Science Fiction recently spoken to Syfy‘s Being Human star Sam Witwer about his character Aidan and his new role as Darth Maul in the animated series “Star Wars: The Clone Wars.”
So I have to say, congratulations for being renewed for a third season for ‘Being Human’!
Thank you, it was really nice, I think it was after we aired the 4th episode of the second season that they renewed us, so that was a nice surprise. We all expected, when you’re a company like NBC Universal you can take your time, but it was really wonderful that they could pull the trigger so fast cause that allows us to get moving quicker. And to have more time to get things done right.
You had to wait in between Season 1 and Season 2 for the renewal correct?
No we heard about Season 2 nearing the end of our run for Season 1. Maybe like around episode 9. In this case we knew right after episode 4. Which was pretty great.
When you were filming Season 2, did you feel it trending towards renewal without it even being aired?
Oddly, yeah. You don’t want to be over-confident about it. I felt like we were going to get renewed. I don’t know how we felt when we were shooting it, but now that we’ve seen a bunch of the episodes I felt very confident about it. I was just didn’t know it would happen that fast.
Did you guys celebrate?
We were actually a little bit separate. Me and Meaghan [Rath, who plays Sally] are here in L.A., but we’re both very busy and then Sammy [Huntington, who plays Josh] is in New Hampshire, because he just had his second child. We usually all watch the episodes together, me and Meaghan will watch the episodes together, but we’re mostly just talking to each other on the phone.
You are all very close?
We’re all extremely close. For example, after we finished shooting Season 1 we all went to Hawaii together. You can imagine, you know you’re with these people 24/7, you know, sometimes for 15 or 16 hours a day, and then after you’re done, your like “Hey, lets go to Hawaii” and a bunch more times. We see each other all the time. Why break that up? I like to think that viewing audience can tell that we actually like each other. It’s not just something we put on.
You’ve been a part of a lot of big name shows such as ‘Battlestar Galactica’, ‘Smallville’ and ‘Dexter’, with Aidan being your first lead role, what has that made you learn about yourself?
I guess that I’m pushy. I think I’ve always been opinionated. In fact, speaking of ‘Battlestar’, they taught me a lot of that. David Eick, one of the executive producers of the show, said to me that “Alright man, here’s the rule. Do [take] one as written, and then say whatever you want. We want your take on the character, we want you to improvise we want you to make stuff up” and that kind of led me along the path toward wanting to creatively contribute other than just saying lines.
When you’re number one on the cast list you have more latitude to do just that. I did it a little with ‘Smallville’ as well, and that wasn’t because I was going to be the guy who was there for just for like a year, however what allowed me to push it a little bit was the fact that they offered me the role, rather than me auditioning for it over and over again and begging for it. Since they had sought me out and offered it to me, I thought “Great, I can kinda bring my own experience into this and make this as good as I can”. And then with ‘Being Human’, with being number one on the cast list you have space when it comes to this. And that’s not to say the scripts aren’t wonderful. Our writers are extremely good, as you well know if you’ve watched the show. But in terms of bringing a little more to it, or putting more of yourself in it, or figuring out what would be a little fun gag here and there. Or having big creative discussions, you’re invited to do that if you’re one on the cast list.
So how do you connect with Aidan? Do you have similarities?
I’m friendlier then him I think, we have the same hair. I think I smile more than he does. Really, when you’re creating any role you’re chosing a piece of yourself and using that to create the character. If you didn’t I don’t think it would come off right, I think it would be artificial. With Aidan, I think I go with a more soft spoken version of myself. We dress similarly, I don’t have a leather jacket or anything, but we both wear jeans and hoodies.
Do you see yourself in every role that you do, or is Aidan specific to that? Did Crashdown or Davis Bloom have connection to you?
What’s funny is Crashdown I was told, which if you watch the reinvented ‘Battlestar’, see what you think of about this, see if I got it right, but what I was told with Crashdown is they wanted a cross between Han Solo and Bill Paxton from ‘Aliens’. So that’s what I went for, I kept the voice kind of closer to Han Solo and some of the energy towards Bill Paxton. Crashdown was originally hired to be the comic relief on ‘Battlestar’. I don’t think a lot of people know that. I think that was before people realized that this isn’t a very funny show, outside of Balta’s owning Six’s, there’s not a lot of comedy here. And there shouldn’t be. But this is before they knew that, they hired me to be comic relief, and there was a lot of really funny scenes that were never shot because well, it didn’t really fit the show. So, it was really kind of a funny thing to sort of navigate as people were trying to flesh out what is really appropriate for the show.
There’s that. And then the Neil Perry character in ‘Dexter’ was just goofy. I just went goofy for that character until he turned into Kevin Spacey from ‘Seven’ when I had to be as centered and frightening as possible. That was an important role for me because before then, all anyone would have for me, anyone would ever really hire me for is thugs and kind of tough guys and stuff and so when it came across, with the ‘Dexter’ role, when they were looking for a squirrely computer nerd, or at least thats what the character description had said, and I mean ‘Dexter’ hadn’t aired yet, so I didn’t know what it was supposed to be, I just knew I wanted to play a computer nerd, so I got a bunch of loose fitting clothes and bought some glasses. I really wanted to do it no matter what. When I found out later it was this really cool and threatening role, it was an added bonus. Certainly nothing I knew about when auditioning, they weren’t telling anyone what the point of that character was until I was arriving on set.
Did you have to audition for Aidan?
Aidan was an audition. That was basically a situation where it was the same casting director as ‘Smallville’, and I guess they had read like a few hundred guys or so I’m told, and basically that casting director asked ‘Why hadn’t we seen Sam Witwer yet’, so they called me up they had me in and I came in and eventually booked it. They were very cool throughout the audition process. For these TV shows you’re in and out, you’re auditioning several times. In this case the audition, they were pretty clear that it was going to be me, and they found different ways of telling me, including eventually just telling me. So that was one of those things where the pressure was taken off. They were very clear about what their intentions were.
Read more of the interview here
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