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Interview with Lindsay Wagner, Guest Star on WAREHOUSE 13

Mike Vicic - August 17, 2010

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TV Tango recently participated in a conference call with Lindsay Wagner, who will be guest-starring on an episode of WAREHOUSE 13 on Syfy on Tuesday, August 17, 2010 at 9pm ET/PT. Lindsay took the time to talk about her role on WAREHOUSE 13 and whether she'll make more than one appearance. Plus, she dished stories about THE BIONIC WOMAN and her TV movie career.


 

 

 

 



Question: When playing Dr. Calder, your character on WAREHOUSE 13, how much did you draw from Dr. Rudy Wells on THE BIONIC WOMAN?


Lindsay Wagner: It never entered my mind to be honest with you. Rudy Wells was more of a physical, technical doctor and Dr. Calder is being based around what’s happening today and what is generally referred to as the Energy Psychology or the Energy Medicine field. It’s working with the energy system directly to heal the physical instead of focusing so much on trying to fix the physical only.

It’s becoming more and more clear to not only people who have been talking about this for years with the necessary engagement of body, mind, and sprit to heal - or some people would refer to the spirit part as the energy of the human body to heal anything, physical or emotional. And to truly heal it. We can shift and change a demonstration by way of physical intervention, but if there is not some kind of a shift in the energetic field and the physiological views of the person, either about themselves or the outside world, then either that condition will come back or it won’t be a complete healing and something else will manifest as disease, or some problem with the body.


So, that’s the type of doctor that Dr. Calder is, as well as being fully trained in doing what’s necessary on the physical. But, she would always start working with the least invasive processes first, if it was appropriate.


Question: Given your own personal journey in life, what type of spiritual connection do you have with Jaime Sommers today?


Lindsay Wagner: Well, given that Jaime Sommers was something that was created from my imagination in collaboration with several other people, she has been a part of my journey of my learning. That experience of playing her and having an outlet through story to express a lot of the views that I have about life or human condition and points of view, one of the things that’s been impactful to me over the recent years has been the responses that I have gotten from people who are now grow up -- the kids and the families that I was basically expressing myself to back then.

Using story as a medium to express some things as best we could when we had a very specific formula mandate to follow, which was kind of an action show, a lot of bionics. And at that day and age it was the Cold War, and therefore we had a specific enemy. So, trying to make things metaphoric and talk about human beings and human condition was a big challenge that we all took on as the producers, writers, and myself constantly pushing them to increase that.

 

So as the audiences have gotten older and the kids have families of their own and are adults and professionals and are giving me feedback, it’s been very nurturing to me to have people feed back to me things that we worked very hard to put in our stories that not many people were noticing at the time. But today, we hear that they really got it as kids, and it really impacted them and the way that they think today.

 

That’s been very meaningful to me and very encouraging when people really choose to make it something more than just for financial gain or just to  have a job. When you put your heart and soul into it as an expression and are always looking for new ways of things that you could put in creatively, not to the detriment of entertainment, but creatively. To use it as a way to share with people what’s helped you, and therefore maybe it’ll help them. It’s always been my belief that that’s true.

 

And so to have that fed back to me all these years later, in just story after story of what some of those things meant to people, just really tickles me and encourages me to not give up on that. When sometimes, you look around and you think, “Oh, my gosh. What is this medium coming to?” It’s not the medium; it’s about what people put into it, and I know that and we all know that. But sometimes, we get discouraged when we see so much negativity being put out to this new generation - to the kids today.



Question: How did you get your role on WAREHOUSE 13?


Lindsay Wagner: They just called my agent. They said they had a role and would I be interested in and willing to play it. And quite honestly, I’ve been so busy. I do workshops and retreats all over the world now with -- it’s called Quiet the Mind and Open the Heart -- which is helping people with some of the things and the techniques and the concepts that have helped me in my life. I share that very directly now through these workshops and retreats.

And so, I had never even seen the show. I hardly have time to see anything. So I watched it really quick on the Web, and I found it to be just a really fun concept. Very creative. And, the visuals -- the way it’s shot -- and the chemistry of the actors just really impressed me. It’s really fun. And in its own way, very current and very today, but it felt a lot to me like THE BIONIC WOMAN, which is what attracted me to want to take the part and do a little cameo, which of course now is kind of turning into somewhat of a recurring Warehouse doctor.

It’s got exciting and kind of sensationalistic parts to it, but it’s not so gory and violent, and you know there’s moments where it gets violent, but it’s not something that I would not want my kids to watch. And, there’s a whole lot of stuff on TV today that I would not want my kids to watch if they were little. I have no control over them today, of course. But, it’s something that could be fun for kids -- after a certain age, of course -- to start watching, because there are a few scary things in there. But, it’s something that a family can enjoy and talk about, and kind of stretches your imagination.


Question: What's your most memorable moment on WAREHOUSE 13?


Lindsay Wagner: Well, I think what tickled me the most right off the bat was when I got to Canada and got my rewrites for the next day. They’d rewritten a little bit of the script, and the writer had gone on to my Web site from my workshops at lindsaywagnerinternational.com and looked at the kind of work that I was doing and he pulled from one of the techniques that I teach. He pulled that and put that into Dr. Calder’s treatment on her first appearance, and then allowed me to elaborate on it to kind of get it more specific and correct as far as how to do it.

It’s very subtle what we’re doing. It’s just part of what I do when I’m talking to the character and treating them. But, it was really impressive to me that they took the time and effort to want to put something new into it, and something that was really directly related to the work that I’m doing. That just was really impressive to me.


Question: Will your character on WAREHOUSE 13 be a recurring character?


Lindsay Wagner: There have been no real long-term conversations, but I have done a second episode now, and that’ll be on towards the end of the season. And you know, they said, “Well, we’ll see you later,” when I left, so I don’t know what that means.

 


Question: Is it ever frustrating to be so closely associated with the character of Jaime Sommers from THE BIONIC WOMAN?


Lindsay Wagner: Not at all. Not at all. I know some actors feel that way, but for me - we put so much of our heart and soul into that and trying to make it something meaningful, that to me it just says it worked. It doesn’t say to me that I’m stuck in that image, because I went on to do 40 television movies, series, features, and mini-series -- all kinds of things, playing all kinds of different characters.

So, the show was never a hindrance for me. And that series, that experience, that character was so much learning for me about the industry, about how to work with story and how to put things in it, which then gave me the experience to be able to do with television movies that I did -- so many of them that I chose or developed talked about human issues that I wanted to talk about through story.

I was well prepared to do it, so I consider that whole thing to have been a gift to my life. And, I love it when people share with me that it was for them as well. That makes me very happy.


Question: On THE BIONIC WOMAN, your character sang "Feelings." Was that really you singing?


Lindsay Wagner: That one, and the other one was the "Road to Nashville," where Doc Severinsen and I sang a country song in there, yes. That was not easy. You know, our schedule was so difficult. We - you know, it was nothing for us to work 16 hours a day, you know, sometimes 18. It was such an intense schedule, because we were doing - even though today people giggle about the - what was high-tech then. I mean, we were the cutting edge of technology for action stuff.

But because of that, and because television in general was not used to that at all, they had booked us to film in the same number of days they filmed their MARCUS WELBYs and their lawyer shows where everybody just stands around and talks to each other and they got a couple cameras and a few actors, and that’s it. You move on to the next scene, and the next scene, and the next scene. We had to go all over the city and to new locations, because it was outside. How can you do action inside all the time? You can’t.

 

So, we were outside a lot and so we had to go a lot of places. We also had stunts and special effects, and break-away parts and things like that take time to film. Because also in all of the bionic jumps and some of the other types of actions, I had to do the beginning of it, my stunt woman had to come in -- we didn’t have two units in those days, the first unit would shoot everything -- and then we’d have to stop and then we’d have to bring in the stunt people, and we’d have to set that stunt up and then do the stunt, and then in that same location I’d then do the ending of it.

 

Because, depending on how her body fell for example, I kind of had to match that body language in my landing or in my take off. So, it was so much more work than the other shows, only they still had us to film it all in six days, just like they did the other hour shows. So, it was a brutal schedule.

 

And so, to pop out of there and pop into a recording studio right in the middle of all that -- being completely tired and everything -- and record a song on the stage while we were filming, which was how we did the country-western one, instead of kind of resting up for your recording session.

 

It was very difficult to do those. So, I was not super happy with the way "Feelings" came out, but I was happy at least that we got through it at a pretty decent level of output.


Question: How has the technology changed TV productions over the years?


Lindsay Wagner: Well, one is that they have two units. The second unit does the stunt work and they’ve gotten very good at having the second unit director and the first unit director being in sync with each other so that they can set it up and work together so that the interfacing of the acting, with the way the stunts came off becomes seamless. And, that’s a lot of credit to the second unit directors whose job it is to help make that happen.

To be honest with you, I haven’t done a lot of action stuff or sci-fi stuff. And the particular things that I’ve been doing on WAREHOUSE 13 haven’t put me in the position to be able to experience some of that. Although my son, Dorian Kingi, who does a lot of stunt work, he’s involved in a lot of that. And so, he talks to me about what they’re doing. You know, what the various movies that he’s worked on.

 

He was the stunt double for the SILVER SURFER and lots of other movies. So, he’s very tall and slender, so they like his body type for a lot of these things. Even creatures and things like that that they do CGI over. And, he’s presently working on the GREEN LANTERN, which I’m not allowed to talk about much, because you know movies are becoming very hush-hush these days about all their techniques and stuff.

 

But, I don’t think I’m the best person to talk about the hows, because I haven’t had that much direct contact with it. But, it has changed significantly, because we had what we used to call blue screen -- I guess it's a green screen today -- back then where you could put in a background that you weren’t in and do some acting in front of that.

 

I know that goes on a lot today, which is even more demanding than normal acting, because you don’t have the stimulus around you. You have to use your imagination even more and make it real for yourself so that you'll be real as an actor. You have to dig much deeper. As an actor I can say that, having done some blue screen in the past and knowing how much actors have to do that today, I really honor the actors that come up with a good performance in that process.


Question: Besides blue/green screens, what challenges you the most as an actor?


Lindsay Wagner: I don’t quite know how to answer that, because for me finding the character isn’t usually hard. I think that the working conditions for me are what I find difficult a lot of the times, which has to do with the kind of inhumane hours - the schedule that the movie business, television business, all of it tend to work in. It makes it difficult to give your best when you’re exhausted, you know.

And, I don’t know if this is the answer you’re looking for, but that’s for me the most difficult thing. And, how I’ve learned many different ways, and actually some of the stuff that I talk about in my workshops and in retreats just has to do with kind of that - those survival skills.

 

I’d learned to meditate before - and I was a meditator before I started acting, but once I did I was really glad that I was, because that’s one of the ways that I learned to help myself rejuvenate myself. Kind of relax my mind and allow myself to release this stress of the set and the pace, and the emotional roller coaster, especially when you do drama.

 

I was often doing heavy drama stuff, which is very taxing on your system. Because as an actor when you are playing something painful, you’re there. You’re experiencing it, and that’s stressful to your body. You may be calling it make believe, but when you’re doing it, you’re feeling it. And when you feel it, your body doesn’t know the difference between the reality of your life and the fantasy that you’re engaging in. And so, it’s stressful on your body, your immune system, and your mind, because you’re focusing on it.

 

I mean today, it’s a very common conversation for people to talk about setting your intentions, create your life. What you focus on has to do with how your health is and what you bring to you in the future. I’m sure that’s all familiar conversations to you. Even "Time Magazine" writes about stuff like that today. It’s very normal conversation.

 

So when you think about the amount of time that somebody who’s making a dramatic film or a film where they’re going through hell every day, they’re spending that many hours of their day experiencing that negativity.

 

It’s bad enough in our everyday lives to try and keep ourselves positive, but now you’re getting paid to stay negative for this month, or for this whole three months of this feature, or for whatever. Or stay angry. You really have to develop a lot of discipline in your mind to bring yourself back in order to stay healthy -- emotionally and physically -- as an actor. And maybe that is the answer to your question....


Question: In your TV movies, is there one where the role or message was especially important to you?


Lindsay Wagner: That is a little hard for me to answer, because different ones meant different things to me. And, there were a handful - I mean obviously SHATTERED DREAMS about a woman transcending her circumstances in domestic violence was one of them. I was in the third year of a three-year public-education campaign on domestic violence, and that was one of the projects that we undertook during that time period.

So that one was very important to me, because it was important to me that a story be done that showed more than just the problem. That kind of at least addressed a little bit what goes on so that when people experience the film -- if either people who were involved in that problem in their life or people who were families or friends of that -- there was more of an understanding about the inner-workings of that, rather than just looking at the sensational story about a family experiencing violence. And, that there is an evolution that can happen to transcend that syndrome in one’s life.

 

During those years when I was working with Johnson & Johnson on the campaign, it became, for the first time, really talked about in the media. People were letting it be okay that we as a culture and a society start talking about it and looking it. Because prior to that, it was kind of like "Not our family. It’s not our business."

 

And yet, we have this attitude that what goes on inside my car is your business. You tell me I have to put a seatbelt on myself and my child. You tell me I can’t have my child in the front seat, da-da-da. But, it’s not your business if I or my children are being beat up in the house next door to you? It’s a strange schism in our culture about that in my mind. So, I was very happy to be involved in that campaign.

 

And towards the end of it we were looking for a film to make, and I wanted to make a story about - not somebody just kind of surviving it, but really thriving and moving on, and showing people that there is a way. But, it’s through going in and looking at oneself and how I am somehow keeping myself trapped in this syndrome.

 

And, they had just made THE BURNING BED, and Farrah did an amazing job, but it was frustrating to me that they chose this story where the answer was kill the SOB. That was the only answer. It’s like, no.What good is that story, other than to make people feel more helpless? You know what I’m saying?

 

If you’re going to dabble with a subject matter -- a real important human subject matter -- to me I wanted to do a story where we were looking for one that would portray not just the problem, but an arch of evolution, and the story of someone who actually did transcend her circumstance. And so I wanted to do a true story, not a dramatized one. Not that that couldn’t be also wonderful and helpful, but I wanted people to be able to relate to the fact that this was a real person just like us who went through this arc and actually grew through this.

 

And so, that one had a lot of meaning to me.


Question: Is that what led you to get involved with the Inter-Agency Council on Child Abuse and Neglect?


Lindsay Wagner: I was involved with them before that. I did a film called CHILD'S CRY, which was about child abuse, and child sexual abuse in particular. And, the technical advisor that the company had found for me to work with was the founder of ICAN, the Inter-Agency Council of Child Abuse and Neglect.

And she came to the set and we worked on the script together. This woman is amazing. Her name is Deanne Tilton, and she’s grown that organization to be an international organization. It’s all over the world now.

 

And her ideas are for helping as opposed to you know, punishing. See to me, that’s part of the problem. In all of our human issues, we tend to want to punish instead of help and look at what’s the core of this problem and see what we can do to grow out of that. And anyway, I really appreciated her way of seeing things as well as her help in making this a really accurate story.

 

And as a result of that collaboration, we just ended up developing a great friendship and I came on board to help her grow her organization through my visibility and it’s been maybe 20 years.


Question: Does Dr. Calder have any supernatural or psyhic abilities? Or is she just a regular person who just happens to work in a secret government warehouse?


Lindsay Wagner: I think you’re going to have to wait and watch. They hold certain secrets very private until they like to do them on screen. So, I’d love to answer your question, but I don’t think I’m allowed to.



Question: On WAREHOUSE 13, it sometimes seems like they rewrite history for a particular artifact. Do you find that aspect of the show appealling?


Lindsay Wagner: I didn’t find rewriting history appealing. I do know that there are certain things, and unless one did their own deep research you may not know which ones are and which ones aren’t, but the show, they’ve done a lot of research, and some of the things that sound like they’re rewriting history are actually facts that they dug up about history.

And I find that exciting, that just as in THE BIONIC WOMAN, when you have a sci-fi genre, you know you can say things that are not common knowledge, or that may be very true to you, and you may be even able to prove it, but it’s still not publicly accepted.

 

But, you can talk about them because if people can’t deal with that, they just write it off that it’s sci-fi. Not real. It’s fantasy. And so, I find that appealing, because that type of show has the ability to talk about things that, just as we back in THE BIONIC WOMAN. One of my favorite episodes -- not because it’s the best episode we ever filmed as far as cinematically or anything like that’s concerned -- but because it was an important issue that I wanted to cover in our show, which was mind over matter. Again, which is commonplace conversation today, using your mind to create your life differently to bring about health. To get rid of a disease.

 

You know, we have such amazing human potential. And so we did a show called "BioFeedback", and I had been bringing a lot of research in from people from our culture who had been researching India and Tibet -- the Yogis and Monks who had the ability to control their body with their mind far beyond anything we ever dream that we could do. People piercing themselves without bleeding.

 

Tibetan Monks having certain practices that they would do as kind of a final exam if you will in one of the stages of their learning in the monastery, and that would be to go out into the snow with a wet blanket wrapped around them with very little clothes on at all and their job was to do this internal practice that they do which heats up their body, keeps them warm sitting in the snow with a wet blanket around them, and actually drying the blanket that freezes instantly because it’s so cold, but then drying the blanket with your own body heat.

 

Those things were very real to me because at a very young age, I had ulcers, and they got so bad at one point that UCLA wanted to operate. And some people -- a doctor and a minister who were both what I would call holistic in their own ways -- worked together to help me learn to work with my mind to heal my body without the surgery. So, that was very real to me because I had experienced it personally.

 

And so, I always wanted to do a story about that and tell the kids and the people in the world that there’s a lot of things that we don’t know that we don’t - you know, that we aren’t learning in our everyday lives that would be really beneficial to us if we were to learn.

 

So that type of a show is always appealing to me, because we did a story like that. So, they’re doing some things like that, and they’re talking about things. And, I think it gets people’s minds going about what may or may not have been written properly in the history books or in the media.


 

Question: What are some issues with today's television programs?


Lindsay Wagner: Well, it’s all about separateness and exclusion instead of inclusion. It’s incredibly violent and gory, and I think desensitizing to thinking of other people if they’re not on your side or on your team, as being strictly the adversary and something you have to kill, conquer, or get them out of here. It just creates such negativity and fear.

I feel that a lot of it is fear instilling and inducing. And the more you focus on fear, the more fearful you’re going to be in general. The more fearful you are, the more coping mechanisms you come up to manage your fear, which then alters your personality and alters your choices in life, which has to do with becoming a lot more exclusive. And, I don’t mean that in a positive way.

 

I think one of the biggest problems is that it isn’t generating a sense of connectedness and caring about others, and certainly doesn’t - if they’re having an issue and they do something that may be off center, there’s no teaching of compassion for that and looking at how might we help this person get rebalanced to a better state so that they don’t feel so threatened, so that they don’t act like that. So that they don’t do things like to me, and I don’t have to feel this way.

 

But, we just think of either wiping them out or locking them up. Punishing them. Seeing them as just horrible or evil, and it’s all just black and white, and that’s not how humans are.


Question: Can you tell us a little more about Quiet the Mind and Open the Heart?


Lindsay Wagner: I do workshops and retreats. It’s hard to explain in just minimal words, but they’re very experiential. And, I teach techniques that I have found that were really helpful in my life, as well as talk about and look at the concept which all of my programs are based on, which is that our experience of any life circumstance, our experience of it is a function of our perspective of that circumstance, not the thing that’s happening itself.

We will experience the feelings that are directly related to our perception of that circumstance or that person or that image of myself in the mirror. That feeling didn’t come with that person or with that experience. Pain if you burn your finger, will come because it’s built into your body to send a message to your brain to pull your finger out of the fire. Wow. Ouch! Okay. Got the message.

 

But what happens after that, when the body has the absolute potential to heal itself, is going to determine how quickly and fully your finger heals itself, how much pain you’re going to experience is a function of how you perceive that happening to you.

 

When you made mistakes as a child or did something -- spilled your milk, whatever -- you got chastised as opposed to helped to learn how to do things better. You have a program built into you already. Even though your parents may have been well meaning, trying to help you to not do that again, that programming is already in you.

 

And so, when you burn your finger you’re going to find yourself going, “Well, that was stupid,” and now you’re trying to cook and you can’t finish cooking dinner because you’ve got this thing and you’re trying to do it anyway, and the kids are waiting, and dad’s waiting, and you’re so frustrated. So now, you’re frustrated cooking dinner, and your body is getting the message that something is still wrong, which it’s really not. It’s still relating to that part of the body that needs the healing.

 

So in a way, you’re telling your body that’s there’s still something wrong here. And so, it goes around looking for what’s wrong and keeps sending more blood there for example. So, it will swell more than normal -- more than it needs to -- as opposed to start instantly really healing without all the swelling and the complications and the continued throbbing and the pain, which is coming partially from the swelling. Because, you’re saying something’s still wrong, and that pain is connected. You see what I’m saying? So, it’s kind of the cycle.

 

So now, you finally get busy and you serve dinner, and you've wrapped your finger and you sit down at dinner, and you’ve forgotten about it and the body is now happily healing itself and it’s not hurting anymore. And somebody says to you at the table, “What did you - what happened to your finger?” And you said, “I can’t believe it. I was cooking and - I just can’t believe it. I just set my hand down right on that thing. I can’t believe how stupid I was.”

 

All of the sudden, you’re bringing that old negativity back up in relationship to your finger and you’re consciousness is going, “Oh, something’s still wrong here.” And so, it starts sending more blood and it starts to kind of swell again. You know how when you forget about something and then you remember about the - your wound and it starts to hurt again? It’s usually because you’re remembering about it and you’re talking about it in some negative way, instead of just simply relaying the information. You still - you’re like still angry with yourself for doing something like that. I mean, that’s just a tiny little example of how that can work.

 

And so the workshops are based on those principals of looking at our perception, and then how do we get rid of those things? And, those techniques that I have found most helpful in my life, helped me shift out of that so that I don’t do that to myself, or so that I don’t have that same kind of reaction to a family member for example, when they say something that I always bark at. And even though I don’t want to do it, I do it.

 

I’ve found some extraordinary people and some teachers and counselors that have helped me learn little techniques to just get rid of those programs, to diffuse them and have those responses actually change in the future. Perpetually. Not just in the moment, but ongoing. You can change those things forever. And, it’s such a relief that I’ve found - and I thought people need to know about this. That was amazing. That whole thing just changed in my life by doing that. I can’t believe it.

 

So, I found myself starting to share it with other people. And, people said, “You should do programs with this,” so I started doing little programs out of my home, and it started evolving. People saying, “Would you come to my neighborhood and do it?” And I was, “Well, you set it up and here’s what it would take,” and I found people starting to do it. So, I started going on the road and here I am going all over the world now. It’s just evolved and it’s been amazing.


Question: Dr. Calder, your character on WAREHOUSE 13, heals with the natural energy field of the human body. Is that akin to the Chinese concept of Chi?


Lindsay Wagner: Yes, of course it’s working with the Chi. It’s working with the life force. The life force knows exactly what it takes to keep any particular living organism - any organism -- alive. Anything in manifestation for that matter. Even a rock is a manifestation of some sort, and you know in physics and quantum physics, they know a rock is not even dead. It’s a very slow moving energy form compared to a human being or an animal or a plant.

One of the techniques that I teach in my workshops is based on acupuncture, and it is in fact the technique that I’ve used thus far in the show. And of course, that is based on the meridians - the electrical meridian system of the body and how the Chi flows. And, keeping it flowing freely, therein the body demonstrating its intended expression, which is a human being in a healthy state.

 

So releasing the blockages in the energy field so that the Chi can continue to flow properly and be accessed properly to increase it if one was to want to do that, or direct it in a certain way are the techniques that I use, or that I’m using in WAREHOUSE 13.


Question: What does that tell us about the mysterious regents around the Warehouse?


Lindsay Wagner: Obviously, they understand that there is power in the universe that can be captured and utilized -- it’s the whole premise of the show -- that we need to be careful with that, because we think we’re very advanced as a species, but if you look at what we do with - unwittingly as well as intentionally sometimes with power, it’s kind of like how evolved are we really?

So, I think that it says volumes about their understanding that the power of the universe can be harnessed certain ways in certain things, and certainly in people and through people. But, I think that they also -- through some of the stories that I’ve seen, though I haven’t seen all the episodes, but with some of them -- they’re starting to show the interconnectedness between the human expression, the human being, the human body and the powers and interfacing, if you will.


Question: What happens on WAREHOUSE 13 that would require your character for a 2nd episode?


Lindsay Wagner: If you've interviewed some people from Syfy before, there’s just things they won’t let us talk about. And, I can’t really talk about that. Fortunately, they just like to keep it a surprise because the show is one surprise after another usually. And so to talk about it in advance would take some of the fun out of the thing. Claudia was there. I will tell you I wasn’t working on her, but I can’t say who I was working on. But, it’s really a cool twist. It’s really a fun - you'll like it. It’s really great.

 

I know it’s frustrating. It’s frustrating for me not to go, “Oh, it’s so cool. Blah-blah-blah-blah-blah.”

 


 

Question: Do you use the  internet a lot?


Lindsay Wagner: It’s more for research. I have occasionally. When I was on location and I would download a movie. I use it a lot but I use it more for researching things that I need to research than watching things on it. But, I have. I definitely have. I’ve watched episodes of series and I’ve watched a few films when I’ve been somewhere that I can’t get on to the television - or there’s nothing on the television I want to watch, or that I’m a country where don’t understand what they’re saying.

I’ve thought about adapting my seminar somehow on the Web as well. I just think it’s very exciting what all the potential in the Web, in the way that you’re referring to it. It’s very exciting. I just haven’t gotten very far with that at this point, other then ruminating some things.


Question: Would you like to do comedy roles?


Lindsay Wagner: I would like to. I always have wanted to. It’s funny. I did THE BIONIC WOMAN, which of course had a lot of humor in it, and that was really a function of a lot of the ad-libbing and the things that I did in it. And then, Kenny Johnson -- the creator/producer -- he’s a very funny guy also. And, he loved that I wanted to skew that show that direction, and our humor happened to work really well together. So, it evolved even more so with the two of us kind of pushing the envelope in THE BIONIC WOMAN.

But then, there were stories that I really wanted to do. A lot of the things that I made right after THE BIONIC WOMAN needed to be done as dramas. So, that’s some of the first stuff that I did. And after doing that, it was just because I was the person who could get a show put on television that would not have been - that never before would TV kind of touch the subject matter.

 

They wouldn’t do stories about child abuse, domestic violence, revisionist history, you know. All the types of movies that I wanted to do stories usually only were done in the feature business. And, I had such a huge visibility because of BIONIC WOMAN that I could get those kinds of films made. So, other film makers were coming to me and showing me these great things, and I did that. And in a way, the industry stopped relating to me as somebody who could do comedy.

 

And if anything became a problem for me [about always being related to Jaime Sommers] because sometimes people feel that doing a series held them back from being able to do the things they wanted to do, it was more that I ended up doing too many dramatic films and people in the industry stopped relating to me as having a sense of humor or being able to play comedy.

 

My comedy is different than a lot of people’s. I think it’s more dry and a more sophisticated comedy, but it then became more difficult for me in the industry to have people take a chance on me as far as, “Well, can’t you - well, go back and watch THE BIONIC WOMAN.” “Well, that was a long time ago.” It’s like they think I lost my sense of humor? So anyway. That’s kind of been my journey with comedy, and I would love to do a comedy. Yes, I would.

 

It would obviously have to be the right kind, because comedic style is very subjective to their personality. And so someone has to know how to write for me properly, but that’s totally doable.


Question: In WAREHOUSE 13, you have scenes with Saul Rubinek who plays Artie. Were any of those scenes ad-libbed?


Lindsay Wagner: I’m trying to remember about ad-libbing. Kind of. The scene on the couch -- without blowing it for everybody who hasn’t seen it -- was certainly scripted, but in the playing of it, it got a little ad-libbed and loosened it up. And, he is great. He’s wonderful. He’s obviously very talented and professional. He’s a very professional actor. He’s very serious. He takes it very seriously.

Even when he’s doing comedy, his mind is looking not only at the dialog, but also at the impact on the story. He’s a very well rounded performer, because he also can think like a director. He can also think like a writer. And, I thoroughly enjoyed working with him, and he’s really nice.


Question: What was it like to work with Sylvester Stallone in NIGHT HAWKS?


Lindsay Wagner: He was really incredible. History has shown that he’s so talented in so many different ways. He had made ROCKY obviously before that. But, it was just incredible. They had some difficulties. Whatever they were, I wasn’t privy to the inside information about it. We started with one director, and all of the sudden there was some problems, and he ended up having to take over the film and he ended up directing it.

So just spontaneously, he just jumped into that role and then directed. And, it was incredible watching him and his multi-talented self whip that film into shape. It was quite educational in some ways. But, just kind of awe inspiring watching him work on so many levels at one time. That’s not easy. Not many actors can do that.