Somebody is sharing the on-the-set photos they have taken: http://www.flickr.com/photos/49347467@N05/
28/08/10 Charles Mesure Interview by Ariane
Charles Mesure talks about V mostly, and the New Zealand shows he’s currently starring in (fyi, I checked out This is Not My Life, and so far it’s pretty good, he plays the lead, and is in practically every scene).
New Zealand television is currently enjoying a two-for-the-price-of-one deal on Kiwi actor Charles Mesure. He is the lead in new local drama This Is Not My Life and also appears in US sci-fi series V. After a busy 2009 in New Zealand also filming Outrageous Fortune and Kaitangata Twitch, he is about to head back to Vancouver to start filming the second series of V.
Vancouver is apparently the sci-fi capital of the world, where shows such as Stargate Universe and Caprica are filmed; what’s it like working there?
There are so many shows shooting up there, it’s destroyed all my illusions, all these shows and movies that I thought were set in New York or Los Angeles or whatever and they all film in Vancouver.
Is that because it looks like a kind-of “anycity”?
It’s funny, it’s not a huge city, but if you point the camera at the right spots, it can look very similar to New York. They’ve got amazing alpine views and they’ve got the downtown area, they’ve got a bunch of stuff, also the crews up there are outstanding so with tax breaks and foreign exchange advantages, it’s a really good place to film.
The character in V, Kyle Hobbes, is a real tough guy – what’s his role in the story?
There’s a small handful of humans who work out very early on that the Visitors – the alien invaders – are up to no good, so they have to fight the Vs, they have to resist in some kind of guerrilla war. But none of these guys are soldiers, so they hire me. I’m a mercenary; Kyle Hobbes is number one on the FBI’s most wanted list as the most dangerous terrorist on the planet, and the resistance decides he’d be a pretty handy guy to help them fight the Vs.
Are you enjoying being the action guy?
I’m loving it, it’s another one in my long line of hard bastards. It’s fantastic. Within the science fiction mythology, he’s the Han Solo character, he’s the cocky mercenary who gets all the cool one liners, so it’s a lot of fun to play.
And do you wish it had been vampires?
Man, there’s so many vampires now, you can’t get away from it. There’s vampire shows out here that you probably wouldn’t have seen in New Zealand yet, they’re just everywhere. I dunno, if I get to play a vampire one day, great, but I’m pretty darn happy doing what I’m doing at the moment.
V is quite a CG-heavy show; how much engagement with that side of things do you have?
In every episode we spend a good couple of days doing green screen stuff. But V is like two or three separate shows – there’s the Visitors and their world, which is very much CG created; and then there’s the resistance, which is all real action. So my whole show is me and Elizabeth [Mitchell] and Joel [Gretsch] and Morris [Chestnut] plotting in bunkers and messing around with guns and things, so it’s like we’re in a different show from what the Visitors are doing.
Do you think that science fiction and fantasy are much more mainstream now since Lost?
Very much so. We just got a call the other day from JJ Abrams people, because he’s doing a new show called Undercovers that they wanted me to come and do, and it turns out I’m not available because I’m going to Vancouver. I think it’s five years since I worked with him on Lost, and it has influenced everything: it has influenced the kind of storytelling we’re doing on V, it has hugely influenced the kind of storytelling we do on This Is Not My Life. Audiences are really asked to be intellectually engaged with the mystery and the storytelling now.
When we interviewed you five years ago you had just moved to the US and were very busy – but there’s been a writer’s strike and a recession since then. Have you seen a lot of changes in Hollywood?
The landscape has changed totally since I first got here. The writer’s strike and the recession changed the structure of the industry enormously. There was a huge movement into reality TV and unscripted TV because there were no scripts to play with. And then that totally impacted on employment opportunities, because there were no scripts, you had huge movie stars coming back to do tiny guest roles on TV, so pilot season 2005, there were all kinds of people who wanted to take a risk on an unknown actor like me, then you have pilot season 2010, you look at the list of actors who are doing a pilot, there are huge international film stars – Dustin Hoffman is coming back to do TV, Al Pacino is now doing TV movies.
When you came back to New Zealand last year you ended up in three different shows: was that like opposite world?
People usually leave New Zealand to find work. There was a guy who was doing post-production on two of the shows, Kaitangata Twitch and This Is Not My Life, and I remember him saying, “who’s this new guy, there’s a new face on the block, how cool”. And I felt like saying, “I did 10 years before that in New Zealand!” That’s the thing, you go away for a couple of years and all of a sudden you’re a new face again. It worked out to my advantage last year, it was fantastic, but it was probably too much, there was too much going on. At one point I was commuting between the North and South Islands a couple of times a week to finish Outrageous Fortune and Kaitangata Twitch and then there was a big overlap with This Is Not My Life as well and it was a lot of fun, but it was insane, just way too much.
Was it a almost a culture shock coming back to work in New Zealand again?
With Outrageous Fortune it was less of a culture shock, because I looked at the cast and that crew and there was very obviously a very high skill level across the board, probably higher than any show that I’ve done in New Zealand before, so that was a really nice surprise to come and see these people doing really amazing work.
Have there been technical improvements since you left?
One thing that was really interesting was that in New Zealand my whole career was on 16mm film, and then I came back and everything I did last year was all using digital media, and that puts different constraints on the crew and the actors because things like focus and hitting marks and so on become hyper-critical, whereas 16mm film used to give us a bit of margin for error.
Digital media, like the RED cameras that were used for This Is Not My Life?
The evil RED cameras, the cameras that break down every five minutes. But the pictures are beautiful, the pictures are absolutely stunning, so all of the teething problems in the end didn’t really matter.
Fans of V who were disappointed by the first season are about to be more than compensated, The second season is much more thrilling, faster paced and emotionally intense.
NOTE: Spoilers behind the cut!
V‘s casting peeps are on a roll!
On the heels of news that original lizard queen Jane Badler is joining the ABC reboot as Anna’s mother, comes word (exclusively!) that Reaper‘s Bret Harrison has landed a pivotal recurring role as well.
According to a V insider, Harrison will play Dr. Sidney Miller, an evolutionary biologist who may have the scoop on what caused the sky to turn red in the finale.
Harrison’s character first shows up in the season 2 premiere (slated for November) when Erica (Elizabeth Mitchell) shows up on his doorstep looking for answers.
Source: EW
18/08/10 V – Does John May Live? by Ariane
Could a certain sexy Cylon be heading back to V when the ABC series returns?
Executive producer Scott Rosenbaum says the show isn’t done with Michael Trucco’s story line yet. “John May may return,” he tells TVGuide.com.
When Trucco first appeared as the Fifth Column resistance leader in an April episode, it was discovered that Ryan (Morris Chestnut) had actually already killed May, as shown in a flashback.
But is John May actually alive? “That’s what they hinted to me,” Trucco tells us. “I thought, ‘OK, he’s dead, but he’s coming back?’ They’re like, ‘Nope, he’s dead.’ I wrote that off as a one-off [appearance], but they made some indication that maybe he’d come back.”
In the interim, Trucco has signed on to USA’s legal drama Facing Kate, but since both shows shoot in Vancouver, another V cameo seems feasible. “I would do it again,” the actor says. “I think it would be a great twist. I would love to resolve that character and see a little bit more into what made him John May.”
Do you want John May to return?
Source: TV Guide
Actress Jane Badler, best known for her role on the original “V” series, will join the cast of ABC’s “V” as a recurring guest star, playing Diana, mother to Anna (Morena Baccarin), who is now the leader of the Vs. Badler will make her debut in the Season 2 premiere of the series.
“V,” which received an Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Special Visual Effects for a Series, stood as television’s No. 1 new drama during the 09-10 TV season in the key Adult 18-49 sales demographic, delivering substantial year-to-year improvement in both of its Tuesday time periods (8:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m.). “V” finished No. 1 in both time periods among key Men (M18-34/M18-49).
Season 2 will feature more character and lizard reveals, more details about the Vs’ mythology – in which Badler will play an important role — and more action and more plot twists. Viewers can expect a roller coaster ride week to week.
“V” stars Elizabeth Mitchell as Erica Evans, Morris Chestnut as Ryan Nichols, Joel Gretsch as Father Jack, Charles Mesure as Kyle Hobbes, Logan Huffman as Tyler Evans, Laura Vandervoort as Lisa, with Morena Baccarin as Anna and Scott Wolf as Chad Decker.
“V” is produced by HDFilms in association with Warner Bros. Television. The executive producers are Scott Rosenbaum, Steve Pearlman and Jace Hall.
Source: ABC
Thank you Scott Rosenbaum for just making V a thousand times cooler. After the executive producer let slip at Comic-Con that he’d be introducing Anna’s mother in V’s November season premiere — and that her name would be Diana, fans went bonkers. I personally begged Rosenbaum to cast Jane Badler (so deliciously evil as lizard villainess Diana in NBC’s original ’80s V series) as this new incarnation of Diana, and word has just reached me that he has indeed awarded Jane the role. Woo-hoo!
When V returns, we will learn that Anna (Morena Baccarin) is keeping her mother prisoner on the mother ship in a never-before-seen section that has been designed to look like the Visitors’ home planet. Both Morena and Laura Vandervoort, who plays Anna’s daughter, Lisa, told me they, too, were hoping Jane would take the role. Still stunningly beautiful at age 56, Jane’s Diana, who will be a recurring character, is perhaps the only reptilian being who will be able to put Anna in her place. November suddenly can’t come soon enough.
Source: TV Guide Magazine