A conversation with Jamie Bamber of ‘Battlestar Galactica’
Imagine if the way Battlestar Galactica left viewers hanging in 2008 had been the big finish: The Colonial fleet journeys across the vastness of space, enduring much hardship and heartache, only to arrive at an Earth, the promised land, that’s a barren, radioactive shell of a planet. It would have been a powerful, poignant way to conclude the Galactica story, costar Jamie Bamber says. It also would have been the bummer of all endings. Now consider this: “Because of the writers strike, it very nearly WAS the end,” says Bamber, a.k.a. Lee “Apollo” Adama.
“All of that day of filming, while we were standing on that wasteland beach with Geiger counters in hand, we were also, as actors, on the phone to agents, to the union, holding different Geiger counters out to the industry, trying to determine whether the fallout from the writers strike might kill our show. So we played it as if it were the end. Thankfully it wasn’t.”
Still, the end is drawing near for the Peabody Award-winning sci-fi drama. Ten episodes of Battlestar Galactica remain. The show returns at 9 p.m. CT Friday, Jan. 16, on SCI FI; the finale is scheduled to air on March 20. Bamber can’t reveal whether it will close on an up or a down note, but he promises viewers will enjoy the journey.
“There are some amazing moments,” he says. “Every scene that we shot was sort of a farewell to a certain event or character or location or set. And each of those moments was nostalgic and poignant and right. I couldn’t feel better about finishing Battlestar Galactica in this way.”
Is Battlestar Galactica completely over for you?
“It is, apart from any kind of curtain call that I might do. The final shooting day for me was back in July. Since then, I’ve moved back to London with my family for at least a little while. So Battlestar is not only in the past by a few months for me, but also on the other side of the world.”
What was the last day like for you?
“The actual logistics of shooting turned into a craziness, so the end for me was firing an automatic weapon at 4:30 in the morning with a bunch of extras on second unit. The main unit had already called a wrap, but I was somehow still going in some forgotten war on a different stage. Then I literally pulled the costume off, tumbled into a car, got back to the hotel, woke my wife and kids and, about an hour later, we were on a plane. Perhaps that wasn’t the ideal way to end this experience, but that’s how it often happens in this business.”
There will be fans who won’t agree, but the show can’t run forever. And part of telling a story correctly is knowing when to end it. Do you agree?
“I think if you don’t know an end to your story, you don’t have the right to craft a beginning. A lot of movies fail because they’re all about the premise and not enough about the resolution. And [exec producer] Ron Moore, to his credit, always had the end in mind. He told me the final scene several years ago — and I can tell you that he got his final scene.”
What are the things that you like most about your character? Also, is there much of Lee in Jamie and of Jamie in Lee? Or is it more a case of, when you play that character, it’s like putting on a Lee Adama suit?
“There are similarities. We both have principles and I like to think that we stick to those principles, no matter how tough the situation is. But Lee has a hell of a lot more guts and a hell of a lot more commitment and he’s a better decision-maker. I always could see the opposite of every argument and I can’t make decisions. Things seem to get thrust upon me, rather than me creating destinies for myself. Whereas Lee is an extraordinary character who, no matter how impossible a situation is, has a linear tunnel vision that allows him to focus and to get through it. He’s a reliable character in the worst situation. That’s something I would like to think I could be, but I’m not sure that’s who I really am.”
Regarding your future and your relationship as an actor with sci-fi: It’s likely that you will never lack for job offers in this genre. So do you see yourself doing more of it? Or do you see yourself resisting that career path?
“The experience of Battlestar was so perfect and so unexpected. It kept exceeding what I thought the potential of this creation was. It kept breaking boundaries. It has become a truly global and much-loved phenomenon. I wouldn’t make any hard-and-fast rules, but I’d be loath to do anything that denigrated that or paled in comparison. I also think the fact that it’s easily available is probably the indicator that you shouldn’t do it.”
So what are you doing next?
“I’m shooting a new series called Law & Order: U.K. So I’m back in London doing a completely different kind of show. I’m a detective and I’m enjoying the subtle challenge of playing a policeman. It’s chalk and cheese from Battlestar. It’s on real streets in a real city that I grew up in. It’s talking about real crimes and transgressions and trying to cope with them. And it’s so episodic, so perfectly structured each week. And as far as I am aware, an American TV show has never been remade entirely with a British cast and British writers for a British audience, so it’s groundbreaking in that way.”
What do you think Battlestar Galactica’s legacy will be years from now?
“I think people will regard it as groundbreaking television in every way: in the way it’s shot, the way we use multiple and very free-ranging cameras, the story arcs, the shape of the show telling one epic story. It is an epic. This is more akin to Homer’s Odyssey than it is to Desperate Housewives or anything on TV right now. It is a quest and it is a search and it is a creation story. It’s an Exodus story. These are old, old archetypal stories we’re messing with. We’re doing something very old-fashioned and very simple, but something that maybe television has forgotten how to do or never knew how to do. I think TV producers forget that the one thing that TV can do better than any other medium is to tell these long novelistic stories with many, many characters. Often TV forgets that and puts itself inside a hospital or a courtroom and just stays there in the same location week in, week out, and basically replicates what can be had in a decent movie or a soap opera. I hope that Battlestar lives on as a really, really good old-fashioned story that TV had the balls to tell over 70-something hours and that it’ll be enjoyable by future generations because it is complete and done and finished.”
Law & Order UK
