For four years and a mini-series, Gigi Edgley played Nebari thief Chiana, using her wits and pulse pistol to survive in the world of Farscape. When Nick Joy last met her she was halfway through Farscape’s fourth season, long before things were wrapped up with The Peacekeeper Wars, and today she’s at the Sci-Fi Ball in Southampton, keeping fingers and limbs crossed for a possible return of the show. She also talks about her new movie Hashtag and remembers one of  her last co-stars, the sadly-missed Richard Hatch.

Hi Gigi, it’s great to see you again, 17 years later. I remember the affection you had for Chiana – do you miss her?

Yes, definitely. I find it mind-blowing that we haven’t revisited Farscape, and it’s even more frustrating that there’s been talk of it and nothing has happened, as of yet. But it feels to me like something might be happening. I was with Brian Henson [Farscape’s executive producer] at Dragoncon [Atlanta, August 2018] and I was so excited because he never does conventions, or very rarely. I thought for sure it was going to be talk of a reunion of Farscape or the [2014 reality TV show] Jim Henson Creature Shop Challenge. And so we did a live Jim Henson Creature Shop Challenge that was a Farscape-based theme, and my guy said to me ‘You know what, this might be the moment that they reveal it’s coming back’. And I said ‘Don’t tell me that, as I’m going to lose all my focus!’

And what happened?

The whole time it was in the back of my head, but then it ended, nothing was said and I was ‘Nooooo!’ And that’s because I still love it. To be still working at comic cons 20 years later, people are so touched by both productions and there’s something so magical about the Henson Company. You look at Kermit the Frog and he’s only a piece of felt, but he can move and inspire you – you’ve cried with him and laughed with him. There’s something quite mystical about anything the Henson Company touches on every level: The Dark Crystal, Labyrinth, The Storyteller.

And there’s a new Dark Crystal Netflix series coming out this year, which just goes to show the Henson brand’s eternal appeal. It’s more than nostalgia, it’s a desire for these stories to continue.

Anyone who has met me knows I’m the biggest fan of both of these productions. It’s very humbling, and you feel very honoured when you go to a different country on the other side of the world from where Farscape was made and you see it’s reached people and continues to do so. I’ve even sat down with Brian and said ‘You realise that people, are desperate to see this come back to life?’ So fingers, toes, arms, legs… everything crossed.

I was always expecting that when your Farscape co-stars Ben Browder and Claudia Black moved over to Stargate SG-1 for its final seasons that you’d soon be behind them.

So was I!

Though there was that cheeky moment in episode 300 where they recreated Farscape, but with Amanda Tapping playing Chiana.

Oh yes, the old switcheroo. Many people have commented on it.

What are people most interested to talk to you about with Chiana? Are they interested in the production side, the make-up, or the character herself?

Anything and everything about it. Constantly there’s new questions where I thought that anything and everything had been asked. It’s been years and years since I played her, but people are still fascinated by her… and so am I.

I was never into sci-fi before Farscape, I was into the phantasmagorical – Neverending Story, Dark Crystal and Labyrinth kind of energy – but I was never a big sci-fi fan. For me, Farscape was a crazy family, lost in space, trying to do their best, but making a terrible mess of it. You could approach topics that you couldn’t do in real-life because you were in space, and you could explore things deeper. To me it seemed very raw and organic, quite a challenging show in many ways.

Did Farscape have a very Australian sensibility, or was it the sum of its very different, international parts?

It felt like it was from the uncharted territories! You had Ben who was American and then it was made in Australia, and one of the really cool things was that any actor I had grown up respecting and been inspired by ended up coming and working on the show at one point or another. Every single person in the Australian film industry had heard about Farscape and they knew that it wasn’t cops and robbers, it wasn’t nurses and doctors. It was a Henson show and they were spending an exorbitant amount of money per episode as well, so you knew it was of top-notch quality, and everyone wanted to come in and fly spaceships and play with the amazing animatronics.

Something I’ve found about Australian actors is that they will push each other’s buttons until someone tells them when to stop. There’s a fearlessness there, so maybe that’s what the difference was.

One of the highlights of this weekend is the screening of your new sci-fi movie Hashtag – the UK premiere in fact. What can you tell us about it? I know it’s a cautionary future tale about the power of social media.

It’s a very exciting project because it’s made purely from the love and adoration of fans, friends and family. We did a Kickstarter and asked for $40,000, and got just over $44,000. And we shot it over four days, but the post-production has been extremely extensive because 90% of it is all computer graphics. We had amazing people work on it.

I was talking to the director [Ben Alpi] and producer recently and they said that we were like a lucky charm because all these computer graphic artists came to work on Hashtag and then got jobs with Star Wars or Guardians of the Galaxy, which was great for them, but we were like ‘No, we don’t want to lose you!’ Because we were on such a tight budget we wanted to have people of a really high calibre working on it, but at the same time if a bigger job came up they’d have to take it. When I first watched it I was blown away by how beautiful and deep and challenging it was.

How will people get to see it? At film festivals or conventions?

They’re shopping it around at the festival circuit, so there’s only certain places you can play it, and that’s why showing it here is going to be so special. We want to make it a teaser – a sneak peek – for an up-and-coming series. When we did the US premiere at Dragoncon my brother was there and he burst into tears. He grabbed the microphone and said ‘I just want to say I’ve grown up with Gigi all my life and this is the best thing I’ve ever seen her do.’ For him to say that… he’s ten years younger, he’s cool, he’s hip, he doesn’t need to say anything nice… it was very special.

The last thing I saw you in was 2018’s Diminuendo with the late and much-missed Richard (Battlestar Galactica) Hatch, where he plays a director obsessed by a robot built to replace his dead girlfriend. How was that movie experience for you?

I love Richard. He has always taught me to believe in my dreams. Every time I saw him at a comic con, and I think I first met him 20 years ago, he would say ‘What are you doing here? What do you want to do? You know you can do it.’ He’d always be constantly there, inspiring me along. He actually put me up for the film and said he wanted me to be involved. I read it and loved it, so when I was working with him it was such a pleasure because it was a long time coming. It was very surreal to watch it without him – but I feel like he was sitting next to me the whole time, chuckling, because that’s the sort of he guy is… in his black leather jacket.

 

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