A lot of people that I've worked with in the past have remembered me well and they'll pick up the phone and say, "Can you do this?" That's the most gratifying thing as an actor. Because they be on staff on that show and be there 24/7, year after year, but you can pop in and spend a week with them and have a kind of reunion of your professional friendship.
And you have a particular skill set that involves being acerbic and arrogant and yet likable --
[laughs] You've summed up my career right there. And a lot better than I do. Usually it takes me three sentences, and you did it in about five words.
-- and that brings us back to Woolsey, because you've been able to do big "guest star" turns with him, but now he's going to be around every week. Is there anything you had to tone down or tinker with for "recurring Woolsey" to become "regular cast Woolsey"?
Absolutely. Woolsey was first introduced on SG-1 [in "Heroes: Part 2" (7x18)] as a kind of a military/think-tank guy. He was himself outside the military but he had a strong legal mind and he came into analyze a command decision that ended up tragically, and basically to see if someone's head should role. So he was what I call "the blame-layer" character. You can't cozy up to the people you're interviewing, because you're gathering information and you're submitting a report so that some sort of action will be made by military superiors.
So he was not a very cuddly guy when he was introduced. But the producers liked me, I think, enough as an actor to have me back, and what they did is they kind of redeemed him in his second outing ["Inauguration" (7x20)], insofar as, yes, he was still arrogant, yes, he was still not a very cuddly guy with good people skills, but at least he meant well. He had a passionate belief in the importance of civilian oversight of secret military operations so that no rogue element from within the military could, basically, seize control and use them for a way that wasn't serving the public interest.
So we saw that he rubbed people the wrong way, but at least he meant well. Then in subsequent returns, both on SG-1 and when they spun me over to Atlantis -- first of all, they gave me an official role, which was liaison from the IOA, all the various countries that know about the secret Stargate operation. So he had a function. He would come in to represent the group interest. But again he was basically assessing the command decisions of a series of leaders. First it was Gen. Hammond, then Gen. Landry on SG-1, then Dr. Weir and Col. Carter on Atlantis. He was brought in to troubleshoot. And always in the background was the idea that he could write a report that was negative that would have repercussions for that individual's career.
We did have some fun with the fact that Woolsey was a conference-room guy and not a real-situation guy, so when you put him in real danger he wasn't courageous. I think of all of those bureaucrats in our administration who got us into a war who had no military experience of their own. I think there were certain subliminal levels of commentary that I like -- there's certainly a Dick Cheney element in Woolsey, although I don't think of Cheney as much of a guy for getting laughs. And there are other differences, apparently -- Woolsey has the capacity to admit a mistake, which also distinguishes him from some of his counterparts in the current administration [laughs].
But now he's a bureaucrat who's suddenly making the decisions himself. And he has enough of a conscience to want to make the right decision and do his best job. So even though he enters this job thinking, "I know the handbook, inside and out, so I'm simply going to make -- my command decisions will reflect protocol exactly. In a crisis situation I'll restore and maintain security. I'll limit collateral damage but I'll accept the loss of this individual or this number of individuals for the safety of all."
All of that blueprint for how he's going to make his decisions kind of goes out the window in his very first crisis. And his willingness to go off book and make the riskier choice that saves a beloved crew member -- that earns him the respect of people like Col. Sheppard, who have a strong renegade streak themselves. I think the writers have been very smart in teaching Woolsey in each of his first crises that the job is not going to be what he thought it was going to be. And that the challenge is going to be, can he accept himself as the man he's becoming?
That's the character arc for season 5, then. Because that's all uncharted territory for Woolsey.
Yeah. First of all, when I first got the call from the producers, saying, "How would you like to assume command?", a little voice in the back of my head said, "Is that going to make sense?" Because we've set this guy up as actually kind of a coward in real danger. We've had some comic mileage in a number of episodes where you see he's not used to the real event. He's a Monday morning quarterback, and if you throw him on the field --
-- he'll drown with Richard Dean Anderson ["The Return" (Atlantis 3x10-11)].
Exactly [laughs]. So at first I thought, maybe that's not logical. Then I took a step back and said, we're living in a world that changes so quickly that people in -- I had lunch with a cousin of mine, who's 50 years old; she's bright, attractive, smart as a whip, and she's changing her career. She's embarking on an entirely new career at 50 years old. And I thought, that's what we're dramatizing, in a science fiction context. We're taking a guy in middle life, who's completely trying to reinvent himself for a new task.
What's interesting is that he is now taking over the job that he used to evaluate others in. And I find that not only opens up all sorts of dramatic possibilities, but there are a lot of humorous ones too, when he is under the same microscope that he used to put others under.
How aware of that is Woolsey? Does he think he's ready for this? Does he see that irony?
I certainly do, as the actor working on it. Some of the situations that I'm describing to you are still in upcoming episodes. The same episode that I mentioned there's a bit of a romantic angle in, he is having his new command evaluated for the first time, by the new representative from the IOA.
