So Say We All

by Mark A. Altman

  MARK VERHEIDEN

  In “The Oath” episode, which was part of the season-four mutiny, Baltar was the one who suggested he call Gaeta and try to talk him down off the ledge. That was a late addition to the script, and turned out to be a great one, because of all the people that you would think to call Gaeta, it wouldn’t be Baltar. But he gave it a try and I thought in that moment you saw a sense of humanity from him and a sense of regret over the fact that essentially so much of this was his fault. His attempt to try and fix something that was getting way out of hand was admirable. Although I would assume there’s this element of self-preservation in that, because if this mutiny went as far as it did, I think Mr. Baltar would definitely be on the chopping block. I don’t think he had a lot of fans on the ship at that point, so he had a really good sense of what his character might or might not do.

  JAMES CALLIS

  His decent side does win out in the end. So I don’t think they were wrong about him, albeit as maddening as he could be and was. Of course, that’s also the fun of the character, is making you want to strangle him.

  “The woman as machine.”

  That, in its entirety, was Ron Moore’s description of the Six character in the show’s bible. Not a lot to work from for Canadian model turned actress Tricia Helfer. Acting was something she was just breaking into (the 2003 film White Rush, guest appearances on Jeremiah and CSI), and Galactica truly became the proverbial baptism by fire.

  TRICIA HELFER

  I had moved out to L.A. in the beginning of 2002, and that whole first year it was hard to even get an audition. I got a few, I did a lot of indie films, CSI and a couple of other things. It was really the next pilot season when I got Battlestar; I got the script a little before Christmas. I remember I took it home with me, I read it, and I loved it. It was my first audition back from the holidays. I think it was January 6, 2003. I met with David Eick and it wasn’t a huge audition. Just two producers and a casting director or something. It went really well, but the feedback was really right there. I was a nobody. I was a model from New York. I would ask about it a few times, because there had been interest in me, but they were trying to find a “name.” Two months went by and I just assumed it was done, yet I couldn’t get rid of the script. It still sat on my desk, because it stuck with me. Then I got a call that I was to go back in again, and I did, and then I found out I was going to be cast on it. That I had a work session—I didn’t even know what a work session was. Turns out it’s with the director and not something that’s always done, but sometimes before you have a cast that’s in front of all the studio and network and everything … sometimes you audition for the studio first and then their choices go past and you test for the network. Sometimes they’re all in the room together, which was the case with Battlestar. So you have a work session with the director, which helps with nerves as well and it ensures that you’re on the same page.

  This was the first time I’d actually met with Michael Rymer. I remember they were testing quite a few people, and this was the night before. I waited like two or two and a half hours. Everybody going in there was like forty-five minutes to an hour in there. And working with Michael Rymer, he was like, “Okay, let’s do the first scene and then we can discuss it and do it again.” We did the first scene and he goes, “That’s it. We’ll do that tomorrow. See you tomorrow.” I was in and out. I thought it’s either really good or really bad. I was kind of expecting a phone call that night saying, “You are no longer testing.”

  But I went in the next day and there were, I think, about eight girls and eight guys, and they had us each going individually. We all waited for a while, and then they came out and they dismissed a couple of the girls and a couple of the guys, and they started pairing us up. I went in with, I think, two different guys. And then I went with James Callis last. Each time you’re going in, you’re also getting different notes on this and that. I remember the casting director started to get ahead with filming and pulled me aside and was like, “Do what you did in the audition. Just forget everything now; you’ve been given so many different directions. Just do what you originally came in with.”

  And then when I went in with James, I assumed it was done, because I was taller than him. You’re supposed to be a sexy character and all the other girls are in high heels and tight pants, and skirts and whatever, and I’m trying to be short, so I’m in flats and trousers. I’m still taller than him. I just assumed, even if I was good, my height lost me this one.

  I remember after the test, because the test took half a day or something. We were the last to go in. At this point, I had no idea which way was up, sideways, whatever. I remember I left to go to Bristol Farms [a grocery store] and I went in and bought old-fashioned doughnuts and mashed potatoes, and I sat in my car and ate old-fashioned doughnuts and mashed potatoes. While I was eating, I got a call that they liked what I did in the test. So then I got called later in the day that we were heading the next day to Vancouver to film. Two days later we were filming in Vancouver, and the first thing we’re doing is in Baltar’s house where he hears the news of the attack and my spine is glowing red. A lot of intimacy. I had a particular outfit that had a lot of really fine snaps and patent-leather bra and panties. Patent leather kind of sticks and doesn’t really do what you want it to do. They were probably worried I wasn’t going to have this commanding quality, because I was sitting there, like, “I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m going to be fired.” Everybody’s looking, you know?

  RONALD D. MOORE

  Trisha amazed us in that she was green as grass. She was a model, hadn’t done a lot of work. Gorgeous. You know, very nice woman, but you weren’t quite clear what she could handle.

  TRICIA HELFER

  Director Michael Rymer goes, “Okay, she has to be a little bit animalistic,” and I’m like, “Okay, I can do that. That’s fine.” So we had to practice. Like, James had to practice disrobing me.

  JAMES CALLIS

  I’ve got to say, black plastic underwear is a bit of a handful.

  TRICIA HELFER

  He was getting nervous, I was getting nervous. We were both sweating, and all the execs and everybody were around the video village. It’s the first day of filming; I’d barely ever been on a set before in my life. So finally I said, “James, there’s a basement. Let’s go downstairs. Let’s practice the snaps. Let’s practice the clasps.” Then I just went, “Let’s kiss.” So we’re downstairs in the basement and I planted a kiss on him.

  JAMES CALLIS

  It sounds really crazy, but genuinely it was a really good move, because we were both really self-conscious. We’re going for each other in an animalistic way and actually feeling slightly self-conscious. More than slightly, because you’re not in a room by yourself. You’re being filmed. There’s loads of people around, but I suppose that’s part of the trick of acting, isn’t it? That essentially was like a rehearsal, and then I think there was also the realization that we trusted each other. It’s a thing about trust. That’s what I think helped us and helped us establish the relationship, because some of that stuff—and being so close to somebody who you don’t know—is obviously a lot of fun and very exciting, but it is intimidating. The very last thing that you want to feel on camera when you’re trying to be real is to feel self-conscious. So it was a good move. What can I say?

  RONALD D. MOORE

  As concerned as we were in the beginning about Tricia, what started to happen was that as soon as we started asking her to play more than one model of Six, you suddenly realize, “Wow, she can really be different people without different makeup, and look exactly the same—it’s clear you just put her in a ponytail or change her shirt and she’s going to give us a different character.” And that was an amazing thing. Once we started to be able to play that, we realized we really could play multiple models of all these guys. All of them could be distinct individuals with different characteristics, different character voice, and it just gave us a tremendous opportunity to really e
xpand that part of the show.

  TRICIA HELFER

  The first one was Shelly Godfrey, and that was in “Six Degrees of Separation.” I remember talking to Ron and saying, “She’s written differently, can I play her differently?” Up until that point it had been Head Six, which I didn’t understand who she was then. I was just playing her. I didn’t understand until I watched the finale [laughs]. But after Shelly Godfrey there wasn’t another one for quite a while, until the middle of the second season, with Gina. I saw them as different characters, and it’s easier to play them when they are a different person. Their psyche, their mind, is different. Their experiences have been different, and so I saw them as the same base model, or like identical twins who have been raised separately. Their individual experiences, or how much contact with humans they had, altered them.

  With Gina, I liked the idea of playing with the idea that a robot could have PTSD, and that it continued on once Baltar kind of smuggled her out, helped her escape and get onto the other ship. It was like a fantasy ship or something. There was one time where they finally got intimate, but she was struggling with it, because of the past that she had gone through. I also really liked Natalie, which was in the final season. She was the one that was trying to broker peace. She was the more political one. She was—Boomer ends up killing her, unjustly mind you, because she wasn’t doing anything with Kara. After Natalie died, Sonia tried to step in and take her place, but that was kind of toward the end of the series. Then of course when Caprica came back around and downloaded, and we see her download into her new body. Then her struggle of seeing Baltar again, and then loving Baltar, but realizing she needs to side with her own kind and just embark on the resurrection ship or back on the Cylon basestar. Just trying to distance herself and shut down her feelings of having more empathy toward humans.

  I tried to base them and structure them on their differences and their opinions that would be formed based on their interactions with humans. Caprica had this, I think, when she downloaded into a new body, and this is when she realized she actually loves this man that she had essentially used and manipulated for the Cylon mission. I really enjoyed her struggle as well, even though I didn’t sometimes necessarily understand it. Her struggle of trying to be on the Cylon side and then ultimately ending up finding a way back to Baltar and finding herself alongside the humans at some point was great fun.

  MARK VERHEIDEN

  She was just amazing, and on a personal level, one of the nicest people you’d ever want to meet. Which was in contrast to her character, who on most occasions you probably wouldn’t want to meet.

  TODD SHARP

  (production executive)

  Basically the Six role came down to two people, Tricia and another person who was a more established actress. And there was a big argument between the studio and the network, and David, Ron, and Michael Rymer. They felt strongly that it should be this incredibly, spectacularly sexy Tricia, and the network was thinking maybe the better, more established actor. I certainly don’t want to paint it as her acting wasn’t good. Her acting was fine, but there was a more established actor who was attractive, but just not as stunning and striking, who originally the network had pushed hard for. In the end, Ron, David, and Michael got Tricia, and the big joke of course is that at first they [the network] fought against her, but then they made her the centerpiece of the season-one [advertising] campaign in that red dress. We were like, “The other one you were looking to hire would not have been on the poster.”

  TRICIA HELFER

  I swear, there were two reasons I became the centerpiece for the posters. One was that the red dress and the white hair stuck out in a show that was filmed dark and documentary style. Visually it stands out against everybody else that’s in uniform and that type of thing. Also, I was really the only known Cylon in the beginning. Six is integral to the story, obviously, and I joke that the main reason is because I have a modeling background and I tend to have a lot more patience at a photo shoot. Actors almost all hate gallery shoots. For some reason they are super comfortable with a video, a filming, but once you get a still camera on them, it’s like they become, “I don’t know what I’m doing. This will capture a second in time and I might look really funny.” Actors notoriously are terrible at gallery images; they are impatient. I had the patience, because I modeled for ten years with photo shoots. I just sat there while they just kept taking pictures.

  DAVID WEDDLE

  She’s drop-dead gorgeous and does the vamp thing great, so in the beginning we just worked that, not thinking that she had any range beyond that. Then I remember writing a scene on Caprica and Athena has run off with Helo. She’s pregnant and gone off the reservation, and they’re talking about the fact that this has happened. That she’s pregnant because she fell in love and that they need to find her. And Doral looks at her and says, “Do you envy her?” I forget the exact line, but she admits that she does envy them. I remember watching that daily, and Tricia really delivered it. I was like, “Whoa!” We started to realize she could do more and we started writing for that. She could play scenes with herself—two Sixes having arguments with each other—and you could totally tell that she was different characters. She turned out to have as much depth and dimension as anyone on the show. In “Pegasus,” when she’s a Six prisoner. My God, she played it. Everyone thought that she could do it, and she proved us right, because you could feel her trauma and her agony and her rage.

  MARK VERHEIDEN

  Think about it: She coopts Baltar into sort of destroying Caprica and reducing humans to this fleet running off into the distance. She started as a very malevolent character but, especially when we got into later episodes where the real Caprica was there and was captured, and was put in the same sort of abusive situations that the other Cylons were being put in, again, you could feel that there were different layers she was playing. Head Six was always sort of the same in terms of being this possible creation of Baltar’s mind combined with what he thought she was. Later on, she became a fully realized character who underwent many changes as well. Mainly what I remember about Tricia Helfer was just what a great performer she was; someone who was so sharp in every scene and willing to really go for it, which is always fun when you’re working with people.

  There was a conscious effort to make the Head Six that would come to visit Baltar feel different than the reality of the Cylons that were in physical form. And the ones in physical form certainly could feel pain and be hurt, and had emotions. I don’t want to say human, but they had emotions.

  MARY MCDONNELL

  That whole thing with Head Six.… You hear them say, “Rolling…,” and you go, “Wait, wait. Cut, cut, cut. Ron, David, Michael … somebody help me.” They come running in and I go, “I really and truly don’t know how to pretend I don’t see Tricia. How does Laura Roslin not see her? You know, is she there? If it’s an influence in the script, if it’s an idea in the story and there’s energies right on the other side, isn’t there anything I can sense? I see Baltar looking at something.” Well, eventually he just became a total nut job to me. It’s pretty simple. I was told, “No, you don’t see her. You don’t feel her.” So it became an interesting process of surrendering to the simple reality that the humans have to play in the story as opposed to the complex reality and ideas that were being played by the actors who were Cylons. It really was like playing two different worlds, but we were side by side and quite often in the same scene, so you’d have to try and not acknowledge some of the faces that James Callis has made.

  There was a lot about Battlestar Galactica that centered on the relationship between Six and Baltar, though the writers admit that in the beginning they weren’t sure how much mileage they’d be able to get out of it.

  RONALD D. MOORE

  I was hopeful, but I just didn’t know where it was going to go. I loved the idea of him seeing her and continuing their sexuality and her sort of emotional and mental torture of him, and his own guilt. I just didn’t q
uite know where the character was going to go and, as a result, where she was going to go. But episode by episode we would just invent a new little piece of business for them and try something different. What’s the next trick to play? What’s the next step in that relationship? And what is the relationship? You know, it wasn’t for a while that we even sensed that there was a larger arc. You were just kind of doing it bit by bit by bit, hoping that later on it would amount to something. But the truth is that there weren’t really many grand plans. If you read the show bible, you’ll see that was the limit of what I had thought out. For instance, I knew that Laura would be in jail at the end of season one, but when and if they would get to Earth was something in the distance. I had no idea where I was going with Baltar. Was he going to become a flat-out villain? Was he going to become a trusted member of the family? Sharon, Lee, Kara … all of them. It was more like, “Let just start here and figure it out as we go along.”

  MARK VERHEIDEN

  People will always ask me if Baltar had a chip in his brain or the Cylons had gotten to him, or is he just insane or … just what is his story? I don’t know that we ever really answered that in terms of his relationship with Six. At least, Head Six—that’s what we called her. There was Head Six and then there was real Six, the actual Cylons. He just had her in his head, and of course that turned out to be the linchpin in how everything went so south at the beginning of the series. Obviously it was some sort of Cylon something, but I think we also didn’t feel the need to answer every single question.

  TRICIA HELFER

  I will admit I was getting a little tired of Head Six, because there was Caprica Six in the beginning, and once Head Six arrived and Gaius got up on the ship, it was really pretty much the rest of the pilot, the whole first season, and half the second season before the Gina episode and the Pegasus storyline. I was getting a little frustrated, because Six didn’t have much of a storyline herself. Again, it was the start of the “God is love” and all these things. Well, there are only so many ways I can do this character, because she’s kind of a little bit repetitive.