We are excited to welcome Mitchell Kosterman to the series to share memories from “Seth,” the pivotal “Heroes” two-parter, and his years of experience in the industry.

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TRANSCRIPT
Find an error? Submit it here.

David Read:
Hello everyone. Welcome to Dial the Gate. The Stargate Oral History Project. My name is David Read. I appreciate you joining me here for this episode. This is gonna be a special one for me because this actor is tied very closely to some sensitive, emotional material from Stargate SG-1. And I’m interested to see where this goes and what he remembers. Some people are, like, “It’s very surface details,” and others, they tend to surprise us and, in some cases, even more after we get to talking about the work. Things start coming up and I’m interested to see, particularly with Heroes. Mitchell Kosterman. Tom Rundell in Heroes Parts 1 and 2, who’s the public affairs liaison at either Cheyenne Mountain or Stargate Command. I probably suspect Cheyenne Mountain.

Mitchell Kosterman:
Cheyenne Mountain.

David Read:
There we go. And James Hamner, who was an ATF officer in Season Three episode called Seth. Also, a very… An episode dealing with some very sensitive topics as well. Mitch, thank you for joining me on Dial the Gate. It means a lot to have you here, sir.

Mitchell Kosterman:
It’s my pleasure.

David Read:
Folks in the audience, if you’ve got questions, submit them through our YouTube chat here and they’ll route them over to me on the back end. Sir, what is going on with you these days? Can you tell me a little bit about your current industry?

Mitchell Kosterman:
I stopped acting in 2005. It did almost exactly two decades of it, and then I went to directing, writing and producing various projects. I’m still doing a bit of all of those things. Mostly that stuff you can’t talk about until after it happens. But I also started publishing a film list because I started working as a consultant to various vendors. Pretty much U.S. companies wanting to move into the film industry in Canada. Most of the stuff that was in Canada up till about 2005 was locally owned by Canadian families [and] Canadian companies. And the larger companies around the world, not just… Well, Great Britain, too. Started buying vendors and venues, particularly studios and heavy equipment and lighting equipment rental type stuff, and they don’t understand how to do the business in our country. They weren’t prepared for that, so they needed liaison consulting with people who had worked in the film business in Canada, and that was me. So, I did that for six or seven years. Then I just put myself out as a freelance consultant and I’ve been doing that ever since. My latest contract expires this December 31st and then I started publishing a film list called Pulse Production List. I believe it’s the only decent comprehensive film list to show you what is shooting in any given week across North America, how to contact the show, and when it starts and when it finished and who’s involved in it. That’s what I’m doing now.

David Read:
Is this it? Is this the one that I’ve got here? Is this correct?

Mitchell Kosterman:
What’s that?

David Read:
Or am I not broadcasting to you? Are you able to see me?

Mitchell Kosterman:
No, I just see me right now.

David Read:
You just see you? Let me see what I’m doing here. I just shared everything with everyone.

Mitchell Kosterman:
That’s OK. It’s called Pulse Production List and right now it’s at yvrproductionpulse.com but it’s gonna move soon.

David Read:
OK. I’ve got the wrong production list. So, you haven’t been able to see me this entire broadcast?

Mitchell Kosterman:
No, I have it in a little box.

David Read:
OK. Can you see me right now?

Mitchell Kosterman:
I can see you right now. Yep.

David Read:
OK, so this other website was not YVR Production List?

Mitchell Kosterman:
Yvrproductionpulse.com

David Read:
Sorry about that. Here I am. OK.

Mitchell Kosterman:
There you go.

David Read:
Very good. Got it.

Mitchell Kosterman:
Hey, that’s it.

David Read:
That’s it.

Mitchell Kosterman:
That’s my company.

David Read:
No wonder you were acting weird. It’s, like, “It’s not the right page.”

Mitchell Kosterman:
And the reason for that is that I’m 67 now, and I really don’t wanna do any more work. I keep track of this stuff anyway, just out of interest’s sake, so it’s not a lot of maintenance for me each week to update it. I watch it anyway. I got offered a project to produce a series that I can’t talk about yet, but I will soon enough hopefully. So, even though I keep trying to retire, the world doesn’t let me.

David Read:
Take it from my dad. Don’t. Especially if you’re plugged into something and generating revenue for something that you would do anyway. That’s the sweet spot. Find something that you would do for free and do it.

Mitchell Kosterman:
You’re exactly right. I just wanna do things like travel and I have to remind myself to go see my grandchildren and stuff. I have a larger family than I had when I started all this.

David Read:
How far are they?

Mitchell Kosterman:
About an hour drive.

David Read:
That’s not too bad. You don’t have to get onto a plane.

Mitchell Kosterman:
That’s not bad at all.

David Read:
And something like this you can take on the road with you.

Mitchell Kosterman:
I do. The publishing thing, for sure. The consulting stuff, I still have to travel to cities like Los Angeles and Austin and Georgia… Atlanta. But I’m hoping to finish that up in December. And with regard to the film list, well, I can do that on my laptop. And in fact, I spent the greater part of my year in Las Vegas and living in a hotel and I just do it all through laptop.

David Read:
There you go. Makes a lot of sense. What made you pursue acting? Where did that bug come from?

Mitchell Kosterman:
I have wanted to be an actor since I was about six years old. I did become an actor in school and right up to Grade Seven, and I played Bill Sikes in Oliver [Twist].

David Read:
Scary character, if done right.

Mitchell Kosterman:
Still have the newspaper clippings because the guys who were in that play with me, at least three or four of them, are now still in the film business. Do you know Daryl Shuttleworth?

David Read:
Name rings a bell.

Mitchell Kosterman:
Daryl Shuttleworth has done hundreds… Like me. He stayed in, though, after 2005. So, he’s done hundreds of shows, and he’s got a lot of stories. But anyway, he was in that play as well. And with my whole family watching. And I loved it. The problem was that when I went to high school after that, it was 70s, the mid-70s, and it wasn’t cool to do establishment-type things, for whatever reason. I just didn’t get involved in theater as high school, which was a big mistake. But as soon as I graduated and started going to university, I wanted to do it, and I started getting involved in little plays and stuff, and then, like magic, the film business came to Vancouver. It was nothing I ever considered, working in film, but it came to Vancouver, and we started… I think the first show I worked on… Heck, I can’t remember. Might have been… Oh, it was Wiseguy. I think I had a teeny, little part before that, like MacGyver or something, but the first time I had anything decent was Wiseguy. That’s a good story.

David Read:
Tell me.

Mitchell Kosterman:
Do you wanna here the story?

David Read:
We’re here for the stories, If they’re thoughtful and poignant. If there’s a… Or are you saying that was the story?

Mitchell Kosterman:
You wanna talk about Star Trek?

David Read:
We’ll get to Stargate

Mitchell Kosterman:
Stargate, sorry.

David Read:
No, I’m talking… We’re going for seminal details here.

Mitchell Kosterman:
OK, alright. So, I’d done a couple little parts, like I said, that I can’t even remember. I don’t even remember if I ever had my own dressing room. Because I can remember arriving downtown Vancouver by this big hotel, and the Circus… That’s where all the dressing rooms and hair and makeup are. We call that the Circus. So, the Circus is parked in a parking lot across the street and I’m not sure I’m allowed to park within a couple [of] miles there. But this woman sees me, recognizes me, which just blew me away… [She] recognizes me, I put down my window and she called me by name, directed my car in and gave me a dressing room. I never had a dressing room before so that was pretty cool. And I’m trying to act cool. I was a young man. I had a lot of experience in martial arts solely. I knew they were hiring me because the stunt coordinator had recommended me to do a little bit of karate type stuff. I met Bill Corcoran, the director, who I still know today. He said to me, “Oh, there’s a… We got a karate guy on this show.” And I said, “Alright.” Because you hear that everybody’s a karate master. And he said, “No. His name is Tony Morelli.” I don’t know if you know but Tony Morelli was the world champion kickboxer at the time, and he was my idol. I get a little bit upset when I talk about Tony because he died in a stunt a couple of decades after that. Anyway, that was really cool. I got to meet one of my heroes.

David Read:
What a great memory.

Mitchell Kosterman:
And then Mick Fleetwood was on that show, and Debbie Harry and Glenn Frey. Glenn Frey and I got along great. He was just a super nice guy. I was too shy to go visit him in LA. He invited me down there and gave me his phone number and stuff, but I was… I have social anxiety problems, so I just never did do that. And it was fantastic. And I got hired to kick Glenn Frey in the head and punch him or something like that while he’s walking down the street with Debbie Harry. Debbie Harry says… Starts screaming and crying about it, “Oh, Bobby! Oh, Bobby!” Because his name in the show was Bobby. And that was really interesting, and a lot of new stuff had come to me fast. The stunt work. The being… Getting closeups. A lot of the hair and makeup. The wardrobe. All of that stuff. It was my first time for all of those big things, and it was interesting because it became a recurring character, and I got to go back for five episodes. And I worked with Tim Curry. Jesus, Tim Curry. Tim Curry… We’re stopping and there’s a pause. Sometimes when the lights aren’t quite correct, usually the stand-ins go in, they get the light fairly correct. Then the actors will come in and they adjust it a bit. Well, in Wiseguy there are often more than two people. You can always tell the budget of a show [by] how many people are in this shot. They’d have five or six people in the shot, so they’ve got more… Two or three cameras. They’ve got… They’re trying the light, so they don’t screw up the other person’s lighting and stuff. And there’d be this little pause. And freaking Tim Curry would start singing in some echo chamber of a stage. And he would sing a freaking song. Can you believe it? I’m standing about three feet away from him.

David Read:
And he just breaks out into a song.

Mitchell Kosterman:
It was absolutely amazing. And Jonathan Banks was super nice to me as well.

David Read:
Good actor.

Mitchell Kosterman:
He’s a great actor, and an amazingly nice guy. He saw… I was studying Spanish, and he saw a book that I had between takes, and he came over, and I’d never talked to him before, and he just started telling me about Spanish. What he thought about Spanish. I think he had a Spanish girlfriend at the time or something. He says, “You know the most important thing you can say in Spanish?” I said, “What’s that?” He says, “Mia pensar.” Now, what that means is, “I think.” He says, “You can go, ‘Mia pensar,’ and start any sentence you want.” That was my tip from Jonathan Banks.

David Read:
It’s great.

Mitchell Kosterman:
On dating women.

David Read:
Is there a role you’ve had over the course of your career that has stuck with you, that you didn’t expect, or you didn’t expect would impact you the way it has?

Mitchell Kosterman:
You know the answer to that questions. You’re setting me up, aren’t you?

David Read:
No, no. I always get a variety of answers. Very rarely is it a Stargate answer. Would that be Tom?

Mitchell Kosterman:
Pardon me?

David Read:
Would the answer be Heroes or would it be Seth?

Mitchell Kosterman:
Oh, are you talking about just Stargate or you talking about my career?

David Read:
I don’t know any… I haven’t seen much of your career other than the Stargate episodes.

Mitchell Kosterman:
Oh, OK.

David Read:
I don’t know the answer to that.

Mitchell Kosterman:
Smallville.

David Read:
Smallville? OK. I’ve seen the first five seasons, and I watched them 18 years ago.

Mitchell Kosterman:
Well, I was the sheriff from the first two seasons.

David Read:
OK. Tell me about Smallville.

Mitchell Kosterman:
And that was interesting but… Do you wanna hear a Debbie story? Funny, though.

David Read:
Sure.

Mitchell Kosterman:
Funny Debbie Harry story.

David Read:
Sure.

Mitchell Kosterman:
OK. So, I have social issues. I’m not very good… It’s a good thing we’re doing this electronically because I’m better at this than I am in person.

David Read:
Sure.

Mitchell Kosterman:
But one of the things you do when you’re an actor who has a bit of a role is, you’re gonna go and try on some of the wardrobe that the costume designer has made for you and you’re trying it on. And often there are other people doing that and there are just screens between you and them. And you know that Debbie Harry is one of the most beautiful women on the planet. And remember, this is like 1984 or something.

David Read:
She’s in her prime.

Mitchell Kosterman:
She was in her prime. She was stunningly beautiful. I’ll just demonstrate how suave I am with regard to women. This is how well I played the game. I could hear her talking on the other side and I thought, “Geez, I know that voice. I think that’s Debbie Harry.” And something happened and we got dressed and things like that, and then she flung the curtain back and she said, “Hello.” Of course I’m stunned. I can barely speak. My lips are just quivering.

David Read:
“Why, hello!”

Mitchell Kosterman:
Yeah! And I go, “Uh, hello.” And I like to tell people about this because this is my chance. This was my chance, you see, to spend some time with Debbie Harry. And she said, “Wasn’t that you I was talking to last night in the hot tub at the hotel?”

David Read:
“Mia pensar.”

Mitchell Kosterman:
“Mia pensar.” You think about that. It should have gone a lot of different ways. But I said, “No.” She kind of rolled her eyes and pulled the curtain back and I didn’t speak to her until we were working again.

David Read:
So, other than “Mia pensar,” I would have said, “I wish.”

Mitchell Kosterman:
Well, you would have at least carried the conversation on for a couple sentences for crying out loud, right?

David Read:
Because if I said yes, and she would have figured it out, I would have been in trouble. It’s, like, “No. It’s not…”

Mitchell Kosterman:
Anyway, it would have been nice to talk to Debbie Harry for even a couple of minutes. I didn’t handle it right.

David Read:
Absolutely.

Mitchell Kosterman:
So, you asked me about things that had an impact for me. The two big ones… One was Smallville, and one I played the bad guy in a movie called White Noise.

David Read:
I have questions for White Noise coming up.

Mitchell Kosterman:
OK. So, fairly quickly, Whie Noise put me in a position where I was torturing and killing women. This is not something I had done before and it wasn’t something I was sure I wanted anyone, especially in my family, to see me doing. So, I had to watch it very carefully. But in one scene, there was a lady who was a victim, and gosh… Jay Brazeau’s wife. I can’t remember her name. I’m sorry. A brilliant actress. And she’s sitting in a chair, and I’m supposed to be torturing her and she says, “You don’t look well.” And I said, even through the makeup, I said, “I’m not well.” I said, “This is really hard for me. I don’t know what to do here. I’m gonna suck because I can’t do the things they’re saying in the script. I can’t even pretend to do the things they’re saying in the script.”

David Read:
They’re so intense?

Mitchell Kosterman:
Yes. It was violent and horrible. And she said to me, “Well, you’re not really doing anything to me,” and I thought about it and that didn’t really help. And she said, “Look, this is what I do. I make it fun.” And I’m thinking, “Fun? How the heck this is fun?”

David Read:
That’s a little perverse.

Mitchell Kosterman:
She says, “When you get dressed up as an axe murdered for Halloween or a vampire or something like that, and it’s Halloween and you’re playing with your kids and stuff like that, how do you feel about that?” I said, “Well, that’s fun.” She says, “Make this fun. Come at me as if it’s a Halloween joke and you’re trying to scare me.”

David Read:
Axe murderers are also vile. OK.

Mitchell Kosterman:
So, I did, and from then on it was easy, and I guess it was so good… I know this sounds horribly like bragging, but it never happened to me before. The very next day I got a call from the producer of the movie from Gold Circle, and unfortunately, I can’t remember his name.

David Read:

It’s hard, right? Been a few years.

Mitchell Kosterman:
Oh, gosh. My memory’s just gone. Anyway, he went on for quite some time about my performance. And that was the most difficult bit of acting I’d ever done in my life, and I was getting praise from the producer.

David Read:
That was a note that freed you. You needed a mindset change and you didn’t know it.

Mitchell Kosterman:
I did, and it was… I didn’t have to go away and practice. She told me that and it just set me free, and I was able to do the job, and I went away from… In fact, that same producer came to the set, visited me on the set, a week later, when I was shooting something else.

David Read:
You really hit something.

Mitchell Kosterman:
So, that’s a highlight. And you said you wanted something you weren’t sure about, and it turned out really good. That’s one. Sorry, you got questions about that?

David Read:
No, it’s great. Go ahead.

Mitchell Kosterman:
OK.

David Read:
I’m gonna just stay out of your way. You’re on a roll. Seriously.

Mitchell Kosterman:
Then the other one was Smallville because I’d play… I started getting… There was a thing on the internet about the fact that I’d play more cops than any other person known to humans. And I tried shaving off my mustache because I had mustache…

David Read:
It’s the mustache.

Mitchell Kosterman:
My lips [are] kind of funny looking. I kind of look like Fred Flintstone so I had to grow the mustache back. And I started getting work again when I grew the mustache back. But it was still a lot of cop roles. And Rob Petrovic is still a producer here in Vancouver. I told him this story. He knew nothing about it. But I just told him like half a year ago. I had a new agent, and I was being a little more bossy with this agent because I hadn’t been satisfied with the last one. And I had a talk with a couple other actor friends of mine, and I said, “Look, you have to direct your experience, and when you talk to your director there…” Sorry, “Your agent. That’s someone who works for you. You have to remember that, give them instructions. Tell them what you want.” That’s what they want anyway. So, I was talking to the new agent that I had, and she said to me, “Look…” Because I got to a point where I didn’t have to audition anymore. People were… I was getting jobs and that’s a very fortunate thing. Not a lot of actors…

David Read:
It’s a blessing.

Mitchell Kosterman:
I know I never became a millionaire or anything like that, but I was lucky enough to work from show to show to show for half a decade, or maybe a decade, without having to audition anymore. And auditioning is horrible, so it was pretty nice, and I just kept getting work. So, she says, “You got a call from…” It was Warner Brothers at the time. “You got a call from Warner Brothers. They want you to play a sheriff.” And I’m, “Oh, sheriff. OK. What’s it for?” And they said, “Well, it’s based on Superman when he was a teenager,” and I realized it was one of these lower budgets superhero type things they were gonna make over the course of time. I think they made a dozen of them after that. You know what they are. You’ve heard of them all.

David Read:
Yes, some of them are actually good.

Mitchell Kosterman:
Some of them are, which was my mistake because I, once again, was judging things I really didn’t know enough about. So, I said, “No, no. I don’t wanna do this.” I’ll make a long story a little shorter. Anyway, we had a few conversations, my agent and I, and I said to her, “I don’t wanna do it but I don’t wanna say no to Warner Brothers,” and she said, “Well, you can just ask them for a ridiculous amount of money.” So, you know where this story is going.

David Read:
I can detect the punchline. Because you’re in it.

Mitchell Kosterman:
She called me up and says, “Well, they took the offer.” And I thought, “Crap. You’re kidding.”

David Read:
Thank God for that mustache.

Mitchell Kosterman:
I guess. So, I went to do the first couple of episodes, and I had like, “Mornin’, Jonathan. How are things today?” And then Annette O’Toole would get some muffins out of the oven and I’d eat a piece of a muffin. That’s how dramatic my part was. But it did turn into a good part. If you ever watch the second season, I got to shoot Lionel Luther and stuff like that. I had a backstory and things.

David Read:
There’s some drama there.

Mitchell Kosterman:
It improved and I got kudos from the producers and writers, and it worked out really well. But I had a bit of a bad attitude about it when I first started, and I think that was the theme you were going for.

David Read:
It just goes to show you never know what you’re gonna get into. You think on the page it’s there but the players behind the camera are not necessarily what you might think. Once you’re on… Once you’re in the project, then others start getting ideas, too, that spin off from that, and it just can blow into something else.

Mitchell Kosterman:
You can influence it. That’s the thing that I didn’t understand. And one of the biggest breakthroughs for me was after I did… I went to Smallville… Once again, I didn’t really care that much. Things were going really well. I was a little bit arrogant about it. I might even have been kind of unfriendly. But I did my job. And one of the things I thought of was… Because I started realizing they have all these guest directors, and they’re all relying on me, and I can’t remember [which] one, but he was one of the producers… One of the big producers, too. He said… I was asking him a couple of questions about what I was supposed to be doing, and he said, “Mitch. That’s what we hired you for.” I was just… Once again, I’d just been thinking wrong. So many times, I needed a good slap in the head, and I thought, “Oh, OK.” So, I stuck pretty much to the text. I almost never changed the text. But any subtext that was there and perhaps evident to any other actors in the scene, I ignored. And I tried to find something interesting, which is what you do in acting school. You always try to find something interesting. There’s no other qualifier. Good, bad, ugly, fast, smart, slow, none of those things matter. Is it interesting? People are gonna think it’s interesting and enjoy it. So, I started doing that and I ended up getting a bigger part and then they made an episode based around me in the show. So, once again, I’m an idiot. I almost blew that chance, and it was fantastic. And I never got more press. Back then, the lead actors didn’t go to conventions. The lower actors like me did. So, I ended up in London, England at a convention, and it was really interesting because… Who’s the guy who plays Reacher now?

David Read:
He was Aquaman in Smallville.

Mitchell Kosterman:
He played Aquaman in Smallville. So, he and I spent a week there in London, England.

David Read:
Alan Ritchson.

Mitchell Kosterman:
Pardon?

David Read:
Alan Ritchson.

Mitchell Kosterman:
Alan, right.

David Read:
Before he was in The Hunger Games.

Mitchell Kosterman:
Alan and I had a great time. That never would have happened without Smallville. But unfortunately, I was just exiting the business at the time, and I think I had… I wanted to go off on a high note, and I did a lead in a film. I wish I could remember the name of it.

David Read:
Well, before we get into the thick of Stargate, Lockwatcher wanted to know, “What was it like working on such a large film with Michael Keaton [in] White Noise compared to your time in television?”

Mitchell Kosterman:
That was not a large film. That was a 10 million dollars film that grossed 50 million on its opening weekend. So, it was the most successful…

David Read:
It became a large film.

Mitchell Kosterman:
It was the most successful film of the year, and it was top film for two weeks there in the winter. It was in the winter, not in the prime time in the summer but it was the most successful film I ever worked on. And it actually changed Michael Keaton’s career. He went back to doing big shows after that because he did such a good job on that movie.

David Read:
I think I’ve seen it. I’m not quite sure. I’m gonna have to go back and watch it.

Mitchell Kosterman:
You’re getting an impression here that there’s a lot of chaos and you really never know what’s gonna happen. Could be good, could be bad. You just don’t know.

David Read:
Isn’t it better than plotting your course and hitting it point for point?

Mitchell Kosterman:
Hell yeah.

David Read:
It’s far more interesting.

Mitchell Kosterman:
Yes, absolutely.

David Read:
Humans have an interesting… They’ve done studies on animals. You structure everything for them. They’ll push stuff over just to find something interesting happening. That’s how we are, too.

Mitchell Kosterman:
Novelty is important to us.

David Read:
That’s exactly right, particularly to Americans and North Americans. I wanna talk about your first appearance in Stargate. This is a Jonathan Glassner episode called Seth. And it’s a Jacob Carter heavy episode, a character that was introduced in the previous seasons who played Amanda Tapping’s, Samantha Carter’s dad. We find out that there is a connection between the Goa’uld that they are pursuing and a cult that… There’s a few of them in the United States. These facilities where people just go and lock themselves in, on ranches and everywhere, and they do whatever it is that they do. And because of property rights, as long as it doesn’t appear that they’re breaking a law, they’re free to do whatever they want but there are these… I know… I actually grew up in a town where one of my teachers’ daughters was sucked into one of these things.

Mitchell Kosterman:
There was a big… A lot of press about them at that time. Idaho. Remember there was the big shooting where the FBI went in?

David Read:
I remember the one in Texas. The whole thing burned down.

Mitchell Kosterman:
David Koresh. There’s a bunch of them.

David Read:
So, this is one of those situations, and you’re playing an ATF Special Agent by the name of Hamner who’s been monitoring the situation. What do you remember about Seth?

Mitchell Kosterman:
Well, it was a small part, but it set the tone for something that happened later, and we’ll talk about this I’m sure, is about how writers like Bob Cooper from Stargate were paying attention to the newspapers. We talk about more about that when we talk about Heroes because it became a very significant part of what that became. It started out as a one episode of a TV show, and it became something very different. But that’s what… My part in Seth was not very big. But I got an interesting story. I love telling you the stories where things go wrong.

David Read:
You don’t have to ask me. Do tell them.

Mitchell Kosterman:
So, I hadn’t… I’d worked with Rick Anderson before on a couple of MacGyver [episodes], and then a MacGyver spin-off, I think.

David Read:
Teeny tiny little Canadian show.

Mitchell Kosterman:
Kind of lasted for a couple of years, too, I think, didn’t it? That’s right. We had a couple of those. I remember that one… What was it called? X something?

David Read:
Something with… You look through these… And pull out information.

Mitchell Kosterman:
And now we got, like, The First of Us or The Middle of Us… The Last of Us.

David Read:
Are you sure? I don’t know. That’s funny, man. That’s really good. But go ahead, what’s your… What do you got?

Mitchell Kosterman:
So, I knew Rick, just from around town, and working on the odd thing we’d bump into each other. And he worked at… They worked at Bridge Studios there, which is the largest studio complex, studio campus, at the time. So, there are often three or four shows shooting at the same time. So, you’d bump into each other, going to the cafeteria for lunch or whatever. Stuff like that. So, I knew him. My first moment with him is in this military tent where a bunch of other military guys are around, and I’m supposed to… I’m trying to assert my jurisdiction…

David Read:
I love this scene.

Mitchell Kosterman:
And tell him what to do and stuff like that. So, you know this is gonna go well.

David Read:
It’s a great scene.

Mitchell Kosterman:
Anyway, everybody’s just wondering what’s he gonna do. And we ended up getting the President of the United States on the phone and he told me to stand down. So, “OK, I can do that.” But funny thing is that the director, who I can’t remember who it was, said… Because they always like to introduce other actors when they come in. So, Rick was coming in because he came in last…

David Read:
Bill Corcoran.

Mitchell Kosterman:
Was it Bill Corcoran?

David Read:
Corcoran. Thank you. Yes.

Mitchell Kosterman:
Oh, my goodness. That’s the same guy who was directing Wiseguy that I just told you about.

David Read:
There you go.

Mitchell Kosterman:
I still talk to him. He just has… I don’t know, man. He’s done literally hundreds of episodic TV. Holy smoke.

David Read:
People stay in your loops. But go ahead. I apologize.

Mitchell Kosterman:
Super nice guy. Anyway, so we’re all kind of… We got our positions now. The lightning’s all done. Everyone knows where they’re gonna move on action and I’ve been… I’ve practiced a quick wheel around that I’m gonna have because who’s this guy coming up behind me?

David Read:
That’s right.

Mitchell Kosterman:
So, he says, “No, we’re not,” or something like that. And so, we get to set, and Bill says, “Rick, do you know Mitch?” And Rick goes, “Oh, yeah.”

David Read:
That is so like him.

Mitchell Kosterman:
What the hell was that? So, I don’t know if that was what caused the problem but there was a problem about 15 seconds later because I was supposed to spin around to him. And remember, the proximity in real life has to be unusually close in order for it to look normal on camera. Like, we’re almost kissing.

David Read:
That’s how the lenses are.

Mitchell Kosterman:
So, I spin around and put my full weight right down on the tops of his foot. It didn’t register on his face. He said his lines. They said, “Cut.” We had it in one take, and everybody’s all quiet because a few people saw what went wrong. And I was facing the other way, so I was probably like this.

David Read:
So, you were hurting his foot?

Mitchell Kosterman:
Yes, and so I take my foot off his foot, and I go… I wanna say sorry or something like that but he goes, in a very loud voice, “Ouch.” Cast and crew all laughed up, and then he just smiled at me and walked away.

David Read:
I’m gonna have to go back and watch it because it’s in the print then. It’s gotta be. That’s funny.

Mitchell Kosterman:
So, just think about it. When he’s saying those lines over my shoulder…

David Read:
He’s thinking, “Ouch.”

Mitchell Kosterman:
I’m standing with my full weight on his foot. Because I can’t change my weight because that’ll adjust the plane of focus. I’ll go out of focus. This focus puller will wanna kill me because I’ve just gone back the other way.

David Read:
That is a great example of two professionals actors. The show must go on.

Mitchell Kosterman:
Well, you don’t wanna be the guy who says, “Cut,” or breaks his character. You don’t wanna be that guy. You wanna hear, “Cut.”

David Read:
Like, “Oh crap, I’m so sorry,” and we gotta go again when there’s a hundred people waiting on you to get it right and time is money.

Mitchell Kosterman:
Yes, literally a hundred people.

David Read:
That is wild. Man, oh man. And that was a dreary episode. It’s one of those where it’s, like, “It’s raining in B.C. the whole week. We’re gonna go out there and do this in the rain.” It’s very atmospheric and very cool to watch that. But it must have been hell.

Mitchell Kosterman:
It is. It’s horrible. I don’t live in Vancouver usually, except in the summer. Because this is where my family is. But I come and visit a little bit through the winter. But it gets…

David Read:
Where are you know?

Mitchell Kosterman:
Pardon?

David Read:
Where are you?

Mitchell Kosterman:
Right now, it’s 27 degrees and sunny. That’s Celsius so whatever the heck that is.

David Read:
What province are you in?

Mitchell Kosterman:
British Columbia. Vancouver, British Columbia.

David Read:
Oh, you are in Vancouver? OK. Got it.

Mitchell Kosterman:
It’s a beautiful city here. And that’s where my grandkids live. I don’t know what I was gonna say about that.

David Read:
No, we were talking about the weather.

Mitchell Kosterman:
Oh, I was gonna say that a cloud moves in about September 30th and it stays until about April 15th. And you get quite literally week after week after week where the cars all have their headlights on during the day.

David Read:
Never go off. I routinely went up to Vancouver for Stargate functions in the spring and summer but only once in the winter, and I rarely remember a time it stopped raining. And we were moving props and set pieces and costumes in the rain. That was an experience.

Mitchell Kosterman:
No. And it doesn’t matter as long as you’re shooting in the studio.

David Read:
That’s it. This is true. Absolutely.

Mitchell Kosterman:
It’s when you gotta go outside.

David Read:
It’s not generally a downpour.

Mitchell Kosterman:
No.

David Read:
We get 10 inches more rain in Nashville than you guys do per year, but you get more days of rain.

Mitchell Kosterman:
It doesn’t surprise me.

David Read:
So, that’s the difference. Because here, the street floods in 10 minutes. So, that is absolutely wild.

Mitchell Kosterman:
We have mist.

David Read:
That’s right. I love Seth. I love the stories of a father and son redemption. There’s two of them there. And I love that moment of you, “Yes, Mr. President. All right.” He turns around and he’s, like, “I guess you’re commander-in-chief’s boy. Whatever.” But I love Jack’s answer is that “OK. There’s some technology in there that we really don’t want getting out yet.” Which is correct but it’s like five percent of the answer. It’s a great line. Good episode.

Mitchell Kosterman:
I thought so.

David Read:
And how does this fold into Heroes?

Mitchell Kosterman:
My part was… Pardon me?

David Read:
How does this fold into Heroes?

Mitchell Kosterman:
Well, I tell you, I’ve got so many embarrassing stories. I’ll try and tell you another one. Ask me about Bob Cooper.

David Read:
Robert C. Cooper. Executive producer of the series. Prolific writer on the show.

Mitchell Kosterman:
He was a writer. That’s how he got the producer’s credit. That’s the way it works. Usually, when you get a producer credit, especially if it’s below the line, that happens because you have contributed in some other way.

David Read:
And how is… Tell me about Robert C.

Mitchell Kosterman:
I wanna wait on that because didn’t we just ask something about Heroes? I don’t know.

David Read:
You were saying that there was a story that was gonna come up that was threaded through this episode. And I’m curious to know how they connect. Unless there’s something else that you wanna cover before we do.

Mitchell Kosterman:
That’s what I was gonna say. The whole… We started making one… It was a single episode.

David Read:
So, we’re on Heroes now?

Mitchell Kosterman:
On Heroes.

David Read:
Yes.

Mitchell Kosterman:
It was a single episode. However, much like what you were talking about with regard to Seth, it was about current events filtering into this TV show that’s supposed to be about space. And that’s what really made, in my opinion, all the best episodes. So, Bob Cooper was writing this episode but every single day that we shot… And Saul Rubinek was completely into his character. He’s that kind of an actor. Not much fun to be around, by the way.

David Read:
He’s intense.

Mitchell Kosterman:
But a terrific actor.

David Read:
It comes out on the screen.

Mitchell Kosterman:
It does. He wanted to be that guy, and he had a level of commitment that I had never been that close to before. And he delivered those lines that Robert wrote and then he said, “This shit is coming…” I remember one day he said it really loud. The whole crew stops and listens. He says, “This shit is coming right out of the fucking newspapers.” Because Afghanistan was going on at the time. And it was the first time I think that journalists had ever been embedded with combatants at that level.

David Read:
At that level? OK.

Mitchell Kosterman:
Yes. They were right there documenting everything. The United States dominated the areas that they were in, so it was deemed to be a little safter for them, I guess. But on every medium that you can think of there were people there, physically, on the ground in Afghanistan, writing stuff back. So, the nature of what we read in the newspapers and saw in the newscasts changed in about two weeks. And this was something that we were witnessing as we shot this show. So, I just thought that was real interesting, too. Obviously, it was a theme throughout Stargate, for Bob Cooper in particular, to pay attention to what was going on around in the world. And Andy Mikita, who was the director of that show, was also one of the producers. And I knew Andy when he was second AD or third AD. We’ve known each other for decades.

David Read:
He started off as an AD on SG-1 and was one of 16 or 17 people who went all the way through to the end of Universe with Gauntlet.

Mitchell Kosterman:
There you go.

David Read:
We can approach this thing and pick it apart however you want but this is a rather big, meaty thing that I wanna approach here. Rob said, one of his chief inspirations was, I think it’s a two-parter, of M*A*S*H, where a camera crew comes in and captures the unit.

Mitchell Kosterman:
I remember that.

David Read:
And it did start off as one hour and became two. How many months did you end up shooting that? Because it was picked up in pieces. I’m not sure if all of your stuff was shot fairly quickly or if other parts weren’t. What do you remember of watching this thing evolve and grow from what was really 62 minutes of, “God, all of this is great,” to becoming a two-hour thing where Bob Picardo comes in and picks up a second half of it for other footage?

Mitchell Kosterman:
Well, the whole thing is, it was a single episode, and it had an ending that was already written, and we shot it. And typically, a good series, hour-long series, would shoot in eight or nine days, maybe 10. Maybe with a few pickups after that. Second unit stuff, a stunt or an explosion or something. But that’s basically how big it was. The cheap, crappy shows shot in six or seven days.

David Read:
Cheap, crappy shows. Cheap shows maybe. Crappy? Well…

Mitchell Kosterman:
Lesser well-produced.

David Read:
They’re all pro—come on, come on.

Mitchell Kosterman:
Anyway, so, we started working on this thing. Events unfolded in Afghanistan right at the time we were doing it. Saul Rubinek, the maniacal genius, invested himself into that character like I’ve never seen anything before, and Bob Cooper started writing some amazing stuff that was a very clear reflection of what was going on in the world, which meant it was gonna have more significant impact on any audience that watched it. I truly believe that is always the case. If you actually hit on something that’s true, your audience is gonna see it and feel it. Anyway, so, we started working on it, and every day Saul’s got a handwritten script from Bob, and Bob’s on the set, which is not usual for a writer. He’s on the set every day and he’s writing. He’s writing new stuff. And they’re coming up to me, saying, “OK, we’re not gonna say this. Just listen to what Saul says and respond accordingly.” And that’s what I did.

David Read:
This hallway scene

Mitchell Kosterman:
That’s a good example of exactly what happened.

David Read:
It’s a showstopper.

Mitchell Kosterman:
I was actually pissed off because you want time to rehearse. I’m terrified I’m not gonna do a good job because I don’t get the chance to come up with my good stuff. But Saul said… And we had been outside talking about it because the trailers we have are outside on that lot. And he was never very friendly to me. He always talked down to me. But that’s OK because of the character. It was perfect for the character.

David Read:
He’s living in the character.

Mitchell Kosterman:
I’m sure if I… Maybe if I met him today, he’d be completely different.

David Read:
He’s [got] such fond memories of that episode.

Mitchell Kosterman:
It was brilliant because… What it did was, and this is always the case for anything in film and television, is when the emotions become real, the camera reads that, and the audience sees it. So, what you’re trying to do, always, is to come up with some real emotion. And if you’re like the movie star who usually just says, “Yeah. That’s…” [or] some kind of crap like that, then you’re gonna get away with not really having to invest yourself much in the character or the moment. However, you saw the drama in that. And that kind of drama only comes from committed actors, great writing, and a crew who will get the hell out of your way.

David Read:
The scene…

Mitchell Kosterman:
And photographics in a way that enhances it and does not take anything away from it.

David Read:
Absolutely. This is a scene that is really teed up by Amanda Tapping, and Saul…

Mitchell Kosterman:
Who still works here, by the way.

David Read:
Absolutely.

Mitchell Kosterman:
She’s producing and directing a TV series here just in Vancouver.

David Read:
That’s right. And Saul comes in with a five iron and hits it into the hole. I can’t imagine being around Amanda in that sequence. Because, in some respects, the more that I think about it, there are significant scenes and episodes where the show pivots. There’s one where O’Neill leaves the galaxy and talks with an alien race. The show pivoted there. And the show also pivots in this hallway, I think.

Mitchell Kosterman:
And Amanda was brilliant. Don’t you think?

David Read:
How was it being around that, when you have an actor who is genuinely emotionally providing something, and they walk through the scene and leave everyone speechless? And then you have Saul Rubinek come in and say, “You turn that camera off when I tell you to turn it off.” And it’s so disarming. I can’t imagine just… You’re standing there just eating it up. You got, like, “Oh, this is good,” but you’re supposed to be, like… Almost, like, not castrated but being hit…

Mitchell Kosterman:
Emasculated.

David Read:
In some respects. Professionally. Because you’re not stopping him because you can’t really argue with what he’s saying, even though you do have your own perspective inside the Air Force. Go ahead.

Mitchell Kosterman:
The way to handle that is to let that emotion hit you. Feel it. Don’t hide it. If anything, you wanna amplify it a little bit. So, go ahead and feel exactly that. That’s what created the drama. Ask me a question about Smallville later and I’ll tell you how that doesn’t always work with other actors.

David Read:
Of course.

Mitchell Kosterman:
Smart actors will… And I wish I could talk to Saul about this because I think I did get right on it. I really started to go with, and I liked it. Now, I was actually… Believe it or not, this is bizarre, I was… Because they ended up having to shoot another few weeks… I think we even came back another time after that and shot the burial scene and stuff. It went on and on and on. I had other shows that I was supposed to go do. And at one point… There’s this big island off the coast of British Columbia, not too far from Vancouver. About an hour away. It’s a such a big island, it’s almost its own continent. There are countries that are smaller than his island. It’s so big.

David Read:
You’re talking about Vancouver Island?

Mitchell Kosterman:
Vancouver Island. Pardon me? Yeah, Vancouver Island. City of Victoria. Anyway, I was, without a word of a lie, for the whole five days of that week that we were shooting the second time we’d gone back to shoot Heroes, and they decided that they’re gonna have this second half to it. I got on a helicopter, which [is] not something very common for me, and flew over to Vancouver Island for 12 hours of each day. This is the deal we worked out. And then I would fly back to Vancouver and shoot on Stargate for the other 12 hours. And I did that five days in a row. Now, just remember that actors, a lot of times, if they’re not on set, they can be… They have a dressing room. They can sleep. So, I did get sleep. I got sleep on the helicopter. I got sleep in my dressing room. So, they wouldn’t want me super tired. The other show never would have agreed if it didn’t work out perfectly.

David Read:
But also, I think it works because Emmett is exhausting you.

Mitchell Kosterman:
Yeah. There’s nothing that didn’t apply. He was wearing me down.

David Read:
There is something about… We’ve spoken a little bit about his attitude towards other performers, which, I think, is just perfect for this role. Because he’s very much like a Ken Burns type of documentarian and storyteller. And I asked Saul about this when I got him on. I was, like, “What is…” And he was just, like, “Well, that’s just acting.” I’m, like, “No, that’s you,” and he wouldn’t pick it apart. There is something about his energy where he’s got the script. It’s a straight line. And he’s doing this.

Mitchell Kosterman:
Yes. Well, I’ll tell you this…

David Read:
And he’s coming, “Oh, what about that? That’s interesting.” And then he dials it back right back in, and it’s… And he’s making up the dialogue as he goes along. And we know that it’s written but what he’s saying isn’t.

Mitchell Kosterman:
Well, what’s interesting about that, the most important thing to me is, and we’ll talk about that… We should talk about Smallville in that regard because I had learned a lot from Saul was that if you say a line wrong, even one word wrong or mispronounce anything, there’s a script supervisor on set standing over by the director and she or he will come over and say to you, “Actually, it’s belong, not blank,” or whatever, and now you have to do it again. They have to do it again because of you. You’re not a very popular guy.

David Read:
Well, especially in sci-fi, they have to have it just so.

Mitchell Kosterman:
But with regard to Saul’s way of dealing with this, he never said it out loud, but I’ll bet you he would say this, “If it’s better, they won’t care.” The director will just put his hand on the script supervisor’s shoulder, “Moving on to the next shot.”

David Read:
That’s right.

Mitchell Kosterman:
That freed me.

David Read:
Or, in some cases, that was interesting… Oh, it freed you?

Mitchell Kosterman:
It freed me. Well, not… I didn’t learn it on that set. But when I did learn that, it freed me, and it gave me a new lease on life Smallville, really.

David Read:
I’ve got a pin in that and we’re definitely gonna hit it.

Mitchell Kosterman:
Well, I believe, to a certain extent, all good actors do that. And you don’t have the lead actors who are being relied upon by the people who hired them to make this movie a good movie. [They] have far more leeway than the other 98 people acting on the show. Saul was right. If you made it, good, as long as it was good and you were committed to it, it stayed in the script. And I learned that for the next 10 years of my life. It stayed in.

David Read:
I think that the defining characteristics of a good actor in that context is to know when to change it, and to know when to keep your mouth shut in terms of letting in another ideas.

Mitchell Kosterman:
You gotta know your character better. You have to have done your homework better. You have to committed to it. You have to explore all alternatives. You have to work hard. That’s it.

David Read:
How do you stand across from that? Just praying that he’s not gonna derail your line of thought or just make sure you go in knowing these lines backwards and forwards so that when he comes back onto the train track, you can continue to execute. I don’t know how you did it. Because I’m watching it and I don’t know how you did it.

Mitchell Kosterman:
He gave me liberty. I don’t want… He gave me liberty. I just behaved the way I thought that guy would. And it wasn’t a too complex of a character. I just listened to what he actually said and responded. I didn’t even try to hit the dialogue in the script. I didn’t even look at it. I listened to what he said.

David Read:
You’re barking back at him about… He’s putting your job at risk. This is national security stuff that we’re dealing with, and he’s leaving his freaking camera on in heavily secured areas. It’s ridiculous. I would be pissed at this guy. And I love this through one from the beginning of the show to the very end of the second episode. “You can call me Emmett.” “Yes, sir.” “Alright.” You’re not letting him in. And the last line, one of the last lines in the show, because he turns and goes, “Tom.” “Emmett.” He’s let him in.

Mitchell Kosterman:
Wasn’t that beautiful?

David Read:
Because they all watched the tape. I’m getting goosebumps.

Mitchell Kosterman:
It was beautiful.

David Read:
They’ve all watched the tape.

Mitchell Kosterman:
It was absolutely beautiful.

David Read:
And they got him now. Yes, he’s an asshole, but yes, he is brilliant. Even Hammond admits that he’s wrong.

Mitchell Kosterman:
And his character, being an asshole and me not liking him and resenting his intrusion into my life, was played… It played perfectly off the way he behaved to me as with our trailers side by side.

David Read:
You come in…

Mitchell Kosterman:
It wasn’t that usual an experience. It was unusual in a lot of different ways, but it did open a big door for me in behaving a different way from then on in all the acting roles that I had after that.

David Read:
You have a very heavy scene making the reveal.

Mitchell Kosterman:
In Smallville?

David Read:
No, I’ll get to Smallville.

Mitchell Kosterman:
Oh, sorry.

David Read:
You have a very heavy scene making the reveal after we’ve just seen the camera footage. Before I get to it, when you were filming this, was it pretty crystal clear how powerful and important a show this was gonna end up being, when it was in the can?

Mitchell Kosterman:
Yeah, I cried my eyes out. I don’t think they got a good shot of that, but Teryl Rothery was a good friend of mine. She was my agent’s wife. And we’re all talking about her dying. It was brutal. So, once again, real emotion counts for so much more than anything you can pretend. So, just lean into it.

David Read:
You come into that room. O’Neill’s alive. The mission report’s just been declassified. Daniel’s tape is put into the tape player, and we see her die. And your line, “O’Neill’s alive. So is Simon Wells. Dr. Fraser didn’t make it.”

Mitchell Kosterman:
I got a good…

David Read:
God, you can tell they all loved Fraser. They all loved her. She was responsible for all of them. Pulling that line off, you nailed it. Because you could have played it a hundred different ways.

Mitchell Kosterman:
Well, I had a sincere commitment to it exactly the way I said it, and I meant it. Because obviously I just imagined my friend being dead. That wasn’t hard. What’s interesting about it is that there’s always a discussion about what we call blocking. And that’s about where you physically are. And then there’s handling of props and stuff like that. Well, understanding what you understand about the mental commitment of acting, do you wanna take some of that brain power away and put it into where you stand or having an actor asshole step on your foot? You don’t wanna give that up. You know what I’m saying, though. You don’t wanna give that up. So, in that scene, I was supposed to exit the other way in the room. And we did three takes on it and Andy Mikita just put his hand on the script supervisor and just says, “OK. We’ll make it work.”

David Read:
You couldn’t get through it.

Mitchell Kosterman:
I couldn’t leave what I was feeling enough to remember my blocking in that moment. Maybe if we did it three or four more times, I would have got it. But in that moment, I was so committed to the emotion that I had of my friend dying… I’m sorry. This is what happens to you when you become an actor. You got no shut of valve. Anyway, you know what I’m saying.

David Read:
The blocking is irrelevant when it’s real.

Mitchell Kosterman:
It is because the director picked up a way… Decided a way that the action has to move in order for him to splice it to the next shot. So, all Andy had to do in that moment was think, “I know somewhere else we can go. We can cut to the picture on the wall. We can cut to a picture of her. We can cut back to this.” Whatever.

David Read:
He’s got all the pieces moving in his head.

Mitchell Kosterman:
He probably had like six or seven ideas in a moment. He thought, “That was great. That was a perfect take. I’m not gonna mess that up by trying it again. Moving on.”

David Read:
That’s right. You guys made a two-hour episode of television that fans, many fans to this day, have trouble watching, and they have to get emotionally prepared for it if they do. Some of them won’t even watch it. I know Teryl has never seen it, and I think that that’s a shame. Because I think that it’s her finest hour.

Mitchell Kosterman:
It’s a brilliant piece of work.

David Read:
She won’t budge. But I can understand that. I’ll never forget her saying… Rob called her. She was in her kitchen. She’s told the story a couple of times, but Rob says on the phone, “How would you feel if we killed you off?” And she was, like, “How would I fell? How do you think I would feel, Robert?” She loved Janet. But you have to understand the show was done. It was done. Atlantis was gonna take over. There was no Seasons Eight through 10. So, I understand the choice that was made but the choice that was made, made a meaningful, impactful moment that has lasted since the show’s run and just clarified how important the work that these people do is to protecting all of us. She gave herself for that airman. We don’t leave our people behind. We go out there and we bring them back.

Mitchell Kosterman:
You gotta know…

David Read:
Even if it’s their remains.

Mitchell Kosterman:
And you gotta know that we the actors, when you have something that’s important and if you’re gonna do a good job on it, just like you just said about Teryl, you are feeling that emotion.

David Read:
That’s right.

Mitchell Kosterman:
It was great that that lady helped me play Halloween when I was the tortured guy because it just had a perfect parallel and it worked. But in most cases, you are feeling those feelings, and sometimes it can be horrifically painful.

David Read:
That’s right. I think that’s the transcendent power of this medium. That’s when it truly becomes art. It’s not just content. You were saying that the communication that you had with Saul, as interesting as it was, left you with something that you were able to exercise later in Smallville. Tell me about that.

Mitchell Kosterman:
OK. I’ll tell you about it. But first of all, I’ll tell you my… Where Saul and I parted ways is Martin Scorsese, because I don’t like Martin Scorsese’s directing style and he did. I’ll tell you a funny story before… Can I tell you a funny story before we move on?

David Read:
Of course. Please.

Mitchell Kosterman:
This is one that I always wanted to tell. Because I’ve told you that I’m autistic.

David Read:
No, you didn’t say that. You said you had social anxiety.

Mitchell Kosterman:
I’m autistic. So, one of the things about autistic people is, [and] I won’t go into a big long spiel about it, but autistic people out there are gonna tell you, “Yeah,” is that when you have conversations, like when you and I finish this interview, for example, I’m gonna relive it, and I’m gonna feel pain about how I said things that I should have said differently. There’s just no reason in that. There’s no way you can get away from it. Because we know from experience, we are often… That’s why we make good actors. We’re always faking who we actually are. But we know from experience that every day when we go out and we say stuff, we often say stuff that, “Holy shit,” we just wanna reel that sucker back in right now.

David Read:
But it’s too late. It’s out there.

Mitchell Kosterman:
It’s too late, it’s gone. And my family will tell you many, many stories about the thing. My boys think it’s freaking hilarious. They call it “Dadism.” And they call up and they say, “Remember that time?” “No, I don’t wanna remember that time.”

David Read:
“That was painful for me. Thanks a lot, kid.”

Mitchell Kosterman:
“It was painful.” Exactly. It still hurts. I got wounds.

David Read:
No, you have a visceral reaction to it. It’s a business that you haven’t digested all these years later.

Mitchell Kosterman:
That’s right. I haven’t dealt with it. So, I got Andy Mikita, who I’ve known for a couple of decades. I think he’s one of the nicest, smartest, most wonderful people out there on the planet, and he invites me to come and make this show. And I was so happy to do it. And Bob Cooper I met. He was super nice guy, “Let me talk to him about the script,” and he was changing the script and we’re looking at it and getting involved in ways that I never had before. They had to get special permission. Andy had to get special permission. He himself made the phone calls for me to have a mustache because you’re not allowed to have a mustache in the United States Air Force.

David Read:
I didn’t know that.

Mitchell Kosterman:
Yes, I have a mustache in that show.

David Read:
Of course you do.

Mitchell Kosterman:
Andy liked the way it…

David Read:
If the Navy had it, I assumed you could have it. Has anyone watched Top Gun? Goose. Hello.

Mitchell Kosterman:
I don’t know. Those are… Apparently, the United States Air force, at the time this was shot, did not allow facial hair of any kind.

David Read:
And the Air Force is sponsoring the program.

Mitchell Kosterman:
Yes. They endorsed it. We get to use all sorts of language and shots of their exteriors and stuff like that. Anyway, what we were talking about before? Bob Cooper. So, Bob Cooper is unlike any writer, typical writer anyways, on set. And he’s stretched out like this and he’s writing and the stuff’s coming in from Fallujah or wherever, and he’s working on this stuff, and then he’s handing pages…

David Read:
He’s supine? He’s on his back?

Mitchell Kosterman:
Well, he’s lying back in a chair.

David Read:
OK. He’s in a chair.

Mitchell Kosterman:
He’s like this. He’s in a chair and he’s lying way back, his legs stretched out. He’s handing pages and he’s talking to Saul. It’s just crazy. Anyway, so Stargate had been around for a long time by then. What were we? Season Seven?

David Read:
Yeah.

Mitchell Kosterman:
Right. So, me, the arrogant bastard, was all… You’re always planning what kind of shows you wanna work on. You’re trying to steer your career. Later on, you realize you really didn’t have much control at all but at the time you think you’re making decisions, and you have some kind of control. So, if you can go get the DVD that they have for Season Seven and it has… What do you call that track when the director and some of them are talking…?

David Read:
The commentary.

Mitchell Kosterman:
The commentary track. OK, listen to it when Andy and Bob are talking about me. Because Bob will tell you… And this is true because it was one of those things where as soon as I said it, I just wanted to reel that sucker back in. I’m walking by him, I’m reading some of the pages because I needed to see it, too, because it was between Saul and me. Saul had most to say but I always got to see the pages as he wrote them. So, he handed them to me…

David Read:
You’re his handler.

Mitchell Kosterman:
Yeah. So, I’m reading it. I’m making decisions quite quickly as I’m walking away, and I said, “Jesus, Bob, this is good.” Trying to be complimentary, trying to be a nice guy. Should have stopped there. And I said… He kind of nodded, “Thanks,” or something like that, and I said, “If I’d known your show was this good, I would have auditioned for it sooner.”

David Read:
That’s funny.

Mitchell Kosterman:
And on the commentary, he says to Andy, “I think he was trying to compliment me.”

David Read:
Rob Cooper is very hard to read. He’s very dry. I went for years thinking that he didn’t like me, and I was wrong. So, I’m sure he thought it was funny, and he was relaying it in his dry way because that’s who Rob is. He’s very deep and still waters run deep.

Mitchell Kosterman:
He’s a smart guy.

David Read:
He’s very smart. I’m sure he thought that was funny but he’s not necessarily gonna show you.

Mitchell Kosterman:
He did chuckle.

David Read:
But that could be an irritation chuckle or a funny chuckle.

Mitchell Kosterman:
I don’t know. Or an idiot chuckle.

David Read:
That’s great. I don’t think they would… There are stories that, “I will take to my grave,” that they never shared because it’s not necessary. But if they share it on the commentary track, they thought it was funny. You shouldn’t go carrying that one around with you.

Mitchell Kosterman:
No.

David Read:
But I can see after it comes out of your mouth and you get the reaction, “Oh my god.”

Mitchell Kosterman:
That didn’t sound right.

David Read:
“I’ve certainly been… On this show, I’ve been there.” It’s, like, “God, should I go back and delete it? Someone’s gonna say something one day.” You can’t.

Mitchell Kosterman:
Right.

David Read:
And to be on the spectrum where you’re stuck with it, I can’t imagine it’s just an instant replay for a while.

Mitchell Kosterman:
Oh, always. For my life. I still deal with it. I’m dealing with it right now.

David Read:
No, this is great. I can tell you right now… Raj Luthra right now in the chat, “More stories the better, Mitchell.”

Mitchell Kosterman:
Thank you.

David Read:
Thank you.

Mitchell Kosterman:
Well, we’re on to Smallville. And you wanna know…

David Read:
How does this connect?

Mitchell Kosterman:
OK. How it connects is, I finally realized like an idiot that every director is coming onto the set and really counting on you coming up with stuff. And we were re-shooting some things with a new director who became the executive producer. I can’t remember his name, but he was the showrunner anyway. Really nice guy. And he said… I said, “This is the scene where such and such happens.” And I wasn’t in it. And he said to me… Because the reason I said it out loud was, I wasn’t sure how the scene fit in. It just didn’t really… I saw it get made. It wasn’t really working for me, and I didn’t say that, but I said, “So, this is…”

David Read:
It’s James Marshall.

Mitchell Kosterman:
No, James Marshall directed…

David Read:
Apologies. He became an executive producer later. Sorry. I didn’t mean to cut you off.

Mitchell Kosterman:
The guy I’m thinking of was a different guy.

David Read:
OK. Sorry. Apologize. Go Ahead.

Mitchell Kosterman:
He became the showrunner on that show right after that episode. They brought him up from LA for that purpose. Shoot, I can’t remember his name but I can tell you [Inaudible].

David Read:
I can… Let’s get it. I’ve got the executive producers right here, so… Oh, there’s a whole list. So, later they were Michael Tollin, Brian Robbins, Joe Davola… Crazy Joe Davola, Greg Beeman, James Marshall, Todd Slavkin…

Mitchell Kosterman:
Greg Beeman.

David Read:
Greg Beeman, alright. I wanted it for the record, the name.

Mitchell Kosterman:
Greg became the showrunner. He actually worked on the show. And unlike a lot of showrunners, he often stood right there. He started directing some of the episodes. He even wrote some, I think. He just was right on top of that show. And he did some other WB things for them and stuff, and he was very, very good at what he did. But he said to me, “Mitchell, I’m counting on you to help me with this scene.” And I thought, “Me? I’m not in it.” But he did want me in it, and he had a plan for it, and we did re-shoot the scene. But what I realized was… And I talked to another director who said to me one day, “We worked together before.” And I said, “Oh, have we? I’m sorry.” He said, “I’m gonna leave it till the end of the day for you to figure out where it was [that] we met.” “OK.” So that’s what happens…

David Read:
“Alright, I’ll start noodling that in my subconscious.”

Mitchell Kosterman:
But we do work with a lot of people and sometimes it’s just for one day, and you do something very emotional and revealing about yourself with somebody for an hour or two and then you never see them again.

David Read:
But they can leave an impact on you like Suzanne Ristic did, Jay Brazeau’s wife, in White Noise.

Mitchell Kosterman:
Yes. Exactly. We had one day of shooting together.

David Read:
That’s enough. One day’s enough.

Mitchell Kosterman:
That’s exactly what it’s like. So, what I realized was… And that was the first time I had no stunt ability because I actually was wearing a cast for a long time for that show under my uniform. I’d gotten older and I injured myself. You always injure yourself when you’re a stunt man. Don’t let anybody tell you otherwise.

David Read:
For sure. It’s hard work. It’s why they pay you good. Things happen.

Mitchell Kosterman:
So, I listened to Greg, and I had that experience on Stargate, and I started thinking that what I should be doing is my own thing. I started watching lead actors and I started listening to them, how they spoke about, how they translated scripts, and I thought my fidelity to the written word up to this point was like rain pouring back in my mouth. It was holding me back. And I also had… This is gonna sound a little bit of an asshole, but I didn’t really want the job. It was another comic book… It wasn’t gonna be any good, I thought. Ended up running 10 years. But I thought it was gonna be crap. And then they sent up Greg Beeman and that just changed everything. But we still had guest directors and there [was] always this same parade of directors coming through these shows. They always hired the same guys. So, I remember that I just started saying whatever I wanted to say, as long as I felt that it fit in with the scene. But it was always more interested, more committed, deeper, and I thought it was providing more than if I had just said the lines that they wrote. Now, Jonathan just leaned right into it. We were rehearsing scenes. We started rehearsing scenes just before we shoot them to come up with little things that we were gonna change and the ways that we were gonna act. It made the entire experience of shooting on Smallville one of the greatest experiences I’ve ever had. And I went into it dreading it, but I was completely free. Funny thing is, when you get a lot of day player actors, a lot of them, as you would suspect, were still stuck on that old mood of me where they think that they have to stick to the script, and they’re used to having people say, “Hey, you got that word wrong,” and stuff like that. But remember, the rule is, as long as it’s good, no one will care.

David Read:
But you’re honoring the intention of the document.

Mitchell Kosterman:
Yes. Does it add to the story? Does it contribute to the story? Does it fit in with the story? Does it interfere with anyone [or] anything else anyone else is doing? All those questions you ask yourself and you satisfy all of those needs, and it gives you a better product. And I believe that’s what good actors actually do. It just took me longer to figure it out. That’s all. Jonathan was…

David Read:
Brad Wright once said to me, regarding an actor who went off script a fair bit… He said, “If you’re gonna make it better, great. All aboard. If you’re changing it just to change it, that pisses me off.”

Mitchell Kosterman:
Or if you just forgot.

David Read:
That could be, too. And for me, it would, like… I don’t want the writer to feel like they are, on some level, partly or largely irrelevant by just, in a sense, disobeying the text. Maybe they wanted this a certain way. So, for you to have the impulse to be, like, “I’m gonna do this because I know that it’s better, because I know the character,” and to have the people who are in charge of pushing Record and pressing Stop say, “We’re leaving it in.” That’s gotta be rewarding.

Mitchell Kosterman:
I think that you accurately described the situation, and that is that as long as you are improving on that guy’s stuff, he’s gonna love you for it.

David Read:
That’s right.

Mitchell Kosterman:
Especially experienced writers are gonna know that. But I’ll also tell you something, little inside thing, is that modern television scripts are not written by a guy. They’re written by a room of about 12 to 14 people, and you know… I’ve actually…

David Read:
Like committee.

Mitchell Kosterman:
I’ve been heavily involved in writing under those types of circumstances and the court request that I get via email is, “Here’s the script. We’re looking for something between pages 36 and 38.” I get one and a half…

David Read:
Why?

Mitchell Kosterman:
And I’ll send it to them, and they may or may not use it. They may use it partly but there’s a lot of writing that goes on like that. So, my point with that is that it’s not as if the guy wrote a novel and now someone’s changing words in it. He still wrote… The original writer of the episode still wrote the story start to finish.

David Read:
And you on some levels are making him look better.

Mitchell Kosterman:
We’re adding to it. Or augmenting it. And I think that anyone who writes, especially in television… You’re shooting those things in seven to nine days and writing in about four. I think everyone who works in that medium appreciates those contributions.

David Read:
And especially with Richard Dean Anderson in particular, I’ve used a number of Jackisms in my own daily life. I go and give blood a fair bit and every… If I go to a new place and I’m having a new phlebotomist or whatever, I take… I borrow one of Jack’s lines, “Just rally jam it in there.” And I went to the person who wrote that episode and she was, like, “That was Rick. That was not me.” Those are gifts.

Mitchell Kosterman:
They are.

David Read:
Well received.

Mitchell Kosterman:
Well, whoever’s gonna do the editing… Usually, the director’s involved in the editing but other people are involved in the editing as well sometimes. Depends on how big the show is. If they don’t like it, a lot of times they can leave it out without negatively affecting the script anyway.

David Read:
For sure.

Mitchell Kosterman:
Just leave it out. And I remember I said once… I was with another, younger detective. We were… It was in a different show. I don’t remember the name of it. But we were searching this room and we didn’t have a warrant so we shouldn’t really be shooting there. And the younger guy who’s with me says, “I’m gonna tell him that we have a warrant even though we don’t have a warrant.” And I said, “Well, you could tell him you got a college degree because that’s even more powerful.” And that was not in the script. I just said it and it was in one of the takes. The other actor who I was working with shook his head at me and he was pissed off. But it’s in the movie.

David Read:
Because it’s real. If it’s either real or it looks real…

Mitchell Kosterman:
Obviously, somebody liked it.

David Read:
That’s right. Somebody liked it.

Mitchell Kosterman:
And those decisions are made by committee. A lot of people had to like it.

David Read:
For sure. It’s a little scary, though. They’ll come to you at the… “We don’t know what to put here. What would go here?” Part of me would be, like, “Why don’t you know what to put there? Aren’t you the right person for this job?”

Mitchell Kosterman:
Exactly.

David Read:
I would be thinking that a fair bit and I have been seeing a lot of that more and more in terms of discussions online where people [are] like “This doesn’t feel right.” And writers will go on and answer questions, like, “Well, we just felt this, or we didn’t really know,” and it’s, like, “How could you not know? Haven’t you lived and breathed this material?” And with AI now taking over so much of things, I don’t know if you unring a lot of these bells. I think a lot of competent writers, the Rob Coopers of the world, are going away. It’s not good.

Mitchell Kosterman:
I know that they have to write them as a committee like that just simply because of the volume of scripts they have to produce.

David Read:
That’s true.

Mitchell Kosterman:
If you’re gonna write something that’s very original, you probably worked on it for a decade and you now have eight episodes and that’s something really great. If it gets picked up for the next season, you now have about four months to imitate what you just did over the past 10 years. It’s impossible. So, you have to have a different process for writing those scripts. And that’s why a lot of shows don’t necessarily get better in the second season.

David Read:
For sure, I understand that. Peace Rider wants to know, “Mitchell, we love stories. You’re so awesome. Do you have a funny story from MacGyver or maybe another time that you ran into Rick?”

Mitchell Kosterman:
Let me see what… I wrote notes to make sure I can tell things [inaudible].

David Read:
Hey, there you go. That’s my guy.

Mitchell Kosterman:
Oh, it’s not funny but it’s freaking remarkable.

David Read:
Remarkable is good. I like that.

Mitchell Kosterman:
OK. Bob. Stepped on the foot. Oh, very quickly on that Wiseguy thing where I thought I was really cool, and I was kicking Glenn Fry in the head while Debbie Harry screamed. I ripped my pants wide open, and it was on a public streets standing in downtown Vancouver and I’m there with my underwear showing.

David Read:
Well, at least you weren’t Commando.

Mitchell Kosterman:
That’s right.

David Read:
Count your blessings.

Mitchell Kosterman:
There you go. What was I gonna say? I forgot.

David Read:
MacGyver or Rick. You said there was something poignant or remarkable. Remarkable was your word.

Mitchell Kosterman:
Remarkable? Oh, shoot. Let me look through this again. Maybe I’ll remember. Oh, OK. This was a real… Another really big… I keep kicking my printer here.

David Read:
You’re fine.

Mitchell Kosterman:
This is another really big deal for me. I was telling you that Greg Beeman made an episode that was focused on me. I end up framing Jonathan for shooting Lionel Luther, but Clark figures it out and catches me in the hospital room where I’m about to kill… Try again or… I think I’m trying to kill Lionel again because it didn’t quite kill him [inaudible] [1:18:18].

David Read:
He sees what this guy really is. Mr. Perfect has to come in and screw things up. Mr. Perfect.

Mitchell Kosterman:
So, you try to… As an actor, you stop trying to control your emotions. So, you feel like you’re gonna cry and… Now, I’ve been doing this for 60 odd years. Well, 50 odd years, I guess. Because it’s a very profound and obvious and difficult to summon emotion that you try to let it come up. So, if you go to family funerals or something bad happens or something like that, you don’t try to control it, which is the natural person’s impulse, [but] you actually lean into it.

David Read:
You’re there to permit yourself to do just those things. That’s why you’re there. To say goodbye.

Mitchell Kosterman:
So, you learn, in real circumstances where you’re feeling real emotion, how to let that emotion come out. And then what you do is, you can… It becomes closer to the surface. So, you find it easier to invest in the written word and made-up circumstances and still cry there because you can think about it. You can now imagine it, whereas before you were always holding it down. And tom Welling… I can tell you some funny Tom Welling stories. My brother’s a bodyguard to the two guys on Supernatural and he got called to Jared Padalecki’s house because the police caught a guy smashing the window and broke into Jared Padalecki’s house and they came. So, my brother comes down because the guy says that he knows Jared Padalecki.

David Read:
Then knock.

Mitchell Kosterman:
And my brother comes down and there’s two cops and it’s Tom Welling in handcuffs and he decided that he wanted to get a video game back that he lent to Jared, because he lived across the street pretty much on Marine Drive there. He smashed the window to get in and took the video game. But anyway, Tom is a real super nice guy. [inaudible].

David Read:
When he’s not breaking windows for Nintendo games.

Mitchell Kosterman:
Funny guy, too. Shit, he was funny. But anyway, we’re on this… We’re doing the scene in that episode of Smallville where I get caught by Clark and I break down a bit. They don’t show it in the actual scene. They edited it out, but I broke down even more. They showed a little bit of it but obviously I had very real emotion on my face. One of the things that can make me cry I found out when I started experimenting with was when someone says something really nice to me, I will cry. So, that’s kind of like the circumstance where I was doing the Halloween thing to be the bad guy. It looks the same. It’s still crying. So, I was trying to do that. And we’re working on this episode and that was another episode that we shot for months and months and months. We kept re-shooting. Because it was a whodunnit and they kept changing who killed him.

David Read:
“Hey, my number’s up.”

Mitchell Kosterman:
Sean Connery’s son Patrick was originally hired as the bad guy who shot Lionel Luther, and they changed it to me and then wrote me out of the next episode, and I was done. So, we’re shooting. We’re shooting this scene. I was heartbroken by it. I found out in a very horrible way. One of the teamsters said something to me because he had got a copy of the script and it showed where I leave the show. And that’s how I found out. In my little village in Fort Langley, just outside Vancouver. And I called… I got a call from the props department. They wanted some old pictures of me because they were gonna show Jonathan and I in High School together. And I said, “I’ll send those to you. No problem. But read the last page of the script to me.”

David Read:
Absolutely. “You want them?”

Mitchell Kosterman:
And that was it. And I was done. And so, I worked the next three months knowing that my job was over, but we were shooting this bit where I’m supposed to get really upset because I couldn’t kill Lionel Luther and I really wanted to have a shitload of emotion there.

David Read:
So, you had a…

Mitchell Kosterman:
I wanted to go over the top.

David Read:
OK. Did Tom stop… Did Clark stop you or did you stop yourself in that scene? I don’t remember.

Mitchell Kosterman:
Clark stopped me. He caught me in the dark.

David Read:
So, you’re not only caught but…

Mitchell Kosterman:
Remember the hand turning the blinds?

David Read:
And you’re embarrassed because…

Mitchell Kosterman:
And then the gun comes out and then Clark turns on the light, throws me against the wall. Anyway, I’m lying on the ground, coming up with as much emotion as I can, and we’re shooting it. And we’re shooting it. And we’re shooting it. And we’re shooting it. Running out of gas. So, I know that something happy can make me cry, too. So, I’m on the ground, I can’t think of what to do. For whatever reason, the whole freaking cast and crew were standing there watching the scene. And God, I get emotional every time I think about it. I said… I look up from the floor like this and I looked Tom in the eye, and I said, “Say something nice.” He didn’t hesitate. He said, “It’s absolute fucking bullshit that you’re getting put off this show after you do such a great job.” And of course, I just fucking… Fountain came out of my eyes. It was amazing. Like it is right now. It’s a problem. Once you learn how to do it, it’s hard to stop.

David Read:
The right peer knows how to say the right thing to get you where you need to go over that finish line.

Mitchell Kosterman:
It was like that. No hesitation, no other question. He just said it.

David Read:
Not every actor will do that.

Mitchell Kosterman:
He was great. Loved the guy from that day on.

David Read:
I’ve heard wonderful things about him. This is how you build relationships where people will walk over hot coals to get whatever you need because you have been there for them.

Mitchell Kosterman:
Trust.

David Read:
That’s exactly right. They know your character. Mitchell. Mitch. I wasn’t expecting the conversation that we had, and it means so much to me that you were so willing to go really… You took the ball and delivered us a touchdown here with this. I was hoping to get some wonderful stories, and you have provided that gift to us in spades, particularly with Heroes. This is an episode that is hugely important to fandom, and you have left us with so much to think about and so many reasons to go back and watch again.

Mitchell Kosterman:
Thank you.

David Read:
So, it means a lot to have you sir. I really appreciate you being so forthcoming.

Mitchell Kosterman:
Well, it was fun for me going down memory lane because I haven’t acted since 2005.

David Read:
Doesn’t mean you still can’t if something comes along. It’s, like, “I want that.” Or someone says, “Hey, we got another Stargate coming back.” That’s one of the things that someone did ask you here. Raj Luthra, “If Stargate were to return in some way, would you come back? Would you be willing to come back in another role if they asked you,” [and] they made it work for you?

Mitchell Kosterman:
What’s the general’s name? He was a friend of my dad’s.

David Read:
Davis. Don Davis. Hammond.

Mitchell Kosterman:
Don Davis taught in the theater department at the University of British Columbia, which is the university I went to. He’s friends with my dad. Super nice guy. And near the end, he wasn’t all that well but he’d always be in there with that amazing voice. And he’d have a few lines, and they were always impactful lines and impactful scenes, even though he was this old guy. That’s a dream that I admit I have, is to come back in some show and have that kind of impact like that. I probably couldn’t do a very large role anyway, but I could do a little thing. It would be a lot of fun if anybody offered.

David Read:
Little thing that represents the big thing.

Mitchell Kosterman:
The problem is that when you’re out of the loop for getting hired, you’re out of the loop for getting hired. And one of the things… We kind of touched on it earlier when we talked about actors and that they can achieve certain things. Even though you aren’t sure what they’re gonna come up with, you can count on them to make the script a little bit better and make the character a little bit better than you already got as the director and writer. He’s gonna augment it. And that’s why actors end up working for the same people a fair amount, people that trust them to do their job. And they kind of get slotted into similar roles because they say, “He did that on that show. He should be good at this on this show.” And as unfortunate as that is with regard to people who are trying to expand their horizons and stuff, you can totally understand. It’s that trust thing again. You’re trying to complete the project. You want it to be good. So, you’re gonna picture people in certain roles. And I’m out of the loop.

David Read:
Right. But at a certain point in your life, and you may have had this point [and] these thoughts already, we recognize the number of days ahead are fewer than there are behind and, “What is it that I wanna do with the remainder of the healthy time that I have left, not just the time I have left, and what do I wanna leave, if anything?” So, our choices become more critical the older we get and they’re harder to Ctrl + Z undo, as it were.

Mitchell Kosterman:
I agree.

David Read:
But I wouldn’t necessarily think that you’re completely out of the loop on something that you’ve been as passionate about since you were six years old. I think it’s just the right thing might come along.

Mitchell Kosterman:
What I meant by out of the loop is that when guys are casting, they need to know where people are in the geography and where people are, where they’re working. And the casting director’s job, although people misunderstand… The casting director does not pick the actors. The casting director presents usually 8x10s and puts them on the director’s desk, or sometimes producer’s and stuff but particularly director’s desk. And he or she will look at those pictures. And sometimes it’s as tack for a particular role. My photo is no longer in that loop.

David Read:
Rotation. Understood.

Mitchell Kosterman:
Not in the rotation. Exactly. So, it won’t even come up. They might think I’m dead.

David Read:
Well, none of us do. And you’re doing something that you’re passionate about. You’re doing something that you’d be doing anyway for free. As far as I am concerned, that is a blessing.

Mitchell Kosterman:
Yes, and I am… When you eventually get to see it, the thing that I’m producing is something I’m very proud of.

David Read:
Can you please let me know?

Mitchell Kosterman:
OK.

David Read:
I’m juggling a few of you. I wanna make sure that I see it.

Mitchell Kosterman:
OK. If it happens, I will definitely let you know.

David Read:
Absolutely. Means a lot to have you on. So, I really appreciate you taking the time. I’m gonna go ahead and wrap it up on this end.

Mitchell Kosterman:
Thank you.

David Read:
Thank you for joining me.

Mitchell Kosterman:
Thank you very much and bye to whoever watched.

David Read:
We got a crowd. Thank you for your time.

Mitchell Kosterman:
Thank you.

David Read:
Thank you.

Mitchell Kosterman:
Bye-bye.

David Read:
That was Mitchell Kosterman. He played Colonel Tom Rundell, Cheyenne Mountain public affairs liaison in Heroes and Special Agent James Hamner in Season Three’s Seth. I really appreciate you tuning in. My name is David Read. You’re watching the Stargate Oral History Project. I am so blessed to have a wonderful team of people who help me week after week pulling this show off, and I could not do it without their help. My producers Antony Rawling, Kevin Weaver and Linda GateGabber Furey. My moderating team Antony, Jeremy, Kevin, Lockwatcher, Marsha, Raj and Jakub. And Frederick Marcoux, who keeps dialthegate.com’s lights up and running. If you enjoy this show and you wanna see more content like this on YouTube, do me a favor and hit that Like button. It does help with the show and will continue to help us grow our audience. Please also consider sharing this video with a Stargate friend and if you wanna get notified about future episodes, click Subscribe. And 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. This coming week… We have Tahmoh Penikett joining us on July the 6th, which happens to be my birthday, at 3pm Pacific Time. He played Third in SG-1 but most of you probably remember him as Helo in Battlestar Galactica. Tahmoh came on I believe it was last year, and we really hit it off and he said he wanted to come back, and so he is. So, we’re gonna talk a little bit more about a wider variety of topics. And I’m hopeful, this is between you and me and the lamp post, that he will be instrumental in getting us Grace Park, who played Satterfield the Season Five episode… Brain Fart. That’s not the name of the episode. Proving Grounds. It’s getting harder and harder as I get older. They used to be right there, and they are not anymore. So, we’ll see but Tahmoh is gonna be coming back and we’re gonna get to know each other a little bit better, and that one’s gonna be live on Sunday, July the 6th. We’ve got an episode of German Stargate Fandom coming up in July. That one’s actually in the hard drive right now. I actually need to sit down and edit it together but that was a fun one. And Wormhole X-Tremists is gonna be resuming with New Order Parts 1 & 2 next Sunday, July the 6th at 1pm Pacific Time. My tremendous thanks to Mitch Kosterman for joining us and be so willing to share so much for 90 minutes. You never know when you’re gonna meet someone that you really connect with. And I was hopeful going in that we would walk away with some great stories from Heroes, and he did not disappoint. In fact, it’s got me thinking about an idea. I’d love to do some kind of roundtable with the folks who made Heroes possible. From Robert to Andy to Saul to Mitch. I don’t want it to be too big but let’s see what we can get. Let me run it by Rob. He may not be game but let’s see if he is. Because Rob Cooper would have to be involved. And I meant to ask Mitch that as well but can’t get everything finished all at the same time. I appreciate you tuning in for this episode. We’ve got more heading your way in Season Five as we move into the second half of the year. My name is David Read for Dial the Gate, and I will see you on the other side.