JOHN DE LANCIE AT SILVERCON '91 --------------------------------- Written and Edited by Simon Plumbe ------------------------------------ One of the more popular guests at conventions in the UK in recent years is John de Lancie, the actor who portrays (if you didn't know already) the god-like alien, Q. This material was recorded between 13th and 15th July 1991. Thanks must go to John de Lancie for allowing us to use the material. DC OR NOT DC...? ---------------- When DC comics launched their regular Next Gen series back in 1989, John had the opportunity to write for the series, creating the first TNG annual with a story about Q. However, it seems as if that will be his last outing into the world of comic books. "I'm not going to be writing any more comics. It was not a particularly happy occasion. I had my first opportunity to find out what a writer feels like. Now, when I go on stage, the theatre's considered the actor's medium. We can bloody well do what we want when we're up there! It's an opportunity that just, kind of, the director says `do it this way, do it this way', that's fine but when you get up there you're pretty well on your own. In films it's pretty well the director/eitors world and in writing it's pretty well the editor or the producer or the guy who paid for it. He changed it, I didn't like what he did, so I'm not going to do it again." DEJA Q! ------- Out of all of the episodes that John has filmed to-date, Deja Q is probably the most fun to watch. However, it is also the greatest source of questions to John from the fans, particularly in the teaser where most fans ask whether or not he was actually naked at the beginning! "Yes, as a matter of fact I was nude all the way around! We tried to figure out, I had a jockstrap on, and we tried to work that out, but it doesn't, you can see it. You can see the indents in the skin and everything else so finally because I had so much to do on that show I just said, `Look, take it off, let's shoot it, everybody wants to say, and let's get the end of the shot over with'." Also, as you'll remember, as well as appearing nude, John also started the episode floating six feet off the ground. This was done using the now- familiar techniques of chromakey or colour separation overlay, but in real terms, how was it done? "I was up against the blue screen and what we did was they had a video monitor and they were able to superimpose I guess. They had a video monitor here and another monitor here with the actual shot that did not have me in it, the shot on the bridge of all the characters seeing Q for the first time, except Q wasn't there, okay. And what I had to do is that they were now going to shoot me in blue-screen and then put that into the shot and I remember what I had to do was to do this in a way, and then they turned it sideways and layed it onto the template and I just played it. And we played with it until we got the hand in the right position and they shot it. It takes a long long time to set up, a long time to set up, and you're just standing there! The actual shooting of almost anything is very fast compared to the set up." THE SQUIRE OF THE CONTINUUM --------------------------- For years, fans have speculated as to there being a link between Q and Trelane from the original series episode, The Squire Of Gothos. John reveals the true story, "Is there any relationship between Trelane and Q? Now, I've answered this question before and I'll answer it one more time. He is my son!! I had never seen it before, and somebody sent it to me and I must admit I was a little taken aback. Bill Campbell's choices and my choices 20 years later were pretty much dead on. It would have seemed as if we had collaborated, but no, I dodn't know anything about it and Gene maintains that there is no connection, although my sense of this is that when Gene was writing it, I would imagine that because Trelane was a popular character back then, that something of that must have stayed in his mind because the qualities are too similar." WESLEY! ------- The character of Wesley isn't all that popular amongst Trek fans, so it was inevitable that someone was going to ask John if HE liked him. "Do I like Wesley? I got rid of him now, didn't I? I think he was kind of a, I think it's unfortunate, you know. All that happens because a writer who one day has a good idea to have the `Let's have the 10 year old figure this out', and then it becomes the deus ex machina of the writers to solve problems and I think they solved too many scripts with Wesley and ended up turning him into the most hated character on the show!" JOHN DE LANCIE - THE ACTOR -------------------------- John first started on the path to his acting career when he went to Kent State University. John continues the story of how he got involved, "I got into (the university) because I hitch-hiked to the end of the road and I walked to the admissions office and they let me in. It was easy to do it. What was difficult was getting into Juliard, which was really an acting school, and that's kind of an exlusive school. I always was acting. I think I've said it in my little bio is that I was a terrible student, I didn't know how to read and my parents didn't pick this up until I was about 12 so I had a certain amount of damage done because of that and a teacher of mine, a history teacher of mine, who was a crazy, wacky kind of alcoholic sort of guy, blew into the classroom one day and threw Henry V in my lap and said, `We're going to do Henry V at the end of the year and you're going to play Howe' and so I learned it and I played it and I was lucky, this is where luck came in. There is a man there who was the editor of the Pelican Shakespeares and he came to see his grandchild in this show and I was in it. And he went and saw my father out and he said, `If your son has an interest, you should encourage him because he has the flair to do this.' and as I said before, and my father thinking any tort can storm at that point, began to encourage me. And I went to Kent State really rebelliously because I didn't want to be an actor, but that's all I did. I just did shows and I didn't want to do it and I went to Kent State to be in Political Science which is nigh on to basket weaving as far as I'm concerned! And then I just kind of backed my way into the business, even getting into Juliard. I didn't really audition for Juliard, I just auditioned when John, there was a man auditioning, I happened to walk by, I said, `Well, why not'. I went in, and said, `Well, I know I don't have an appointment, but could I audition?', `Sure!'. I auditioned, he said, `How would you like to come to Juliard?', I said, `I'm not interested!', he said, `We'll give you a scholarship.', I said, `I'm not interested.', he said, `We'll give you a scholarship AND housing', `I'm not interested', and I walked away! My father called me up and said, `You idiot! That was John Housman you were auditioning for and you'll damn well go there!' and I said, `I won't. I will not.' and I auditioned at a couple of other places and I didn't get in so at the end of a month of auditioning, the only place I had to go to was Juliard, so I went there! It wasn't until I got out of school, I should never have been in school for as long as I was, school was never for me. It wasn't until I got out of school and alone in an apartment without any work, although I was under contract for Universal so I was making a salary, that I began to come to grips with, `Do I really want to be an actor?', but by that time, I was about 27 years old and at that point THEN my career began to start, THEN I began to say, `Okay, I really want to do this' and I have to start applying for some." Now, it may surprise you that as well as acting, John also teaches acting to a number of students. Given his misgivings towards school, why did he decide to get involved in teaching? That's a very good question and I think that's what makes me a terrific teacher - it's because I really know what it's like to NOT want to be there and I also know what it's like to be in a fog when I was there and to be out of focus when I was there. So what I INSIST upon when I teach is that I insist on people kind of -whooosh- coming into focus. They only give me the students that they think can handle it - I'm a really tough teacher. What I say to them at the beginning is that I say, `I'm comitted to YOU making a breakthrough. You WILL make a breakthrough in MY class. Now you have to be comitted to having that happen as well and we'll work together and we'll get there.' I give them better than I ever got at Juliard and also I give them something that most schools don't have and that is that I AM a professional and I know what's required. We don't talk theory at all. It's not theoretical discussions, there's no `acting-schmacting' involved. It's really `What do you need to do', `When do you need to do it', `What is expected of you' and, `I know you're not going to like it, but this is what you have to do first and second, third, fourth...' and we go through that and the result is that I get very good actors coming out of it. Actors who have a sense of reality about what it is that they need to do." However, if John hadn't have gone into acting, what would his chosen career have been? "For a while I thought it was chiropractor, I mean, when a friend of mine was a chiropractor I thought what he did was great. When I was a little boy, I wanted to be an archeologist, but I've been an actor since I was 15 and I've kind of, it, when I was about 30 I kind of had a crisis which was, `Jeez, I didn't know how to do anything else, maybe I should really COMMIT to being an actor!' and since then there isn't anything that has come up that I would enjoy more. I mean, as an actor, most actors don't work very much, so we have a lot of time to do a lot of things and I teach, which I enjoy immensely and so, so I consider myself an actor/teacher, maybe I can direct - very infrequently I direct so I can add that to the... So I'm very lucky because as an actor I can do a lot of the things I like to do. I enjoy reading a lot, I certainly have the time to do that!" It's not common knowledge, but for several years, John struggled with the reading disorder, dyslexia. How did he manage to cope with this in terms of learning scripts? "Well I overcame my dyslexia kind of sooo gradually. There were so many places along the line that a little bit of direction would of helped me and I just never got it. It wasn't until very very late that I realised I had been learning, trying to memorise the wrong way, I mean all that type of stuff. So I've had to completely re-vamp, gradually, as problems have come up and then I've dealt with it. I have re-vamped my style of learning. I won't say, I guess the last problem with dyslexia is that the confidence will never be there in that area, you know, some people are, I worked with an actress once who was like, she and I were fire and ice, we were sooo different, but one of the things which I admired about her is that she would stop the rehearsal and say, `Well, there's a period at the end of that sentence, John.' you know, she was always correcting me, but her visual and auditory understanding of material was very good. What she lacked was a sense of freedom, I mean, she never lived on stage. You could always see everything working and I don't like that, I don't feel that that's what the audience comes to see. I don't think that the audience should see `Acting'. You know, actually going back with the idea of playing Q, that's one of the traps of Q, because there's no rehearsal period. I mean, you rehearse for the camera, you run it two or three times and that's it, there's not really what's called a rehearsal period and because I have to be kind of what I call `Out on the skinny branches' a little bit, further away from the trunk of the tree, most everybody is playing pretty close to the best. To get out there, you need a little more than, `Let's do it' and sometimes you can overshoot it and get into `Acting' and that's one of the problems with playing Q. And one of the problems also about getting scripts late, you don't have a chance to really let it move into you a little bit." A large number of actors have difficulty in watching their own performances either on television or film. How does John feel about watching his own work? "I don't like watching myself on television or film. I watch it because I have to, I certainly I can tell you the first time I saw myself I was overcome! I went to bed for a day! Sometimes I like it and sometimes not. Film has a way of telling the truth and the truth isn't always what you want to see or hear." Apart from watching his own performances, is John able to, when watching television, divorce what he can see on screen and studying the actor's performance? "Well, usually when it's a good story, yes. Certainly when I'm watching something that I've shot that's very difficult because it's a two dimensional medium let's say for which I can add that third dimension of knowing that on the other side of the camera there's so and so and why didn't that scene get put in, so that makes it very difficult, but on good shows, yes I can divorce it, I can move into the story and watch it. Most of the time though is what you view as entertainment, is obviously our work so it's a double-edged sword." Before John appeared in Encounter At Farpoint, he was performing in a play in Japan. He was asked if he had to learn the part in Japanese. "No, no, I mean that's impossible! It's hard enough doing a play, it's another thing to say, `Now let's translate that into Japanese!'. No, we just went there and did the play. What was amusing about that is that there's a time in a production which is when everything is done and you're waiting for an audience and director, invariably because he doesn't know what to do with his time, says, `Okay, let's do another run through.' and the actors are like, `Oh god!'. So you sit there doing a full-blown run through of the play with the director and the stage manager and there are no laughs anymore, there's no reaction, you're just running it. That was somewhat the feel of the thirty or so shows we did in Japan because they can't undertand a word we said and we were being simultaneously translated execpt that their language is about three times longer than ours so actually we were being paraphrased and I remember being out there, I played this wonderful EVIL character of Amundsen, I think it was about Amundsen and Scott, and I was out there alone and I had this soliloquy and I had this many people (referring to the 500 or so fans at the con) looking at me and I was in the middle of my soliloquy and carrying on and what have you and I saw 800 people that had been watching me all of a sudden turn and look up-stage that way. What the hell were they looking at? I mean I'm the only one on stage! It occurred to me that the translation had gotten finished with me and had simply come to the part that said, `And now the sleds are coming in!' and of course that's where the sleds always came in and we had 800 people looking for the sleds and I was still talking! That's how it would go. One night I'd forgot what I was saying, which is not unusual and I looked at Donald Moffat and I realised he wasn't there either so out of my mouth I went, `Oh ********!' and I turned to the audience and I go, `Where am I?' and they're still watching. And luckily I was helped out because of my friend, Chris Jones who realised off stage that something was wrong and he just brought the sled in!" Are there any parts that John would really love to play or any actors that he would like to work with? "Well, I'll tell you, there are two types of actors in our country, I don't know whether it woks out that way here, and one of them is, there's what we call the `Repertory Actor', the actor who works in every other city in America, BUT New York or Los Angeles and then there's the `Commerical Actor' and although the two are beginning to meet a little bit, I'm pretty much still in the area of being a `Commercial Actor'. I do plays, but I'm `jobbed in' to do the play. So as opposed to a `Repertory Actor' who actually, like Patrick was, who there is a repetoir of work and you can begin, you can focus in on what probably your company is going to do, like in his case, they did Shakespeare quite predominantly, then you can begin to say, 'Well, I wanted to play that role. I've seen it played by many people, I think I could do it, you know, better or differently or whatever.' but for a `Commercial Actor' that isn't the case. Everything for us is in the future, everything is going to come up. I had NO IDEA that I would be playing Jack Tanner until somebody simply came to me from another company and said, `Do you want to play Jack Tanner?', `Yeah, great!'. So I don't have those aspirations because unfortunately in commercial theatre it's not really a place that I can fulfill them as easily. And in terms of people which I would like to work with, just good actors. The obvious good actors - I would love to work with them. And I do, more and more." Apart from appearing as everyone's favourite omnipotent being, is there any other part that John would have like to have played? "What other part is there?! No. You know what is wonderful about playing Q is that every time I come, it's like a little bit of a turn. I'm really a peripheral character and at the same time I've enjoyed all of the fruits as you were of being in STAR TREK. So I think that certainly, in terms of my business, I have somewhat escaped being known as being on STAR TREK and yet I AM on STAR TREK and I've had an important part in STAR TREK, but I'm not, quote `type-cast' in STAR TREK. Not yet! So Q sits well with me." Has John had to turn many parts down in his career, or does he accept most of the roles he has the opportunity to play? "Well, I've turned down lots of parts. I turn down parts all the time, mostly because they're just too stupid to do! I turned down a movie recently because it was too violent, `Doll Man' which will be out here soon. I just didn't think that gang rape and pouring gasoline on women and lighting it was such a good thing to be involved in. And so yes, all the time, I mean I was supposed to read an audition for a part that they wanted me to play, the day that I flew here and I just read it and said no. So that happens all the time, yes. You get to pick and choose after a while and hopefully you get.. what happens is that, again this is the `Commercial Actor'. The `Commercial Actor' establishes him or herself to a point where there, they are known and are capable of playing many many different things. They're solid, in other words, they're pro's. Then you start hoping there's going to be in there some opening, drop the part, Star Trek one could say, Q could have been THE part, however a little bit of a ricochet because it's REALLY considered, again I'll say this, it's a cult show. The `Eugene' thing - well, yes, but that was really only a soap opera and nobody really watches that. Jack Tanner was terrific, but you know, it wasn't done in New York so there are things, as you get closer, as it were, to the bullseye, you're looking for THE role. The role that could be, what's called, `The Breakout' role and that's how the commercial business works. In a repertory company, it doesn't work that way, at all." John obviously has a flair for the more comedic roles, but does he have the opportunity to get to play many of them? "Yes, yes, I've played a lot of comedy roles. As a matter of fact, I did a show where I was asked to come on to play a psychopath and, not a big stretch I'm afraid, and I looked at the show and they needed, they wanted a psychopath, but what they NEEDED was a comedian. The show was dreadfully boring, I mean really, it just kind of plodded along like this, there was no energy to it, so I thought well, there's nothing in the literature that says that a psychopath doesn't have to have a sense of humour. So I'm a psychopathic with a sense of humour, and it became very very popular. I think that that's more enjoyable. Also what is it? `Smile and smile and still be a villain!' I like to play, when I do play `evil' as you say characters, I like to make sure that the character could infact be your brother, yes, right! I just think it's more fun that way, so just a little something funny, because those things I find that you can actually, the sword of humour is a lot sharper." John has also made a guest appearance on L.A. LAW, as many of the actors to have appeared on Trek have also done (including Paul Winfield and Gates McFadden). What exactly was his involvement with the show? "My involvement with L.A. Law was simply to do one show. L.A. Law is kind of the obligatory show that everybody does in Los Angeles! You know, it's been on for a long time, everybody has it on their resumes, I had not really watched the show before and I just came on, played a sleazy lawyer and walked off! It was somewhat of a humourless couple of days, I can assure you. It's not a yukky- yukky type of group. There I actually did try to liven things up, but it fell on deaf ears!" CONVENTIONALLY SPEAKING... -------------------------- There are few actors connected with Trek other than the regular cast who are invited to, and attend c onventions. What does John think of the whole convention scene and Trek fans in general? "Well, you know what, I've found very few people who are obsessed with it (Trek). They asked me this on the the radio about half an hour ago or so. What I like about it is that it gives an opportunity for people to get to come together, people who actually look forward to seeing each other, from different parts of the country. I'm sure it's the same way because that's how it works in the States, you know, `I'll see you at the next convention', so there's a socialness about it. Another thing is that there's a charity involved. I mean, I think there are a lot of good things about it, it's certainly better than painting graffiti on the walls, and I would say for the most part there are a lot of good things about them. The lady also asked me, `There MUST be a bad thing about it?' and I said, `Well, every once in a while, maybe 1.1% or something like that are made up of people who are strange.' I was walking down in New York and there was a guy who was coming towards me and he ended up, I could see that half way down the street he had, kind of, beaded in on me! I kind of made a little bit of an adjustment, he made an adjustment, I made an adjustment and he made an adjustment and finally he came up to me and he was really kind of an unsavoury looking guy and I figured out, `Well, this is it, you know! Broad daylight, it's going to be a mugging, he's going to pull out a gun and I'm the one, God!' and he says to me, `You're Q!', I said, `Er, yeah.' `Can you bring people back from the dead?' I figure `Uh, the mugging's still on!' so I though for a second and I said, `Only people I like!' Yeah! And he walked away! So there are those." Q AND GUINAN - A BEAUTIFUL FRIENDSHIP! -------------------------------------- In Q Who, we found out that Guinan and Q had met previously. John was asked what happened between the two of them. "Well, that's a little bit along the lines of actors just playing. Whoopi and I were, there's no story, there's no back story, there's no story to go to, so we just thought if we kind of do this a little bit (raising his hands like he did to Guinan in Q Who)... YOU PEOPLE filled it in! So the best I came up with is that Guinan and Q... a hundred or two hundred or a thousand years in the past..... were a BAD date!! One of those dates that just doesn't work out and you're happy never to see the person again and then all of a sudden you see them and you don't want to mention it at all. Well, that's Guinan and Q!" WATCHING TREK ------------- One of the cliched questions that guests always seem to be asked is whether they were fans of Trek or if they watch either of the series. John was first asked whether or not he was a fan of Classic Trek. "Not really, no. I was 18 years old. I had something other to do with my spare time!" But what about the Next Generation? Does John actually watch the new show, and what does he think of it? "Do I like to watch THE NEXT GENERATION? I watch it, I don't watch every episode, I watch it occasionally. I like what I see. I think it's better than Classic Trek! Not because I'm on it either, but what I look at are production values. The production values are better and that's what keeps my attention a lot of the time." LOOK TO THE FUTURE ------------------ As this con took place in the 25th Anniversary year, many fans wondered if the actors had any idea if Trek was to have lasted so long, and in the case of John, if it would last for another 25 years. "I think it's evident that it's going to continue for the next 25 years. I think that there's been a natural take-over as it were from Classic to Next Generation, I don't know whether 25 years is necessarily the number, but where Star Trek made it's biggest impression on me was in the first year of having shot it, having shot the first episode (Encounter At Farpoint), then I was at the Smithsonian, which is our national museum in Washington, and I went to the air and space part of it and I was looking around and I was looking at the X-15, and I mean the REAL X-15, and the REAL "Spirit of St Louis", the Mercury capsule that went around the Earth and there, in a corner, there was also the Enterprise, a model of the Enterprise. So I'm looking around and I see that and I go, `What the hell's THAT doing here?!' and then I went, `DOING!'. Well, that's what it's doing here, it's made an enormous impact on a lot of people and I don't that that's necessarily going to diminish, especially since the new show is out. They've already produced more episodes than the first show and they've got at least another 2 years to go. So I would say it's well entrenched." DRESSED TO THRILL ----------------- Some of the costumes that John has had to endure for the role of Q have been less than simple to say the least. How long did it take him to get into one of the costumes? "Ask me how long it took me to SEW the costume!!! I would go in, certainly in the first episode, I went in many times for fittings. After that, a regular fitting time. Certainly they take a little longer than most people, but I don't know. An hour, an hour or two maybe. No big deal. And certainly getting into them is no big deal." But how about all the rapid costume changes such as those found in Encounter At Farpoint. John went on to explain how there were achieved. "I know in the first one, as everybody asked me, `My god, how did they do it, where you're snapping from one character to the other?' and actually what we did was we use a video assist. Say I'm in a kilt, and I end up like this and then we lock off the camera, quite literally, lock it off so it can't move. Everybody walks away from the camera and then I go in and I go into my dressing room and I change and then I go to the make-up wagon and I get into make-up and then I come back maybe an hour later, say an hour later, and then get back into position except with a new outfit on and they have a video camera now and that has freeze framed on the last picture and we just find it, you know there we go, and then they go, `Go!' and I start acting again. So that's how that works." But what does John actually think of all the costume changes he has to put up with? Does he enjoy them? "Well, I think Q without costumes would be rather boring. So yes, I enjoy the costume changes. It's fun, that's all, it's fun." Q - THE CHARACTER ----------------- When the character of Q was created, there were certain guidelines for the way the character would act, but how much of Q's on-screen persona was scripted by Gene and how much of it came from John? "Well, the words are almost written in stone. But clearly, if I played it or if you played it, we would have two different type of characters up there. So, the outline let's say, of the character has been written, the gut of the character is what I bring to it. I teach acting and I always tell my students, I say, `There's got be a reason that I'm hiring YOU as opposed to YOU' you know, this person as opposed to that person, it's what you bring to it and so Q is really a manifestation of what I've really brought to the role and yet to understand that that's kind of what the role required or at least what I thought it required. So it's a merging of the two." James Doohan has often been quoted as saying that the role of Scotty is `99% James Doohan and 1% accent'. Is the part of Q the same for John? "There's a lot of myself in any role, any actor who, I think most actors who will say that if the role works out for them, you know, if somebody asks about favourite roles, you know, Jack Tanner, and stuff like that. It works best from my point of view when there is infact a lot of yourself in it. I just was watching, I used as an example, my wife was in `A Little Night Music' and there was a guy who was playing a Count. So he spent a lot of time being `The Count' and my students saw that and I said to them, `You see, there's what I'm trying for you not to do - we know he's the Count, we refer to him as the Count, he's dressed as the Count, he doesn't have to PLAY the Count. If he would bring a little of what HE is, which after the show I actually got to meet him and he was very charming and alive and what have you and if he had brought some of that to the character, to his performance, it would have been wonderful. It would have been much better than all this stuff'." MR BAD GUY! ----------- Something that I have noticed over the years, is that a large number of the roles Joh seems to play that are either evil characters or just plain bad guys! Did John think he was typecast into these types of roles? "Well, to expound on the answer to that question, is that for some reason, if you speak well and don't have a leading man kind of face about you or if you have a presence about you which could in any way could be construed as threatening or bigger than life, you are immediately cast as that. You know, the actors all say if you went to a boarding school or what have you, your career is set as an evil character! It's just the way it is. I've played lots of characters other than that, but what you see are those. And I've kind of grown to enjoy them because the leading man character always has to go, you know, `I love you' and then `No, you don't love me!', `Oh yes, I love you. I love you more than you could love me!' and on and on and on! `I love myself more than you!', but I find that so constraining. They tried to insist on this particular show that I be the love interest and I simply wouldn't do it! I just play love scenes as comedy scenes! I have asked my students every once in a while I make them go around the room and say, `Okay, I want everybody to say I love you' and no-one will end up saying, well this is how they all do it, `I love you' (in a deep throaty voice!) you know, they all give it the spin and I would say, `Can't someone simply say I love you? I love you. Why are you giving it the spin?' Well, the reason they're giving it the spin is because all their experiences come from watching television! It's all so disgusting and they fought with me and I had such a difficult time! I just made them laugh and they said, `But that's not a love scene!' and I said, `Well, it's my love scene.'. It's like going to bed with three or four different characters!" Following on from John's problems teaching his students about love scenes, he mentioned a rather unusual experience he had himself... "Did you see the Thorn Birds? At the end of that story I was supposed to be the guy who the parents wanted Rachael Ward to marry and she ended up liking Brian Brown which was really ridiculous! Can you imagine? So in any case, there was this scene which I come in, I'm dressed in a tuxedo and she's coming down the staircase and she's all dressed in white and what have you, and we've got a hundred or so people THIS side of the camera watching her come down. And I know that the reverse of that is going to be ME looking at her. And I had been told, it was written in the script, that I had also been told by the director, `We want to see you when we come around on your side, we want to see you look up and be smitten with love!'. What does that mean?! What does smitten mean?! So in any case, I knew that I was in trouble because comedy wasn't going to be my hout on this one and I was going to have to be `smitten' with love! So in any case, they shot her, you know, she walked down the staircase, you know, 22 times and I knew, `Here it comes' and they said, `Okay. We're going around on the other side now.' so of course all the 100 people go up the staircase and the cameras are taken up there and they put the `x' where I'm supposed to be and I have about 15 minutes before it's going to be on me and I'm sweating! So I've got be very self-concious here, so the way I get rid of self-conciousness is to put my attention outside of me. And the next thing is is I need something to do. However, it isn't like I can, you know, wash laundry I mean, I'm supposed to just stand there and look up and be smitten. So I went outside and thought about it and thought about it. Oh, and there's a third thing. If you can have a secret as an actor, that gives you a great deal of power. So I thought about it and I went and I opened up my tuxedo, the hands pocket all the way, and they said, `Okay John, we're ready.' and I stood on my spot and I wrapped my hands around my... I sat there playing with myself as she came down the stairs and I had this kind of glassy you know look on my face and I got LOTS of work afterwards!!" KEEPING IT IN THE FAMILY ------------------------ As well as attending the convention with his wife, Marnie Mosiman (the interpreter for Rivas in "Loud As A Whisper"), he also brought along his two sons, Keegan and Owen. John was asked if he would even encourage his children to become actors. "I would encourage them to be producers - and they can hire their parents! I don't know, it's something that you need to feel like you have to do, not that you've been encouraged really to do, although that's helpful, but I think it's really something you need to do. It's a lifestyle which is, it's not the best of lifestyles, you just don't know what's going to happen next, so there's always an underlying state of anxiety in almost every actor's life and, you know, most actors, the joke is that you never know if you're going to work again, after your last job you're sure you're never going to work again, and we all say that, `Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.' but actually that's true. You know, the lady (the radio interviewer mentioned earlier) said, `Well, what are you going to do next?'. Actually, I don't know. I mean, I know something will happen because something always does, but I don't know when it's going to happen and what it's going to be. And yet at the same time I know that the bill collector DOES come. He's regular. So there are tensions involved, that's the downside of it. The upside of it is you can say, well, my gosh, you certainly don't have a boring lifestyle because of that, but I think the biggest problem about actors, especially commercial actors, is that they don't get the work all the time. So we have a lot of excess energy, we're spinning a lot and that's difficult. Even when it's working well, you can say, in retrospect you can go back and say, `Well that was really the high point of my work career'. So there's not a sense of ladders that you're climbing or anything like that. So that creates tension problems." Playing Q has also lead to a few interesting experiences with his children, especially when he met their school friends. "I had an opportunity where I went to pick up my oldest at school and a whole bunch of kids came and ran up. His friend ran up to me and he said, `Go away, tell them Daddy, tell them if they're bad you'll freeze them!'." ALL TIED UP... -------------- No-one can forget the trial scene in Encounter At Farpoint, where John was in the judges costume and floated onto the screen on the giant chair, but John remembers something else about that... "I had just come back from Japan and you know that scene in which where the Judge comes in up on the crane? I had to stay up there for a long long time and you know, I was very pumped up in the morning, I'd flown in, I guess, Saturday or Sunday night or whatever it was, and I had to start shooting the next morning and of course I had to be there at five or whatever. And so I was pretty pumped up. Through lunch I was okay, but after lunch... Now I was up there and I began to totter a little bit, so they decided to come and chain me in! So they chained me in, which was very good of them because they didn't want to lose an actor, but it also gave me an opportunity of just kind of -leaning- against the chain and falling alseep!! So because the length it takes between shots, which sometimes can be 40 minutes or so between set up, I would just take my cat naps up there and they would wake me up when it was time to talk!!" Q THE DIRECTOR! --------------- There is a growing trend in America that more and more actors are turning their hands to directing. Has John ever considered this? "Yes, I enjoy directing. Television directing and television/film directing are very different than stage directing, but it's still something that, if certainly somebody offered me the opportunity I wouldn't turn it down. I don't know if I would ever pursue it, but I know that a couple of people on the show are beginning to direct. That usually happens in shows where, you know, it's gone on, everybody's settled down." MECHANDISE ---------- Star Trek has always been known for having an endless supply of affiliated merchandise to go with it. How does John feel about seeing his face on countless items? "Well, if I got paid for it I'd be delighted! I received a cheque, which I'm happy to report, was, I think, $98 in four years! You know who I think really makes, I think it's really the dealers who, it's the actor market element. I was surprised, I must admit. Of all the things I've been the most surprised about, is when somebody pushed a doll of ME into my face and asked me to sign it! That was the one thing I hadn't figured on!" STAR TREK - BEHIND THE SCENES ----------------------------- While the original series was being filmed, Wiliam Shatner and Leonard Nimoy became notorious for their practical jokes and sense of humour. John was asked if any fooling around took place on TNG and if so, who was the main culprit. "It's a laugh riot every moment of the day! We just come on hysterical and we leave slapping our thighs and can't wait for the next day! And every day, is a different ring leader. No, it's really a very sombre, closed mouthed, serious group, reading lots of religious literature! I don't know, I don't know. I'm telling you, when I go on, I've got so many damn lines that I've just got to be, I've just to watch, `cover my ass' as it's called, so there isn't all that much fun and frolic." When it comes to filming an episode, the production crew place a great deal of pressure on John and the other guest stars because the scripts don't always arrive in plenty of time... "I don't even get the script until a day or so before I start shooting. They simply call up, ask me if such and such date is open, I tell them yes or no and then I wait for a script and I start bugging them about a week before and I can expect to get it probably about three days before hand, although I can tell you in Hide & Q I didn't get it until the NIGHT before hand! When I was working everyday on another series and I was a series regular there, that became par for the course and you began to learn how to operate that way, which is the way in which the regulars on this show operate. But when I go on, I only go on once in a season and usually what I have to do is a little like this, so there's a lot of pressure for me because I'm not accustomed to, I don't have that nuzzle working the same way." Star Trek: The Next Generation is a very high profile show in the States. Did working on the series live up to any expectations John had? "Well, you know what I had no expectations. I remember when my agent said, `You have to go over to Paramount, here's your audition time and it's in room such-and-such and you'll be meeting so-and-so and it's on this day.' and I said, `Okay. What's the project?', `Star Trek.', `Star Trek? But it's already been done!', `Oh, they're doing another one.', `Oh, okay!'. I'm demistifying it for you because it really was a job. You know, Patrick I'm sure will say the same thing. He walked in, you know, he was in LA looking for work and it happened to be, you know, what's that thing when luck is when opportunity and preparedness meet? Serendipity. Well, in any case, it just happened to be opportunity and I was prepared and they came together. Again, it was all after the fact that any of this made any kind of sense. And for a long time it wasn't going to happen because I was going to be in Japan. I was in Japan for at least two weeks of when it was shooting and it wasn't going to happen. And it's only because they changed the shooting date - they changed when they needed me - that it happened. For that reason, all this came true. Actually, it came down to more than that. It came down to, `Okay, we will change the dates, we'll use you for the last two weeks, you have to be back on Monday.'. My last show was Saturday night and there was no flight until Sunday morning. And I'm working it out and I go, `Well, that's it. I give up. It's not going to work.'. And I happened to call the theatre and I said, `Now the last show IS Saturday night?' and they said, `No, it's Sunday afternoon!', `Oh' and then I realised, I GAINED a day going back! And I went, `I can do it!' so it was pretty close." What was John's inititial reaction when he first joined STAR TREK? "Well, you know, nobody asks you to come and `join'. I'm envious of my English friends who have just a little bit of notoriety and they're ASKED. You know, `Oh, so- and-so would be good for this part, so-and-so would be good for that part.' but in America, you actually audition, no matter WHO you are, you'll audition for everything. Who was it, Marlon Brando had to CONVINCE the director to be on APOCALYPSE NOW. So in any case, I didn't just drop on, I auditioned and I auditioned a couple of times and Gene Roddenberry ended up taking me aside and he said something very nice, he said, `You make my words sound better than they are.' and I figured at that point I had the job! And that was it. My reaction after that was it was a job, also my wife was having our second baby, three days before I was to leave to go to Japan to do a stage play, `Terra Nova' with Donald Moffat, I don't know if you know who he is. And then I came back and started this show so there was no real reaction time. The reaction only came at my first convention, when I looked out and went, `Oh my god!'. It's odd, you know, you do a lot of other work and one seemed, you know, or seems to hit. Every once in a while something hits. So my reaction has been, I'm still in a state of reaction as it were." What does John think about the atmosphere present working on Star Trek? "Well, for most films it's pretty much the same. I know that there's a saying that we don't get paid to act, we get paid to wait. And there's a great deal of waiting on a film set. It's very business like, everybody's there to make things work. You're only there when you need to be there so socialising is only because everybody's been brought together and are waiting so they're passing the time. It's pretty much straight foward work and many many hours of it. The guy who plays Worf starts at 5:00, 4:30 in the morning you know and doesn't finish until 8:00, 9:00 o'clock at night and on Fridays it may be midnight. You lose your sense of idle banter and playfulness after a while - you get there and get it over with. That's the reality end of it at least. The other end of it is that they are a very nice group to work with and everybody's very amiable and very professional. Professional means making things work. That's the operative word." John was then asked what is was like working with Patrick Stewart? "Well, it's wonderful because, as any good actor, what makes good acting is that when you are pushed, you push back. And not only is it skill and intelligence and all of that, but there's also that underneath mechanism which is `When I push, he pushes back' and he pushes, I push back and the result is that the audience get a scene begins to develop, a sense of a relationship begins to develop and that's what makes for good combinations." Thanks to John de Lancie for his assistance and support in creating this article and for the Silvercon committee for a great convention.