From the minds behind The Hub Productions, and the original founders of Oz Comic Con, Metro Comic Con is a new vision of pop culture in Australia. With over 40 years combined experience in the event space, the creators of Metro Comic Con have previously brought Australia guests of the calibre of Jason Momoa, Benedict Cumberbatch, Orlando Bloom, Jared Padalecki, Jensen Ackles, Karl Urban, William Shatner, Robert Englund, Richard Dean Anderson, Patrick Stewart and Stan Lee.
Among the line-up for this years Metro Comic Con is Battlestar Galactica star Jamie Bamber, who famously played Lee ‘Apollo’ Amada in the series. As Jamie touches down in Australia for the first time in 10 years for this convention, Nick L’Barrow spoke to him about looking back on the show 20 years later, working with Edward James Olmos, and how these conventions allow him to meet all new fans everytime.
Nick: If I’ve read correctly, it’s been 10 years since you were in Australia last…
Jamie Bamber: I was trying to get my head around that as well! Thank you for coming up with the number. That sounds about right. It’s been a while.
Nick: And it was Brisbane, where I’m from that you last visited! So, I’m glad you got a chance to check out the city!
Jamie Bamber: That does fit with what I remember. 10 years ago, did you say? That would’ve been 2014…
Nick: Well, welcome back to Australia, and I appreciate you taking the time to chat! I’m curious to get your perspective on the fact that there was about a 25-year gap between the original Battlestar Galactica and the remake TV series you were in, and it’s now been about 20 years since your version of the series aired. We live in an age of nostalgia now, so I’m curious to know what the reaction was like 20 years ago when the show first came out, and how the reaction has evolved since then?
Jamie Bamber: Yeah, it’s odd to be in that stage to you’ve just mentioned. When we were doing the show, obviously we were dealing with exactly what you described – messing around with something that was beloved and that people had grown up with. And we were seen as being slightly sacrilegious because we were doing something different, and there was a bit of animosity towards it. Well… quite a lot of animosity towards it, before people even saw it.
And that all really shifted super-fast. At the time, there was no social media, but the internet was obviously alive and well. There were these things called message boards, so fans would directly comment on everything that they had seen on screen, or were about to see, or what they heard was about to be remade. And it was extremely direct. They weren’t positive before the show aired, then that shift happened once it began to be aired. They sort of appreciated what we were trying to do, that we weren’t trying to sort of pretend that the original never happened. We were just making a new, updated version for the times we were living in.
We suddenly became this media darling! All the sort of, highfalutin publications in the US were championing us. It changed to love very quickly. From despising what you don’t know, to adoring what you do know. And we’ve been riding that wave for 20 years. It’s not as prevalent in the media space. It’s harder to find on the streamers. It comes and goes. But when people do find it, it’s pretty well universal, the appreciation and love. It’s a very special thing to have been a part of. It was a bit of a golden age of TV. It was a great time to live through certainly.
And what impresses me is that young people come and find this show! My kids have found it. Their generation found it. And they find it just as relevant and just as prescient.
Nick: That’s so interesting because I was wondering how the fanbase has changed over the last 20 years. I’m assuming you meet so many different fans at these conventions, so what have you noticed about how the fanbase has evolved in that time?
Jamie Bamber: That’s the best thing about these cons. You are actually getting to meet a new audience. You do get people of my generation coming back and telling me how much they appreciate it. But they normally come with a younger generation attached to them.
The popular culture world is now so much more broad than it was. The conventions back in my day were very much genre based. They were still very much around sci-fi movies and TV shows. Now, it’s cartoons, all sorts of self-generated products, magna. It’s very broad, and to still be part of that crazy family that is bigger than it ever was– Conventions have become not just about sci-fi. They are popular culture celebrations. And see that sort of evolution is interesting too.
The thing that really touches me is to meet folk who are my age and older, but with their kids who are discovering it. Sometimes I’m expecting to meet someone I’ve met before, but there’ll be that other generation as well. Catching up with people who’ve grown older, who’ve gone on to different things, and the show means something to them from a time in their lives.
People binge watch things when they’re not doing great, you know? It gets them through a tough time. It’s certainly gratifying and heartwarming. It’s nothing to do with what we do. But it’s lovely to hear that it’s been, sort of, translated into someone’s life and that it’s meant something to them.
And the show [Battlestar Galactica] is about going through crisis. This show is as existential a crisis as you can go through! The nature of Cylon, and what Cylon might mean, has changed. We’re dealing with a newer version of AI today, but this was a story about AI in the 1970s, and we made a story about it in the noughties. Now, we’re on the cusp of a Battlestar reboot again, where you know, Sam Esmail will take it somewhere else.
Nick: I think he’s going to have such an interesting take on it. I’d love to expand on that a little bit, because while sci-fi and fantasy, and fiction in general, are fantastic escapism, they are also such an interesting vessel to explore interesting themes about society. I’m curious to know what you believe makes these grand stories such an interesting what to make these themes more accessible for audiences?
Jamie Bamber: I think you put your finger on it. I mean, great stories are great stories! And what stories are, is reality plus shape. We are talking about who we are today, who we’ve always been, but we’re giving it a shape and context which allows people to digest it in a different way. It’s that little bit of magic, you know, putting things in a different setting, but it’s really the same take.
We’re telling an age-old story. We’re telling the story of Exodus in the Bible. We’re telling the story of Frankenstein. These stories that are elemental. But what Ron Moore really brought was this allegory of America, a George Bush Jr. era America. What we were doing to ourselves post 9/11, Iraq, all of that. That’s the literal inspiration for this story. But this story is relevant to every generation, because we commit these acts of self-harm unknowingly all the time. We try to make our lives easier by creating technology, creating systems that seem effective, and yet, we as human beings are not equipped to see the full ramifications and consequences of something that we may create.
That’s Mary Shelley’s story in Frankenstein! It goes way back! But the thing that is interesting today, is what we are doing with technology, what we are doing with globalisation, what we’re doing by breaking down barriers, being more accepting and open of other people, we also create backlash that makes people want to revert to a safer world where they could understand the story that they’re living, and they look backwards.
Battlestar is that friction between looking forward and looking back in the past. It’s the dilemma of the show, is that we find the only way to move forward is to look back to the past, and that helps us. It literally does help people in this yarn, because they get bitten on the arse by their own creation! But inevitably, this story becomes more complex than that.
Nick: I think what you just said is a testament to the power of storytelling! I’d love to talk about your time working with Edward James Olmos, who I think is a fantastic actor. I read about the physical changes you both took on for the father-son roles, you dyed your hair, and he wore contacts, but what did the conversations and collaborations between you both look like in regard to getting the nuances and mannerisms of your characters relationships right?
Jamie Bamber: Well, I don’t think it was conscious in that way. I don’t think we addressed it too much explicitly with each other because the relationship is a broken one in the beginning of the show. And I think there was something about Ed and I coming from very different parts of the world that was culturally different.
We had to play father and son, and that was very important, but there had to be this disconnect as well. And whatever happened was really useful. I don’t think we ever really sat down and talked about it. We kind of just talked about the logistics, as you mentioned. He famously just asked me if I’ve ever worn contact lenses, and I said, “No.” So, he said, “I’ll wear the lenses. You dye your hair.” He sort of made that decision for us.
He was quite an austere figure at first, and quite demanding and sort of… very terse. He wasn’t very vocal at first. But I think that was all part of Eddie’s master plan to create this sort of… I don’t know, sort of make him a figure that I had to win over. Our first scenes… yeah, it was tough. It wasn’t easy as a young actor. I definitely felt intimidated by his reputation, by his work, by his success in the past. And the scenes kind of used that. I think that’s what comes across. Sometimes you don’t need to do too much work explaining everything together and putting it into conscious terms. Because these relationships haven’t been through therapy! These relationships are unreconstructed, so we sort of bashed it that way.
Thank you so much to Jamie for his time, and to Metro Comic Con and NixCo PR for organsing the interview! Jamie Bamber, plus many other stars, will be in attendance at the Metro Comic Con in Melbourne from July 13-14. Find out more information here.
