Saturday Page Three

Farscape Live!

Members of the audience who were selected earlier acted out a skit directed by Tony Tilse and Andrew Prowse. I hated to miss this but I needed to run back to the room and download all the photos I’d taken to my computer so I could come back later and take more.  

Anthony Simcoe

If there's one thing you can say about Anthony Simcoe it's that he certainly isn't boring! He doesn't make an entrance, he creates an event. Everyone else’s entrance was a calm walk to the stage. Not Anthony. He ran out from behind the curtain, made a loop of the room, leaped onto the stage and fell down. Whew! Then he had us all repeat the phrase we learned last year – “I vow, I will never be taken prisoner, again”. And one more time.

He gave us a quick rundown on Anthony’s day, beginning with the alarm going at five in the morning and ending with him going home in the evening. It takes “only” an hour and a half now to put on his makeup. He then goes to the set with wearing boxers, the chest piece, and the front piece of his head makeup. He’s missing the back of his head and wardrobe has the rest of his clothes at the side of the set. Then they do a rehearsal or two and it’s “D'Argo-ing up”, which means putting on the rest of his clothes and the back of his head and everyone else takes a break. They shoot the scene and then it’s “D'Argo-ing down”. This happens over and over until the last scene is done for the day. Everyone else goes home while it takes him an hour or so to get out of the makeup. Then he takes a shower and goes home. Alone. Sometimes he spends an hour or so at the gym and then he’s in bed early to be ready for the 5am wake-up the next morning.

The first fan up to the microphone asked him whatever happened to Jothee. He said that D'Argo threw his butt off the ship. He’s lost somewhere off in the Uncharted Territories of space, in pain. Alone. With sores festering all over his nether regions, never able to partake the joy of companionship with another woman. He’s going straight to hell! Then in D'Argo’s voice: “We have problems in our family”.

A woman asked if, every time Rygel farts, if they actually have to inhale helium. Nope. It’s shifted later in post.

Does he find it hard to do the voice all the time? It really isn’t too difficult because he’s usually only speaking during a scene a couple of times every hour. It’s more difficult in ADR (additional dialog recording) because then he’s using the D'Argo voice two hours straight. Ben and Claudia’s ADR sessions can be six or eight hours long, but Anthony can’t sustain that deep voice for such an extended period.

Because there’s so much latex on his face, he can’t get all the movement in a normal face, but he can get a great deal, so if the face isn’t moving it’s because he doesn’t want it to move. He notices that a lot of people working in prosthetics think they have to exaggerate their movements to get through the make-up and then they just end up looking silly. He loves working in prosthetics. He’d rather be D'Argo than any other character in the show. Everything about the character is different from Anthony. He’s working with an American accent when he has an Australian accent and the voice is totally different. With all the prosthetics, D'Argo looks totally unlike Anthony.

His favorite serious D'Argo moment is from Suns and Lovers, where he’s burning the tattoos in the furnace. If you watch carefully, there are a few tears, a very vulnerable moment. He also really loves the dancing D'Argo, and he gave us a super demonstration.

He didn’t know that there would be prosthetics involved in his character until the seventh audition, then he saw the drawing of what D'Argo would look like. He looked at it. He looked at Rockne. He looked back at the drawing. He said, ”I’ll take it!” It was actually a difficult decision to make because when you’re an actor, your face is your brand and you want your brand to be out in the market. He knew he had to accept that his brand was going nowhere while he was on Farscape. But the benefits of doing the show far outweigh this.

His favorite episode? Til the Blood Runs Clear because they got to go away. They all packed up, jumped into vehicles and headed for location. The first shot he had was the one in the desert where he was walking away from the prowler. He was in makeup for four hours, put on a mask and walked across the desert. That was it for two days for D'Argo, so Anthony had a bit of a holiday.

He calls himself the most over trained and under talented actor in Australia. He takes acting very seriously as a craft. He did his undergraduate studies in acting at one school, then he ran a theater company for a year. Then he decided that he needed more training so he moved to Sydney and auditioned for NIDA (National Institute of Dramatic Art), graduated and then worked for a couple of years in plays and small film roles and guest roles in television. Then he got his masters degree which was focused on teaching acting and drama. Then he became the youngest ever acting lecturer at NIDA. He was directing a play when he got the call to come do Farscape.