SGU Week: Brian J. Smith saves the universe

As Scott, the graduate of the Juilliard School of Drama gets to inhabit the kind of reluctant-hero role that will remind viewers of Luke Skywalker, Harry Potter and--minus the nerdy thing--Chuck Bartowski.

Col. Everett Young (Louis Ferreira) taps Scott to lead the group of civilians and soldiers on Destiny after the colonel is injured. Scott tries mightily to appear in control, but he's uneasy, ill-prepared and at the end of his rope.

Scott argues with Dr. Nicholas Rush (Robert Carlyle), the scientist being blamed for the predicament the survivors face, that their first goal must be to get back to Earth. With one word, "Please," Smith conveys all the fear eating away at Scott.

"It's easy to get there, at least with Rush," Smith said of his character. "Here he is, this young, scared kid having to convince this brilliant mind to do something that [Scott] thinks that needs to be done. It's really interesting predicament to be in--to be in a leadership position over someone who's a genius and who could talk and think circles around you."

I won't reveal how Scott fares against Rush, but I can say that Smith holds his own against movie vet Carlyle and everyone else in the cast. He's found a role that likely will make him a big star, even if he's too humble to think in those terms.

"I am just lucky that [my career] has led to this," he said. "And who knows what will happen in the future? It's very, very exciting."

Smith and I chatted more about his character, co-stars Ming-Na and David Blue, fart machines and the dog he's baby-sitting, Cassie.

When the Icarus base is attacked, Scott (Brian J. Smith) steps up to save lives. MGM photo

Are you on set today?
No, no. I'm just actually hanging out in my neighborhood with my little puppy I'm baby-sitting.

Oh, yeah. I just talked to Ming-Na and she told me to ask you what you do with that dog in your trailer. She said she caught in an awkward moment. And that she...
Oh. [Laughs.] You know, Ming-Na likes to spread rumors. That's what Ming-Na likes to do. I'm just surprised she hasn't said that on Twitter ... So she'll probably tweeting those kind of rumors about me and Cassie.

Yeah, I saw the pictures of the dog in your boots.
Yeah, she's very sweet.

You're just dog sitting?
Yeah. I just wanted--hold on a second. Cassie, come here. Come here. Ah, she got tangled up. No, she's one of the hairdresser's dogs. She actually breeds them. I had been mentioning for awhile that I really wanted to have a dog; I didn't know if I'd be able to do it. Oh wow, she just threw up. [Laughs.] Wonderful. She mentioned that had this dog and I was sitting there getting my hair done, and I was like, "Oh, sure. Yeah, I'll take her." And it went really good.

What kind of dog is it?
King Charles Cavalier Spaniel; they're kind of like a miniature--she kind of looks like Lady from "Lady and the Tramp," but smaller.

Oh, OK. So let's talk about Stargate.
Yeah, yeah.

You grossly undersold yourself at Comic-Con this year because when you were asked, "Tell us about your character," you were like, "Oh, he's a soldier." I saw the first three hours and you're like the main guy.
Well, thanks. That's what I like about him. I kind of like the idea that at first you kind of think of this kid as a typical "Stargate" soldier, and then he ends up having a lot more [going on]. I think that's kind of the cool factor of the character, is he really surprises you. Yeah.

Were you surprised by all the stuff that he was getting to do?
Yeah. Really, really surprised. I mean, you don't get to see, at least like an actor in my 20s, a lot of the roles you go out for are pretty vapid, too cool for school, you know, really invulnerable monsters. For whatever reason, that seems to be very cool on TV right now. I was really excited that Brad and Rob wrote a character that has a lot of heart and someone who is trying to do the right thing but doesn't always quite know how to go about doing it. He's got a lot of fear, and he's got a lot of baggage. You just don't see writing like that for young actors.

Scott organizes the survivors on board the Destiny. MGM photo

Right.
It's, for whatever reason, not I think a lot of people who are trying to attract an audience don't think that that's cool, that people aren't going to respond to that. It might be quite the opposite actually.

Well, he's kind of thrown this big 'ol responsibility keeping everybody alive.
Yeah, yeah. If you've ever seen the other "Stargates," he's really, at first, one of the guys you would sort of see in the background. He's not an O'Neill [from "SG-1]. He's not a Shepherd [from "Atlantis."]. He's fresh out of school and he really shouldn't have much responsibility, but circumstance thrusts him into a position where he's got to step up, really in spite of himself. If he doesn't, the price is the lives of a lot of people.

This is kind of the biggest production you've worked on, right?
Oh, it's by far the biggest thing I've done. I mean, I started off in theater, worked my way from off-off Broadway to off-Broadway and then I did a Broadway show. I did some independent films, did "Law & Order." I've been really lucky in my career, this sort of progression of training and then dip your toe in the water a little bit. You do a really cool off-Broadway play and you work your way up. Then I am just lucky that it's led to this and who knows what will happen in the future? It's very, very exciting.

So I was doing a little research on you on the web and I ran across this thing. Were you in "A Clockwork Orange" in Dallas?
Yeah. Actually, I was. It kind of became a big deal. It was actually college production, directed by this really amazing guy down there; amazing director, Brad Baker, who runs that program. Before you knew it, it had all the major reviewers in town coming and reviewing it. It ended up being like one of the best productions in Dallas that year. I played Alex. I think I had to block a lot of it out because it was such a violent, physically arduous role, every night, sometimes two times a day. I mean, I was losing my voice. This is all really before I gone to Juilliard and I'd done any serious training with my voice and my body. And looking back on it now, God, I cringe at some of the things that I did without being aware of really what I was doing. But it was an awesome experience.

Brian J. Smith and Robert Carlyle butt heads more than a few times in "Stargate Universe."

Yeah, there's a big interview with you on the Dallas Observer site.
Yeah. Well, it's funny, a lot of people are going to see ["SGU"] and maybe start identifying me as Scott when really in my theatrical career I played all sorts of very crazy, violent, mean, unsympathetic characters. So it's hard for me to reconcile that.

So was it hard to be nice in a role?
Well, it's much more true to who I am as a person. I think that's probably the closest character, just in energy-wise, that I have played in my career so far.

[His co-star] Ming-Na said being on a set and having to work with all the cameras and everything it's almost like sort of a theater experience, too, because...
Yeah, it is. So I mean we always would give the director so much shit because we, often times, have no idea where the cameras are at. And that's kind of the point. Sometimes I'll go up to one of the directors of photography and ... calibrate how it's going to look in a filming sense. I'll be like, "Look, I can see that mark. I know you're trying to light that moment. I can hit it." They're like, "No, no, no, just play the scene as you would in life, don't stage it for the film, for the camera. Play it to your partner." ... That's the creative approach that's being done from all levels of production, from props to the way it's being lit to the way it's being shot to the way it's being acted. [We} try and find how the situation would play out in real life and not in a comic book or a kind of conventional TV way, which as an actor is the goal.

Is it harder to do act in the Destiny-based scenes than it is on location? That third hour you're walking through the desert.
I'll tell you the hardest thing. Do you remember the holoscreen things that come up at certain points? Those are really hard because you have to be looking at nothing. That holoscreen is not there and you have to pretend that you're looking at this imaginary object two feet in front of you. You can't be looking at the wall that is 10 feet away. You can't focus on that. That's technically really difficult. When you're actually out in the desert [filming], that's easy because you don't have to act tired, hot and delirious because at a certain point we were getting close to dehydration or just having a mental breakdown because it was very tough. That being said, I think of all my experiences on the show shooting out in New Mexico was ... I'll take that. I'll walk away from this year with that being the best experience. It was awesome.

I was going to ask you where it was shot.
Yeah, it was White Sands right off out of Alamogordo, New Mexico. It was actually an Army base, which is right outside of an Air Force base. We couldn't shoot certain things or point the cameras in certain directions because the top secret stuff is being done there, but it was really generous of them to let us use it. It really contributed to the kind of epic feel of that third episode.

Lt. Scott (Brian J. Smith) leans on Sgt. Ronald Greer (Jamil Walker Smith) for help on the Destiny. MGM photo

How many days did you still have sand in your hair and your ears?
I still have sand in my boots and I'm not kidding you. I think they have like three or four pairs of everything that we wear. We kind of recycle [them]. This one pair of boots, I guess I was wearing in the desert, I still knock on the heel of those boots and sand will come out.

How long did you guys film out there?
We were there really only for I think like seven, eight days and we shot like 23 pages of script in that amount of time under those conditions. It just says a lot about our crew and the production department and even our cast that we were able to do that amount of material and pull it off in such a great way in that amount of time. It's unheard of.

Have you been surprised by the fan reaction that even before the show is out there that everybody is like, "Oh, we're excited."
You know we're really, really excited, that the fans [of past "Stargate' series] are excited about the show. But at the same time, we are trying to think of this as a new show. It's like a new fan base, but of course we want the old "Stargate" crowd to watch it. They're going to love it. There are so many things in it I think that are really gifts to that and at the same time I think that Brad and Rob are amazing writers. The whole writing staff is. They're very capable of telling stories. They're very dramatic in a very dimensional way and I think that people are going to respond to that.

Are you feeling any pressure at all to make sure to get those fans or are you just thinking, "OK, I'm just going to do my best here and this is going to be..."?
Yeah, I don't feel any pressure. You have enough pressure on you already when you show up on set every day. You've got a job to do and it requires all of your attention and if I'm spending a fraction of the second in a scene wondering how a fan is going to react to this moment I'm not really committing to it and I'm not really giving it all I've got and in the end I'm doing the fans a disservice where I divide my attention that way, so you just show up on set and you do your work and off you go.

Have you been enjoying interacting on Twitter with people? (You can find him at @brianjacobsmith.)
Twitter is great for me because you do get to get in contact with the fans in a way that I think you couldn't have done back even like two or three years ago. I actually get a lot of news about "Stargate" from the fans, people who will find certain interviews or will find certain articles about the show or sometimes even casting news people find out before anybody does and they'll post it. It's great.

"I'm going to do what? I have to do what in the next episode?"
Yeah, yeah. They're like, "Oh hey, Brian, I just read your next episode that week on spoilers.com and wow, this one is going to be really tough. You need any advice?" I'm sure it will come to that pretty soon.

Brian J. Smith as Lt. Matthew Scott. MGM photo

Does David Blue crack everybody up all the time?
Yeah. I'll tell you David Blue and Louie Ferreira are two of the funniest people in their own way. I mean David's got this great sort of, and I use this term with lots of love, but this great kind of geeky, off-centered humor. Louie, on the other hand, is like a big kid. I don't know how many takes I have personally ruined. I don't know how much money I have cost production because I've been laughing at something that Louie just said right before we rolled.

He has a thing with fart machines. He just likes the noise and he likes to make people laugh. You know he'll go crazy with it. It's like a Whoopee cushion, but it's electronic and maybe I shouldn't be telling you this. I'm probably going to get so much crap from him for saying it. He is honestly one of my favorite people on set. He is a big, big kid. And then it's amazing to me because here he is, kind of popping a Whoopee cushion, and then the director will yell "Rolling," and [Louis] will turn it off. All the hijinks go away and Colonel Young is standing right in front of you. It's amazing actually.

His character is pretty serious.
Incredibly serious. It's nothing, nothing at all like the real guy, like Louie Ferreira. He is one of the most energetic, brilliantly funny men I've ever met in my life and I'm always astounded by how great he is.

After meeting David at Comic Con I'm wondering if he's even acting on screen?
Exactly. David is just brilliant casting because he is that fan. He would always. He would love to have General O'Neil knock on his door and say, "We need your help." And here he is on the show and in a way he is living his dream. It's perfect. It was a stroke of genius casting him in that role.

Are you ready to be recognized as Lt. Matthew Scott for at least the next five years?
Yes and no because I love the character. I think he is actually a really great role model. I think he is an incredibly earnest young guy who's got a lot of incredible things to give. I love the character and I would love to be identified with him for that reason. At the same time I'm an actor and this is about a career for me as well. I want to play all sorts of roles and something I'm going to be trying to do is get back on stage. I'm going to hopefully be doing a play or doing some kind of an independent film or something. It's important for me to not just get comfortable with one role, which you can do on TV. It is very easy to kind of rest on your laurels and get comfortable and kind of fall in love with this character that you've created and do it for five years. I would love the show to go for 10 years, but I got to make sure for me as an artist that I'm spending my time exploring other facets of developing my creativity too.

POSSIBLY SPOILERY STUFF FOLLOWS, BUT SMITH IS PRETTY WELL-TRAINED TO KEEP MUM.

Soldier Scott (Smith) and civilian Eli Wallace (David Blue) bond in "Stargate Universe."

Are Chloe and Scott going to get together?
Well, you'll have to see. I think that in some ways they would be a very good match and in other ways I think it would be a pretty big problem as well. We'll see what happens in episode four. I believe that's [called] "Light." "Light" and "Darkness," the two episodes after that, you might see something happen. There might be a disaster or nothing will happen at all. Who knows?

You guys have been well trained to not spoil anything.
[Laughs.] You're trying to find something out about that one, yeah. Well you know my thing is I won't spoil. I'll give you like a whiff. I'll give you a little bit of a whiff of what is going on.

What I like about Scott in the first three hours you learn so much about him and about his background and everything. He has got a lot of baggage.
Yeah, yeah. He is very moving and I always wondered what it's like to not have like aunts or uncles? There is an episode coming up and I'm not going to say too much about it, but he does go back to Earth and the big question is, "What do I do? Who do I visit?" I always imagine, what does he do on Thanksgiving? Everyone else has got a family. You go to your grandparents, your aunts, your uncles. I think the military became his family. The military became not only his job but it became his identity ... I think that he is held back by his need to never let anybody down.

That is what I love about him so much too. Any time he fails he takes it so personally. Any time something goes wrong it's like, he's very hard on himself. He takes failure very, very personally because there is a lot at stake. Yeah, so he's a great kid. I love him. It's rare to work on a character that just moves you like that.

Scott sort of reminds me of movie characters that you become attached to, and then he gets killed and you get upset. I was thinking, "OK, what is going to happen to him now?"
I know. Exactly. You'll see. As the show goes on, because of his need to continually improve himself, he's always in the thick of it and he's going to come close [to being killed] a lot. He is going to be on the brink quite a few times. I can guarantee that.