Past and Future: Interview with Claudia Christian at the VIECC 2024

"Babylon 5 was very popular with a lot of the people who attended Renaissance fairs"

Beitrag von Stefan Cernohuby | 17. Dezember 2024

Hello, I’m coming from 500 years ago. May I introduce myself, my name is Gabriel.

Hello Gabriel.
(both shake hands)

So if you're wondering why I look so weird, it's a Comic Con first. I did a stage fight like five minutes before and had no time to change clothes.

Gabriel, I did Renaissance fairs for 35 years. You're not weird. This is normal. This is weird. (points to normally dressed photographer) This is weird. So you fit right into my world.

This is nice. So tell me about Renaissance fairs, what you did there?

Well, I started attending them when I was doing Babylon 5 because there's a sort of cross pollination of fans that love sci-fi, but also love medieval recreation work. So I started going to Southern California fair and then Northern Fair. And then I started going to other fairs. I would dress either as a Scottish Highlander or I would dress as a as a woman in corsets and everything. Then I started a group called the Clan McStagger. We were a bunch of friends and we had a little song: Why walk when you can stagger, like stagger when you can crawl? We were a drinking group and we would sing for our beer. So that was my old days. My party days. Now it's just water. (laughs)

So you said this was during your Babylon 5 years. How how did you connect to this Renaissance fairs?

Yeah, because Babylon 5 was very popular with a lot of the people who attended Renaissance fairs. So it was like I was a mini celebrity at these run fairs. I had bodyguards and all sorts of entourage, it was crazy. It was really fun. People would buy me drinks.

If they all recognized you there would be a small step to going from science fiction to fantasy TV shows. Have you done that?

I think so! No, I haven't. Been in genre, I've done fantasy anime and certainly a lot of the roles in the video games would constitute fantasy and genre, but I've never… the only close thing I came to was Highlander. That’s it. That's the only series I did that was sort of genre-y because my flashbacks were medieval. You know, I was playing the oldest immortal in the Highlander TV series.

This was the Adrian Paul series?

Yeah, I did a spin-off pilot by myself, playing a character that they were looking at a women to do the spin-off series. And so they gave a few women their own episodes, their own pilot. One of them was a French actress, a British actress, an American actress. And then it ended up going to the actress that was already in the Highlander. So…

There was some talk to resurrect the Highlander series some years ago.

They're gonna resurrect everything! (laughs) No new ideas, darling. So all rehashed. Yeah, I'm. I mean, look, they brought the A-Team back.

Very true. Everybody forgot about that, I mean the new A-Team… But let's talk about this resurrection of Babylon 5, maybe because there was a movie last year.

Yeah, “The Road Home”.

 What can you tell me about that? It’s pretty new and I think all the major cast from the series were there.

Yes, the the living cast members did their their roles and the deceased cast members were played by voice matches by voice actors playing them. With permission from their families.

Why animate it? What's the reason for that? Why don't do a live action continuation of the original series or maybe a kind of prequel?

Because most of us are dead. Most of the cast is not living. It’s hard to do an original Babylon 5 thing with only 20% of the cast. So there's no way you could do an original cast series from Babylon 5 right now. There's only a few of us left.

Is there a possibility that the live action continuation will be done? Because currently as you said, everything is remade.

They tried, they tried. I told the story when I was on stage, they tried to reboot, the series in 2021 through The CW. But then The CW went under and Netstar bought it, and they didn't want to do a scripted series. But J. Michael Straczynski did write a pilot, and it was green lit. It was supposed to be shot in 2022 or 2023, and then it just went away.

Would that have been a complete reboot, like the same characters played by different people? Or something different?

No, no, it was the same world that it was before. That particular version of it would have been with the younger version of one of the leads of the series, and then different young people playing it, because it was made for The CW. Very, very young. The creator of Babylon 5 said that he would probably use some of us older actors in some recurring roles in the series, but nothing ever came of the series, unfortunately. So that's life.

Would you reprise your role as Commander Ivanova?

No, that would not have happened. It would have been a completely different role. 

A Shame.

Yeah (laughs). But I did in “The Road Home”. I did it in the animated series. So I mean the animated movie, so maybe there'll be another animated movie in the future from Warner Brothers.

What do you think about Star Trek? Because it was always compared to Babylon 5? It’s a horrible question (laughs).

I can't. I can't say that, because I've never seen it. I've never seen Star Trek, I've never seen the original. I've never seen any incarnation, I've never seen all of Babylon 5. I hate to say it. I've seen the first two seasons years ago. I blogged about it and I made myself watch it. I watched it every night, a different episode and I wrote a blog about it, the guest stars and all the stuff on it. And it was a lot of fun. But then I stopped.

Why?

Life got in the way.

Maybe you should continue sometime, because it seems like a fun thing to do.

I know. I think everything has been said about it. I I find it very self indulgent and egotistical to watch my own work. So sometimes I have to watch it, because you know, you have to put new acting reels together … but something that old, there's no point in watching it, because I can't use it for work, now you know what I mean. It's nostalgic, and it's also hard to watch because so many people have passed. So for me, I'm watching my friends who aren't here anymore, so why would I put myself through that?

You're an author as well. So tell me about it. What kind of fiction do you write?

Well, I started writing short stories. And then when I started my non-profit-organization - prior to starting it - I started my advocacy work in 2010. Which is I advocated treatment for alcohol use disorder called the Sinclair method. So I wanted to write a book about my own experience on the method, and I did that. It was called “Babylon Confidential” and it also was a memoir with Hollywood stories and including Babylon 5. After that I wrote compilation book of stories of people who were on the Sinclair method called “Journeys”. After that I wrote an alternate universe book, that took place in a Rome that never fell with my writing partner Morgan Grant Buchanan, and that's called “Wolf’s Empire”. After that I wrote a book about a woman in Hollywood who wants to be an actress and ends up being this sort of special type of Fighter called “The Original”. That was a lot of fun, sort of spy, 007 kind of stuff. And then I wrote a cookbook called “Snack Hacks” during the pandemic for gamers who aren't eating healthy, play a lot of video games… so I wanted to teach gamers to cook things easily and inexpensively and make their diet better. So “Snack Hacks” came out with lots of stories from all the video games I've done and lots of recipes that are easy to make and I did that with a gamer named Mark Michel who is also disabled and he wrote hacks for people who are disabled as well in the book. So the book really helps a lot of different communities and I'm quite proud of that book. It's a lot of fun. And then what else did I write? I think I'm forgetting something.

It's a quite a broad spectrum.

Fiction, Non-fiction, addiction, fantasy, you name it. Yeah, cooking.

You mentioned Video games. So you were doing voice acting in video games, which is meanwhile quite a thing.

I do. I do a lot of different games. Yeah, just in the last month, I did Final Fantasy 7, Halo, Guild Wars 2, World of Warcraft, Hearthstone. And some other games. 

Do you get a script for all of this or do you play through the game, to know what happens. Or how do you do it?

(laughs) I don't play. I don't play any video games. Some jobs will give you the lines the day before or a couple days before. Most jobs don't. You get there and you get just your lines. You don't get a script and you don't know the story… I mean, if you're playing something for 10 years… like I've been in World of Warcraft for 10 - 12 years and in Guild Wars 2, so I kind of know what's going on.

So it's very difficult to know about your role or to find out about that. How do you approach this? You just read through it or do you have a person who is maybe knowledgeable?

The director, the director is on the phone call. You're in a booth and you have headphones on and there's people all over the world. There's writers on the call, and then there's usually a director on the call and they'll say: “Ok, in this scene you've just come from the battle and you're exhausted and you lost some people and you're now going to find the wizard and the Wizard's going to give you the light and the light is the thing you need to save your people, ok?” So they set the tone. (laughs) 

Is this your first time in Vienna?

No, I came here many times. I have family in Germany so I also came here for a press conference for a movie called “Hexed”, that was back in the 90s but I haven't been here in quite some time. Probably 15 years.

Do you speak German?

My German is really bad. My mother stopped teaching us after the second, her third child. She stopped, because we were being bullied in America. So it's very unfortunate, but she didn't teach me. So unlike Sandra Bullock, who's fluent, I had a mother who decided to only speak English at home, which is sad.

Sandra Bullock went to school in Germany as far as I know.

She speaks fluent German because her mother is German, just like my mother is. But her mother spoke German to her, her whole life.

So you never adopted an accent for Ivanova?

No, it's funny. It was not even discussed, because she went to the American Consortium. So they wanted her to have just a regular American accent and then her parents were cast with Russian accents, were Russian actors, actually, that played my parents and my brother. I think my brother may have had a slight accent, yeah. But no, they they didn't want me to use one. I was happy to, I could do a Russian accent easily.

Would you do a Russian accent for me? (laughs)

(laughs, then with Russian accent) No. I will not do Russian accent for you. (laughs)

(laughs, then also with Russian accent) No, this is good one. I like.

Very good, dushenka maya! [Russian for “My dear!”]

It's because maybe because other people associate Russians in space, they think of Chekhov, who had a unique accent.

Walter Koenig is actually in my new comic book, he’s in Dark Legacies. He represents a very pivotal role in this series. I have a lot of my cast members: Bruce Boxleitner, Bill Mumy, Pat Tallman and now in the next comic book Nicola Bryant from Doctor Who. So they allow us to use their images and create characters in the comic book series. And I actually have some of the comic books with me from the first issue.

And what kind of series is this? Which kind of genre?

It's sci-fi. It’s a character driven series called “Dark Legacies” and we have the third issue coming out and we have a RPG game and we have a video game coming out next year. I'm hoping maybe to someday have an animated series or a live action series based on it.

Very cool. I have to take a look at that, of course later. That sounds very interesting.

We have great British comic book artists, amazing colonists, and my writing partner Chris McAuley, who's an amazing writer. Yeah.

Who's the publisher for this?

Scratch Comics and Diamond releases it, Diamond Comics. It's distributed in comic book stores by Diamond, but Scratch Comics is a UK based company.

You kind of dabble in all sorts of nerd stuff...

Everything, you name it, I do it, yes.

So that's a very fitting place for you to be here at the Comic Con.

Yeah, and because it's literally Comic Con. Yes. And I have a comic book company, so it makes sense.

Are you doing lots of these counts per year?

No, I do a couple just to promote the comic book, really, but and also if it's some place that I want to go. You know, this tied in to a nice little trip to London and I'm going to Rome after this. So Vienna was perfect thing to do. I did Poland with Bruce Boxleitner in June because I've never been. I wanted to go and it was in Poznan, which was lovely. Oh, I did one in London, because I was there and Bruce was doing it, so I did a day at a convention. So, you know, just if it works out, I'm happy to come along and say hi.

Thank you. Thank you very much. It was very nice to meet you, to have a nice chat.

It was very nice to meet you too. Although the light is very bad here. Like I said [before the interview], a police investigation room. (suddenly changes to police detective voice) Where were you on the night of Wednesday the 21st ?

I was at the Renaissance fair.

Prove it!

Well, look at me (wears full Renaissance costume – laughter). I’m in the Psi Corps, you know.

 What am I thinking?

 You're thinking that I asked a lot of questions. (laughter)

 Yeah, you know, it's great. Good.

That was fun. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much, Gabriel, Nice to meet you.