NOCC: Aaron Douglas Q&A
Company: Wizard World Product: Aaron Douglas Q&A
Aaron Douglas, mostly known for his role as Chief Galen Tyrol on the newer Battlestar Galactica series, had a Q&A session at the Wizard World New Orleans Comic Con and we had the pleasure of being there and seeing Douglas' most enjoyable talk. To make things interesting, he was even filming the Q&A session (as well as several other events from the convention) on a small recorder for a CNN iReport (follow the link below to see the iReport). Douglas had many stories to tell, including how he found out his character was one of the Final Five Cylons. He said that the cast and crew always had parties at the beginning of a season and while wandering around the house of one of the show's higher ups, he stumbled upon scripts and outlines for Season Three. When he read that he will be revealed as a Cylon, he was asked to keep quiet and not let anyone else know. Douglas said that all during the filming of that season, he would walk up to writers and ask if there was anything interesting coming up for the Chief and they would always say no. In his mind, Douglas always replied with a resounding, "Liar." Douglas was asked at one point if he brought any cool props home from the show. He said he didn't, but when they had finished filming the Season Two finale, "Lay Down Your Burdens," and they realized that the show might very well end right there because of funding issues, he went around to all of the casts' chairs and stole all of the backs that had the actors' names embroidered onto them. Douglas said that he was very glad the show came back after that because it would have been the worst ending to a series ever. He said that people would forgive The Sopranos or Seinfeld for their endings, but there is no way fans would be able to let things be with Season Two's ending.
Several times throughout the session, Douglas made snide jabs at Star Trek: The Next Generation actor Will Wheaton and when asked, he explained that the two are actually really good friends, but they never miss a chance to dog each other out, especially at conventions like Comic Con. Douglas recalled a bet the two had during the Winter Olympics. When Canada beat the U.S. in Hockey, Wheaton was forced to wear the winning team's jersey during all of his public appearances for a week, and this included a time when Wheaton was making appearances at a convention. Being from Canada, and still living there, Douglas said that he doesn't get to meet up with many of his former castmates as much as he would like to, but he said that there are still parties where everyone will get together and he will even make the trip down to L.A. to occasionally visit his friends from the show. But even though he hasn't gotten as many chances to visit his friends as he would like, he still has plenty of memories. A couple of particularly amusing stories involved Edward James Olmos (Admiral Adama). One was a boxing scene that paired "The Old Man" up with the Chief. Douglas said that they had done a lot of training for those scenes and their coordinator would call out various numbers related to different types of punches and blocks. During the filming of this scene, the coordinator had called out a series of moves, and some signals got crossed on what punches should be thrown or what dodges should be made resulting in Douglas punching Olmos rather hard in the face.
Another Olmos story involved an early scene between the two characters. In it, Adama is supposed to yell in Tyrol's face to order him to get some repairs started. Just before doing the scene, the cast and crew took a lunch break and Olmos decided to eat a sandwich that left his breath rather pungent. Instead of performing the customary practice runs right after lunch, Olmos said they should just jump right in and do the scene. Douglas said that he can't help but gag when he thinks about Olmos yelling in his face when the two were mere inches apart. In an episode Olmos directed, "Escape Velocity," Tyrol is sitting at Joe's Bar when Adama walks up to console the Chief over his recent loss. Douglas said that the two performed the scene perfectly on the first take and Olmos felt like everything had gone just right. The problem is, it turns out no one had turned the cameras on. Douglas said that even several takes later, they still couldn't get the scene as well as it had been that first time.
Douglas also talked about his family. He said that his son wasn't really into the show much until the kid's mother started showing him selected scenes from it. One day, the boy visited Douglas on set and he decided to take his son to the hanger set where Tyrol spent most of his time. Since they were preparing to film on the set, there was a Viper sitting on the deck and Douglas' son kept insisting that they "take it for a spin." Douglas had a hard time trying to explain to his son that it couldn't really fly and that it was just for the show, but his son kept insisting that it could. Douglas even went so far as to put his son in the cockpit and show him that there wasn't really anything in there but an empty frame, to which the kid pointed to one of the actresses who played a pilot on the show and said, "Yes it can, she flies them all the time." Given all of these great stories though, the most amusing part was when a friend of his gave him a belated birthday present. This was a one-of-a-kind Chief Tyrol encased on Carbonite action figure. You can see Douglas' reaction of the gift and his reading of all of the amusing tidbits written on the box by viewing his CNN iReport.
-J.R. Nip, GameVortex Communications AKA Chris Meyer
Related Links: Aaron Douglas on IMDb.com Aaron Douglas’ CNN iReport
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