Amanda Tapping: Sci-Fi is not what it used to be

Julia Diddy
Fancast.com

Legions of Stargate SG-1 and Atlantis fans were crushed to learn that Amanda Tapping was disembarking from the popular franchise, leaving in her wake little more than vague indications of possible guest appearances by her beloved character, Sam Carter, in future Stargate movies down the line.

Happily, Amanda’s back on the sci fi scene with a vengeance in Sanctuary playing Dr. Helen Magnus - a smoking hot 157 year old femme fatale who runs a secret sanctuary for abnormal creatures and extraordinary humans of every ilk. With everything from mermaids to vampires, Bigfoot to Jack the Ripper flocking to the protective confines of Dr. Magnus’ occult oasis, the block watch participants of this neighborhood will certainly be kept on their toes.

Tapping has also donned an Executive Producer mantle for the series, which is being described as an effects-intense show that boasts a dazzling graphic novel vibe a la Sin City and 300. Tapping took time out from performing her relentless double duties on both sides of the camera to field questions from the press. She discussed how her current reign as celebrated sci-fi siren belies a love for comedy and Little House on the Prairie; how delivering lines to a tennis ball in front of a green screen is not that different from theater; and why being a working mom is equally hard in both the fictional and real life realms.

Following are some highlights from the Q & A session:

People are so familiar with you now starting with the X-Files episode, and then going through all the Stargates. Before this started, were you interested in sci-fi or fantasy at all?

Amanda Tapping: I would say more fantasy. I wasn’t a huge sci-fi fan. I appreciated the genre, but I honestly was more of a Little House on the Prairie girl. So…

That would be a difference, yeah.

Amanda Tapping: Quite different. But I grew up with three brothers and they were into, you know, all the big sci-fi shows. And I actually really got into Star Trek: Next Generation and Babylon 5. So I guess I slowly got indoctrinated - pulled away from the prairie into space.

Now as you become encompassed in playing it, I mean what do you find interesting about being in that genre instead of a different one?

Amanda Tapping: As hokey as this sounds, it’s just a limitless possibility. It’s sort of - it’s the fact that you can go anywhere, do anything. You’re not bound by even normal human physics. I mean, you can literally do anything and I think that that idea of possibility is what makes it so appealing. But in truth, sci-fi as a genre is really not that different than anything else. I mean, we’re telling the same sort of stories. We just have maybe perhaps a broader palette on which to tell them.

But I think sci-fi as a genre is blown wide open. It’s not what it used to be. It’s not - the demographic is a lot different than it used to be. We’re not just exploring space. The genre is much broader than it used to be.

Plus there are more female captains, more female admirals and so forth. As you’ve proven, female stars of series have been where you have to be.

Amanda Tapping: And there’s more female audience members. There’s a lot of women watching sci-fi which is amazing.

We talked about this time last year for Stargate Atlantis and at that time you joked that you’re going for Kelsey Grammar of sci-fi, which is of course another 20-year run in one character.

Amanda Tapping: I know.

What changed? What do you - what blew your skirt up so much about Sanctuary that you would change, that you would direct all your energies toward this?

Amanda Tapping: When I first got approached with Sanctuary, I didn’t know what the future of me and the Stargate franchise was going to be. And so we - this was January of 2006 that it initially - the script was brought to me. And at that time I didn’t know Atlantis was going to - I was going to be doing Atlantis and I didn’t know what was going to happen with SG-1. So we shot this little test scene and then decided to - we got the funding and in January 2007 decided to do a web series, which didn’t seem at all to conflict with Stargate or how that was going to work. The timing worked out perfectly.

And then when it came down to - I had finished Season 4 of Atlantis and I got offered Season 5, and it was a really lovely contract. And it would’ve been very easy to say yes. But I had to sort of make this enormous leap of faith because Sanctuary was waiting in the wings. We didn’t have a broadcast deal yet. We were hoping that - you know, we had a lot of interest from different broadcasters around the world and we were hoping that we would get picked up.

And so had I said yes to Atlantis, I would’ve basically killed Sanctuary where it stood because I wouldn’t have been available to do it, and it would’ve gone away. And I felt really strongly - so many people had put their time and effort, and money and support behind it that I thought, it’s time to make this leap. And I love the character. I love this show.

Stargate was very gracious and understood my need to sort of move on. The fact that there was still the possibility of Stargate movies and that I would definitely be involved in them made it sort of a soft landing because I wasn’t actually saying good bye. I was saying see you later. But I did make this enormous leap of faith whereby I said okay I have to stand beyond this project. I put my money in it. I put my name attached to it and I’m executive producing it. And here I go.

So I took the leap and shortly after turning down the Atlantis contract, Sanctuary started to get its broadcasts picked up around the world. So, “Phew!” was basically the word of the week.

And it’s just a beautiful project, and I’m so proud of it, and I’m so proud of the people that are involved. And it just felt like the right time.

Now you’ve [undergone] a remarkable makeover to become this character, too. I have to look very hard at you……as this character to see the same Amanda that I know from Stargate.

Amanda Tapping: Yeah.

Was that important to you to be completely different in your appearance, or is that second nature for you as an actor to just change your look?

Amanda Tapping: It was a really conscious choice. When I first decided to do Helen Magnus, it was a real conscious choice to have absolutely no vestige of Sam Carter in this character in terms of any - everything from her appearance to her voice, to her walk, to her wardrobe, everything. I just felt the end to completely reinvent. Partly as a woman, I just felt it was time, and as an actress I just felt it was time to just try something completely different.

And it’s kind of great, because I go places and people don’t recognize me; people that I’ve worked with for ten years don’t recognize me. I just shot the final episode of Atlantis last week and I walked onto the set and half the crew didn’t know who I was. And I was like sweet - I have accomplished what I set out to accomplish. And then of course I came back with a blonde wig and they went, “Oh - hey Amanda!” It was funny.

I know you’ve worked with special effects. That’s old hat, but is it weird working in such a minimalist setup where almost everything in the room is just a green backdrop?

Amanda Tapping: Yeah. Initially it is, but you know what? It feels more like doing theater than anything else. And that was my training, so it actually feels like you’re putting on a play half the time because you don’t have a huge set to play with and you don’t have - you know, you really do definitely have the fourth wall. So it does feel a bit more like theater. The hardest thing with shooting an almost entirely virtual show is getting a sense of the scale.

We’ve shot in the catacombs under Rome and we’ve shot in huge chapels and we’ve shot in - the Sanctuary itself is this massive structure. And it’s really hard to get a sense of just how big it all is. So when we’re starting to see now the fully finished effects, you’re like oh my, wow the Sanctuary really is huge. Whoa, okay. But that’s the hardest thing. The hardest thing is just getting a sense of the scope.

Helen Magnus looks really good for 157. What’s her secret?

Amanda Tapping: She bathes in Botox. No……….yeah, well, actually her - I’d tell you, but I’d have to kill you. Wait until the episode, The Five, and you’ll get it - you’ll get the full meal deal on Helen Magnus and how she came to be who she is and why she’s still around. The beauty of being given a 13-episode arc for our first season is that we’ve been able to sort of pull these stories out, like just create this huge mythology that we couldn’t do in, you know, the two hours of webisodes. We sort of packed a lot into those two hours. But now we’re able to sort of draw that mythology out. So Helen Magnus’ secret is revealed in an episode called The Five.

After the pilot, what’s the direction of the series? I’m sure you’re going to discuss the back-story of Jack the Ripper and all that stuff, but what happens after that? How is it laid out?

Amanda Tapping: Well it’s - part of the mythology, like I said in the episode of The Five, deals with these five characters from history who have come together, these forward-thinking scientists and how they’ve come to be who they are; Jack the Ripper being one of them, Helen being another one, and a few other very cool characters from history.

So we start with that as a jumping off point. But the main focus of the show is the creatures within the Sanctuary. And it can be anything from - we have a beautiful episode called Edward, where it’s a young boy who is an autistic savant and it’s his ability - he’s like a human camera.

He’s actually a person like this in the world so it’s based on sort of pseudo fact. But, you know, there’s his story and how they get him to come out of his shell. [The] back-story is really explored. And it’s - I’m loathe to say monster of the week because it’s not that but we do - every episode has a very interesting focal character that we’re dealing with. But like I said, we also bring in, you know, and it’s now common knowledge - Nikola Tesla is one of the characters that comes to light in the Sanctuary. So yeah - we’re pulling from that. We’re pulling from sort of the things that go bump in the night mythologies that we’ve all grown up with. We pull from history. And then we’re also just taking really remarkable human beings and sort of shedding a light on that idea.

How would you set the show up for someone who is coming in blind to it who hasn’t seen the webisodes; its plot, its tone? What’s exciting about the storyline to you?

Amanda Tapping: Wow. You know, we’ve been asking ourselves that same question. I keep going to Damian and saying what’s the log line for our show? Come on, come on. How would I describe it? It’s centered around my character, Helen Magnus, who is a 157-year old doctor from Victorian England who runs a sanctuary for all manner of abnormal creatures. She’s pulls into the fray a young forensic psychiatrist named Will Zimmerman, who has always sort of thought outside of the box and has therefore been shunned by regular law enforcement agencies - but in fact now realizes that the things that he’s sort of tried to investigate are now real.

You’re kind of seeing a lot of the Sanctuary and a lot of the creatures and a lot of the mythologies through his eyes as sort of the Everyman. But the show has a very graphic novel feel to it. We’re shooting almost photo real - you know, half the time you’re not sure if what you’re looking at really exists or whether it’s a visual effect and sometimes it’s very obvious that it’s a visual effect, and we’re shooting with a real graphic style. So it’s got a real edgy look to it. So that’s tone, a bit of the plot.

I have this really kick ass daughter, Ashley, who is a weapons expert and a martial artist. She’s kind of the cool factor. We draw from characters in history and from this incredible mythology of my back-story. Am I doing good?

Perfect, perfect.

Amanda Tapping: I’m trying to find sound bytes for you. I’m like ah, ah. I need to call Damian and say, “Give me a log line.”

And then you are an Executive Producer on it, obviously. How hands on are you and what kind of appreciation does being an Exec Producer give you as to what actually it takes to put on a show like this?

Amanda Tapping: Yeah, okay. Well I’m very hands on; more so than I probably should be. But I’m very hands on. I took the mantle very seriously so part of my job, I felt, was to go out and try to get us the funding to continue to make the show. So I’m in touch with our financial guys on a regular basis and that’s kind of my job, is to go and get beaten up. “Why does television cost so much money?” I have to answer those questions. I’m involved in the casting and editing, and making sure that the crew is all put together. Now I’m doing post production, mixing shows, color correcting and the sound and everything.

So this is a whole new learning curve for me. And I literally found that I do not have a spare minute in my day. As soon as I get to work, which is usually a couple of hours before crew call, if I’m not sitting in the makeup chair or actually acting on set, then I’m in a meeting or a conference call.

So my appreciation is that I now think actors are wimps. I used to think that I had the hardest job in the world. Sam Carter was a really intense character in terms of the volume of dialogue that I had. And I used to think, “Oh my God - I’ve got ten pages of techno babble today! I’m working so hard!” And now I just laugh at that and go - oh my God…..there are days where I just want to be an actor again.

How pleased are you with Season 1 as a whole?

Amanda Tapping: Totally, totally proud of it. I’m really thrilled. I think we have some really killer episodes and I’m proud of the fact that our crew stuck around. We wanted to start in February. We didn’t end up starting to shoot until May. A lot of the people we have are feature quality crew members and who have actually been trying - you know, features have tried to lure them away and they stayed with the show. And I think it speaks volumes about how much faith people have in this project. So I’m proud of the look of the show and the feel of it, and the attitude on set, and the fun that we had. I’m really proud of the product. And I think there’s some shows coming up - there’s an episode called Requiem which for me personally was the bravest work I’ve ever done as an actor. I don’t think I would’ve been able to do that had I not felt so safe. So I mean, I credit the crew and the cast for just - it was a really - it was a phenomenal experience.

We’ve talked a lot about and know how this is groundbreaking technologically and yet for an average person watching, that maybe doesn’t mean a heck of a lot. If you’re somebody tuning into this for the first time, do you want the people who are watching to be aware of the groundbreaking technology or do you want it to be so seamless that maybe the average person doesn’t even know anything about that?

Amanda Tapping: A little bit from Column A and a little bit from Column B to be honest with you. I think ideally there are times when we don’t want people to know and in fact, in our massive - we have this huge opening shot which is almost entirely a vis effect until the very end and you’re not sure where the vis effect ends and the real scene begins. And that kind of seamlessness is so stunning to me. But people will know. They’ll know by watching it that what they’re seeing isn’t always real and we’re really proud of that because the vis effects are so cool looking. So it’s kind of a hard question to answer because I do - you don’t have to be a technology buff or think it’s really cool or be into it to find the style of the show interesting. You can’t help but be drawn into it, even if that’s not your bent. I think you can’t help but notice how cool it looks.

Yeah, it’s one of those funny things when the technology for something gets so good that, you know, if the object is to just make it seem so real, it’s kind of a tough one, isn’t it, in terms of - do you want people to notice or not?

Amanda Tapping: Right. Honestly, at the end of the day, all the technology in the world wouldn’t mean anything if you didn’t care about the characters. I think that that’s always been the case with good television - if you care about the characters and you care about what happens to them, and you’re interested in their relationships and you’re interested in how they move forward through scenes, then that doesn’t matter what’s going on in the background.

I think that at the end of the day the audience will really like the characters on the show and will care about them. And that will save us, technology aside. I mean, the fact that we happen to have some really kick ass vis effects is very cool, but if you don’t care about the story, then you don’t care about the story.

You played Sam Carter for so long. Is there an emotional detachment that you go through when you’ve played this character for such a long period of time, and then moving into Helen Magnus and this whole new world that’s been created for you?

Amanda Tapping: Yeah, it’s a weird disconnect that you have to do because Sam Carter was so much a part of me. I mean, the line between Sam and Amanda became pretty blurry at times. She informed so much of who I was becoming, and I informed so much of who she was becoming that, you know, it was a weird - it was a very difficult disconnect. When I finally decided to not go back to Atlantis, I ended up doing two episodes this season - the very first one and the very last one of the season, which was great.

But when I said no and I finally had to walk away, it was a - I was a massive emotional mess, and my husband was like, “Come on, seriously - eleven years, sweetheart! Move on!” I was like, “You don’t understand.” You do, you have to - it’s sort of like cutting off your arm, and going “Okay, how do I move forward now?” But then after awhile, the - I mean, for me as an actor the whole joy of discovering a whole new character and of creating this woman was…..you know, you move on pretty quickly. Like I said, it’s been a very soft landing. If I had gone - you know, Stargate had been canceled and I didn’t have anywhere to go, then that would be I think a lot more difficult to let her go. But because I had somewhere, you know, really exciting to leap into - the hard part for me was last week where I wrapped Sanctuary on September 12 and the following week I was shooting Stargate Atlantis. I was like oh, Sam Carter, Sam Carter, find Sam Carter, where’s Sam Carter? You know what I mean? I put on the army boots and there she was. It was good.

Helen has a daughter.

Amanda Tapping: Yes.

That’s a great place to mine a lot of family stories and just the emotional bond there. Where can we see that going in this first crop of episodes?

Amanda Tapping: Well, it’s really an interesting relationship between these two. I mean, first of all the fact — and this is something that I still have a, you know, I’m still trying to wrap my head around how to play this out but — Helen made a choice to bring this child into the world knowing that she could quite possibly watch her grow old and die - not knowing if Ashley has the same gift that Helen has, not knowing if Ashley will have the longevity. So she brings this child into the world knowing that she may lose her, which as a parent is like the worst thing ever - to imagine your children dying before you. So starting from that as your jumping off point of a relationship is just a weird place to start. And then what happens is they’re comrades. They’re colleagues.

I mean, she’ll fight to the end of the earth to protect her daughter, but at the end of the day, it’s often her daughter protecting her. Which again turns the whole mother/daughter dynamic on its head. There’s a huge amount of respect and there’s a huge amount of chemistry between these two women. And then there’s times when the mother/daughter dynamic flashes up and it sort of feels weird. It’s like, “Ashley, be careful out there!” - you know, and yet you’re sending her out to fight an invisible monster in the caves underneath the city. It’s like this weird dynamic.

Because of what they’re facing everyday, there’s these flashpoints. But at the end of it there’s a massive amount of love.

You did a great job casting because Emily seems really great.

Amanda Tapping: Yes, she is. She’s awesome.

With Sanctuary starting out as a web series, had the intention always been for that to be a showcase or a springboard to a traditional TV deal, or were there aspects to the web format that were kind of appealing and interesting in their own right?

Amanda Tapping: Well we, in our infinite naivety, actually envisioned staying on the web. We never really set it up to be a model for a television series. Our initial hope was that we were going to, you know - that the shifting paradigm that this convergence of new media, we were going to do games and having, you know, a full social networking site so that Sanctuary For All became a place where fans could go not just to watch the show, but to get involved in other aspects.

And in ideology it’s great, and monetization - not so much. And we wanted to make a really spectacular show. We spent a lot of money and it needed it. We wanted to do something that was really big and really flashy, and that we would all, you know, be proud to watch. We probably could’ve used even a few more million dollars to make the vis effects better. And the thing you need to know about the webisodes is a lot of those vis effects were rendered in 12 days which is crazy……so anyway, that was our idea.

As a business model there were - you know, there’s also ancillary revenue streams so we were thinking we would make money this way, this way and this way and still be able to produce the show. And that just didn’t happen. I mean, the Internet being what it is, the sites, the streaming. We knew it was going to be pirated and that was cool. We wanted to get the name out there. What it ended up doing for us was bringing a huge amount of eyeballs to the show from around the world. And then it sort of became, well - we don’t want to lose this great intellectual property. We don’t want to lose the idea of the show, so let’s go back to what we know and what we’re good at, which is making television.

And then suddenly it all made sense. It’s like the clouds parted and the sun stream - you know, the little god rays streamed through and we went “Oh, of course we’re going to do television. What were we thinking?” And so that’s - you know, and now we’re on TV and it makes sense. And we’re all very happy to be here. But I think still our goal is to get back onto the web in a different presence. You know, the alternate reality gaming aspect of it, or taking turns in the Sanctuary. What I would love to see is, you know, Helen walking down a hallway and the audience being able to click on a door that she passes and go through that door, and see what happens. In a TV series, that doesn’t………….I mean, this is in my brain, which is quite exhausted. But I think it would be cool to (unintelligible)…… that sort of thing.

More interactivity in other words?

Amanda Tapping: Exactly. To create a web presence that’s more interactive. At this stage, however, we had a finite amount of money and a really, really short timeframe. So we focused all our energy on making the 13 episodes of the show. And, you know, if it’s successful — and of course, we’re all hoping that it will be — then eventually we will branch out and try to do more interactive web initiatives with it.

Your biography states that you co-founded a comedy troupe. Is that right?

Amanda Tapping: Yeah, I did. Yeah.

How often do you have an opportunity to just enjoy full-on comedy? Would you like to do more of that in the future?

Amanda Tapping: I’d love to. I mean, I actually got to do a short film last year called Breakdown and I won the Canadian Comedy Award for Best Actress in a Film for it which was kind of fun. But it was like - for me it was, “Oh my god, I’m still funny! Woo!” Because, you know, you spend your time in sci-fi land for so long, and you sort of forget that these other skill sets exist, or have they gotten dusty? It was really fun just to be able to play in that realm.

Comedy is sort of my default mechanism and thankfully I work with these incredibly funny people. And Robin Dunne is - who plays Will Zimmerman on our show - is perhaps one of the funniest people I’ve ever met. And he’s just this quiet little - you know, you’d never know by watching him. He’s so – just an earnest, intense character but behind that is this zany, crazy, funny man. So I hope we get a chance to showcase that. It would be good to do a Sanctuary comedy episode. But…

I was going to say, so - would that be in the future perhaps?

Amanda Tapping: Yeah, Season 3 or 4, you know.

I was wanting to find out maybe if you could tell us what are some of the acting challenges you’ve found for stepping into Helen’s shoes, would you say?

Amanda Tapping: Literally stepping into her shoes because they’re stilettos and they’re very uncomfortable…..compared to army boots. It was finding her physicality. After playing a character like Sam Carter for so long where her physicality is so comfortable - Sam is so comfortable in her own skin, and Helen is this very sexual, more mysterious being. She has a much darker edge to her and it was sort of finding that, because Carter always looks on the bright side, and Helen has been around so long, and has seen so much of the evil in human society if you will. And she’s also seen the genius and the brilliance. But I mean, at the heart of Helen is this swing of incredible loneliness, and so it was finding all of that. It was sort of trying to create this completely legitimate, dark, intense woman after playing somebody like Carter for so long.

It was a huge challenge to find her. And literally also just to find her voice. I wanted to make sure that because she’s from Victorian era England it informs so much of who this woman is and how she thinks. And that era is so specific. And because she was a forward thinker and she pushed the envelope scientifically and emotional and societally, she’s informed by that. And so I wanted her voice to still have that carriage of, you know, the aristocrat and the use of proper English. But she’s been around for so long that it couldn’t be so high brow. It still had to be sort of accessible to modern day vernaculars. So finding that, you know, was - that was a challenge, too. I mean, I walked around for days trying different accents on people - unwitting, ordering coffee in Starbucks as this - mid-Atlantic wasn’t working for me so I had to pull back.

So you mentioned maybe we’ll see [certain things] in Season 2, 3, 4. I was just wondering how far in advance is this thing mapped out?

Amanda Tapping: Up to Episode 13.

There’s no four year plan or…

Amanda Tapping: We don’t, actually. I’m sure that Damian actually in his head has a grander scheme for the whole thing. But at this stage, we’ve sort of started mapping out where we want certain character relationships to go. But really we’re sort of - it’s that kind of - it’s that superstitious feeling of let’s not plan too far ahead because we may be derailed, you know. Like let’s think really clearly about - intelligently how we want this series to move forward.

We don’t want to be rushed - you know, rush into anything but also by the same token, I don’t know it’s this weird sort of superstitious - how I feel is which is people are like what would happen in Season 2 and I’m like I don’t want to talk about Season 2. Let’s hope next year we get a pickup for Season 2. Let’s get through Season 1. Come on everybody, just calm down, calm down. You know what I mean? I’m a bit of a fatalist.

So nobody is counting their chickens right now?

Amanda Tapping:Exactly, exactly. We’ve all been in this industry long enough to know. I mean, I just kept thinking Stargate would get canceled and it never did. And the one year that we thought it would get picked up again, we got canceled. So I’m of the mind that I’m just going to think that - you know, think the worst and be really pleasantly surprised. But I think Damian has a grander scheme for it. We just have to dig it out of his little brain.

Is there any mythology or fairy tales, whatever, that you’re looking forward to doing? Any old stories that you want to do?

Amanda Tapping: There are, actually. I’ve always loved the vampire mythology and I’ve always loved the idea of that kind of creature- totally without social conscience, and how that works. And so that was sort of - if she ends up with a - ooh, vampires, they’re the scariest thing I can possibly think of. And so we sort of explored that mythology actually already in the first 13.

But I like that idea. I like the idea of what happens with a creature that seemingly has no social conscience, seemingly has just a selfish agenda and then you find out that maybe it’s not necessarily that at all. I like the idea of turning things on their head. What I - I’m not really answering your question very well. It gets lost on a little bit of a tangent. But I like the idea that we are taking what society views as abnormal and shining a light on it, saying maybe not so abnormal. Maybe - because Helen’s belief ultimately is that all the creatures that she studies are keys to the evolution of our race.

She believes that they’re evolutionary steps and so when you look at somebody like - somebody with autism, for example……is it that they’re societally challenged, or are they just so far advanced that we don’t get them? And I have an autistic nephew, and I look at him sometimes, and I think he has insights into this world way beyond. But we don’t get it, so we think that he’s not quite up to our standards.

At this point in time how does [Helen] look at her longevity: as a gift or a curse?

Amanda Tapping: Both. I think ultimately she still sees that there’s work to be done, and she still sees that her quest is worthy, so she needs to be around for it. But she often talks about the curse of it, and that’s what I alluded to before, this swing of incredible loneliness. When you watch everyone you’ve ever known grow old and die — all your lovers and your friends — I think that her heart is very well protected now because……if it wasn’t, she would be heartbroken all the time, watching these incredible people that she spends time with. So I think she’s very guarded, because she doesn’t want to give people too much for fear that it - you know, she’ll be heartbroken in the end. So there’s - that’s the loneliness and the curse of that. But like I said, she still has a quest to fulfill and so she’ll continue doing what she’s doing because it’s still worthy.

Over the course of the first 13 episodes, will we get glimpses of what she’s been doing all this time?

Amanda Tapping:Some, yeah. What I would like to do is if we do get picked up for another season, is explore a little bit more of her back-story in terms of like actually going back and looking at it - like to see her in the different eras of what she’s done. But you get a huge sense of her past and how she’s been spending her time in the first 13 for sure.

We see her in the first episode kind of pulling Will into this world, and she already has sort of this team together. Is she gearing more towards maybe building a family instead of a team or maybe……some kind of group of people that she would want her daughter to be around, that her daughter can learn from?

Amanda Tapping: Absolutely. Absolutely. She’s always thinking in terms of like-minded people and in terms of creating for herself a family environment which is why her butler is Bigfoot, and he’s as much a part of her family as anyone, and why young Henry was brought into the fray as a young child, and now he’s a part of the Sanctuary.

She does create family wherever she goes. And Ashley is always a growing concern for Magnus. She always wants her to have a good influence around her and that’s alluded to a lot in the series as well. So hang on with that one.

You set up a lot of things in the first episode, one of them being the secret that she shares with Will about Ashley. Can we expect that that’s going to be something that kind of comes back to bite Helen for maybe not telling Ashley about that?

Amanda Tapping: Definitely, and Ashley does find out. She had to. I mean, that’s not something that you can just keep playing out. It’s like beating a dead horse after awhile - the idea that Ashley doesn’t know who her father is. So she does find out who her father is. And it’s interesting because it is dealt with by not being dealt with, which means that it’s something that’s going to come up and bite her in the ass.

I know there’s some things about her dad - about John - that were talked about in the webisodes that weren’t necessarily broached in the first episode. Are those things still to come?

Amanda Tapping: Yes.

I’ve seen a lot of the web series now and I noticed that there’s some differences in the web series and the first episode of the TV show. Why those decisions were made, and do you think it’ll be off-putting for any of the webisode fans? Are you worried about that at all?

Amanda Tapping: We were initially, but I think what the move to television has done has given us a lot more freedom and a lot more room, and a lot more time to be honest, to spread out this mythology and to open up the mythology. The web series was so compact and so much information was given in that short period of time that I don’t think the stories were given as much breadth as they needed. And so here we’re able to breathe a lot more life into these - into specific areas of the story. I don’t think that people who have watched the web series will be disappointed. Because it’s just that it’s spread out.

We were concerned initially. Changes were made. In part, there were network concerns about certain aspects of the story and also we had more time. We had the opportunity to create a more living, breathing mythology, rather than pack it in.

You mentioned that Requiem was your bravest episode. In general, what’s it about and where will it come in - how far along is it? What episode is it?

Amanda Tapping: I think it’s Episode 8 or 9. And it’s Will and Magnus stuck in a submarine in the middle of the Bermuda Triangle. And Magnus goes insane.

You mentioned you’ve got this kick ass daughter in the show. In real life, your daughter is three years old, is that right?

Amanda Tapping: Yeah, and she’s kick ass too.

Now you’re going into this fiercely demanding series. Is it hard to have a kid that young at the same time that you’re starring in and producing a show?

Amanda Tapping: Of course, yeah. It’s the big - it’s the great equalizer for me. Mama guilt is - I think any working mother goes through the same thing. It’s the topic of trying to do what you want to do and being fulfilled and, you know, needing to work and wanting to be home. The beauty of doing series is that it’s a - you know, it’s a short period of time. You’re working really hard, crazy long hours and then you have these breaks. And in these breaks, I get to be full-on mama. But it is very difficult. I mean, the beauty of having Olivia when I had her was I went back to work with her. For the first 18 months of her life she was with me everyday at work. But that’s not possible with a three and a half year old. She needs more freedom. It’s the great debate in my head and in my heart all the time, about working.

Don’t be left out in the cold – retreat to Sanctuary, premiering this Friday, October 3 at 9/8 c on the Sci Fi Channel.

More on These Topics: Amanda Tapping | Sanctuary | Stargate Atlantis | Stargate SG-1