The last few years, Syfy has really raised the bar for science fiction television fare in my opinion. Aside from Black Mirror, four out of five of my top five sci-fi shows are on Syfy. I’d actually rank The Expanse & Dark Matter higher in that hierarchy than Black Mirror, despite its extraordinary writing. I guess maybe I am more interested in episodic shows. Or maybe I am captivated more by teams of outlaws fighting impossible odds and usually coming out on top.
Whatever the explanation may subconsciously be, I love a bunch of the shows they run these days, including two that feature Canadian rocker turned voice actor Jeff Teravainen: 12 Monkeys and Dark Matter. My constant use of hashtags and Twitter have led me to a bunch of my favorite TV stars the past year, and sometimes you luck out and they #FollowBack, which leads to chances to ask them to do interviews, bringing us right here to the phone interview I recently conducted with Jeff.
If you’ve never watched either show, now is your chance to binge watch it all. Then come right back and read this fun interview I did just in time to mark the season three finale of Dark Matter, tonight on Syfy!!
PlanetPhoebe: On Dark Matter, you play as Lieutenant John Anders, who has a history as an undercover agent alongside Six, back when he was working for the Galactic Authority. Season three opened with you holding Three in custody while he saved your ass a few times from the attack drone, which was after both of you. It was a chance to see you working closely with Anthony Lemke for a change instead of when we usually see Anders deal mostly with Six played by Roger Cross. What was it like working with Anthony this time around?
Jeff Teravainen: It was amazing. I knew him from before as well. He’s just a great guy. That’s the thing about Dark Matter. For me I always said that they are like the core family and I was like the very close cousin. And I got treated that way: “Come over for dinner. Let’s hang out and all have a great time.” So we have a real relaxed atmosphere with the actors/producers, everybody. We just bounced stuff off each other. It was a real pleasure to work with him just in a professional manner. It’s fun to watch how other people work and see what they do. Yeah like you experiment and stuff. I learned a fair bit on that episode too. Vaughn Murphy, who directed… I’ve known him forever as well, so I was excited to work with him. I learn things like I am told how consistent I am on takes. And I like that, but at the same point, both of them were pushing me to do different things here and there. Since then I don’t think I’ve done the same take twice, and I think that’s basically on their advice. So yeah, we had a ball. We had a scene where he was gonna be on top of me and I remember I was concerned about my breath, ’cause he was gonna be over me for so long. And then on the first take, he went into the snack truck and went for something heavy on the hummus, and I decided, oh then I’ll go grab something there too. For a minute, it was biological warfare there.
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