We pin down Claudia Black, alias "tough cookie" Aeryn Sun, to find out more about her part in new series Farscape.
Aeryn Sun is rising.
Every week on Farscape, the Sebacean ex-Peacekeeper cuts a formidable presence, holds her own with the toughest tough guys and displays a bit of heart. She even appears ready to win the heart of the series' lead, Commander John Crichton (Ben Bowder). And actress Claudia Black, who plays Officer Sun, couldn't sound any happier. "It's been exciting to pursue the depths of Aeryn without knowing from one episode to the next what's going to happen to her, what's going to be revealed about her past," Black enthuses. "The polarities in her character are fascinating to me. I love opportunities to express not just her strength, but also her vulnerability."
"I think of her as a touch cookie who was bred to have a hard exterior for the sake of survival. She's the woman-child. She contains all the classic polarities of contemporary characters. She's a little girl lost in space. She was very much in denial, especially at the beginning, about the adversity of her circumstances. And she's finding that she has to cope emotionally with a lot more issues than she ever expected. Also, she's not just acting tough. She is tough. She was literally bred because she came from good genes. It's an expectation that she have a toughness and a strength to her, and it's the fragility within that that is very exciting for me to play."
At the moment, Farscape is in production of its second season, while the Sci-Fi Channel repeats the better part of Season One. The last few original episodes from the first season will air in early 2000, leading into year two. It's the old Babylon 5 gambit. To date, Sun has figured prominently in a number of episodes, including Throne For A Loss, PK Tech Girl, DNA Mad Scientist, Till The Blood Runs Clear and The Flax. Black ranks PK Tech Girl, in which Crichton developed feelings for a somewhat more 'human' Sebacean, as the hour featuring Sun's finest moments.
Looking to next year, Black envisions unique challenges and exciting surprises. "Physically, I want to do more crazy things," she says. "I've spoken to the writers, because I'm also looking for opportunities to extend myself, to test myself as a person and therefore as an actor. From talking to the writers, I know they want Aeryn to be as wild and crazy as I can deliver. Her relationship with Crichton will also continue to be a matter of interest because, as the situations around the characters change, so too will her ability -or lack of ability- to express her feelings for Crichton. I think there will be a constant tug of war inside her as to how much she should really open up to him. The circumstances are never perfect."
Black utters a genial stream of pleasantries when speaking about the cast and crew of Farscape. They're fun. They laugh a lot. And so on. Thus, the conversation leaps over to the special effects and puppeteering, major Farscape components. The special effects are top-notch, and, given that the show is co-executive produced by Muppets boss Brian Henson and puts creations from Jim Henson's Creature Shop front and centre, it's no shock that the character Rygel comes across as real as Sun, Crichton, D'Argo (Anthony Simcoe) or Zhann (Virginia Hey). "The special effects can do nothing but enhance the project," Black says. "The quality of the effects is just more proof to me that the creators of the series really care about the show. They're really investing the money, the love, the time and the creativity they need to in order to enhance the show."
"I don't believe that the special effects or puppeteering, when they're done well, get in the way of storytelling. As an actor, it is a challenge, but one of the primary tools we as actors have is our imagination. On a show like Farscape, it's just a matter of learning to use the imagination in different ways. You have to be flexible. You have to think on your feet. It's an enormous challenge, but it's worth it. I can't believe it, but I actually consider Rygel (manipulated by John Eccleston and voiced by Jonathan Hardy) a co-star. Here I am talking to this guy who has just as many out-takes as the rest of us do. The jokes continue when the camera cuts. The puppeteers bring the creatures to life. So, it's really not a stretch of the imagination for us as actors to believe that we're performing with something that has a heartbeat."
Though Black has never considered herself a genre fan -actually she doesn't watch enough TV or see enough movies to qualify as a major fan of anything- the Aussie actress has done her share of fantasy and Sci-Fi. "I played Cassandra from Atlantis on Hercules : The Legendary Journeys," she notes. "The character was in two episodes. The first was the third season's finale) Atlantis, and the second one was Hercules On Trial," (a mid-fourth season episode) in which some of the popular characters from the past were asked to come back and support Hercules during his trial. When they did one of the TV movies that they like to do during the hiatus, to keep the production crews working, the producers called me in. So I did something called Amazon High, which was with Selma Blair, who was in Cruel Intentions. I have no idea whether or not it has aired anywhere. I played the Queen of the Amazons. She was regal and butch at the same time. It was quite a combination. We were running around, in possum fur bikinis, screaming and beating up stuntmen."
Black's non-genre credits include such Australian productions as Good Guys Bad Guys, A Country Practice, Seven Deadly Sins and City Life. Her next big project, however, is very definitely Sci-Fi. It's writer-director David Twohy's feature, Pitch Black, shot both on sets at the Warner Roadshow Studio in Queensland and on location in the Australian desert in the middle of winter. As much a horror film as a Sci-Fi outing, if not more, Pitch Black dumps a group of people (Black, Vin Diesel, Cole Hauser, Radha Mitchell, Keith David) on a strange planet in total eclipse, and as darkness descends, so too do paranoia and alien creatures in the night. "I play a character called Shazza," Black explains. "She's a sort of a New World explorer. She has a partner, who's played by John Moore, an Australian actor. They're sort of earthy, straight-down-the-line, adventurous travellers who were going to another colony, and they were probably going just to have a new experience."
"Shazza is another tough broad for me. I actually did Pitch Black before we started Farscape. In fact, I was still filming Pitch Black when I started Farscape. I'd never been se sleep-deprived in my life. I was very, very lucky, though, that the producers of Farscape were willing to accommodate me. I almost lost Aeryn. Anyway, Pitch Black was a challenge. It was cold, it was physical, but we had a good time. David Twohy's a funny guy, and I mean funny-amusing, not funny-strange. I enjoyed being cheeky with him and seeing a smile break out on his face. It was fun to taunt him with my brassy Australian humour. I've seen the film and I like it. It's very scary."
And now Black is back in Australia, in Sydney to be precise, shooting Season two of Farscape. As the conversation ends, Black offers just a few more words about those last few Season One episodes. "The final shows are very dramatic," she promises. "The relationships between the characters on board Moya intensify, and I think we deliver the goods. It's all very believably and very moving. And I hope Season Two will have even more of that."