Bruce Campbell and Sharon Gless Q&A

SciFiChick.com was able to participate in a conference call Q&A session with Bruce Campbell and Sharon Gless, from USA’s Burn Notice. Here’s the transcript from that call.
And don’t miss the Burn Notice mid-season finale, tonight at 9pm.

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What sorts of methods and what type of influences do you use to in your portrayal of your characters? What do you draw upon to, in your characterization of Sam and of Madeline?

S. Gless: Bruce?

B. Campbell: Mother first.

S. Gless: Well, my husband said, when he read the script, chain smoking half the time. And he said, how lucky are you, they’re paying you to smoke. So he said, wow, you do all the things with the cigarette. I said, “Well, yeah, I already knew how to do that.” What do I draw on? I’ve never actually had children, myself, but I just connected with Jeffrey’s character and every week it’s different and as the show goes along, Madeline, my character, first she’s totally in the dark and very needy and very sort of just all sort of emotional things that are unattractive. And as time went on, Matt Nix said, “Sharon, she’s smarter than what I was writing.” And he gave me one clue, he said, “Remember, he gets his smarts from her.” I said, “Oh, okay.” So I just took that information and it gave me and my character a little more confidence. But I don’t know, how do you prepare for playing someone who’s manipulative? Is it built in? I don’t know.

B. Campbell: When you’re in show business, you know lots of manipulating people.

S. Gless: Yes, that’s true. But I try to do the manipulation with humor. Hopefully, that’s how it’s coming across.

Why doesn’t Sam Axe’s personality match the normal ex-military stereotypes? He seems really upbeat compared to how most shows depict characters that have been in serious military situations.

B. Campbell: I think my character is actually more accurate. I think I run into some of these guys. My first wife remarried a police officer, and I’ll tell you these guys like having a good time when they’re not working. They don’t sit around mopey dope, they sit around and crack gallows humor, lots of gallows humor, dark humor. Frankly, I think they’re happy that they’re alive most of these guys after going through all of this and they have a good joie de vivre that the average executive might not have. So I should think Sam is very indicative of the real guys, you know guys who are my age who have mustered out in their 50’s. Believe me, most of them are drinking beer and sitting around a pool cracking jokes about the old days.

S. Gless: In my experience in having done Cagney & Lacey many years ago, we had technical advisors on the set and we had detectives and police. Not exactly in the role that Bruce is playing, but these guys who see so much really do have a very macabre sense of humor. And I do think that’s how they stay sane.

Is there a beer or cocktail that Sam has yet to meet and enjoy and if there is, what is it and why haven’t they met yet? And Sharon, Madeline seems to go with the flow a bit more nowadays with Michael’s past. Will she eventually come around to just trusting him blindly or will curiosity get the best of her and she’ll find out on her own where her son has been for the past ten years?

B. Campbell: Go ahead, Sharon.

S. Gless: I think Madeline is slowly figuring it out. I don’t think, to this day, she really understands the full impact of what it is he really does. But she knows he helps people. That’s how she phrases it. That’s how she lives with it. And yes, she is getting more informed. I think there are moments where she does trust him. She has to, she is, despite what you see, she loves him. It’s her boy. But I think there’s always a bit of doubt because he’s never completely forthcoming. So what she finds out she sort of finds out on her own. He’s a little vague when he explains things, enough to calm her down or to get her to help in an indirect way.

B. Campbell: And with regard to Sam’s question, I don’t think there is a cocktail that he has not found yet. I think Sam has been making them up, he knows so many of them. But you know, the one thing I want to point out is you never see him drunk. You know, a lot of people go, oh Sam’s an alcoholic. Hey, he’s a guy who likes to drink like a lot of Americans. So that truly is – you find sometimes we pick our battles. If I’ve got a morning meeting with the feds, Sam will have a cup of coffee. He’s not a complete party boy.

S. Gless: Bruce and I are still trying to get Matt Nix to write us a . . .

B. Campbell: He promised us season two, he promised that we would get drunk together.

S. Gless: I know, he lied. When Sam babysits with Maddie, wouldn’t it be a fun thing to sit there and get loaded and not talk about anything that has to do with the work.

B. Campbell: Exactly.

Aside from you two getting drunk together, how do you want to see Sam and Madeline’s relationship evolve in season four.

B. Campbell: Well, go ahead, Sharon, give it a whack.

S. Gless: Well, I think Sam and Maddie have kind of a really cool relationship. We were given a chance to live together. That helps. I didn’t tell you this, Bruce, that I really miss the fact that you moved out.

B. Campbell: I know.

S. Gless: Yes. But that gives you a chance to come back. How do I see the relationship evolving? I see it as all good. I see that it can get rougher, it can get more tender, and I think there’s a myriad of things that can come out of a relationship with two people who do respect each other and who both love this one man, this boy, my boy and his friend.

B. Campbell: And you know the one thing I should say, too. I can’t speak for other actors, but I don’t really probe the writers, I honestly don’t. I haven’t bugged them in three years about what’s coming up with Sam. Whether he’s going to have a home or a girlfriend. I like to sit back, just like the audience, and let it happen. I get excited reading the next script, because I don’t really know what they have planned. The season finale, I couldn’t tell you sitting here right now what’s going to happen. Not because I’m lying or that I’m not supposed to, I don’t know because I haven’t asked, I don’t want to know. So you know . . .

S. Gless: I’m the same way. I never ask about what’s going to happen with my character.

B. Campbell: No, because . . . as we’ve seen, they’re good writers so you know, get out of their face. We don’t like them in our face, I don’t get in their face.

Burn Notice has been renewed for a fourth season, and as we all know, the show is extremely successful. How many seasons do think this show will have and do you both plan to stay on the show through to the very end?

B. Campbell: Go ahead, Sharon. Let’s see where we get.

S. Gless: I don’t know. I mean the show – it used to be in the old days when you signed a contract, it was for seven years. But in this day and age, I don’t know. I do think it has some longevity.

B. Campbell: Come on, Sharon, pick a number, pick a number.

S. Gless: Okay, seven.

B. Campbell: Seven. I’m going eight.

S. Gless: Okay, baby, I’m sticking with you.

B. Campbell: The reason I say that is because Monk went eight and we’re outpacing Monk in the ratings. And so we’re kind of the new tent pole for USA, and I think we’re going to be around for the long haul and mentally, I have to say, I’m not looking over my shoulder. I’m fully prepared to ride this show to the bitter end because it’s – why, what am I looking for? Actors always seem like they’re looking for a better gig. This time I can’t, there is no better gig. This is a good gig, and I’m happy to ride it until it ends.

S. Gless: Yes, me too. I want to stay. My husband, who is a producer, used to tease me and he’d say, “You know, I wouldn’t give these people any trouble.” Because he said, “How I would open the next episode is this rainy morning and everybody’s just standing in this rain under umbrellas and we pan down. Is that a tear on our hero’s face? You pan down and the tombstone says, Madeline.”

B. Campbell: Season finale or a season opener. Exactly.

S. Gless: Yes, right. So I’m just playing myself and I hope they let me stay the whole time.

B. Campbell: Yes, gee, Sharon, do you think they’ll let you?

S. Gless: Well, you know, you never know. They may want to move somewhere. But knowing Madeline, she’d pack too.

B. Campbell: Yes, she probably would.

S. Gless: Yes.

The show projects itself as a tutorial. It teaches about different operatives and things to use in real life. Have either of you ever been motivated to go ahead and try some of these things that the show teaches?

B. Campbell: No, and I don’t recommend it either. I don’t recommend that anybody build anything from any fictional show.

S. Gless: Right. Don’t try this at home.

B. Campbell: It’s very important, do not try this at home for all kinds of reasons. I do know, as an adventurous child, we sent UFOs up that were constructed of dry cleaning bags over balsa wood struts with candles as thrusters. And you know, we could have set the woods on fire. We had homemade explosives, we could have blown our hands off. So growing up in suburban Detroit, I definitely had an older brother who was crazy and we were always mixing the wrong things together. Making gunpowder, and so I’m glad to have survived, actually. But now as an adult I can look back and go, “Yeesh, man that was stupid.” So I don’t caution the separation of church and state when it comes to TV shows it’s all fake, folks.

S. Gless: When I was watching the show. Alright, we know I can’t look at my own stuff. But anyway, I asked Matt in reading all these scripts. I said, “Matt,” I’ve been in scenes or standing by watching Michael and Sam and Fi build stuff right there with whatever they had. And they go in really close and said to Matt, I said, “Matt, this looks really real. I mean you’re going to have people go home and aren’t children watching this?” And he said, “Sharon, I always leave some things out.”

B. Campbell: There’s always about three ingredients that he leaves out.

Could you talk about getting together with Ms. Daly again and working with her again on Burn Notice?

S. Gless: It was wonderful. And I’m not just saying that. Tyne Daly is one of the finest actresses I’ve ever met or ever had the pleasure of working with. It was just like old times. I mean they were different characters, but we know each other now and her mother had a great expression. Okay, her mom said, “Sweat makes a great cement.” And she and I sweat together for six years and we just know each other’s timing, we know, and we love, we love to rehearse, we love to work, and it was a real treat for me and I think for all of us to have her on the show.

B. Campbell: It was great to watch. Yes, we loved it and the crew and the cast. …

Are there any past guest stars or characters you’d really like to see make a return appearance or is there anyone out there like a fantasy guest star that you’d really like to have on the show or work with personally?

S. Gless: I’d like to have Tyne Daly come back. She wants to come back as a bad guy.

B. Campbell: And she’d be a great bad guy. I’d bring her back.

S. Gless: I know. Like Judy Dench on the James Bond things. Not a bad guy, but she would be running the whole thing.

B. Campbell: Exactly, she’s the big evil temptress. But you know we had Lucy Lawless a couple years ago, which was a lot of fun for my old Xena pal. One of these days I’d love to get Kevin Sorbo, my Hercules buddy, to be a bad guy. Nice thing is when your ratings are good you get good guest stars. That’s really just the bottom line. Everyone wants to be on a popular show. Nobody wants to be on a marginally rated show. So we’re actually very fortunate – that’s what ratings bring to you.

What would Christine Cagney think of Madeline and what would Madeline think of Christine Cagney because they’re both non-traditional characters but in very different ways.

S. Gless: Yes, I don’t see them going camping together. I think that’s a very good, it’s a hard question. They’re so different. I don’t know. I think Madeline might have a little more respect for Christine and what she does, maybe not her attitude. Christine was highly competitive. I don’t know if she liked any other women around. There was an episode where they brought in a young cop who was going to observe and they became sort of comedic because Christine just didn’t want anything to do with her and all the men were all over the woman, of course. I don’t think Christine sees anybody but herself, do you know what I’m saying, herself and her work. That was part of her problem. She was a raging alcoholic; I mean they were very different. But I don’t know, maybe if you sat them down in a bar together that they’d get along. That might true. That’s the best I can do I think. I could see them just forgetting what either of them do and what their backgrounds are and just sitting down and having a drink.