Sitting With Six: Maximum PC's One-on-One with Battlestar Galactica's Tricia Helfer

Posted 08/26/2008 at 10:50am | by David Murphy

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Anyone can talk about  "visual computing," the big catchphrase of this year's Nvision conference.  But few walk the walk as well as Battlestar Galactica's Tricia Helfer.  She took part in Monday's keynote address alongside Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang, sharing how virtualization and computer effects have expanded her acting boundaries and methodology.

But there's always more to Six than what you see at face value.  So Maximum PC sat down with Tricia to grill her (as nicely as one chats with someone who gave Starbuck the business) about the kind of technology that really makes her tick, and how she's managed her spaceborne success-turned-geek icon. Even after all that, she still wouldn't drop us any details on the Battlestar series finale--our favorite Cylon truly has a heart of steel.

So, Tricia, what are you doing at Nvision?

What am I doing?  I think I’m giving perspective to the audience of what it’s like working with some of the technology that they’re developing.  A lot of the people out there are developing it, but they don’t necessarily know what it’s like to work on the other side of it and the difficulties, the pros and the cons, that kind of thing.  Maybe it’ll help them in the long run.  Maybe it’ll help them develop a little bit—"well maybe we should try this!  Maybe we should try that!"

What are your expectations for Nvision?  Do you think of this as your typical geeky convention?

No, this is completely different.  Conventions, science fiction conventions, are more just—for me, they’re more laid-back. You’re talking basically about Battlestar Galactica and answering questions about the plot lines, and the story lines, and everything like this.  Being here at Nvision is a complete honor, because I’m coming on after Jeff Han.   As I was discovering yesterday, what he’s doing is unbelievable.  And to be on stage with [Nvidia CEO] Jen-Hsun Huang—it’s an amazing group of people to be on stage with.  So it’s an honor.  I’m a complete tech idiot, so it’s very interesting for me to kind of hear what’s going on out there and be a part of it.

Since you’ve admitted to being a technophobe, what’s your guilty geeky pleasure?

(laughs) I, honestly, am probably one of the worst people… I have four iPods, because NBC keeps giving them for Christmas gifts and stuff.  I still don’t even know how to, like…  I never take them anywhere because they’re not full of anything.  And my friend keeps sending me downloaded music and I don’t know how to actually get it from the e-mail onto my computer or onto my iPod.  I can’t sync my Blackberry to my Mac.  If something goes wrong, I literally yell at my husband to fix it for me, I call a computer tech, or I call my sister who manages my Web site.

One of these days, I’m hoping all these people out there make it easy enough for computer idiots like me that can just plug it in and everything works!

How have you managed the transition between people who see you as Tricia the actress versus Tricia the Cylon?

I started acting a year before I got Battlestar, so Battlestar is definitely one of the things that I’m known for in the acting world the most.  But I think now it’s a little bit different because in the very beginning I found it was very funny because people, when they met me, if they were fans of Battlestar, they were very intimidated by me.

Number Six, she’s a very strong character—physically, and emotionally, and mentally and everything—and I would find people scared to come up to talk to me at the first couple of conventions that I did.  After awhile, the fans—after you’ve met at a few conventions and they realize you not actually the baby-killing whatever—sometimes it’s hard to differentiate between the actor and what they see on screen.  So it just takes a couple of conventions and word starts to get out that she’s actually a nice person and so forth.  And now, at conventions, people are a lot more open to talking to me and getting a picture with me and all that kind of thing.

Does the science fiction convention tour ever get overwhelming?

I try and go for the happy medium.  I like to do a few because I do like to get out there and meet the fans, show them the respect—these conventions, they come to see people.   Not just the actors, but also all the illustrators, everybody involved in the sci-fi world.  But I don’t do it for a moneymaking thing.  I don’t want to do as many as I can.  I also want to work toward other jobs, and I also don’t want to get known just too much in the sci-fi world.  Now with Battlestar ending, my next couple of jobs are outside of the sci-fi realm because Battlestar has been known for such amazing writing.  For me to step back into sci-fi, which I will, I want it to be of a quality—the same type of a quality.  And so I’ve turned down a lot of roles that are in the sci-fi genre that I just don’t feel match up. 

It’s also, I don’t want to get known just in one genre because then I think it’s limiting for your career longevity in the long run.

But you have dabbled in the geekier roles—the Command and Conquer game…

Well, you know, a lot of the other things that I’ve done too.  In hiatius, I did an independent movie with Leelee Sobieski called Walk All Over Me that had nothing to do with the Sci-Fi genre…

Canada’s Next Top Model?

Canada’s Next Top Model, I hosted and produced.  I just did one year, I didn’t want to do more.  That was taking me back too much into the modeling realm. I was fighting to get out of being a model-turned-actress and fighting to be taken seriously.  And I was just starting to be taken seriously as an actor and then it was like—bang!—it went right back there.  The show’s great, and they do really well, but it just wasn’t for me. 

Instead I did the film Walk All Over Me, and that went to the Toronto Film Festival, The Weinstein Company bought it.  It’s out in the states right now on DVD.  And because of that, one of the casting directors from Fox Networks saw me at the Toronto Film Festival in that film and she liked me, and they put me under a holding deal, and now I’m doing a pilot for them—a show for them.

It’s just—you have to choose your priorities.  It’s a business.  You have to mold your career to where you want to go.

On the next page: saying goodbye to Battlestar Galactica