ctor Ben Browder is feeling pretty fearless these days. That might seem an odd thing, considering he's out of a job now that the filming for Farscape's 11 final episodes has been completed. Instead of worrying about the future, Browder's busy being jazzed about the "cool stuff" coming up
in the remaining episodes and about playing that ultimate lost-in-space astronaut, John Crichton. Farscape will begin the second half of its fourth and final season Friday, Jan. 10.
Browder has appeared on Broadway in The Merchant of Venice and in the feature films Memphis Belle, A Kiss Before Dying and Boogie Boy. His televisions appearances include Party of Five, Paper Mansions: The Dottie West Story and Innocent Victims.
Browder chatted with Science Fiction Weekly about playing John Crichton, cancellation and why Hollywood doesn't scare him.
Browder: How you doing?
I'm depressed that Farscape got canceled.
Browder: Yeah. Well, I could probably run neck and neck with you on feelings about the show being canceled. It was a depressing period of time when we found out. The truth is we were just having too much fun. That really is not allowed. Somehow after four years somebody got wind of it. "No, no, this is work. You're not supposed to have fun at work. That's unheard of." [Laughs.]
What can you tell us about what's coming up on the 11 episodes that are yet to air?
Browder: I'm contractually bound not to discuss any future plot points. It makes it difficult for me to tell you what's coming up. I can talk in sort of round circles. We have 11 episodes left, and we're literally entering territory that the show has never gone before, and very dangerous territory for any science-fiction show, which makes it interesting and exciting for us. And we've got one hell of a cliffhanger for you [laughs].
John Crichton is a great character.
Browder: Crichton is a gift of a character. He's an absolute gift of a character, and his development and his change over four years. In playing Crichton, a lot of the time I'm holding secrets as I'm playing him. Things that I know about the character and the writers know about the character that no one else knows and will never know. And often it will end up coming out in one line of dialogue. There's a lot of stuff underneath when you're playing John. It's fascinating watching him respond to the universe, and he's having to do it with some rather large issues in the final 11 episodes. He's dealing with almost all of his major issues in the final 11 episodes, and so it was damn interesting to play.
Is there any possibility that there might be a Farscape movie to give the series some conclusion?
Browder: You know, there has been speculation on that for some time. I think that the question as far as the movie goes is whether it makes financial sense for the companies to do so and there is some financial incentive to do it, both for the sake of the series and for the sake of the movie on its own. The difficulty, of course, comes in getting a movie a green light, getting the money to shoot a movie.
And for the sake of the fans.
Browder: If it was just for the sake of the fans, we would still be doing the show. We have the most amazing fans. I ran into some of them at the West Hollywood Halloween party. I walked by and there's fans with a sign of Scorpius saying, "You will watch Farscape." And I just had to go over. They sort of looked at me and then they looked again. "That's a really good costume. It kind of looks like Crichton." [Laughs.] They're actively out there supporting the show. Of course, it's Halloween and Farscape lends itself to Halloween, but it's humbling to have people who care about the show enough to not only sit on their couch or the chair in front of the TV on a Friday night, but then get out on Halloween with a sign saying, "You will watch Farscape," trying to get other people to watch their show. And actively campaigning to say we like this and we think you'd like it, too.
Other than people who green-light films, they're the people who ultimately put the bucks in the Buck Rogers, who make the show fly. And all the way through, our fans, our viewers, our audience has been critical to us being on the air, staying on the air. It's kind of nice after being in Australia and living in oblivion to see them. You know, it's fascinating. In Australia, I very seldom ever ran across anybody who watched the show, because it's not on there.
I'm in L.A., house-hunting, and I actually ran into someone who sees the show, and not only are they fans of the show, but they're conversant in it. And so you can actually have a conversation about the substance of what it is you do, and that's an interesting thing after four years. We had a lot of conversations with those I worked with about what we're doing, what we're going to do, how we're going to do it, does this work, does this not work. You know, we have all these creative conversations. But four years later, it's great to be able to see people and have that conversation with someone who doesn't work on the show.
What else are you up to now?
Browder: Well, what I'm up to right now is I've hopefully found a house.
That sounds like a good thing. Your family will probably be happy about that.
Browder: Well, one's hoping they're going to be happy. The kids are looking forward to it. I'm also auditioning for the first time in four years.
I imagine you didn't have much time during the show to audition for other things.
Browder: Well, I was just so busy on Farscape. Then, of course, we had disasters like September 11th, and I was with the writing staff between seasons two and three. I was busy doing Farscape the whole time. I was in Australia, so geographically it wasn't convenient for me to look for work, cause they're not casting me out of Australia. So now I'm walking back in and have had a few auditions for the first time in four years and, you know, being an actor is hard [laughs]. You forget how hard it is. The hardest thing about being an actor is wondering where the next opportunity is going to come from. I went from being reasonably important to a really great production to now being just another name on a list somewhere.
Well, you do have a great character under your belt.
Browder: Well, I've been privileged to play an interesting character, and I've been very lucky to get the job. I was lucky to work with the people I've worked with.
How do you feel about John Crichton now?
Browder: He's kind of unfinished. We had a few more plans that didn't quite manage to fit in, but I cannot complain. I'm very appreciative to the point of thinking, man, am I ever going to get another role this good? I can't complain about how Crichton developed. He developed in a way that most actors would be envious of. You know, you play a character on television and usually they're locked down. That's it. They move two inches from beginning to end in five years. And within two years, Crichton had moved further than most characters will ever move in the course of any series. You know, I look at season one and it's a bit like looking at baby pictures.
Crichton was so innocent back then.
Browder: I looked at some early episodes and I went, "Look how innocent he is. He's just so bubbly." And three years later, "Man, who the hell is this guy?" [Laughs.] He adapted to his environment. He got wary. He got more worldly, more acerbic.
He got pretty good at drawing his gun.
Browder: He didn't carry a gun in the beginning. He didn't even pick up a gun. The first gun he picked up he pointed it backwards, and then he didn't pick up a gun for a long time. And now he's got a name for his gun, and he sleeps with it under his pillow. That's a big change. I believe the core of him remains intact to the degree that there is a sense of wonder about the universe and about the people of the universe.
You know, he's motivated by good intentions, but you know he carries the baggage of a lot of mayhem, a lot of death and a lot of violence which has been perpetrated on him and by him. His innocence is encrusted with a lot of bad things. And so he makes a fascinating character and becomes more complex as he goes along, and in some ways more mysterious as he grows, and we can learn stuff about him and there's still more stuff.
He seemed to become even less predictable as the seasons have passed.
Browder: And the more you know him, the harder it is to predict exactly what it is that he's going to do. What is he up to? His motivations were always clear to me, but I never felt the necessity to explain the motivations to an audience. On rare occasions, you would end up with Crichton having a conversation where something is revealed or he's explaining something, but he didn't go around very often explaining his motivations.
Most of us do not explain our motivations. We don't come in and go, "Look, I'm doing this because when I was in third grade my teacher made me stand at the chalkboard and write 300 times that I will do my homework on time. That's why I'm doing this." You see a fair amount of that in television and films, but you don't see it with Crichton in Farscape. He becomes a kind of mystery, so you have to wait for it all to unfold to understand what he's about. And sometimes even then you don't fully understand what he's about.
He's a very complex character and that makes it a joy to play. And he didn't start out seeming to be complex. He started out seeming very simple, which wasn't really the case. And the further along you went, the audience understood, "I don't really know this guy as well as I thought I did." A lot of stuff we had in mind early on. What's the necessity to telling people Zhaan is a plant? We knew that from day one. We dropped in little bits and pieces along the way and suddenly you go, "Oh, that's what that was about." With the aliens there can be a lot you just don't know, full stop, so it makes them mysterious.
But Crichton, he is a human. We understand he's a stock character. You know, he's Buck Rogers. He's this. He's that. And he's not really. It was interesting watching the first reviews of the show, where they go, "Oh, it's this." And we shot episodes 11, 12 or 13, and I'm shaking my head going, "Oh, man, they're wrong. They just don't know it yet. [Laughs.] They just don't know it yet." And all the way through there's things that unfold about Crichton, at least for me, that unfold where you go, "Wow, when did he make that decision?" And then you realize he made that decision a while back, he just hadn't been telling you he made that decision.
You know what will happen in the final 11 episodes. So if this is it for Farscape, what do you think fans are going to take away from the series?
Browder: I don't know. Honestly, I don't know how other people will look at it. An audience will look at it differently than I do. I see something entirely different. A director will see something entirely different. When we look at it when it's finished, the writers will see things that I won't see. And the fans, or the audience, will certainly see it in a different light. One day I hope to sit down and have the time to watch it from beginning to end. Like sit down myself and do a marathon and watch the entire series and say, "How did this story unfold?" I know the story up to where it ends, but my view of it is more narrow because you forget as you go along and you don't see it afresh.
The thing I do believe is the story does hold, and it does unfold, and that it is worth rewatching. What I've discovered about the series, even for watching it for myself, is that I can watch some episodes multiple times and still see things in it that I didn't see before, even with the episodes I've written. "John Quixote" I've probably watched five times, and I know what's missing, and I go, "Oh, I should have done this. I should have done that." I know what hit the floor. I know which babies we killed and all that. But I watch it with what Tony did and what Gigi did and Claudia and Lani and Wayne and everybody. There's so much nuance thrown into almost every episode.
I've watched episode 4.11 ("Unrealized Reality") in its finished form. It's the last episode that aired. I've watched that at least four times, and it just keeps getting better every time I watch it. I can't explain to you why I think it's better. It's an unusual piece. It has an associated filmmaking nature about it. But every time I see it I see something more and I still enjoy watching it. I think that the series as a whole is kind of that way. There are some episodes that you can watch once and you're pretty much done with them, but there's not many that I watch once and I think, "OK, that's it."
Farscape is so densely plotted. It's so thick with character, there are scenes which are informed by what happened a year later, and you go, "Oh, that's what they were doing there. Oh, this was a setup." It's an interwoven and complex story, and so it bears rewatching. Most stories are never completely finished. If they're good, they scream for a sequel. If they're not good, it's probably because the story wasn't well finished anyway. I don't know many things that you put down, you put down a book or you turn off the TV, you go, "That's it. I'm satisfied." If it's really good, you want to continue with the characters. Most good films are that way.
What do you think has made Farscape special?
Browder: It was a very creative bunch. You have your fights and you have your disputes, but it was an incredible group of people to work with. It was a very capable, creative team. They were exciting people to have around. Hell, I was in the middle of the time of my life, and was aware of the fact, thinking, "Man, does it get any better than this?" Farscape was a great place for me, as an actor, to be. I can only be grateful for the experience.
It seems that Farscape is all about the journey that these characters are taking.
Browder: The journey and how a story is told is everything. There's only so many plots, and the basic framework of the story was laid thousands of years ago by Homer [laughs], and we've been retelling that stories in different ways, shapes and forms and guises ever since. It is a journey piece. It is the Odyssey. It's the story of the characters and their journey through this dangerous world seeking home. [On Farscape] all of them in some way are seeking a home, a place to be, without realizing at the time that they've created a home that then gets shattered and put back together.
But, yeah, the journey in storytelling is everything. I believe it's in execution and in the twists and the turns and the way you tell the story. And hopefully Farscape will hold up. I don't think we're going to suffer too badly for an effects-intensive show, because the show wasn't about the effects. The show was about the characters and the journey. So we should hold up fairly well.
How do you feel about these final episodes?
Browder: All good things come to an end, and hopefully we have ended well. The thing is, when you're doing something, I can't with confidence stand up and go, "The final 11 are the greatest that you'll ever see in Farscape." Because quite frankly, an audience will see something in a unique light. They will see it based on where they are that day, on the condition of the world, on where the episode is placed within the series, on whether they're tired. And you just don't know what is going to work.
There are great films that did no business, and then have become classics. And there are bad films that did huge business and five years later you go, "Huh?" And at this point, having finished shooting Farscape, hopefully they'll love the last 11 episodes. If you're tuning in for the first time—which I hope some people do, and I think some people should, because it's not like you can put it off anymore—if they tune in for the first time, they could watch the 11 episodes as a single story and then go back and watch to find out, "How the hell did they get there?" I don't think it would drastically diminish the enjoyment of the series. That's what I hope for. I hope that the story has legs and then it holds once 4.22 is wrapped.
Then, from there, it will be dependent upon the interest of people who like the show and other people who have money to make more Farscape. I reckon we'll be seeing Rygel and D'Argo in a bar [laughs].
That would be a great sitcom.
Browder: Well, you know, just pop Rygel down at the end of the bar. It's convenient for the puppeteers. You know, aliens come in every week. He gets phone calls from Crichton [laughs]. "Just rounded Alpha Centauri and you guys won't believe what's out here. Would you send me some money?"
Farscape is such an unusual show. There aren't many series where you have no idea what's going to happen from one minute to the next.
Browder: You don't see it very often, and there's probably good economic reasons for that. From a television standpoint I can understand why it becomes difficult for anybody to say, "Let's make more of these." Because it is a complex show. Realistically, almost every penny goes up on the screen. That's the truth. Every penny goes on the screen.
And it doesn't look like any other show.
Browder: In a lot of ways, you're operating outside of Hollywood. You're operating in Australia, with a completely different sensibility from your designers. Early on, Steven Chao, who's running USA Networks, and Bonnie Hammer said, "Give us something different." And they said that to the right people, because you're working outside of Hollywood so there's not the inherent fear.
The thing about Hollywood [is that] there's so much money involved, because it's such a struggle and it's such a war making television and film, and there's so much status attached to it that most people are afraid. Australia is a smaller industry. It doesn't have that kind of pressure. So the key creative elements were not afraid to fail. And [executive producer] David Kemper realized this, and he did stuff. He'd say, "I'm going to do this because I know it's good because it scares the crap out of me." And you know in Hollywood he might not have done it.
You couldn't have done this show on a regular network.
Browder: Oh, no, no. No way. We would never had made it past the first six on a regular network. SCI FI gave us the freedom. SCI FI encouraged us to do something different and then stuck with us for four years while we did it, and they are to be praised for that because I don't know another place that was going to put that kind of investment and that kind of faith in the creative element to do what it is that we did. It kind of shows you what's possible out there, but you know creativity and risk-taking is not really standard operating procedure out in Hollywood.
We were very lucky about where we were and who we were dealing with, the network we were on, the audience that came to find us and then went out and told people, "You should see this." Because you see it for the first time and you tune in at the wrong moment and you really are going to be asking, "What the hell is this show?" It wasn't like the audience was being talked down to. They were being treated like an equal in the process.
It is a challenging show in many ways.
Browder: It was challenging for us. That was the gauntlet that was thrown down to do at a certain point. We went, "Well, we can do the standard old thing and go down quietly." Go find another job and no one will say, "What a bunch of idiots." Or we can just take the risk of being a bunch of idiots and hope that it works out OK. And for the most part it worked out OK.
We wouldn't have seen Crichton in a movie going through the journey he has gone through, and we wouldn't have seen Crichton on a regular network show. There isn't any other place where we would have seen John Crichton.
Browder: It was truly a fortuitous set of circumstances we found ourselves in while we were making Farscape. To that degree I wonder if I'll ever see it again. I recognized while I was in the middle of it I was in a unique situation, and as long as the hours get and as difficult as it is and all the fights that you get [into] trying to make this work, I was always in the back of my mind aware of the fact that this is a lucky set of circumstances. You might get away with this if you've got a 150-seat theater somewhere, you know, do it in the round with no budget. But we had this fantastic opportunity and it was an opportunity that we relished right up until the final frame.
The fans will still be hoping for another year.
Browder: Well, at this point there's not another year, and that's OK. That's all right. When and if the show ever goes into syndication in the same way that the original Star Trek went into syndication, it will find a new audience.
You have four years. The original Star Trek only had three.
Browder: It didn't find its broad audience until it hit all hours and everywhere else, as opposed to being on at 9 and 10 on a Friday night, which is where it was situated. I believe there's a broad audience for the show, which is witnessed by the fact that our audience is almost 50 percent women, which is highly unusual for science-fiction show. It's because the show is talking to the human condition, not to a demographic. It's not targeting a single audience.
It's not targeting a science-fiction audience, even. It's targeting whoever will listen, and it's saying, "This is how we see the story." And yes, we've got some crazy aliens, and we've got ships, and we've got this grand adventure going on, and we've got Rygel floating around on his throne sled, and some people are going to go, "Oh, I know what that is." And then they sit and they start to listen and a lot of people just get caught up in the story.
And what other adult series could pull off having characters that were puppets?
Browder: That's right, and what series is going to pull off your human becoming more alien? I mean, Crichton, who starts off as completely human, by midway to the latter part of season two and certainly into season three, you go, "OK, he's got this alien in his head." [We're going to] see how Crichton responds to Earth. Does he fit in on Earth anymore or is he more alien than the aliens?
The beautiful thing about Farscape is getting ourselves into a fine mess and watching us crawl our way out of it. The journey along the road, as you say. I don't regret even the completely horrible things I did. There were things that worked really well. There's other stuff that's just shocking, and you go, "Well, I know why it happened. It happened because for a brief moment we weren't afraid to try something different." And that fear of falling on your face that all of us have, and certainly everybody who does television and film has a great fear of failure.
You know, we were afraid, but we suspended the consequences and said, "It scares me. Let's do it." That's an amazing thing to have carry on for 88 episodes. You know, I look forward to the time when I see it again. Hopefully, I'll see it on television somewhere. Love it, hate it, like it, dislike it from an audience standpoint. I don't think that you can say we didn't try [laughs]. The one criticism you can't make of us is that we laid up and played safe, rested on what it was we knew.
And hopefully your fans will be able to see you in another exciting role.
Browder: Well, I've got to find that, and anybody you know who happens to be casting, I have a family to feed [laughs]. It's just an exciting time for me. It's another precipice, and having done Farscape for four years, at least I'm not as afraid of that precipice. It is a bit of an object lesson for me, as well. Perhaps I should be, but I'm not really afraid of Hollywood at the moment. Hopefully I'll find something. Well, if I don't, I had a good shot, which is more than most actors get out there. For me personally, there's a lot of great stuff that came out of it, and I will be forever grateful.
If I had the money I could retire and go, "Well, that was pretty good. At least I had a good time doing it." But I can't, so I'm not [laughs]. So I better go find some more work. Maybe I'll start writing for Science Fiction Weekly. "Tell me, how do you feel Angel's progressed in the last four years?" [Laughs.] I actually caught some Buffy the other night. I've watched so little television the last four years. I've just been too busy to watch. I'm always in the middle of doing something, so carving out time to watch something wasn't my job description. But I've been trying to catch up a bit since I've been back in town.
I'm carving out time and looking to see what's out there, and every time I look at a show I end up drawing some sort of comparison to what I've been doing [laughs]. I'm going, "Andrew Prowse wouldn't have shot it that way." [Laughs.] It's a fascinating time.
After spending four years on a science-fiction series, how do you feel about the genre?
Browder: Science fiction is reasonably hot for the moment. I mean, look, nine out of the 10 top-grossing films of all time are science-fiction films. The only place where science fiction has really suffered is in making the critical ghetto. One of the great joys of being on a show like Farscape or Buffy is that we've managed to crawl out of the critical ghetto so that mainstream critics are looking at it and going, "Actually this is really good television." And from a vanity standpoint, as an actor you hope for that. In science fiction you go in going, "Well, I know no one's ever going to take us seriously." And there will always be people who won't take us seriously. The industry has to take it seriously because science fiction makes a lot of money. But the critics don't have to.
Well, I always take it seriously.
Browder: Well, you should take it seriously. 2001 is one of the seminal films of our time. Star Wars was one of the seminal films of the '70s, no question about it. And Alien was an amazing film. There are a lot of things that science fiction does that it's able to tell a breadth of story that is as important as any mainstream dramatic film. The fact that they're not recognized by critics is because they will often get sidetracked by the whistles and bells and go, "Oh, it's not real," without understanding that everything they see on film is not real [laughs].
Believe me, there's nothing real about Forrest Gump. Forrest Gump is not more real than John Crichton. And I think Forrest Gump is a great film. I think it borders on being science fiction, and it certainly is a fantasy. But it is a great film. It's a Wonderful Life is a fantasy film. It was ignored in its time, as well. It's a great film, but it's a fantasy film and it tells you something about the human condition. They're great films and, yeah, they will be critically ignored.
But they can't fight public opinion.
Browder: No, they can't. In the long run they can't. The longevity of the show and whatever is remembered about the show will be held by the audience and not by the critics. But it's still nice to occasionally to have the critics of the time going, "You know what, this is worth watching." It's really gratifying to see that happen to a show like ours, which any number of critics at the time said, "You know, I wasn't going to review it because it's science fiction, and we don't have time, and it's on SCI FI, and there's other things which are far more important."
Three years later virtually all of those shows are gone, and Farscape is still there. It's a credit to SCI FI that SCI FI kept it. It's a credit to the people who made the show. It's a credit to the audience who stuck with the show, and it's indicative of what the general thought is of the genre that I've been working in and that you report on. You're living in the ghetto. You know, Buffy is a fantastic show. Every time I've seen it, I think, this is a great show, and certainly worth far more praise than any number of shows which I see get nominated Emmys.
I find the entire thing fascinating, but at the end of the day, all we're doing is trying to tell an interesting story. Thank God somebody watched. It was a joy to work on. Crichton was a joy to play. I hope that someone sees fit to give me another role like that sometime in my life. It's very rare that you get roles like that. And to be entrusted with that. Let's be honest. "Ben who? He's going to do what?" I mean, give me a break. I guarantee you I had to be low on the list of acceptable candidates to play John Crichton. I certainly wasn't on anybody's pre-approved list. They took a huge risk hiring me. A huge risk. I was very, very lucky, and I'm very grateful. And as for Farscape, who knows what the future of it is? We've had a glorious past. It's been a hell of a ride.
Also in this issue:
The cast of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers.
