He's back, but more importantly, so is she. He is the Terminator, the unstoppable robot from the future. And she is Sarah Connor, the mere mortal of today, who plays a vitally important role in the events of tomorrow: She's mom to John Connor, the boy who will grow up to lead the resistance against the lethal cyborgs. It all comes together in Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, a new Fox series that debuted Jan. 13. Lena Headey (300) stars as Sarah, while Thomas Dekker (Heroes) co-stars as John and Summer Glau (Serenity) is on hand as Cameron, a cyborg who arrives in the present—in the form of a pretty high school student to whom John finds himself attracted—with a mission to protect both John and Sarah.SCI FI Weekly was on a recent conference call with Headey and consulting producer James Middleton, who previewed the new series. Middleton, a longtime executive on
Terminator projects, also spoke about
Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins, the upcoming fourth feature film. Middleton started off the conversation solo and was joined by Headey after several minutes.
James Middleton, it's one thing to keep an audience on the edge of their seats with relentless action during a movie, but how do you go about finding the right balance on a series so that you don't wear out the audience over time?Middleton: Well, one of the things that we felt we had by doing a television show based on the
Terminator franchise was an opportunity to explore character, to explore Sarah Connor's character and the problems that this mother would encounter trying to raise a 15-year-old son and trying to teach him to be a good man while being in extreme danger. So that's something we feel that we can do better, actually, in a television show than in a two-hour movie. The other thing that the show allows us to do is change the narrative dynamic. The movies are a chase dynamic, and in our show Sarah Connor is on the attack. She is the one that is searching and trying to root out Skynet, Skynet being this pernicious, evil force from the future. What she finds is that there is a vast conspiracy in L.A. It's not just one Terminator or two. There are many, many aspects of this technology and how it's formed. And she has bitten off a little bit more than she can chew. But the difference is that she is proactive.
We go to great lengths to try to help viewers along that have not seen the
Terminator films or don't know specific mythology. I think most people do know about the
Terminator lore, if only because of Arnold Schwarzenegger. But we go to great lengths to explain the backstory of our Terminator mythology as the series progresses.
Following up on that, could you talk about the difficulties/challenges of adapting a film franchise into a television series?Middleton: I always looked at doing
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles as a great opportunity to bring back a character who I loved in the mythology, Sarah Connor. I felt that in the first two movies she was the heart and soul of those films. I worked on
Terminator 3 and it was a very financial success. However, I missed Sarah.
Headey: Hello?
Middleton: Hi, Lena.
Headey: Hey!
Middleton: Lena Headey is on the line. Lena, I'm just going over some of the backstory.
Headey: Good. You're better at it than me.
Middleton: At any rate, getting back to the opportunities of the television show, I felt, actually, that a television show would be a better way to explore this character that I loved so much.
Arnold Schwarzenegger is alive and well. Has he weighed in at all on Sarah Connor Chronicles?Middleton: No, he hasn't really weighed in. To the extent that he's governor he's incredibly occupied. I worked with a producer named Andy Vajna, who is very close to Arnold, and they speak frequently about various
Terminator projects, but Arnold has really made a turn in his life to politics, and he has not weighed in on the show.
Headey: It's a natural progression.
Middleton: Lena will one day be president of the United States.
But on your wish list, would you love a cameo or guest shot by Schwarzenegger on Sarah Connor Chronicles?Middleton: Yeah, of course we would. We would love that. Arnold is an icon of the franchise and an amazing personality, [so] sure we would. But it just has not been feasible.
The television show, with its focus on Sarah and with the addition of Cameron, is very female-centric. What went into that decision?Middleton: As I said before, as a fan of the
Terminator movies and as a general SF, drama and action fan, I love Sarah Connor. We had done a movie with Arnold. I had studied all three to work on
Terminator 3, and I really felt that it was time to explore Sarah, because Sarah was always the emotion and the depth of those previous movies. And I thought a television show would be the perfect place to get into what her history is. What were her likes and dislikes? What did she lose by being impacted by this war from the future?
How about making the protector female?Middleton: It was absolutely a conscious choice. It comes from the idea that the Terminators—and this is from Jim Cameron's vision of the mythology—are actually infiltrators. If that is the case, then what better infiltrator than a beautiful, petite teenage girl?
Lena Headey, you have to carry the emotional elements of the story, and you also have to be an action heroine. So how tough is this show on you physically, and how hard is it to find the balance so that action doesn't overwhelm the drama, and vice versa?Headey: A, it's my job, so I love it. Do you know what I mean? There's an enjoyment from being challenged in an exciting way. And I also think the physicality of someone like Sarah feeds into the emotional side of everything, too. It helps all of that. So they go together really, really nicely. At the end of the day I'm usually quite tired, though!
James, can you give us a T4 update? Is Christian Bale in it? When will filming begin? Middleton: Christian Bale is in the picture. McG is the director. It will shoot in Budapest, and we hope to be in production on April 21.
And what can you say about the plot of Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins?Middleton: It is [set] after
Judgment Day. And it shows the formation of the resistance.
Lena, you have talked in the past about how you were not made up to look very glamourous in the show's pilot, but you do look a bit more glamorous in the second episode that Fox provided for screening. Are we right? Do you have a bit more makeup on in the second episode?Headey: I would have gone on strike, too, a makeup strike, if they didn't allow me [to wear makeup]. ... I think there was a little bit more style to the second episode. And there's nothing wrong with that.
Lena, can you talk about training for the show, and are you still getting flak about stepping into a role with which Linda Hamilton is so associated?
Headey: I guess that ghost is always going to be there. For the pilot I did quite a lot of physical training, because I was back in London before we went out to Albuquerque. So I had time to do a lot of stuff and then came out and worked with the stunt coordinator for a while. But during the making of the show it's been very hard because the schedule is really tough and long days, and I think the amount of work we do, the amount of physical work that we do, keeps you to a certain level of fitness. And it is called acting. Thank God!
And can you talk some more about the fans' reaction to you in the role?Middleton: I'll weigh in on that. There are going to be obvious conversations about a new actress playing Sarah Connor, but Lena has done an amazing job. And in the screenings that we have done at Comic-Con, and we just did one at the Golden Apple comic-book store, which is the mecca of comic books in L.A., people really embraced Lena as the new Sarah Connor.
Headey: Well, some people have!
Have you played a character like that before, where people are so opinionated about it?Headey: No, of course not. She's such a beloved, iconic character that certain people will never open their minds, but, you know...
Their loss?Headey: Their loss.
