To play Jamie in his short SF film Crossover Point, Antony Johnson turned to BroadwayWorld award-winning actor Casey McKinnon, responsible for the Galacticast podcast. McKinnon was also able to step up as producer for the film, which can be found on YouTube (click here to watch it or go to the foot of this interview). Paul Simpson caught up with McKinnon…

NB If you’ve not already seen Crossover Point, go and check it out now – there are spoilers in this interview

 

How did you know Antony Johnston?

I met him 11 years ago at Comic-Con [in San Diego]. I used to record all of my interviews all in bulk, going to Comic-Con and interviewing a bunch of comic creators and then releasing the episodes over one or two seasons. In 2009, I went down to Comic-Con. I interviewed him and we remained friends for many years just on social media.

He’s been doing a lot of great work in this difficult time; he’s been continuing doing the thing that’s important to him, which is writing. He’s been teasing projects on Facebook and I would comment and support because here I am, an actor who can’t really work. I think that this time is all about supporting my friends.

Then he wrote this short film, Crossover Point, and brought it to me. I was really excited because I hadn’t worked with him before. We’ve been friends for 11 years and I know he’s a stand-up guy. He’s an excellent writer.

I read the script and I loved it immediately, and I think I loved it for the same reasons that I’m seeing people respond to it online. Things like the goatee comment, just the fun of it is exactly what I loved when I first read the script.

I giggled and I enjoyed it, and when I got to the end I saw a character that I’ve always wanted to play. I’m also friends with Robert Hewitt Wolfe who used to write for Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. He once told me that I was a, I think he called it a “heel to face to heel” or maybe “a face to heel to face” – a revolving door. What that was – and I probably won’t do it justice because I’m not a writer – was a character who you see as good that can turn bad but then can turn good again. We sort of discussed it in terms of [the Cardassian] Gul Dukat and how you love him, you hate him, you love him again… He just keeps going back and forth and you love that about him.

When I read Anthony’s script I saw the kind of character that I want in my career. I feel like this is just the beginning of something that I’d like to develop, whether that’s something Anthony develops or a character that is in my wheelhouse that I can do somewhere else.

Did you anticipate the nature of your character?

I am the kind of person who will watch a TV show and just say out loud, “Oh I bet you this is going to happen, I bet you that’s going to happen”. So when I was reading it I did think about it but it was just before it happened. So, yes. Whatever twist in TV and film I’m always thinking, what could it be?

I was very excited when it happened because I think it was only one or two lines sooner that I thought about it.

One of the things Antony and I discussed was that if you go back and rewatch the film, you see your character’s reactions through the first five and a half minutes or so completely differently. How much of that layering in, which is clearly there, came from you and how much of that was suggested by the script or suggested by Antony as director?

He did put certain things in but that was something that we discovered when we were filming. It was something that I wasn’t practising ahead of filming, really not thinking so much about it.

One thing that I do as an actor is work really hard on the research and the memorisation and everything I need and then just let that go on the day of filming so I can be available to serve the script and the director’s needs.

I didn’t overthink it too much but when we came to the day of filming I just lived in that character and I stayed in it to make sure that I was serving the story – but not giving it away too much because that was the most important thing: making sure that we didn’t give away the story before it was revealed.

Did you do versions where you were a bit more overt?

As an actor I do a lot of theatre, and one thing that I love to do is to play but I didn’t really play with this. We had only a certain amount of takes, we had to film continuously and there was the fear that my cat would walk in at any moment or someone would start using a drill or a leaf blower at any second. I live in L.A. and that’s just the way it is!

We had to be very pointed as to where we were going and how we could make the next take even better. I’d say that the first take was probably the biggest, most expressive take and then Antony brought it down to a quieter level and we maintained the quieter takes for future, really just pinpointing and making it even more what Antony wanted.

So there wasn’t a lot of room for play but probably the play came in more in how we expressed the change in her. The change in seeing what’s really going on in her mind, the expressions on her face by the end of the film.

Did you feel that she was putting on an act to begin with or was it actually that that was the persona she needed to present to the doctor to elicit the information? Is that the real her we see at the end? Or is the more insidious interrogative version the real one and she could just let loose a bit?

I think when it comes to any character, any human, they have multiple ways of being. They have different ways of talking to different people. So, when I’m talking to you it’s different from when I’m talking to my husband or when I’m talking to Antony or someone I’ve known for a long time.

I think that her way of talking to Doctor Jackson was yes, thinking in terms of strategy, diffusing, feeling him out… but with a plan in mind. It was a bit of an act but it is a way that she would talk to people in the real world… but it wasn’t too much of an act. It was just enough.

Do you think she wanted him to know the secret or was she hoping he didn’t? That he hadn’t cracked it and therefore he could go on with his happy little life and they didn’t need to kick the door in.

Yes, I think that’s probably the case. I think that she kept diffusing it at first. Diffusing it with jokes: is this a real thing? Is this a prank?

Setting the fiction aside, you also came on board as producer. What did that entail?

By coming on as a producer I could take care of the acting union SAG/AFTRA which I’m a member of so I cannot do any non-union productions. When Antony came to me and I said absolutely, I also had to ask if we could make it a union production and keep my fingers crossed and hope that he said yes. I’m so lucky that he did because I fell in love with this script and really wanted to do it.

One thing that the union tries to get us to do is to make productions union. Which is a challenge because I’m trained to be an actor; I’m not necessarily trained to do all of this paperwork. I reached out to a lot of friends. I had produced a lot in the past but that was before I became a member of the union, so there was a learning curve there.

The union actually made it very easy, they do it in stages – pre-production, production, post production – and they give you the paperwork based on what stage you’re in. So it ended up being pretty easy; just more work than you would normally be accustomed to, as an actor

It was an interesting production because normally you don’t have a director working from England on a production where the actors are in the U.S. We had to figure out how to make that all happen. Making me a producer also made me the signatory to the union so I’m responsible for the production.

I stepped up and I did it. There have been other productions that have come to me in the past where people have said ‘Hey do you want to be in this?’ and it’s non union. Sometimes you’ll either say can I make this union? Or sometimes if it’s something that maybe, you’re not interested in, you’ve always got that option of saying ‘Well, I’m union.’

Presumably that made it a very useful production for you, both in terms of on your CV as an acting role but also, you are now a producer.

Yes, so now I know exactly how it goes. The next time someone comes to me with a role and I have to try and make it union, I’ll be a lot more prepared to make that happen and to do it effectively and quickly. Not only that… I said earlier that I’m not a writer but the truth is I am, I do write my own material and I have a short film that I’ve been working on that I’m very proud of that we have not filmed yet.

I have other projects that I’m also working on because we’re in quarantine and Crossover Point gave me the opportunity to look at what I could do in this time. It really inspired me and I also took an acting class in quarantine which was also done remotely – that inspired me to think about all of the technology that is at my fingertips. We have Zoom, I have an HD camera from when I produced Galacticast fifteen years ago. I have a phone that is HD quality, my husband has a phone that’s HD quality… We have so many cameras that I just know there’s a lot more that I can do – film something that is compelling and interesting and still incorporating other actors, while we work from home.

What else have you been doing?

Do you know about The Plague Nerdalogues? My friend Marc Bernardin who is a writer and producer, he’s working on Picard season 2 right now, he launched this wonderful effort to raise money, initially for Covid-19 relief but he changed it to Black Lives Matter for obvious reasons. What it is, is actors performing monologues from famous genre films and TV shows. I performed Sisko’s monologue from DS9’s In The Pale Moonlight. Lin-Manuel Miranda participated and he did a monologue from Battlestar Galactica. We’ve raised $50,000 for Black Lives Matter so far.

 

Click here for our interview with Antony Johnston