An Evening With John Noble

By Stephen Tulley (@Stephen_Tulley)

I’ll start off my contribution to this blog by apologizing for not having any pictures to include. But this post isn’t about visiting set, or even about working with the main Fringe cast (which I would dearly love), but rather about an evening with John Noble discussing acting in front of his fellow actors.

As a member of the Screen Actors Guild one of the benefits is the opportunity to see your fellow actors that you highly respect in person talking about their personal experiences with a show/movie, and the chance to discuss the craft in a small gathering of fellow guild members. The best of these is called the “Conversations” panels hosted by the SAG Foundation at the Hollywood and New York locations. Now I admit I’ve never been to a Comic-Con convention but I’ve seen enough videos to know that they are massively attended events. The Conversations series is the polar opposite. At the Hollywood division office the room they use can only accommodate just over one hundred members, consequently reservations fill quickly.

Therefore I counted myself lucky to get a spot in May 2010 to see John Noble talk about his experiences on Fringe. I’d been a fan since the pilot episode and eagerly waited for that evening. (http://sagfoundation.org/userhome/eventdetails/8346)

Most Conversations at the Hollywood division begin with a screening of a favorite episode by the guest speaker, or part of a movie. That evening John elected to screen the “Peter” episode, which had aired for the first time only weeks earlier. After the screening there was a moderated interview for about an hour, and then John took questions from the audience written on cards. At a similar event about a year later the SAG Foundation videotaped the event as part of their Live Streaming video series with Josh Jackson and John Noble which you can get a sense of what the evening was like. Unfortunately, this evening wasn’t videotaped.

Our moderator began with a bombshell, “Are there any actors in Australia who *can’t* act?” which drew a lot of laughter. But John replied that “down under” actors are expected to be formally trained in theatrical school, meaning lots of theater training before “on camera” work as we call it in the business. He also stated that in the Australian theater British plays are expected to be performed with British accents, American plays with American accents, and so on (for those of you who always wondered how Aussies were able to take on an American accent so quickly.) He also explained that since there is relatively little film and television work in Australia most actors expect to travel internationally to earn a living in their craft.

Next John was asked about how he came to the theatrical scene of South Australia. He said he had really “just fell into it” but admitted he was more than intimidated by his fellow stage actors as a young man. At this point John held up two fingers as if holding a cigarette, threw back his head, and with a pretentious stage voice stated, “Because everyone seemed to be going around endlessly smoking and trying to outdo fellow actors with Shakespearian monologues!” That drew quite a laugh from the audience and I hope that one day John will do that again for the Fringe fans – I would have loved to have seen Walter do something like that!

He was then asked about preparing for the “Peter” episode. John said that he did get into physical shape to play a much younger version of himself, but that most of the “reverse aging” process was due to the use of tabs to pull back parts of his face, make-up, and lighting. He emphasized that just changing the lighting, or the film stock, can make remarkable changes on camera. [This was when Fringe was still using film stock. They switched to digital cameras about a season later.] He also stated that “young Walter’s” hair was his own, just with some extensions, meaning no wigs. I remember he seemed particularly proud that there were no post-production tricks used to make him and Blair Brown look years younger.

John then discussed how much he loved portraying Walter. He said that Walter’s range of emotions was very appealing to him as an actor. For instance, he said that in the role of Denethor in Lord of The Rings, he basically understood what made the man “tick” quite easily, but with Walter there was always some other element to discover in the character.

During the Q & A afterwards I remember a few things. The first was a question about remembering lines. John said that after so many years in the theater he never thought twice about memorizing lines, it just came naturally to him and he rarely “dropped” a line when the cameras were rolling. The second was a question about the goofy dance from “Inner Child.” John related a story that he and his daughter came up with the dance the night before they filmed that scene. He called it the “Dancing with a Tall Naked Lady” dance, and then got up and did a bit of it! Finally, he talked a bit about his recent visit to Mexico which he had come back from just before this interview.

For those of you who have watched the videos of Fringe cast interviews some of these stories will seem familiar, I’m sure they have been repeated many times by John, but this was still just the second season of Fringe and I am doing my best to recollect an evening from just over four years ago. All I can say is that at the conclusion John was very warm and welcoming to the audience and stayed on a bit longer to chat with some people. The John Noble you see in videos is the exact same as in person, whether the audience numbers in the thousands, or just the one hundred plus.