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On July 11th one of Syfy's most
successful series ever, Warehouse 13, returned for
its third season. After saving the life of the President,
two Secret Service agents find themselves abruptly transferred
to Warehouse 13 -- a massive, top-secret storage facility
in windswept South Dakota that houses every strange artifact,
mysterious relic, fantastical object and supernatural souvenir
ever collected by the U.S. government.
The Warehouse's caretaker Artie (Saul Rubinek) charges
Pete (Eddie McClintock) and Myka (Joanne Kelly)
with chasing down reports of supernatural and paranormal activity
in search of new objects to cache at the Warehouse, as well
as helping him to control the warehouse, itself. Claudia (Allison
Scagliotti) is the young, hip, brilliant techno-wiz who
manages to successfully breach the Warehouse's complex security
system in order to track down Artie.
PCM participated in a conference call with Saul, Eddie
and Allison to learn more about this highly anticipated third
season, in-depth perspectives about their characters, and
the progression of the show.
Question: Without giving away any spoilers to
the upcoming season, I'm wondering if you can each describe
the direction your characters seems to be heading this season?
Saul Rubinek: Without giving up the spoiler, oh, okay,
well I was planning to spoil everything, but if you don't
want to, okay, all right. So, Eddie, how deep do we get into
Pete Lattimer's character this season?
Eddie McClintock: We kind of get an insight to the
people that really influenced him when he was a kid, kind
of who made him who he is. We find out more about his dad.
We find out more about his mother. And so we really actually
- I can't remember the name of the episode, but my storyline
is pretty much centered around Pete's past. So we're going
to get to find out what made him the way he is.
Allison Scagliotti: Well Claudia's arc is always sort
of mirrored my personal arc. This season she finally got a
peer in the Warehouse in the Steve Jinks character and they
developed a really close, great friendship, an almost brother-sister
dynamic. Claudia is contributing in the technical field as
always, building tesla grenades and periscopes in the Warehouse
and whatnot. But more than anything, she just sort of is figuring
out what it means to be a part of the team which I'm figuring
out along the way, what does it mean to be part of this team
that makes television show every week.
That's right, that's right. So sort of wanting to be respected
and, you know, just figuring out her purpose there and her
function there and also dealing with her past. I think we
touched on what was mentioned in Season 1 which is Claudia's
time in a mental institution which is obviously emotional
and a touchy subject. But it's been cool to explore as an
actor and I've had a really wonderful time flushing that out
this season.
Saul Rubinek: Well, third season, there - they can
take some chances in where they might not have wanted to right
away, they wanted people to get to know the characters. So
there - they can play a little bit. We can go off character
a little bit. We all get a chance to be kind of bizarre versions
of ourselves in some way or another because of - certainly
I do because of artifact-related incidents.
And the writers got a chance to have a little bit more fun.
They know that they've got a core audience. They know that
the show is successful, that their tone and their storylines
have been on the right track, that for the most part, we're
getting incredibly positive responses from people. We have
a lot of fun. And I think that what's going on is, you know,
we're not searching, "How can we make this show work?"
We're not part of a group of people trying to figure out how
to stay on the air.
We're trying to give the fans more of what they already like.
We're really - this is the kind of show I would watch with
my family. So it's really entertaining show. It's really unpredictable
and it continues to be that way for my character certainly.
I think that you get to find out how Artie fits into the Warehouse
hierarchy with a little bit more depth. They continue to deal
- as writers of the show, they've allowed the show to explore
the mythology and the regions and even by putting, you know,
life and death situations into the hierarchy of how the Warehouse
operates. They're allowing themselves to explore this world
as it really existed and looking at the intricacies of it.
That's really fun for fans. It's fun for us. We - honestly,
we get scripts. We're very lucky that we read through them
two days before we go into production. We have a read through
around the table with some guest casts if they're available
and we're listened into by network and studio.
Question: My question is you're well into Season
3 now, you've done a lot of episodes. Can you tell me what
your favorite episode has been so far?
Allison Scagliotti: My favorite happens right in the middle
of the season, it's episode six, called Don't Hate the Player.
And this episode has everything. It's probably our most absurd,
to date, I think in the history of Warehouse. There are sort
of Tron-meets-Dungeons-and-Dragons episode with an amazing
guest cast. We all plus get to do crazy things and play sort
of heightened versions of ourselves and also very different
versions of ourselves. And that's the episode that heralds
the return of Mr. (Neil Grayson) to Warehouse 13.
Eddie McClintock: I would say Don't Hate the Player
is definitely one of my favorites in the - of the season.
It's things like that just start being - they just started
being done on television. The fact that we got it by the network
and they let us make the show, it speaks a lot towards the
amount of confidence that they have in our writers and our
show runner and Jack Kenny and us as actors to pull this off.
It was so much fun and like Allison said, there's really some
absurd stuff but it's actually funny. It's not just silly
and stupid. It's stuff that will make you laugh which obviously
is always very important.
My other favorite would be, there's an episode called Love
Sick where I had to play being drunk and - and for quite a
bit of it and it's always - I've only had to maybe do that
one other time. But it was really challenging for me to walk
the line between someone playing drunk and someone who's actually
looks the part.
So because that was a big challenge for me as an actor, I'll
be interested to see how it turned out. And I hear that it
turned out okay. So I guess the payoff is that it's always
nice when you're trying to convey something and you're able
to actually do that. So those were my two favorites, I'd say.
Saul Rubinek: And that episode, Love Sick, was one
of my favorites too and the other one too that you mentioned,
Don't Hate the Player, I got to play a kind of Artie - you
know, as if he were doing a Monty Python movie. And it was
an offshoot of Artie. And in Love Sick, Artie's bedroom is
introduced and it's an extraordinary set; gets used a couple
of times during the season. Terrific times.
But what - this is an opportunity and I think Allison and
Eddie will join in is to talk about the unsung hero. We've
sung praises of Jack Kenny and our co-stars and how well we
get along and we have wonderful guest stars. But the unsung
hero of our series is really Franco De Cotiis, who is our
production designer who is a magician, who has created a look
for this show that I will - I really believe he should be
nominated for an Emmy. I think it's - cable is a little harder.
There are less viewers and it's a little tougher to get nominations,
but if anybody deserves to be recognized in a television industry
at the moment, for my money, after 30 years of doing television,
I'm looking at great designers and even in feature - in the
feature world, there are very few people who can do what he
can do on a budget that he's got.
The fans are getting a master craftsman who is doing masterpieces.
He's doing - he's an incredible team, he's got great art director,
he's got great set decorators, people who love the show, every
prop, every - that he supervises, all the design, the costumes
by Joanne Hansen, every aspect of the show on the design front
is one of the, not talked about by you guys in the press much,
and understandably, you know, we're out there, these characters
are interesting, there's great storylines and we got great
artifacts and the fantasies and adventure part of it is really
fun.
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