One of the biggest draws for this year’s Sci-Fi Expo held last weekend in Dallas, Texas was the gathering of four members of the crew of Joss Whedon’s Firefly, a show beloved by many but canceled by Fox. Adam Baldwin, Jewel Staite, Sean Maher, and Ron Glass were in attendance and boy did they give Firefly/Serenity fans a good show!
During the Serenity panel, these cast members kept the crowd laughing with many observations and details about their time together on the show and movie as well as other experiences together in a lively banter that made their reunion so much fun to see. The Q&A room was packed to the gills with fans and besides good-natured ribbing about Ron Glass’ character dying in the movie, Sean Maher’s claiming not to answer questions about Firefly, and an unsuccessful call to Nathan Fillion, there were sure some shiny moments to be had. Check out the highlights from the panel and some video clips of key moments below.
Fan Q about the cast members’ favorite moment in Serenity or Firefly:
Adam Baldwin: “One of my favorites is when we’re going into a bar and little Kaylee says something about ‘twixt her nethers.’ [crowd laughs] I just thought it was a darling moment. I could stand to hear some more. [Adam grins] But truly, my favorite was that whole mule chase. That was one of the most early on scenes we shot. It was very physical and there was a lot of rehearsal and jumping around that mule on cable work. It was one of the most fun few days [for me].”
Jewel Staite: “One of my favorite moments is when Sean gets shot. [crowd laughs] No, no, no, I have two favorite moments but I love that scene where you say to River, ‘River, I’m sorry.’ It kills me. [crowd ‘awwws’.] It makes me cry. And I also like that scene where we make out. [crowd applauds]”
Sean Maher: “I’m just going to echo everybody. ‘Jaynestown’ was my favorite episode, too, because it was a lot of fun… And my other favorite moment is when I get shot and I’m lying there… and Morena says ‘Put pressure here’ because it was being surrounded by [everyone]… it was so easy for me to just look up at everyone and just one of those genuinely wonderful moments as an actor.”
Ron Glass: “In Serenity, I loved the last moment before I took my last breath.”
Fan Q about the most fun they’ve had on a movie set:
Adam Baldwin: “The most fun I had working was on Serenity because … the movie, well the series as well but the movie because the movie was something so special because it was a series that was canceled and was resurrected by Joss’ determination so I think we all approached it as something we knew it was a special opportunity for us to recreate roles that we had lost and we were all heartbroken and devastated when the show was canceled. To have that uplifted again was just magical. For me, that was the most fun I’ve ever had.”
Jewel Staite: [at Adam] “Getting a little emotional there big guy?” [Adam puts on sunglasses and smiles.]
Jewel Staite: I agree with [Adam]. I think it was closure that everybody needed and it had a different feel to it because when we were doing the series, we were all worried about losing our jobs and the movie had a beginning, a middle and an end as far as a start date and an and date. Sorry, Ron! [crowd laughed] The movie has always been a sore subject for Ron Glass. But yeah, I just remember laughing a lot and having a lot of fun.”
Sean Maher: “I’m not going to say Serenity because that would be boring. I had a lot of fun reuniting with Jewel on Warehouse 13. I kid you not, my cheekbones hurt at the end of the day, I came home and I was like, why are my cheekbones so sore? It was because I laughed for what was it, 18 hours straight? Brutal shoot. We just sat at the corner laughing at everybody.
Along those lines of Jewel and Sean’s Warehouse 13 episode, “Mild Mannered”, Jewel brought up how ridiculous Sean looked in his purple spandex suit that he had to wear for his character.
Sean Maher: “And that would be the least favorite moment of my career… [It] was a one piece. Like a leotard that pulled up in that area. At first I was shy about it. I had to reach down and shift so I had to like yank and pull. I was just grabbing my crotch the whole time. It was very uncomfortable.”
Clip of the Serenity Panel at Sci-Fi Expo: Purple Leotard
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxbpVdChMA4[/youtube]
Fan Q that prompted roasting of Adam Baldwin:
Jewel Staite: “One of my favorite [scenes] was when we were shooting that scene in Serenity where we were all up in the bridge and we were going through Reaver space. We were staring at nothing, a green screen, and we supposed to be all scared and Joss is talking us through the take. He’s like ‘Ok, you’re going through, everyone’s really scared. Look to the left, there’s one there. Look to the right, it’s very creepy. And Adam is like making this noise. [crowd laughs]. He was in the back like,”uhhhhhhhhhh.” [crowd burst out into more laughter] and I’m like dying I’m trying not to laugh! I was like what are you doing back there?
Adam Baldwin: I was scared!
Jewel Staite: It was hysterical!
Clip of the Serenity Panel at Sci-Fi Expo: The “uhhhhhhhhhhhh” Noise
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_hCiBubfOc[/youtube]
Sean Maher: “Oh gosh, I’m trying to think. ‘Dear Diary. Today, I was pompous and my sister was crazy.’ Also one of the more enjoyable things, er…, frustrating to Simon but enjoyable to watch as a fellow actor, was that Jayne had to touch everything in every scene. So Adam would sit there and touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, which was always annoying but in retrospect kinda funny.”
Jewel Staite: “But you know what else, that [Adam] taught me as an actor to an actor amongst many things was that you always had to have a prop in your hand and that you had to be doing something in the background. So like if the scene wasn’t about you, you’d still try to find a way to make it about you. [crowd laughs] So if you were doing something in the background with a prop, the editor would have no choice but to cut to you later to show what it was that you were doing. Hence more screen time. And it’s something that I have taken away. So thank you, Adam.”
Ron Glass: “This actually happened offstage. We had trailers next to each other and in my old fashioned kind of way. I like to prepare. It’s kind of an old fashioned thing, right adam? I would do it quietly and by myself. And he would be next door to me with the loudest damn music that he never never never stopped playing. And I couldn’t bring myself to say anything about it. So instead of preparing I would just fume!”
Adam Baldwin: “He’s a Metallica-ist.”
Apparently no one said anything about it to Adam until one day Gina Torres said, “Stop it. We’re sick of it.” Adam’s response was, “I really had no idea!”
A fan asked the panel if there was anything they wanted for their individual characters. Adam wanted more with Jayne and Inara as she was Jayne’s idea of a “perfect woman” of which Joss’s reaction was “No freaking way.” Jewel had always wanted Kaylee and Simon to have a baby and Ron wanted his character to have been married.
To cap off a lively and hilarious panel was an even funnier moment when a poor fan kept mispronouncing Alan Tudyk’s last name as “Tur-dick” first. Then there was a moment where Jewel and Sean were cracking up on stage at which Jewel later revealed they were cracking up about the correct pronunciation of “Two-dick” and when Adam said that Alan was teased a lot in school, Jewel had leaned over to Sean saying, “I don’t know why, two is always better than one!”
Clip of the Serenity Panel at Sci-Fi Expo: Mispronouncing Tudyk
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11H27cmPB1U[/youtube]
Sorry, Alan. I think “two dicks” is what people came away with from this Serenity panel!
But seriously, the cast was very appreciative of the fan love shown to them. Baldwin summed up the experience of Serenity best with this sentiment:
Adam Baldwin: “Clearly this is a testament to Joss’ vision and thank you all for ‘getting it,’ seeing it, embracing it and enjoying it. I’d just like to echo the whole family atmosphere and how well they cast everyone in the show and just wish we had three million more of you, pairs of eyeballs…”
Can’t stop the signal, right guys?
Keep it here on SciFi Mafia for more from the Sci-Fi Expo!
