We never felt we got enough of actor Christina Cox in Stargate SG-1 and Atlantis, mainly because she made such a mark with her three roles! We are excited to have her on LIVE to talk “T’akaya,” “Kershaw,” “Teldy” and more!

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Timecodes
0:00 – Splash Screen
0:27 – Opening Credits
0:59 – Welcome
1:10 – Guest Introduction
1:25 – International Space Organization Tracksuit
4:02 – Getting the Acting Bug
10:11 – Auditioning in Modern Times
13:16 – Challenges with Auditioning Via Tape
15:37 – Jen Crane in Defying Gravity
17:13 – Not Retreating Into Yourself
18:43 – Christina in Season Four of Dexter
19:38 – T’akaya in “Spirits”
23:35 – A Week in Full-Face Prosthetics
25:42 – Working with the Wolf in “Spirits”
27:48 – Working with a Puma
29:26 – The Spirits and the Salish
30:52 – Kershaw in “The Sentinel”
34:09 – Shooting on September 11, 2001
38:01 – Teldy in “Whispers”
43:00 – The Fog in “Whispers”
44:50 – Taking the Team Forward
46:17 – Janina Gavankar
49:35 – Christina’s Favorite Show Growing Up
52:31 – The Chronicles of Riddick
55:47 – Connecting with the Crew
56:25 – Speakers Corner
57:15 – “Whispers” Reunion?
58:59 – Captaining a Great Team
59:55 – Thank You, Christina!
1:00:47 – Post-Interview Housekeeping
1:02:44 – End Creditsreat Team
59:55 Thank You, Christina!
1:00:47 Post-Interview Housekeeping
1:02:44 End Credits

***

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

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TRANSCRIPT
Find an error? Submit it here.

David Read:
Welcome to Episode 265 of Dial the Gate. My name is David Read. You’re watching the Stargate Oral History Project, and I have the pleasure of being joined in this episode by Christina Cox. You know her in Stargate as T’akaya, Lieutenant Kershaw, and Major Anne Teldy of Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis. Christina, what do you think of my outfit?

Christina Cox:
I think it’s fantastic! Oh my God, where did you get this?

David Read:
So I worked at Propworx, who was selling off the Defying Gravity merchandise. It’s a little tight on me because I’ve gotten kind of fat. But this is one of the original track suits from the show.

Christina Cox:
Yes.

David Read:
So this here is, [reads patch] “International Space Organization.” And if you have not seen the series, folks… oh, look!

Christina Cox:
There. I’ll just put it there for the whole…

David Read:
The mission patch.

Christina Cox:
You have more than I do. Look, this is it. This is what I have. I have this and I have a sweatshirt, like a crew cast and crew sweatshirt. So that’s pretty dope.

David Read:
Would you like some props?

Christina Cox:
Like which props?

David Read:
I will… I’ll email you a couple of things afterwards that I bought along the side. I got some duplicates of things, and I’m going to send you some.

Christina Cox:
I realized that, yeah, I hadn’t been aware of those prop sales until a friend of… a fan who became a friend, because he’s also a photographer and we trade photography deets with each other. He ended up buying some of my stuff because I was like, “I don’t want that out there. That was… what?” it was a swimsuit or something.

David Read:
Oh, yeah.

Christina Cox:
So he bought it for me and he burned it. He showed me him burning it so that I knew it hadn’t gone anywhere. I was like, “OK.” I would have loved one of those tracksuits though. They were great. And do you know, the white… our white astronaut suits? The workmanship that went into building those was out of this world.

David Read:
They were used in other shows. I know that.

Christina Cox:
Stop it.

David Read:
Especially with the thruster pack and everything else. By the time that we got them at Propworx, they had been used by someone else, I think. But yeah, no, it’s absolutely… if you want this, I will give this to you. I’ve had it for a number of years. If it would mean that much to you, I would be happy to send it.

Christina Cox:
We’ll talk about it.

David Read:
Yeah, absolutely.

Christina Cox:
I’ve digressed already, so this is a sign of things to come.

David Read:
Well, you know what? This is how you get to know someone and, whew, Yeah.

Christina Cox:
Is it a little hot? Is it a little synthetic? Do you want to take that bad boy off? Just put it in an envelope and…

David Read:
Take it all off, David. I am really delighted to have you. You have always been one of my favorites in the franchise. And to be frank, it’s disappointing that we didn’t have you in more shows. I think had Season Six returned, I think Joseph Mallozzi has made it pretty clear that we were going to have to have the team back.

Christina Cox:
Yeah.

David Read:
But I want to go back a little bit further. I want to know how you got the acting bug, how old you were, and what made you fall into this thing and thinking that, you know, that this would be a thing for you?

Christina Cox:
Well, so it’s kind of twofold. One, I’m the littlest of three sisters. So it was like a constant like, “I’m over here!” You know, so going for attention came with the job of being the youngest sister. My middle sister was into all things arts and I revered her. And so I wanted… I thought if I did something cool that she did, you know, she would want to hang out with me. It didn’t work. You know, when your sister’s in high school and you’re in middle school or even grade school, it’s like, “yeah, no.” So I was an aspiring gymnast when I was a kid. I was OK. But I had a hip injury that was not getting any better. And back when I was doing gymnastics, there were no alternative therapies. There was no physio, there was no understanding of it. It was like, “go on the cement floor and do it or shut up.” And it didn’t age well. So I transferred into dance, which I love, and still love and still do. And I auditioned for Canterbury High School in Ottawa, which was where my family was living at the time for the dance program because I was super duper shy and didn’t want to be… did not want to speak in front of anyone whatsoever. I wanted to do gymnastics or I wanted to dance.

David Read:
You’re still being artistic. You’re still speaking, you’re still communicating.

Christina Cox:
Yes, 100%. Sometimes I think more effectively than with words. And while I was there, they asked me… I was talking with them, they’re like, “are you sure you don’t want to also audition for the theater program?” And I said, “why? I have no experience whatsoever.” And they said, “at this stage, that doesn’t matter. That’s what we’re here for. So go learn this monologue and come back and do it.” So I did. And they said, “we want to offer you a double major if you want to come here.” Yeah.

David Read:
This was high school.

Christina Cox:
This was high school. This was for grade nine.

David Read:
Wow.

Christina Cox:
I talked to my parents about it, and they made a decision that this place was too far, and it wasn’t in their schedules to be able to drive me there. And so I went to a regular high school. Boy, I made them regret that decision. I was not a very good kid in grade nine. And I was just skipping classes, because I was bored. I was still basically a straight A student, but I was bored. And so I just phoned it in. And then we moved to the Toronto area and I said, “I will be a great teenager if you find an arts program for me because I’m going out of my mind.” And at the time York University was just starting up this pilot project at Unionville High School in Unionville. It’s an apt name. And they had a music program, they had a dance program, they had a theater program and a visual arts program. And so I auditioned for both, knowing now that this was an option. And got in. And so I did theater and I only did the modern and contemporary part of the program because I didn’t have a ballet background because I had gone straight from gymnastics into just, whatever, jazz. So it also didn’t fit in the schedule. So I don’t have a solid ballet foundation, but I did do modern and contemporary and Broadway and all of that. As well as the theater program. And then I think in grade 12, I had to drop the dance because my hip was becoming such an issue and I just did theater. And then for fun, our theater… I’m telling you a really long story here, way too many details.

David Read:
Please, no, I’ll stop you.

Christina Cox:
We had an opportunity… I’ve got, of course, cat hair on my face. We had an opportunity to have real auditions for the Canadian stage company. Because we were season ticket holders and they knew we were from an art school and that we were working at, you know, hoping to become working actors. So as an exercise, they let us come in and audition for the Dream in High Park, which is the stage company’s yearly summer live in the park Shakespeare. And well, me and myself and one other person from my class, we got the job. They weren’t expecting to hire anyone, but they hired the two of us for all of the smaller roles and part of the chorus and all of that. And it was an amazing experience. And we did that two summers in a row. And then I went to Rye High and left after two years and have been working pretty much in TV and film ever since. Like I had been doing guest stars and whatnot through high school and the odd commercial here and there and a Gatorade commercial.

David Read:
So you were exposed to the lens?

Christina Cox:
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, then I just went from there. [I] haven’t really done theater. I had my first theater audition in 30 years, a couple of months ago and that was nerve wracking on a whole other level. But yeah, that’s how it started.

David Read:
I imagine it’s quite the transformation that you can see from 30 years ago to now with zoom and all this. Was that was the theater audition in person?

Christina Cox:
Yeah, it was good.

David Read:
OK. Good. Wow.

Christina Cox:
Yeah. I will… a friend of mine, Tony Napo. He has an acting class in town and I’ve gone in twice to act as a reader and offer a female perspective of the business and my thoughts and insight that I’ve accumulated, and I feel really sad for actors that are coming up now that have never had an audition in person to connect with another person, and there are casting directors who have never been in an audition room and I feel really grateful to be what now feels like the last generation that could… Like when I was auditioning here in the 1990’s – and so many things were happening in Toronto in the 1990’s – it was all in person. Like the idea of putting something on tape… there’s the famous story of Scott Speedman sending in his tape for Batman from the Citytv speaker’s corner because nobody had a video camera, right? And you would go in a room, and it didn’t matter who they had in mind in LA and they had seen people in LA and or New York or wherever. You could go in a room and the writer was there, and the director was there, and the producers were there, and a casting director who had some impact on the choices was there. And you could go in and nail it and you could feel the energy in the room shift, “I think I might have gotten that.” And that in and of itself was such an experience and the directors got to see if you could take notes, if you could adjust or if you were a one-trick pony. And if that was the trick they wanted, that was great. But if you couldn’t work nuance or tweak the performance or give them something completely different – it was like a work session, which you don’t get now. And kids today, they really… I don’t know, I’m not a fan of self-tapes. Because I won’t be by myself on set, I will be working with another actor.

David Read:
That’s correct.

Christina Cox:
I will be on set in the room with them and we will hopefully have an exchange of energy and emotion that, you know, plays in and changes the direction of the scene. And that’s really hard to do in your living room with your cat scratching on the door and, you know, your beleaguered husband reading for you for the 50,000th time. So it’s… it feels like a totally different thing. Like it’s a completely different skill set. And I know people that are great at it. I crave the connection. So it’s a thing for me.

David Read:
I had Rachel Luttrell and Tori Higginson on a few weeks ago. And they were talking about when you record a tape, you know, it’s eight to 10 hours of prep work often. You have 10 million ways that you can interpret this role. And you don’t get to demonstrate, like you said, that you can take a note and pivot. And that’s mostly what Tori said, and Rachel said; and on top of that, they often look at just the first 20 seconds that you send in.

Christina Cox:
Yeah.

David Read:
And they do not often send, now, even a “thank you so much.”

Christina Cox:
Not even a “no” if you… if it’s been seen.

David Read:
It’s just a void.

Christina Cox:
Yeah. Yeah, it’s… you’re just sending off all your heart and soul off into the abyss. It’s really… it makes it really challenging because one you might have an interesting take on it, but it might not be the take that they wanted, but then they think that you totally misunderstood the material.

David Read:
How do you know? You can’t ask for adjustments.

Christina Cox:
No. And they can’t… in their defense, they can’t give feedback because now they can accept 2000 tapes. When you ran a session, you had to cherry pick your first maybe 20, 25 people. And, you know, some will say that makes it really hard for an up-and-comer to get in the room. But it also, it makes you earn your keep because you have to be really good and you have to work your way up. And you can have an actor who is really great in the comfort of their living room, but I think, how do they know how to hit their marks? How do they know how to find the lens? How do they understand when camera’s going to a screamer, like they don’t understand what that means and how they have to modify their performance because everything they’re doing, they’re learning in this little safe little bubble and that’s a big shock to step on set. And yeah, I don’t envy this next generation. But hey, why worry we’re all going to be replaced by AI anyways.

David Read:
Jeez! it’s like Simone with… oh, I forget the actor, but, man, I mean, yeah, just absolutely, you know, this is… we all got to hang on.

Christina Cox:
Yeah. I’m super grateful to the amount of amazing experiences that I’ve had on set and the friends that I’ve made.

David Read:
Can you give me an example of a role that hit you deeply in ways that you didn’t anticipate, or maybe you connected with the material immediately, but pushed you in ways that you didn’t anticipate or challenged you in ways that you thought were unexpected? No pressure.

Christina Cox:
200 episodes of things.

David Read:
Yeah, I know.

Christina Cox:
Well, you know, Jen from Defying Gravity was a really interesting one because she was a lot more free than I am as a person. In so much as I have never jumped on a bar and whooped and partied and I’ve never been that person, right? And it doesn’t mean that I don’t, you know, I don’t have fun and I’m not full of joy. It doesn’t come out of me like that. And I remember reading a scene that, like, she’s slamming shots and she’s dancing on the bar and I was like, “oh no! I don’t know where to find that.” And it was terrifying to figure that out because it just was… I saw those people in college and I watched and I was like, “really? Oh, wow. You’re really… OK. You’re doing that.” And I think that maybe it was that I am, contrary to popular opinion, fairly shy. Kind of, you know, a bit of an introvert. So I have to like, you know, a little organ grinder that the monkey pops out of. That’s how I feel when I have to go to an event, when I have to be in a crowd, I’m like, “OK. [winds organ]” to not retreat into myself and be completely locked down and then, you know, come off as like aloof or rude. But it’s mostly because I’m just super awkward in big crowds. I’m good one on one with people. I get overwhelmed. And I’ve had to… I take it like a job now when I go to an event to – not in a way that it’s arduous or anything like that, but then I go, “OK. Let’s see how curious can I be about the people that I’m meeting.” And I find that that’s so much more interesting to ask them questions. Because I don’t like talking about myself. I don’t watch the stuff that I do.

David Read:
Oh, OK.

Christina Cox:
No, I do it if either felt right or it felt off. It fell off. I’ll ask the director for another take. I will watch once to hate myself and wish I’d done everything differently. And then once if it’s going to go on a demo. But other than that, I’m not like… not sitting around like, “Oh [inaudible]. That was good.“

David Read:
No. You’ve put it away. “What’s next?” Yeah.

Christina Cox:
Yeah. It’s about the work for me. You know what I mean? The being on set, the performance of it. Someone told me that Dexter is re-airing right now and they just worked through the whole series and level… “level four.” My daughter’s a gymnast, so I was like”level four.” Season Four is one of the favorite seasons.

David Read:
With the Trinity killer. Yeah.

Christina Cox:
Yeah. Oh, John Lithgow at the table read. I just about like… I was like, “oh [feints].” [I] could barely speak, I was so nervous. Plus everyone else on the show, you know.

David Read:
No, he was extraordinary in that role. And you as well. Yeah, that’s right. Police officer who murdered her husband, daughter and another person on Dexter.

Christina Cox:
Yeah, serial killers and dominatrixes seem to be like my wheelhouse. My specialty.

David Read:
Your first appearance, though, in Stargate SG-1 was essentially as a goddess, though. And it wasn’t one that we had seen before with the boombox voice and outlandish personality and, you know, everything else. You portrayed a spirit of the Salish people, not the Salish from the Northwest, but the Salish from another world, a wolf alien named T’akaya. And it was not something that if you were watching this cold, it’d be like, “oh, it’s Christina Cox.” It would have been, “is that Christina Cox in under that makeup?” Tell me about this person and the makeup job and the airballs and everything that went in with it.

Christina Cox:
Oh my gosh! OK. So, where does one begin? OK. So makeup. I think it was like, it was three hours to put on, but here’s the kicker: it was four hours to get it off. Because it wasn’t a mask. It was appliances, sectional appliances, and those actually take longer. So it was a series of little air bladders that were lined up under the, I guess, I mean, to me, they kind of looked gillish. They looked like little gills. So there was a little air bladder and then a tiny little tube that ran over my ears. And then all of the tubes ran down the back of my neck. And it was all like secured under the dress. But when I was walking and talking and they were supposed to be doing this thing, there was [a] special effects makeup artist on his hands and knees crawling behind me with like turkey basters pumping the bladders full of air. But the bladders kind of went: crinkle, crinkle, crinkle. Crinkle, crinkle. And I’m talking and I had to wait for the crinkling to stop so that I could speak and you could understand it. And I remember on the second day, one of the producers came up to me and they said, “hey, one of the things that we really loved in your audition was you have a lower voice for a woman. And it’s a bit husky, right? Like it’s a bit more raspy. And we’re wondering why it sounds so different. And if you could, you know, speak in your normal voice.” And I was like, [nasal] “yeah, I’m sure. I’ll totally get right on that. I’m really sorry. I think we’re going to have to loop this.” I have a really squishy nose. I mean, look at this. Look at this squishy little nose. I broke it twice. And it just got compressed by the prosthetics. They were able to loosen it up a little bit by the third day so that it didn’t push my nose down so much. But I had to loop most of that.

David Read:
I can’t believe that they would approach and say, “yeah, can you not play like there’s a whole thing holding your nose down?”

Christina Cox:
It wasn’t in a malicious way, or anything.

David Read:
I’m sure.

Christina Cox:
They were just puzzled. And I’m so busy navigating stepping on the poor bastard with the turkey basters and like also is he looking up my skirt? Like, what’s happening? And trying to time the talking with the crinkling – that I wasn’t aware how much it had changed. And then I listened to the way I was when I was speaking with the producer, I realized, “oh, it’s because my nose is pushed down because I have no I have no bone at the end.” Yeah, we were all just really puzzled why it had changed so much. And then it was, “oh, of course.” So I did do ADR for most of the first day, I think. And then once the guys adjusted the makeup, it was easier to talk.

David Read:
Oh, [nasal] so you weren’t always like this for the entire… oh.

Christina Cox:
[nasal] Just on the first day.

David Read:
I see. Well, you know, gotta get the kinks out. Yeah. So three days on set with that makeup.

Christina Cox:
Oh, a week. It was a week, I think.

David Read:
Wow.

Christina Cox:
I have so much respect for people that do entire series in full face prosthetics. I don’t know if I could do it. Like I had minor ones for Elysium and those were easy. They were just like a little gelatin appliance with some blending on them. They were easy and they went on and off quite easily, but also 20 years later in prosthetic makeup. So I’m sure that it’s all very different.

David Read:
But someone like Doug Jones who has run the gamut, you know, he just has to have a zen place that he goes in his mind.

Christina Cox:
Yeah.

David Read:
Whatever cord bothered him in his brain, he found scissors and cut it.

Christina Cox:
Yeah. I chatted with him at the chiropractor. We have the same chiropractor. Yeah, we were just… random things that happened in Toronto. Yeah, he just has to – I can’t speak for him, but I would think you have to find a little room inside your brain to chill out while it’s happening. My friend, Andy Hallett, who’s now passed, he was in Angel and he had hours and hours every day to put it on, and his hands. His hands were also with the claws and everything, and the full eye contacts. Like that is a level of self regulation that I don’t think most people understand. And the crazy thing is, it’s harder to get out of it than it is to get into it. And that’s the part where you start to go, “I really got to get this off of me. I got to get this off of me.” And you want to start pulling and you really can’t because you’re going to pull your face off.

David Read:
Yeah. Nana Visitor, she played a Bajoran for years. And for the first couple of… for several shoots, she would pull her nose prosthetic off and she has scars to this day.

Christina Cox:
Oh my goodness!

David Read:
She learned very quickly not to do that.

Christina Cox:
Don’t do that. Don’t do that.

David Read:
Yeah.

Christina Cox:
One of the… are you going to ask me about the wolf?

David Read:
Oh my gosh! Christina, I was seriously about to say, were you on set the day that your alternate form was there, the wolf?

Christina Cox:
Yes. Yes, I was.

David Read:
Tell us, please.

Christina Cox:
Oh my gosh. You see them in pictures and you see them at the zoo and you think, “oh, look at that big husky dog.” No. The thing was enormous. It was so tall at the shoulder. Like I’m five-six. I’m not a giant. But this was so much bigger than even the biggest Malamute, the biggest dog. Maybe in the realm of shoulder height with a really, really, really big Great Dane, but gigantic and terrifying. And your fight flight freeze response, it kicks in when you see a wild animal of that big, and it… my brain just wasn’t braining as it tried to process the size of that wolf. Yeah. It was nut. And I stayed very far away from it.

David Read:
Martin Wood shared a story about when she’s sitting on the Stargate and they get the shot of the dog turning like this he made a sound that went, “Zshhhh” and got the dog… the wolf, turning its head sideways.

Christina Cox:
Oh! Amazing!

David Read:
But yeah, no, this is not a domesticated animal.

Christina Cox:
No.

David Read:
You can’t train… you can get some stuff out of it, but you can’t expect it to react like a Malamute or anything of that breed. And I’m surprised. Part of me is surprised that they let the actors near it.

Christina Cox:
Oh yeah.

David Read:
OK.

Christina Cox:
They can just hire another one. I had a mask on. They could just put someone else in there. No big deal. I don’t know the story of that wolf and its trainer and how it came to be in the, you know, working with that trainer. So it may have been abandoned as a pop. Like, I’d love to know the backstory of that actual animal. I was on another show called Blood Ties and we had a Puma.

David Read:
Whoa.

Christina Cox:
It was nuts. Its head was as big as a bread box and they have the… they’re the pit bulls of the jungle. They have the most crush power.

David Read:
Yes.

Christina Cox:
And yeah, she was not impressed with… she did not want to work anymore.

David Read:
Wow. Typical cat.

Christina Cox:
Right. So finicky. But I could get pretty close to her, but Kyle Schmid, my co-star, he was in it. He was going right up to it, because it had a cable on, right? There’s no like, let the Puma out.

David Read:
OK, so it wasn’t going to take the front of his face off.

Christina Cox:
No, it had… you know the braided steel wire that they use for holding up antennas.

David Read:
Construction equipment.

Christina Cox:
That’s what kitty’s leash was made out of. Right? I think she was like tied off to a car or something with like two guys roping her in. It was nuts. It was yeah.

David Read:
The cat’s fully comfortable. The cat will just stay in its position. Hold for cat. Action.

Christina Cox:
Hold for cat. Cue the tiger pee. Because if you want the kitty to go [growls], you have to… they take a little rag that’s got tiger pee on it and they piss her off. And then she’s… yeah. So then she’d start baring, showing her teeth and getting angry. You know, like, [exits] “la la la.”

David Read:
Well, I’m glad the wolf behaved on Spirits. Martin Wood, he’s so cool. And that was one of his earlier shows. The man has never stopped. He’s just wild. What did you think of that story: of an alien race that had freed the people of that world from its Goa’uld oppressors, but continued to live with them – because they were shapeshifters – continued to live with them as their ancestors had believed their spirits had? There was a symbiotic relationship. We can only assume that that continued afterwards, even though they knew who they really were. It was a cool concept.

Christina Cox:
No, and I love that it’s pulling from… you know, the show is shot in BC and that things like, you know, the history of the indigenous people there are being pulled into the storytelling. And I think that would be… I’d love to see it done again now. What would the perspective be on it now? And how you would… I mean, it’s ultimately a folktale, right?

David Read:
Yes.

Christina Cox:
Reimagining of a folktale that the spirits that these people… they believe that they embodied were actually real, but in a different way. It’s yeah, it’s really interesting.

David Read:
We didn’t see you again until Season Five. There was an episode in Season Three called “Shades Of Grey,” where Jack O’Neill appeared to, well, lose his shit and, you know, get sucked into this organization, this Black Ops organization. And what was really happening was he was turning a lot of them… he was finding the moles in the outer edges of the people who were involved in the Stargate program. And by the end of that episode, they were all taken into custody. Now, this was the first time that this had happened in Stargate, to my knowledge, that extra footage was shot for an episode that was designed to appear like it had been shot in a previous episode. It was retconning the end of the Season Three episode “Shades Of Grey” into “The Sentinel.” And in that, you were arrested and appear again, but for the first time in the Sentinel as Lieutenant Kershaw. Tell me about coming back to the show three years later.

Christina Cox:
Well, I think there was… you know, on any show when someone’s appeared on it, they’re reticent to bring you back again because it takes the viewer out of their ability to be present with you as a new character. But the fact that I had full face prosthetics and I had just finished a film called Better Than Chocolate at the time, that’s why I was even in Vancouver. I hadn’t been living there. I had only gone out to shoot this movie. And so that’s why my hair was really short and blonde and spikey. That was because it had been cut off for that movie. And I know by the… I can… my memory, it works in interesting ways. And I read a study about actors’ memories – because we have to load so much information into one day and then spit it out, and make room for the next day’s dialogue, that it really makes us have great short-term memories. But I also tend to scoop out things that happened on the days of those really intense dialogue days or whatever. Something completely unrelated could happen at home, and I won’t remember it. But I can track it by my hair. I’m like, “oh, I must have been here. Because that was when they chopped it off and dyed it blonde. So that was around. 1999 or whatever it was.”

David Read:
That’s right.

Christina Cox:
Yeah. And I was really happy to go back because my favorite characters are law enforcement and soldiers. And I really resonate with those… that personality type or that archetype. And so I was thrilled to come back as a soldier, but I was, you know… you’re always kinda bummed to be the bad guy because you know you’re not going to come back after that. You want to make sure you don’t die so there’s a chance of returning, or do something really terrible and not return. But it was… I don’t know if you know this. If you’ve spoken to anyone else from that episode, we were shooting in a cave. There’s a section in it in a segment underground cave. Guess what day that was?

David Read:
So I know that for “Menace,” which was shot around the same time, that was 9-11. I did not realize that “The Sentinel” was in production on 9-11 as well.

Christina Cox:
You were shooting on 9-11. And I go for a run every morning or a yoga class or whatever and I got up at five or something and I don’t turn the TV on. I don’t turn the radio on or anything. I got up, had my coffee, went for a run. And as I was coming back – I think my call time was like 6.30 or something. And as I was coming back to my apartment, it just felt weird out on the streets in Vancouver. Like it was too quiet. No one was out. No one was driving anywhere. There was like, it was just too still, which was unusual. So I went in. I thought, “this is so strange. What’s going on? I’m going to turn the TV on,” which I never do. Turn the TV on right as the second plane hit. And then you’re just standing there in shock, watching this all unfold. And you go, “are we going to go make a TV show today?” So you call, and production; nobody knew what to do. No one knew how to handle it. And we all go to set. And we are standing around crying because we don’t know what’s happening. And we put the monitors from Video Village – we tuned the monitors onto the news – and my parents were supposed to be on a flight from Las Vegas, coming home from Las Vegas.

David Read:
Oh my god.

Christina Cox:
I couldn’t reach them. It was just the most surreal, surreal day. And I don’t think we got anything done. We stood around for a while. Everyone just sort of was like, “what are we doing?” We wrapped early.

David Read:
Peter DeLuise directed.

Christina Cox:
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And Peter was just like, “this… we just, we have to, we have to be with this, right?” Not making a TV show. And then we regrouped and ultimately had to… we finished the show, and people had to find out were their people OK because half the show is American, right? You know, 90% of the people on the show are American. And as is Peter. So I had to track down my parents and everyone was fine. But it was a really weird surreal day. So I remember being in that cave very clearly and standing around those little monitors. Thank God they’re the old TV monitors that you can actually tune, unlike the new digital ones, right? So that’s the biggest sort of bummer. But that is the core memory of that episode, frankly.

David Read:
Wow. No, I think it’s important to tell these stories because I think it’s important not to forget where we all were. I didn’t know you were on Stargate that day. I only thought that “Menace” was in production, but I guess they were shooting more than one at once.

Christina Cox:
Yeah, maybe. It’s pretty ingrained in there, so yeah.

David Read:
Wow. Man, oh man. Did you have trouble getting… so you weren’t flying back to the United States? You were staying up in Canada for that?

Christina Cox:
No, I was there at that time.

David Read:
Did you, you were living in Vancouver at the time?

Christina Cox:
I can’t remember, maybe, probably.

David Read:
OK, but you didn’t have trouble flying back to wherever you were.

Christina Cox:
No, no, no, no. Nor would I. My parents actually ended up getting on a train from Vegas and I picked them up at the Vancouver train station and they stayed with me until flights went back to normal. Yeah.

David Read:
World changed.

Christina Cox:
Yeah.

David Read:
Man, oh man.

Christina Cox:
Yeah.

David Read:
You are one of the few talent… I cannot tell you the number of times that I have talked with someone who they wanted to do another episode and like, “we’ve seen your face. The audience knows who you are.” And then you’ll come across Garwin Sanford or… there are certain actors who do get a second life with their own face in the show. And that was you with Major Teldy in Stargate Atlantis’ “Whispers” in Season Five. This is one of my favorite episode of the show. And it felt like we got to finally see what Lieutenant Kershaw would have become had she not been corrupt. And frankly, a full girls unit is a badass idea.

Christina Cox:
I know, right!

David Read:
Right?

Christina Cox:
Right, Joe [Mallozzi]? Come on!

David Read:
15 seasons to get it, but we did, we got it.

Christina Cox:
Yes.

David Read:
Tell me about leading that team.

Christina Cox:
I mean, it’s just, you know, before we went live, we were talking about how there are certain experiences that are just milestone experiences. And a big part of that was that Joe Mallozzi just ran such a great set and it was so much fun. And I made one of my best friends in my entire life, Janina Gavankar, was in that episode. And that’s where we met. And we were like, “oh, Oh, you and me? Yep. We’re done. We’re in. We’re in. Besties for life.” And I say besties now because I have a 10 year old, but we went to our weapons training and I had done a lot of weapons work already at that point. And… I hate that I can’t remember the tactical consult that we had.

David Read:
That would have been Rob Fournier.

Christina Cox:
Yes! Yes. So Rob was putting us through our paces with our guns and our postures and it was when I learned that only amateurs do this, that they tilt their head and he was like, “put your hand up!” Yeah, it was great. It was great fun because if you’re playing those kinds of characters, I feel that you have to do your due diligence and you have to respect and honor their work, because especially when you start to get to know some of them, because I’ve now been on enough shows where we always have a tactical consultant that’s either, you know, I did a pilot in Miami and we had DEA and FBI and Miami SWAT – they all hold their guns differently and they all had different ways of doing things. And so everyone within this team that was like a multi-jurisdictional team had a different way of doing it. And I was DEA so I had to like DEA goes into close quarters into houses and people can be jumping out from doorways. It’s a very different thing than you know a cop with a weaver stance. So I just was like, “tell me everything, Rob. Let’s do this, let’s go.” And, and, you know, Janina was in the Star Wars video game.

David Read:
She sure was.

Christina Cox:
She sure was.

David Read:
Battlefront too.

Christina Cox:
Oh yeah. And she was telling me that the work that… the movement work that they got to do on that so that they were doing the proper, like the roll through the… you can see this lights me up, right?

David Read:
Of course.

Christina Cox:
So it was just… it was so much fun. And I had known Nicole de Boer from Toronto, from just auditions, from the time we were 16 or 17 forever. But we’d never worked together. And she had her little girl with her. And that was really fun, a little… like little one in the trailer door. And yeah, I think it should have been a spinoff series, but that’s just me.

David Read:
I think it could have worked as one, you know, or at the very least, like a limited series or mini series or something like we’ve got now, because it was an interesting group of people. They all had their own distinct personalities, despite the fact that we only had them for really just, you know, like a half an hour of screen time when it really boils down to it. But everyone kind of had their thing. You know, I felt bad for… oh, David, who played Vega? Who was it who played Vega? She got offed so fast.

Christina Cox:
Yeah!

David Read:
But that was a shock. Let me… let me for archive purposes. Let me give her her due.

Christina Cox:
Starts with an ‘S’.

DR;
She was played by Leela Savasta. Savasta was what you were thinking.

Christina Cox:
Savasta. I remember her last name. Yeah.

David Read:
Yes.

Christina Cox:
Yeah. It was a bummer to have to kill her because we were all having so much fun and we’re like, “we’re sorry!”

David Read:
Here’s your ratchet pull. That’s the new hook for the theater. You’re out.

Christina Cox:
Yeah, right.

David Read:
But no, that was… it was an atmospheric episode. Did you guys… did you feel the urge to cough through all of that? Or was it something that you got used to standing in with all of the fog?

Christina Cox:
Mostly I was worried about tripping on something and eating it. But there’s a couple different kinds of fog and they’ll… the atmosphere that they float in, that you rarely see done anymore on set, is a kind of chokey… it’s like it’s not a great tasting fog. I think it’s made some sort of vaporized oil product and it doesn’t feel amazing. We had it on Reacher and you kind of feel a little bit in the back of your throat, but I mean it makes things look amazing, right? It gives it this tone. Then there’s a mist that’s a little heavier. If you think rolling fog along the ground, but they want you clear up here. This was the guys where the effects team was just, you know, working their tails off to make sure it was at the right levels and that it moved right and didn’t immediately fall. But they… I mean, they executed it relatively, I think.

David Read:
Yeah, no, it’s one of the most iconic episodes of the show because of the visuals. And I think that it’s got… Stargate didn’t do horror very often, but when it did it, it was pretty darn good. And this was one of those where there were only like one or two jump scares in it. I’m not a big fan of jump scares, especially… particularly when there’s a lot of them. But if they are held back for specific moments, then it’s really cool. And I think that that was a great haunted house episode in that effect stage.

Christina Cox:
Yeah, I think, I think… I don’t know if it… was a blessing or a curse that it was so different, right? In terms of if what we’re talking about is whether or not we could have taken that squad and propelled them forward on their own arc. Maybe because it was such an outlier, it didn’t make sense how to bring them back in because that episode felt so different. Because, trust me, there was so much talk back and forth between the creative team and us about… and Janina and I and Joe about bringing them back that it really felt like something that was on the cusp of, you know, happening. And the fact that it didn’t was really one of the big disappointments because, A; I love my job. I love to be on set. That’s why I do this. It’s not for the… for me it’s all experiential, which is why I can tell you more about the days of being on set and the people that I met and how it felt rather than sort of look at the episode from the viewer’s point of view. And there is a chemistry, an alchemy that happens on great sets. And that’s the thing that I’m always looking for is; does it have that magic? And when we got together and we were running those scenes, I was like, “oh, there’s something good here. Like, this is really good.”

David Read:
When you come across a group of people whom you click with and whom you discover that you love to be with – I don’t care if you’re on a stage or if you are working in a Mexican kitchen, which is where I was when I was 17 years old – I loved going to work because I loved the people that I got to play with. And Janina Gavankar, I interviewed her shortly after that episode and I fell in love with that person, with that laugh, and that personality. She’s just… and she wouldn’t… if I was, like, saying something that I was like uncomfortable with, she was like, “veneer’s off, man, let’s go.” And that’s how she was. And I fell in love with her. And so I totally get it. Tell me a little bit about Janina Gavankar.

Christina Cox:
Oh my gosh.

David Read:
Right.

Christina Cox:
Well, you need a whole other hour.

David Read:
She lights up the room.

Christina Cox:
Oh, absolutely. She is so… it’s a word I use in my world. I don’t know if it resonates for anyone else: she’s just so shiny. And we met… we were in totally different places in our relationships and lives. And she was in a girl band, has a scholarship to university on a timpani solo. Like, I’m like, “what can you not do?!” She’s a genius. At everything she does that she wants to figure out, she does it at such a high level. And I’m like, “I’m still learning to eat with a spoon.” You just sort of stand back and watch Janina go. But we bonded over our love of DIY and like decorating and hiking. And she gave me some very serious, “girl, what are you doing with that man?” talks. And, you know, like really veneer’s off. She pulls the punches and she’s been a huge part of our lives and my husband and my life. And, you know, she’s essentially my daughter’s godmother. So yeah, she’s just a spectacular person.

David Read:
I have tried to get her on the show, and I’m going to try again, because we haven’t connected since that episode aired in 2009. And I just… I did a lot of interviews over at GateWorld at the time back then and I always think of her as one of those special people. She has that X factor. There’s just something about her. And no matter what she does, she is extraordinary at it. She goes full bore. Absolutely.

Christina Cox:
There’s no half measures. And I think that’s really… I know it’s certainly inspired me and pushed me to push myself further. In seeing that quality in her. Absolutely.

David Read:
Absolutely. Do I have a few more moments with you for fan questions? Is that OK?

Christina Cox:
Yeah, sure.

David Read:
OK.

Christina Cox:
We didn’t talk Defying Gravity.

David Read:
I know, but I didn’t want to take up too much of your time.

Christina Cox:
Yeah, I know. I make people… they start to fade out. “Christina. Stop talking.”

David Read:
Teresa Mc [asks]; Christina, what was your favorite program to watch when you were growing up? What did you click with?

Christina Cox:
Battlestar Galactica.

David Read:
The original.

Christina Cox:
The original. I also had some really nice brown and light brown suede Battlestar Galactica running shoes. I am convinced they made me way faster. I tried to get another pair when I grew out of them, but they didn’t make them anymore. And my speed just dropped.

David Read:
Oh, those Cylons, man, they’re going to march after you.

Christina Cox:
Oh, yeah. They’re gonna get me. So I loved Battlestar Galactica. I loved Starsky and Hutch. Dating myself, right? The Dukes of Hazzard. I even had the car. I fangirled out a little bit when I met John Schneider. I’m not going to lie. And then I was really into going to the movies, probably more so than TV because, you know, there was one TV in our house and it was usually my dad watching the news. So the original three Star Wars, most importantly: The Empire Strikes Back, I had the album of The Empire Strikes Back, the dialogue, and I could do that movie from beginning to end.

David Read:
The radio play?

Christina Cox:
Yes, all Christina radio play of Empire Strikes Back.

David Read:
So good. It is my favorite movie of all time.

Christina Cox:
Yes, 100%.

David Read:
Yeah.

Christina Cox:
Blade Runner is one of my all time favorites. I had an Indiana Jones phase for sure. Yeah, those were the big ones for me was Star Wars and wanting to be in one of them. I would lie on the ground as a dead body to be in a Star Wars movie. I don’t care. Whoever is listening; I’m available. Literally, if you need to, like, just be a dead person.

David Read:
The number of people who did full puppeteer prosthetics and take their heads off… a Stormtrooper element, it’s Simon Pegg or the villain. Yeah, it was a huge deal.

Christina Cox:
Oh my God. I have… I got my daughter Lego kit with Jenina’s character in it, the Lego Jenina.

David Read:
Of Iden?

Christina Cox:
Iden Versio. And so my daughter puts it together and we, like, send her pictures because now she’s in LA and we’re here and our cats have decided that Iden is the best cat toy of all time. One of our kittens is constantly running up to us and going [drops item from mouth], and it’s Jenina’s head all the time. So I think, unfortunately, Janina lost her wig in the recent cat extravaganza, so I’m really sorry. I have to get another one. Yeah.

David Read:
Ian brought this up. Chronicles of Riddick is one of my favorite films. And Ian also wants to know, what was like being on set for that with Vin Diesel?

Christina Cox:
Oh, it was amazing. The whole thing was.

David Read:
The whole film.

Christina Cox:
Yeah, it was good. I think it took us nine months to shoot that.

David Read:
Wow.

Christina Cox:
It was epic on an epic scale. The sets were amazing. And we did lots of… I did a lot of pre-training for that to look physically accurate for the role. And I really enjoy that kind of thing – when you actually have time to create the character that you want to create and it’s not just rush, rush, rush, “let’s go. Let’s do this movie in a week, in 15 days” – that we had time in advance to work out the kinks. We had rehearsals! And not rehearsals five minutes before the camera team came in and it was really just a blocking – we came in for weeks in advance of shooting and worked those scenes. We had story meetings where everyone was making sure that the relationships made sense. And again, Nick Chinlund from Chronicles of Riddick became a really dear friend. So, yeah. And I got to fly around and shoot really crazily big guns.

David Read:
You sure did. It’s an action film, you know, but it’s also a drama. But you want to make sure that the action is right. You want to make sure that you get that right and that everyone is taking care of themselves. So, it’s a great underrated film. I keep on waiting for him to do number four. It’s just a matter of time. But yeah, looking forward to that for sure.

Christina Cox:
And doing those sequences with the camera team that skilled, that high level, it’s like dancing. And so for me, that’s one of the reasons that I love action roles so much is that it’s a little bit of a way for me to express one of my biggest loves. Like I’m a mover above anything else. And so films like that, that really let me go full out, I just… it’s the best experience in the world. The guns that I had were Desert Eagles and they were then… had a resin epoxy kind of extra shell on them to make them look futuristic, and they were so heavy that after about six or seven hours of shooting that sequence the noses started to go down on them because I couldn’t hold them up anymore.

David Read:
“I’m doing the best I can!”

Christina Cox:
You’re holding two 12 pound weights in each hand, running around, right? All day long. And then they started to droop. And the guys were like, “Christina, get the tips up on the guns.” And I’m like, “OK. I’m trying!” And it was just like, boo. It was like the dowsing rods finding the water. I was like, “I need a break.” Yeah. I had really sore forearms.

David Read:
But then taking them off. And it’s just like, you don’t know what to do with your hands. It’s going to take a while to get them back to life.

Christina Cox:
Get the feeling back, yeah.

Christina Cox:
Absolutely. Brian O’Neal Singleton [asks]; what acting crew was better to work with, SG-1 or Atlantis? That’s not a fair question, but I figured I’d ask.

Christina Cox:
That’s… I mean, they’re basically the same people, right? I mean, they’re all… it’s Vancouver, the crews. Once you start working with a crew of people, they’re going to move from show to show. I always connect with the crew. And obviously the longer… like on a show that you are a regular on, you have more time to build relationships. But, yeah, they were all… they were all great.

David Read:
Candy Mitch. Last question for you. Has Christina gone to other speakers’ corners in Canada? Speakers’ corners? Is that raining bells to you?

Christina Cox:
I didn’t go to a speakers’ corner. I was referring to Scott Speedman, using the speakers’ corner at Citytv to send in his audition tape for Batman.

David Read:
Oh. My apologies.

Christina Cox:
Yeah.

David Read:
OK.

Christina Cox:
I only remember the one at Queen… on Queen Street at the original Citytv.

David Read:
OK. OK.

Christina Cox:
I can’t imagine what would happen if we had one of those now. Oh, wait, you do have a speakers corner. [shows cellphone]

David Read:
That’s it.

Christina Cox:
Non Stop speaker’s corner. Whether you like it or not, 24/7.

David Read:
You thank God for mute, you know? Christina, this has been a real treat for me. What I would love to do… I need to get Janina on. So I’m going to reach out to her people, try again. And I’m going to… I still need to have Leela on, one-on-one. But after I have done that, I would love later on this year to have all four of you back on for a “Whispers” reunion. If you would be game for that?

Christina Cox:
Oh my gosh. We do a watch party?

David Read:
We can do that. Yeah, absolutely. But I would love to just sit down with you guys and have y’all catch up. Nicole [de Boer], I’ve had her on. She’s great. And yeah, I’m going to reach out to Janina’s team again to see if I can get her back, because you guys created something very special in that episode, and it has continued to resonate with the fandom for 16 years since.

Christina Cox:
That’s so amazing. I love that so much like that’s… that’s the power of performance. It’s the reason… one of the main reasons I got into it was in doing theater and feeling… you know, like I was saying about audition rooms: that you feel the room change with you and because of you, and you feel the same thing on stage, and it’s sometimes on set if it’s a very… if it’s a really like a big scene and you know it’s really cooking. You realize the power that cinema, television, and art has to change minds and hearts and opinions. And I think that now, more than ever, we need those voices. We need authentic voices because we need help understanding what’s happening in our world and how to relate to each other and our common oneness.

David Read:
Everyone has a story to tell. And I think that one of the reasons that Whispers works as well as it does is because it’s not just a piece of drama, but it’s a piece of drama with people acting in it who enjoy being together. And I think that that seriously makes a difference with the material, even though the material is in black and white, you know? I think that it still comes through and it resonates. And you guys created… you captained a great team.

Christina Cox:
Oh, why thank you so much. We could… you know, we could always do Whispers: The Golden Girls Edition as well. [sings] “Thank you for being a friend.”

David Read:
Oh man, absolutely.

Christina Cox:
Can you imagine?

David Read:
Oh, it would be great. It would be great.

Christina Cox:
Major Teldy and the girls at the retirement home.

David Read:
I think you’re a little while off though.

Christina Cox:
Pitchin’ it out there.

David Read:
Absolutely. Well, if that’s a ‘yes,’ I will look toward getting all the folks together for later this year.

Christina Cox:
OK, great. It’s been a real pleasure. Thank you so much for reaching out and having me on the show.

David Read:
Thank you, Christina. You take care of yourself. OK.

Christina Cox:
You too.

David Read:
Bye. Go ISO.

Christina Cox:
Yeah!

David Read:
I’ll email you. Bye.

Christina Cox:
OK. Bye.

David Read:
Christina Cox. She was Major Anne Teldy in Stargate Atlantis, and she was to T’akaya, and also Kershaw – I got them all straight. Yes! – on Stargate S-1. Really appreciate you tuning in. It was terrific to have her. Really hoping that we can get all the folks together for a Whispers reunion later this year. This has been something that I’ve been cooking up for a while, but you got to talk to the captain of the team, you know. You got to see if they’re gonna be interested in that. Let’s see what we have coming up here. If I can get my crap together and pull this up here. OK. John O’Callaghan, who played Niam in Stargate Atlantis, he’s going to be joining us next Friday, June the 28th at 10 in the morning. Tom J. Astle, who wrote Cor-ai, he’s going to be joining us Saturday the 29th at 11AM. And June 30th, next Sunday, Tony Amondola, who played Bra’tac in Stargate SG-1, he’s going to be back on the program. So this is a great lineup of folks that we’re going to have for you. And then I’m going to take July off, largely off. But we will be having pre-recorded episodes that I have had planned that are going to be playing throughout the month. I will have one week of live shows before I go off to San Diego Comic-Con, but that is the current plan. My tremendous thanks to my moderating team. We had Antony, Sommer, Marcia, Jeremy, Tracy – you guys make the show possible, and I cannot do it without you. If you enjoyed the episode and you want to see more content like this on YouTube, please click the like button. It makes a difference with the show and will continue to help us grow our audience. Please also consider sharing this video with a Stargate friend. And if you want to get notified about future episodes, click subscribe, and giving the bell icon a click will notify you the moment a new video drops and you’ll get my notifications of any last minute guest changes. And clips from this livestream will be released over the course of the next few weeks on both the Dial the Gate and GateWorld.net YouTube channels. My thanks goes out to Frederick Marcoux at ConceptsWeb who keeps DialtheGate.com up and running. Brice and Eagle SG, Matt Wilson, you guys keep me in animated goodies and we’re going to be having a few more heading your way next week. A few more ships that you haven’t seen before. My name is David Read for Dial the Gate and I’ll see you on the other side.