For fans of Farscape, it's almost inconveivable to imagine anyone but Claudia Black essaying the role of ex-Peacekeeper Aeryn Sun. With her dark mane, rich Australian accent and devil-may-care attitude, tough gal Sun has become one of the galaxy's hottest aliens. But it's the actress' skillful approach to this very flawed individual that has given Sun a compelling, human presence that fans have embraced.

Surprisingly, though, Black was not what the producers had in mind at first. "Originally, they didn't want to cast an Australian," says Black, relaxing in a Los Angeles hotel, where the cast and production staff have gathered for the first official Farscape convention. "The role was meant for somebody barely turned 20 or 21. They wanted a very young Aeryn. I'm 27. I normally play characters who are in their 30s or late 20s."

But something in her nature intrigued producers enough for them to toss away the bluepring. "I had to take a very simple line with Aeryn initially," says Black. "I didn't know what they wanted. No one knew, (not even) Brian Henson. they said, "To be honest, we don't know what to do now, because you weren't what we had in mind for the character, but we're going to go with you. Just do what you want; we'll work around it, change it.""

Sun has emerged as a character of sound military mind and extremely capable body, but she's also an emotionally insecure mess. "The polarities within her fascinate me," Black reports. "It's a wonderful opportunity to show extreme strength and extreme vulnerability, and also find whatever light shade I want in the middle. That's the task they handed to me. The writing's on the page, but the grey area's my domain. That's what I get to play with."

Black recalls finding inspiration for Sun in Audrey Hepburn's classic performance as Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany's. "That film was ahead of its time. This woman had a past. Her dysfunction about emotion and love were similar to Aeryn's in the sense that she appears to be something that she's not. She puts on this whole performance for people. She has an adventurous spirit, but she's actually very damaged and frayed."

But even as her understanding of Sun grew, Black explains that "I couldn't let Aeryn open up until the writers were ready, because she's an important part of Farscape's development. She's part of the show's heartbeat in that she has to most dramatic character arc. She has to develop from this very closed, very frightened but strong individual to someone who can share and trust."

Jokingly referring to her Peacekeeper as "woman/child," Black agrees that this duality has led to some dynamic episodes. One of her favorite and most challenging shows came in season two. "The Way We Weren't" exposed a particularly nasty aspect of Sun's past. "This is the one where she goes down," Black notes. "You get another aspect of Aeryn's character you weren't expecting. Just when you start to think she's becoming human, you're reminded that she was an animal, that she had no morals. To push and pull with the audience's emotions is important, and they do it very well on this show."

Black points to the first season episode "The Flax" for some of her Peacekeeper's earliest changes. "I started finding her sense of humor, her sense of play. Then, I don't know how if it's coincedence or fortune, but the writers started to provide me with more playful opportunities." In the story, Sun and John Crichton (Ben Browder) are facing certain death when their lingering attraction to each other comes to the forefront. In a mere moment of open emotion, they leap at each other like sexually charged teenagers. "That was originally written as a coy embrace," Black states firmly. "But there's nothing coy about Aeryn. I know she has the stuff. She's not a virgin."

The fusion of actress and character has more than pleased executive producer Henson. Though Farscape is very much an ensemble show, Henson, during the convention, told and enthusiastic audience that he believed the heart of any good TV series was a compelling romance, and for Farscape, this lay in the winning combination of Sun and displaced American astronaut Crichton. Henson directly attributed the success of the joining to Black and Browder. Co-star Virginia Hey (Zhaan) has called Black's work "magnificent" and Gigi Edgley (Chiana) is equally magnanimous in her admiration. But Black, embarrassed by the compliments, deftly moves off the subject, illustrating a big difference between American and Australian productions "There's what we call the Tall Poppy Syndrome (in Australia)," she explains. "If annyone stands out from the pack, the head will get chopped off. So if you succeed, if you're ambitious, it's seen as a sin."

Praise aside, Black is thrilled to be in L.A. "To have a room filled with people who wouldn't want to be anywhere else in the world, who dig what we do for a living -that's golden and I'm excited about it.

Though the actress seems comfortable in her own skin, it's not an aspect she maintains during Farscape's production. "It's hard being Aeryn every day," says Black. "She's not a happy person. In oder to play her the way I do, I shut down as a person. I become very closed and the boundaries come up. I perform by instinct. I can play-act -be a character one second and me the next. But with Aeryn, because I'm doing it every single day, I end up just slipping into the role as I walk onto the set. Her energy is so abrupt. She's just so moody -sort of the worst of me on a bad day. I try to shift away from that now as much as possible. Laughter's very important."

And so is good physical health when it comes to working on Farscape, which Black describes as "the most physically demanding and arduous thing I've ever done."

Part of the irony in playing such a conflicted character is that her Farscape "success" came at a dark time in both Black's personal and professional life. "I started Farscape while I was also working on Pitch Black, and I wanted to die," the actress recalls. "I was just beyond exhausted, I was so thin. I don't have a desire to be musclebound, but I had to build up my arms (to play Aeryn) so I didn't look so emaciated. And getting on a plane every other night to go to Queensland or back down to Sydney! I almost didn't want to act again after doing Pitch Black. I thought maybe I was in the wrong business."

But that was only part of Black's trials. "I've gone through a period over the last few years..." she elaborates. "Some things happened in my personal life that just made me so afraid of the calendar. I didn't want the year to progress. I thought, "What else can it bring me? Please no, I just don't want this year to turn around, because I'm afraid it'll just get worse." I had never been like that before. My heart had been broken in 1994, then I was cast in a show that folded. The network had lost all its funding -so everything just collapsed. One week, I had gone from having everythig I had ever wanted simultaneously: A fantastic relationship, a great job opportunity which could have afforded me flexibility and independence. Then, everything just dropped out of my life.

"I had held on to grief for about two years, then finally I had to really suffer. It all came out of me. It was a four-year period, betwen 1994 and 1998, before Farscape came along, when I went through this massive period of adjustment. I wanted to get out of it, but I couldn't. It was just Horrible.

And then came Pitch Black, the SF thriller shot in desolate Coober Pedy, Australia. "An amazing place," says Black, "but it was their coldest winter on record since the 1970's. That's one of the greatest adversities to perfroming for me. When you're on location and the environment is really inhospitable, the focuse becomes not about performing and play-acting, but about survival. I know that sounds a bit dramatic, but it's true. I was absolutely freezing. So your health diminishes, you're not firing on all pistons. The director (David Twohy) is quoted on an Australian movie show as saying, "Enjoyable is not an adjective I would apply to the filmmaking business." He would say it's more akin to pushing a piano across a beach. We were working with a very despondent and frustrated individual who wasn't given a great chance at success on this movie. And I wasn't prepared for the Hollywood system of filmmaking -who has the biggest trailer. In Australia, we have such a sense of equality. It's an ensemble thing. That's part of Farscape's strength."

Genre fans might also recognize Black from her stint as an Amazon in the Xena: The Warrior Princess episode "Lifeblood," and as the legendary figure Cassandra in the Hercules: The Legendary Journey's episode "Atlantis." Both, she admits, were good preparation for the more technical aspect of fantasy and SF -like CGI work- as well as their trademark action sequences.

Despite the education, Black remains critical of her own performances. "It wasn't exactly the best American accent I had done on either Hercules or Xena. I would say to the dialogue coach, "I want to see you." And he would say, "Oh, you don't need to see me. Your accent was perfect in the audition." I would say, "I'm slipping because I'm focussing on other things." In the audition, you're sitting in a chair and focussing on selling yourself potentially as an American. I'm a perfectionist, I don't want people to think I'm crap at accents, because it used to be my forte. I had a musical ear and was very good at mimicry, and I had been brought up on a steady diet of American TV in Australia, so the accent came easily. It really embarrased me when I saw both of those episodes."

In addition, the Xena shoot was also physically draining. "Michael Hurst directed it," recalls Black, "and he insisted that we do all our own fight scenes, except the ones that were dangerous or risked our lives. The first battel sequence, where you see the women take on all these men, was shot in the mountains. We had to learn these moves -it was choreography, a dance. The guys would run up, we would take them on, beat them up and run on. Then all these horses charged through. It was insanity, and we were very cold. It was sub-zero temperatures. There was snow, and we were wearing very little -these possum fur skirts and bikini tops. That was another one of those experiences like Pitch Black, where you're thinking more about survival and pain."

Regarding Hercules, Black is more circumspect. "Cassandra was a nice character," she concedes. "It was very different from what you usually see on Hercules, because she doesn't get it on with Hercules. Normally, the women are sexualized to such an extraordinary degree, and Cassandra was endowed with intelligence, spiritually and sensitivity. That was terrific."

While Cassandra may have been clearly defined, Sun certainly requires a more creative touch from Black. Especially in the beginning. "The scripts weren't as solid then as they now are," the actress explains. "The cast didn't have as much (latitude to) contribute as we do now. We also didn't know what kind of show we were making. It was a co-production involving several nations, a big budget which made everyone afraid. The politics increase exponentially, the more dollars you throw at something.

Farscape really changed when Tony Tilse came aboard and did "PK Tech Girl (in which Aeryn finds her authority -and Crichton's interest- threatened by another Sebecean woman). That's probably my favourite episode of season one. The scale was expanded. It was more (film-like) and adventurous. I started to take risks and make choices that were more artistically minded. At first, the director would go, "Oh, I don't know," and I would say, "Can I try it once? If you don't like it, I promise I won't bug you with it again." And sure enough, I would try it and the director would be lauging before the tape was over. I just thought, "Keep going with that, be courageous."

"What we've done on the floor," she continues, "has inspired the writers. They tend to want to repeat things that we've already done. So you have to keep moving, keep to your own information so it's fluid."

By season two, Black had become so entrenched in the role, she took on the moniker "ChickwithGun" when chatting on Farscape's Internet sites, and was enthusiastically making such suggestions to the directors as having her ex-Peacekeeper firing weapons from both hands during the big shoot-out in season one's climactic episode "Memory." When it's pointed out that for a tough gal, Sun seems to be the one usually getting her butt kicked, Black responds with a heart laugh, "I know, I know! Everyone, the stunt team, the safety office, everyone says, "My God, you are the worst shot in the galaxy! What's going on!?""

Black then waxes thoughtful. "If Farscape were a film," she says, "it would be all right for us to be superheroes. But you start to suffer from the superhero complex. You want to be cool all the time, and there's no emotional value in that in the long run. There's something about Crichton which demands that he be the hero, the one who is victorious and saves the day. The rest of us are the parts of humanity that remind us we're not perfect. Although Crichton messes up, he's the one essentially who's here to teach us about the American way. It's a bit of propaganda; a traditional heroic paradigm."

But tradition seems to have little to do with Farscape. From the beginning, the series has taken familiar plots and characters and stood them on their heads, all while pushing the envelope with character behavior. "There's no way this show would be the way it is if it were made in L.A," agrees Black. "The irreverence comes from an Australian sensibility of wanting to give the bird to the Establishment."

In addition, Hollywood tradition would dictate that Sun -an aggressive character with a tendency to manifest emotions physically- be played by a man. Fortunately, Farscape isn't a Hollywood product. It's also strangely fitting that Black, a woman who, as a child and adolescent, shied away from athletics, seems perfectly comfortable in fatigues, grease and sweat, not to mention the occasional smattering of blood. "I've always been very in touch with my masculine side," she says, looking distinctly feminine in black slacks and sleek, silky top. "I'm obsessed with being a Libra and with the challenge of acquiring balance, always feeling extremes and polarities. While I've never had any doubt about my sexuality or my gender, I've always had very strong male as well as female energy. That's the challenge as a human being: To seek the two engergies and make them, somehow, one.

"My favorite book," Black continues earnestly, "is To Kill A Mockingbird. It has the most profound and simple essence -a moral of humanity- the importance of walking around in someone's moccasins to understand them."

So, could she offer a bit of advice to her troubled alter-ego? "To appreciate the value of friendship and to not be so afraid of loss," says Black, who then recounts Neale Donal Walsch's book "Conversations With God." The world of humans can be broken down and divided down into two simple emotions -love and fear. Aeryn just has to decide which emotion she wants to be motivated by."

One thing's for sure: It's not fear that drives Claudia Black.

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