Titan Magazine #29 - Robert Carlyle Interview
, Jul 13th, 2009
How would you react if you were told you could never go home again? That’s the situation the heroes of Stargate Universe are faced with when they are marooned in deep space, a long way from Earth. Naturally, the news is a difficult pill for everyone to swallow—except for Dr. Nicholas Rush. The scientist seems oddly content with the prospect of spending the rest of his days in strange, and often dangerous, surroundings. Why does he feel this way, and, more importantly, what is his real agenda? No one knows for sure, including Rush actor Robert Carlyle.
“Dr. Rush is certainly a complex individual,” says Carlyle. “You’re never sure what his motives are, and to be honest with you I don’t know what’s happening with the character either. Brad Wright and Robert Cooper [Stargate Universe creators and executive producers] are obviously telling me everything I want to know, but I’d rather not know it all, which is how I’ve worked over the years. When you know how your character is going to end up, you’re tempted to play his heroic side. In fact, what you should be doing is playing the moment and each scene as it is, which is fresh. Just like you shouldn’t look too far ahead in your [real] life, you shouldn’t look too far ahead in your acting life.
Big Project
Opening episode Air sees Colonel Everett Young (Louis Ferreira, previously known as Justin Louis), commander of a secret off-world base, lead a hasty escape to an unmanned and experimental spaceship called the Destiny, launched by the Ancients at the height of their civilization. Not long after arriving, the team discovers that the ship is on a preprogrammed course and is unable to return to Earth. With a Stargate on board, but no access to Earth, Young and his team are stuck and must fend for themselves as the Destiny continues its travels through space.
Arriving on the Universe set for the first time to begin work on Air was an eye-opening experience for Carlyle. “It was like walking onto a James Bond set,” he says. “It’s that big, it’s that good, it’s that spectacular; that’s the best compliment I can pay it. This show has wonderful craftsmen, set designers, and props people. They spent a tremendous amount of money on this set and it’s all there on screen.
Escaping Destiny
Unfortunately, the congenial mood on the Universe set is not mirrored on board the Destiny, particularly in regard to Dr. Rush’s relationships with his colleagues. “If we start at the top in terms of crew ranking, Colonel Young is my character’s nemesis, there’s no doubt about that,” notes Carlyle, “and it’s quite serious. These guys are not having a petty conflict. Without giving too much away, there’s an episode, which we’ve yet to shoot, where a tragedy takes place aboard the Destiny and Rush tries to frame Young. They hate each other that much. Young is a soldier, while Rush is a scientist, and they just don’t get one another. As soon as they end up on the Destiny, the colonel is all about getting everyone home, and Rush is all about ‘How do we avoid that?’ So they’re against each other from day one and that’s been developing beautifully over the past six or seven weeks of filming.
When asked about his favorite Universe episode to have worked on so far, Carlyle refers back to Fire. “One of the interesting things about these episodes is that the first three are, as you know, entitled Air, Fire, then Water, followed by Earth, so it’s very much about the basics,” says the actor. “These characters are ill-equipped for this mission. None of them are supposed to be there [on board the Destiny], and therefore have no additional resources when they get there."
[*Editor's Note: The episode Fire is now split into two episodes, Darkness and Light.]
Art of Acting
Listening to the actor speak, it is obvious that he’s thoroughly enjoying what he’s doing. There was a time, however, when the Scottish-born Carlyle dreamt of performing in a very different type of arena. “Like most youngsters in Britain, I wanted to be a footballer. All I wanted was to play football, and, of course, that was the impossible dream,” says the actor. “At first, I worked as a painter/decorator with my father, who, along with his family as well as extended family are all decorators and have been for about 50 years. So that’s what I was going to do, until many years ago when a friend of mine asked me to go with him to an amateur dramatic group. I was bitten quickly by the [acting] bug. I was 21 and an opportunity came up to go to drama school and I thought, ‘I’ll take it.’
Read the full story in issue 29 of The Official Stargate SG-1/Atlantis Magazine, now on newsstands.
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