Interviews

SciFiChick.com had the opportunity to sit in on a conference call with Kelli Giddish, star of FOX’s upcoming show Past Life, and David Hudgins, executive producer and creator.

The pilot episode for Past Life airs this Tuesday, February 9th on FOX. Then, the show’s actual premier (and regular time slot) entitled “Dead Man Walking” will be on the following Thursday, February 11th.

Kelli, could you talk a bit about how you first became involved in the series, and about some of the acting challenges you found stepping into the Dr. McGinn role?

K. Giddish: Well, there is a pilot season every year and this is actually one of the first projects I went out on probably about a year ago — last January. I really, really loved the character and went right in for it. Actually David and Deran Sarafian, the director of the pilot, and Lou Pitt, were all down in Baltimore and I was living in New York at the time. I went in and tested and it went from there. They had found Nick Bishop and so it kind of just rolled into a project from there.

When I first got the script looking at Dr. McGinn it was just someone that I immediately connected to, in terms of just a through-line for me. It was immediately a character I felt like I didn’t have to take a lot away from myself to play her; I just got to add on layers, one being that she believes in a system of reincarnation and past lives and that’s her way to help people.

A challenge which I think is really nice to see her overcome as a character and one for me as an actor is to really get people on your side and to get the patients on your side. I think she really acts as an emotional conduit to people that are having trouble or experiencing trauma, from what she assumes and is from their past lives.

David, could you tell us first where your inspiration for this series came from and some of the challenges creatively, and with production, getting the show off the ground?

D. Hudgins: Sure. First let me add on to what Kelli was just saying. The way we cast Kelli Giddish in this role was very unique. Here’s what happened. I got her audition on tape, which is actually an e-mail they send. I was sitting at my computer and I queued it up and I watched it and I was absolutely blown away. In the moment I said to myself that is Kate. That is exactly who I had in mind so we flew Kelli down to Baltimore and we screen tested her for this pilot which is not that common anymore these days.

As soon as we screen tested her and showed it to the studio and the network everybody agreed that she was perfect for the role. I just think that’s – there was good karma from the beginning with Kelli. In terms of my inspiration the series is inspired by a book called The Reincarnationist written by M. J. Rose. I had a pilot deal with Warner Brothers. They sent me the book and asked me to read it and I did. Frankly, I didn’t really have any expectations when I picked up the book but as soon as I finished it I was immediately engaged. I said this is an incredibly cool world. It was a world that I was not that familiar with so I immediately started doing research, started talking to people. I happened to see a three-part special on Oprah that she was doing with a guy named Dr. Brian Weiss about past lives and regression. I just got hooked immediately and thought this is just such an interesting, different, unique world.

From a storytelling point of view what I love about it is it is so wide open. There are so many different stories you can tell based on this world. I came up with this franchise of The Past Life detective team and building around that just sort of went forward with the series, and created the characters. The inspiration really for the project was this book, The Reincarnationist by M. J. Rose.

You asked about some challenges for production. One of the great things about the show and frankly, something that we were pretty surprised with when the pilot and the first episode started coming in is there are these regression episodes within the shows where the patients are having – they’re basically flashbacks. They’re going back and they’re experiencing their past lives and we really wanted to have these sequences – we really wanted these sequences to have a unique look.

Deran Sarafian, who directed the pilot, did an amazing job with that and he came in and he created this visual style that’s very filmic. It’s very cinematic, it’s scary, it’s fast. What we ended up with were these really interesting sort of mini thrillers that play throughout each episode which were a challenge to shoot because there is a lot of different coverage and a lot of different pieces that you have to get.

At some points Deran [was] running through the forest with the camera in his hands. I mean it was that much fun and that sort of outlaw style of shooting. It really worked. It really cut together well. We developed a whole system for shooting those regressions with a second unit. It required a lot of cutting and a lot more visual effects than we originally anticipated.

We actually hired a special editor to do the visual effects and to edit those sequences. That was a challenge to do the regression episodes. The rest of it was really just a dream. It’s just an amazing case and we had a really great crew in Atlanta and it was a great time.

Kelli, are there any similarities between you and your character?

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I was recently able to interview Richard Doetsch, author of The 13th Hour, reviewed here. Which also made my top picks of 2009.

The 13th Hour takes a different spin on time travel. How did you come up with the idea of doing a novel in reverse?

I had never seen a novel written backwards before and thought it would be a great challenge. I think we all have a moment in life that we would like to change be it a decision at work, something we said to a girlfriend or boyfriend, or sometimes something greater like expressing our true feelings for a friend or family member before they slipped out of our lives or saving someone from a tragedy if we could only reach out our hand in that one fateful moment. I think it is something universal, something everyone thinks about at some point, something that bridges languages and cultures. How great would it be to act on hindsight?

If you could go back in time to change some event in your past, would you?

No, I think we are the sum of our failures and successes, our missteps and achievements. Our character, our lives are shaped by the unchartered lives we lead for better or for worse and it’s really the obstacles and tragedies we face that form us and give us the tools and abilities to tackle the future.

What obstacles did you face in writing such a complex story?

Writing the thirteenth hours was like playing five games of chess in my head at the same time. I wrote the story backwards in the same way the reader experiences it. In so doing, I had to remember the future and the past. It was difficult but fun as it was like a giant puzzle whose every move reverberated throughout the story.

While the element of science fiction is there with time travel, The 13th Hour is more of a mystery thriller. What section do you think your novel should be shelved?

Without question, in the thriller and mystery section. My stories are really thrillers with heart along with a very slight dash of fantasy. All of my stories have a very slight bit of fantasy in them while remaining firmly routed in reality. That little bit of the impossible helps to give a bit of a sense of wonder and is part of my signature. Most of the people who have read and enjoyed it are thrillers readers who picked it up without thinking of it as sci-fi.

I read that New Line Cinema bought the film rights. Any further news on that?

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