07 Meltdown on set

Claudia Black interview about Farscape to bbc in sept 2005
What was the best episode, and which was the worst, or hardest, to do?
The difficult episodes to film were the ones where we hadn't received the script before we started shooting.When you're a lead actor, or part of a core cast, you have a huge responsibility to carry the story, to work out what colour you bring to that canvas and to deliver that wholeheartedly. When you don't know what direction that's going in, or where it leads, you can't really fulfil your responsibilities. Sadly, creatively you have to tone down your choices because you have to make them more generic, so they can be slotted in to whatever is filled in around those scenes.
Meltdown was a particularly difficult episode to shoot because we had not received the script and the director was in the near-to-impossible position where he had to make something out of nothing. We had a basic idea of what was going to happen in the story but there are always so many indications from the writer as to how you tell the story. I mean, what's the story? There are only thirteen original stories told in a million different ways? One of the great things about Farscape was bringing a very irreverent tone to an otherwise common story, or putting a unique twist on the tale and we weren't in a position to do that as performers if we didn't have the story in front of us. It's hard to do a painting without the canvas.
Contrasting that there were episodes like Ben Browder's one [John Quixote] where I played the crazy blonde-haired princess. The wig was very heavy and I started to get a bit cranky boom-sticks, as I call it! I was a bit tired and wanted to have lunch... It was a great opportunity for improvisation. I found that Aeryn was too clean and serious a character to improvise in a way that, say, Crichton would in his environment. Therefore I, as an actor, didn't feel I could really let loose on Aeryn terribly much, but the more she started to soften with Crichton the more room for improvisation [there was] in that regard. There are scenes that are quite intimate between Crichton and Aeryn where she's learning to speak English - that was one of my ideas that I'd threaded through from something from David Kemper and one of the other writers. We would feed in those things when we could.
As far as episodes go, on a whole... the two-parter where the Talyn Crichton dies. The sand dune sequences were such fun to film, in those buggies - fanging around as I say: the technical term for driving at high speed in a sand buggy. Shooting on location in Australia when the weather is perfect is just a sublime experience and we look back on that with great fondness.
The Choice was a really stimulating episode for me. I was nervous as hell because I knew I was carrying it individually, really. Gaining an opportunity to work with Paul Goddard as well - he was so lovely to work with; and Rowan. We just all enjoyed working with our stable of recurring directors. [The Choice] was just another opportunity for us to come up with some ideas and play around with the story, and I enjoyed it immensely.
My mother got to return and Linda Cropper is a fabulous woman, a great actress, and really well known in Australia, but also really funny. In between all the very serious stuff where we were having fights, we'd crack up directly afterwards. [It's funny when you think that the character is] so stern and they had such a terrible relationship- so dysfunctional.
There was one particular day where I was shooting a scene in The Choice with my mother and we're standing on the balcony. It's when Crais comes in and shoots her accidentally-on-purpose. I was supposed to catch Linda Cropper, hold her before she dies and have this moment with her where she says 'let me go'. Aeryn finally decides that she should release her mother off a building so that she can splat on the floor below. There were all these safety mats and I went to catch Linda and she fell at a slightly different angle from what I was expecting. I'm totally uncoordinated anyway so I don't know why any actor would ever trust me. I missed, she fell over, we both fell off the wall together, I swore and it was quite funny. I think they removed the swearing from the bloopers. Poor mum... couldn't catch her!

[@arithon4258]

Farscape was an absolutely amazing series with a wonderful cast.
It was such a shame that it ended early!

[@sebastianmelmoth1645]

Not just radiantly beautiful and amazingly sexy, but such an intelligent and articulate actor who gives very insightful and thorough answers to questions. Her professionalism is extraordinary.

[@sadev101]

spectacular lady

[@HuyMinLao]

Aeryn is so baddas and hawt!

[@metairie33]

1st