Interviewer
Coppergirl

Featured Gamer
Nathan Fillion

As an actor Nathan Fillion has had the chance to burst Xander’s eyeball in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and command a ship of villains, preachers, loonies and saucy seductresses in another of Writer/Director/Producer Joss Whedon’s TV shows; Firefly. This led onto the making of Serenity, which sees him and his crew take on the all powerful ‘Alliance’ in this action/adventure movie released on DVD on February 27th.

But, as he has so much fun at work shooting guns, swinging from metal bars and playing tricks on his fellow cast members, what does he like to do to relax? Well, Coppergirl caught up with him to find out that he’s a man obsessed with the Halo series!


How much of a gaming fan are you, and when did you really get hooked?

As a child, I had what they called a Telstar; a little unit with two dials on the side and basically you could only play Pong. That was the extent of my videogaming. I played my neighbours’ consoles, and later my mum brought home from school the Commodore 64, which we tried to programme a game into. It took four days to programme, and it never worked!

I never had great computer access when I was a kid, but once I’d grown up I got back into it.  I think the first console I bought was a Sony PlayStation, then I moved up to the Sega Dreamcast, and then the Xbox came along and I never turned back.

I tried the PS2 for a while, but I wasn’t a fan. I really preferred the games for Xbox, and then ‘LAAAAA’ [he sings in a high pitched voice]; they really hit the nail on the head with Halo for me. That was it.

So, as a big Xbox, or should I say Halo gamer, have you got a 360 yet?

I’ve not yet seen one, played one, or own one, but I will definitely get one. When Halo 3 comes out, I’m certain you will see me with an Xbox 360, and most definitely a wireless controller….

So when you are gaming, do you spend most of your time on Halo?

It’s now Halo 2. I have a story to share with you; a couple of years ago, I had just gotten back into town after a little vacation in Costa Rica and I went to the House of Blues on Sunset Boulevard, where I ran into three friends of mine that I hadn’t seen for years. I asked them what they had been up to, and they told me that they had been spending a lot of time at home, and had been playing Halo a lot. They started to explain; “…it’s a game on the Xbox” and I just said “Stop, you had me at Halo.”

We got together every Sunday night after that, those three, my friend Corey and I; we were two against three, and we would play group Halo. We’d link up our boxes together and we’d play back to back so each of us had our own TV. We’d exchange gifts, have a lovely dinner and then we’d compete until maybe one o’clock in the morning on this damn Halo!

Then Halo 2 came around and the group kind of dissipated a little bit. Now we’ve got Alan (Tudyk) in; Alan played Wash in Serenity, and he’s an excellent player. He was terrible when we started, but we trained him! Ran him through all the drills and trained him, trained him, trained him.

What’s the funniest or best thing you’ve got up to on Xbox Live then? Any tricks you like to play?

I’m a run out there, shoot and throw grenades kinda guy, I like the head-on gaming. I remember one time on Live, playing Halo, we were playing against these guys who were loud mouthed sons o’ bitches. I was filming a movie in Chicago and a bunch of us decided to play. Well, we had a fellow on our team who was only playing for the third time, so we got murdered out there!

So the fellow who wasn’t very good decided to sit out for a game to see how we’d do without him. We picked out a game where I could grab a sniper rifle and I took out these guys. I have to say they were about 800 yards away, at the time I had a bent scope, but I still killed them four in a row; pop, pop, pop, pop, as they were all running in a line ready to come kill us. I started at the back too, [whispers] so the guys at the front didn’t see what was going on.

I was really, really happy about that. And that’s coming from a 34 year old man, wasting his time on videogames! But no, we do it socially, it’s a very social event, that’s how I try and justify it…

Moving onto the filming of your film Serenity, I heard that you can be a bit of a prankster on set. Did you get up to much whilst filming?

Now, the only problem with a reputation for being a prankster is if anybody gets a joke played on them, you’re going to get retaliated against. Even if it wasn’t you that played the joke on them, they’ll figure it was you. And if anyone has a good idea for a practical joke, you’re probably going be the target, so I try and play down the prankster role.

However, that being said, years ago when we were filming the pilot for Firefly, I let Alan stay at my house and feed my cat while I was in Vancouver and he was house hunting in LA.  While he was at my house, he left a calendar that was sent to from his neighbours back in Texas, with family photos of him as a kid. So I took all the goofiest photos of Alan when he was growing up, goofy outfits, faces he was pulling. I photocopied them and eventually, years later I posted them up all over a bar scene when filming Serenity on his birthday. But because I’d got the photos close to four years before, he had no idea where they had come from. But I was so proud, I think I was smiling too hard, you know what I mean! I thought I was pretty clever, so I gave myself away.

It comes across that you guys are a close knit group, do you socialise outside of work?

Absolutely. People always say it must have been a big reunion for you all to come back and do Serenity. Sure, it was nice to be with the cast, but it wasn’t a reunion because we spent a lot of time together in the interim, we remained friends.

When any of us are working in Vancouver we go hang out with Jewel (Staite). She’s the farthest one away so she’s the hardest one to hang out with. But the rest of the guys... Alan I see constantly, Adam (Baldwin) I see almost as much, Ron Glass I don’t see as much as I should, but we’re all in contact, we’re all still pals. Plus we get to go to these conventions and hang out with each other there too!

Well, playing the Captain in the film, we’ve noticed that a lot of people are comparing you and your character Malcolm Reynolds to Harrison Ford playing Han Solo. Do you find that flattering or a bit geeky?

Oh I love that! If you’re going to be compared to someone, be compared to someone great. If they say “Yeah, he’s really good, he’s kinda like …” and mentions an actor’s name that you’ve never heard of, that’s not what you want. “He’s like the new Steve Guttenberg.” Hmm. You know what I’m saying?

Lots of people love him [Mr Guttenberg], but if I’m going to be compared to someone, my preference would be Harrison Ford!

Well you love games and you love acting, and it seems like you’ve had the chance to merge the two when you did the voice for Gao the Lesser in Jade Empire. How did that come about?

A couple of friends of mine from a theatre company in Canada that I actually got my start with would do voices for these videogames. Then their voiceovers would get taken to the States, and American actors would listen to them and do impressions of them; basically copy their work.  They would always be bummed, because they’d do the job and get paid and they were happy for that, but then their voices would be switched for American ones and then just never got the credit.  So anyway, this game was one where they actually got to be the voices and they didn’t get switched out, and they asked if I’d like to be one of the voices and I said sure. So I went up there, did the voiceover and had some fun! 


NATHAN FILLION ASKS US…

So, Nathan, What do you want to ask us; the UK’s Holy Grail for all knowledge 360..?

Fillion: How is it possible to play a game of Halo without getting called ‘Bitch’?

I believe its written in folklore that thou must call someone a bitch or be called a bitch once a game. But seriously, with the 360, if you choose gamers from certain gamerzones; Recreation and Family, the chance of being sworn at will decrease, as these are non trash-talking zones.

Fillion: When you report somebody for lewdness on Halo 2, or cheating if someone is modding etc, what actually happens to these people? Is there some kind of Halo jail? How many reports does it take to take someone down?

Apparently they go to prison camps, where they are put through hours of sleep deprivation to drill the cheating out of them. However, if this fails, Bungie itself runs a system where they either temporarily or permanently ban you if you are reported for bad behaviour.

Fillion: What’s up with the class action suit against Xbox 360? I heard something about a suit because of units not working or something…

According to reports on the internet this was the case, however information seems to have disappeared of late, so nothing may have come of this. We’ll just have to wait and see…

Fillion: And finally, when are you going to send me an Xbox 360? [laughs]. Let me get an addendum; when are you going to send Xbox 360s to my Clan? I can’t be a good Overlord if I don’t include the clan!

When are you going to take me out for dinner? Get us a table at a nice restaurant like Sketch, and I’ll see what I can do…



YOU ASK NATHAN FILLION

We asked www.oxm.co.uk forum users what they’d like to ask Nathan Fillion. Here’s how he responded to ‘megafan’ Dr Frankenjam, oh, and Sphyder!

Filming Serenity on location, Were you (or any other members of the cast) recreational gamers? If yes what games were you particularly into?

I never played games while on location, while at work, because I never brought a console to work with me. If I had time, I would fall asleep watching Star Wars; the original. But no I never brought a console to work…

Dr Frankenjam

How do the cast of Firefly/Serenity feel, despite the film not being the blockbuster hit it deserved to be, to be named 'Film of the Year' by both BBC's FILM 2005 and FOCUS magazine?

We’re really happy about that! We understand that we had a good series and we got cancelled. We understand that we put out a great movie and it wasn’t a monolithic financial success, but we also understand the most important part is that we did something good; if anyone watches it they can’t say it really sucks. We know that we worked hard and put out something that was good and I think we’re all happy with that.

Yes I would love for this movie to be a $200m blockbuster smash, but what I wanted from it was another chance to play Malcolm Reynolds. What I wanted from it was for no one to say Nathan Fillion should stick to TV.  I wanted it to be good, and it was.

Dr Frankenjam

Nathan, I've heard you are the leader of a Halo 2 clan along with Alan Tudyk, and that you are a huge fan of the Machinima Internet show 'Red vs. Blue'. Is this true?

Yes absolutely! Sarge is my favourite character. I don’t know how they’re doing what they’re doing, but they’re clever. And yes, I set up a clan. There’s about six of us, but only three of us only play, three are honorary members. They don’t really play with us [whispers], they’re not good, they’re like 12’s and 13’s, and well we’re 25’s.

Dr Frankenjam

Do you think there will ever be a Firefly/Serenity video game and if so would the voices be done by the original cast?

Oh jeez I sure hope so. That movie is screaming for a videogame! I think the 360 would be a nice console for it…

If there was a videogame and they didn’t let me do my own voice, oh my god I would be terrible. I’d raise a ruckus on the Internet, that’s what I’d do!