Beth Blighton: How did you end up spending Oscar Night?

Clancy Brown: We decided just to stay home and I ended up on the phone with my family for most of it.

BB: It was good to see Robin Williams win.

CB: Yes, absolutely.

BB: Was that a fun experience doing "Flubber" with him?

CB: Yeah, he's one of the "actors of our time" so now I can say I've worked with him.

BB: No kidding. Couldn't have been boring.

CB: No it wasn't. It did get boring occasionally, usually when he wasn't around. (laughs)

BB: You took your fair share of abuse in that one, but at least your little girl will be able to see it.

CB: Yeah, eventually. (laughs) And she'll probably wonder about the high-heels in my eyes.

BB: Does she ever hear you doing the cartoons?

CB: She just heard me do Lex Luthor over the weekend, and she kinda turned around, but she doesn't quite make that connection yet.

BB: How old is she now?

CB: Two and a half.

BB: That's a great age.

CB: Do you have kids?

BB: Just one, he's about to turn twelve. That scares me because I've suddenly become an idiot. I'm boring. To your daughter, at her age, you're a god.

CB: I presume I'm an idiot from the beginning. (laughs)

BB: So how is everyone? Have you heard anything from any of your E2 co-stars?

CB: I talk to Gegenhuber every now and then. I don't speak to Debrah very much. Not because we don't try, but every time she calls I'm not around; every time I call, she's not around.

BB: I just talked to John for an interview a couple of weeks ago. That was a lot of fun.

CB: He's a great guy.

BB: What have you been up to? Do you have any new projects?

CB: Nothing really. My wife Jeanne is a freelance news journalist, so she got very, very busy here in LA on the Monica Lewinsky beat. So I've been pretty much being a dad, and being a mom, too.

BB: That's fun.

CB: I prefer that.

BB: I imagine, from your point of view this whole Lewinsky thing has got to be pretty bizarre.

CB: It's silly, I think.

BB: So has real life fatherhood turned out to be anything like what you had to do on the screen? Was that good practice?

CB: Oh, yeah! You know . . . well . . . of course it's NOT! (laughs) But I was pretty comfortable with it while I was doing it. And then I look back on it -- I haven't really watched too many of the episodes since it's been on the SciFi Channel, but those ones that I do see, I definitely can imagine myself being as obsessive about it as he was.

BB: How can you not?

CB: Exactly. Especially with a beautiful daughter like that. If I had a son, maybe not so much, I think that's probably gender bias.

BB: Well, then that would be your wife's worry.

CB: Exactly. But I'm having a good time doing it. I wish I could say it's similar, but I had NO idea.

BB: It kinda sneaks up on you. Now we know she has your eyes, did she end up with your curly hair?

CB: It's hard to say right now. She has a lot of it and it's blond and it's straight as we speak, but as I look back at pictures of my sister and me, it was straight until we were about six. She wasn't born with curly hair. It'll probably start flipping up here pretty soon.

BB: You had such great chemistry with Madison, was it there when you read, when you did the auditions, or did that develop once you started filming?

CB: It was pretty much there from the beginning. It was certainly manufactured early on. But that was pretty easy to manufacture. She's an adorable, sweet little girl. Beautiful.

BB: She was so polite at the convention.

CB: She's aces. And it certainly developed as we went on. She actually had quite a rapport with Antonio. Which is understandable, since basically he's gorgeous, and they have about the same capacity – the capacity of an eleven or twelve year old. And I say that with great affection. So they were of "like minds". She missed her dad, so I was a handy surrogate for a little while. I didn't spend as much time with them as I would have liked to, or they would have liked to, but she's her own person. I certainly haven't spent as much time afterward as I would like to.

BB: I imagine she's about grown up now.

CB: Yeah, I rented something last week. My daughter and I were in the video store -- we go in and get the Disney videos – and she saw some thing with a little puppy on the cover.

BB: Oh, "Shiloh"?

CB: Yeah, and she just adores the covers, so she wants to get those. So I said, "Okay, fine, we'll get those." It's as good a reason as any to rent a kid's video. And I turn it on, and of course she's not interested in it cuz there's not enough puppies in it, not enough of the dog, and she wants the dogs to talk and whatnot. But I made her sit down and watch it because Maddie was in it.

BB: Was there anything you wish they had done more of on Earth2 that they didn't get a chance to do?

CB: More of them! I really liked the direction it was going with respect to the episodes like that "Rashomon" story -- "Survival of the Fittest". I LOVE that director and writer, John Harrison. He also did "The Enemy Within", which I thought was terrific, and he also did the final episode, which was little more problematic, in that it had all sorts of missions to fulfill. All sorts of agendas. "Survival of the Fittest" was purely Harrison. "The Enemy Within", was not purely Harrison but it was definitely touched by him and more along his line. Because it was pretty much character-driven. That's the one I actually sat down and watched [on the SciFi Channel]. That's the one Jessica was so good in.

BB: In "Survival of the Fittest", I think your finest moment was begging for True's life.

CB: That was a little indulgent, actually. I would change it a little bit, but...

BB: Mmm, I don't know. You made ME cry, so... Congratulations!

CB: (laughs) Yeah, well, all right then.

BB: Did you keep anything as a souvenir from Earth2 or New Mexico?

CB: Oh sure, I've got New Mexico everywhere in my house, somewhere. There's so many Earth2 souvenirs that I've kept. I have my jacket. The original jacket. The very first time I wore it was the very first time we worked on it. I sort of kept it through the thing, I used it every now and then, but I made sure I got that one. I just love the Roanoke reference on it.

BB: So that was on purpose?

CB: Oh yeah, absolutely.

BB: Did you keep any souvenirs from your other movies?

CB: Oh sure. I've got little things, here and there. I don't even know what they all are. Most of them are pictures and stuff like that. If you do it long enough, there's just so much junk! But Earth2 was real . . .. I have all the scripts and stuff. It was just a lot of fun. It was definitely a high point that I'll look back on with great affection.

BB: It looked like you were having fun. It looked you were having a great time with eachother.

CB: Most of us were. It was definitely a highlight for me. I completely enjoyed it. Hell, my daughter was conceived while I was working on it!

BB: So THERE'S you're most memorable souvenir! Now, Tierre Turner described you once in a Starlog Magazine as "a big ol' farm boy from Ohio". Is that accurate? Are you a farm boy?

CB: Yeah, sure, why not? (laughs) Well, Tierre has got a little Ohio in him, as well. He's a pretty remarkable guy. He's been around forever. He's got kids everywhere. Knows exactly what he's doing. He's someone I'm happy to call a friend. I don't know many people that he wouldn't call a friend, though, which is why he's a better man than me. He's just so damned gracious and charming.

I'm surprised he didn't call me a "polar bear". There was one night during the Pilot, when we were out all night on this cliff, and then we had to go to work the next morning, so we ended up staying at the set in one of the trailers. Of course, the trailer wasn't heated or anything, and it was a cool desert night. Me, I just fell right to sleep. But Tierre gets up the next morning and says, "Oh my God! I can't believe how COLD I am! I didn't sleep at all!" I said, "Are you kidding me? I slept like a baby." He said, "Well, you're just a big POLAR BEAR!" And I said, well, ya know, I'm from Ohio, man! (laughter) Ya know, we're used to sleeping outside if the fields aren't plowed. We can get cold and it doesn't bother us!

BB: You've played villains, heroes, psychos and even the love interest, you've done some slap stick. Is there anything you haven't gotten to do in your acting career that you would like to do, yet?

CB: Hmm... I don't know. Whatever the next one is. I've gotten a little less ambitious that way. I don't plan out about career and stuff like that. There's so much good about everything you do. I mean, the best thing about it is that you get to do it in the first place. I can't really put my finger on it, because if I said one thing that would mean I didn't say something else. One thing I'd love to do, just sort of irrespective of anything else, I'd love to do a "Star Trek" movie or something -- just because it's a cultural touchstone. It's sort of "of my generation." I've always liked "Star Trek", and I especially like them now that they're getting smart. They're sort of smart compared to everything else, even the originals.

BB: Personally, I always thought you'd have made a great young Darth Vader in the next "Star Wars" movies.

CB: There you go! That would be terrific, too! "Star Wars" is another of those cultural things, but that's not Shakespeare. That's not like the really esoteric dream I have of going into some province and spending the rest of my days doing.

BB: Having read "The Green Mile" by Stephen King, I could have sworn he wrote the part of Brutus Howell with you in mind.

CB: Frank Darabont who did "Shawshank Redemption" is doing that. That might be why you brought that up. I've sort of had a peripheral conversation about it, and actually ran into Bill Sadler and talked about it a little bit. And (laughter) as much as I adore Frank, and as good as I hear "Green Mile" is -- I have to read it, yet -- and as much as I KNOW it will be a terrific movie, kinda the last thing I want to do -- and probably the last thing Frank wants to do -- is start casting the same people he had in "Shawshank" in another Stephen King prison movie.

BB: It would be sort of fun, though, to see Byron Hadley go good.

CB: Right, well, like I said, I've gotta read it. I told him, "I'm of the same mind you are. I'm not especially inclined to reprise the same character or reprise even a similar character with a different twist, but if there's anything you want me to do, please feel free." It's sort of like the thing with "Dead Man Walking", when Tim [Robbins] was doing that. He called me to do that little part in there, that he originally figured he would do. And then he decided not to, and he couldn't find anyone to do it, so he called me. But his idea was that he would do it. It was kind of a glib idea and it was to inject some humor into it, but he sort of decided against it, because he thought "I have this pretty intense movie, it's pretty good, and I don't want to take people out of it by being the director acting with his wife" or whatever they are. So that's the same way I feel about Frank and "Green Mile". It's going to be a good movie. He's a good director and good writer, so he wouldn't want to take anyone out of it by putting me in a similar uniform. I wouldn't want him to do that. I'd rather do something else with Frank.

PART II