Closet Sci-Fi Geek

Today I had a chance to interview Paul Blackthorne, star of The Dresden Files. I’ll be posting the interview here in the next week or two when I get a moment to transcribe it.

The funny story with this is that I ran into Paul Blackthorne a few weeks ago at an event in Santa Monica, and I had no clue who he was. I figured he was just another wanna-be actor. (You just assume that, when you live in Los Angeles and run into an actor you don’t recognize.) Now, considering The Dresden Files is somewhat niche-oriented, my Paul-ignorance would perhaps have been fine for any normal person, but I happen to be running a sci-fi blog here. For me to not recognize the star of The Dresden Files is downright embarrassing! But…alas, I had just not seen the show yet. Obviously, I hadn’t paid too much attention to the previews either. (And, here’s my third excuse: Paul does not look a thing like the drawing on the promo materials!)

The strangest part of this story is that the day before I met Mr. Blackthorne, I had a dream I was talking to a tall guy with black hair and a British accent. I don’t know anyone who fits that description, so, when I was at this event, and a tall guy with black hair and a British accent raised his hand to ask a question (the guy in question being Paul Blackthorne), I knew I had to talk to him afterwards…how bizarre is that? What can I tell you…I’m a closet sci-fi geek who happens to be an energy healer…so I must be psychically attuned to science fiction opportunities or something. Either that, or the character Harry Dresden somehow exists for real in the ether somewhere, and he was charming up some grass-roots media attention for his show.

I’m actually the kind of person who doesn’t really want to meet the stars of the shows that I watch regularly. For me, it blows the suspension of disbelief that I develop for the show. Actors are, after all, just real people, and once you know them…well, you know them. I have met quite a few people from the new Star Trek shows just by accident in social (not convention) situations, and so now when I see these people on TV, I think of the actor behind the character. (NAME DROPPING ALERT!!) I briefly hung out with Wil Wheaton, for example, because he was good friends with a guy I was dating some years back. So now he’s Wil, not Wesley, that guy who used to go to Canter’s with us on Saturday Nights. (Wil is one fantastically funny guy, by the way. I am so sorry he got such a bad rap for his role on that show.)

I really don’t get fans who go to sci-fi conventions and get excited about meeting the stars of their favorite shows. I really do not want to meet the stars of Lost. I saw Dean Cain once at a party during the height of Lois and Clark, and I ran the other way – I’d rather think of him as Superman. And thank goodness I never met any Star Trek stars from the original series…Voyager and The Next Generation are totally blown for me, but at least I can still watch the original Star Trek and imagine that Captain Kirk really exists somewhere out there in the universe. (William Shatner’s Priceline ads notwithstanding.)

This applies to every show I like, sci-fi or not. I don’t want to get to be buddy-buddy with Hugh Laurie – I want to think of him as House. House is one of my favorite shows and that’s precisely because his character is so strong.

Perhaps you are a fan just dying at the thought of meeting your favorite star and can’t possibly understand why I would not want to meet them. Well, I guess that’s how it is in Los Angeles. We are surrounded by stars here. We Angelenos live with them, date them, hang out with them, go shave our heads at tattoo parlors with them. Not that I’ve got a celebrity roster of gal pals but you just run into people here. So you can get kind of blase about the whole thing. (Either that, or you turn into an annoying name-dropping kiss-ass celebrity-hanger-on-er, which is totally not my style.)

Such as it is, it took a chance meeting with Paul Blackthorne to get me to finally watch The Dresden Files, but now when I watch the show I see Paul Blackthorne and not Harry Dresden. Thankfully, I was not a fan of the show, so no “Dresden File” world has been blown for me.

When I did finally watch The Dresden Files, much of what I was considering – especially since I knew I had an interview coming up with Paul – was Paul’s performance as an actor. How was he? Well, Paul is thankfully a good actor (because it’d suck to have to put on a smile and interview him if he were god awful). Harry Dresden’s accent kind of threw me – in real life Paul has a fantastic British accent – what a shame to cover that up for that old school American dialect they have him doing. As for the show itself – I enjoyed it. It was pleasant mind candy – a lighter version of Supernatural, from my first viewing.

And finally, after watching show for a little bit, I was able to relax and forget I was watching Paul – some actor dude I met at an event who happened to have a British accent – and start to feel like Harry Dresden was alive and breathing (even with said American accent). I liked his character, and I liked the warmth Paul brought to the screen. It’s a nice show.

Alas, I hope I did not wait too long to start watching, since the show is on the bubble. Fans are anxiously awaiting to hear its fate, but if SciFi is as stupid as I think they are, they’ll probably cancel this one as well, if just because they can’t sit and wait for people like me to catch up and start watching during season two.

Oh well. Regardless, please stay tuned for my official Paul Blackthorne interview. He is one cool cat, so you’ll want to hear what he has to say. Stay tuned.

June 19th, 2007 | Category: Television | Subscribe to comments | Leave a comment | Trackback URL