Would you steal medicine to protect a family member? What if your life was on the line, and you had unlimited resources? Adrian Conrad invited us to ponder those questions and actor Bill Marchant, who brought him to life, joins us LIVE to discuss his take on the character and his own career!

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Timecodes
0:00 – Splash Screen
0:22 – Opening Credits
0:52 – Welcome
01:08 – Guest Introduction
01:45 – Morally Ambiguous Characters
04:37 – Adrian Conrad, Bill Gates and Richard Branson
05:40 – Bill’s Roots
09:50 – Making a Living
11:11 – Teaching Is a Life Calling
11:54 – Acting is Expsoure
13:55 – Anxiety Vanishes During Work
16:10 – David’s Experience with Teaching
19:47 – David’s Journalism Background
21:23 – Non-Profitable Careers
25:00 – Stargate Cast as Teachers
25:56 – Auditioning for Adrian Conrad
29:38 – Bill’s Approach to Conrad
33:01 – Playing Conrad Post-Implantation
34:38 – Goa’uld Arrogance
35:25 – Director William Gereghty
36:48 – Goa’ulded Adrian and Diana Scene
39:12 – Interpreting the Goa’uld in the Scene
42:18 – The Goa’uld Has Taken Over
44:06 – Post-Implantation
45:15 – Amanda Tapping
46:20 – Sick the Night Before “Desperate Measures”
48:37 – Stargate’s Ambassador
49:42 – John DeLancie
53:18 – Distinct Goa’uld Personalities
55:22 – Plans for Adrian Conrad Post-Season Five
57:05 – Bill’s Auto Accident
1:01:48 – Tom McBeath
1:03:10 – Returning for “Prometheus”
1:04:46 – The Prometheus Set
1:05:59 – Adrian Conrad’s Death
1:07:20 – A Proper Send-Off
1:10:45 – The Mayor of Vancouver
1:11:57 – We Get Adrian’s Goa’uld Story
1:14:32 – Other Projects
1:15:22 – Returning to Stargate
1:17:08 – Auditions Over the Computer
1:21:51 – Was Adrian Conrad a Good Guy or a Bad Guy?
1:24:56 – An Impactful Role
1:27:06 – Chappie
1:30:40 – Godzilla (2014)
1:32:36 – Voice-Over Work
1:34:13 – The Pink Triangle
1:37:09 – Thank You, Bill!
1:39:54 – Post Interview Housekeeping
1:43:53 – End Credits

***

“Stargate” and all related materials are owned by MGM Studios and MGM Television.

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TRANSCRIPT
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David Read:
Hello. Good afternoon, good day, wherever you are in the world and welcome to Episode 262 of Dial the Gate: The Stargate Oral History Project. My name is David Read, I really appreciate you joining me for this episode. I have, in my opinion, one of the better villains that Stargate SG-1 produced. I say better, because, if you’re really paying attention, you can’t help but feel bad for the guy. Bill Marchant. I’m not talking about you getting spaced, as it were, although that was technically the Goa’uld. That was not Adrian Conrad. That was the Goa’uld, but I’m getting in too much into world building here. Bill Marchant, Adrian Conrad. Welcome to Dial the Gate, sir. How are you doing?

Bill Marchant:
I’m doing great, David. Thank you for having me on.

David Read:
Thank you for being here. This is a treat for me because I love when, sci-fi in particular, but drama can certainly do it in general, put you into a position where you’re not comfortable with the way that you feel about a character or a protagonist or an antagonist. I just want to start right off the bat: Adrian Conrad was one of my favorite characters, one of my favorite villains from SG-1. I know that some people are going to disagree with me and that’s OK. Despite what he did to Sam, I don’t condone him for kidnapping her but still feel bad for the guy. I can see myself in this situation where it’s like, “Yeah, I’ve got nothing else left.” I would not kidnap someone, but I can still feel bad that he’s in the situation that he is. I’ve wanted to know for a while now, how do you feel about this character? I wanna get into you as a person, you as an actor and as a teacher pretty quickly here, but I just had to ask you about this off the bat.

Bill Marchant:
Sure thing. I think I’m like most actors; playing an erstwhile villain, if you will, I think Adrian’s got complexity so he’s not just a two-dimensional cartoon cutout villain. He’s a bad dude who does bad things for ultimately selfish reasons. I think every actor loves to play those kinds of roles, I certainly do. I was aware of Stargate certainly, ’cause it shot in my city. I’m an actor here and I am a sci-fi fan, but I’m not a big TV watcher. Traditionally, I’m more of a film man so I knew a bit about the series. I certainly knew who the main characters were and I’d seen the original film so I was aware of the premise of the gate, et cetera. But when I got the sides from the casting director, who was Carol Kelsay at that time, amazing woman and hugely responsible for advancing my career. When I got the sides, I was blown away going, “Holy shit, this is an amazingly complicated character.” The way they were pitching it to me then through my agency and through Carol Kelsay was that their plans for Adrian was that he was gonna be on the show for quite a long time, which I’ll get into later. I couldn’t help but be thrilled on multiple levels. The character was great. The writing was great. I didn’t know Bill Gereghty at the time, but of course working with him was one of the great joys of my career, and the whole team, and I’ll get into all that. But yes, to answer your question more succinctly, the character himself was just mind-blowing. I think at the time, I based the character around Bill Gates, most likely, because at that time, that was pre-Elon, pre-Jeff Bezos. I guess Richard Branson was around at that time but I think Branson was actually an influence too because of the arrogance and the outrageous act that he commits by kidnapping Sam, putting the Goa’uld in his body. The lengths that he was going to; the ego on this character, his desperation to stay on planet Earth in any form was so profound that I found that intriguing. That relationship with ego is, as an acting teacher, something that I have to confront all the time within myself and certainly within my students and Adrian Conrad has ego in spades.

David Read:
Let’s sit him aside for just a moment. When did you fall in love with acting and how does it ultimately fold into teaching?

Bill Marchant:
That’s a great question. I’ll try to be as succinct as possible.

David Read:
Or not. We can get there.

Bill Marchant:
OK. We have time. I grew up in a little town called Georgetown, Ontario, just an hour outside of Toronto. A typical small Ontario town, very white, very homogenous, almost like Pleasantville, a little freaky about seemingly perfect it was, and in retrospect, not perfect at all. In the ’70s, the Canadian government instituted legislation to promote film and television production in Canada. A lot of that was, unfortunately, really B-grade productions that were tax havens, places for people to blow money and have tax deductions. They were mostly junk films, but not entirely. Two big films came to my town, one of which was, I think it ended up… I’ve got it here somewhere. I forget what the final name of the film was. It was originally called Never Trust an Honest Thief and it starred Orson Welles.

David Read:
What a heavy.

Bill Marchant:
Totally. Literally and figuratively also.

David Read:
Yes, absolutely. That was not on purpose, I swear to God.

Bill Marchant:
He was a big fella.

David Read:
I do that all the time. I’m sorry, go ahead.

Bill Marchant:
Orson would appreciate it, I’m sure.

David Read:
I’m sure he would.

Bill Marchant:
The movie shot literally in the park outside my house and one big scene happened on my street right in front of my house. The whole town was transformed. I was a freak, David, as a kid. There was no cable in those days, that’s how old I am. We just had the dials on the channel, literally rotary dial, and the UHF channels. There was a channel out of Buffalo, Channel 29, and they showed basically old movies 24 hours around the clock. I would stay up all night. I’d wait till my parents go to bed. I’d already memorized the TV guide and I would sneak downstairs and watch movies. I’ve always been an insomniac so it was fine by me even as a little kid. I was watching On the Road movies with Hope and Crosby, but I was also watching stuff like Casablanca, Citizen Kane. I was well aware who Orson was and there he was outside my house, the cameras and the lights and everything and I got to be on camera. From that moment I was hooked. I started auditioning, sending auditions, or my package, whatever. It was a home photograph and a letter basically to CBC, which is the Canadian Broadcasting Company for those people who don’t know. I got a gig on one of those shows and my career started to blossom and bloom. My parents were like, “We live in Georgetown an hour away. We can’t run the family around you and your schedule. You’re free to do any acting you want at school or the community theater, but we can’t sacrifice the family for what you want and need right now. When you’re age–”

David Read:
How many siblings did you have?

Bill Marchant:
One younger, one older, both brothers.

David Read:
OK. Big family.

Bill Marchant:
They’re both creative men, but not actors like I am now. They both acted in school, but they’ve got careers of their own. I did everything possible, more than a dozen community theater shows, every high school musical, et cetera. I ended up going to University of Guelph for theater and that’s how my acting training started. The life of an actor is very rough. The training I got at University of Guelph did not prepare me for the business. I went to Toronto with stars in my eyes. My ego puffed up a thousand times its size ’cause I got told in school and in the community that I had something special, and I believed that. I thought that stardom was gonna be immediate and of course it wasn’t. I got sucked up into the restaurant industry like every actor and I got a steady job working in upper management in restaurants. My folks were happy ’cause I was making a living, but I was miserable. At the age of 27 I moved to Vancouver, actually to be a writer, ’cause I’ve always been a writer too. I really abandoned acting at that point. Ultimately, after a few years of really tough times, to be truthful, I got back into acting and I started my own theater company with a woman by the name of Kate Trois, who’s a local legend and genius. I got an offer, after a couple of years, to really be the architect and one of the creators of the acting department at Vancouver Film School. I’ve been there for 27 years, which I can’t believe. It’s kinda shocking. As I said to you in our correspondence, I love acting and being an actor. I’m looking forward to my next gig whenever that rolls around. I feel like my life calling is teaching. I’m good in the classroom. I’m compassionate to the young actor and what they’re going through. I’m well aware of how difficult it is to take what’s happening inside of your creature and put it so nakedly and brazenly in front of a camera. I think it’s much more difficult than people think. It’s easy to be good, but it’s profoundly difficult to be even approaching greatness, whatever that might mean in our field.

David Read:
To put yourself out there.

Bill Marchant:
Yes.

David Read:
I haven’t acted since college, so what the heck do I know? Especially for introverts, it’s a great exercise in exposure. It’s almost like exposure therapy. I can go out there, but it’s not really me. I’m being led by a document. You know? That’s a very safe space, even though I’m presenting myself, a facet of myself to people. I’m sure a lot of what you go through in class, I’m sure you probably have done things like mask work and things like that; ways of articulating the psyche with one another and with the audience. It’s very freeing.

Bill Marchant:
Yep. I think you nailed it, David. I love that you talked about the introvert’s relationship with the craft. I think there’s a long-held belief, or a perception, that actors are, by nature, extroverts. There are, of course, actors who are. Maybe they have an easier time of it because being in the public or being in the limelight or just having that much attention on them, that’s what they live by, that’s what they desire. Whereas the introvert, myself included, if I’m in public, of course, I can do it. I’ve got the skills to survive it, but then I have to retreat back to my home base and hide away for a couple of days or weeks to restore my energy. I think you’re right; a lot of introverts are drawn to it because you can be exposed, as you said. You can be out there, but you do get to hide behind that word “mask.” I love that. You get to hide behind the mask of this character. For me, I don’t want to speak for other introverts, but I suffer from a great deal of anxiety too. When I’m working, teaching and/or acting, it vanishes completely. I’m so focused on something outside of myself that the cogs and wheels that whir and turn and twist inside my brain constantly…

David Read:
You can’t shut them off. You can’t shut them off unless you change your paradigm.

Bill Marchant:
Acting is a different paradigm, so it’s a total paradigm shift. A character like Adrian Conrad, the excitement there is – of course you’re in sci-fi – so for the child that still lives inside of me to play in that particular playground, God. Just so thrilling, so exciting, so distracting from my woes and worries. My days on Stargate, though far too brief, were as exciting as anything that I ever did. I love those memories and frankly that’s why I’m here today because I am a shy, fairly withdrawn person and not prone to doing interviews. My experience with, not just Stargate itself, but the fans has been revelatory to me. It’s just such a constant joy. That’s over 20 years ago, I think, right? Are we ’22, ’23? I’m not sure.

David Read:
23, 24. It was 2000, Season Five was… No, Season Five was shot in 2001, so 23 years.

Bill Marchant:
Holy… Wow. Wow.

David Read:
Yeah. September 11th was shot during “Menace,” that was later in Season Five. It both feels long and feels recent, you know?

Bill Marchant:
Yeah.

David Read:
It’s weird.

Bill Marchant:
Looking at young Adrian’s face, I’m a little shocked. Adrian was a middle-aged person at that point. OK, if I was middle-aged 23 years ago, that must mean I’m certifiably old now. I don’t know.

David Read:
Those tech billionaires, man. I worked at PayPal for about five years. This was after my Propworx time when I sold the Stargate props and costume pieces. I worked as a phone agent for a year and a half and eventually got sucked into training. It’s teaching, essentially. It’s exactly what it is. Rarely in my life have I ever been as content. My father was a flight instructor. I knew that I had it in me, but I loved it and if I could still be doing it, I probably would be. There is something about imparting knowledge and dealing with different personalities and dealing with those personalities intertwined with each other; watching them feed off of learning a new skill and adapting what you have to share with them to that personality. Like I said in the email, there are few jobs more important or rewarding, in my opinion, than teaching.

Bill Marchant:
I agree. It’s no secret, certainly on my end of the industry, out of a class of 25 people, in the long run, if you’re lucky, maybe five of those people will actually end up pursuing this as a career. Coming out right after graduation, maybe everybody plays their hand, but within a couple of years most people have fallen away and attrition takes its toll. I’ve always looked at my career as a teacher as more about engaging with human beings and helping them be better people, more compassionate, more open-minded, more playful, more accepting. David, unfortunately, I don’t know who to blame other than maybe marketing media, and social media now too, but people are brutally unkind to themselves. If I’ve had anything to offer as a teacher, it’s helping a few people look at themselves and realize that they have more beauty, grace and love and play to offer the world than they knew that they had. Our capacity to diminish ourselves and to destroy ourselves possibly through addiction, et cetera, is so profound. If, as a teacher, I’ve even helped one person navigate some darker waters and find their way through to a better place, then that to me is the ultimate fulfillment. In film and TV, you have very little contact with your audience. Stargate has been such a gift because the audience is so present and engaged and vocal on so many different platforms. I have had a lot of contact with Stargate fans since I shot the show. Usually as an actor, TV actor, you don’t get to meet your audience so to be in the classroom and actually to have that kind of interaction with an audience is one of the most beautiful aspects of my entire life and history.

David Read:
In particular with your industry, I’m curious if this is something that you set course with on day one. My minor was journalism, in college, and the first thing they said was… What did he say? It was basically, “Congratulations, good for you on setting your sights on a career that is not gonna pay much. If you have fulfillment in this, that’s great. Accept the fact that most of you are not gonna be making great money doing this.”

Bill Marchant:
When did you graduate from journalism college?

David Read:
2006.

Bill Marchant:
’06, so 18 years ago. In those 18 years, unfortunately, journalism has taken a terrible dive. I don’t wanna sound like the snob that I am, but journalism, as we know it, now is in the hands of the amateur. Real journalism and the kind of people that I admired growing up – I’m a total avid reader; I was a newspaper and magazine junkie before they all vanished. That quality of writing has largely disappeared and you have to really hunt for it now, which is a shame. Whether it was The Times or The New Yorker, or in Canada The Globe and Mail, or other publications, there were some really mind-bending writers out there. I don’t know where the journalists have gone, but I guess underground. I don’t know.

David Read:
There are a few different places. What I’m trying to get at with acting is that 90 to 95% of them are out of work at any one time and if you can find fulfillment with it, depending on the person, that’s far more important than owning a big house and having the greatest toys. If your spirit is being nourished in the work and you can make it by, I know a lot of them, like you said, working in the food industry, can switch back and forth. It’s a huge blessing to at least have found some kind of anchor creatively, even if it doesn’t always pay well.

Bill Marchant:
100%. I couldn’t agree more.

David Read:
Would you communicate that to the students pretty early on or would you not lay that as a burden on them at all? I’m curious, as an acting instructor, what your approach was.

Bill Marchant:
Fantastic question. I tried to build it into my teaching, without it ever being a negative or without ever being a killjoy in the classroom.

David Read:
OK, so you didn’t slap them with it.

Bill Marchant:
100%. No, I work in a faculty of about 60 people, and I know some of those other teachers, they feel it’s their duty and obligation. I’m like, “You know what? I think, A, the students only need to hear that once and many of them know that going into it anyway.” Us being promoters of a negative stereotype doesn’t do anybody any good. I’ll go so far as to say this too, David, that people love to be prognosticators of who is going to be successful and who’s not. “Oh, you’ve got it and you don’t,” or, “You have talent and you don’t.” I think it is absolute horse shit. Certain actors may have a broader range, certain actors may have an easier go at it because of charisma or certain expression of ambition that might lend them opportunities that other people might find harder to access. I’ve taught thousands and thousands of people over my teaching career and there are so many actors that nobody would have picked to be successful who’ve risen to incredible heights and other people who are so supremely talented who’ve, maybe from fate alone, failed miserably. There doesn’t seem to be any great rhyme or reason to it. However, I do believe that everybody has a storyteller within them, and if, as a teacher, I honor that desire and that specific talent, then I’ve done my job. It’s not for me to decide who gets through the portal and who doesn’t.

David Read:
It’s fate and it’s who you know and it’s where you are in the moment of where you are. There’s a lot of things at play.

Bill Marchant:
Good looks are important. Talent is obviously significant to some degree, but not as much as people would think.

David Read:
Look at Steve Buscemi. Man, one of my favorite actors. Is he gonna be a leading man? No. But has he got work? Yeah.

Bill Marchant:
Because he’s a fucking genius.

David Read:
He’s hilarious.

Bill Marchant:
He is.

David Read:
Was Garwin Sanford at that institution?

Bill Marchant:
No.

David Read:
OK. Garwin taught somewhere else then. Many of the Stargate cast have also taught and you can see why with their body of work. They know what they’re doing. There’s a lot of amazing actors who have done Stargate who have also taught. That’s really cool.

Bill Marchant:
At one point, I’d say over half our faculty had worked on the show in some capacity or other. I was lucky to have a pretty substantial recurring role, so I get more than my fair share of attention from the fan base. I’m sure, especially the hardcore fans, would recognize almost everybody who worked at that point. At one point or another.

David Read:
Tell me about the audition.

Bill Marchant:
The audition. Again, a beautiful question. I remember it like it was yesterday. It was in Carol Kelsay’s office. I was thinking about this last night because I was curious if we’d get into it. I’m pretty sure I did two auditions. Again, everything is self-taped now. I’m sure you understand that. It’s a very different place now. In the old days, I wasn’t young, young then. Stargate, to me, was my major breakthrough. I’d worked a couple of good gigs before then, but that was my first recurring role. Carol would have had me into the office, I think on… No, maybe she saw me once before I went in front of the producers and the director. I do remember the producer/director session and there were more people in that room than I’d ever encountered before. In my head, there’s as many as seven. It could have been as few as five. Gereghty was there, for sure.

David Read:
Brad Wright probably would have been there.

Bill Marchant:
Brad Wright, 100%. Bless Brad, I love that man. The room was packed so that made me a little bit nervous. Carol was, I don’t know. I think she’s out of the biz entirely now, but she was one of the best casting directors that there was. She was quite often the reader, too, which was not always the case, but she was that day. If I remember correctly, I was reading off of Carol. We were doing the scene in the hospital bed where I’m talking to Diana and getting her to release me from my bonds.

David Read:
Oh, so the Goa’uld’s already taken over in this scene?

Bill Marchant:
Yeah, exactly. I might have done another scene from that. I probably did, but that was the dealmaker, if you ask me. I’ve always had good emotional access, I’m sure you know what that means; for an actor to have the ability to go to all the extreme emotional places. I read the sides and I’m like, “Holy shit, this is totally my thing, my oeuvre.” In the audition, I’m talking to Carol as Diana, and at the perfect moment, the tear rolls down my face, plonk onto my shirt. I heard a noise from Gereghty or Brad, not a gasp, but a sound, a sigh of, “Yes,” like, “This is what we’re looking for.” For Diana to believe, then the audience has to believe. I was in the moment and Adrian/the Goa’uld was such a good liar that I nailed it. I wasn’t sure that I got it, but I got the phone call about three days later. I don’t wanna sound too arrogant, but I wasn’t surprised.

David Read:
“I did a good job in that one.”

Bill Marchant:
I was thrilled beyond measure. I would say that was the most exciting moment in my career. If I had a launching place or a lift-up point, it was that moment when I got the call from my agent that Carol had said, “Yeah, the guys on Stargate want you.” As I said, the hope was at that point, that Adrian was gonna last for at least two full seasons. The plan was, at that point, for there to be multiple episodes. I could tell you later why that didn’t end up playing out. It was a huge high and very exciting for me.

David Read:
I don’t think we’d ever seen a character confined to a wheelchair, yet. I think part of it because getting up the Stargate ramp to go to other planets would be rather tricky. It was one of those situations where when you’re looking at the body of work that the show had done and where it was going, it wasn’t surprising that the show asked the question at some point, “If you have unlimited money and unlimited resources and access to knowledge of what the government is doing with extraterrestrials – because you’re running tech firms that are connecting with them in some way – what would a person whose chips were completely down do when they were in this situation? How far would they go?” That’s Adrian Conrad.

Bill Marchant:
Yes, indeed.

David Read:
So, how did you make a meal of that?

Bill Marchant:
How do you mean, David?

David Read:
As your approach to this character, going in, how did you want to make the audience empathize with him? Did you not care about audience empathy? Did you care about, “OK, this is just the drive of this character?” What was your approach to having the audience relate to this human being while he’s got one of our, one of our heroes pinned to a bed?

Bill Marchant:
Interesting. In terms of my overall experience on the show, I spend very little time as actual Adrian Conrad.

David Read:
Mostly the Goa’uld.

Bill Marchant:
Yeah, exactly. It’s pretty quick. In terms of Adrian, it was a combination of two things. One is ego and one is desperation. Now that I’m older, I kinda get it better and I’ve lost so many people that I hadn’t at that point in time. My mom was still alive, but she was very, very sick so I was conscious of what I would do for my mother, even more so than myself. Without knowing fully, the impact that the Goa’uld would have on the host, I would not do that to my mother, of course. I would do almost anything to have my mother still alive on the planet so those kinds of urges I understood. The ego, I think a huge part of acting training is about our desire to be famous or to be somebody or to be seen. To be acknowledged, to have our insecurities wiped away and to have our true self, whatever that might be, validated by a huge number of people. That kind of ego, I think, it’s in all of us. I think the harder part for me was playing him post-op or post insertion.

David Read:
Implantation.

Bill Marchant:
There we go. Thank you. That’s the word I’m looking for. Post-implantation, it was dumbass fun. As a huge fan of sci-fi… Alien was an old film even by then. I don’t know how old, I think Alien came out in…

David Read:
’78 or ’79.

Bill Marchant:
Right. That movie changed my life forever. The notion of having a creature inside me, maybe not a chest buster or Carpenter’s The Thing, right? That was a movie that I saw in high school. I think as reference points, those two films bear some similarity to Adrian’s storyline. It was a thrill for me to be this all-powerful other. What’s interesting, of course, is the voice and the eyes are added in post so I knew the show well enough to know what I was gonna become.

David Read:
We’re dealing with a creature that’s used to being at the top of the food chain.

Bill Marchant:
That’s right.

David Read:
He’s out of his normal place of worshipers but he’s still got that arrogance bug.

Bill Marchant:
I think we’re all prey to megalomania at some point in time. In some way, shape, or form. I’m a pretty modest, gentle fellow, but I’m a complex human being like anybody. So, just for me to focus on those parts of myself that could dominate, annihilate, own the moment because I’m all powerful, oh my God, David, what a fucking… Excuse my language. What a thrill that was. As I was intimating it, I was a kid in the candy shop. Gereghty on that first episode too, just one of the best directors I’ve ever worked with. I can’t imagine he’s still around. Is he?

David Read:
I have not checked in on him in a while. Was he older at the time?

Bill Marchant:
Well, he was probably my age now, but he was not a young man. Definitely a seasoned director. Such a sweet, playful, gentle creature. You know enough about the biz to know that that’s not always the case. To work with him was just wow. It was amazing. I think I might’ve said this in some other interview before, but for those Stargate fans who are really into Easter eggs and nitty-gritty, there’s a monitor beside the bed, I think it’s post-implantation, when I’m talking to Diana and you can see, is it a WG? It’s probably a WG. It might be a BG. Either it’s Bill Gereghty or W… Anyway, the monitor lights spell WG or BG for Bill Gereghty.

David Read:
It’s his cameo.

Bill Marchant:
It’s his cameo.

David Read:
I think someone posted a picture of that the other day. It was circled and I didn’t get it at the time. Now that you mention it, it’s like, “oh yes,” ’cause all the directors had their thing.

Bill Marchant:
That’s his Hitchcock moment.

David Read:
I do wanna get to the Goa’uld, technically the Goa’uld, with Adrian and Diana. It’s one of the more complicated for us as a viewer, because she doesn’t know necessarily, otherwise she’s crazy, that it can imitate. It immediately has access to the knowledge of the person it’s attached to. You’re playing that in that scene and if I remember right, there was a moment where it’s almost a wink and a nod to the audience. Even if it’s a sly, upward tick of the mouth, where you’re talking to her and you’re pretending to be him but then you’re not. How do you as an actor, ’cause we’ve had two or three guest stars who have had the privilege of doing this. How do you balance that line, communicating, “Hey, I’m this guy, but I’m not this guy. This camera over here, this camera knows that I’m not this guy.” Where is the line?

Bill Marchant:
Ooh, I’m intrigued by that.

David Read:
You can probably access that a few different ways.

Bill Marchant:
As I recall, again this is a long, long time ago, but I chose to play the scene Adrian-forward. Meaning that if you’re seeing the Goa’uld in my performance, I don’t believe that’s intentional. Not to say that it couldn’t be part of my subconscious too, because I’m thinking different things. I remember that being a quandary to me, how much do I reveal, if anything? I’ve always gone with, regardless of what character you’re playing, I’ve gone with my truth: me, the human being, meets the perceived truth of the character. If I’ve done my work and my research, if I’m prepared and I trust that process, then my instrument will reveal all aspects of that. What you saw could very well have been there without me consciously knowing it, as strange as that may sound.

David Read:
No, I, as an audience member, am taking on a certain amount of interpretation in terms of what I’m seeing. I am capable of seeing things that aren’t necessarily there because of my context watching the show.

Bill Marchant:
For me as an actor, here’s what I have to offer you and then what you make of it – it’s like being a writer. I’ll write something and my intention is X, but if you receive something else, that’s the beauty of the art form. It’s perception and what you see is as valid as whatever it might be that I’m intending to offer. I know I wasn’t intending to solely be Adrian because I was well aware that there was something inside of me that had power over Adrian. If I was going to play that, I didn’t want it to be overt.

David Read:
So, you weren’t necessarily aware that, no, it is not Adrian talking at all. It is a Goa’uld pretending to be him? ‘Cause he’s not letting him talk. They’re in hell. As soon as the implantation takes, they are being physically and psychologically tortured from the inside and they are paralyzed.

Bill Marchant:
I did know that because I talked about that with the producers and the director and I did my research too. I watched every show up until my own. I was aware of that, but the nuance of, as you said, the Goa’uld has access to everything I ever have been and my entire history and my voice and my emotions and everything, so his, or their ability to play me inside my own body would be supreme.

David Read:
That’s what’s so terrifying about it.

Bill Marchant:
I thought rather than confuse myself with trying to play two realities at once, if the Goa’uld is that good, has that facility to live inside my creature that fully, then let him do so. Now I’m vacillating, but I’ll throw this…

David Read:
It’s OK, this is all delicious to me, the psychology of our greatest enemy in the show. I love it. We’re eating it up.

Bill Marchant:
I think the actress’s name was Carrie Genzel, who played Diana. Wonderful, wonderful actor. I did enjoy, in the moment, knowing that I was manipulating her. But again, is the Goa’uld manipulating her or is the Goa’uld using… How manipulative was Adrian? He’s a fucking tech billionaire. For sure he would have skills of manipulation of his own. How much does the Goa’uld have to assert itself in order to access Adrian’s own selfishness and manipulation.

David Read:
I’m just digging this. From someone who knows the show backwards and forwards, the personality is fully suppressed. They are in a nightmare. The Goa’uld accesses all of that knowledge and experience that the person has possessed and with its own genetic memory, uses that to then make a mask of the person and project them outward while the person inside has no control and yet is fully aware and is being tortured. If someone later has the Goa’uld removed, they tell the audience and the people, “I couldn’t stop it. I reached my hand out to kill my brother-in-law. I couldn’t stop it.” He has been completely taken over by this thing, which is manipulating them.

Bill Marchant:
However, Adrian is inside of all this, watching this version of myself destroy, kill this woman I love.

David Read:
On a screen and with all the implication that suggests to that. There is an episode, and I’m gonna have the actor on it at one point in time. Alan C. Petersen plays a character by the name of The Canon in Season Three’s “Demons,” who was also possessed by a Goa’uld, but the Goa’uld dies just moments before he is killed. Being this horrible person who has mistreated this village of people for years, the last words that he has are, “Forgive me.” He has seen what he has become, and he has had the darkest of all dark beings interface with his personality. I love these characters, because you, as actors, get to play the angel and the devil and get to go to town on that. When this guy takes over, he cures him of, I think it’s Birchard’s Syndrome, it’s a fictional illness, and then you became someone else. Letting that Machiavellism play with John de Lancie as well. Tell me about that side of it from here on in.

Bill Marchant:
The post-implantation?

David Read:
Post-implantation, yes, technically.

Bill Marchant:
There are so many stories to tell. It’s the highlight of my career to that point in time, and still one of them, of course. Maybe the one. I don’t know. It was so much fun. Amanda, I had Carrie to work with as well, Richard to work with in future episodes. Most of my work in that first episode, a lot of it was with Amanda? I’m sure you’ve heard these stories a million times because she is a saint. Show business is full of all kinds of people, some great and good and some nefarious and selfish and lost. The sweetest, kindest, and this is gonna sound like hyperbole and a lie but it’s not, Amanda Tapping is one of the finest human beings I’ve ever met on Planet Earth, period. Certainly, within this business, which can be so narcissistic and ugly, she defines just grace and humanity and kindness. She’s a superior human being. My first day on set…

David Read:
Come on, Bill, it’s only been 23 years.

Bill Marchant:
I know. I’m getting very much…

David Read:
I’m kidding.

Bill Marchant:
…conflated here. I’ll say this, to make a very long story a little bit more concise. The day before I shot my first day, which would have been at the sanitarium, Riverview, which has played a million things in a million TV shows and movies. We were out at Riverview and the night before I had a temperature of 105.

David Read:
Oh, God.

Bill Marchant:
Projectile vomiting everywhere; so sick I was delirious. I didn’t get a wink of sleep, of course, ’cause I was so ill. I phoned my agent at about 5 o’clock in the morning saying, “I can’t go.” He’s like, “Are you fucking kidding me?” He’s like, “Either you go to the hospital right now or you go to set.” I’m like, “Ugh,” and this is my big break and I’m so excited and yada yada. I do decide to go. I get to set. They’ve got a special trailer that they’ve rented just for me, basically as a quarantine zone. My own trailer would have been lovely as it was, but they’ve got this luxe, crazy thing. The thing is loaded with every kind of cold medicine you could think of, every creature comfort that you could have for a sick person was there. Luckily, that was a wheelchair scene that day. I’m not really super proud of my work in that particular scene ’cause I was so sick.

David Read:
And Adrian’s sick.

Bill Marchant:
I know. You’d think it would be perfect; method acting central. It was really difficult to get through it, and I was, you can’t see it on camera, but they have a barf bucket. It’s out of sight but it’s in the scene. When they call cut, “Wuck.” It was awful.

David Read:
Next to your wheelchair.

Bill Marchant:
Post-COVID, they would’ve never let me anywhere near the cast. In those days, everybody was sick on set. It was so normal. Anyway, Amanda took such good care of me, unbelievable. That was it! It was before we even shot. I was there for costume, wardrobe. I’m in my trailer, knock, knock, knock on the door. Who’s there? This woman I’ve never met before. I know very well who she is. She’s like, “Hi, I’m Amanda.” I’m like, “Yeah, I know. I’m Bill.” We talked for half an hour. She took it as her role as the Stargate ambassador to make sure that as the guest star, that I felt welcome and loved and seen and appreciated and considered. That’s just the class act that she is. That’s an Amanda story.

David Read:
She is the welcome wagon, she always was.

Bill Marchant:
I’ve had the great privilege to have worked with her a couple of times after that as a director. She’s certainly as great a director as she is an actor. She’s worked with literally thousands of people. The next show I worked with her on was, I don’t know, probably at least 10 years later. It was like it was yesterday and she greeted me with open arms and big hugs. You were talking about the post-implantation. I wasn’t intimidated to work with Amanda and ultimately with Richard. I never did get to work with Christopher or Michael, though I met them. I was really intimidated to work with de Lancie because he’s John de Lancie? Not just Q, but his whole career. Including fun stuff like The Hand That Rocks the Cradle. It’s John de Lancie! I don’t know how many stories you’ve heard about John, but he is as intimidating in person as he is on Stargate.

David Read:
I’ve had him on the show. You better bring your A game when you’re across the table from him because he’s fully present.

Bill Marchant:
He is fully present and he doesn’t suffer fools. He was nothing but kind to me, but he’s very imposing, as you would know. He’s not one for pleasantries. I have nothing bad to say about the man. We sat beside each other for two 16-hour days or whatever. It was like long, long days in the caverns of that Riverview and he was totally professional, but he’s not a glad-hander. He’s not your friend because you’re working on the same show. I think we had mutual respect for each other. The scene in the sanitarium when he and I first meet…

David Read:
In the basement? After O’Neill’s been shot?

Bill Marchant:
No, no. At the end of the…

David Read:
Oh, OK. They used the same building, but it’s been suggested that he’s been moved.

Bill Marchant:
We were in the same location, but yes, totally different place. I’m in that containment unit at that point. De Lancie comes in to talk to me in that first episode. Oh God, that was… he’s a great actor, man. As you said, so present, so engaged. I’ll never forget the feeling of sitting across from him. I don’t wanna say I’m a serious actor, but I like to have fun and I’m playful, but I don’t mess around. I’m there and I have stakes and I’m involved. There are people out there who think sci-fi TV is silly. I don’t think so. It’s as important to me as anything ever made. You don’t go halfway; you go all the way. De Lancie is certainly that guy. He’s not messing around. It’s like he’s doing Shakespeare at The Old Vic. He’s just full on. What a joy. I haven’t seen John since I died.

David Read:
You both died.

Bill Marchant:
Yeah, that’s true. We did. I know the fans were freaked out by that. They weren’t expecting him to go either.

David Read:
No. That was a great switch; two bad guys for the price of one.

Bill Marchant:
I hope I get to work with him again one day ’cause he’s a superior actor.

David Read:
Absolutely. The Goa’uld, despite their arrogance, they all have distinct personalities. This one, I really got the impression, just hated every human that he could, that he came across. “You guys, you think you have me, and for now you do, but I have thousands of years of memory. I’m gonna outlive every last one of you. I’m gonna have my way.” Any time that he’s making eye contact with either Simmons or O’Neill or Maybourne, it’s these snake eyes that are coming out of your head. He’s looking at them like a meal. It’s one of the more unsettling performances of a Goa’uld in the show. I must give that to you for doing that, and Joel Goldsmith for his score. You had your own motif that came back, especially in “48 Hours.” It was like, “OK, he’s still confined. He’s still there.” Now he’s saying, “Don’t mess with me or these consequences are gonna happen. Your friend is going to die, or you’re going to kill the host.” Everyone’s like, “We don’t really care about the host at this point.” It’s, “Well, I’ll kill him. I can kill him.” That was just delicious to watch.

Bill Marchant:
Nice. Thank you. Some of that I give to Brad. Brad came up to me during the first episode and said… We were in the basement at that point, or maybe we were in the lawn. We were at Riverview. Brad said, “I want you to be the meanest Goa’uld of them all.” They did have plans for me at that point to continue on, I don’t know what the storyline was ultimately gonna be, but they intended for him to be the worst of the worst. Some of that’s me and my interpretation, but some of that’s also engagement with Brad and what his vision was for where they were going.

David Read:
Yeah. It’s interesting because the show was ending with Season Five. Showtime had renewed the show from two seasons to four seasons and then to a fifth season, relatively all in the same time span of the first season, while it was in production. They really enjoyed what was coming out. I suspect, when Season Five ended, the intent was a feature. I suspect there would have been plans in some way for that. When Showtime picked up the show for Season Six, you returned in “Prometheus” as well. I don’t wanna immediately skip over “48 Hours,” because it is one of my favorite episodes of the show; him possessing the knowledge of how to reset one of the Stargate pieces of technology, the Dial Home Device, was critical in that. It is more or less you in a cage in this episode and having to project out from that. Tell me about the changing over from that, from the confinement into getting yourself aboard this ship and actually finally getting a chance to leave Earth. Simmons and the Goa’uld are actually beginning to work together. Simmons is on the run just as much as anyone else is, now he’s a prisoner too.

Bill Marchant:
I’ve got so many memories around those two episodes and that time. Going back to your talks about the movie, I was privy to talks about what was going to happen. I’m sure you know all this better than I do, the feature was all but a certainty at that point. It looked like Season Six was definitely a bust and then Season Six was a surprise. I’ll tell you this part of the story now. I was in a terrible car accident when I was 16 years old. I didn’t know it at the time, but the bone was compromised. I had both my hips replaced prior to my being cast as a Goa’uld. By the way, it’s hilarious. I love your pronunciation because it’s correct. I’ve been trying to say Goa’uld properly for forever and I still can’t say it right.

David Read:
Goa’uld is technically correct, but everyone messes with it.

Bill Marchant:
I know.

David Read:
Gould.

Bill Marchant:
Including on the show.

David Read:
Because they’re beneath contempt. Who cares?

Bill Marchant:
Anyway, we were all having a great time and Gereghty and I hit it off, and Brad and I hit it off. I forget who wrote that episode…

David Read:
Which one are we talking about? The first one or the second one?

Bill Marchant:
The first one. “Desperate Measures.”

David Read:
I think that’s Brad.

Bill Marchant:
Is it Brad?

David Read:
Let me make sure for the sake of archival purposes. Spank Me Rosie, Joseph Mallozzi and Paul Mullie. I’m sorry, guys.

Bill Marchant:
OK, I was even talking with those boys too because they were heavily involved, obviously, at that juncture. I could be wrong, but I think they were actually working on the feature at that point in time.

David Read:
I wouldn’t be surprised.

Bill Marchant:
They had engaged in a bit of conversation about, “Hey, you’re an important guy. As we finish this season and move forward, you’re gonna be around,” basically. We were in the basement and Brad was watching the monitor with Bill and he’s like, “You got a limp.” I’m like, “Yeah.” He’s like, “I don’t think a Goa’uld can have a limp.” Joseph was there too and there were other people, there was about four or five people. I was standing right there, got into a conversation about whether that was in the realm of possibility. We left that day with the idea that, yes, he could have a limp because I have an implant that wouldn’t have been taken out of my body.

David Read:
No, the Goa’uld works with what it has.

Bill Marchant:
That’s right. We left with the idea that even though it wasn’t a perfect reality for them, they could live with the idea of me having a limp. I was told later by my agent that that’s why they killed me off and it was so abrupt. I don’t know that to be true, decisively, but it probably is.

David Read:
You think so?

Bill Marchant:
I think so. It’s showbiz. They were in a period of transition so nobody knew exactly what was gonna happen. Nobody knew about the Showtime deal at that point, of course. Maybe it was in the works; I don’t know. “48 Hours” was already written so I was definitely gonna be around for that. I can’t remember the name of the episode. My character got referred to in an episode afterwards that I wasn’t actually in, but they talked about Adrian Conrad. Do you remember that episode?

David Read:
Between “48 Hours” and Adrian Conrad? Or between that and “Desperate Measures?”

Bill Marchant:
No, no, no.

David Read:
There are references to him because that’s an ongoing thing.

Bill Marchant:
I was included in the discussion, but my character had vanished at that point. In “Prometheus,” I’ve got a couple scenes and I’m gone.

David Read:
Your agent told you that this was the reason?

Bill Marchant:
Yes. I got the script for “Prometheus” and I turned the page and I was like, “Shit.” I was just following along and nobody told me that I was gonna die. My agent didn’t know. Nobody knew except for the script and me in that moment. That’s how I found out, just reading the pages. I harbored some hope and there was some discussion that maybe he could come back. Anything’s possible in sci-fi. I know Amanda was quite compassionate about the whole situation and hoped for the best but that story ended with “Prometheus.” Back to your discussion about the character, there’s so many stories, David. I think this is sort of a sidebar story, but one of my heroes in the city, I did not know him, but I think Vancouver’s greatest actor, and I still believe this to this day. Such a great, great, great artist and wonderful human being, is Tom McBeath.

David Read:
Tom is wonderful. I love him. He’s a dear friend.

Bill Marchant:
He’s a very dear friend to me too. We got to do a play after that, but that was the first time we’d met. I’d seen him in a production of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in Vancouver. Up until that point, the best acting I’d ever seen was in New York City and watching Tom on stage, it was a good production, but Tom was definitely the shining star. I thought, “Fuck, I wanna work with that man one day.” Lo and behold, here comes “48 Hours.” I knew he was Maybourne before then but I hadn’t met him. We hit it off like that and just had such fun working together. I was really hoping that storyline would take off and that Tom and I would get to work together again but it didn’t play out that way. By that point, I was a Stargate fan, of course, and then waiting for the scripts to come in and not knowing whether I’d return or not. When I did come back for Prometheus, I was thrilled. Very sad to find out that I died but getting to work with de Lancie again was great. Getting to work with Richard was… I was a kid when MacGyver came out so this is a person who for a long time had this position in my life. There’s lots of different stories about Richard in town, as you could maybe imagine, but my experience with him was nothing but stellar. What a gentleman. I’m sure you’ve heard a million times, one of the funniest human beings on planet Earth.

David Read:
He made that show.

Bill Marchant:
On set and off set, he’s a rascal. It’s a joke a minute with that guy and really dry. He’s a gas. To go back to the story, I’m a 60-year-old kid now and I was a 30-whatever-year-old kid at that point. But to be on this spaceship, it was too much fun. It was a blast.

David Read:
That was the first episode with that set, the Prometheus set. It continued on until 2009. They added to it every year with more gack, more and more gack on each of those pieces and expanded the corridors and everything else. You were there for the prototype and that must have been a sight to behold. What a magical set.

Bill Marchant:
It was a magical set, people were really stoked about it. It was a big thing for them to have this gigantic new set piece. By that point, we’re into Season Six, so the show has a new lease on life. I was sad that I wasn’t part of it anymore, but they were actively planning and super excited about what was gonna happen.

David Read:
Absolutely. I think that the Prometheus set was at Norco at this point. I don’t think it was at Bridge. Do you remember that? I think that they started it off at Norco.

Bill Marchant:
As I recall, it was Bridge but I don’t remember. It could have been anywhere, frankly. I only remember shooting at Riverview and at Bridge, that’s my memory, but I don’t know.

David Read:
Got it. The character’s death, especially if you’re told that you’re gonna be sticking around for a little bit on this, the character’s death, from my perspective, seemed fulfilling because the previous season we had a character by the name of Tanith. I am forgetting who played him because I wanna make sure that I give his name out for due credit. That would have been Peter Wingfield, who is now a surgeon. He’s no longer an actor. At the end of Season Five, they knew that at that point there was probably no chance of a Season Six; it was gonna go to a movie, so they were wrapping stuff up. They brought him back as a static shot ’cause they couldn’t get him up in time for the show. They took a screenshot, an image of him from a previous episode, and photographed him in the spaceship before it explodes. In the scheme of losing characters, Goa’uld characters in particular, we as an audience were accepting of the fact that sometimes these things are just going to come out of left field. Hearing your story, what you were told by your agent, and having an episode return where you got a sendoff, a proper, certainly earlier than expected, but a proper resolution to that character, for me as an audience member watching is fulfilling.

Bill Marchant:
Great. That makes me happy ’cause I mean, yes, by then I was a fan, but I’m not a fan the way fans are fans. The investment that you have in characters as real Stargate fans, it’s just different. I’ve met so many now, literally hundreds of people over the years, either in a professional situation or randomly on the street. When I used to look more like Adrian Conrad, when I was younger, I definitely got spotted because the fans are into it and so rabid. You’re not gonna walk anywhere without getting noticed if there’s a fan around. My husband calls it “getting gated.” He’s like, “Oh, you got gated.” I’m like, “Oh, I did.”

David Read:
“The Goa’uld is loose. Someone call SGC, I’ve got him.” That’s funny.

Bill Marchant:
Exactly. I’m not a famous person and don’t pretend to be. I was on a flight, my family lives back in Ontario, I was on a flight to Toronto and there was three seats. I was on the aisle and a guy in the middle and a guy in the window and the guy in the window was clearly vibrating. I didn’t think Stargate for a second. I was worried he was, you know, a terrorist. I didn’t fucking know.

David Read:
Something’s wrong.

Bill Marchant:
Something is wrong. Eventually the guy in the middle is like, “Excuse me, I hate to bother you, but would you mind talking to my brother? He’s totally freaking out.” I’m like, “Pfft, I don’t understand.” He’s like, “Stargate.” I’m like, “OK.” Over the years, people have taken me out for dinner. There’s four women from London, amazing, amazing people. There’s so many, it could be anybody. They took Tom and I out for dinner one night, a very, very expensive dinner. I don’t know how they got my contact info, I think through my agent. “Would you wanna go for dinner with Tom and some fans?” I’m like, “Absolutely.” So, respectful and so loving and so kind. You know the fan base way better than I do and it’s a pretty special world to be part of, frankly.

David Read:
We accept the fact that there are talents who do the job as a job. When you have folks like Tom McBeath who genuinely love and enjoy the fandom interaction and who are not threatened by them, you hang on to ’em as long as you can. That’s Tom.

Bill Marchant:
Oh my God. He’s just salt of the earth.

David Read:
Absolutely.

Bill Marchant:
A brilliant, brilliant actor. The best.

David Read:
Can I share a personal off-topic story real quick?

Bill Marchant:
Of course…. similar experience?

David Read:
I’m flying up to Vancouver in 2004 for a Stargate convention and I have this long conversation with this guy sitting next to me and we talk about what I was going up there for. Really nice guy. He said he knew Stargate. He knew that it was the big thing and that it was up there, yada, yada. We land in Vancouver and I get off the plane and someone comes up behind me and says, “How was he?” “How was who?” “The mayor. Mayor Campbell.” I was like, “Mayor…” Larry Campbell and I had a conversation for two hours and I didn’t even know he was the Vancouver mayor.”

Bill Marchant:
Wow. I love that story. I’m sure you know, Larry is a legend in this city and they built a TV series around his life as a coroner. Just wow. Wow, wow.

David Read:
You never know.

Bill Marchant:
Yeah.

David Read:
That’s funny. Any other stories from production or from your experiences with Stargate that you would like to share before I start winding this down with some fan questions? I’ve really enjoyed picking your brain and pulling back the characters ’cause this has meant a whole lot to me. The Goa’uld are so accused, and in some cases rightly so, of being flat comic book villains. Most of them, when we get to spend time with the characters, are not that. They just appear to be, on the surface. Adrian Conrad is a great example of that because we get his host’s story.

Bill Marchant:
Which is so important. For whatever reason, David, this character, it seems to really resonate with people. The amount of attention that I’ve gotten in the last 23 years because of Adrian Conrad is outrageous. I’ve often wondered “What is it?” I think you really found the core of it, is that because people know his origin story to a degree and who he was before the implantation; there’s a connection with the human being beneath this. Certainly, for the deeper fan, like you are yourself, knowing that Adrian’s inside there somewhere. Having met him and seeing what his predicament is, that’s going to have a deeper kind of impact than maybe other Goa’uld do. As we move towards wrapping up, I don’t think I have any other stories from set that are really worth telling. Me being that sick, Amanda and Richard and Tom and John, in front of the camera, and then Bill Gereghty, oh my god. I was developing my resume at that point. I was a fool to believe that everything was gonna be as cool and as lovely as that was. Not that I don’t really have many horror stories to tell, but it was never that good again, frankly. It was never any better than that. I’ve had wonderful experiences and the last movie I worked on was a very strange indie film called Corner Office with Jon Hamm, and I could talk for an hour about that.

David Read:
Good actor.

Bill Marchant:
Very good actor. Incredible actor. It was deep in the heart of COVID, so it was crazy. I did a series for CBC called Strange Empire, which was really ahead of its time and unfortunately got canceled after one season. Not to mention my own writing and theater career as well. I’ll always look fondly at the Stargate experience. I’d be a liar if I didn’t say that somewhere, somehow, wouldn’t it be cool if it got resurrected in some way, that saw the return of Adrian and/or just me as an actor. I’d play any role.

David Read:
It’s not beyond the realm of possibility. The sale of MGM to Amazon is complete and they are working on something Stargate related. The question is what and the question is when. I fear that it will not be set in the Wright universe, W-R-I-G-H-T. Villains and heroes never truly die in sci-fi.

Bill Marchant:
That’s right. That is true. It’s worth repeating that it was a truly, truly wonderful experience for a young actor to play with those kinds of people at that caliber at that time. It couldn’t have been a better experience, apart from the fact that I got killed off. I understood, if indeed that was the reason why, it could be conjecture, that might not be true. Whether it’s true or not, I still got three great episodes out of the deal, got to work with some fantastic people and I still run into crew members. I see Amanda occasionally and we all look back on those days as being halcyon and better times. The industry has changed. It’s a colder place now, David. It’s unfortunate because the quality of material can still be great, but it’s much more business than it ever was. It always has been. I’m not a fool, but those were better days, in my opinion.

David Read:
The Zoom, and this is informed by lots of conversations with actors, the Zoom auditions are impersonal and suck.

Bill Marchant:
Yep.

David Read:
The taped ones. At least if it’s live, you’re having a conversation with the casting director who wants to maneuver you into the correct interpretation that the director is looking for, or a series of them. When you are submitting a tape for a character, you have a million different avenues to go down and how do you pick the one that you think will be a lock? How do you do it?

Bill Marchant:
You know this obviously, in the old days, which aren’t so old at all, you’d go into an audition and half the time you wouldn’t get a note at all. You’d say, “Thank you” and maybe you’d get the gig or not. I’m an actor. I respond to direction. I’ve developed my whole life, worked at it to be able to, if you, David, say, “Bill, I would like you to do it this way…” I say “yes” and I go. There’s no opportunity to show that skill anymore. The feedback that we’re getting from industry now is some regret. They’ve cast people off tape who aren’t able to replicate A, what they did, and B, they’re not directable; they can only do that one version. It’s a death knell for the production and certainly for the directors and writers, just like, “Oh my god, we’re stuck with this stiff.” I would love to go back into the room and show people what I can do.

David Read:
I can only hope that that last sentiment will be only more prolific as we move forward. I don’t think there is any reason other than maybe people feeling more comfortable and for cost cutting, other than that, to start bringing up in-person casting calls again. You’re not going to be shooting the show over Zoom. If you were, Zoom interviews and casting calls would make sense, but otherwise, no. Get over it. Set aside the money to have the casting directors look at people in person. The other argument that I’ve heard is it allows them to open up the list to a much broader group of people, but then you spend 8 to 10 hours creating… I apologize…

Bill Marchant:
No, no.

David Read:
… my absolutely blathering…8 to 10 hours working on something. Rachel Luttrell told me in one case they looked at 20, 30 seconds of the first tape and then move on.

Bill Marchant:
Yep. I was told it’s casting by Tinder. Swipe left, swipe left, swipe left. If they see you and you’re 20 pounds underweight or overweight, or your hair’s the wrong color or the, whatever, some fancy that the producer/director is having, you’re gone and in the old days, you could feel it. I swear this to be, I don’t know this to be true, but I swear it, David, that I would walk in a room and I would feel a coldness from the table: “Wrong guy, not who we want.” I’d do my work and I’d feel a shift and then I’d get a direction. Then you’d feel another shift and I’d get the gig because talent is a mutable, changeable, adaptable thing. That’s my great gift; the fact that I can take direction. I don’t get to show off that skill anymore.

David Read:
Most of the time, you don’t get feedback.

Bill Marchant:
No.

David Read:
Rachel and Torri Higginson were saying, even a thank you. At least give the actor something that he can chew on for the next one. “This was good, this was not good. Go work on this.” How can you elevate yourself as a performer to become the next-best version of yourself if you have no feedback, if it’s you and a lens? I’m sorry, I’m ranting.

Bill Marchant:
No, it’s good. The casting directors, they themselves quite often are not privy to whatever information the producers might have. All they’re doing is making sure that they get the tapes, they might not even be in the room or get any feedback whatsoever. If I don’t get the role, I don’t know why or even if I get close, I don’t even find out. The last thing I wanna do is end this incredible interview with bitching and whining about the state of the industry. Let me say that I’m hopeful. We’ve long said that talent will win out and I think that at the end of the day, that will be the story. We’ll return to a much more human way of doing this because it’s better for the product.

David Read:
It is. Do you have 10 more minutes? I’ve got fan questions.

Bill Marchant:
Sure.

David Read:
Tricy Sport? We’re gonna go with that one. This is gonna be an unfair question, but I’d still like to see you dance with it. “Was Adrian Conrad a good guy or a bad guy?”

Bill Marchant:
Adrian Conrad. He loved Diana. Even though the Goa’uld is in control in that scene, he’s still using Adrian’s memories and sensations and feelings and here is a man who, in a relationship with this woman, is warm, gentle, loving, and kind. It’s all manipulation at that point because he’s a puppet, but I think, by definition, he’s a brutal and ruthless businessperson. He has to be to be the billionaire that he is. I never chose for him to be a bad person at all. He’s not some great humanitarian.

David Read:
No.

Bill Marchant:
I did base him, to some degree, on Bill Gates, who is a very flawed man, but who is a great humanitarian. To answer the question most fully, I’d say he’s a dangerous man with some really great qualities.

David Read:
It cannot be ignored that he refused to kill Sam.

Bill Marchant:
Yep.

David Read:
The doctors were like, “He told us that we’re not going to do that.” So, yes, he’s willing to capture her, but no, he intends to set her free.

Bill Marchant:
Isn’t that strange?

David Read:
I think that that’s important because we can’t know his life of surrounded by worshipers for years, getting access to whatever he wanted, and still there are some lines that he will not cross. Yeah, he’s gonna borrow her for a few days, but he will not kill her – and then that decision is overridden by people who are under him. The other thing that I think is important to point out is, we don’t know if Diana is dead by the end of that, she may be unconscious. I went back and rewatched the episode. I think from a Goa’uld perspective, to torture the guy that is hosting him, I think that he did.

Bill Marchant:
I think she’s dead for sure because to the Goa’uld, she’s a distraction, an obstruction. if my take on the Goa’uld is correct, I don’t know if there’s pleasure there, but just killing somebody is absolutely nothing and she’s a problem, so she’s gone. She’s a waste of time and space. Why Sam doesn’t get killed? I never really did wrap my head around that, but she still has value to the Goa’uld.

David Read:
Yes, her intelligence.

Bill Marchant:
Her knowledge and her connections and her whole world. She’s an in to him.

David Read:
This is a deep one. Fal Rabbit, “in your years of acting and teaching, what one situation, or one that you can recall, has given you your deepest imprint as an actor that you use in your everyday work? An accomplishment or a failure”

Bill Marchant:
OK. I love that question a lot. I don’t know if the question’s esoteric, but my answer will be. I was rehearsing a play that unfortunately never got produced, the production fell apart, but we were in rehearsal for at least six weeks. It was a play called The Crack Walker by Judith Thompson about people in Ontario who are living on the fringes of society; people who are not blue collar but literally just barely surviving. Beautiful play but very brutal and very harrowing. The director I was working with, Catherine Billings, she would do these as part of her directorial process, it was a sense memory exercise where you would sort of free associate in character based on prompts made by her, the director. Something happened that day where I let go of my need to control and to intellectualize and to understand the process and live freely inside of it as a playful, wild, chaotic thing. Still safe, but safe to do dangerous work, if that makes sense. That moment has stayed with me ever since and I use it in my teaching and my acting all the time.

David Read:
There is something to be said about crossing a certain Rubicon in our minds, in whatever it is that we may be doing creatively, giving ourselves permission to be free.

Bill Marchant:
Yes.

David Read:
Some people can’t get themselves to it. Other people are like, “Hey, whatever happens next, it’s gonna be interesting.” I completely get that. That’s a cool story.

Bill Marchant:
Thank you.

David Read:
Anonymous, “how was working with Yo-Landi and Ninja while working on Chappie?”

Bill Marchant:
Holy shit. I wish that I’d actually worked with them. The Chappie experience was fantastic. Good Bill spotting there. I think that is an outrageously underrated movie. It’s got its problems, sure, but Neill got slammed for it so unfairly.

David Read:
He’s so good. He’s brilliant.

Bill Marchant:
It’s fun, it’s beautiful, it’s heartwarming. Like any Blomkamp picture; miles ahead in terms of the technology. I think I was probably part of a rewrite and I don’t even know if the whole movie was shot in Vancouver. I don’t think it was. Neill, certainly at that time, was based in Vancouver. They did these reshoots. There were three characters: a social worker, myself, and a psychiatrist, who pop up as talking heads in the film. I was an AI expert so I got to work with Dev and Neill for a couple of hours, but I had no contact with the rest of the cast during the production. It was a fantastic experience. Neill is one of the most intense people I’ve ever met in my life, very fucking scary.

David Read:
He knows what he wants.

Bill Marchant:
He knows what he wants. We all shot on the same day and the two actors that went before me, they came back from the experience in tears. I was like, “Whoa, what the fuck is this gonna be like?” Luckily for me, he and I work in a very similar fashion. He’s very intense, very direct, very specific, maybe to the point of being brutal, but I can take that. I’m not a fading violet. I can handle it. It was a joy to work on the project, but no, I did not work with those two incredible artists.

David Read:
I see. There are a few directors that I follow and, “OK, what’s he doing next?” and he is one of them.

Bill Marchant:
His career’s had its fair share of ups and downs but I would never count him out, no.

David Read:
He’s a risk taker. He’s willing to go, “I wanna create what I want.” Him, Wes Anderson, it’s, what are they gonna do next?

Bill Marchant:
District 9, his first major film. He made a short at Vancouver Film School, where I teach, and that was, of course, the thing that started his career.

David Read:
Alive in Joburg was a Vancouver-based short?

Bill Marchant:
The District 9 short.

David Read:
Yeah, ’cause that’s the one that came before. The trailer came out for that and I’m like, “I’ve seen this movie before.” I didn’t realize, I thought Alive in Joburg was shot in South Africa.

Bill Marchant:
It could’ve been, but I don’t think so. I think it was set in South Africa, but probably shot in Vancouver.

David Read:
I did not know that. I had never seen anything like it when it came out. It was so good. It’s like, “This guy’s got talent.” Then District 9 came out and it was like, “This is the same one.”

Bill Marchant:
It could’ve been that he did a project at VFS that led to the short film that led to District 9 but the origins of District 9 came from VFS.

David Read:
Got it, absolutely. Do I have time for two more questions?

Bill Marchant:
Sure.

David Read:
OK. Marcia wants to know, “you got to work in a Godzilla movie. Doesn’t every actor want one of those? How cool was that?

Bill Marchant:
It was super cool. If she can spot me, I’ll give her 100 bucks–if I had 100 bucks to give, I would, though.

David Read:
Ha, ha, ha.

Bill Marchant:
It was tremendous. I was a MUTO technician. What happened was I was MUTO technician number two and they hired two people to play; it was a total mistake. We showed up on the day and, “Who’s MUTO technician number two?” Kurt Max Runte and I both put up our hands and so Gareth said, “OK, you get these lines, you get these lines.” I got the shitty lines. I got to make this cross, have a reaction, and I was there for, I don’t know, at least five days. It was feature shooting. Really intricate, setup after setup after setup. It was so fun. We’re working with a green screen. so it’s your imagination. They showed us pictures of what MUTO would look like., It’s Godzilla, of course, and I was a Godzilla freak when I was a kid so that was really fun. The highlight of that for me was, I don’t know if you know…You probably know both of them ’cause you’re that person. You seem to know everything about film. I got to work with Sally Hawkins and Ken Watanabe. I was with them all those days. Sally Hawkins is a British actress, did a movie called Happy-Go-Lucky that is probably one of my favorite films of all time. Directed by, I’m drawing a blank. Genius, genius director. Ken Watanabe, of course, is just a legend. The fact that I got to work with them, that was the highlight of the experience for me.

David Read:
Absolutely. The last question, audiobooks. I think that I have Branded by the Pink Triangle?

Bill Marchant:
Yep.

David Read:
Did you narrate that? Let me make sure I get the proper credit here. This was Antony. “What do you like about voiceover work and how it’s separated from anything visual?”

Bill Marchant:
That’s a great question too. I wish I got to do more of it, frankly. I’m an old guy and I finally had the wherewithal to do my voice demo last year which I think you can listen to somewhere. Maybe on the Character’s website if you want. It’s out there if you wanna have a listen. I’ve done a few auditions, not as many auditions as I want, but I’ve done a few auditions for the voice world. I’ve done commercials and stuff over the years, but my voice resume is not nearly as extensive as I would like it to be. A place where I’ve had some success is with the audiobooks. In answer to that question, I love being in the booth. It’s headphones on, microphone in front of me. It’s so quiet. It’s so focused. As we talked about earlier, as an introvert who gets overwhelmed by human energy, unless I’m teaching or acting, it’s like I’m in total isolation. It’s me and the engineer, who I can’t see. I’m hearing over the cans. I wanna talk about that specific project. I didn’t make a million dollars off of it, far from it, but a couple of grand, whatever. That’s not the point. My agent phoned and said, “There’s this company that is doing this book, Branded by the Pink Triangle, which is about the queer experience in the concentration camps in World War II.”

David Read:
Oh, is that all? Man.

Bill Marchant:
Is that all? Exactly.

David Read:
Geez, that’s a big… Phew.

Bill Marchant:
So, for me as a queer artist, I immediately said yes, even before I’d read the book. I read the book that weekend, confirmed with my agent that I wanted to do it. We spent, I don’t know, three, maybe four days. You’re reading a whole book. It takes a long time and it’s exhausting. Some of the passages in that book, of course, ’cause it’s all true stories, David, it was very intense and very heart-wrenching. I did lose my shit a couple of times and the producer and the engineer were so supportive. I think my agent must have shared with them the fact that I was a queer artist but they didn’t hire me for that. They hired me for my voice. But just to be able to…

David Read:
You’re sharing stories.

Bill Marchant:
Exactly. To get to the point of it, I grew up in a brutal little town that was very homophobic. I think I’m probably a straight-acting person because whatever queer behaviors I might have had were literally pounded out of me by bullying and brutality. I’m straight-presenting, so because of that, I’ve spent my career exclusively playing straight characters. There’s nothing wrong with that.

David Read:
It’s work. Look at Neil Patrick Harris. His most well-known character is a straight guy.

Bill Marchant:
Exactly. So, for me to finally have an opportunity to live within my body and my truth and my experience and tell stories that impact me and mean something to me. That was a really powerful and redemptive experience for me. Just beautiful. Very troubling and disturbing, of course, because those stories don’t get easier, far from it. They get more uncomfortable over time for me.

David Read:
But they need to be shared…

Bill Marchant:
Hallelujah.

David Read:
…and you’ve been given that opportunity to do it.

Bill Marchant:
Hallelujah. I forgot who that was…thank you very much for that question.

David Read:
That was Antony. Good job, Antony.

Bill Marchant:
Thank you.

David Read:
He’s one of my moderators. Bill, this has been great. I really appreciate you taking the time. I really appreciate you still being aware of the material and being able to delve into the psyche of your character because it has been nearly 25 years. I get many actors who are willing to come on, but they only retain so much and you can only ask so much of them. To be able to really be succinct and drill down with you on this and to get to know you as a person, has been a gift to me. Thank you, sir.

Bill Marchant:
It’s same back at you, David. This has been such a joy. You’re an incredibly gifted interviewer and interlocutor. This has been a real joy. Who cares why, but I’m going through a pretty challenging period in my life right now. I’m OK, but to have a laugh and to go back in time and to share some of these stories and to communicate and play with you has been a tremendous gift in my day.

David Read:
It’s been wonderful. I am here for you if you ever need to communicate. I am thrilled to have a number of the Stargate talent still in my sphere. We all need one another and we all need the ability to hearken back to the things that are in our careers the most, and in my case, as a fan, the things that are most pure. The fan base continues to grow; it’s not shrinking. There are fans continuing to be born that their parents are getting them sucked into this thing. It’s important for them to have places like Dial the Gate and to be able to share these stories out into the future as we continue to move forward. Thank you for taking time to share your story.

Bill Marchant:
You’re very welcome and again, thank you. To anybody who’s listening out there who’s keeping the flame going, hallelujah. Thank you so much.

David Read:
Thank you, Bill. I’m gonna go ahead and wrap up on this end. It was my pleasure to have you.

Bill Marchant:
All right. Peace, David. Thank you so much.

David Read:
All right. Thank you.

Bill Marchant:
Bye-bye.

David Read:
Bill Marchant, everyone, Adrian Conrad in Stargate SG-1. This has been a real treat for me. I’ve had the privilege of having well over 200 of them now, folks on the show. One of the things that has been continually surprising to me, and it shouldn’t be, is how fresh these stories and perspectives are. There’s just so much there. It means a great deal to have Bill on to make the show continue to be possible for you guys, Dial the Gate. We have another episode heading your way, if I can get my buttons right, this afternoon… No, this evening. I just got rid of the thing that I needed to click on. Isn’t that great? All right. We have coming up tonight Heather E. Ash, writer and story editor, Stargate SG-1. She’s gonna be joining us this evening at 5:00 PM Pacific Time. I know that’s a little late for the European audience, I do apologize. We had to accommodate her schedule; it’ll be on the re-watch as well. We’re gonna cover the last remaining number of her episodes that we didn’t cover previously. This coming Saturday, June the 22nd, 12 noon Pacific Time, Christina Cox. She also played a couple of different roles in Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis. We’re gonna have her on to discuss them. I’m in talks with another actor right now, we may have another actor to be fitting in with her this Saturday. Please keep it on dialthegate.com for all the updates in terms of when we’re gonna have people because that can change really quick. Be sure to hit the Bell icon as well if you wanna get notified about when episodes go live. I’ve been hearing some people saying that that’s not really been working. I may be playing a part in that to a degree so I’m gonna try and do my best to fix it. I don’t wanna post the upcoming live shows too soon because people scrolling through their feeds who never are around for a live show, who always catch it later, tend to unsubscribe. I’m trying to tighten that down as much as possible by just posting the live stream just a few hours beforehand. My understanding is that the Bell icon, the reminder goes off half an hour before and when the show goes live itself…long of the short, I’m gonna work on that. I’ve got a number of pre-recorded shows that are being constructed right now that are gonna be heading your way this July. I am largely gonna be taking July off. I’m leaving home for a little while to do some traveling. On the weekends, we’re gonna have some pre-recorded episodes, interviews and specials, coming to you throughout July. For the weekend of July 20th and 21st, I will be back. That’s just before San Diego Comic-Con where we’ll be shooting the Stargate 30th anniversary special there as well so there will be at least one weekend in July. I’m trying to bank a few more of these episodes before we go into this pre-recorded void for July. Bill Marchant, thank you again, it was a pleasure to have you. Thanks so much to my production team, my moderators Tracy, Antony, Jeremy, Marcia and Sommer. I could not do the show without you guys. If you like what you’ve seen in this episode, click the Like button. It makes a difference with the show and will continue to help us grow our audience. Please also consider sharing this video with a Stargate friend. If you wanna be notified about future episodes, click the Subscribe and give the Bell icon a click. It should notify you the moment a new video drops and you’ll get my notifications, you should, of any last-minute guest changes. Clips from this live stream will be released over the course of the next few weeks on both the Dial the Gate and GateWorld.net YouTube channels. Thanks so much to Frederick Marcoux at ConceptsWeb for getting Dial the Gate off the ground. Brice Ors and EagleSG, Matt Wilson, my visual effects artists and animators. You guys make the show possible from week to week. My producer, Linda “GateGabber” Fury, thank you very much. My name is David Read for Dial the Gate and I’ll see you on the other side.