Working With Leads And Cast Members Of Fringe

By Stephen Tulley (@Stephen_Tulley)

Readers of my previous post know that since I work as a background actor, stand-in, and precision driver in Hollywood I sometimes get the opportunity to work with actors or directors I admire. I consider those to be special and memorable days at work. But since I’m also a serious Fringie, I’m also always on the lookout for actors who had roles in Fringe. It’s a little game I play, much like the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon game, “How many actors have I worked with who were in Fringe?” Some of these predate Fringe, and others during the airing of the series, but here are my experiences with a great cast of actors.

Seth Gabel

As Season 4 of Fringe unfolded I kept thinking to myself that Seth Gabel looked really familiar, not just having appeared in previous episodes. About halfway through the season I had an epiphany… I had actually worked a scene with Seth on an unaired pilot back in 2006, it just took me that long to remember it!

Until recently networks often ordered a slew of pilots and then chose which ones to put to series, usually a fraction of what had been filmed. It was very expensive for the networks, but great for actors and crew members. There used to be a spring “pilot season” when it was not uncommon to work 12 hours days six days a week. That has all changed with the recession.

“Beyond” was a pilot for Fox that was never aired, but it centered on scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory building a probe to destroy a meteor hurdling towards earth containing deadly pathogens. Seth played one of the scientists and in one scene he walked around this device in the lab set looking at the other scientists (meaning me and bunch of other people) wearing white protective hazmat suites. And yes, even though we were on an air conditioned sound stage it was very hot in those hazmat suites.

And since this was in April 2006 we filmed the pilot during Passover and I remember one day production had set up a Passover table on stage for Seth, the producers, and other actors.

Jasika Nicole

It wasn’t until Fringe had been on for a couple seasons that in doing some research I discovered that I had worked a scene in yet-another unaired comedy pilot that Jasika starred in. The “Mastersons of Manhattan” was a multi-camera sitcom pilot for NBC that never got picked up. Here’s part of an early review from TheFutonCritic.com, a site which tracks and reviews pilots for TV:

“And last, but not least, there's Amanda's boy-trapped-in-a-girl's body daughter (apologies as I didn't recognize the actress) and Penny (Jasika Nicole), a nurse/struggling actress who's been taking care of the Mastersons' ill father while also carrying on a affair with Roger and plotting the Mastersons' downfall with her real lover - Bobby!”

My role was a juror in a courtroom, but the cameras were all behind all our heads, so we were just silhouettes on film. Unfortunately, I don’t remember if Jasika was in that particular scene. I should note that multi-camera shoots are very different creatures than single-camera shows like Fringe. It’s much more like theater. Shot almost entirely on sound stages there are usually four cameras rolling at one time. In traditional sitcoms, like “Mastersons,” all the scenes are rehearsed then filmed in sequence in front of a live studio audience. Current sitcoms sometimes contain pre-shot scenes, but those are aired on TV’s for the studio audience to understand the continuity of story.

As for background actors, when not rehearsing a scene we are holding up in the bleachers where the audience sits for the taping. So, for a full day I got to watch all of the scenes being rehearsed, both in front of me in person and on the TV’s above.

John Noble

I know that when the pilot of Fringe aired most people said, “Aha..that’s the actor who played Denethor of Gondor on Lord of the Rings.” I, on the other hand, said, “Aha…that’s the actor who played Russian Consul General Anatoly Markov on my episode of 24!”

While I would love to state that I worked a scene with John Noble, I can’t, but we did appear in the same episode of 24 and both our characters were connected in the storyline.

In 2006 I was cast to be *the* Secret Service Agent guarding ex-First Lady Martha Logan (Jean Smart) in episode 6.13 of 24 (6 p.m. – 7 p.m.) at her elite sanatorium. Her ex, former President Charles Logan (Greg Itzen) comes to ask her help contacting the Russian Premier’s wife as Jack Bauer has locked himself in the Russian Consulate and extracted information from the nefarious Markov (John Noble) but cutting off the tip of his finger with a cigar cutter.

In a fit of rage Martha stabs Logan in the neck and the Secret Service agents scramble to aide him. At the end of the scene you can hear the line, “Agent Tulley! Get in here!”

Sadly, it was two different sets of scenes filmed in two different locations on different days of the shooting schedule, but all for the same episode… There, but not there… Kind of like being in the other universe.

What irks me the most is not working with John in a scene together, although I did get to work with Jean Smart (which I consider an honor), but that the exterior shots of the Russian Consulate were filmed at Craven Estates…in my native city of Pasadena, California! I should also add that our director was Jon Cassar, who went on to direct 5.06 “Through the Looking Glass and What Walter Found There.”

Mark Valley

The John Scott character has always been controversial among Fringe fans, including the fact that in real-life Mark is Anna Torv’s ex. But for both seasons of the legal drama “Harry’s Law” he played attorney Oliver Richard for 22 episodes.

I’ll be honest with you…courtroom scenes are the most boring scenes to work! Unless you have lines you have to sit for hours on end listening to the same dialog over and over again, all the while looking alert and pretending to be hearing it for the first time. I got stuck in the visitor’s galley right behind Mark at the defendant’s table for one episode in which we filmed for 10+ hours a day for three straight days. And Mark had not one word of dialog.

So you might ask what do actors do in that case? Well, for Mark he texted a lot between takes up to the point when an AD would come up to him and state, “Uh, Sir? We are rolling now.” And then he hid his phone under the table until we cut.

Marcus Giamatti

In 3.04 “Do Shapeshifters Dream of Electric Sheep” Marcus portrayed our favorite conflicted shapeshifter Officer Ray Duffy. Not that long ago I was cast in a funeral scene for a very small independent movie “The Curse of Downer’s Grove” which according to the production notes has been completed but no information yet on releases.

I was asked by the director to step-in and fill the role of the pastor at the grave site. Since I didn’t get my hands on a call sheet I don’t know exactly what Marcus’ role was in the movie, but he was one of the mourners. But, this is what small-budget means: props didn’t have a bible, so one of the prop assistants spray painted one of her college text books and taped a cross on it for me to use.

It rained a lot that day so I’m sure many set-ups were cancelled or changed. Now on set I don’t normally chat-up the “first teamers” (aka, the lead actors) since they are there to work, and in fact every person on the set has a specific job to do, so most idle chat is done on lunch break or after wrap, but I appreciate his work so he is one of the cast members I would have approached and thanked him for giving us the shapeshifter who just wanted to live with his family.

Evan Bird

There are simply sometimes in the business when you show up to set and aren’t used. That was the case with the movie “Maps to the Stars” where I had been booked to be a traveler with my contemporary car. We were filming in the parking lot of historic Union Station in downtown Los Angeles and after the AD’s were going to have me drive through camera frame for this particular scene, they changed their minds. As we were broken to go to lunch at catering, I saw Evan Bird walk right by me chatting with one of the AD’s and my first thought was “Hey! That’s the kid, Aaron Sneddon from 4.03 ‘Alone in the World’ just taller!” Since I couldn’t get my hands on a call sheet I didn’t know how many scenes he had that day.

John Pyper-Ferguson

When episode 4.02 “One Night in October” aired I was happy to see John cast as “Dr. & Killer” John McClennan. If you read my previous post about DP Tom Yatsko you’ll know I stood-in on Brothers & Sisters for a couple seasons. John portrayed Joe Whedon, who was married to the character Sarah Walker (played by Rachel Griffiths) during this time. All those large Walker family scenes that were filmed in the first two seasons had at least 11 stand-ins, and many times I was sitting across a table or a couch from John waiting for my actor to arrive on set.

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.

An Enemy of Fate: Meeting John Noble

By Andrew Moore (@ashok0)

As a huge TV enthusiast, I've always hated that I've never been to a single Comic Con nor ever met anyone from the Ten Thirteen or Bad Robot family. Between school, work, daily life, etc. it just never really seemed that practical.  When I heard John Noble was going to be at Second Stage Theatre in NYC, traveling to "Substance of Fire" didn't even cross my mind.

But after reading other Twitter stories from other Fringies who had life-changing experiences because of our show, I started thinking... is it really an impossibility? In late April, I was talking to a Fringie in real life who worked for an airline. I rather non-seriously said, "We should just get on a plane and go see John Noble." I'm not even sure if I expected the conversation to go anywhere, but he said that he'd love to do it and could probably get excellent travel rates from his job.

Within a week, we organized our flight plans to see John and pre-ordered theater tickets for May 21st, but I still has this sinking feeling that the trip was a dream too good to be true. And on May 14th, I came home from work to read that John Noble was dropping out of the play between May 20-23 due to Sleepy Hollow conflicts. And flash floods had grounded all flights from Ohio to NYC during Noble's final performance dates. My friend and I were both contemplating on just cancelling the trip and rather discouraged, I tweeted that things in life were falling apart.  

Later that day, I got a tweet from Danna Aissa with the classic Fringe 'Dream Logic' puzzle: "Y̶o̶u̶’̶r̶e̶ ̶b̶n̶e̶n̶ ̶g̶e̶f̶i̶a̶n̶e̶o̶. Y̶o̶u̶’̶r̶e̶ ̶g̶o̶n̶n̶a̶ ̶b̶n̶e̶e̶f̶i̶.  You’re gonna be fine."  Wow, she couldn't have spoken truer words. That week, my friend and I readjusted our work schedules, snagged tickets to John's performance a week early, and we drove to NYC. We figured if POlivia could create a gateway to 2167, kill the Observers, reset time, and get Etta back... we could surely find a way to see John Noble.

The first day of the trip I was just awestruck by seeing John on stage at "Substance of Fire". There wasn't a bad seat in the house. It was an enjoyable play and his Walteresque lines related to food were an absolute killer. After the play ended, we waited for a few minutes outside the theater. We almost left for our hotel when JOHN NOBLE walked out onto the street from the lobby and was standing literally a foot in front of me. A few other fans came up to him holding White Tulips. :'-) John stopped and chatted with everyone that waited for him. He took photos with us and gave us all autographs. Just a really nice guy, and he seemed just as lovable in real life as he is on screen.  <3 At this stage, I don't even know how I was still breathing and I don't honestly know if I said anything remotely coherent. I just remember vomiting vocabulary about thanking him for making Fringe, and telling him how much the Bishop family and the symbol of the White Tulip meant to me. 

The next day we went to see "American Hero" with Ari Graynor. It was a funny play and Ari had great presence on stage. After the play ended, Ari stopped and chatted with us briefly on the street. It's really strange talking to Olivia Dunham's sister in real life, and if I hadn't conditioned my nerves from talking to John Noble the day prior, I probably would have blacked out.

On the third day of our trip, we concluded our Fringe adventure by taking a ferry past Liberty Island. We also went to Grand Central Terminal and visited the location where 'Bad Dreams' was filmed for Fringe.  This was very cool for me because 'Bad Dreams' is one of my favorite episodes and I particularly loved the cold opening. Just seeing the architecture of the building in real life is quite breathtaking. After leaving the subway station, I couldn't get 'Nellie the Elephant' out of my head all afternoon.

After returning back to Ohio, I couldn't help but think how many times our trip almost never even happened. Just like September almost never distracted Walternate, I almost never signed up on Twitter to tweet #ChangeYourWorld. In which I never would have connected with the fandom and never would have mentioned "Substance of Fire" in a passing conversation. And this blog post never would have happened. But it did, because Fringe was a rare show that was more than a TV show. For me it was a show that added up to something far greater than the sum of its individual pieces, and just being part of the fandom --- many of whom are Philes that started this same journey as far back as the 1990s --- has been a life changing experience. Or as my friend Jeremy who went to NYC with me so succinctly summed up Fringe, "It uses all these sci-fi themes and creates all this in this world, it's like a dream. It's a fancy platform to explain and convey all these awesome things about life. It's like, okay lets make a story about family and love and friendship but instead of something boring we can make it awesome!"