Dial the Gate welcomes “Zelenka” actor David Nykl to the program to take LIVE questions from fans and reminisce with David about his time in the Pegasus Galaxy.

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Timecodes
00:00 – Opening Credits
00:23 – Welcome and Episode Outline
01:37 – Call to Action
02:15 – Guest Introduction
03:56 – The Pandemic
08:07 – David’s Formative Years
11:59 – Personal Heroes
14:20 – Getting Into Acting
15:54 – What characters have you played that have really stayed with you?
22:48 – Press interviews
24:09 – Previous Awareness of Stargate
25:41 – Audition for SG-1
27:04 – Was SG-1 homework for you before auditioning for Atlantis?
27:47 – Audition for Carson Beckett
30:12 – Zelenka Was Russian
37:28 – Trivia Questions!
49:10 – Learning Accents
52:02 – Playing Smart People
53:07 – Zero-G Experience in Adrift
55:19 – Any Changes to Zelenka?
57:20 – Memories from Arrow
1:00:38 – Memories with the Atlantis Cast
1:04:30 – Does work or stress follow you home?
1:06:49 – Prague Comic-con
1:08:49 – What is a piece of advice that you were given as an actor that stuck with you?
1:10:07 – Were your Czech lines strong enough to be censored in the Czech Republic?
1:12:23 – Zelenka’s Pigeons
1:13:50 – Was Zelenka’s expertise underused?
1:16:35 – “Letters from Pegasus”” (SGA 1×17)
1:20:09 – Additions or modifications to the technobabble to facilitate the story
1:22:47 – Anything to check in the future? (“The Sleepers”)
1:24:12 – Post-Interview Housekeeping
1:28:33 – End Credits

***

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TRANSCRIPT
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David Read:
Welcome everyone to Episode 27 of Dial the Gate. My name is David Read. Thank you so much for joining us for our third and final show of the day, here, on December the 6th. We have a terrific actor and definitely a fan favorite, Mr. David Nykl, standing in the wings here, ready to go. Before I bring him in, I just wanted to advise on the run of the show and what’s gonna happen here. So, we’re gonna have David in, I’m gonna ask him some questions about his heroes and where he’s from, how he evolved into the performer and the professional that he is today and the people who made him who he is along the way, and getting involved in Stargate, and a little bit about Arrow as well, and then I will turn the floor over to Q&A from fans in the live chat, you submit questions in text in the YouTube chat here, you’re more than welcome. And then afterwards, I have Zelenka artwork, actually, that I came across that I’d like to share with everyone, talk a little bit about our sponsor for this episode, introduce next week’s guests and then we’ll let you go. Before we get any deeper into this, if you like Stargate and you wanna see more content like this on YouTube, it would mean a great deal if you click that Like button. It really makes a difference with YouTube’s algorithm and will definitely help the show grow its audience. And please also consider sharing this video with a Stargate friend, and if you wanna get notified about future episodes, click the Subscribe icon. 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 live stream will be released over the course of the next several days on both the Dial the Gate and GateWorld.net YouTube channels. I know you’ve been waiting for him, the man of the hour, Mr. David Nykl. Welcome to the show, my friend!

David Nykl:
Hello GateWorld, hello internet! Is anybody really out there?

David Read:
We are! What a whirlwind since we last talked. How’re you doing? You staying sane?

David Nykl:
I’m trying to remember the last time we talked, I think it was with…

David Read:
Chris?

David Nykl:
Chris Judge was there, and we were talking about the… Somewhere downtown Vancouver here, in the…

David Read:
We were at the real Ritzy hotel.

David Nykl:
The Hyatt, I believe, but that’s irrelevant. But it’s at least two or three years ago, right?

David Read:
Yeah, well, Star Wars: The Last Jedi had just come out. That’s how I mark time, by Star Wars movies. And, yeah, so, we had a chance to catch up and you stumped me with a question, I don’t know if you remember which one it was, but I was not able to remember which episode was your first. And I’d said The Storm, and you said, “No, 38 Minutes.” I was like, “Grr, that’s right!”

David Nykl:
You know, that might probably be, and probably still is, the only thing I’ll be able to stump you on, so I’m under no illusion that you know far more about the series, the show than I do, but I can fill you in a little bit about some of the actors.

David Read:
That’s absolutely what I hope for. So, tell me, how have you been keeping yourself pre-occupied through this time here. Has there been any chance to get back to work?

David Nykl:
Well, Your Honor, that’s a long question because it’s… I’m just getting assaulted by cats.

David Read:
That was a tail, OK!

David Nykl:
Yeah.

David Read:
Who’s this?

David Nykl:
This is Myš. Myš is the Czech word for mouse.

David Read:
That’s perfect!

David Nykl:
We hoped that we would put in the job description into her name, but she’s neither a hunter nor a… She’s turned into a lap cat.

David Read:
That’s a beautiful black cat. She’s so striking, and I’m not a cat fan, I’m so allergic.

David Nykl:
Oh, are you? OK, well, this is a safe distance. Back to the original question, I think it’s been months now since this has happened. I was working on a show with a friend of mine, Peter New, called Time Helmet, which is a fun little indie piece that was filming here in Vancouver in late February, just before the hammer fell, as it were, and that was sort of the beginning of the end of the end. I have done auditions since then, I have worked on several translations. I’ve got construction projects, I’ve built a deck, there’s been lots of stuff, there’s a boat I’ve been working on, the stuff I’ve been doing over the progression of the seven months. Currently, we are in month five million here, entering into November.

David Read:
I’ve lost track.

David Nykl:
Yeah, Blursday the 50th. We’re running into Christmas, which is kind of nice. I’ve been doing a little bit of skiing. I really want things to get back to normal so that we can all work and we can all play and we can all go back to what it was. I think everybody shares those… I’m sorry to keep fidgeting so much, it’s the cat. She’s doing that…

David Read:
I was like, “What’s going on?”

David Nykl:
…moving stuff around. It’s turned into a dynamic environment.

David Read:
That’s too funny!

David Nykl:
I will stop moving. So, it’s a kind of a long answer for saying not much. And certainly in terms of acting, unfortunately, and I really missed it, I think like everybody around this time I’d like to go to work, but things will settle down, hopefully when the restrictions start lifting soon and we’ll be out of the soup and we’ll get back to doing things like normal, because you can’t act without other people. You just need other people. The self-taping and the being on your own and the social isolation is crazy.

David Read:
I agree. There’s only just so much that we can tolerate. I also like and appreciate the opportunities that have come out of this as well. There’s been some new… As awful as it’s been, and it’s been genuinely awful, there have been some cool opportunities that have come a lot of people’s way. All of us are making it work as best we can.

David Nykl:
That’s a really good attitude, David, and it’s also the truth. I think that, if anything, it’s a way for us to sit down and shut up and pay attention to the slower things, and the lessons of patience and the lessons of kindness and lessons in tolerance, all the things that this is. It’s a disease of density, it’s a disease of people, so we have to learn how to work with each other in order to beat this thing.

David Read:
I agree.

David Nykl:
That’s just one of the many things about it, but I think that a good attitude like you’ve got really goes far and keeping your eye on the… And there is a light at the end of the tunnel, which I think is really heartening, it is a good feeling. I’m really looking forward to it lightening up and getting better, I’m an optimist that way.

David Read:
You were born in Prague, right?

David Nykl:
That is correct, yes.

David Read:
How old were you when you moved from Prague to Canada? So, how much time did you spend over there on that side of the pond?

David Nykl:
I thought you were gonna ask me one of those trick questions, like how old was I when I was born, and I was ready with zero. I was just born in Prague in the late ‘60’s, shall we say, and in 1968 I was a year old, so the math is quite easy to do. It was what was known in that time as the Warsaw Pact Invasion of Prague. There had been a sort of a lightening. By lightening I mean like a lighter mood in the country and there was an early sort of Spring that was happening, and freedoms were coming in. There was political resistance to that and there was an occupation that happened almost overnight, where the tanks came to the streets of Prague. My mother looked out on the streets and she saw tanks, literally right in front of our building, and she said, “I’m not raising my kids here.” So, that was sort of the beginning of my story of coming to Canada. I was an infant, I was two years old, and we landed on the shores of the West Coast here, so I learned both languages simultaneously at home, Czech at home and English outside, to the point where I actually had that as a kid. My four-year-old mind, that’s the way the world was divided, inside language and outside language. So, outside language was English, inside language was Czech, we kept speaking it, and to this day I keep it up at home, I speak it here at home, so I’ve been code-switching, as they say in linguistics, for all my life.

David Read:
I have friends who are… Their parents tried the bilingual thing when they were young, and the kids couldn’t get it. They couldn’t switch from one to the other. A friend of mine in particular, he stuck with Spanish and he wouldn’t do the English. They just had to give up because he wasn’t assimilating the English. Did you have any issues like that?

David Nykl:
It basically becomes what the lingua franca of the family is. If it’s not a natural language to speak at home, and we speak more English now, here, as well, in our particular household unit, but if it’s not rigorously kept up, or if you’re not immersed in the language, then it does fade. You can still engage in it, and you can still talk to people about it and read in it, sometimes, but it does tend to fade.

David Read:
But it’s so cool that you recognize the importance of maintaining your roots and where you’re from and preserving that part of the past. It’s nice to see that there are people who manage to find a balance with that. I suppose it’s just a lot of practice, I would think.

David Nykl:
Yeah, it’s also happenstance. People choose their paths and in some ways, it sort of chose me. I returned there, there was… It’s like everything, the political and the personal intertwined at a very crucial age, I was there when Václav Havel was the president, so it was a really strong time, and I was a young actor doing lots of theater back then. The time had found itself. It’s a good thing, as you say, it is a good thing to maintain, and you’re lucky if you can, wherever you are, to do that. Part of it is knowing what your roots are, so looking into that and facing those things, too.

David Read:
David, who are your heroes? Who are people who set you on the paths that you’ve taken, personally? Who are some of your professional heroes, as well? Who have helped make you who you are?

David Nykl:
Well, that’s a great question, it’s a very personal question, It goes sort of beyond the aspirational things. I had heroes when I was younger like Nelson Mandela and… I hope you’re not distracted by the cat rotation trick that I’m doing.

David Read:
I am watching the cat! Oh, that’s funny.

David Nykl:
I’m trying to answer seriously, I’m completely aware that there’s a rotating cat behind me, so pay attention to what I’m saying. There was the aspirational heroes like Nelson Mandela, there was people like Václav Havel at that time, playwright and president, it was sort of morality driven, it was based on what is right in terms of rights. Those were the aspirational heroes, but the ones that really influenced me were the guys along the way, the men and the women along the way that… I guess for an actor the biggest thing is who believed in you, or said, “Yeah, let’s take a chance on this guy.” Just going backwards from the present, most recently was a fellow named Ivan Zachariáš, who is a really well-respected Czech director and cast me in an HBO series that we shot… It’s now two years ago, came out last year on HBO. It’s actually available in the States, I believe, now, on HBO Max, called The Sleepers. But he’s just a fellow… He didn’t know me in terms of even Zelenka or Arrow, he might have heard about it, but he just sort of took a chance on that, on me, and casting me, and it’s been a really fun series. And there’s been, like I said, men and women along the way, and so, heroes, that’s a strong word. Some people have been positively influential, some people have been negatively influential, which is also a good question.

David Read:
It’s important, yeah.

David Nykl:
Is that a good answer? I felt like I’m rambling.

David Read:
No, it is, you’re good. When did you fall in love with the craft? How old were you?

David Nykl:
I was young. I’m an old kid actor. I was young. I loved the fact… I think the thing I liked about it the most was that I was a curious kid, and I liked to read, and I liked to do lots of things, and I had a strong imagination, too, so I fancied that I could do lots of things and actor was one of those things that seemed to be a really good catch-all. You can pretend to be, try to be, learn to be, and eventually become whatever the person under assignment is. And then that sort of developed into that character and creating that world and making that person, and it was what really helped me right now. Those are the positive things, those are the great things about it. There’s negative things about it as well, as everything is, but what drew me to it was the ability to live in other people’s shoes and to play different characters. It’s pretty heady stuff.

David Read:
When you are really looking at trying to make a performance your own and also try to give the text of something authenticity, it means that you may have to go into areas that are uncomfortable for you if you wanna really realize another human being. What characters have you played that have really stayed with you and that you think about from time to time, or just were perhaps ones that, “You know what? I really don’t wanna go here again, but I’m really proud of the work that I did.”

David Nykl:
Yeah, good question. A lot of… in every character, even the ones that are on TV, even the ones that are on action-based TV, which is like the Arrow on the CW network where the Arrowverse… Even stuff like that that seems to be all whiz-bang, there’s stuff to do the behind the scenes for the character and the kind of things to make that character work in those particular things. But most fun has been on stage, you can flesh out some really good characters. I played a fellow named [Arthur] Przybyszewski in a play on stage here last year, a Tracy Letts play called Superior Donuts. Michael McKean…

David Read:
Superior Donuts!

David Nykl:
Yeah, Superior Donuts.

David Read:
That sounds like a store name.

David Nykl:
And you nailed it, that’s exactly what it is, this guys owns the store. And that kind of character goes into the real… You can really get into the darks, the shades, the things that are ugly about that kind of character. You can also look for the fun stuff, the aspirational and the good stuff. That was a really nice, fully dimensional sort of character.

David Read:
Well, in that case, if you don’t mind, let’s use that as a kind of case study. So, how do you dig into a multi-dimensional character when you’re offered one like that or when you get a chance to play one? Tell us a little bit about who that character was and what your approach was to attack it.

David Nykl:
This is really cool! I’m really glad that you’re asking questions about a process. I thought you were gonna stump me about what episode nine in Season…

David Read:
In due time, my friend.

David Nykl:
Oh shit!

David Read:
Oh, my God. Please tell us about this character.

David Nykl:
So, like everything, you start with the text. You start with reading it backwards and forwards and pretty quickly you get a picture of what this fella is like. In the real world, and in the casting world will often get, like, three sentences or four sentences in the breakdown to describe that character, based on the behavior in certain scenes. But when you have a play like this, the text sort of has everything in there. So, for his particular character, he was a long time… Was a liberal, he was one of those Grateful Dead kind of guys, the long hair… An aged hippy. And he had all those ideals, he had all those things that we…

David Read:
Insert – is this a real person, or is this fictitious?

David Nykl:
This is the character. Sorry, yes, I’m just giving you an example using this character…

David Read:
Got it, understood.

David Nykl:
…from Superior Donuts. And it was written during the Obama era, it was written during a time when there was a little bit more optimism, and then there was particularly racial optimism. This play sort of strikes at those things very directly, and this is the character that ends up confronting things he thought he knew about the way things should be and how they evolve. And that kind of stuff is great to get into because you can fully realize all the stuff that you’ve wanted to bring to the thing and that you think about those issues. So, that kind of time, that kind of investment, those kind of rehearsals really help. I’m gonna speed this up. And then the next thing is getting into the body. So, walking it, running with it, cycling with it, having it in your head, finding the body for this character and getting it really physical, and then pushing through the excitement and the nervousness of opening and presenting it, the beginning of the fully formed character takes time over the run to establish. That kind of fun, as an actor, that kind of fun, professionally, is what I do for. That’s what I love.

David Read:
Is it fascinating, is it scary, is it exciting to portray a character who embodies things that you don’t?

David Nykl:
Yeah! Of course! Everybody wants to go in the fast car, everybody wants to see what it’s like to rob a bank. Everybody wants to… It’s wish fulfilment, it’s behaviors, it’s situations… Now, in TV, again, it’s often very regimented and you don’t get that, sometimes, all that kind of leeway, but it’s a lot of fun to play characters.

David Read:
Even ones that you find completely morally reprehensible?

David Nykl:
Yeah, actually, almost especially ones that you find completely…

David Read:
Really?

David Nykl:
… morally reprehensible. Just think of… Well, starting with Dante’s Inferno, that you can continue on to… The character of the demon was way more appealing. And go all the way to Walter White in Breaking Bad. Why do we like him, why do we sympathize with him, and why does he take us to places that we go, “Wow, we would actually, maybe, even go there ourselves.” And that’s the kind of stuff that… Good tragedy, in the Greek sense, you know how a tragedy cleanses you, if you go to these dark places with these characters, perhaps you’re cleansing yourself of that by going through that vicariously. At the end of the day, you turn the TV off. Walter White is… spoiler alert.

David Read:
Oh, God, that’s a fair point.

David Nykl:
You know what, now that we’re on the topic, let me say one thing about spoiler alerts. I don’t believe in them, or I don’t think that spoilers are necessarily a bad thing, because vis a vis tragedy, which is what we’re talking about right now, a lot of Greek ones start with, “This is the story of how John Smith dies.” It’s the first sentence, right? It’s like, we start with… And you wanna watch how it’s gonna happen.

David Read:
We all know that The Titanic is gonna hit the iceberg, but we wanna know what’s gonna happen to Rose and what-his-face.

David Nykl:
Right. So, logical information, or knowing ahead of time that Darth Vader is Luke’s father doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re not gonna enjoy the series by knowing the spoiler and knowing the information. That’s only gonna link some parts of the story for you, it’s not gonna give you the full experience.

David Read:
I remember interviewing you during Season Two, and you had just finished… Really recently just finished working on… What was it? Duet. And I was asking you for some details, and I remember you being really reticent because, “Hey, you don’t wanna give really anything away.” I suppose there’s a part of it where you don’t wanna get in trouble, either. Did you ever have… What was it like dancing that line and doing press interviews through the show, and also, too, I suppose Arrow as well?

David Nykl:
Yeah, honestly, not that hard for me. I think some of the other cast and crew were sometimes tried to get tricked into revealing stuff. I was nervous when conventions started and I thought that exposure, particularly in those years that we were still filming or that we had… But it was pretty easy to sort of learn to not talk about what’s coming up, and sometimes the timing was such that that shows had already come, we had a pretty quick turnaround schedule from the time where we had filmed and the show was broadcast at the time. There wasn’t often that much of a gap.

David Read:
Yeah, not too bad. Did you see the Stargate Feature Film in theaters? When were you first aware of it?

David Nykl:
Yeah, I did. It was… Was it, like, ’91? 2?

David Read:
4. ’93, ’94. It was ’94.

David Nykl:
OK, so yeah, I would have been… Where would I have seen it? I would have seen it in Prague. Yeah, I was in Prague in those years, so it was probably in a cinema there that I saw it.

David Read:
What were your early thoughts on this movie? Was it just a fun sci-fi romp? Did you feel that it had legs when you saw it?

David Nykl:
I didn’t. Honestly, I didn’t think it was a show that would go into a franchise, nor was my thinking that way. I liked the archaeology, I liked the Egyptian, that’s what I remember from it. James Spader and Kurt Russell and the haircut.

David Read:
Buzz.

David Nykl:
I remember that, but, honestly, I wouldn’t even be able to tell you about the plot about it because I don’t think I… I saw it once, and then I saw it once again around the time when we were shooting Stargate, I did it as part of my research, so it’s hazy in terms of the plot of it, but that’s where I picked it up, essentially. And then I was away in Europe while it started filming here in those early years of…

David Read:
SG-1.

David Nykl:
…SG-1, yeah. And I went up, once, to an audition for SG-1 when I just freshly coming back from Prague, I think it might have been ’99, so it was a couple of years before Atlantis started, and it might have been year two or three?

David Read:
If it was ’99, they would have been recording Season Three. You don’t remember what that was, do you, by any chance?

David Nykl:
I’m sorry, do I what?

David Read:
You don’t remember anything about that early audition, do you?

David Nykl:
Yeah, I do remember asking my agent, “What is ‘T-E-A-L-apostrophe-C’, how do you pronounce that?”

David Read:
But you weren’t applying for Teal’c?

David Nykl:
Yeah, I was probably talking about Teal’c, and I think it was just a random scientist guy and talking about Teal’c, so I happen to remember lines from that one. That was SG-1, and that was sort of when I caught wind of that it’s filming here, it’s a big deal, in terms of the amount of shows that they’re doing and the hiring of local actors. It was one of the first shows to be a true franchise, in that every week new actors would have to come on. It’s a great employer and was, traditionally, a fantastic employer for actors here.

David Read:
The SG-1 series, was it homework for you before auditioning for the Russian in Atlantis?

David Nykl:
Yeah, hey, good call! You know that it was a Russian.

David Read:
Thanks to you!

David Nykl:
OK, I might have revealed that. No, I didn’t have time. There’s no time, between when you get the audition and when you get the sides and make the audition tape, to watch an entire series. But I knew the premise already at that time and the idea of the wormhole and the circle and the going through, of course, and the ‘ka-whoosh’, again, having seen the movie. And so that when Atlantis came along, I actually auditioned for another character in Atlantis before auditioning for Zelenka, by the way. Does anyone know that?

David Read:
I did not. I knew that you auditioned for a Russian, but are you saying you auditioned before that?

David Nykl:
Yeah, I auditioned once before that, and we should make that a trivia question. I should not give away the answer.

David Read:
Did you audition for Ingram? Benjamin Ingram. The character that Dr. Rodney McKay replaced.

David Nykl:
No. But you’re just gonna whittle me down to the…

David Read:
This is what I do, man, I whittle.

David Nykl:
OK, I auditioned for Beckett. I tried my Scottish accent, and I did a way better one than McGillion, but, I don’t know. They went with their second choice. I love you Paul. He’s a very good friend of mine, he deserves that.

David Read:
I didn’t know you auditioned for Beckett.

David Nykl:
Yeah. And then nothing. And then the pilot came and went, that’s why I wasn’t in the pilot. And then an audition came up for a random scientist guy, a Russian scientist guy, named Karpov, in a new show called Stargate Atlantis, “Oh, that’s the one I auditioned for a couple of weeks ago.”

David Read:
That was.

David Nykl:
And it was episode three or four, it was called Thirty-Eight Minutes or something like that, and the audition was with the captain of the ship, who was a woman, and her name was Torri Higginson, and that was my first scene that I ever shot with Stargate was that scene with her. If you’ll notice, I’m actually holding a walkie talkie radio which we never used. We had the…

David Read:
The comms.

David Nykl:
Yeah. That’s how new we were, that’s how fresh I was, I was holding a walkie talkie.

David Read:
“Anything I can do to help.” “Stop talking, please.” That character is clearly born in that moment.

David Nykl:
Stop chewing the wire, cat, get out of here. If I go blank, if the signal goes dead, it’s because I’m getting…

David Read:
Hello kitty-cat!

David Nykl:
I’m getting vandalized! I’m literally hackers, and by hacking I mean using these teeth to chew the wires.

David Read:
Well, hopefully she doesn’t have some kind of electric shock.

David Nykl:
Electric kitty! OK.

David Read:
So, they switched the role from a Russian to a Czech because of you.

David Nykl:
OK, so, yeah, so how did it work? It was Karpov, it was the scene ‘Stop talking, please.’ No, that’s what it was, the script arrived after I got the booking, found out that I got it as a Russian guy, “Oh, this is great.” The audition I remember going in to for Karpov at the time, the Russian scientist, was a room full of Russian guys, like, big Russian guys. And I remember in the audition room thinking, “Whatever it is that you’re doing with the ‘Don’t talk’, or whatever it is with the busy work that you’re doing, just do it facing up so you’re doing like this so they can see your face.” So, maybe that’s my origin myth, that I like to think that maybe they actually saw me.

David Read:
You have a kind of nervous energy about you that you are really good at applying toward whatever it is that you’re working on, and I think that when I watch Zelenka, I think one of the things that really captivates me, in terms of your performance, is that he’s racing a million miles a second and just trying to keep on top of everything at the same time and somehow managing to hold it together. I don’t know if it’s just him, I don’t know if it’s caffeine, I don’t know if he’s taken something else, but that character was just so satisfying to watch, especially off of McKay, who is also in the middle of his own marathon at any given time, and they’re trying to pull something off in any given situation.

David Nykl:
I think one of the things that made dramaturgical sense, with the introduction of Zelenka, is to split tech talk into two and to make it a Mutt and Jeff routine, and I think that was a stroke of genius by the writers to sort of split all the explanation and all the laying of the pipe, as it were, of the storyline, technically. And it always had something to do with power.

David Read:
Of course. Atlantis was always running out of power.

David Nykl:
Always running out of power, so it was all about conduits and power and all those things. And we could have a dialogue rather than a manic monologue that Rodney might have. So, it ended up turning it into a frantic relationship. If I seem twitchy and nervous, I literally am trying to fight off a cat chewing through my wires here. I’m being sabotaged. You guys have no idea.

David Read:
How was the technobabble? How did you deal with it? Was it a burden that you were perfectly happy to take on, because “You know what, this is the gig and it pays well.” Did you enjoy it or did you endure it?

David Nykl:
No, the former. I didn’t know what it was when I first got it. I assumed when I first got the gig I didn’t know that there would be that much of that. But a lot of texts that you work with, again with the basis in theater, is you figure out what is really being said by all of that language. Every genre, everything you work on has its own way of saying, “Oh, we’re in danger!” or, “This is the reason we’re in danger,” and you have to learn that language, so that’s what the technobabble was. Then when I saw how Amanda handled it, and how David was doing it, that kind of mile-a-minute thing, I sort of found my own way through that, and it really is an important part of the script to explain to someone why we are doing certain things, why we are in the puddle jumpers at a certain time, so, why not have fun with it again, why not do it in a way that you can have a sort of structure as an argument, a guy complaining against his boss. And that was another thing, the dynamic worked nicely because everyone knows what it’s like to have a boss like that, a megalomaniac boss. There’s a great deal of that.

David Read:
No, that’s never happened to me.

David Nykl:
I have had lots of people at conventions tell me that they know people just like Rodney. That’s the fun part, when you can sort of represent those things for other people, so that stuff is fun. I really enjoyed that. I think we also got way more mileage out of it, us being frenemies or whatever, for lack of a better word, than it was being at odds to each other, because those moments, I remember in some of those episodes where it was like, “Aw, no, you’re my best friend,” it makes for a nice little ‘Aw, shucks’ moment but it doesn’t really do anything to the relationship because you don’t wanna see them going down the hallway going, “Hey, Rodney, how you doing?” because that’s just another day at the office. What you wanna see them is arguing and competing and being frustrated with each other.

David Read:
There was, if you’re watching it, there is definitely… There was care for each of the characters, but, in terms of the McKay and Zelenka relationship, it was one of those things where,” Yes, that’s there, we play that beneath the surface.” But on the surface Zelenka just endures McKay, because he has no choice, and McKay just puts up with Zelenka’s deficiencies, according to McKay. And that’s where the humor comes in and that’s where it’s played. But there’s also… There are people who behave like that to each other all the time, who, deep down, “Yeah, I do care for you and I do appreciate what you’re doing, but I’m never gonna tell it to you.” And McKay never did.

David Nykl:
Yeah. And also, you have to consider also our location. We are the ultimate outposts of all outposts, this is beyond being in the Arctic or at McMurdo Station down in the Antarctic. There is no other person, you have to work with that. And that is also something that someone recognized, is that they’re stuck in a situation where they’re stuck with that person. You gotta figure out your coping mechanisms.

David Read:
And even in an alternate reality in Vegas, he’s still stuck with him, which I thought was, A, it was a good excuse to bring you in, but, B, also, he still has to suffer McKay. I have a number of fan questions here that I’m gonna give ample time to.

David Nykl:
Let’s see what I can do here.

David Read:
But before I do that, I definitely would love to have you back in 2021 to go into specific episodes later on, and I hope that you will take up my offer to return.

David Nykl:
OK, give me the credit of… Let me watch them first.

David Read:
I will indeed.

David Nykl:
Because right now you’ve… I don’t know.

David Read:
Absolutely. So, everybody, keep that in mind with these questions. David may be like, “I’ll get back to you!” But before I do, I would like to play a 10-minute game of trivia with you, if you don’t mind?

David Nykl:
OK, alright.

David Read:
So, do you have questions for me?

David Nykl:
Do I get to pick the topic, or is the topic gonna be Stargate?

David Read:
Topic will be Stargate.

David Nykl:
[sighs].

David Read:
I know.

David Nykl:
OK.

David Read:
I know.

David Nykl:
I knew that!

David Read:
I know that you know it, because yeah, you were sent the questions.

David Nykl:
I’m gonna bring them up right now.

David Read:
David has questions for me, three for me, and I have three for him. And his lovely chair back, back there.

David Nykl:
I’m sorry I’m being rude, I’m just trying to access the questions. Can you talk amongst yourselves for 10 seconds?

David Read:
We will indeed. 10 seconds. So, alright, what we’re gonna do is, I’m gonna play a brief trivia game with Dr. Zelenka himself, and then we’re gonna start getting to your huge selection of Q&A here. I’m breaking a little early so that we can get through all them properly. Alright! I have got…

David Nykl:
Ready.

David Read:
…three for… Would you like to throw one at me first, or would you like the first one?

David Nykl:
OK, is that what we’re gonna do? We’re gonna do a little mano-a-mano?

David Read:
Mano-a-mano, yeah, here we go! Know what I’m saying?

David Nykl:
Let’s start… Let’s go in increasing difficulty. We’ll start with an easy question.

David Read:
OK, throw it at me.

David Nykl:
What was the movie Jennifer Keller was anxious to see in SG Atlantis episode Identity? Season Five, Episode Eight.

David Read:
She mentioned a film that she wanted to see?

David Nykl:
Yes. What was it?

David Read:
Oh boy. She mentioned a movie.

David Nykl:
OK, and I just hope you remember this is the category “easy”, so, I think we’re…

David Read:
Oh my God.

David Nykl:
…in for a treat! What’s the movie that Jennifer Keller is anxious to see in the episode Identity?

David Read:
So, the subject of the episode is imposter, so there’s, like, you got a situation where there’s people who are switched, and I’m trying to think of… Could it be a film called Imposter?

David Nykl:
No.

David Read:
Ah, OK.

David Nykl:
[Starts singing the James Bond theme]

David Read:
[Continues singing the James Bond theme] Ah, Mission: Impossible?

David Nykl:
No, no, no! That’s [sings Mission: Impossible theme].

David Read:
Oh! James Bond!

David Nykl:
Yeah!

David Read:
For Pete’s sake, man! Why did I think Mission: Impossible first?

David Nykl:
That’s kind of funny. But what’s the movie?

David Read:
Mission Impossible Eight? Or, James Bond… I don’t know, man, save me.

David Nykl:
I think we can safely say we got him, guys, right? I think we got him. OK, so it’s Dr. No.

David Read:
Dr. No! Is there a mistaken identity in Dr. No?

David Nykl:
I honestly did not Dr. know that.

David Read:
Alright. Zelenka, in Quarantine, what did Zelenka reveal…

David Nykl:
You mean in real life?

David Read:
Yeah, I know. The fictional one before you guys went the other way. In Quarantine, what did Zelenka reveal to Carter that he had once raised?

David Nykl:
What did he reveal to Carter that he once raised? Hmm.

David Read:
Did you…?

David Nykl:
I don’t know!

David Read:
That’s funny, David.

David Nykl:
That’s a good question. That was one of the examples of where writers sort of throw you a curve ball, because it was… I got the script and it was like, “Oh, I’m raising pigeons now.” So, I guess it was a random Eastern European hobby that Zelenka has attributed to him. So, pigeons was the answer! Am I right?

David Read:
Yes, but how do you have a mug with a pigeon on it? That’s too funny!

David Nykl:
It is kind of funny. It’s such an irony. I just made myself a cup of tea before we started out here.

David Read:
Do you have a thing for pigeons, or was that…?

David Nykl:
I don’t! I don’t know why I grabbed this, it must have been something…

David Read:
That’s too funny, David.

David Nykl:
I must have anticipated that question.

David Read:
Yeah, we’re all…

David Nykl:
OK, my turn. I’m gonna have to read it first. Give me a…

David Read:
An uncomfortable wait.

David Nykl:
What was the Ancient word for the whale that appears in an episode called Grace Under Pressure and the numbers are…

David Read:
Yeah, Grace Under Pressure, I remember.

David Nykl:
…Season Two, Episode 14. What was the name, what was the Ancient word…?

David Read:
The Ancient name for whale… These are gonna crucify me.

David Nykl:
Yeah, this is brutal.

David Read:
That’s a medium?

David Nykl:
That’s a medium, yeah. That’s the medium.

David Read:
I don’t remember the name for the Ancient name for whale.

David Nykl:
Yeah, whoever’s writing these trivia questions for you has it in for you, David.

David Read:
Yeah, they do. No, that’s fine.

David Nykl:
I know. It’s Flagellus. Flagicallus. Flagicallus? My God, I hope I don’t pronounce that one wrong! I’ll be banned from the internet! Flagicallus. The hint that I have for that was that it’s a Latin sounding Lantean term.

David Read:
Latin sounding Lantean term. Interesting. I wonder if that’s the name for that species, or just generic “whale.” Probably one and the same. That’s cool, though.

David Nykl:
I think it’s one of the writers in the Writers’ Room sort of going, “Aah, who knows.”

David Read:
Alright. Which episode is technically the first where we see Zelenka off-world? It’s implied that he goes off-world earlier, but which episode is technically the first where we actually see it?

David Nykl:
So, I can remember what I was doing and where we were, in this grassy sort of knoll and I’m with… Kavan was there.

David Read:
Yes, Kavan Smith, Major Lorne.

David Nykl:
And Pauly’s there, and I’m all nervous… It’s Duet! I’m gonna call it, Duet!

David Read:
He’s two for two!

David Nykl:
That is something that I… Remembering episode names is the last thing that I remember.

David Read:
Ah, there you go.

David Nykl:
It made me think of the setup, actually, that we had for when the two become one and then I remember that’s it. Yes, yes, yes.

David Read:
Alright. What’s the final one for me? See if I can pull out of this tailspin.

David Nykl:
Now the hard one.

David Read:
Oh, God.

David Nykl:
In the episode Sunday…

David Read:
One of my favorites, OK, there’s hope.

David Nykl:
…Dr Zelenka, one, was eligible to win three prizes. Two of the prizes was a desk fan and a Swedish massage from Dr. Ambrose, and what was the third gift?

David Read:
Prices for…?

David Nykl:
Sorry, prize. Prize for winning at the chess tournament in the episode Sunday, Season Three, Episode 17, there was three prizes that were available, first one is a desk fan, the second is a Swedish massage from Dr. Ambrose. What is the third available prize, in the category of “hard?”

David Read:
Man, that stinks. These are good. I don’t know it.

David Nykl:
Yeah, I think I’ll give you a hint without you even asking for it, you deserve that.

David Read:
Did you know it without looking? Do you remember this?

David Nykl:
No, I didn’t, but it came back to me as soon as I…

David Read:
Oh, OK, well, I feel a little better then.

David Nykl:
I didn’t even know it, so that’s the level of hard that it is.

David Read:
I’m waiting for that clue.

David Nykl:
It’s named after someone who worked on the show.

David Read:
OK, um… well, I know that there’s a binder prize in…

David Nykl:
You’re in the right room.

David Read:
Well, yeah, but that’s like ten different people. Mallozzi, Wright, Cooper, Mullie, but I don’t remember what it was. Binder. Martin Gero. Rescue me, man, what is it?

David Nykl:
OK, we can’t progress like this. Dr. Mallozzi’s Anime DVD.

David Read:
That’s right!

David Nykl:
Dr. Mallozzi’s… Dr. Mallozzi. See, they could just give themselves titles!

David Read:
Yes, they can.

David Nykl:
Turn themselves into doctors.

David Read:
He was already… Joseph Mallozzi MD wrote the book ‘Latin for the Novice’ in Season Four of SG-1, Window of Opportunity.

David Nykl:
Yes, they like doing stuff like that and hiding Easter eggs.

David Read:
Absolutely, why not. Alright, man, the last one for you. In the spirit of what you love so much, in what episode did you say, in Czech, “Jesus, I can’t work with these actors.”

David Nykl:
Yeah, I said, “Ježiši, já s těma hercema nemůžu dělat,” and I went to a convention in the Czech Republic a couple of years ago and one of the kids stood up and fully seriously asked of me, “Why would Zelenka say he can’t work with actors? I don’t get it.” So, I think for the kid to have the fourth wall broken on a TV set… What episode it was? So, we were in peril, we were in the control room. That narrows it down! I’m gonna say The Storm, arbitrarily, as I don’t know.

David Read:
The Brotherhood.

David Nykl:
The Brotherhood. OK.

David Read:
That was tough. But very good.

David Nykl:
OK, cool!

David Read:
So, two out of three, zero out of three. Well done.

David Nykl:
They got it in for you with those trivia questions.

David Read:
They do. I have questions submitted from fans here for you, are you ready to go?

David Nykl:
OK. Alright, shoot.

David Read:
In both Atlantis and Arrow… This is Jeremy Heiner, moderator. “In both Atlantis and Arrow, you play characters that speak accented English. David, what is your process to learn to speak with a different accent and how do you approach speaking a different language in the shows?”

David Nykl:
Accent work, it does seem to be a sort of an area that I’m doing a lot of TV work, even though people still are surprised that this is what I sound like in real life. It’s part of the process of building a character. As I said earlier in the show, you start with the text, and it depends on the kind of voice that you’re given as a character. Sometimes you’re not given a lot of words and you gotta get character through out in grunts, like our good friend Jason Momoa.

David Read:
Yes! “No. No.”

David Nykl:
Getting by on two-word lines is… And other characters have lots of talk, like Zelenka, and technobabble, something else we talked about. Accent is basically just a layer to it, it’s a part of the process. I’m surrounded by the Czech accent, for example. Everyone in my family, almost, has one, so I hear it all the time, despite the fact that I don’t have it, I put it on all the time, all day long. It’s part of the code switching. So, the process is reasonably simple. The Russian one was a little trickier because I don’t speak Russian, so for Arrow I did have a coach, which really helped. I also recorded a lot of the dialogue, or, a lot of the Russian lines, because I do have quite a bit of Russian dialogue in different episodes in Arrow and I had them on my earphones, just to get the right intonation, kind of the weight and the sense of it. So, that really helped. But that’s a part of it. Yeah, the linguistic side of it is kind of fun, I enjoy that part of it, giving the character a voice.

David Read:
It’s always exciting to… I love experimenting with different dialogues as well, but it’s always exciting to see the look on someone’s face when they hear it, it’s like, “Do you speak…? Do you actually speak that language?” It’s like, “No, I’m just putting it on.”

David Nykl:
Another question I get, I’m anticipating I might get it, is if I wrote the Czech stuff, or, did I come up with the Czech stuff, and the answer is yes. The writers did not write Czech, they just sort of put “swears in Czech,” or, “curses in Czech.”

David Read:
So, you just wanted to make it compatible with the spirit of the text, then?

David Nykl:
That’s right. I was serving the text, David, that’s exactly what I was doing. And if they want me to curse in Czech, I’ll curse in Czech!

David Read:
Dan Dutton, “What was it like playing the role, arguably, of one of the two smartest people in Atlantis?”

David Nykl:
Well, Dan, for some of us, being the smartest person just, I guess… That’s a David Hewlett response. I’m conditioned. Being smart is being made smart by the words that you’ve said. Having said that, it’s science fiction based on science fact, we had a physics consultant, Mika McKinnon.

David Read:
Wonderful.

David Nykl:
She’s terrific, and I love her posts on the interweb, follow her, you guys, not only for emergency preparedness but just for real science in this age. There’s a bump for her, Mika. She was great. And so all of things like formulas on blackboards, wormhole physics, which at some point I kind of had to dabble in with a little bit, is all a part of it. You need to know what you’re talking about.

David Read:
Kyle Guebert, “In Adrift you are filmed during a zero-G situation. What was that experience like?” With, I think, it was Sheppard.

David Nykl:
I was with Sheppard, that’s right. It was an episode called Adrift. I’d been hit by a micro-asteroid. That was super fun because we were like marionettes, we were suspended on these cranes in the space chutes and the process is called over cranking where the camera goes twice as fast, so that your actions look slow and fluid, as they would in space. It was a really fun day because of all the tech that we had doing that, the fact that we were swinging back and forth, and we had cooling vests underneath the jacket. In the afternoon there’s that part where I hit the wall, we jump across the thing and I remember Martin Wood was telling to the dolly guy who was just getting ready to push, “Just really hoof him into that wall.” Imagine you’re on like a mobile swing, like this, and then when you hit a wall, so it just goes “Boom”. It looked really fun in the slow-mo. That was a fun show to… The tech, shooting the special effects, was really cool, because you just have green paint on the floor, and that’s the cosmic void.

David Read:
I’m surprised to hear that you didn’t, like, just be instructed to mime the slow motion, the experience of when we think that we would be in space. The camera actually accelerated?

David Nykl:
Yeah, the camera was over cranked, the swinging-out-of-control physics, once that is played back, it looks remarkably real, the simulation of the zero-G. Yeah, isn’t it cool, the tricks that they can do?

David Read:
Always something. Always something up their sleeves. Teresa McAllister, “Looking back now, would you have changed anything about Zelenka’s character in any way? Either about your performance or about what the writers provided you?” Was there anything that you walked away from and was like, “You know what, in hindsight, I wish I could have tweaked that, just a little.” Or maybe a lot.

David Nykl:
Well, yeah. I guess you evolve and TV captures a particular phase that you are at, so 15 years ago, I don’t think I was where I am now in terms of what I knew about the craft or anything, but having said that, Atlantis was a remarkable school for that, for the very technical skills, like, vis-à-vis the last story or any earmark or being able to do those basics. If I was to change it, I don’t know. I sometimes think maybe I was a little too frivolous with it, that he could have been a little more grounded. That’s sort of more appealing to my tastes, now, so it’s not really an objective thing. I mean, there was a part of the manic energy I could, as you mentioned earlier, that I think maybe perhaps worked in terms of that, and we were reacting to the danger and the peril and the peril and all the peril.

David Read:
And the McKay.

David Nykl:
Yeah.

David Read:
There is a layer of comedy with him, with Zelenka. You can’t play it purely straight.

David Nykl:
Yeah, and that’s kind of what’s fun. I think that was what the charm of the Stargate franchise is, as opposed to other sci-fi franchises, specifically space ones, is the sense of humor, right? It’s in the DNA of at least the first two shows, significantly, where there’s these throw-away lines, there’s this sort of ‘we know we’re in danger, we know we’re watching a story about being in danger, let’s have fun doing it.’

David Read:
Right, absolutely. I have a question from Scotty0709. “Any funny stories or memories you can recall that stand out from Arrow?” We got a few Arrow fans in here.

David Nykl:
You got a few Arrow fans? Hi, Arrow fans! The one thing I can say about Arrow, and it’s certainly not a mark against it, was that it was a really professional site, It’s one of those 22 episodes a year with an hour of action, so there’s lots of ratchets, there’s stunts, there’s cranes everywhere, so the work days are full, particularly for Stephen and Dave Ramsey. They’re great guys. Working with them, the approachability of working with them was fantastic, but when you’re done working with them, they need their time and you have your time, so that kind of cast feeling that we had on Atlantis wasn’t there as much, for me at least, on Arrow, because I also came in at random times and there was the whole entire third season, I think… or fourth… one of the seasons I wasn’t there and then I came back for an entire season, almost every episode, so I was in there a lot. And that was when I got to know, it was not until the fifth season that that feeling… what I’m trying to say with the story is that it was a really professional, hard-working set for the first couple of years and then by the end, as I got to know everybody more and I became more of a character that people knew about – particularly the team, people like Juliana Harkavy and Rick Gonzalez and Echo – I see these guys now at conventions and that’s always what’s really fun, but at that time I never really worked with them, I worked Season Five almost exclusively with Stephen and my Russian guy, but not as much with the actual cast. So, when I got into Season Six, when we had that enemy cycle going on with Stephen Amell, I got to work with some of the people on the other… And that’s when I got that feeling to be working on set again. Good questions, guys.

David Read:
Are you ever part of a production where it’s like, “I’m over here, I’m doing this thing, but, God, I’d really love to work over here with these guest actors or these particular people and sink my teeth into it and I don’t have a scene with them. They’re here, but I’m not participating actively in a scene.”

David Nykl:
Yeah. I remember the days where SG-1 and Atlantis were shooting on the same lot.

David Read:
Pegasus Project.

David Nykl:
And we’d see the same, we’d see ‘action’, and we’d go, “Oh, my God, I’d love to work with her!”

David Read:
Oh, the same lot.

David Nykl:
Yeah, so that was always really cool about when the productions were together. But other times, sometimes you’re just remote, you’re in remote locations, you’re somewhere out in the bush and stuff like that, so it’s just the cast or the crew that’s there. Those days where there’s more people round on set is always way more fun.

David Read:
Monica Lake wants to know if you would share a favorite memory from Atlantis. I would suggest making, more specifically, a particular moment with one of the cast members that you shared that was a memorable take-away in hindsight, like, you got to know someone a little bit closer, or something about them that surprised you.

David Nykl:
That’s a more substantive question than the usual “we were fooling around, having fun” type question, so, I gotta give it the thought that that deserves, but let’s just say, arbitrarily, someone that I didn’t work with much, who’s mega famous now, is Jason.

David Read:
Yes!

David Nykl:
That was someone that whenever we had the few little interactions and the few little scenes was great, because you know, he’s a charming guy, he’s got a great personality, he’s a lot of fun to be around and we particularly had a… I really enjoyed getting to know him in those little pieces. I have a sticker over there where I went to a Guns N’ Roses concert with Jason Momoa, in Perth, Australia. He’s a great guy, he’s a lot of fun. When you get a chance to break past the processes that everyone needs to go to and all, when you just actually be buddies and pals, that was what was awesome. Honestly, that was what was awesome about Atlantis. And other people, like Paul, who I ended up getting more and more scenes, I also got to know him well after the fact more, at conventions [inaudible].

David Read:
That’s right. There is a sense of… You guys had long days, in some cases 16, 17 days… Hours. That’s a really long shoot! 16-17 hours on set. There’s gotta be a sense of going through the trenches that you take away…

David Nykl:
Yeah.

David Read:
…and giving a chance to be outside of that environment and being somewhere like Australia, celebrating with people about the work that you guys did that makes it clear to people, and to you yourself and your experience that it was all worth it.

David Nykl:
Yeah, I often would say, exactly, the 16-hour days, and it’s not uncommon, right, so it doesn’t even feel like it’s the trenches that you had to go through, that’s just the day on the job. If you’re giving Arrow, that was also one where we had 2 o’clock in the morning stunts…

David Read:
That’s crazy.

David Nykl:
…and rolling around in puddles and stuff like that, but that’s the work and that’s the hard part of it. And I always say, “You do that and then you go home and you take a shower and you go to sleep and you wash the dishes the next day.” That it happened, it was cool, but people won’t see it for another month, few months, and then not later, and then you don’t know about it until you see them reacting to it, which in some cases is years later down the line, in places, like you say, like in Australia. I’m always surprised by the reach that it has and the influence that it has on people, I find that a particularly magical thing about this particular franchise, and a very powerful thing. You got to use that power for good because those stories have made their way around the world, there’s something about it that resonates with everyone, so you gotta honor that.

David Read:
In general, the work, the character, the stress, the hours, does it follow you home? Or have you always been able to turn it off?

David Nykl:
Yeah, it follows you home for about the first, I guess, four or five hours, particularly a night shoot, after you get home after a night shoot it’s hard to go to sleep. I just drink a lot of water and just go to sleep, but yeah, so, your heart is still racing, you’re still sort of… Sometimes the over-exhaustion bleeds over into the next day, like, on the Fraturdays and stuff like that.

David Read:
Oh my God, Fraturdays, that’s right! The Saturday morning shoots.

David Nykl:
Yeah, they start at six in the evening on Friday evening and they stop at 10 in the morning on Saturday. So, those kind of shoots are common, you sleep the day off, but your heart is racing, it’s an exciting thing. You think about all the things that happened and the way the setups are and then I often sort of edit it together in my head, “Oh, we did that setup,” or, “Oh, this is probably what it might look like.” And then you fall asleep and then you [inaudible]. After you do the post-mortem in your head, then you let it go, and you let it go onto the next thing. And those are the things I miss, now, I’d love to be doing that again.

David Read:
It’s interesting, David, during the production of… Hewlett. During the production of the show, he would say that he would go home and he would still be in McKay mode, and Jane would give him 10-15 minutes, where he would snap his finger and point and then after that she’d shut it off.

David Nykl:
Oh yeah, that’s it, the [snaps fingers]. I would smack him upside the head if I was Jane!

David Read:
Right!

David Nykl:
“Don’t be bringing that shit home.” It is hard, it does become sort of a part of the thing, but I have it a lot with the clothes, funnily enough. If I take the clothes off, and the accent and the glasses, that character, it’s a little bit like you put the suit on.

David Read:
Yeah, you’ve compartmentalized it, that’s cool.

David Nykl:
Yeah. You put it away. The characters… I don’t come home and [snaps fingers and points].

David Read:
Point! This is a little esoteric, I’d be interested in your response. Eva Lipenska wants to know, “David, when will you post the video from Prague Comic-Con where we were all saying ‘I’m trying *** on your Instagram.’ You promised.”

David Nykl:
Oh, I did? Oh, it might have been the one that I filmed! Oh, I never put that up, OK. Well, thanks for reminding me.

David Read:
I’m happy to convey the information.

David Nykl:
Thanks David, I got briefly confused because I sure thought, “Why would I have that because I was on stage.” But now I recall, it was…

David Read:
“I’m trying, blank.”

David Nykl:
Yeah, it was one of the last things this year before lockdown, was Prague Comic-Con in February, and there’s a particular catchphrase that I said, as Zelenka, which has kind of exploded all over the Czech Republic. People kind of love it, and it’s “I’m trying, do prdele.”

David Read:
You can go ahead and say it.

David Nykl:
Yeah, you can say that, you can totally say that. I said it on the SyFy network broadcast into your homes 15 years ago, so I can say it now.

David Read:
Give me the English word.

David Nykl:
The Czech word ‘do prdele’ is the curse, but it basically means ‘I’m trying the best as I can’. That’s sort of what it’s gonna be. “OK, I will look into…” Yeah, I was on stage… That’s what it was, I was on stage and I filmed the whole audience doing that. I’ll put that up on my Facebook acting profile.

David Read:
So, if I go to Prague and I walk around saying “do prdele,” I’m gonna be in trouble?

David Nykl:
Well, no, you’ll sound just like every other Czech out there. Actually, you got that remarkably well.

David Read:
That’s funny. Livingandthriving, “What is a piece of advice that you were given as an actor that stuck with you in your performances?” From someone that you admire or…

David Nykl:
Yeah, careful about asking actors for advice, but when it comes to acting, maybe that’s one thing that I can illuminate, and that is, it’s always about the other person. That’s what is kind of cool about it, is it’s the listening, it’s the actual absorbing of what’s going on, because that’s what people wanna watch, that’s what they wanna see. And that’s what I’m particularly missing in this environment, in this lockdown environment, with the self-tapes and stuff, where you don’t have that interface as it is available to you on set. That’s the kind of stuff. The best thing that I learned was the paying attention and the stillness, and let the people come to you, let the people find what they need to find based on what you’re doing in the scene, but let them come to you and listen. It’s about the other person.

David Read:
Wow. I like that. CarlosTakeshi, “Was your dialog in Atlantis strong enough to be censored in the Czech Republic?”

David Nykl:
No, that’s a funny thing, too, is that they just… Here’s the weird thing. Zelenka is dubbed in Czech, so, let’s work through this Escher diagram of the situation.

David Read:
So, when it gets to the Czech Republic…!

David Nykl:
Yeah, so then I’m speaking Czech, dubbed as Czech, speaking English, but then the character breaks into speaking Czech and it’s me speaking Czech, and so I have some… so, what do they do? Do they just turn the guy dubbing me and have the production track play me swearing and they go, “Well, he’s supposed…” And yeah, that’s exactly what they do. They don’t censor it, they let it play, It was there. Also, bear in mind, when Stargate first came out, the online world and the downloading world was in a different place, shall we say, and so a lot of the episodes made their way into people’s hands that didn’t watch them on TV sets.

David Read:
Right.

David Nykl:
On the interweb and those things. There was no censorship in that. You can’t censor [inaudible].

David Read:
I wanted to clarify how they did that. So, the guy who always dubs Zelenka’s English, he would stop speaking and then David Nykl, in the Czech Republic, would be heard reading the Czech?

David Nykl:
I think so. And perhaps any of your Czech fans that are on right now…

David Read:
I’m curious.

David Nykl:
…can confirm that for us.

David Read:
You’ve never seen a Czech translation.

David Nykl:
No, I’ve actually never seen an episode in Czech. Well, they might have played some for me when I was on stage. I think they once did a medley of me being dubbed in all the different languages [inaudible].

David Read:
That would be cool!

David Nykl:
That was fun. Yeah, like, the Spanish and the…

David Read:
I would love to see a sequence where you speak in Czech in the episode in the language of Czech, I’d love to have seen how the whole thing plays. If anyone’s out there?

David Nykl:
If anyone’s out there, yeah, let’s do it. We both, obviously, need to be illuminated. But that’s what I think they did, they would turn down the translator, or the dubber, and the production would play, the production track would play.

David Read:
Got it. JohnFourtyTwo, “Radek’s hobby of pigeons, is that something the writers introduced or is that a suggestion that you made?”

David Nykl:
[drinks from pigeon mug] Hmm. Yeah, I know how it…

David Read:
That’s so random, man.

David Nykl:
It’s bad when you use the same sight gag twice, I suppose, right?

David Read:
No, it’s fine.

David Nykl:
Yeah, we just had the chat earlier, it was the writers that gave that. For example, once I had a really silly thing that I offered as a pitch, I said, “That time I was fencing…”

David Read:
Really?

David Nykl:
Yeah, it was, I still do it. I have an épée, it’s hanging right up there. But, I did a little bit of that and I said, “If you’re gonna pick random things as hobbies, then I can do that, for example.”

David Read:
That’s cool.

David Nykl:
So, it’s just a random thing, like, can you imagine I could have been a fencer, but you got pigeons, so that’s what that is.

David Read:
I think that that would have made… added an interesting flavor to the character of making him a little bit more hostile, because then he could play that later on, like, “Don’t make me get my…”

David Nykl:
Yeah! “Don’t make me eviscerate you.”

David Read:
Right, exactly! “Don’t push those buttons, man, I’m armed. Just let me run back to my quarters.”

David Nykl:
There’s more to Zelenka than people knew, that’s for sure.

David Read:
Absolutely! Henrik Danielsson, “Do you feel that Radek’s expertise was ever underused or put in the shade?”

David Nykl:
Well, there’s two answers. One, yeah, I guess you could say that sometimes he was eclipsed by McKay, but then there was the strange thing at the very end of the show where it turns out that this whole time he’s been working on a thing called the wormhole drive, which is kind of like… So, was it underused or did he come up with a thing that actually saves Atlantis at the very, very last moment?

David Read:
That could be fair.

David Nykl:
I’ll throw one more in there, too, is that we were carrying around these Dell laptops, which weighed about 27 pounds, and we were first told, when we got to Atlantis, that it would be papers and that everything would be on these things. Bear in mind, this was the year 2003… No, 2004, and I sort of thought, “Well, these should, instead of having keyboards, you should just be able to interface directly with the screen of the laptop.” At that time, it was a revolutionary idea, and a year later Steve Jobs comes out with the iPad.

David Read:
That’s fair.

David Nykl:
And Zelenka invented it. Zelenka invented the iPad. Alright, carry on.

David Read:
I lost my place. I think that there is also a perspective of humility with you, as well, that I think goes into that. I never heard of this term before until we were meeting with each other last time, with Christopher. You called yourself a “studio rat,” and I was like, “Hm, OK.” You were like, “I’m just a studio rat,” i.e., you were around on set, you would be brought in, you would do the job, you would do the job well, and you would play your part. And so, you would also think there would be a disconnect as well from the content, to a certain degree, it was like “Zelenka has served his purpose, his purpose for the show.” Is that fair?

David Nykl:
Yeah. I’m trying to understand the question there, but yeah, in terms of the approach to it, yeah. I do believe that you need to serve the text, I think that’s the actor’s purpose, because these are the guys that are engineering what happens in the long run, so I think the kind of help that you can get could be coloring the character and doing what you can with the character, but I wouldn’t have thought that I would be able to tinker with the cosmology in the world that they were, no, I wouldn’t do that.

David Read:
Claireburr, “You gave an entire speech in Czech in Letters from Pegasus. Was that something that was written out for you, or were you invited to create your own version of whatever you would like to interpret that was unique to the Stargate world, that would have caused serious problems were it released back on Earth, to a friend or family member?”

David Nykl:
Yeah, no, that was a written bit…

David Read:
OK.

David Nykl:
…the monologue that she’s referring to. The one thing that I did is, I just translated it. That was just an overnight translation, because they wrote in English. One of the things that a classic screenwriter dilemma is, you don’t describe what’s happening on screen because people see what’s happening, so what they did is that they used it in Czech, is that I was describing what was happening on screen, which is the city rising, and it’s the title sequence where the city is rising up from the depths. And I go on, and it was written out in English, “It’s a beautiful sight, it’s a beautiful sight, the city was rising, the city came up from the depths, I’ve never seen anything like that before.” Just sort of an amazement at the thing, but they said they wanted it in Czech. So, I translated it the night before, it was, like, a paragraph, and I was supposed to be prepared to do both versions, which was the Czech one and then the English one, that would have been. And the director for that show was a fella by the name of Mario Azzopardi, I remember him, and he was a very forceful kind of guy.

David Read:
Intense.

David Nykl:
Intense, yeah, an intense director, and it was the first shot up in the morning, first thing in the morning, it was like 6 AM, camera sets up and we come in and Mario goes, “Let’s do the Czech version first.” So, I said, “Fine, I’m ready for that, let’s do the Czech version.” We do one take, we did the Czech version as you see it, and they wrapped up the camera and we’re moving on and there was no version in English. And I said, “Well, I know the speech in English,” and it was Mario’s way of forcing the editors to choose the Czech version because there was no other version available, so that the Czech would make it in, because he was concerned that they would opt to the English and he would rather have had it in Czech, so he selectively chose to do that.

David Read:
Hats off to Mario because he pushed that direction of Zelenka’s character all the more, because it worked.

David Nykl:
Yeah, that’s what I was trying to say. It takes a whole bunch of people to create the character.

David Read:
Planettv, “When you would do these translations, were any of the cast particularly interested in what you had said?” Was there anyone who always was like, “OK, what does that mean?”

David Nykl:
Yeah, sometimes I got asked by the director!

David Read:
“What are you saying on my screen?”

David Nykl:
“What are you saying?” And I would just say, “Oh, it’s nothing, it’s just sort of, “Oh, gosh, darn”, and “darn”, this sort of stuff. I’m trying, I’m remembering our audience.” In the meantime, I’m doing none of that, I’m full-on swearing, cursing.

David Read:
One of my favorite films is Air Force One, and Harrison Ford’s secretary comes in, “Mr. President, sign this.” And he does, and she walks off with it, and he’s like, “What was it?” She’s like, “Oh, it’s nothing.” It’s like, you could have just signed away the detonation of a country. That’s funny. DR Essex. Couple more for you, and then I’m gonna let you go. DR Essex, “Did you ever get to incorporate any nerdy dialog…? Did you ever get to make any additions or modifications to the technobabble to facilitate the story at all?” Or did you just play it as read?

David Nykl:
Pretty much played it as read, I mean, it was a struggle enough just to play it as read, so, inevitably I think there might have been tolerated mistakes, in terms of what is in an edit to whatever. But usually it’s A plus B tempered by C equals D. So, it’s dilithium crystals… I don’t know what…

David Read:
Zee-PM’s. And the McGuffins.

David Nykl:
Yeah, Zed-PM’s, yeah.

David Read:
Right!

David Nykl:
So, yeah, it was X times Z… So, you just had to get whatever those particular… And it wasn’t always just the Zed-PM’s or the Zee-PM’s, it was also all the other tech that we would encounter. We tried to make it work so that we could be understood. But from other actors that worked on other franchises, like, for example, I would talk to some of the actors… Dominic Keating, for example, in the Star Trek franchises, and they said that Paramount was way more strict, that they wanted them to…

David Read:
Oh yeah.

David Nykl:
Those actors had to be word perfect. That wasn’t my experience with Stargate. Stargate was like, everywhere you’d try to stay as close to the words as possible, but there seemed to be a tolerance for normal human etiquette, so I think that’s what really helped.

David Read:
Star Trek was also set in the far future, so there was a tendency to make it a thing apart from us as much as possible, even though they were playing our music and referencing all of our stuff on a regular basis. Anyway.

David Nykl:
Yeah, that’s good.

David Read:
Marita Teien Tønder, “A question for you…” This is the second to last, “A question for you and the same question to Zelenka,” and I’m interested in what your answer is. “Linux or Windows?”

David Nykl:
Oh, God bless you. I’m not the computer nerd that you think I am, so Windows. Go ahead, I suspect there’s gonna be a part B.

David Read:
Do you think Zelenka would have appealed to the Linux demographic?

David Nykl:
Oh, Zelenka? Linux, for sure.

David Read:
I would think so.

David Nykl:
I’m sorry.

David Read:
No, you’re good.

David Nykl:
I’m sorry, I read the blank expression, but I wasn’t too sure to whom the question was addressed to. Zelenka, yeah, Linux, of course.

David Read:
And Ian wanted to know, “Is there anything that you have done recently that you really recommend that we check out now that everyone’s doing the whole streaming thing, the streaming wars are in full steam.”

David Nykl:
Thank you for this opportunity to answer that question. HBO Max, in the States – the problem is, is here in Canada, I’ve been having a great difficulty finding it – it’s called The Sleepers. There’s a thing, I think, on Amazon called just plain Sleepers, and it’s about Russia. That’s not it. It’s set in Czechoslovakia in 1989 and it’s called The Sleepers, and I play a character in there. It’s a six-part miniseries, it’s done by HBO Europe. It’s fantastic, it really has a great… It took almost a year to shoot, we shot it through the winter, some really great shoots in some great buildings. So, a really great six-episode thing, I recommend it, check it out, The Sleepers, from Czechoslovakia, we filmed it last year so it will be a Czech production from 2019 on HBO Max.

David Read:
Alright, we will have to do that. Are you in all six?

David Nykl:
I’m in the first five, I play an English agent.

David Read:
An English agent for a Czech show? Interesting. Alright.

David Nykl:
Yep.

David Read:
The Sleepers. Not the Russian one.

David Nykl:
Check it out, guys. Yeah, check it out.

David Read:
David, it has been wonderful having you, my friend.

David Nykl:
Thank you, guys, it’s been a real pleasure. Thanks for great questions and everything, and I hope you guys do well through all of this. Hang on, hang tough, we’ve only got a few more months to go, the world will come back and I’m really looking forward to seeing you guys in person. And great questions today, David.

David Read:
Thank you so much, sir, it’s good to see you. You take care of yourself, OK, we’ll be in touch. 2021.

David Nykl:
OK, bye-bye guys.

David Read:
Bye-bye. Alright. David Nykl, everyone. Hope you’ve enjoyed the program. Before I let you go, I have some artwork to share with you. This is… I went back and forth. On DeviantArt, there is so much Zelenka art, I was like, “Which one do I wanna showcase?” And I came up with this one, Guest Artist Elabeth. She created this, Dr. Radek Zelenka. “I really like this drawing,” she says, “it’s probably not a very good impression of the type of pose that the mild-mannered scientists would take, but I think it makes him look cool. For those of you not in the know, this is a character from Stargate Atlantis, where, for some reason, Zelenka isn’t credited as a main character. Whenever he is on, he is a guest, but I think he is worthy of being part of my little stint of drawing the characters of the show.” And I would have to agree as well. Let me introduce you to our sponsor for the month of December. Dial the Gate has partnered with 3D Tech Pro for the month of December to give you a chance to get your very own desktop Stargate and customized Ancient keychain. To enter to win these items, you need to use a desktop or laptop computer and visit DialtheGate.com, scroll down to ‘Submit Trivia Questions’. Your trivia may be used in a future episode of Dial the Gate, either for our monthly Trivia Night, or for a special guest to ask me in a round of trivia. There are three slots for trivia: one easy, one medium and one hard. Only one needs to be filled in, but you are more than welcome to submit up to three. Please note, the submission form does not currently work for mobile devices. Your trivia must be received before 1st January 2021. If you are the lucky winner, I will be notifying you via your email right after the start of the year to get your address and what word you want for your Ancient keychain. I hope it’s not a really long word. Be sure to check out our partners’ website for more Stargate-related merchandise at 3dtech.pro. If you really enjoyed the show, subscribe, click the Like button, it does make a difference with YouTube’s algorithm. Next week’s lineup is here. So, the second two are live, the first is pre-recorded from a couple of days ago. Gary Jones did a fan Q&A with six different sets of Stargate fans. It was a fun two-and-a-half hours. Poor Gary, man, he made it through it, but at the end of it was like, “I gotta get the guy out of there!” The fans, they were just wonderful. We have six pre-taped stories that we’re gonna be sharing with you over the next three months: December, January, February. So, that’s pre-taped, that starts at 11AM Pacific time. Rick Worthy, who played Kytano, will be taking your questions live on the same day, December 13th at 1PM Pacific Time, followed by Mr. Garwin Sanford, who played Narim and Simon on SG-1 and Atlantis, respectively. He will be starting at 3PM Pacific Time as well. That’s all I’ve got for you. I appreciate you tuning in, it means a lot to me that you are out there and sharing the show with Stargate friends and potentially family, if you watch the franchise with family. Now that SG-1 is on Netflix, it’s gonna be really interesting to watch what happens. I’m hoping for more of a resurgence for the franchise, similar to what happened when… but not, certainly, as big as when SG-1 moved from Showtime to SyFy, but one can only hope. Let’s get some wind in our sails and get this thing promoted so that Brad can move forward with SG4. Please, God, that would be wonderful. Alright folks, we’ll catch you next Sunday. I’m David Read, we’ll see you on the other side.