aspects and still keep it interesting?

Simon Barry: Well, it’s actually handy to have both because they both drive each other. The Sci-fi mythology is kind of part of the fabric of all the characters connection to each other and then sets up, you know, a lot of the dynamics. The police world allows for a structure to build certain stories around and so I actually think it’s a really great balance of supporting the episodic in the serialized in the same hour. And having Kiera integrate with the police department makes sense, it’s not like she is a time traveler working out trying to do – solve a huge insurmountable problem on her own.

She did the smart thing, which was to integrate with local law enforcement and to use them and so – and by the way they would have vested interest in these guys coming – being brought down anyway, so I think that what we got out of that was an ability to justify how Kiera can have an impact using her relationship with Carlos and the police department and also allow for the structure of storytelling to be a little bit more in the domain of police cases, which brings up kind of that familiar structure of crime stories and police shows.

But we’re not trying to be, you know, obviously we try weave in as much of our serialized and mythology components into those crimes so that they’re not outside our universe. We’re trying to make everything inside the universe. I think it works well.

There’s a theme of loneliness to all the major characters, could you talk about maybe what the different approaches of that – maybe that leads to their actions and especially Alec who seems to be a little self-sufficient in his kind of computer lab, can you talk about the loneliness theme?

Simon Barry: Yes. I think you’re taping something that’s actually very predominant and you’re right, there’s a – we always talked about the idea that there was a certain amount of a castaway vibe for Kiera as well as it being a mission driven thing for her. She also is stranded and abandoned and cut-off and all those things that someone who would be, you know, a castaway on a desert island would go through and it opened up a lot of possibilities to look at isolation and to look at those characters.

And certainly in season II we’re going to delve a little bit more into that but you’re right, it’s finding your place in the universe, finding your place in destiny, finding your place in, you know, the time – in the time Continuum or what is destiny, what is fate, what you can control, what you can’t control often attaches itself to a sense of self and isolation and sometimes beyond.

So it’s – I’m glad you’re picking up on it. We are sort of looking at people – characters who are sort of examining themselves in ways that are unusual and mainly because they’re not making those normal connections and we’re going to have those connections develop in Season II in a way that makes – I think we can have some fun with that, what we set up in Season I and see where it goes in Season II because we know these characters so well on their own, it’ll be something to see how they relate when they’re not but I think Rachel is going to chime in too, so go ahead.

Rachel Nichols: Yes. I mean I think I love the question actually it’s different, I’ve never been asked that question, although not the first time I’ve thought of a response to it. So thank you but there is that lone wolf loneliness, I mean it’s something that inhabits her obviously for sort of the superficial where she’s in 2012 and she is alone but, you know, the idea of she’s separated from everything that she knows and everything that she’s familiar with and she’s thrown into this new environment and it’s really sink or swim.

And there are very few people, I mean Alec and then clearly Kellogg they’re sort of becoming friends at the end of the season but there are very few people that really know who she is, where she’s from and why she’s there, how she got there. And there’s a real loneliness in not being able to be honest with people like Carlos. I mean the even if Kiera’s surrounded by people, she still feels completely alone because there’s no one there really that knows who she is.

And to lie to your best friend and someone that you truly respect and admire and appreciate on a daily basis, it is excruciating and it’s very, very lonely and it’s, you know, she feels like she’s a one woman army very frequently and Alec, you’re right, Alec is very self-sufficient in what he does and how he exists in season I. We’re letting him blossom a little bit more in season II but I think that’s why Alec and Kiera get along so well because they know the truth about each other and they both know what it’s like to be completely alone and feel completely alone.

And I think Kiera finds great comfort in the fact that she has him as a friend and I think, you know, that’s really important for the show about the idea that you can be surrounded by people and feel completely alone – work conversely completely alone and yet feel like you’re, you know, that you’re not. And I think she does some of that knowing that Alec is in her head and a part of her. And at the end of the day, she relies heavily on him for her own sanity.

By Marc Eastman

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