On August 17 Syfy announced they were renewing "Eureka" for a fifth season. The show is currently about halfway through its forth season. In a recent conference call interview we asked series creator, Jaime Paglia, and star, Colin Ferguson, how they both got involved with the series four years ago.
Q: Can you talk about how you became involved in Eureka at the beginning?
COLIN: Sure thing. Jaime you predate me.
JAIME: Okay. Well it was a concept that was generated by Andy Cosby and myself. We co-created the show together. We had been doing some feature films before this one and we sat down for lunch one day. If we were going to do a TV series what would we do? And I think that the show concept was a perfect blend of our particular personalities and interests. I think I was more of the "Northern Exposure" character dramedy kind of mindset. And Andy was more of the sci-fi geek lover and we both enjoyed shows like "Northern Exposure" and "Twin Peaks" and "X-Files." And by the end of lunch we had dug through some old concepts and made some changes to them.
And we pretty much had the premise of the show. Pacific Northwestern town that doesn’t appear on any maps and a U.S. Marshal stumbles onto it and finds himself assigned to be the town sheriff. That was pretty much the most productive lunch meeting I’ve ever had.
COLIN: And then I guess… the final casting was the most interesting one because it was myself and Jordan and there was another guy—Ed Kerr. I don’t remember who the girl was. And we did the mix and match. And it ended up being Jordan and I who got the role. So probably she’s arguably as important for me getting the job as anything else.
JAIME: Yeah, I have to say… Andy and I were dividing and conquering in the early days of getting the pilot going. And I… was doing casting first with our director, Peter O’Fallon. And Colin came in I think on day two of casting. And Andy was scouting locations in Vancouver and I called him up afterwards and I said I think we found our guy. You’ve got to get back here and see him. And there was obviously a lot of pressure to stunt cast with feature film actors and all of those pressures that you’re under when you’re trying to launch a new series. But Andy came down, he literally walked over, talked to Colin for about 30 seconds and he came back over to me and he said, "Yeah, that’s our guy. So we knew."
COLIN: And it’s a funny thing too because… as an actor you go in the room and you do what you do. And I have a very quirky sensibility. And Jaime has a very quirky sensibility. And Jaime was the one in the room who… was the guy I met. And typically on my end you go in and you do your quirky thing and they go, "That’s weird"… and they cast someone else. So it was a refreshing change of pace for Jaime to go, "Yeah, actually you know what, that’s right."
JAIME: That’s the guy. Colin’s quirky matched my quirky.
Be sure to tune into "Eureka" on Scfy, Friday nights at 9:00 PM.
For our complete interview with Jaime Paglia and series star Colin Ferguson visit Pop Culture Passionistas.
Follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
Comments