hris Brancato, creator and co-executive producer of the SCI FI Channel's First Wave, finds himself--after filming three seasons in this tense Earth-vs.-aliens epic--at his own juncture of tension and excitement.
His series, which began broadcasting third-season episodes last month, will be up for a renewal decision sometime this month. As you will see in this interview with Brancato, he's very confident in the quality of the season's episodes, and he remains optimistic about the show's future.
The fact that First Wave is up for a renewal decision so
early in the third season's broadcast must be very tense for you and everyone
connected with the show. How are the ratings doing?
Brancato: The decision comes from SCI FI here domestically and also from
Pearson Television, who distributes our show in all other territories in the
world. It would be a combined decision between the two of them.
Our ratings were hurt last year here in the U.S. because we were moved from
Friday nights, where we were on with Farscape, to stand alone on Sunday
nights. Our ratings went down about a 10th of a point on average every
episode because we were just sort of all alone on Sunday night with
Highlander and The Crow reruns. And now, we're part of a new block of
programming on Monday nights with a couple of other new shows. Hopefully we'll do well there.
Is the show seen in
many countries around the world?
Brancato: A lot of people do see it around the world. The last accurate figure I heard
was that we're in 57 markets worldwide. Ultimately, they have to add up the
numbers and see if the financiers can continue paying to keep the show.
Creatively speaking, what kind of decisions did you have to make, going
into the third season, to create the Gua resistance force Raven Nation, and
their leader Jordan Radcliffe, who is played by Traci Lords?
Brancato: It has always been in my head that the show had to evolve. There
has to be a measure of success in Cade's journey. It had to travel in
different directions, otherwise we'd get into the rut of doing the same thing
every week. At the end of the second season, I really felt that after 44
stories, "Okay, now it's time to ramp up the alien move towards the second
wave." If I were watching the show as a fan I'd start to say, "They've got a
lot of information. Now it's time to mobilize and attack Earth." And at the
same time, I wanted to suggest in a way our budget could afford that Cade
Foster was attracting a huge following of believers. I would have loved to
bring back actors from seasons one and two, showing thousands of people
crowding around Eddie's trailer, but our budget doesn't allow that!
I understand that before shooting could ever begin, everyone involved
with the show had a serious problem to resolve. This problem manifested
itself in the form of a casting call in the spring of 2000 to replace
Sebastian Spence. The notice that went out said, "We must consider replacing
the lead of our series, the character Cade Foster. The character would
continue with his consciousness being replaced into another body and thus
the Saga goes on. ... " This casting call notice set off a lot of rumors within fandom that you were
parting ways with Sebastian, and that the series was taking a fork in the
road, a scenario that actually happened with Earth: Final Conflict when they
replaced Kevin Kilner with Robert Leeshock.
Brancato: What happened there was simply that for the second year in a row,
Sebastian's back, which has a chronic back injury, forced us to shut down
production. At the end of season one we had to delay the filming of episode
22 for a month while he recovered and had back surgery. And then, after
episode 18 of season two, the same thing happened again. He had to have
surgery to repair an old back injury. We were forced to issue a casting call
for a replacement actor as an insurance precaution with literally zero
thought that we would actually have to cast it. We suspected that Sebastian
would be fine at the end of the surgery, recover quickly and go back to the
show.
[Producer] Larry Sugar had to put that out as an indication to the bond
company and the financiers that if Sebastian was indeed physically unable to
perform the role, that we could finish out our obligation for the season.
Unfortunately, when a casting call goes out, people hear about it. A lot of
speculation developed around whether we were dissatisfied with his
performance or some other problem. None of them were true. Unfortunately, it
caused some ruffled feathers among the fans, and even Sebastian himself was
wondering what was happening. Of course, we explained to him that this was
just a bureaucratic necessity, and we had no intention whatsoever of
replacing him. Not only that, we were ecstatic about his performance. But
then he was fine and we went back to work.
This year Cade and Crazy Eddie (Rob LaBelle) are joined by a new ally, a
tough-as-nails red-haired woman named Jordan Radcliffe, leader of Raven
Nation, a resistance group against the Gua aliens. Tell us about how you
came to create the character.
Brancato: We felt the series needed a shot in the arm. We wanted a recurring
female character to add tension between Foster and Eddie. What we decided to
do was personify our following of Cade Foster in the form of Jordan
Radcliffe and create a Raven Nation that we don't see all that much, but we
hear about! That would make us feel, for those of us watching the show, that
Foster and Eddie's efforts were somewhat successful, at least among the
small group of the populace.
So you placed a massive casting call on both sides of the North American
border: in Vancouver, Toronto and Los Angeles. What kind of an actress were
you looking for?
Brancato: I was thinking, "If we're going to hire someone for this role, I'm
looking for two things: I'm looking for the best actor--always!" We're
looking for someone who may or may not give you a publicity jolt. We wanted
actresses who had TV recognition.
We wanted someone like a Jeri Ryan or a Carrie-Anne Moss. Unfortunately,
those two people I just mentioned are occupied doing other things!
At our sessions here in L.A., I came in and about 15 actresses were reading.
I happened to notice, unexpectedly, that Traci Lords was on this list.
She's had a nice career as a legitimate actress for
about 10 years. I was curious how she would do. I wasn't expecting all that
much. Out of the 90 people who had read, she was just the best! She played
both the good and "evil" aspects of the character very effectively.
It required someone who could be likable and friendly as an ally of Cade's. And play a few other roles as well. Not only was she terrific in the
audition, she did a wonderful job throughout the season. She was also an
incredibly positive and professional presence on the set. People were
getting tired and she was a breath of fresh air.
What made Traci Lords' casting all the more remarkable was that you
ended up choosing her without screen-testing her with Sebastian Spence. Isn't that standard procedure in Hollywood, to see if these two actors had good chemistry together and in front of the camera?
Brancato: We just rolled the dice with that. It is customary that you would
do a lot of screen testing, and anxiety-provoking focus groups. I think we
just assumed that they would work well together. I don't think we ever
filmed them together until the first day on the actual show. When you bring
that up as a question, I sort go, "Wow! That's sort of insane that we would
have done that." Once we met Traci and talked with her about the role, I was
impressed with her professionalism and from her audition. I just didn't see
it as being much of a problem. Oddly enough, [Sebastian and Traci became]
good friends. She's proven to be fairly popular. I think she's a good addition to
the show.
So what do you have lined up for this season's plotting? What kinds of
confrontations will we expect to see for Cade, Eddie and that Gua defector,
Joshua?
Brancato: We ramped up the alien menace in the form of Mabus, the alien
Antichrist, who had appeared to lead the second wave. Every episode now has
a little bit more sense of urgency. It's not just alien experiments
[anymore]. You'll see this as the season develops. Every step is going to
get closer and closer until ... they either destroy us or not.
So the Gua's Mabus is your recurring villain for the season?
Brancato: I don't know how successfully we've done that, but we needed to
personify the threat in one alien who didn't just look like anyone else, who
looked a little scary. It was an attempt to finally see the face of this
evil. To create someone who could be a specific villain. It's very common in
science fiction that you would do something like this. We just felt it was
necessary. If I had to do it over again, there are some things I'd do
differently. But, all in all, I think it works. If you like the show and are
watching the episodes, you get the feeling this year that we're not just
meandering along, we're moving towards something that eventually has a
climax at the end of the year.
Over the course of 44 episodes, Cade and Eddie have been battling to
prevent the so-called "Second Wave." Will the series ever depict these
events?
Brancato: No question about it. The show moves to a second wave at the end
of this year. That I don't have to hide. Should we be producing more
episodes, we'll be dealing with a different landscape on the show. I think
it would be foolish for us to try to just simply stay the course of a first
wave. Whether you change the title of the series or not, I don't know, but from
here on the viewers of the third season and a possible fourth, should expect
lots of different things.
But if the second wave is an actual alien invasion, will the series
evolve into a cross between The Invaders meets War of the Worlds or V?
Brancato: Well, no, we want to stay away from doing absolute retreads of
other series, while at the same time, what we would do--and there hasn't
been a lot of discussion about where we would go after season three, but I'll say this--we would try and make sure the show has some First Wave elements that we all like, such as the relationship between Cade and Eddie. We have to figure out whether we'd do a post-apocalyptic show or something in the midst of a full-blown battle for the possession of the Earth. It's
sort all up in the air right now.
Because the third season ended with an uncertain future for the
production, you seem to be placed in a very tough situation. Your third
season finale may have to serve as both a season finale cliffhanger and, in
case the series got canceled, as a series finale. Do you know what the
series' idealized final episode is about?
Brancato: Our initial commitment to the SCI FI Channel was to do three years. I
think what we've been able to do is create a wonderful season finale for
season three. Should we continue, that's going to require a lot of
discussion about where we're going with the show. So the answer to your
question, no, I don't have in mind yet what the [series] finale of the show
is going to be, however I feel the finale of season three is very effective
to end the season. We'll see what happens after that.
We would love to keep doing the show for five or six years and hope they
would let us do it. We worked very hard to create a finale for season three
that provides room for a series to continue but also provides a satisfying
finale to what we've been doing for three years. If, in the sad event that
this is all we are doing, fans can look at episode 66; we tie up a lot of
loose ends over the course of the season and we tried to follow them to a
wonderful finale. I think it is a satisfying ending to the whole series.
But it also provides a launching pad to do other interesting things if we
continue to go forward.
It's a closed ending that offers possibilities. I don't want to give too
much away. It's one of the things I'm happiest about. When you write and
produce a show, you're not always happy about how a show turns out, or
how you did a character, or this and that. In this case, I'm very happy
about how we resolved the end of season three. I hope we get a chance to do
more.
Here, in Vancouver, Canada, where the show is filmed, an ad appeared in an
arts/entertainment weekly advertising that First Wave was having a two-day
public sale of all their props. When I saw that, I was stunned. My first
immediate thought was the show was ending. Was I leaping to conclusions?
Brancato: We're not a show that just constantly reuses props. The decision
was made to shut down operations for three or four months, sell off things
so we don't have to store them, and then if SCI FI orders the show and if
the financiers determine they want to go forward, we'll start up the show
again.
Was Crazy Eddie's Airstream trailer, just about the only recurring set of
the show, a part of that sale?
Brancato: It's in my driveway right here in Los Angeles! No, I'm just
kidding. I don't know what they did with the Airstream, that's a good
question. I got to find that out. [But] I don't think they sold the
Airstream.
Scanning the Internet, I've noticed devout fans of the series rallying
with Save First Wave campaigns, hoping to raise awareness and activism.
Brancato: We have a core group of die-hard fans who are wonderful people and
who care about the show a lot and have lobbied the SCI FI Channel to
continue the show. I think it's been effective.
I understand that First Wave fans have taken a page from the successful
campaign by Roswell fans to get that series renewed by the WB Network for a
second season. To express their passion for that show, fans mailed network
officials bottles of Tabasco sauce. For this campaign they mailed ... what?
Brancato: Bonnie Hammer, executive vice president and general manager of
the SCI FI Channel, is aware of the packages of salt that she's received from
fans, as well as all sorts of other things they send to remind her how much
they like it.
I get it. Gua aliens who inhabit human "husks" can betray themselves
because they react to salt in the same way that humans react to addictive
drugs. Fans have used salt as a device to express their love for the show.
Right?
Brancato: She's tickled by that. Ultimately, it's about ratings and dollars
and cents. But it certainly doesn't hurt that this wonderful group of
committed fans have expressed their liking of the show.
Subsequent to this interview, SCI FI announced that First Wave will be
moving from its Monday night slot to Saturdays at 9 p.m. ET beginning March
24.
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Also in this issue: Down to Earth's Chris Rock
