Sorry I’ve been less than present here this week. The post-con fatigue, combined with the situation with Mom, has been kicking my ass. However, I did promise you news of actors behaving badly, so here’s the dish. Now, I tend to go to more writer programming than actor programming at DragonCon. It’s just that there’s so much to do/see and only so much time.
However, this year, I decided to go to a session with Claudia Christian (Susan Ivanova) and Jason Carter (Marcus Cole) of
Babylon 5. I love B5 fiercely, and even though his tenure on the show was short, I adored Jason Carter (or as
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caras_galadhon calls him “Aragorn in space”). The session was billed as “Star-Crossed Lovers,” and my inner fangirl went SQUEE! Over one of my OTPs.
Now, this session was after the TORn session on
The Hobbit, so I had to run between hotels, and the ballroom was already full by the time I got there. I had to lean on the back wall near the water. Apparently, the mod for the session didn’t bother showing up, because after a short wait, Christian got up on stage to introduce herself. She chatted a bit, then made us watch a rather crappy clip of a new series she is appearing in. Her character appears to be a cast-iron bitch, which will turn out to be a fascinating bit of foreshadowing.
Let me just say that Jason Carter is nowhere to be seen.
The lights come up, and Christian starts to take questions. I don’t remember the first, but the second was, “Where is Jason Carter?” At the question, he promptly popped up from behind the table on the stage he was hiding behind. Applause ensued. He did a little chatter, and while it was going on Christian was very invested in getting him to shut up. They were in HER half of the session, so he needed to keep his mouth shut until HIS part of the session.
As you can imagine, most people were there because they wanted to hear more about BOTH of them on B5. They didn’t want to ask her 30 minutes of questions and then him 30 minutes of questions. So while she is taking her questions, Carter is fidgeting. Sitting. Standing. Playing with his microphone. Drinking some water, which made a crinkly sound (the plastic of the bottle) on the microphone. When she says, “Thanks for making noise while I was talking,” he does it more. During all this Christian is snarking at Carter, and he’s responding with obvious amusement and in kind.
A good portion of the audience, myself included, assumed they were playing with each other.
So after about three or four questions, someone asks what it was like working with Michael York on B5. Carter jumps to his feet, looks at Christian, and asks, “Can I take this one first?” He’s clearly gearing up for a fanboy moment. Christian is clearly DEEPLY ANNOYED. She says fine in a way that makes it clear it most definitely is not fine, and then basically rattles off a list of things she has been in with York in order to suggest that what she would have to say would be more valuable than anything he could possibly say.
He says, “I believe the question was about working with him on B5.” She tells him to go ahead with the edge that suggest he get it over with so she can get back to her questions and adoring crowd. He shakes his head and says, “I guess we can’t all be as fabulous and famous as you.” She says, “You know it’s amazing how quickly all the bullshit comes back.” Then she grabs her purse and storms off the stage.
People go, “Awwwww,” because they think she’s still playing. She pauses, then storms out of the room. There’s awkward silence. People are expecting her to come back, everyone to laugh, and the panel to get going again. That doesn’t happen.
Carter then says, “Umm. Do you think it was something I said?” People laugh. And this one fanboy in front of me jumps up and yells, “YES! IT WAS!” He starts shouting at Carter for being rude and not letting Christian speak, and he storms out of the door near me. Then about 10 other people got up and left, and I had this horrible sinking feeling that there would be a mass exodus, but there wasn’t.
Carter came across to me as a bit awkward, a bit inappropriate. A bit like he was trying tdo hard. Lots of self-deprecating humor, which along with the rest and the humor struck me a defense mechanisms. As the session wore on, he got more conversational, and there were a few quieter moments that felt less performative. Highlights were his talking about his days in acting school. Role he’d most like to play now: Macbeth on the stage. He said he’s too old for Hamlet or Romeo and not old enough for Lear. The long Marcus hair is gone. He said that after he went gray he realized the only people who looked good with long grey hair pulled back in a ponytail were guitar players, and he said that coloring it was too much of a pain in the ass an always ended up in his making a mess in the bathroom.
Some B5 fun moments, Carter said of Christian after she left that he gave his life to save her and how did she repay him: by leaving the show. He said he knew he was more than a flash in the pan on the show when he got a chair with his name on it. He talked about how the actors didn't know their character's arcs or story arcs in advance, so he was taken aback when he got the filming script and found out his 35-year old miner turned Ranger was a virgin. He said, "Well, I thought about that a lot, and I decided the only reasons he would still be a virgin was that he couldn't get laid or that he was deeply spiritual. I decided the second had a bit more dignity." He also said, "Apparently, you American women are turned on by the idea of kick-ass virgins."
Then he said that he joked with Straczynski that he'd written Marcus as a 35-year old virgin, deeply spiritual, with long flowing hair and a beard, who gives his life so another could live. He was Space!Jesus. He told Straczynski that they should have someone check on his body in three days and find it gone. And then he could start appearing to people at random on the station. They decided not to go that route. *snerk*
After the session he left the same way as the fans, stopping and chatting with people on his way out. A couple near me stopped to get water before leaving. They were also shocked by the Claudia!flounce and at her fanboy. “Was he in the same session as us? She’s the one who kept telling him to sit down and shut up and not interrupt her session.” Frankly, I got the sense that she was planning to walk after her half hour was up from the start. Then they told me they were in a Next Generation session earlier and Jonathan Frakes and Denise Crosby got into it and Crosby walked out on him.
Clearly, the actor panels are where the drama is. I must make more time for them next year.
However, the Christian tantrum left a bad taste in my mouth. Listen, I don’t think that you are going to like everyone you have to work with on the job. That is true whether the job is acting or working in an office. The thing is when celebs are at cons, they are at work. They’re promoting themselves and the shows they are a part of. They’re working. If people can suck it up and work with people they hate for 40 hours a week every week, actors can behave themselves for 60 minutes on panel. Not being able and willing to do so is an unattractive display of egotism and disrespectful of the fans who are there to see them.
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