GATEWORLD: FORWARD AND ONWARD
Tuesday - January 29, 2013
by Chad Colvin
Over the course of Stargate‘s history on television screens, several characters (many of them fan favorites) have made their final exits through one form of death or another. We don’t mean a Daniel Jackson-style death where it doesn’t stick and by the end of the episode (or season) he’s alive and well. We mean the ones that were permanent. Be it the end of that character’s story arc or merely trying to serve a dramatic function, those deaths stayed with us. Skaara in SG-1‘s “Full Circle”. Janet Frasier in the same series’ “Heroes” two-parter. And although he eventually returned through the miracle of sci-fi storytelling, it doesn’t make Carson Beckett‘s final scenes in “Sunday” any less gut-wrenching or emotional. And that last event would make Atlantis‘ next character loss even more profound.
When last GateWorld talked with actress Torri Higginson, who portrayed Atlantis’ civilian expedition leader Dr. Elizabeth Weir, it was while she was just finishing up the first handful of episodes in Season Four — a season that would reduce her character to a recurring status before essentially killing her off. And while her exit from the series (both on-screen and off) may not have gone as smoothly as anyone would have liked, time heals all wounds and Higginson’s (who went on to more mainstream fare like NCIS) are no exception.
After a long absence from our pages, we finally caught up with Torri last fall at the Chicago Offical Stargate Convention hosted by Creation Entertainment. In our interview, Torri Higginson chats with us about the current state of the franchise, her personal feelings on Weir’s unceremonious exit, the impact of the character and the franchise itself, what she’s up to currently, and more!
... GateWorld: You’ve kept pretty busy since, but unlike a lot of other Canadian actors, it seems most of what you’ve done since Atlantis has been more contemporary work as opposed to genre. Do you have a preference between the two? I mean, even going back to the earlier days, you were doing projects like the TekWar films with Greg Evigan and William Shatner up through a certain point … but it seems like a vast majority of what you’re doing now isn’t necessarily so much in that realm where it’s so prevalent as far as what films …
Torri Higginson: "Yeah. I always joke and say, “I’m actor. I’ll take whatever they offer me.”
I know when I left Stargate, I kinda felt … I’ve always been surprised that it … and it’s changed now, but even six years ago, when I was still doing Stargate, I couldn’t get a good agent in Los Angeles. Like, there was kind of this division within Hollywood about sci-fi and the primetime “regular” stuff. And people didn’t give it as much respect, I think, as they do now or as it was due.
I think I was … it was suggested to me when I was no longer doing Stargate and I was back in L.A. to try to do stuff that it was not sci-fi. Just to not get pigeonholed into one thing.
I mean, I sort of … it’s been quite thin – the jobs for me the last few years. I’ve been doing theater. And I’ve been doing more writing than anything else. So, at this point, I mean, I would love to do either. I had a really great, fun job doing Stonehenge Apocalypse, which was – and I’m sorry to Syfy and Paul Ziller, who I adore, adore – was not a great show. But it was fun. It was a lot of fun. And I kind of like doing those things. I have a history of doing a lot of bad action B-movies in Toronto. And at the time, there’d be a part of me going, “Oh, this isn’t exactly Shakespeare. What am I doing? Why am I doing this?” But mostly you just feel, “This is really great fun and we’re not saving the world so why not just enjoy it?” And when people are working on those shows, they’re just doing it for fun, which is refreshing..."
CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE STARGATE ATLANTIS FEBRUARY 2013 ENCORE SCHEDULE ON SYFY
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