Woolvett Thinking
(From Xposé #54)
As measles-ridden, mega-efficient, mechanical genius Harper, actor Gordon Michael Woolvett darts about the good ship Andromeda like a kid in a candy store. Full of life and devilment, this self-professed 'lurve God' meets every challenge with the kind of dry quip or sarcastic comment guaranteed to exasperate the hell out of his companions on board. The scary thing is, he is just like that in real life. Asked a simple enough warm-up questions like, 'How did you get involved in this crazy project?' Woolvett immediately says, "My usual answer to that question is that I'm a stalker and wanted to get close to Kevin Sorbo [Dylan Hunt]..." before disarming me completely by adding, "Thankfully that's not true. I actually did it to get close to Lexa Doig [Andromeda]." Now, as both the aforementioned actors are absolutely gorgeous that's understandable, but dire threats of telling executive producer Robert Hewitt Wolfe that Woolvett gave away spoilers leads the actor to finally confess the real reason he ended up as the Andromeda's engineer extraordinaire.
"It's a classic! My wife and I had just moved to Los Angeles from Canada in order to find work and they asked me to audition for a role back in Canada. I took a pass on the first round of auditions because we'd just moved away, then, of course, we encountered the usual actor's life where a year goes by without any work. When the producers came back to LA again and asked me to audition the second time, I walked into the room and I basically met myself in one of the producers. Seth Howard from Tribune Entertainment and I were so alike in so many ways that we hit it off straight away and I ended up with the part."
Similar to Harper in that he talks nineteen-to-the-dozen and moves from one subject to the next with hardly a break for air, Woolvett takes a moment to reveal that though he is a surfer dude, the kind of surfing he enjoys is nothing like the sport revered by his alter-ego. "I'm trying to get them to change this in the show, because I actually do something called kite-surfing. Basically, you have a huge kite - a 15-meter sail on a 27-meter long line and you use it like a kite to create torque and it kind of pulls you along the water. It feels sort of like water-skiing mixed with windsurfing yet is very like sailing because you're being powered by wind rather than being pulled by a powered boat. It's a lot of fun and when you get good [and he's there!], you can get as high as maybe 30 to 100 feet in the air. It's amazing!"
Obviously a man up for a thrilling time, Woolvett says he gets the same rush from working on Andromeda. "It's both daunting and exciting to be involved in this show," he notes. "I'm a science fiction fan. I always have been, so whenever I see a new show I want the stories and the effects and everything else to be better than the last time. I think sci-fi always has that challenge to overcome. So in one respect my role in Andromeda is daunting because the genre already has an audience, but it's up to all of us to rise to the challenge and make sure that we give more than 100% and excel in what we do. You see shows that don't and stay on the air and go on for a long time, but no one wants to end up in a mediocre show that's still going on in 10 years. That can do very bad things to your career. Andromeda is definitely not one of those shows; it has a lot of sparkle, ingenuity by the buckethead. It's certainly meeting all my expectations and hopes and I'm extremely happy to be involved in such an exciting and innovative series."
Woolvett is also looking forward to adding some innovations of his own by putting his undoubted skills as a computer whiz to good us. "See, Brent Stait [Rev Bem] told me he grassed me up re the computer thing, so I have to confess that I do design websites and putz around on the computer in my spare time, and when time allows I hope to link my site to the official website. In fact, I'm redoing my own site at the mokmentso that you can squash my head and pop my eyes and do great things like that. I like taking people's heads apart." Fine...
So, do we get to see Harper doing anything like that in Andromeda? Making sure that no one is listening, he nods, "Well, Robert [Hewitt Wolfe] keeps us in the dark about this kind of stuff, but what I can tell you is that we get to see a darker, more despicable side to Harper's comic genius. Watch this space."
