The man behind Walter “Chevron Guy” Harriman returns to share more stories from Level 28 of Stargate Command in his extraordinary career in the Stargate franchise.

Share This Video ► https://youtu.be/oCnDin4s82I

Gary’s Email for Consignments ► [email protected]
Visit DialtheGate ► http://www.dialthegate.com
on Facebook ► https://www.facebook.com/dialthegate
on Instagram ► https://instagram.com/dialthegateshow
on Twitter ► https://twitter.com/dial_the_gate

MERCHANDISE!
https://dialthegate.redbubble.com

SUBSCRIBE!
https://youtube.com/dialthegate/

00:17 – Opening Credits
00:47 – Welcome and Episode Outline
01:03 – Call to Action
02:04 – Guest Introduction
03:54 – Seeing the popularity of Stargate grow
09:38 – Producers and writers of Stargate
21:06 – Walter’s Character Arc
25:27 – How Wallace Shawn was cast (SG-1 9×04 “The Ties That Bind”)
34:31 – What was it like going from RDA to Beau Bridges in Season Nine?
40:28 – Working with Atlantis cast members (Jason Momoa, Paul McGillion, and Chuck Campbell)
46:51 – Gary’s Artwork
53:12 – RDA portrait and other paintings
1:02:48 – Portrait drawings (Arnold Newman)
1:05:48 – Mac Miller
1:07:22 – Gary’s grandmother
1:08:52 – Self-portrait
1:10:59 – Irish fisherman
1:13:11 – Ansel Adams and Chris Haddock
1:15:22 – Of Mice & Men poster
1:18:43 – Painting of his stepdaughter
1:20:58 – Gary’s son and his father
1:26:03 – Drawing his fans
1:35:07 – Were there any mishaps with control room equipment over the years?
1:37:30 – Was it different working on SG-1 set on SGA episodes?
1:38:56 – What did you think of your puppet? (SG-1 10×06 “200”)
1:40:23 – Was there anything you liked filming for a Stargate DVD extra?
1:44:28 – David thanks Gary for his appearance
1:46:32 – Post-Interview Housekeeping
1:50:29 – End Credits

***

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

#Stargate
#DialtheGate
#TurtleTimeline

TRANSCRIPT
Find an error? Submit it here.

David Read:
Welcome, everyone, to Episode 92 of Dial the Gate. We’re creeping towards 100. My name is David Read. Thanks so much for joining us. Gary Jones, Chief Master Sergeant Walter Harriman, will be joining us today, but before we bring him in, if you like Stargate and you want to see more content like this on YouTube, it would mean a great deal to me if you click the Like button. It really makes a difference with YouTube’s algorithm and will definitely help the show grow its audience. Please consider sharing this video with a Stargate friend, and if you want to get notified about future episodes, click the subscribe icon, and giving the bell icon a click will notify you the moment a new video drops, and you’ll get my notifications of any last-minute guest changes. This is key if you plan on watching live, and clips from this livestream will be released over the course of the next few days on the GateWorld.net YouTube channel. As with most of our live programming, the moderators are standing by to take your messages in YouTube.com/dialthegate for Gary Jones. You can ask him anything, the moderators will get that over to me, and I will do my best to ask Gary. It’s always absolutely a pleasure to have this gentleman on. He did some projects for us recently over the course of the last few months, fan episodes, and now I get to have him back. Mr. Gary Jones, welcome to this show, sir.

Gary Jones:
Woohoo!

David Read:
Gary, how are ya?

Gary Jones:
David, David, I’m good, I’m great, I’m always good. Like my mom, when I ask my mom, she’s 86, in a wheelchair, can’t walk anymore, spends a lot of time in the bed in the home, and I go, “How are you, Mom?” She goes, “Fantastic.” And I go, “Really?” She goes, “Well, why not?”

David Read:
Why not indeed.

Gary Jones:
Why not? Why not have that choice instead of … She said, “Because nobody else cares anyways.”

David Read:
Oh, that’s not true!

Gary Jones:
No, but you know what she’s saying? She’s saying, “Why not just be great?” That’s what my mom’s attitude is. So, I try to adopt that, and it’s gotten her through COVID. She contracted COVID, and then once she got through that, she got pneumonia.

David Read:
Oh, you’re kidding!

Gary Jones:
She’s still going.

David Read:
Good for her. What a trooper. Is she the one who you forced to sit down in front of a Zoom chat to say hello to everybody? Was she the one who wasn’t gonna do it? Am I remembering it right?

Gary Jones:
Yes! She was like, “Oh no, it’s computers, I don’t want to do that,” and then they just rolled her up to it, to the desktop. And she was like, “Oh my god.” She couldn’t get her head around it. My cousin from Wales was there, and she’s like, “Where are you? Are you all together?” And I’m like, “No, Paul’s in Wales, so-and-so’s in Toronto, you’re in Toronto, I’m in Vancouver,” and she … it was mind blown.

David Read:
The marbles of technology.

Gary Jones:
Mind bending to her. Anyway.

David Read:
Absolutely crazy.

Gary Jones:
What would you like to know?

David Read:
So, Gary, you spent what was actually a day, an afternoon, talking with fans, but it turned out to be reams of content for Dial the Gate, about their love of this franchise and what it has meant to them over the years. You talked with people who have had struggles with depression or mental illness, or found ways to use the show to help them grow with their family together, and sitting on odd couches — if I remember correctly — and ugly couches. Just finding ways to use the show to connect with other people. What was that process like doing those segments for the show?

Gary Jones:
It was just… I remember, in the very, very early days of being invited to conventions, that I just didn’t understand it. I didn’t buy into it, mostly because I didn’t believe, in the very, very early days, that fans even knew who I was. I just thought, “No, I’m just a secondary character, I’m not a lead.” So, when they invited me to a convention and I kinda reluctantly, kind of out of curiosity too, and then was hit with all these fans who absolutely knew who I was, I had to really… There was a major period of adjustment, because I thought, “Oh, these are just… Who are these people who are obsessed with the show? Why?” I didn’t get it, and it took me a little while. When I got it and I suddenly went, “Oh my god, this is an actual community. This is a community of people that are just lovely.” And the more I got to stand at my table with my eight-by-tens… That’s one thing, right? You go there because you’re trying to sell your autograph.

David Read:
Yeah, that’s the passive income source.

Gary Jones:
It’s a passive income source, and you go because of that but sometimes even that alone is not enough to keep you going, because if you’re not into it, you can go, “Ah, no.” Because what it requires is a certain level of commitment, energy, curiosity, and sort of desire to meet the fans. And once I got to the point where I suddenly started finding the fans really interesting, then I kinda crossed over. For me, I kinda downplay what I do, ’cause I go, “Well, I’m an actor, and whatever. I just read my part and read my line and whatever.” But then when guys would come up to me… I remember one guy came up to me and he just looked like a guy… he almost looked like a homeless guy. That’s the best way I could describe him. Nothing striking about the guy, nothing to him, and he comes up to my table. He’s talking about the show, and I said, “Well, what do you do? What’s going on with you?” And he said, “Oh, I’m retired now.” And I was like, “Oh yeah, retired? From what?” And he goes, “Uh, putting electrical systems in nuclear subs.” And I was like….

David Read:
Someone’s got to do it.

Gary Jones:
I was like, “What?” After that, it was those kinds of… I thought, “Oh my god, there is a mine of information and interesting people.” And then I just became, “I just want to talk to the fans,” because I just found them all… they all have stories, they’re all interesting, and the common thread was Stargate. That brought them to the conventions. That’s what it was. And I thought, “OK, I’ll talk about Stargate, but I need to know about you.” Because there is only so much that I can talk about myself. I’m happy to talk about the show, but I just found that, generally, the Stargate fans were just fascinating and really, really, really lovely people. There was not anybody that I met that I didn’t like or were obnoxious or anything like that. They’re super nice, and when you’re in that sort of concentrated nuclear reactor of fandom, it’s great, it’s fantastic. And I’ve made friends, such as my friendship with you over the years, and I’ve met people who come back to the same conventions and I know them by name. It’s really cool. It’s just cool. So, to be sitting on the couch and talking to people, I just want to know about their lives. I find them genuinely interesting. That’s what it is for me, but that’s me personally. I can’t speak for anybody else who might be put in the same position. That’s just who I am.

David Read:
I am always continually surprised. You think I wouldn’t be… I’m thirty-eight. I’ve been watching this thing since I was fifteen years old – fourteen/fifteen — continually surprised at how, when I rewatch it, and I rewatched the whole thing, all of SG-1, five or six times. Not that many, considering what it is that I do. And I’m always finding something new. In pretty much every single episode, there is a depth to the storytelling, to the characterization, to the quirks that all of you players had on screen, that continually reinvigorates it. And one of the things that Brad Wright and I talked about once, since one of the things that I believe his agents said is that it’s just evergreen. You can always find something about it to apply to your life in many ways that a lot of other shows just… It’s one note, and whatever note it is, it’s a good one, but this one, I mean, there’s a reason why on the forums you see people say, “I’ve just finished SGU Season Two and I’m now starting at the beginning of SG-1 Season One.” They start over again!

Gary Jones:
Yeah, and they bring their families into it and they bring their kids into it. And their kids grow up where they’re watching their parents loving this show, and they go, “Well, if this is so great, I might as well just give it a shot.” And then the next thing you know… and then I have people coming to my table with parents and children. So, it transcends generational lines, which is… it’s like, “Come on, seriously?” But just to touch on something that you said just a moment ago, I think so much of it has to do with the writing. It’s one thing to… the chemistry between, say, RDA and Amanda and Chris and Michael, there’s no way that you can have any control of that going into starting up the show. You have no idea. You don’t know who’s gonna work, who’s gonna not, who’s gonna be the weird fourth wheel and not work, and you might have to replace or whatever. But the fact that those four worked out of the gate, the chemistry is just icing on the cake to good writing, which you can control. You can’t control the chemistry, but you can control the writing. And then you’ve got Brad Wright, who’s iconic, and Robert C. Cooper and all these writers, and Damien Kindler…

David Read:
Joe and Paul.

Gary Jones:
Joe and Paul, and Joe Mallozzi and Paul Mullie, and they were all fantastic writers, and Peter DeLuise and…

David Read:
Martin Wood.

Gary Jones:
Yeah, they were all… and something else happened from inside the sort of hierarchy and the structure of Stargate, which is that they would promote from within. So, what you end up getting is second ADs that move to first ADs that move to director that move to producers.

David Read:
Yeah, look at Andy Mikita. I mean, he was there from day one.

Gary Jones:
I know, and Andy, I love Andy. Andy is one of those guys that when he walks into the room, you go, “Oh great, Andy is here.” He is like that. I love Andy to bits, he is a great guy. Had so many laughs on stage, and we became friends. Used to go to his house and visit him and his wife Candice and the kids. He is a great guy, and you can see it on set that it was the same crew, it was the same… how could you not have this incredible love infused throughout the entire show? Love and respect. And that alone helps it become a well-oiled machine, so all those other things get taken care of. The chemistry gets this sort of flourish, because they’re not worried about, “Who is not getting along with who?” Or, “The director is not a great person.” With that kind of promoting from within, you then get a shorthand. You get a shorthand. Everybody sort of knows, and people joke around. There is tons of joking around, and that’s what made it a really great show to be on, for me anyway, because I got spoiled. Because I wasn’t a contracted player, I could still audition for other shows, and say I got a day or two on another show. I would walk onto that set, and I started to become really aware of the fact that I really didn’t know anybody. I might know one or two people, or one or two crew members, or maybe another actor on another show, like Outer Limits or something like that. If I got hired to act in something and I would show up, I would be like, “Oh, I don’t know anybody,” and then you just kind of… you’re there to just do your thing and you got hired ’cause you fit the part and whatever. But it was not like walking on the Stargate set, because with Stargate, I would show up on the lot, and I would know the guy at the security hut. He’d come out and chat with me, “Hey, how’s it going?” And, “Oh, you know where you’re going, just go park, whatever.” So, starting there, that’s where it became– And then not only that. During shooting, if I shot a scene in the morning and then I wasn’t due to shoot a scene till later in the afternoon, sometimes that happened. But it’s not like I could go home. I was there for the day. I would just go up to the administrative offices and hang out, and I knew all the women working up there, and I could wander down the hall, pop in to see Peter DeLuise who is working on something and have a chat with him. Where else can you do that? It’s impossible. But I would just go and have a laugh with people, and they were all really welcoming. I really knew everybody. I don’t know how else that would ever happen again, unless that was a show that was on for ten years.

David Read:
And to jump exactly off that point, you have a show that’s on ten years, the first one, seventeen for all of them. Andy Mikita, as a case example, was one of the ones that I had on my show who… to say it was pulling teeth is not correct to get him on, but there is this lack of pretentiousness with all of you that a little bit of pretentiousness wouldn’t hurt in terms of knowing how much you guys are worth to us as fans. Because he was like, “I’ll be happy to come on your show and sit with you, David. I like you, but I don’t know what I’m gonna talk about for an hour.” And then we sit down and I bring up “Heroes,” or I bring up some of these other episodes, and he’s like, “OK, well, so with ‘Heroes,’ this is what we did, we did this.” It’s like, “Andy, don’t you see what you just did?” That’s what I’m talking about. That’s the magic in a bottle that you guys have. And he’s like, “Oh, that’s it?” I’m like, “Yes, more please. Now let’s go do another one.” It was only then that it was like, “OK, now I get it.” You guys have stories to mine that all of us are craving.

Gary Jones:
I know, but that is part of it. They’re doing their jobs, but they’re not thinking, “Oh, this will translate at a convention.” After a while, I would.

David Read:
Yeah, but you have to discover it for yourself.

Gary Jones:
Yeah, but I would say, when I first started doing conventions, my background in comedy kicked in. My background in improv comedy and some stand-up comedy kicked in, and I thought, “Oh? What am I gonna bring to the table at a convention?” Because it’s not like…. Michael Shanks can walk on stage, and they can just applaud for ten minutes, and conceivably Michael Shanks wouldn’t have to do anything to fill a hall. They just want to be there.

David Read:
To be with him.

Gary Jones:
To see him and be with him and be in the same room as him. But for me, I’m like, “Hmm, I gotta make myself kinda useful around here.” “How am I gonna do that?” So, I just thought, “Oh, just my natural kind of tendency to tell stories?” I thought, “Well, there has been some funny stuff that happened on set that I see through my eyes.” Certain… you could talk to somebody else who was in the same incident or in the same episode as me, and they wouldn’t see it the same way. But my kind of view is always, “Where’s the comedy here? What is the hilarious thing that happened here?” That is my particular viewpoint. And once I started doing that, and the more I thought about it, the more I went, “Oh, then there was that story,” and then, “Oh, then I remember that happened,” and I started collecting these stories so that when I finally got kind of up and running at these conventions, where I did more of them, I could be on a stage and talk for an hour. I could talk straight for an hour, and then you throw in audience members asking questions, and it’s manna from heaven. Then I can get to goof around with the audience, have fun with the audience, and just tell stories, and I’m in heaven.

David Read:
It’s only to a certain extent about your relationship with Stargate. They also want to get to know you. You shared a Mickey Rooney story once about getting a photo with Mickey Rooney that was just hilarious.

Gary Jones:
Yeah, but that’s what I mean though. Honestly, another actor given the same circumstance could literally be traumatized by that and just be like, “Oh my god, Mickey Rooney tore a strip off me, and he was horrible,” and it’s just the viewpoint. It’s like, “What lens are you gonna see this through?” And I’m always looking for the funny lens, always. Even if a person is horrible, even if I work with an actor and you go, “Oh my god, that was a nightmare.”

David Read:
But that’s life, and life is funny!

Gary Jones:
The nightmare becomes, “How much of a nightmare?” Like, “Oh my god.”

David Read:
It’s just crazy. I have something that I want to prepare everyone for this in a little bit. We had Garwin Sanford on November? December? At this point? And he shared his collection of art with us, and one of the things that we’ve done today, the last time that Gary and I sat down together, he was showing off some of his paintings. So, one of the things that we’re gonna do in just a little bit here is show off some of his art, much more, with a greater focus to detail. I got it in advance, we’re gonna go through it here, but before we get to that, I wanted to talk about how the character, after we kinda settled on what his name friggin was, had evolved from being kind of a gate technician to more of an administrative assistant role within the base. And it’s something that you could tell that, if you read between the lines, his relationship with General Hammond really cultivated this throughout the seasons. So, that by the time that O’Neill takes over as General in Season Eight, O’Neill’s like, “OK, you’re the guy.” “You’re the guy to help me get through this, to prop me up and make me look good to all of these people who were coming in, thinking that they’re gonna come in to meet someone serious, and they are not!” At some point, the paperwork has to get done, and, “You’re gonna help me do it.” That change in Season Eight was fantastic for the character, because it gave you more work and it gave you more to play in the episode, and you got to really sink your teeth into scenes with Richard Dean Anderson.

Gary Jones:
Well, yeah. To be honest, that dynamic had nothing to do with me, in terms of how it was conceived. It was Richard Dean who said he wanted that. He basically said, “OK, if I’m gonna be the General on the base, I want there to be some stuff going on,” and he just decided that he said, “It would be great if I had a better relationship and more interesting relationship with Walter Harriman.”

David Read:
He needed a Radar, which is your namesake.

Gary Jones:
Yeah, but even that is a fluke. And you have to remember too, that by the time Season Eight rolled around, I had already figured out, because they already gave me kind of funny stuff to do before, little lines here and there, funny little moments or whatever. And I think as long as I had figured out what the tone of the comedy was, ’cause that’s my job also as a comedian. If you’re in a funny show, you gotta go, “Well, what is the tone of this? Is it slapstick? Is it sarcastic? Is it dry? Is it this? Is it that?” And first rule of comedy is you don’t outshine the star. So, I knew that Richard Dean… in the scenes with him and I, they gave him funny lines, and I just had to get what I could out of it without overplaying my hand, but also make him look good, but also be funny. And I figured out the tone of the comedy, and I think once I figured out the tone of the comedy, I think the writers, when they would watch it, would go, “OK, we can give him more, because he sort of knows what he’s doing.” So, a lot of that came from Season Eight. Season Nine and Ten, I had three years of just way more stuff than I would normally do, and a lot of fun. And I find myself in scenes with Richard Dean and, oh my god, I couldn’t believe it. I was like, “Look at this stuff they’re giving me to do.” And it was just a joy. So, as an actor and a comedian, I got to really practice that and kind of hone that, and I was really proud of that. I was proud that I was able to do that. Do you remember the episode that had Wallace Shawn?

David Read:
Yes, I do. That was… yes, absolutely. “The Ties That Bind,” I believe?

Gary Jones:
I don’t know if you ever heard this story, but I got a call one day from a buddy of mine named Mike Roberts, who has since passed away.

David Read:
Oh, I’m sorry.

Gary Jones:
He was a really funny guy. He’s a lovely guy, but he was really… in fact, if you ever saw a show called The New Addams Family, try and find it. It’s The New Addams Family, and side note, Elinor Anne Harvie plays Morticia, and Elinor Anne Harvie played Novak.

David Read:
Yes, she did!

Gary Jones:
The show where she got the hiccups and was drinking from a glass of water or whatever.

David Read:
Damn it to hell!

Gary Jones:
That’s Elinor Anne Harvie, and she played Morticia. Mike Roberts played Uncle Fester. He was this round little guy, and he was very funny. Anyway, one day he calls me up and he goes, “Gary, you’re not gonna believe this, I got an audition for Stargate.” And I was like, “Oh, great, Mike. That’s awesome.” Because people who were close to me, they knew I had been on the show forever, and so if they got a… everybody wanted to audition for Stargate and get on Stargate and do something on Stargate. And I was like, “What is the part?” And he goes, “Oh, I’m auditioning for the part of this alien.” And he says to me, “I’m just asking you, how should I play it? It’s kinda a funny part, right? It’s got comedy in it, and how should I play it?” And I just happened to realize that I was in that episode. It was upcoming, and I have the script. I couldn’t believe it. I was like, “Mike! I’ve got the script right here. Let me have a look. Swear to God.” So, I peel through it, and I read what he’s gonna do, and it was quite funny. And I said, “Oh, Mike, you know what? This is the great thing about Stargate writing, in terms of comedy. You don’t have to do anything.” The writing is enough. You don’t have to push it, you don’t have to make a meal of it. I go, “I can read it right here and I can tell that it’s funny. You just need to be you and just do it.” And he goes, “Oh, great, great.” Sounds relieved. So, he goes and does his audition, phones me back after, and he says, “Guess what? The audition went really well. Thank you so much for your advice. I think I really knocked it out of the park.” And I said, “Mike, I can’t wait to work with you. I don’t know why they wouldn’t cast you.” And so, a couple of days go by, and of course, when they cast, the episode’s coming up pretty fast, so they get their casting done pretty quickly. So, if you don’t know kind of the day after, then it’s like…

David Read:
Something’s wrong?

Gary Jones:
What’s going on? He waited like two days, and he hadn’t heard from them, and so he calls me up and says, “Have you heard anything? I hadn’t heard anything.” I said, “Well, Mike, sorry, but the production team doesn’t usually call me to let me know who’s been cast and who hasn’t been cast. I don’t get those calls, so I really can’t tell. I don’t know, for whatever reason, right?” So, he’s like, “Oh, OK, OK, I will just wait here.” Cut to, I walk on set, right? And I didn’t even know who was directing that episode at that point, but I walk on and it’s a guy named Will Waring. And Will is… Will seriously used to be the B-camera operator. So, anybody who knows about filming is like, they have the A-camera, who shoots all the stars, and the B-camera, who shoots me and the secondary stuff, and stuff that they fit in later sometimes. But Will had worked his way up to be a director because he was beloved. Will is a fantastic guy. And he’s really good at what he does, so they went, “OK, Will, you’re gonna have a shot at directing,” and they gave him this episode. So, I walk on, and I always would come on set, go into where they’re shooting, and just say hi and check in and whatever. And I see Will, and I’m like, “Oh, Will, congratulations on shooting this.” And he goes, “Oh yeah, thanks a lot.” And he goes, “Hey, guess what. You know who we nailed for this episode as the alien?” And I go, “Who?” And he goes, “Wallace Shawn.” And I go, “Oh my god. Wallace Shawn is the alien?” And he goes, “Yeah.” I go, “Oh, a really good buddy of mine auditioned for that part, Mike Roberts, and he was wondering why he didn’t get cast.” And he goes, “Oh, let me tell you something. Mike Roberts was fantastic. He did such a good job.” And I’m like, “Oh, OK.” He goes, “You wanna know what happens? Kind of a funny story.” So, Mike is auditioning for Joe and Paul, ’cause they were the ones in the casting thing, and there is Mike auditioning, and Joe writes on a piece of paper and slides it over to Paul, and it says, “Reminds me of Wallace Shawn.” And he just slides it over to Paul, and Paul looks at Mike. Paul writes on the piece of paper, gives it back to Joe, and says, “Think we can get Wallace Shawn?”

David Read:
That’s what happened.

Gary Jones:
Next what happened, they called Wallace Shawn’s agent. Wallace Shawn was in a play in New York or something like that. He was in a play, and he was dark on the Monday. Dark days in a play means that you’re free that day. They flew him up and filmed him in a day and then flew him back. Oh my god. I called Mike, I go, “Well, guess what. You Wallace Shawn-ed your way out of that audition.” He’s like, “What?” I go, “You were so much like Wallace Shawn, that they hired Wallace Shawn!” He’s like, “What?” I go, “You idiot!”

David Read:
You inspired them to cast someone else. You were that good.

Gary Jones:
You were that good. You acted so much like… you were so good and funny that you made them think of Wallace Shawn, so they just hired Wallace Shawn. And that’s why you didn’t get cast.

David Read:
“Let me go jump off a building now.”

Gary Jones:
No, he goes, “Well I guess I can take solace in the, you know, that I acted well.” But we just laughed our asses off.

David Read:
How are you supposed to respond to that? What can you do?

Gary Jones:
That is the stuff as an actor you would never know in a million years, because they’re not gonna call you and go, “Mike, you were fantastic, but you were so much like Wallace Shawn that we hired the actual Wallace Shawn, so Mike didn’t get cast.” You don’t get that. So, it was only through me being in the episode, him having called me, and otherwise I wouldn’t even have had a clue. I would have just walked on set and gone, “Wow, Wallace Shawn is in this episode? That’s cool.” But because it was my buddy Mike, who was hilarious, he was able to have fun with it.

David Read:
And inspire them to go a different way without putting a penny in his pocket. The creative process is… it’s an interesting one. In situations like this, what are you gonna do? If you inspire them to go with someone else, I mean, I think that’s probably a new one that I have ever heard. Inspiring someone to say, “You know what? You’re so much like someone else, I wanna go with that person, because you made me think of them.” Jeez.

Gary Jones:
I know. It’s the first time I’ve heard of it too, and I just killed myself laughing. It was so funny. Mike and I had a really good laugh about it. To me, that’s the best story. That’s the best story.

David Read:
What was it like going from Richard Dean to Beau Bridges in Season Nine?

Gary Jones:
Well, in the very first episode that I met him, he was the first guy, really, even outside of Don Davis and Richard Dean, he pulled me outside and he said, “OK, what is our relationship? What is this? How does this work between me and you?” And I was like, “Oh my god, here I am chatting with Beau Bridges about our relationship.” I mean, it’s kind of every actor’s dream. But for him, it was kind of a no-brainer, and I thought, “Wow, this is really cool.” Like, he’s not just looking at me as, “Oh, the guy who opens the gate.” He wants to know what our dynamic is. So, that was great. Then you take it from there, and then you see moments where he’s trying to use the phone and I’m like, “Sir, you press that button. You press the other button.” He goes, “OK, got it!” I’m just like, “I know what he needs.”

David Read:
“I like yelling at people, but I never get the chance around here!”

Gary Jones:
But I do remember that, on the first scene I ever had with Beau Bridges, he’s standing behind me and he does one of those, “Open the iris, Walter,” or whatever. Some kind of command or whatever, and Peter DeLuise came up to me afterwards. They shot the scene and then he goes, “OK, we’re gonna shoot it again,” and he goes, “OK, we’re gonna do this scene, but do all your lines as William Shatner. Do all your lines as Kirk.” And he would make me do this all the time. All the crew got used to it, where I would just go, “Oh my god, we’ve lost contact with the MALP, sir, I don’t know what’s going on!” Just doing cheesy William Shatner, just for Peter’s amusement. So, he says to me, “When I’m in a scene with Beau Bridges, movie star, famous, iconic Beau Bridges,” he goes, “Do it as Kirk.” And I go, “No, I’m not doing it as Kirk.” He goes, “Do it as Kirk,” and I go, “Peter, it’s Beau Bridges, I don’t wanna do Kirk. I’m tired of doing Kirk, you make me do Kirk all the time.” He goes, “Do it as Kirk!” and I go, “OK.”

David Read:
This is your director.

Gary Jones:
Yeah, it’s my director. It’s like, “Why don’t we just waste everybody’s time to amuse Peter?” So, I go, “OK, alright, I don’t care. Fine.” So, we do this scene again. Beau is like, “Oh, how come we’re shooting this with all the lighting?” Some kind of a lighting glitch or whatever. So, we do this scene again, and then I was like, “Oh my god, sir, the blah blah blah” in Kirk’s voice. And just going through all the things and doing my Kirk. It’s totally rolling. Camera’s looking straight at me. It’s me on a close-up, and they’re looking at Beau too, and I’m just full-on Kirk, and then Peter just goes, “And cut!” And we end the scene, and the crew is like… they’re so used to this now. The crew used to two things. They were used to me saying, “Chevron one encoded,” all the way through to “Chevron seven locked.” They’d be like, “Oh my god, here we go.” And then the other one was Kirk, where they eventually go, “Here we go, he’s doing Kirk again.” As opposed to Kierkegaard. So, when we finished that scene, Beau hadn’t even… he was just standing there, looking like he was kinda going, “What? What just happened?” And I just got up and I patted him on the shoulder, and I said, “Welcome to SG-1.” And he just goes, “Got it.”

David Read:
Yeah, he had said pretty early on that he thought that it was going to be this more serious set, and he understood pretty quickly that there was a certain amount of shenanigans that were just gonna go on, and he just had to be along for the ride. He had very little control over it. Everyone was gonna have a good time, and he just had to get used to a little bit of a different pace in Seasons Nine and Ten of a show.

Gary Jones:
Yeah, not just pace, but tone. Tone was huge. People just goofed around all the time.

David Read:
And the work got done, but they had a good time doing it.

Gary Jones:
Oh yeah, but that’s the thing though, because it was, by that point, it was just a completely well-oiled machine. So, it wasn’t like goofing around and slowing things down. It was goofing around at the pace. So, they can have fun at the pace. The tone stayed the same. It was always light-hearted. Problems were figured out on the fly. Nothing was a big deal. Except then you had Beau Bridges there, and he was great, super nice guy, really friendly. I could chat with him, and we all got our job done. But, “Do it as Kirk, do it as Shatner.” “Shatner, do your Shatner.” It’s like, “No, I’m not doing it.” Then that lasted like 15 seconds.

David Read:
What a run with that show. And then you have scenes with Jason Momoa in Atlantis that are terrific, referencing back to working with Landry and everyone else and visiting General, I think, if I’m not mistaken, or someone of that equivalency. Tell us what it was like doing the exact same sets, but for Atlantis tape, and having scenes opposite Jason Momoa and that cast of characters.

Gary Jones:
Well, I mean, Jason Momoa was — and is — in my experience, just a big kid. Like he looks… he’s huge, he’s imposing, but in between sets, he would play ukulele, or he had a little guitar, he would just kinda noodle on his guitar. He was just ultra, ultra friendly. But he looked, of course, like he could snap your neck with one hand. And when I found out that I was in that scene with him in the cafeteria, eating fries and talking about bingo, whatever, all I could think of was, “Oh, this is funny.” I didn’t think, “Oh, Jason Momoa,” because only in retrospect, when I was recently putting together an acting demo reel, did I go, “Oh my god, I did a scene with Aquaman, just me.” So, I was able to take that and put that in my demo reel, ’cause I thought, “If you don’t enjoy me, at least enjoy Jason Momoa.”

David Read:
Yeah, ’cause he’s the straight face in that.

Gary Jones:
He’s the straight face. He just stares at me. He’s like, “This guy is beyond boring.” And he’s waiting for Joe to come in and give him some news, and then they just both take off, and I’m like, “Yeah, leave me going. Yeah, it’s a funny story.” I’m a bit rack on tour, you know what I mean? If I get you alone in the cafeteria, stand by.

David Read:
Yeah, you better look out, man.

Gary Jones:
Better look out, ’cause the stories are coming fast and furious. So, I just had a really great time in that show. Whatever I did — and to be honest, that’s the one main thing I can remember. I can’t really remember anything else. You’d have to show me the clip so that I could go, “Oh yeah, right, that.” Because with the Atlantis people, I didn’t really know them. I knew everybody else, but I knew Paul McGillion from a long time ago, and Paul and I are really, really good buddies. Paul and I are great when we both go to conventions, because we just both try to make each other laugh. Paul’s a sweetheart. He’s very, very funny and quick and charming and hilarious. I love Paul. If you ever go on Twitter…

David Read:
He’s great people.

Gary Jones:
…you’ll see me and Paul kinda hacking on each other and making fun of each other, but man, we just love each other. Paul’s a great guy.

David Read:
There is a– Go ahead.

Gary Jones:
So, Paul was somebody that I kinda knew, but I didn’t really do any scenes with Paul.

David Read:
Yeah, there wasn’t a lot of crossover from Beckett to SGC after he went to Atlantis.

Gary Jones:
No. And the other guy I got to know, but I didn’t really do any scenes with, was Chuck Campbell.

David Read:
The Chuck-technician.

Gary Jones:
The Chuck-nition. Chuck was the stand-in. Chuck was a stand-in that they… again, that’s what I mean about Stargate promoting — the franchise — promoting from within. They knew Chuck was an actor. A lot of times you will have actors, regular actors, doing stand-in work because they need to work and they haven’t worked. So, they’re like, “OK, I will forgo any auditions, and I’ll sign up for this long-term gig where at least I know I’ve got a weekly paycheck, and I’m gonna be part of this show.” And the stand-in, ’cause you have a job to do. Well, of course, Stargate just promotes from within, and they made him the technician. So, he became my equivalent on Atlantis. And then a couple of times, Chuck and I went to conventions together, and he is hilarious. He’s hilarious and a great guy to hang out with. Oh my god. He’s from Newfoundland, and they’ve got a real… It’s the closest that Canada has to Ireland. If you think of how funny Irish people are, Chuck’s like of that ilk, and he’s a great guy. I’ve met so many fantastic people and hanging out with them was just a real treat and just a laugh. Honestly, if I didn’t have a big laugh going to the conventions, I probably wouldn’t do them. I wouldn’t do as many as I have done, because I just knew that I was gonna go and have a laugh. Especially when I found out who some of the other actors — who they booked — were gonna be there. For sure, if I knew that Paul was gonna be at a convention, I’d wanna go to that.

David Read:
In a heartbeat.

Gary Jones:
In a heartbeat, ’cause we have chemistry. But the other actors… if I walk into the green room, it’s really nice to see them in there, really friendly, “Hey! How’s it going?” And we’d catch up and everything. But it’s not the same as if you have that kind of chemistry, because I believe that at the end of the day, that’s really what fans want to see. If you’re gonna put a couple of actors on stage, that’s what they wanna see on stage. They wanna see actors having a great time with each other, and the stories can come out, but if the fans walk away having laughed, that’s like, “You’ve done your job.” It’s not just, “Oh, I’ve got to see so-and-so, and it was interesting,” but if they can be laughing their asses off, then that’s, “We’ve done our jobs.”

David Read:
Absolutely. You were kind enough to share some of your artwork the last time you were here, and I went through some of the content with you then, and I’d like to go through it again now, if you do not mind.

Gary Jones:
That’s really kind of you, David.

David Read:
I’ve prepared some of these pieces in advance, and one of the first ones that I would like to share, you did artwork… we were talking about this yesterday, and the first thing that you had done was, you had indicated a 9/11 lawyer, if I am remembering correctly. So, tell us about your background in drawing and how this comes to this guy.

Gary Jones:
OK, so I have no background in drawing. That’s just something that I… that’s innate in me, that I always been able to do. It just didn’t mean anything to me. I’ve had people say to me, “Oh my god, if I could draw like you, I’d be drawing all the time.” But unless it’s a real drive to do that, and it just happens to be a part of your skill set, for me it just didn’t really mean anything. Looking back now, it feels like it kind of… I was able to draw since I was a small boy, and I remember moving to Canada from Wales, and then I was in Grade 6 and we had an art class and we had to draw a face. And I drew this face, and I could just tell by what I had drawn that it was good. And the teacher would come around looking at everybody and saying, “Oh, you might wanna try this, try that.” And he comes to my desk, and he looks at what I have drawn and he goes, “Oh, OK, so obviously you’ve done this before.” That was the first time I was like, “Oh?” It didn’t occur to me. I just did what came naturally to me. If you put a pencil in my hand, it feels like… without getting too freaky doodle about it, it feels like in a past life, I was an artist, and that the feel of a pencil in my hand is the most natural. It becomes an extension of me. As soon as I got a pencil in my hand, shading and just how it feels and the weight and the pressure, the feel of it is just the best, and a paintbrush too. So, cut to years later, it goes dormant and I don’t do anything with it. And around seven years ago, I was at a sort of a New Year’s Eve getaway up in a cabin with some friends. I’d been told that there was not gonna be any internet or anything like that. Movies would be on the VCR or whatever, so I thought, “Oh, I’ll take my sketch pad with me and just see if I do anything.” And as usual with me, I just avoided it and didn’t do anything. And then on the day we were leaving, I thought, “Oh, maybe I’ll just kind of peel off a sketch here.” And I had a Vanity Fair magazine with me, and I was looking through it for something to draw, something to sketch. And I came across this article on this lawyer who worked on the 9/11 commission, and it just kind of caught my eye. And there were two pictures of him. One was he was looking at the camera, and the other one was from behind, and he was kind of looking out his window down to where the World Trade Center had collapsed, and they were gonna build the monument up. I think it’s the Freedom Monument or… I can’t remember the name of it.

David Read:
The name of the memorial.

Gary Jones:
Yeah. So, I did these two little sketches of this guy just to kind of amuse myself, and I did them in about an hour. And when one of the guys who was on this little New Year’s Eve trip with me saw it, he was an artist as well, or was artistic, and he went home, inspired by what I had drawn, and he contacted me to say, “Hey, when I saw you do those little sketches, I went home and I drew something, and look at what I did,” and showed it to me. And from there, I said, “Oh, hey, do you wanna get together and draw, maybe this Thursday?” And he said, “Yeah.” So, he came over, we brought chips, beer, and we drew for a couple of hours and chatted. And since then we’ve done it for… the only thing that stopped it was COVID. We’ve done it for six years, once a week. He would come over to my place, and so everything that you’re about to show came from that. It was my working with him, hanging out with him, and we both did tons and tons of pencil sketches. And then it got to the point where I just said to him one day, “Hey, you know what? We’ve done a ton of pencil sketches. Why don’t we try painting? Do you wanna give painting a go?” And he goes, “Yeah, sure!” Neither of us knew how to paint. We just didn’t know. We just thought, “Well, we’re feeling this kind of creative, artistic vibe. Why don’t we just… what’s the worst that can happen? It could just look like crap.”

David Read:
You waste some paint.

Gary Jones:
We waste some paint, nobody’s gonna see it, and you just throw it away, or you paint over the canvas or whatever. But I just said, “You know what? Let’s give it a go.” And he was all for it. So, next thing you know, he shows up at my place the following week with an easel. He bought an easel, I bought an easel. We bought canvases, and we both went out and bought paints. Next thing you know, boom, we’re at it, we’re painting. So, that is the context of all this art you were about to show everybody. That’s where it came from. It’s me and my buddy connecting.

David Read:
Before I get to a couple of the paintings, I wanted to explore the drawing with Richard Dean Anderson first. ‘Cause you did Rick.

Gary Jones:
I did.

David Read:
Tell us about… was this drawn from a photo?

Gary Jones:
Yeah, it was drawn from a photo, and I thought that I would maybe draw something like this and bring it to conventions as something that I could offer and sell to the fans. So, that’s what I did.

David Read:
Wow. What is it about the human face? You do a lot of faces. A lot of this artwork is a lot of faces, and I’m gonna pull up RDA’s dog, Andy, here as well. What is it about the face and the eyes that you find so compelling? Because, I mean, these, you look at a lot of computer game, video game avatars now, they look dead behind the eyes. They just look like they’re not real at all, but these are so lifelike. You make them pop. You bring out their life.

Gary Jones:
What is it about? I don’t know. I look at something and I go, “Oh, I like the way the light lands on this part of the face,” or there’s something about the eyes that I wanna try. I gotta tell you that I experience this pretty much every time I do a portrait. I’ll do one eye, I’ll get one eye right, in my opinion, and then I’m just scared to death to go over to the other eye, because I was like, “Oh, if I’ve done one eye right, the other eye has to be completely correct.” You can’t get one eye and then get the other eye not right. If you get the eyes, you can sort of fudge the rest, or you can kinda make the rest work. But I’m telling you, if the eyes are not right, it just doesn’t… I don’t know how else to describe it. They have to be correct.

David Read:
The rest falls.

Gary Jones:
Yeah, because when people talk, they look into each other’s eyes. So, if somebody’s gonna look at one of my drawings, they’re gonna look into the eyes of the drawing, and then they’ll look at the rest of it, like we do as humans in human interactions. So, that’s kind of how it goes for me, and– Let me just turn that off… turn my phone off right now for a sec.

David Read:
Oh? I lost him. I think he killed himself, he must have unplugged it. Hopefully he’ll come back here. Sorry folks, these things happen every now and then. Let me see here. Let me pull up, while I’m trying to get him here, some of his other artwork. Give me just a moment. So, these are flowers that he’s done. The benefits of doing live shows: it’s completely unpredictable. There he comes. Just one second here. You there with me?

Gary Jones:
I’m here now.

David Read:
Perfect. Alright.

Gary Jones:
Sorry, David.

David Read:
No, you’re alright.

Gary Jones:
That might have had something to do with turning off my phone. I don’t know.

David Read:
That was strange.

Gary Jones:
That was really weird. That was very weird. Anyways, I’m back.

David Read:
I just showed your flowers. Your first go at doing some flowers. Now I have one of my favorites, “Greta’s Legs.” The human form, and not only that, the sheets that you’re doing it on is crazy.

Gary Jones:
Right. What really captivated me on that picture were the sheets. And I hadn’t really done something like a separate part of the body, and so it really fascinated me to do something like that. And to be honest, when I first did those sheets, where you see they’re all kind of… there’s all this sort of movement in the sheets, it wasn’t like that when I first began. But I don’t know what happened. I think I was reading a book about one of my favorite painters, Lucian Freud. He’s an incredible portrait artist, and he paints other things as well. But I kept looking at the way that he would just sort of go at it and kind of attack his paintings with the brush. Listen, I’m just making it up as I go along.

David Read:
Of course.

Gary Jones:
Whatever, right? The more I did it, the more I just kind of… I realized as I was doing it how I was creating this movement. And one of my friends who’s also a painter said that that’s one of his favorite paintings because of the movement in it, because of how much it moves. And I tried to paint it in such a way that it’s not fine detail, but it’s enough that you really get the sense of what it looks like with the shadows and underneath of her foot and her arch and everything like that. So, that’s one of my… I love that painting.

David Read:
I love it too. I have one of you that you did in Florence, Italy, outside of a shop, it looks like. I love the color in this and the age.

Gary Jones:
Yeah. I was on holidays with my family years ago. I have two pictures of that same shot. This is from a photograph that I took. The one is the old man is there by himself, and then the next one, my son is standing in front of those big doors. But when I was doing it, I was like, “Ah, I’m not gonna take on drawing my son, ’cause if I don’t get it right, it’s not gonna look good.” So, I decided to just do the one that didn’t have my son in it. And also, as a backdrop to that shop, in the actual photo, that shop is just… it’s like a bomb went off in that shop with the stuff that’s in the windows. I don’t know what kind of store that was or what that guy was selling, but there were tons and tons of books in the actual photo, and I left those out. I chose to leave those out because I wanted to have this guy just sitting in front of an empty doorway. So, I painted in all the shelves, and then I painted the guy, so everything is exactly the same. And I gotta tell you, in Florence, a lot of those buildings in the narrow streets, they’re made of brick and plaster. So, over time, a lot of the plaster that is on the facade of the bricks just wears away and falls off. So, what do they do? They just go replaster it. They don’t paint it. They just show up with a bunch of plaster and they plaster.

David Read:
And they fix it.

Gary Jones:
Then they go, “Well, it’s plastered now, there’s no exposed brick.” So, if you look at the wall… the section of the wall that looks kinda like almost burned and dark, that’s just age, and that’s just the part that hasn’t fallen off. And if you look at the sections that look kinda cleaner and whiter, that’s the part that got replastered in real life. And I was trying to figure out how I could recreate that in a painting, and so I thought, “Oh, well, I’ve got a little mixing trowel of my own that I would mix my paints with.” So, that’s what I started painting with. The other stuff I painted with a fine brush. For the wall, it was like I was troweling on plaster. So, I would just scoop up white, and I would trowel it on, and I’d mix a bit of gray in and I’d trowel it on, and I created that look of, how can I really recreate the troweling plaster effect? And I did it with my own trowel, painting trowel, mixing trowel.

David Read:
Yeah. You approached it the same way, and it resulted the same kind of effect.

Gary Jones:
Same way, and I got the same effect, and I was really happy with that.

David Read:
Just crazy.

Gary Jones:
Yeah, thanks.

David Read:
I have some Arnold Newman photography that was done here. You had a book of his called One Mind’s Eye. This gentleman here with the bald head and the big nose. Just distinct features.

Gary Jones:
Arnold Newman. These were just… he’s my favorite black-and-white portrait artist, Arnold Newman. And I love that book. It’s full of… he was one of those guys back in the sixties, lived in New York, and he photographed everybody. He photographed Picasso, Marilyn Monroe, just all these artists, like Joan Miró, all these artists and writers and authors and poets and sculptors. They’re all in this book. One Mind’s Eye is an amazing book if you can get your hands on it. I think you can order it through Amazon, but it’s not in print anymore. You gotta kind of hunt it down. I lost that book originally, and my girlfriend found it online and got it for me at Christmas. I was beside myself. It’s here with me now. And he was one of those guys that would have… you can imagine he would have dinner parties with the people that would show up to his dinner parties. Like, “Oh yeah, Picasso’s coming over with [inaudible].” But what I loved about him was that he would contextualize his portraits. He would take these people, and he would put them in a setting that supported what they did. You just gotta see the book to know what I’m talking about. There’s one very, very famous portrait that he did of Igor Stravinsky where he’s kinda leaning like this against a grand piano, and the lid of the grand piano is up. You can’t miss it. That’s Arnold Newman, and it’s all about composition. And I love composition. The things that you’ve shown right now, there’s less composition because they’re straight portraits. But I take photographs too, and I’m a photographer as well, so I love composition and how things are weighted. But for these pencil sketches, it was more that I just loved the way the light caught their eyes and it caught their faces, and I just wanted to try and see if I could draw that.

David Read:
Rapper Mac Miller. I have him up now.

Gary Jones:
Mac Miller. He was part of three rappers that I drew for my son. My son was really into rap music, and he said, “Oh, do you think you could ever draw me a rap artist?” And I said, “Well, send in the picture, I’ll see what I can do.” And there’s two others that I drew that I’m pretty happy with.

David Read:
The pirate one with the braiding of the uniform. It’s really cool.

Gary Jones:
I forget that guy’s name. And then the other guy who’s got big dreads, and what caught my eye about that was that he’s top lit, so there’s light shining down. So, it’s almost like his hair kind of disappears into… it is covered with light, and that really caught my eye. So, I’m really happy with those three drawings that I did for my son. He loved them. I gave them to him, and he was pretty happy with that.

David Read:
They’re beautifully… Absolutely.

Gary Jones:
Yeah, and they were just exercises for me. They were like, “Oh, can I draw these people?” Like, “Can I draw a person of color that I haven’t done before?” Like, how do you do that with skin tone as opposed to drawing a Caucasian person? So, it became a study for me. It was like, “How do I do that? What am I gonna do to make it look like that, to make it just right?” So, that was really great.

David Read:
I have your grandmother up, which oddly enough actually in hindsight reminds me a lot of my grandmother. Old German lady.

Gary Jones:
The thing I loved about that photograph, oh my god, ’cause I never really saw my grandmother wear those glasses, which would look like she stole them from Michael Caine back in the 60s. And she’s smoking a cigarette, which I knew she’d smoke. But that picture, when I came across that picture, I was like, “My grandmother looks like she ran a London crime syndicate.” That’s what I thought of when I saw that. Like the toughest old broad, with these Michael Caine square glasses and a cigarette hanging out of her mouth, and I was like, “Well, I have to draw this.” So, it was just… again, it was just a study. And I also loved that, when we talked earlier about the eyes have to be perfect, well, her eyes are obscured by reflection.

David Read:
Yes, reflections.

Gary Jones:
And I was like, “Oh, that’s interesting. How am I gonna do that?” So, what I actually did was I drew what I thought were her eyes, and then I erased them all.

David Read:
Correct. It doesn’t look like there’s something wrong with her eyes. It really does look like, as far as I’m looking at it, it looks like you captured a reflection on the lenses, so that was achieved. I also have a self-portrait, not the one from your son’s photos, but a self-portrait of you kind of looking off to the left.

Gary Jones:
Yeah, that photo…

David Read:
I thought it was your dad originally, and then you’re like, “No, it’s me.”

Gary Jones:
No. If you look at that photo, it kinda looks like me. But everybody who saw that said, “Wow, sort of looks like you, but you look incredibly sad.” And I said, “Yeah, I was going through a really, really sad period of my life.” I was getting divorced and I was having a really tough time. But I was still being artistic and being creative, and this person, a friend of mine who was a photographer, took some photographs of me. And I saw that one and I thought, “Oh, I’m gonna try and draw it.” And so, there’s a heaviness and kind of a sadness to that that I hope I captured, but that’s what I think of when I see that particular picture.

David Read:
I have a profile of you that your son took and you drew.

Gary Jones:
Yes.

David Read:
Let me pull this up here.

Gary Jones:
So, that one, he just took a photo of me from the side. We were driving. We had stopped at a stop light or something, and I just remember I was thinking about something, and I had my hands like this. And then when I saw the photo later, what caught my eye were my own hands, and hands are hard to draw. If you show… I guess you have shown that picture of Richard Dean you had.

David Read:
I already did share Richard Dean. I can go back to it.

Gary Jones:
So, for me, the hands were really important that I get the hands right, ’cause if the hands don’t look good… so you spend time on that. And for that, it was like this idea: what are my hands? What do my own hands look like? So, that was the challenge in that drawing that I quite liked. I like that photo.

David Read:
I have… let me see here. Let me pull this up. An Irish fisherman. I love this. You wanna talk about a face that has years earned and hard lived on it. This Irish fisherman with his hat and everything else is just so well done.

Gary Jones:
Yeah. Well, if you look closely at that, because it’s not even up in front of me, I’m just remembering the actual drawing. That picture, what caught my eye on that picture was his lip. It looks like it’s been sliced and kind of… I thought, this guy’s had some kind of fishing accident. He got a hook in his mouth, or I don’t know, God knows what.

David Read:
Something happened.

Gary Jones:
Something happened to this guy’s mouth, and it looks like his lip was slit open and then sewn back together. And of course, years later, it’s still like a bad stitching job. Again, whenever I come across these photographs, there’s always something in the photograph that has to bring me to it and go, “Oh, that’s interesting.” And so, the other thing that I haven’t done before in a lot of other sketches of older folks especially was that he had kind of liver spots on his face. And so, I noticed that when I started adding those, I couldn’t believe what it actually did to the sketch and how it really brought out his age. And just the fact that drawing somebody who’s older is just more interesting because of the lines and the cracks and the shadows, and where the light is captured and where the darkness sits. They’re just more interesting. So, for me to draw him was a real challenge. And his eyes are hooded, and he just looks like he’d be a guy that you’d see at the local and would not be putting up with any guff, and he’s lived quite a life.

David Read:
I agree. I have Ansel Adams here, who is one of my favorite photographers.

Gary Jones:
Yeah. The thing that I liked, where I was happy particularly with this drawing, the one I did, was, if you’re looking at it straight on, the left side of the face, not where his hand is, but the opposite side, just the line of light that runs down the side of his face that sort of makes it separate from the rest. I always go to that. I like it. And again, the hands are…

David Read:
Exactly.

Gary Jones:
If the hands don’t work… that one’s got hands and eyes, so that was a pretty tricky one to draw, but I think it came out pretty good.

David Read:
I’m gonna go through some of these others fairly quickly here. Chris Haddock.

Gary Jones:
Chris Haddock is a local producer and writer who’s quite well-known in Vancouver, and that photo I just came across in a local trade magazine, and I thought, “Oh, this is a cool picture of Chris.” And I worked on the show that Chris had created years ago, and then one day, recently, within the last year, I bumped into Chris. He was sitting in Vancouver having a coffee outside of a place with another actor friend of mine, Stevie Miller. And I said, “Hey.” I said, “By the way, get this, I did a drawing of you once.” And he’s like, “No way.” And I said, “Yeah.” And I went into my phone, and I stood there scrolling, and I found it, and I showed him the picture, and I said, “I just did this drawing of you because I thought it was interesting.” And he was like, “Wow, that really is me.” And then I ended up sending him a copy of it.

David Read:
There you go! I first thought it was Vincent Schiavelli when I first looked. I was like, “That looks familiar.” It was like, “No, that’s Chris Haddock.”

Gary Jones:
No, Chris Haddock is quite the iconic guy around here. I wouldn’t mind talking about some of my paintings, if you have any.

David Read:
Before I move on to that page, I would like to bring up your production of Of Mice and Men.

Gary Jones:
Oh yeah.

David Read:
You had a design for cover art.

Gary Jones:
Right. That’s a poster. That’s poster art. So, in that, the guy that I did all the art with, that I told you that I’ve been doing art with for six years, we’ve gone on to do… he works in leather now. He makes wall lights and bags, and he’s really, really good at that. He’s amazing. And I know that if anybody was ever interested in what he did, I could get those pictures to you, ’cause he’s so good. But also, it got to the point where after a while he would come over, I’d be drawing, and he’d be on his iPad because he was taking a computer graphics course up at the local university just to kind of broaden his skill set. And so, one day I said to him, “Hey, I’m directing this version of Of Mice and Men with my girlfriend’s son in it.” Elliott, who is six foot three, and he’s gonna play the part of Lennie. And he’s a guy with physical and mental disabilities, but he also acts. And so, the guy that played George was Elliott’s best friend, so the two of them were Lennie and George in this production of Of Mice and Men, and I got to direct a guy with disabilities to play a character with disabilities. It was the most astonishing and fantastic experience. Anyway. I decided, because it’s a theater thing, it’s low budget, and I said, “Well, I’ve worked in design before. I’ll design the poster.” So, I went to my friend Dana and I said, “Look, I’ve got to design a poster for this thing, and I have an idea what I want it to look like.” And I roughed it out, and I said to Dana, “As far as the graphic of what’s gonna represent the play, I’ve done a bunch of research on past productions of Of Mice and Men, and a lot of them show the two guys together, Lennie and George together, and maybe something with rabbits or whatever, but what I haven’t seen is the rabbit as a gun. Could you create a rabbit as a gun? Mash them up.” And that’s what Dana came up with. It was this graphic, this visual representation, and I was over the moon. I just thought, “Oh my god, I’ve never seen this before. It’s such a cool poster.” And if you squint, the rabbit is the stock, the handle, and then you’ve got the hand, and the hand is the trigger, and the ears are the…

David Read:
The pin, yeah.

Gary Jones:
Yeah. So, I was really happy with that. I just drew upon my own past experience working in advertising as a graphic designer to come up with that.

David Read:
Let’s look at a couple more of the paintings. Your stepdaughter on Promise. I love the color in this.

Gary Jones:
Thank you. That horse, that pony… that was a pony, and it had kind of a reddish-brown coat. And by that time, we had had to… she… that pony had moved away from where we lived, and so it was about an hour and a half drive away from us, because we just couldn’t… Lily was growing up. She was going to school. She wasn’t gonna ride anymore. So, I would take her up there to visit Promise, and then she would… because Promise was injured and he couldn’t do any of the things that he did. She couldn’t ride him the way she could, so he was basically put out to pasture. And sadly, I heard that Promise, up at that place, jumped a fence, ran into the road, and got hit… got killed by a truck. Got hit by a truck and killed. And so, I painted that as kind of like…

David Read:
Yeah, absolutely.

Gary Jones:
…to her and Promise. And that was really my first painting. That was my first painting.

David Read:
That’s crazy, man. Your first painting was something.

Gary Jones:
And I remember a buddy of mine who is an incredible artist, I sent him a couple of stages as I was working on it, and I emailed it to him, and he said, “Why, for your first painting, are you painting a horse?” And I was like… it’s just one of those things that I kind of knew. I just knew I could do it. I don’t know what else to say beyond that. Much the same way that if you put a pencil in my hand, I kind of know I can draw. I’ve always known this. And he said, “Why don’t you just paint an onion?” And I was like, “An onion?” Yeah, most people starting out painting, they’ll start small, an apple or something. And I was like, “No, because I know I can draw this horse.”

David Read:
There you go.

Gary Jones:
So, I was really proud of that as my first go-around.

David Read:
And your son and his grandfather.

Gary Jones:
Yeah. So, my dad, who’s been dead about 15 years now… no, it’s got to be longer than that, because my son is 20. My son’s got to be about two there in that picture. So, it’s probably about 18 years ago that my dad and my mom flew out to Vancouver to visit. So, my son would sit on the back of that couch a lot, just on his own anyway. But my dad happened to be sitting on that couch. And covering that couch is velvet. It’s velvet. And when I showed this painting to my son, he said, “Oh my god.” He said, “Dad, I remember what it was like running my hand on that velvet.”

David Read:
Correct.

Gary Jones:
‘Cause if you run it the opposite way, it looks white. It captures the light.

David Read:
Yes, the light.

Gary Jones:
The light kind of changes color. And he said, “I’m looking at this painting, and it takes me right back.”

David Read:
He can feel it.

Gary Jones:
Yeah, he could feel it when he looked at the painting. And I thought, “Oh my god, that’s so cool.” The painting that’s hanging in the background, the white dress, is a painting done by a friend of mine who lived in Vancouver. When she was in art school, probably 25, 30 years ago, I bought that painting from her. And I was like, “When was I ever in the position to buy art as a starving artist myself?” But I was so taken by that giant painting that I bought it from her. And years later, I find myself doing a painting where I have to paint her painting.

David Read:
In the shot.

Gary Jones:
In the shot. And I was like, “I have to get this right because…”

David Read:
Yeah, it means something to you.

Gary Jones:
It means something to me. And when I sent it to my friend and I said, “Check out what I painted,” she was just blown away. She couldn’t believe her painting had been painted.

David Read:
Because it was in the shot.

Gary Jones:
Because it was in the shot. That’s pretty cool.

David Read:
Before we get to your commission, the last one I have is of him in Tombstone.

Gary Jones:
Oh my god, this is one of my all-time favorite shots that I took of my kid. He’s about 13. Took him down to Tombstone, took him down to Tucson, Arizona, to visit a buddy of mine and his son, so the four of us were out together. And my friend Alex said, “Let’s go to Tombstone, and we will kind of hang out in this old cowboy town, and we will watch the recreation of the OK Corral,” and all that kind of stuff. And Oscar was just at the age where he wasn’t too cool for school. And he and this other kid, when they got there, they said, “Aww, can you buy us some plastic six guns?” And we’re like, “Yeah, sure.” And they were just like… little cap guns, and they were shooting at each other and chasing each other around. Things would change after that. My son would grow up and everything. So, that photograph, I caught my son in a moment where not only is he firing his six gun, but he’s on this horse, pretending he’s escaping from a bank robbery, and he’s shooting over his shoulder. And look at him, he’s got aviator shades on. And he’s got a trucker hat that says, “Loser.” And I just love everything about that. I actually painted my son.

David Read:
You captured the moment of him in time.

Gary Jones:
And there’s a couple of spots on that painting that I absolutely love. Where his leg is slightly bent into the stirrup, so I got that right, which is the shape and the angle of his leg. It was really important for me. And the other one is the arm that goes across like this. It’s kind of white and it sort of bursts into the gun… the gun becomes white. And that was the intensity of the sunlight. The sunlight in Tombstone on that day was just baking hot.

David Read:
Yeah, welcome to my state.

Gary Jones:
And I was really happy, and my son even said he really loved the way the arm looks with the white on it.

David Read:
And he paints as well. We had one of his paintings on last time you were on the show.

Gary Jones:
He paints too, yeah.

David Read:
But the last time you were on the show, some fans reached out to me and said, we want Gary to consider some work for us, and you did a commission. The first stage of which I have here on this screen. It’s a gentleman from Texas, right?

Gary Jones:
Yeah.

David Read:
So, this was an initial drawing, and his face is in the lower left corner, you can see.

Gary Jones:
Right. So, what happened was, I had two people contact me and ask me if I would do some painting for them, and those didn’t pan out. I said, “Yeah, I’ll do them,” and then eventually they said, “Oh yeah, we can’t afford to do it,” but eventually they just disappeared, and I was like, “OK, fine, whatever, no worries.” And then out of the blue, this young lady contacted me on Twitter. She sent me a direct message, and she said, “I hear that you’re accepting commissions.” And I was like, “OK, sure.” I had no expectations, really low expectations. And she said, “Well, I would love you to paint a portrait of my father-in-law, and his name is Ihor,” and I think he’s Ukrainian. Something like that. So, I said, “OK, sure.” So, then I basically said to her, “OK, this is gonna happen. I’m not gonna get messed around. I’m happy to do it, but you send me half the deposit, and as soon as that’s in my bank account, I’ll get to work.” And she was like, “OK.” And I was like, “OK, great.” And I had the most… I just had such a lovely relationship with this young girl as I would send her segments of the sketches. And I guess whatever you have up on there right now is just the picture of him down to the corner, and then me drawing a grid system on the canvas so that I can get his face in the perfect proportion and make sure that it actually looked like him as a pencil sketch before I began painting him. Because I thought, you can’t just start painting. You have to do the sketch first. And you have to go proportionally, erasing, move the eye, shift this, shift that. And then once you have it as a line drawing, it doesn’t have to be all super shaded in, but at least there’s almost like a schematic, like a line drawing. And once I was happy with that, then I began painting. And of course, because it was my first commission, I was a bit of… I was going, “Oh my god, I hope that… god, this turns out.” So, I started painting the jacket and the tie, and I was kind of working my way… then I’ll paint the shirt. Anything to avoid painting the face. And I painted some background, then I started on his hair. Oh my God. Seriously, I was like, “Anything to avoid…”

David Read:
Those eyes.

Gary Jones:
“…having to make him look like who he looked like.” And I’ll tell you a funny story. When you showed that picture of Lily on Promise, if you’d seen me paint that, I painted everything I could, except Lily’s face. I painted her hair. Her face was like a blank egg. I basically concentrated it down to that, until I finally got to the point where I went…

David Read:
Got no choice now.

Gary Jones:
“I gotta paint her face, because I left it to last.” But what was great was that by the time I got there, I gained enough confidence in the painting. I thought, “You know what, this is gonna be pretty good. I just gotta make sure it looks like her, and I just gotta figure it out.” And it looks exactly like her. It really does. You don’t know what she looks like, but trust me, it looks like her.

David Read:
But we’re looking at this guy here, and you’ve captured him. You’ve got him spot on.

Gary Jones:
Well, that was the thing. If you notice… Let me ask you a question, David. What do you think, by looking at that portrait, what do you think was the one thing that I found really interesting in that photo that I thought, “Oh, this will be kind of cool?” What do you think is the one little bit that I thought was super interesting?

David Read:
I mean, from a design aesthetic, if I’m just looking at it and I’m thinking about creating something like this, the glasses do an interesting thing on his eyes.

Gary Jones:
That’s it.

David Read:
That’s it?

Gary Jones:
That’s what got me.

David Read:
Yeah, ’cause it’s a distortion. So, can you copy the distortion?

Gary Jones:
It’s a lens distortion. And when you look at it, if you sort of ignore the lens distortion, he just looks normal. His eyes just look normal, but they are distorted. That white bit, I couldn’t take my eyes off that. And as soon as I saw that, people would say to me, “Well, you’re not gonna draw that in, are you?” And I was like, “Are you kidding?”

David Read:
You have to.

Gary Jones:
“I can’t wait to get to that bit.” That’s the bit I wanna paint, because it just fascinated me how the lens changed the side of his face. And I was loving doing that, so that brought me into it, and I kept looking at that. And then it was a matter of taking my time with it. I had the thinnest paintbrush and just did the tiniest white brush strokes to get his hair right. And then if you pull back and you look at the photograph of him, he’s got a kind of a mixture of darker hair and white hair on his chin, and you gotta get that right. It’s not just a white beard. There is a real kind of palette to it, and it’s all mixed up. And I gotta get that right. I couldn’t just do a white beard, ’cause it just wouldn’t look like him.

David Read:
Right, yeah, it has to be right.

Gary Jones:
Yeah, and I had to be kind of a bit aggressive with it in my brush strokes, and I was really happy with the way it turned out.

David Read:
You did great work, man. And if anyone is interested in reaching out to Gary for potential commission, it’s [email protected]. And I have put that information into the chat, so people will find it available there. And I will also put it in the show notes as well once this is all up and running.

Gary Jones:
Thanks so much.

David Read:
Thank you. This is so cool. Thank you so much for taking me through this stuff. I think there is so much more to be found in an actor’s performance that informs their performance than just the role itself. Their entire creative body. And to be able to share that with you, some really intimate moments in your life, with your kid. Those legs, man. Creates such a visual array of something spectacular. It’s really special. Thank you so much for sharing.

Gary Jones:
I think basically what I realize I’ve done for many years is chosen a creative life. So, to become an actor, and then move into writing, and then improvising, and then playwriting, and then scriptwriting, and then photography and painting. It’s entirely creative. And working in advertising and design, it’s creative. So, my life is really… that’s the life I’ve chosen. And whether or not it necessarily always comes with a big paycheck, it’s not how it works.

David Read:
Fulfillment is important.

Gary Jones:
This is who I am. This is what people know me as. And it’s really great to chat with you, David. You’re always just an awesome guy to talk with on Zoom and just hang out with. We always have a great time together, you and I. But what a brilliant opportunity to be able to… ’cause I don’t… I never talk like this. Like the fact that you actually asked me questions about some of these paintings and that I can tell you what’s behind them or whatever, I never get to do that. So, this has been really amazing for me, so I appreciate it.

David Read:
Thank you for sharing.

Gary Jones:
Anytime, man.

David Read:
I have some fan questions for ya. Is that OK?

Gary Jones:
Yeah.

David Read:
Dan23 and Teresamc, “Were there any mishaps…” Excuse me. Dan23 and Teresamc, “Were there any mishaps with control room equipment over the years, or incidents you had with technology, computers, doors, things like that?”

Gary Jones:
One time, I was standing in the hallway outside the SGC, and I reached up, I was leaning against the wall, and I pulled off a huge bolt.

David Read:
Yes! The bolts, they were glued on!

Gary Jones:
Yeah. It was like Styrofoam, and the bolt just came off in my hand. I said, “Oh, sorry, I pulled a Styrofoam bolt off the wall.” And they just went, “Oh, you idiot,” and they just glue-gunned it back on.

David Read:
Oh my gosh.

Gary Jones:
Chris Judge once — I’m pretty sure it was Chris — he changed all the letters on my keyboard and I had to sit at the…

David Read:
And pop them off. Yeah, there’s a tool for it.

Gary Jones:
He popped them off, and then he rearranged them, and he wrote out a disgusting message on my keyboard.

David Read:
ArvaDev, “Would you ever paint the Stargate?” That’s an interesting idea. Would you ever paint the Stargate?

Gary Jones:
Would I ever paint it? No, I don’t think so. I don’t think so. I thought you meant would Walter just decide to paint the gate.

David Read:
No, would you ever or did you ever paint the Stargate? ArvaDev.

Gary Jones:
You mean paint as in do a painting of it.

David Read:
Do a painting of the gate.

Gary Jones:
Oh yeah, of course I would. Yeah. That would be a cool challenge for sure.

David Read:
Absolutely. Cocla… You basically answered this, but he was asking if it was different working on Atlantis compared to SG-1, ’cause you had the same set.

Gary Jones:
Same set. No, they were in two different sound stages.

David Read:
Right, you were on the same set when Atlantis would come to you.

Gary Jones:
Oh yeah. The only difference was that I didn’t really know those guys that well. They were all nice people. Kinda got to know Torri Higginson a bit more, and she was really fun to hang out with. They were all nice. I just didn’t know them that well because I didn’t see them as much as I did the SG-1 cast. But everybody else was the same. The crew were interchangeable.

David Read:
Peacewriter wanted to know, “The sketch you did of Rick’s dog Andy. Did Rick ever get to see it?”

Gary Jones:
Yes, I showed it to him. I sent it to him, and he just loved it. He loved it. He thought it was great.

David Read:
You really captured that dog. That was an impressive drawing. I was really impressed, man. Of all these that we went through, that was one of the ones that was like, “Wow, that dog’s eyes. There’s life in that 2D image.”

Gary Jones:
Yeah, I was really happy with that. I haven’t drawn any animal since. I haven’t drawn anything. That’s the one and only dog that I have ever drawn. I was really happy with it. Rick was too. He thought it was great.

David Read:
Redux, “What did you think of your puppet form in “200?” Wasn’t that crazy?”

Gary Jones:
Hilarious, hilarious. I only saw it when I saw the show, because the puppets were all done down in LA by the Team America people. And when we acted, they shot us in the SGC doing our scenes.

David Read:
Right.

Gary Jones:
And then they just sent the footage down and replaced us with the puppets.

David Read:
Yeah, they shot reference shots of you and then the clean plate of the backgrounds and then composed them later on. It’s just crazy, man. So, you never got to see your puppet in person?

Gary Jones:
No, and everybody asked me that. And that’s one question that all the fans asked me: do you still have your puppet? I go, “No!”

David Read:
I think MGM’s got them.

Gary Jones:
They’ve got them.

David Read:
It sold.

Gary Jones:
“Here’s a puppet that costs like a trillion dollars.”

David Read:
They were very expensive.

Gary Jones:
Yeah, of course.

David Read:
The electronics in them and everything was just so perfect.

Gary Jones:
And so hilariously written, like, “Make it spin,” and “I feel so stupid.” “Make it spin!” “It should spin!” “Make it spin!”

David Read:
“It’s round, it has to spin!” Oh, Don. God bless him. Dan23, “Was there anything you liked filming for a Stargate DVD extra?” You did the 200th episode promotion with Sci-Fi.

Gary Jones:
Oh, down in San Diego?

David Read:
In Vancouver, you did the 200th episode Sci-Fi Channel. You’re trying to get the running gag, you’re trying to get yourself in the 200th episode.

Gary Jones:
Trying to get myself into the 200th and going to Beau Bridges and asking him if he can get me on. I’m trying to bribe him. I think I said something like, “I’ll pay you… 2000 large.” And he’s like, “2000 American?” And I go, “No, 2000 Canadian,” kind of a thing. It was a joke…

David Read:
That’s right!

Gary Jones:
… about the fact that the money was Canadian meant it was large. That was really fun. But I’ll tell you, one of the Season 10 box set, one of the DVD extras on there is me down in San Diego emceeing.

David Read:
Yes.

Gary Jones:
OK, they just put that on. I didn’t even know. Somebody told me at a convention, they go, “Oh my god, you were so funny in that.” And I was like, “Well, how did you see?” And they were like, “It’s in the DVD extras.”

David Read:
Yeah, it’s in the DVD extras. You hosted the SG-1 panel.

Gary Jones:
Yeah, I didn’t get paid for that. But hang on. What they did was they flew me down. I took my wife at the time. We got put up in this fantastic hotel. Everywhere we went was limos. Everything was totally… it was great.

David Read:
Full production.

Gary Jones:
Full-on paid-for holiday.

David Read:
Vacation.

Gary Jones:
Yeah, vacation.

David Read:
Not bad for a hosting gig.

Gary Jones:
What was funny was that the reason I got that hosting gig was because they were promoting it up in Vancouver, and they had asked me, could I… they were gonna have Brad and all the actors up in the gate room, with about 10 reporters sitting there and asking questions, and could I moderate that? And I was like, “Oh yeah.” And I put my flight suit on, and they asked me to, and I said, “Sure.” So, I put that on, and I just fielded the questions, and I was a little bit funny or whatever. Next thing I know, they’re flying down to San Diego, to Comic-Con, to do the same thing, and I get called and they say, “Would you go down to San Diego to do a Q&A with the cast and do the same thing?” And I was like, “Yeah, for sure.” So, on the way down, flying down, I’m talking to Joe Mallozzi, and Joe goes, “So, are you nervous? Are you nervous about this?” And I was like, “Nervous? Why would I be nervous? There’s just gonna be a couple of reporters there.” And he goes, “Oh no. No, no, this is in front of 4000 people.” I was like, “What are you talking about?” And he goes, “That’s what it’s gonna be. They just want you to emcee at a podium.” It’s one of those little things where they pull the big wall aside and they make this ginormous room, and it is packed with 4000 people. And I guess anybody else might have been like, “Oh my god.” And I was like, “Oh, bring it on.”

David Read:
Absolutely.

Gary Jones:
So, I think that translated when I moderated that cast Q&A and just had a total blast with it. Went out and was funny and took questions from the crowd and just hacked on them and made it really fun. And I think they just went, “Oh my god, OK, let’s put this on the DVD.” So, it’s on the DVD extras, which I’m really proud of.

David Read:
That’s great, man. Gary, it’s always awesome to have you on. I appreciate you answering the fan questions and taking us through your art and just a cross-section of your life at this moment in time. It’s really special, so it means a lot that you’ve joined us.

Gary Jones:
Yeah, thank you so much, David. It’s always great chatting with you. I wanna mention too, very briefly, people can contact me through Twitter, because that other lady did contact… she did DM me through Twitter. So, it’s @thegaryjones. They’ll know.

David Read:
Perfect.

Gary Jones:
@thegaryjones is the one. And they can DM me there or they can contact me through Gmail.

David Read:
[email protected]

Gary Jones:
Yeah.

David Read:
Perfect, sir. Means a lot to have you on.

Gary Jones:
Oh, my Instagram. My Instagram is GaryJones680.

David Read:
GaryJones680. Alright.

Gary Jones:
Yeah. So, there is no excuse for people not contacting me and asking for commissions. Thanks a lot, David.

David Read:
You take care of yourself, man.

Gary Jones:
Always a pleasure. We’ll talk soon.

David Read:
I appreciate you. I’ll be in touch with you.

Gary Jones:
Cheers, man.

David Read:
You be safe. Bye-bye now.

Gary Jones:
You too. Bye-bye.

David Read:
Gary Jones, Walter Harriman, Stargate SG-1, Stargate Atlantis, and Stargate Universe “Air.” He was in the pilot episode. I have a few fan questions before we go and bring Sharon Taylor in. “During the 12 Things We Want on Stargate event,” Raj Luthra asked, “was it mentioned why the Ancient Atlanteans chose the Pegasus galaxy and not the Andromeda galaxy?” It was not mentioned. I would… I don’t know. Has Andromeda ever been used in science fiction other than the name for the ship in Andromeda? I’m not sure. The Andromeda galaxy is a possible… I think some fan fiction has covered it at some point, but no, there’s never been a proper explanation in the show. Kix394, “Do you alternate live interviews on one Sunday and a prerecorded interview the next, or does it depend on everybody’s schedules?” So, what I try to do is have one Sunday designated every month as a prerecorded. I’m getting ready to move. Announcement, announcement! So, I’m gonna be taking the show into hiatus in terms of live shows pretty soon here. So, I am banking some content for the next few weeks, and then we’re gonna go into a different form of content, which I will reveal soon in due course. Teresamc, “Are you planning to travel to the sci-fi cons and do live interviews with them?” Once – yes — once it no longer costs two or three grand to go up to Canada and do a lot of those events up there, I wanna do that. I wanna do some location shows as well, where we go to some of the hot spots and where it’s their significance to the Stargate story and tell some tales there. Redux Q, “Come try it, any chance of having Jace Hall, Todd Ray, Dan Castellaneta, Ona Grauer, Morena Baccarin, editors, some more SGU casting, captains of the spaceship, the actor who played Janus?” All of these are on the table. I’ve reached out to Morena Baccarin’s management, have not heard back. Ona Grauer has passed for the time being. I’m hoping she will come back around when she’s less busy. A lot of the SGU cast have declined, unfortunately. But you can’t get everybody, so we’re doing everything we can with what we’ve got. Before I let you guys go, I did have fan art, as if we hadn’t had enough art today, but I did want to bring this in, because I thought it was way too cool. Let me share this. Nebulin is providing the artwork for today, on both this interview and the Sharon Taylor interview. This is Gary Jones as Walter’s family. He said, “I think it would be cute if Walter had a family.” So, these little notes here, “Daddy’s home,” in his flight suit. My name is David Read. I really appreciate you tuning in to Dial the Gate. It means a lot to have you here. We are gonna be doing another episode here in just a moment. Thanks to my production assistants, Jennifer Kirby and Linda “GateGabber” Furey. My moderating team: Summer, Tracy, Keith, Jeremy, Reese, Antony. You guys make the show possible, continue to be possible, so it means a lot to have you as part of it, and it means a lot to have you joining us live pretty much every weekend. I’m gonna get Sharon Taylor here, and we’re gonna talk about going from technicians in the Milky Way galaxy to technicians in the Pegasus galaxy, and she’s gonna be up next. My name is David Read for Dial the Gate. Thanks so much for tuning in, and we will see you on the other side.