That seems to be true of some of the stranger things, too. "When he saw Rico in costume overlooking the real town, Tuzla, he said 'Oh, I like him, he's real,'" MacRury recalls of that same photojournalist. "When he was in Sierra Leone, he was stopped at a checkpoint by paramilitary thugs, and a guy stepped out of the jungle high as a kite wearing a white wedding dress. So he would be Wedding Dress Guy."
Speedo Boy, while equally unexpected, perhaps requires more costume-related bravery for an actor. "What saved me is the wig. I don't think I could wear a Speedo like that without the wig," Colantoni says of the long blonde hair he sports for the role. "Thank God I could hide behind whatever little clothing I had, though the leather jacket in 105 degree weather wasn't a lot of fun."
But he also found that his character represented a particular kind of truth. "When we were in Bosnia, there was a different feeling I got walking around like that than in Canada. It was amazing how something that ironic struck a chord with the people there. Here it was just like, are you hot in that thing? There it was like, we know that guy. We understand that guy."
"Speedo Boy seemed to be a guy who found a calling in war. When war happened, he identified with a higher purpose," explains Colantoni, whose character is also a musician. "But the story takes place during a ceasefire, which was the most interesting part of that character — his inability to fulfill that higher calling. What do you do when you're actually waiting for war to break out again? It was thrilling, thrilling, thrilling to be able to deal with that frustration."
"Major Hart is a guy who comes into the situation with a set of preconceived notions and rules, and has that challenged every step of the way," is how Roberts describes his role. "He's the guy in the absurdist surroundings who tries to be as normal as possible. He spends a good part of the show trying to figure out how to maintain his sense of what's right and what order means in the context of a place where that's totally meaningless."
Article comments
1 - Joe Clark
So you seriously expect us to read this in three chunks so your blog host can sell three times as many ads?
Why not just bill us by the word and get it over with?
2 - El Bicho
Joe, try and keep up. It's 2009.
3 - eLYSE
It sounds like a great miniseries...which of course won't play down here in the States. Darn.
4 - amysusanne
i was all set to ask you if you knew anything about the possibility of it airing in the US, but then i remembered that this is the internet. it's probably already out there somewhere.
awesome interview, as usual. i so love enrico and have way too many eps of "flashpoint" backlogged in the DVR right now. i saw your heads up on twitter (i'm sabrinaobscura, btw) and meant to search it out and then totally forgot until this morning.
5 - Rob Campbell
There's a pretty cool web game on the back end of the ZOS tv website.
Last Tango in Jadac is an interactive nightmare that tasks users to participate in the illicit economy of war torn Balkins. Participants must collect cigarettes and condoms to barter their way out of town - its a trip.