David Eick Filling the gap in season 3

Source: IF Magazine

BATTLESTAR GALACTICA is now officially in hiatus, but we only have to wait a matter of weeks until we can get our fix again. Shooting is completed on the three part finale for this fourth season, a lot of the people involved with production can breathe easier for a little bit. David Eick is not one of those people. Eick and producer/creator partner are always working, and Eick himself has more projects getting ready to head into production. In this final part of our interview series with Eick we squeeze out a few more details about BSG and find out what’s just over the horizon for the talented producer.

iF MAGAZINE: Is it as fun to collaborate with Lucy Lawless again after so many years?

DAVID EICK: It’s really great and I’m really happy with her. She came to the show to do and she’s such a pro because she understands that means sometimes she’s in a lot of the episodes, some times she’s a little of the episodes; sometimes she is the focus of a scene and sometimes she is in the background. You’d be surprised, a lot of actors, particularly actors show have had their own shows and been title characters on shows that were big hits; it doesn’t work that way. If you want them you better build a whole story around them and when they show up on set you better have scheduled your day in such a way that they are the centerpiece and focus of what’s being done. She’s got kind of a theatre actor’s soul. She has a consummate professional attitude and she is all about the work; and yet she has all of the intangible qualities of a true star. I think it’s a really amazing and unusual combination.

iF: Judging from everything I’ve ever read, she has to be fun to work with.

EICK: She is a lot of fun. The crew adores her. The directors adore her. She is sort of like how I would imagine people working with in the 1940’s in old Hollywood. There’s a real irreverence to her, she gets the joke, and she doesn’t take it all that seriously at all and yet she is a complete professional. She doesn’t have the failing that accompany people who have had such huge successes early in their careers. She’s been the centerpiece of a hurricane television sensation and yet there were days on BATTLESTAR where I know she spent hours and hours on the set to say one word. You just don’t find that kind of dedication in people. On top of everything else to have the work be so good, and to have it stretching her in ways that people haven’t seen or haven’t seen as much as other things she has done has been a real joy. It’s a shame, and I wish we had known and been able to coerce her into making a linger commitment because it’s one of those situations where it didn’t go as well and I thought it would it actually went better.

iF: How far do you foresee BATTLESTAR going?

EICK: I don’t know is the honest answer. Ron has told stories of other shows he has worked on where they got to seasons where it was a chore for them or it was clear that it was more of struggle than it had been in the past to keep things going. I haven’t had that experience, so I don’t know what that’s like, but if we found ourselves feeling that way … We’re all making a good living doing the show and we have families and mortgages so its nice to have a job, so that’s a factor, but if it were a chore to comet o work everyday, or we felt were bullsh**ing each other with each subsequent story and it was a drag, then maybe we’d say “they all blow up at the end of this one and lets call it a day.” Until I feel that way it’s hard for me to say if it’ll be another one, or two, or even five years. We had always intended for this to be a series and that’s why we ended the mini-series on a cliffhanger. I was standing on set a the end of the min-series with Michael Rhymer and I said to him, “ I can’t imagine doing this as a series, I don’t have a single idea in my head as to where this could possibly go as I stand here on day 37 this 45 day shoot.” He said, “Are you crazy? This thing could go on for years and years. I don’t even know where you’d draw the line. There are so many directions this thing could go with the depth to this idea.”

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