Sunday July 6, 2008
No mean machine
By MUMTAJ BEGUM
Beneath the cool robotic exterior of the terminator in The Sarah Connor Chronicles is Summer Glau the sensitive gal.
IN the new TV series Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, 26-year-old Summer Glau portrays a tough terminator sent by the adult John Connor from the future to protect his teenage self (Thomas Dekker) and his mother, Sarah Connor (Lena Headey).
Glau, best known for her role as kicka** River Tam in the TV series Firefly and later reprising the role in the movie version entitled Serenity, is once again executing nimble moves against the bad guys as she plays the cyborg named Cameron Phillips.
Summer Glau may have learnt to kick and punch but she remains a non-fan of martial arts.
In a recent interview in Sydney, Australia, set up in conjunction with the release of the series in Asia, the Texan lass talks about playing a terminator on her own terms.
You are possibly the furthest from the image of a terminator. Why do you think you were chosen for the role?
They were looking for a normal, unsuspecting girl. The whole idea was that it is more dangerous if you can’t see it coming. She is an undercover bodyguard so she goes with John everywhere, and she is supposed to be able to pose as his friend, his girlfriend, his sister, and so I fit that mould pretty well. After my first test for the role, I was sitting in the waiting room and I heard them watching my fight scenes from Serenity, and I think that was what tipped me over the edge.
Did you take any martial arts lessons to prepare for this role?
I had never done martial arts before this. I don’t think I have ever worked this hard in my life, and I have seen a lot, having been a ballet dancer; ballet dancers are the meanest, toughest things in the world.
Six months before the series started, I was sent to this fight camp in the middle of Alhambra, which is like a suburb of LA. One of the producers drove me there on the weekend. I was the only girl in the class, and there were these 40 12-year-old alleged Asian assassin boys. They made fun of me. I had never worked so hard because they were tough. I learned wushu. It is extremely beautiful but hard on your body. I did that and some kungfu, some kickboxing, like a hybrid, and I worked for months to do those fight scenes myself, because Josh (Friedman, the executive producer) wanted to be able to leave a camera in the same spot for the whole fight scene to make it look real. So when I learned how to fight, we actually made contact. I learnt how to roll off their face when I punched, and tapped them when I kicked them. I had to appear like I was pushing with all my force but I was actually just tapping. That was really hard.
I’m glad that I did it, but I don’t ever want to do martial arts again. I met with Joel Cramer, our stunts co-ordinator and I said to him: “Okay, so what kind of things do you want me to do? How does a terminator fight?” He said: “Well, Summer, I’ve seen some of your work and, wow, it was good, but terminators, they just break things and they pick things up and throw them, and shoot guns and walk through walls, and it can be a lot different to what you have done before.”I was so relieved. All of our sets have these signs: “Do not touch”, “Break away”. You cannot touch anything because it’s all breakable; if not, it will hurt real bad.
The women in this show are powerful females, like your character and Lena’s. Do you feel empowered by playing her?
Definitely. I always look for roles that make me feel good about being a girl. I have to say that there are a lot of roles out there that make me feel really bad about being a girl. You can imagine what the things are and I shall not go into detail.
Getting the chance to do Sarah Connor Chronicles has been such a privilege to me, and really makes me proud to be a girl and working with Lena (some people call us Thelma and Louise). She is such a strong woman. They are both really strong, but they are strong in totally different ways.
Interestingly, all three characters (Cameron, Sarah and John) are fighting for the same thing but they do it in completely different ways. There is a constant power struggle going on between she and I, but we are still women who are powerful, and we are trying to protect John.
What is it about this character that appeals to you?
I have until that point played very vulnerable emotional characters. I thought it is awesome to be the girl on the scene who is not crying or falling apart. I love the action. Who doesn’t want to play Terminator? I wouldn’t pass that up. I love every aspect of playing the character.
The only hard thing is, being a scene partner for my fellow actors. It is a very odd experience to have to be so placid; no matter what is going on and who is crying or yelling at you and how upset someone else is, I can’t give anything back. They are my scene partners, I’m giving them energy. But I always think Lena is going to come over and hit me after we’re done with the scene, because I just stare at her blankly while she spills her guts out. I feel so bad. That is the most uncomfortable thing about playing the role.
When you do the action scene, especially when you are running, you can’t show any emotions. Is that hard to do?
It is hard. One of the things that I even tried to incorporate from the beginning was making a blink deliberate, not blinking because I needed to but blinking more slowly, as a robot would. Also, Cameron won’t talk with her hands, won’t move her hair out of her face, won’t cross her legs. All these little human things I had to strip away, and add them back in a false way, because Cameron is an infiltrator and she isn’t supposed to appear human, so everything has to have something deliberate. It has to go from the mind through the body.
‘The Sarah Connor Chronicles’ airs on 8TV at 10.30pm every Monday.