Transcript Episode 6: Comikaze 2014 — ‘Nobility’ interviews — Torri Higginson, Miracle Laurie, & Neil Johnson
Intro music.
In this episode, we continue the coverage of Stan Lee’s Comikaze, 2014 edition. Comedy science fiction is a rare beast. “Nobility” is a new science fiction comedy web series currently in production that was at Comikaze. Set 700 years in the future, it’s a mockumentary-style show about the crew of the C.A.S. Nobility. I got the chance to speak with two of the actors, Torri Higginson and Miracle Laurie, and director Neil Johnson about the project.
Torri: Hi, my name’s Torri Higginson. I’m an actress. I’ve done all sorts of stuff, but you guys probably know me from “Stargate: Atlantis,” Dr. Weir, and presently working on “Nobility.”
Miracle: My name is Miracle Laurie and I play Alethes. She is one of the Eujin race on “Nobility.”
Neil: Hi, my name is Neil Johnson. I’m the director of “Nobility” and 10 other feature films, all science fiction.
Angie: I asked each of them what drew them to this project.
Miracle: Well, Adrienne Wilkinson is a wonderful actress that I’ve met. I’ve only got to know her because of conventions, but she got in touch with me initially. She listed all these other actors so this cast, I went, “Oh my gosh, who are these people? Like, why are they involved in this project where there’s no money and it’s being made on a prayer and a hope.” So, that’s what initially drew me to them. And then, I read the script and I thought it was a wonderful concept and a wonderful character, and I wanted to play, so.
Neil: Well, with “Nobility,” E.J., I met many years ago, and I cast him in the film “Starship: Rising” and “Starship: Apocalypse,” which is coming out next year and I think he just saw how I did films, and we just started chatting about — I said to him, “You should make something of your own if you want “because he’s right into sci-fi like me and we’re just complete nuts. So, we just got chatting and he said, “Look, I’ve been thinking about doing ‘Nobility,'” and I said, “You should because now, you’ve been on my set and you see how we do things.” So, next minute, he wrote “Nobility and it’s his big dream project, and then got me in to help out directing it. And it wasn’t hard to get me involved, let’s just say.
Torri: For me, personally, not only the humor, which is always fun and actors don’t always get an opportunity to play in, but Adrienne Wilkinson’s a good friend of mine. She’s in the show and she brought me in and she told me everyone that was involved, and I just lost my mind over the cast. It’s very, very impressive. There’s someone from every bit of this genre and sci-fi and they’re all legit talented people, and when I got to meet with everybody, they were just super lovely and I had a ball. I mean, we have Chris Judge and Chekov, for God’s sake, and everyone in between. And really great actors like Darren Jacobs, who’s done a lot of theatre, and not everyone in the genre may know him but they will after this and he’s beautiful. And just really, really good people and we had a blast.
Angie: As mentioned, comedy science fiction is rare; it’s difficult to pull off. They each talked about their experience with doing comedy.
Miracle: I did a web series called “Goodnight Burbank.” It was a mockumentary-style news show, and I played the entertainment reporter with Asperger’s done with all the respect in the world. But there was a lot of great writing on that show, and Laura Silverman was our lead, along with the writer Hayden Black, and they’re great. So, one of the reasons I’m an actor is because of Lucille Ball. So, comedians are a lot of my heroes, and I definitely think it would be a ball to do on a regular basis. To just really explore that and play, and to me, it’s an actor’s dream.
Torri: To me, I’m not attracted to slapstick. I like the stuff — the comedy comes out of tragic characters and real situations. And I think that’s what my character is going to be exploring more of that stuff. So, the situation is what’s funny, not so much the one-liner zingers.
Neil: I’ve got a weird talent in my life with my films that they end up being half-comedies, anyway, because of my weird sense of humor. So, that’s been built inside me, and I’ve been forced by my distributors sometimes to cut the comedy out of the films because there’s too much of it. So, it really wasn’t difficult, and I’m such a “Red Dwarf” fan that I would watch “Red Dwarf” — I’ve watched, like, every episode at least 50 times, so it’s that level of ridiculousness. I just put my type of humor in there and try to keep it a little dry and keep the seriousness about the story, as well. I just didn’t want it to be like a laugh track-type thing. I just wanted the comedy based in reality.
Angie: Now, judging by your accent you’re from the U.K. British humor is definitely different than American humor. Do you feel that that’s what you’re talking about?
Neil: Well, funnily enough, I’m also — I mean, you look at “The Office,” which is what we’re comparing this to a little bit, “The Office” was originally a British series that the Americans took over and made it even funnier and did it in a really good way. So, I’ve been in the U.S. now for about 15 years, I’ve been here now, so for me, I get the American humor, as well. It’s not that dissimilar in many ways. If you really dissect certain types of American humor like “Seinfeld” or the American “Office,” it could play in England quite well, as well. Back in the old days in the ’70s and ’80s, you had sitcoms, where it’s, you know, here’s a gag, you would laugh, and that sort of thing, here’s a laugh track. American humor’s changed a lot now, I think, and it’s much more classier, and I think it’s closer to the British style of comedy.
So, for me, if it works, it works. And all the actors are American except for Darren, so it’s just let them run with their own timing, comedic timing, and it seemed to work really well.
Angie: Torri, then, talked about how different it was to do a web series for her.
Torri: Now, it’s my first time doing a web series, starting with something which hasn’t already been formulated, so we’re watching it formulate as we create it. So, that’s a nerve-wracking thing as an actor, because coming from theatre, you know what the project is, and then you start doing television, film and you realize you don’t know because there’s all this stuff going on behind the scenes that you’re not a part of. And with a web series that’s in its infancy form, it’s even more so. So, there’s a huge leap of faith about what’s happening and where it’s going to end up.
Angie: Finally, I asked Neil what drew him to the genre of science fiction.
Neil: For me, I’m all about expanding humanity. I have this weird feeling that one day, we could be wiped out by an asteroid at any point, and unless we leave the planet, we’re pretty much screwed. We have to get out into space and colonize. We have to propagate the universe. So, as a man, you feel you have to make a child. As a race, we have to propagate our species throughout the galaxy. And I think sci-fi is the one thing that will open those doors to allow us to get out to outer space, and maybe we have to modify our own bodies to live on other planets, maybe that’s what we could have to do, and maybe we could have to evolve beyond basic humanity. But if our core remains human, that’s what sci-fi is about. It’s like, remember humanity, go out and populate the galaxy, remember where you came from. But if we don’t have sci-fi, we might be dead in 1000 years. We may be extinct. So, sci-fi, may be humanity’s only hope.
Outro music.
And that’s Geek Out’s latest take on Stan Lee’s Comikaze, 2014 Edition. Next round, I talk to Miracle Laurie further about her work on “Dollhouse.”
Thanks for listening to Geek Out with Angie Fiedler Sutton. The theme song is “Schoolyard Haze” by Jari Pitkanen, available via the Free Music Archive. The podcast is recorded in partnership with Sci-Fi For Me Radio and released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license. Links for more information on all this are available on angiefsutton.com.