For our second fan interview, Gary sits down with a father-daughter duo to discuss how the franchise helped bring them together as a family — not to mention a fairly interesting couch!

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0:00 – Opening Credits
0:27 – Gary Jones Introduces Paul and Kiersten
2:58 – Family Bonding over Stargate
6:49 – Richard Dean Anderson Named Walter
8:55 – Don S Davis Named Harriman
12:30 – Favorite Episodes
14:46 – Kiersten’s Adria Costume
17:22 – Want to Share Your Story?
17:51 – End Credits

***

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

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TRANSCRIPT
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Gary Jones:
Hi, everybody. Welcome to Dial the Gate. I’m Gary Jones. You might know me as the Chevron Guy or Chief Master Sergeant Walter Harriman. Essentially, my job was so important that if I didn’t open and close the gate, you would have never seen Richard Dean Anderson come back down the ramp, so what can I say? I guess part of what I’m doing here is I’m allowing fans to come into your world the way that the show allowed the SG-1 team to come into yours. I’m speaking today to Paul Fowler and his daughter Kiersten. Kiersten and Paul, how are you?

Paul:
Wonderful.

Kiersten:
I am wonderful.

Paul:
Great to see you.

Gary Jones:
Great to see you too. Paul, you look like you’re … What room are you in?

Paul:
Blank background. I painted these walls, so I wanted to show ’em off. I figured instead of a mess behind me…

Gary Jones:
All right. OK, good. And Kiersten, where are you? You guys are in different cities?

Kiersten:
Yeah. I live in Jersey City right across the river from Manhattan, and I’m in my living room. Very exciting.

Gary Jones:
Great. Across the river from Manhattan. That’s your reference point, as soon as you say Manhattan ’cause I’m … I can actually say I’m on the other side of the country to Manhattan. I’m in Vancouver. I’m 3,000 miles away from Manhattan, but as long as I say Manhattan I just sound very uptown. And where are you, Paul?

Paul:
I’m right across the river from Philadelphia. So, close, but not too close. A good hour and a half drive up to her.

Kiersten:
Far enough.

Gary Jones:
That’s not that far. It’d be quicker if we did have a Stargate. How many times have you wished in your life that you had a Stargate? How many?

Paul:
I can’t count. I just can’t count. Or even rings, I’ll take them.

Kiersten:
This is a lame answer. Every single time I jump in a pool, because the pool is the closest I can get to what it might feel like to go through a Stargate. I see the waves and everything, so every time I jump in, I think of the Stargate.

Gary Jones:
The kawoosh. Every time you jump in, you create your own kawoosh. We talked in Chicago a couple of years ago, didn’t we?

Paul:
Yes.

Gary Jones:
You’ve mentioned how the show brought you and your daughters together, and you bonded over the show. Tell me a little bit about that.

Paul:
Kiersten, you wanna go first?

Kiersten:
That’s pretty easy. From my perspective, I was just a little girl who wanted to hang out with her daddy.

Kiersten:
And I wanted to watch what he watched just to be there with him. But what is so wonderful about Stargate, besides the fact that it’s family-friendly and it touches on all these social issues, is even as a child, I loved it, and I loved watching it. And then, it just so happened, as the years went on and I got older, I was still coming down like, “OK, is it Stargate time?”

Paul:
They were great memories.

Kiersten:
On TV, every night.

Paul:
I would be, “It’s Friday night, it’s Stargate night. New episodes are coming out. We gotta watch it.”

Kiersten:
I remember the old couches too, throughout the years that we would sit on when we watched it. Not the green one.

Gary Jones:
Do you remember that green couch, Paul?

Paul:
I do. That was a big couch.

Kiersten:
It was good enough, though, to watch TV.

Gary Jones:
It’s a good thing the show was never titled Star Couch. The leads would sit on a couch and travel through time on a couch. They wouldn’t really do much. It’s good that it was something named Stargate.

Kiersten:
I think it would be a little anticlimactic if they just sit down like a couch potato, and then, “Boom,” in a different universe.

Gary Jones:
Exactly.

Paul:
They might pull things outta cushions and stuff. “Oh, here, I got a Zat gun. I have this.”

Kiersten:
That’d be smart. They could surprise ’em, ah.

Gary Jones:
My God. See, that’s where you need a show like Time Couch. You have a guy who’s a couch potato, doesn’t do anything, but there’s this magic couch that travels through time. And like you say, he reaches behind the cushions and whatever he needs to help save the day, it’s fallen behind the cushions.

Kiersten:
It’s everything.

Gary Jones:
Wouldn’t you watch a show like that? You’d watch a show like that. Time Couch. I’d watch that show.

Kiersten:
It’s original.

Paul:
And of course, you would have to be in charge of the time machine. Date locked in, time locked in.

Gary Jones:
Or my character would be the upholsterer. I’d be the equivalent to the technician on the show. I’d be the upholsterer, so whenever he came back, whatever adventures he went through, I’d be, “Oh, my God. What did you do to these cushions? What the hell did you … What happened? I’ve gotta get this on the sewing machine and fix up these cushions.” That’s what I would be. And of course, like I started out on Stargate, having no name, I would be the upholsterer.

Kiersten:
Trying to picture the Stargate characters on the couch and who’s sitting next to who. I can only imagine the antics that would happen. ‘Cause there’s no way Neil would not completely lay out on the couch and take up the whole thing with his head back.

Gary Jones:
Exactly. You’d really get to see the different statuses by who sat where and how much space they took up. If I was in the script as the upholsterer, I know the fans would find a way to call me the cushion guy or something like that. Like they did with the Chevron Guy. It’d be, “Oh, you’re the cushion guy?” And I don’t have a name yet. I won’t have a name for 10 years.

Paul:
Or your name will be given to you by another character, either Hammond or… Richard Dean Anderson in one episode, he’s like, “Walter?”

Gary Jones:
I know. “Walter.” And I remember being in the scene and looking at him and going, “Who’s he talking to?” And because it was Richard Dean, I was, “He’s the lead.” When he said that, I thought, “Oh my God, did I miss that in the script?” ‘Cause I was reading my lines and I would read his lines but not really concentrate on his lines. I would be more listening for my cue line. But I thought, “Did I actually miss being called Walter?” And I think because it took place in the episode 2010, and it was in the future, I thought, “Well, maybe my character’s name, it’s just a different name or I’m not the same guy.” I couldn’t figure it out until after the scene was shot, and then they came over to Richard and said, by the way, he said, “Rick, Gary’s name is not Walter.” And he goes, “Well, it is now.” ‘Cause basically that was him saying, “We’re not reshooting that.” It was like, “I called him Walter and that’s his name now, so people, figure it out!” And then slowly but surely, after that episode, I just saw my name. I went from Norman Davis to suddenly I was Norman Walter Davis in the script. And I was, “Oh my God, the power of the star of the show.” He’s like, “That’s who he is now.”

Kiersten:
“You’re Walter now.”

Gary Jones:
And then I think after that, they were, “OK, well, it can’t be Norman Walter Davis. There’s three names.” And they got rid of Norman, so then I was Walter Davis, and then shortly after that, that’s when Don Davis, God, it was… And there was another Davis, like a Major Davis in the show too. I said to Brad once, “Do you have a Davis key on your keyboard, where you’re writing scripts and you can’t come up with a name, you hit the Davis key and it automatically assigns the name Davis to a character?” And he’s, “Yeah, I think I do.” But Don Davis was the one who was asking me to open the iris and he said, “Open the iris, Harriman.” But he was saying “Airman,” because I was in the Air Force. And it was the first time that it was actually written in the script, airman, that he was calling me airman, you’re an Air Force guy. But because of Don’s mangled Missouri accent, “Open the iris, Harriman.” And he said it like that every time. And I knew it was “Airman” in the script, so it didn’t mean anything to me. I was, “Yeah, OK,” opening the… And then after we shot the scene, I heard them talking, the script supervisor talking to the director, ’cause I can’t remember which episode it was. They were, “What did Don say?” That’s a strong Don accent. They were, “What did Don just say?” And he’s, “Open the iris, Harriman.” “Yeah, but it didn’t sound like ‘airman.’ It sounded like Harriman.” And they were, “OK, well then his name’s Harriman.” That’s literally how it happened.

Kiersten:
“Slap it on, that’s the name.”

Gary Jones:
So, Don was the one who inadvertently named me Harriman. And then finally they went, “OK, well then he’s no longer Norman Davis, he’s Walter Harriman.” And I just moved into another complete set of names.

Kiersten:
At least that was on TV. Something similar to that happened to me in real life, where oddly enough, I have this — who’s now a very close friend — very eccentric fellow. I introduced myself, I go, “Hi, I’m Kirsten.” He goes, “Nice to meet you, Jasmine,” and then continued to call me Jasmine every time we hung out. He decided that was my name. And I would correct him and he would be, “Sounds good, Jasmine.” And to this day, we still talk about it because he finally gave it up. It took a year. I was Jasmine for a year.

Gary Jones:
Really?

Kiersten:
Yeah. He’s a really funny guy. I don’t know why he did it. I asked him and he said, “‘Cause I felt like it.”

Gary Jones:
That’s pretty funny.

Kiersten:
So, I know what it’s like to be given a name involuntarily.

Gary Jones:
For me, it meant that I was further embedded in the show because they’re not gonna mess around and change names and keep me there. I swear it’s probably the only time in a show over the course of 10 years that the same character has had a complete name change. I can’t think of any other shows that I know of where they did that. Sometimes they’ve kept the character’s name and switched the actor — that’s happened in various shows — but not kept the actor and switched the names. That’s wild to me. So, you guys used to get together and bond over Stargate. What are some of your favorite episodes that you remember hanging out and enjoying? What episodes jump to mind?

Paul:
A bunch, to be honest with you. Of course, “Children of the Gods,” I finally got her involved in that. Not the Showtime version, the Director’s Cut. “Lost City” was a good one. She came down, we saw “Lost City” together. That’s when everything was exciting. Atlantis was starting, the Stargate Universe, or franchise, was getting better. “Window of Opportunity,” of course. That’s just hilarious.

Kiersten:
That one is so funny. It gets me every single time.

Gary Jones:
Great. That’s wonderful.

Gary Jones:
My favorite would be “Heroes Part 1 and 2” because that’s when I got to be interviewed by Saul Rubinek and say, “I open and close the gate, that’s pretty much my job.” That was Rob Cooper, the producer and writer, just making fun of my character, and that’s all I did. That’s really all I did. I looked like I did more, but I opened and closed the gate. That was really, really fun to shoot, ’cause it was funny dialogue, and it was just a blast. But listen, speaking of “Window of Opportunity,” I’m just gonna wrap it up now and thank both of you for joining me today. It’s been really great talking to you. And actually, I love the fact that even, forget just being in person, that we were actually able to do it again in Zoom. So, in whatever iteration it’s shown up in, we’ve managed to pull it off. Paul and Jasmine, thank you so much for joining me.

Kiersten:
No, thank you so much for this Window of Opportunity. It really was so wonderful, and it shows how tight-knit the Stargate fan community really is.

Paul:
Yes.

Gary Jones:
It does.

Gary Jones:
It does. Hey, Kirsten, this is cool because you’ve actually gone that extra mile and dressed up as a Stargate character. Can you tell us a little bit about the character and something about the costume?

Kiersten:
Of course. First, I thought everyone might be surprised that Adria was still alive, seemingly. But the costume was really fun to make. I had a friend, Kelsey, who does some tailoring, and she’s more into the Renaissance theme, which is why I think you see some of that patterning here. But the hardest part to make absolutely, I have to stand for this, is these sleeves. And I know Adria had the yellow in the middle, but we could not get that to seam right. So, we did this and the orange dress, and I had this beautiful necklace. It’s gone now. But I picked Adria because she’s such a strong character, and even though she’s the bad guy, she has that female power about her of being so… I don’t know, her leadership and the way she looked at things was very different than mine. And I’m always somebody who loves the good guy, or say the Nox, for example. And it was fun to try to be a villain for once and to dress up as someone who just as her personality I looked up to because she did have some conflict with the Ori and her mother and everything going on. And even though she chose the wrong path, I think she had the potential to have chosen another path if maybe she was led in a different direction.

Gary Jones:
I think villains don’t usually think of themselves as villains. So, rather than refer to her as a villain, why don’t we just call her a badass?

Kiersten:
That’s actually how it felt when I watched her. She was a badass.

Gary Jones:
She’s a badass. And you can have a badass hero or a badass villain, and I think badass just about covers it.

Kiersten:
I think you’re right.

Kiersten:
And even though the Ori were conquering the universe, it felt very cool to be someone different and to come to Stargate Con dressed up as someone who wants to conquer the universe with my little sister as the Nox, who just wants peace and to be left alone.

Gary Jones:
Nice. Well, thank you so much for going the extra mile and getting a costume made and showing up and telling us all about it.

Kiersten:
Oh, thank you.

Gary Jones:
That’s brilliant.

Kiersten:
Thank you so much for having me. I can’t wait to dress up again.

Gary Jones:
You’re welcome. Talk to you later, you badass.

Kiersten:
Thank you very much. Goodbye.

Gary Jones:
Bye. Hey, everybody. Thanks for watching this episode. Hey, do you wanna share your Stargate story on air with me? Email the show at [email protected]. That’s [email protected]. Tell us a little bit about how Stargate has helped you grow as a person or affected your life in a positive way. I’ll be recording more fan interviews in 2021, and you might be next. See you next time.