Claudia Black was interviewed on the breakfast show 'Mornings With Kerri-Anne' shown on the Nine Network, Austrailia, on the 6 February 2003. Below is an highlights transcript.
Host: "Farscape" was the most expensive production ever in Australia at $2 million an episode.
Claudia: It was something like that, and it was interesting becoming victim to the exchange rate as well, because certain things would be possible one day, and then the next day things would change slightly. And I think it's certainly the most ambitious project we've ever had in terms of fast turnaround tv because we were shooting an episode every ten days with the last three days overlapping with the B-Unit. And to shoot that on 35mm cameras it was an extraordinary feat. I don't know whether it's something to boast that it's the most expensive show but we certainly put all the money on the screen so it's something to be proud of.
Host: Tell me about those sci-fi conventions.
Claudia: I limit them only because we've spent so much time working on the set that the little time that I had in between I would try and spend time with my friends and family. They forget what we look like, and I do love to travel. That's one of the reasons why the entertainment business was very appealing to me because I knew that I would have opportunities to travel if I was working.
Host: Where did it all start for Claudia Black. You're an Aussie girl!
Claudia: I'm an Aussie and I eat Vegemite heaps, and that everything's tops! My grandmother's very much in denial about the fact that she was born in Australia. And we called her the Duchess of Darling Point, or she was called the Queen of Australia, because she was "frightfully, frightfully" posh and she brought us up to speak very round and forward and it's taken me many years to sound like this. This is about as neutral as I get, I think.
Host: What did your Mum and Dad think when you said "I think I'm going to be an actor"?
Claudia: I come from a very long line of family members who went to university -they are all academics. I'm like the black sheep of the family, and I thought I was going to have to book two ambulances to stand outside the house when I told them one night at dinner that I was leaving university. I lasted three weeks and the deadline at university for paying fees was at the end of the third week, and I thought, well, before Mum and Dad have to start forking out any cash for my tuition, it's probably a good time to tell them I'm getting out. And they almost had a heart attack. It was just one of those amazing moments.
Host: What do your parents do being both academics?
Claudia: Both doctors. And they're so scientific about everything it's so funny and they're so practical, and my sister and I were always peaceloving and talking about, you know, all the new-age stuff. We just had these great passionate discussions over the dinner table about Mum needing impirical evidence about things, and me saying, "But if you can't really prove it, how do you know it's not there, you know?
Host: So what do they think of the show?
Claudia: They love it. But unfortunately the way that it ended up being scheduled, the show's really for insomniacs.
Host: How long did it take them to tell their friends you were in the show?
Claudia: About -20 milliseconds. To finally have a daughter who's an actor, who's getting paid to be an actor, that's a big difference, a very big difference. They're really proud. Really, really proud. They've both come onto the set and unfortunately the day that Mum came, I'd actually been transformed into another creature. As you do. Mum turns up and I've got like this mutated stomach with a chicken-wing thing sticking out the side. They lubed me up, we use KY jelly on the make-up, with all this sort of slime and stuff and I sort of walked out the door and Mum just couldn't look at me. It freaked her out. She was really disturbed.