| By Rob Salem ,
on 04-04-2008
|
Favoured : 172 |
Battlestar's one-eyed colonel says role a `gift'
As the cult hit launches its final season tonight, Canadian star says Galactica more than just sci-fi
Apr 04, 2008 04:30 AM
Rob Salem
TV COLUMNIST
Even without the eye patch and the scowl, Michael Hogan has never exactly been shy and retiring.
Which makes one wonder why, even on the eve of tonight's avidly anticipated return of Battlestar Galactica (Space at 10 p.m.), he has studiously, stubbornly avoided the press.
That is, until now.
It isn't a privacy issue, the actor insisted in an exclusive interview earlier this week. He just doesn't think it's necessary.
"Battlestar doesn't need me to sell tickets," assured Hogan, on the phone from Vancouver, on his way out the door to return to work – a dialogue dubbing session – on the second half of this fourth and final season.
"What Hogan has to say about things really doesn't matter."
He undersells himself. What Hogan has to say, and particularly what he says in the grizzled guise of Battlestar's one-eyed executive officer, Col. Saul Tigh, is of extreme interest to the reborn science-fiction series' dedicated legions of fans.
Yet the veteran Canadian character actor would prefer to reserve his off-camera comments for when and where they are really essential.
"If I am doing a play, or a small-budget Canadian film like A Simple Curve, which I did a little while ago, then I am all over it," he says. "I'll do everything."
He is right about one thing – there really is not a lot he needed to add to his fan-favourite portrayal of the cranky, crusty Tigh. It's all there in the character.
Even among this excellent ensemble cast, Hogan's Tigh has captivated – right from the first season, when he was still chugging back the booze, and on into the third, where he lost his right eye and led a guerrilla revolt and had to assassinate his traitorous wife, and then, at the end, was aghast to learn ... Ah, but we'll get there. The fun is in the telling.
And Hogan is having the time of his life.
"What a gift, what an absolute gift," he enthuses. "They just keep writing this stuff for me. I'm an honoured man.
"The work has been amazing – the directors, the writing, the cast ... I mean, you guest in some series, and you think, `F---, how do you come to work everyday?,' what with all the egos, etc. Here there's not an ounce of that. Not an ounce."
And it is a gift that will keep on giving, even when the show wraps for good in just a couple of months.
"It's really quite amazing, in terms of career, because there is nobody, nobody in this industry, worldwide, that hasn't seen Battlestar Galactica, you know what I mean? Francis Coppola has seen it. John Sayles has seen it ..."
And they have liked what they've seen – as have a substantial number of outside-the-industry, and even non-genre fans. And that, Hogan says, is because spaceships and robots notwithstanding, Battlestar Galactica is so much more than merely a "genre" show.
"I never think on the set at all that we're doing a sci-fi show," Hogan says. "My research has all been strictly human, because all of the situations that I have been placed in as Tigh are very human situations. I've never had to deal with the unreality of any of it. I mean, I have often said, `I'm glad I'm not a Cylon ...'"
He can't say that anymore. That surprise we mentioned from the end of last season, now almost an entire year ago, was the revelation that Tigh and several other unlikely characters have been unwitting artificial infiltrators all along.
"When they told me, I was like, `Bull---t! You've got to be kidding me!' I mean, apparently there was a thing on the Internet, and the fans voted on who was most likely or least likely a Cylon, and of everybody that even had one line on Battlestar, Tigh was second to the bottom."
Unexpected, perhaps. But that is precisely what keeps the Battlestar faithful coming back for more.
Though not, surprisingly, from failing to recognize Hogan, off-duty and out in the real world.
"People don't recognize me," he confirms. "I don't look like Col. Tigh when I'm walking down the street. We were in New York the other day, for the (David) Letterman appearance, and Eddie (co-star Olmos) and I were walking along, and people were all over him, and they had no idea who I was.
"And I love that – I think that's just great. But then there's Eddie saying, `Hey, this is ...,' and I'm, like, `Shut up, man. Don't do that!'"
It's the eye patch, he reasons. That damned annoying eye patch.
"I hate that thing," he grumbles, Tigh-like. "It screws with your depth perception. In the morning it's not bad, but later in the afternoon it's like, `Hogan's pretty quiet' ... `No, man, I'm just not going to talk anymore until this is off and I've got a beer in my hand.'"
There is, he reluctantly admits, one advantage. "It saves on contact lenses. I only have to put one in."
thestar.com
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