The Point Radio: Jeri Ryan Returns To Sci Fi on HELIX
Transcript
The Point Radio Hey it's Mike Raub. From many seasons, Jerry Ryan was a science fiction icon at 7 of 9 on Star Trek Voyager. And then she walked away from the genre. But why and what brought her back to science fiction in the new sci-fi series Helix?
We'll get answers to that. Plus, Caliber is back and finally a New York City comic book convention. Let's get to The Point. This is The Point. The Point Radio.
Get The Point Radio. Actress Jerry Ryan is back in the world of science fiction with the story arc running right now on Helix on the Sci-Fi network. I said how was Jerry and the first thing I asked is what brought her back to this show? You know what, it was fun.
Well the concept of the show to begin with was sort of intriguing to me. I hadn't seen any of it at that point because it was just being shot. And I loved the people that were involved in it. So that was all really cool. And then when I was hearing a little bit more about the character and I was seeing how she
was written then it was fun. You know what, it's fun. This is my first foray back into sci-fi in a number of years. So it was nice. It was a lot of fun to get back into it.
So after being 7 of 9 did you purposely stay away from science fiction? In the very beginning when I had first ended Voyager then yes, that was a conscious decision. Because one of my concerns when I signed on to Voyager to begin with was that Star Trek is kind of notorious for its actors getting pigeonholed and not really being able to break out and do other things.
And so that was a big concern of mine in the beginning. Which thank God has turned out to be completely unfounded and I've been very lucky. More recently it's just because it's just, you know, I go where the interesting roles are and this was the first one that really sort of caught my interest. She admits she does like the genre.
It was funny, I never, when I started on Voyager I had never ever been interested in science fiction. It just wasn't my genre to watch. And now I've, you know, my son grew up loving Star Trek and loving Star Wars and all of that.
And I just was never really interested and now I've got a daughter who's now almost 6 and so I started watching things with her with her big brother showing her Star Wars for example. And she loves it. She's obsessed with Star Wars.
And I became a big fan of it through her eyes watching it with her. And I've really started to enjoy it so it's a great time. And so yeah, I'm actually getting into science fiction now as an adult which is really kind of crazy. I just put in my life to start to be a fan and all the, you know, Avengers and Iron Man
and all of those movies I love. So yeah, it's fun. Discovered a new interest. The show like Helix, it has so much story to be told. I wonder if it's tough to keep the actors on point without letting them know too much
about what's coming up down the road. I talked to executive producer and showrunner Steve Maida. Some of it we're just trying to kind of keep the mysteries in obviously and we're trying to help the actors as much as we can while still not revealing everything at the end of the day.
And part of it is, you know, it's a work in progress. That's the thing about a series is you don't have everything figured out from, you know, in the halfway point we're still working through things and, you know, we knew where her character was going but, you know, other things came up in the breaking of the show. So we try to give as much direction as we possibly could.
Another thing that appeals to Jerry is the action. Oh yeah, it's not my first stage of it either. I mean, I did Mortal Kombat and I've done some other roles with a little bit of action but here and there. Yeah, it's a lot of fun.
I always enjoyed those things. She told me she's especially enamored working with series regular hero Sonata. Batman is unbelievable. I was in awe of him. I still am in awe of him.
He's the man of a ninja. Throw the book at his head and I have to throw it directly at his face. And there, you know, it's on me. I can't like pretend to throw it. I have to wail it at him and he's standing like six feet away from me.
And I was a wreck shooting the scene. I was so nervous. It's like, dude, I have no aim. I can't. He's like, just throw it.
Just do it. Just right at my face. Just go. And there's cameras set up right behind him and so he has to knock the book away and we're worried about hitting the lens and all this expensive equipment.
He never even blinked. Never flinched. Never breathed. Nothing. Every take he just batted it out of the way like it was nothing in the exact spot that
it was supposed to land so it didn't hit any equipment. He is amazing. So under the promise of not revealing a lot, I asked Jerry to tell us what she could about her character. I'm trying to tip toe the line about not giving too much away, but she's certainly
driven and she definitely has an agenda that she is there to do. Hitaki has gone off the rail. He's supposed to be finding them a virus and a cure and he's screwed up. He's messing around and doing his own thing and that's not okay. So she's there to fix it.
And whatever she has to do to make that happen is what has to happen. Music in Helix is a big player and Steve told me that's all part of the plan. Aside from the get-go that we wanted to do some things a little bit differently and be unsettling not only in storytelling and how we were shooting the show but also in post and how we cut the show and in music.
And so part of that came from I think that the whole Do You Know the Way of San Jose which started the whole thing came from Ron when we were sitting in post on the pilot. And that idea came from one of our other producers at Decter to use that song and we bottle on iTunes and watched it just kind of temp in and it was like wow that works really well. So it's something we had talked about when we saw it we thought it was great and so that's
why we continue to do it and Fever is the perfect one. That's probably the best song we're using in the entire show. This is intense to say the least with very few light moments. I asked Steve if that was intentional. No we want to keep up the intensity.
There are light moments coming but they tend to be kind of in the service of keeping everything moving and sometimes you find those moments in the worst situation. So yeah we have 13 episodes and we really want to our mantra was to keep the show moving and so we want to have down time, we want to have character time but we definitely want to keep everything twisting and turning and keep you coming back for more hopefully.
New episodes of Helix with Jerry Ryan every week on the Sci-Fi channel. See more at Sci-Fi.com. Listen up here we go with the latest in pop culture. They were certainly one of the most prolific publishers of the 90s and one who gave us the first work of some great creators like Ed Brubaker, Brian Bendis, Michael Allard
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The official dates were the 14th and 15th of June in New York City. That's it for now we're back in a few days and we'll look at Bates Motel headed into a second season and Vera Farmiga Emmy-nominated actress talking about just exactly where Norma is going to go next. In the meantime you can get all the pop culture you need to get the point radio dot com.
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