Kenn> I know you recently went to the Comic Con in New  York?  How was that experience for you?

Rekha> It was pretty crazy.  There were a lot of people in a very large building.  It was really neat.  I went with Michael Trucco and Michael Hogan, and we got to answer some really fun questions on a panel.  There were a lot of really wonderful fans out there.  I didn’t last on the floor for too long but it was really fun.

Kenn> Did you get recognized as you were walking around?  Does everybody know who you are now?

Rekha> Yeah, I don’t how many people, but the beloved fans of this show that I work on; people were like, “Hey, can I get a picture?”  I guess that’s why I didn’t last too long, the crowd got thicker and they were like, “OK, time to go.” 

Shaun> It gets scary.  I was at Comic Con last year with the Jericho crowd and the crowd was big and got bigger, and they were like, “Time to go.”  The siege mentality was sort of starting to set in, know what I mean?

Rekha> Well, it’s funny because I was like, “Hey, oh yeah sure”, chatting away. Then I look up at them every once in awhile.  I’m having fun, but meanwhile, they’re scouting.  They’re looking.  I saw their faces were looking really tense toward me, and I was like, “Is it time to go?’  And they were like, “Yes, it’s time to go now.”

Shaun> So how do you feel about this character now?  When you came on, you took Billy’s place, but especially this season she’s had more lines than any character on the show this season.  You got to roll around with Baltar, and then you shot Cally out the launch bay.

Rekha> Yeah, it is a pretty action packed existence for Tory.  It’s a little different than pushing paper on Colonial One. 

Shaun> How do you feel about it as an actor?  Some people on the SCI FI board are saying, “She’s carrying the show this season”.  What do you think?

Rekha> I think it’s an actors dream come true to have something as crazy as to wake up and discover that you are the enemy that you have been fighting and fleeing, in a very literal sense.  That’s pretty mind boggling from a story telling point of view, and what you have to do an actor to prepare for that.  Then on a metaphorical sense too, in the larger excitement of how awesome this is to tell a story in which we are telling the truth; that all of our enemies lie within.  That quote, you are your own biggest enemy.  What a wonderful metaphor to explore though the concept of humans and Cylons.  It’s such a great show, I’m such a huge fan of it, and it’s ridiculous. 

Shaun> That’s good that you’re a fan of your own stuff.  We’ve had Katee on before and she loves Starbuck.  It’s great when actors love what they are doing.

Rekha> It is great, because I’ve certainly done a lot of stuff that I don’t love.  But you’ve got to pay your bills.  You look for art, and we’re all trying to make art, but there are a lot of sketches before you get to a real masterpiece.  And I feel like I’m working with Picasso right now.  I’m no longer in the academy training.  There’s something really special going on in this show.

Kenn> I think if I asked which shows you didn’t like, I’d probably have my heart broken.  I was looking at your IMDB profile and you’ve been on so many things I loved, like John Doe.  That was one of my favorite shows, and on Dark Angel you had the recurring role.

Rekha> Oh great.  Yeah, not to say that there’s a lot of schlock that I’ve worked on.  There are some things that worked great.  But most of all, I’ve been very blessed.  But then it’s not always.   I don’t know if you remember the character that I played on Dark Angel.  It was a fun spot to do, but she didn’t get a lot of a character of arc.  She didn’t get one period actually.  She was a doctor who came in and worked with Jessica and Michael’s characters to help them out.  But I never went anywhere.  But to have a show like this, where this is a serious arc; if you go back in the story before you even saw me, you’ve got the given that my entire family has been blown to smithereens, but I’m still alive.  Now, because there are so few people left in the world, I get my dream job.  In the back-story, I used to work for the mayor.  So this is like the dream of my life, but it’s a really messed up circumstance.  Then I go on a planet where it’s war time.  We’re running from robots, then I found out I am a robot, then I’m sleeping with the guy that ruined my life on New Caprica so that I can try to find the answer to deal with this insanity, then I kill somebody?

Kenn> You missed that you got to fix an election too. 

Rekha> Yes, I screwed that one up unfortunately.

Shaun> The character must be from Chicago, because only in Chicago do they know how to fix elections (laughs).  Maybe you don’t like Tory anymore after what she did last week, but did you like Tory and fill out some of the background of the character for yourself?

Rekha> You know, I did, but not with details.  I didn’t think it was necessary, simply because there is so much going on in the scripts.  The writing is so wonderful; I didn’t feel like I needed to do a whole lot to fill in the gaps.  But Ron and I did talk before we started the 4^th season,  It was really wonderful actually.  I got to collaborate and send them my thoughts on the character on what my strengths and weaknesses were, and what I thought about how her existence was, which was great.  So we did build that back-story for Tory coming into this 4^th season.  Yes, I do like Tory.   I think for myself, and for most actors, you have to like your character.  You have to have compassion for every human being on this planet, or else what are you doing being an actor?  That’s my point of view anyway.  I may not agree with some of her decisions, but I do believe she is doing her best.  She’s one smart cookie.  I certainly could not be the chief of staff to the president of the Universe, as I like to say.  So I respect people who do those kinds of jobs.  She’s extremely organized and she’s really together.  To have her world broken apart, and to be forced to feel things that she’s never felt before, I can’t imagine what she’s going through.  I do try to imagine, that’s kind of my job.  But it’s hard to imagine.

Shaun> How did you feel when you opened the script and read that your character was going to shoot Cally out the launch bay?

Rekha> Can I say shit on this show?  That’s what I thought.  Oh shit!  Oh boy, people are going to hate me.

Kenn> This is an argument that I’ve been having with a lot of the other fans, including Shaun.  I think Tory was really heroic in saving Nicholas.  I don’t like the fact that Nicki Clyne isn’t on the show anymore because I liked her a lot, but I think what Tory did in saving the child was probably important for the entire future of humanity and Cylon. 

Rekha> I think that’s what happened for myself as I went through that scene.  I know lots of people have different interpretations and I don’t want to take away from that.  But I felt that she was quite sincere in trying to turn this woman around; trying to see if she could really see us as humans and get past the fear and save herself.  I knew if I couldn’t get her to come around, I’d have to do something I didn’t like.  Tory’s thinking this is an important child here and I’m not going to let her take him with her.  That’s for sure.  Trying to protect my new family and Aaron’s character, Chief, trying to protect him from this wife that he has, who has lost her marbles. 

Kenn> I think that’s a nice way of putting it.  But I loved that scene, I think it was one of the most powerful scenes of the series. 

Rekha> Oh wow.  I still haven’t seen the episode.  I’m dying to see it. 

Kenn> Trust me, it’s a good one.

Rekha> Cool.

Shaun> How do you pull out of the character after some of the heavy scenes you’ve had, or do you? 

Rekha> You know, it’s interesting, because I’ve never worked so intensely as I did this summer when we were shooting some of that stuff.  It’s such a dark show, and I’ve never done this before.  I was really surprised how it did build. I’ve heard, and I hope, that the older you get, the better you get at it, coming in and out of character.  I’m still fairly new at this and I’m not that good at it yet.  So I found that it was taxing.  I found myself feeling really bummed out on the weekends sometimes, and I’m like, “Whoa, that’s not my life.  Where am I?  Oh, my life is good, reality check.”  It’s a tough one. 

Shaun> We have a call now.  Caller, you’re on the air.

Caller>Hi this is Jamie.  My question is, I talked to Aaron the other day<LINK TO THIS>

and he told me how they put everyone’s face up on the board deciding who would be Cylons.  What did you first think when you first found out?  Were you happy you were going to be a Cylon?  Were you against it?

Rekha> I was really excited.  I’m quite sure I was the only one who was totally overjoyed.  The reason I was, was that I’d just had so much fun as a fan watching these wonderful, dark, female characters; Tricia, and Grace, and Lucy and who they portrayed, and how much fun they got to have, doing all this action.  I was delighted that the plot was doing anything like that.  Like I said earlier, it’s a wonderful thing to work on as an actor.  To me, the bigger the challenge, the more excited I get.  So it’s a big challenge.

Kenn> Would you say there are any similarities between Rekha and Tory? How are your characters alike, or are they at all?

Rekha> At the heart of it, I think yes.  If I can’t find what is in her that is in me, then I can’t pull off the role.  I like to think I’m smart and together.  I don’t know that I’d make some of the choices that she makes.  But at the same time, I can’t even judge her in that way because I’m not in her shoes.  I don’t know what kind of shadow I’d be of my current self if I’d gone through what she has gone through.  All of the characters on the show are pretty amazing.  To think what they are going through and how they are surviving; they are all really strong survivors, all these characters that have managed to live and not kill themselves by now.  So yeah, I think there are similarities.

Kenn> What do you think it is about the character that makes her seem so much more accepting of it?  Even the character seems almost happy to have found out that she’s a Cylon, compared to the chief and Tigh and Anders. 

Rekha> I think in her sort of very pragmatic fashion, she’s seen that there have been a bazillion tactics that we’ve all been trying to use to get our goal, which is to end the war, which is to get out of this alive.  And being the president’s assistant, she’s been at the helm of a lot of those decisions and trying to implement all of those different tactics.  And they are not working!  None of them are working.  So ok, let’s be practical about this is I think where Tory is coming from.  “Now I have this new found knowledge, ok maybe the answer is here in this, discovering who I am.  Maybe it’s not where I’ve been looking the whole time.  Let’s look in the opposite direction and see what I can find.  Maybe that’s where the true answer is.

Kenn> Are you going to get any scenes where you get to act with yourself like the other Cylon’s do?

Rekha> If I answer that one way or the other, it won’t be as much fun for you to find out.

Kenn> That’s probably true.  You’ve got to watch us; we try to trick spoilers out of our guests!

Shaun> Ron Moore has trained you all very well!

Kenn> Ok, a question about a spoiler, not asking about the spoiler, but I have to ask a question about the secret of who the 5^th Cylon is.  Do you have a feel for how closely guarded that is?  Do the actors know, or do Ron and David even know who that is at this point?

Rekha> It is really safely guarded.  I always feel like, I think Michael Hogan was saying this, when you read something in a script, you don’t know if it’s true.  People show up and then you find out that they aren’t really alive, they’re dead.  It’s just somebody’s vision.  When I found out I was a Cylon, one of my first thoughts after being excited, was maybe I’m not.  Maybe they planted a chip in our heads when we were all on New Caprica because we were incarcerated by the Cylons on many occasions.  Maybe I’m going to find out in a few episodes that I’m not a Cylon.  So I don’t even know if I believe anything when I read it, and no one is there to tell you yay, or nay.  They like to leave you in the mystery.  I did not find out the full word of whether or not I was a Cylon until five minutes before we shot the scene where we say we’re Cylons.  So that’s how closely guarded they are on that show. 

Shaun> We have a question from the chat room, are you planning on going to any other conventions, if New York City did not scare you off completely. 

Rekha> No it didn’t.  It was crazy in a wonderful sort of way.  I really had a great time, and I needed a good nap when it was over, but I’m totally ready for more.  It’s so wonderful to meet all of the fans.  We’re a bunch of people who all love the same show, so why wouldn’t I want to go to more.  If they call me, I will come.

Shaun> Someone else is asking about Davinci’s City Hall.  That was a great show, but I guess moving him into the mayor’s office didn’t save the show. 

Rekha> Thank you, that was really one of my most enjoyable characters, aside from Tory, in my career.  It was a really great little story arc that we had on that show.  It was a shame to see it go, but I know the creators of that show are doing another show called intelligence.  And I caught a bit of that and it’s a wonderful show.  I think it got canned too.  It’s a situation of it being Canadian.  I think our situation up here with funding for television is terrible.  It’s really sad because there is such great writing, and such great actors up here, it’s a real shame that things like that get pulled.  But thank God, most of my work comes from the US.

Shaun> So what are you doing now, are you trying out for pilots?

Rekha> There hasn’t been much in the way of pilots, and I’ve been pretty busy with the show.  But I’m just starting to audition again now that we’re coming to a close.  I don’t know, it’s just weird to get back out there again, but I’m excited about it.

Kenn> When will the filming wrap up for the season? How far along are you in the season?

Rekha> We’re getting close.  I think we’ve got maybe 5 or 6 episodes left.  Isn’t that depressing?

Kenn> Yeah, very much so.  Speaking about depressing, I’ve got to ask, what’s up with Tory crying during sex?  Do you know the back-story behind that?

Rekha> It was the writer, Michael Angeli.  We spoke about that, because that’s exactly what I said, “What’s up with this?” He said it was something that he had heard that it was true about some woman he heard about, and he liked that idea.  He thought it would be a cool quirk to incorporate into Tory’s character.  For me personally, I was like, “I don’t know!”.  I decided to use it appropriately in the scene, because it never came up again, it seemed like it was quite appropriate that it was her response to having to sleep with Baltar.  I think she lied.  I think she was really unhappy.  I did not want to sleep with that man.

Shaun> How do you feel about being a part of Galactica?  I mean you can go to these conventions now until the day you die.  This show is going to be around forever like Star Trek.

Rekha> It just started to dawn on me, that thought, when I was in New York.  I think that somebody said it to me.  They were saying, “This is cult”.  And I was like, “Yeah, I think this is.”  This is huge.  I new it was a great awesome show, but I never thought of it in those terms until just recently.  That’s pretty amazing to be a part of something that’s going to go down in history like that, knock on wood.  It’s a source of great pride and I feel very fortunate.

Shaun> Are you looking for another drama or a sitcom?  Would you like something lighter to do?

Rekha> You know, I wouldn’t mind a break.  During the strike, I did end up doing a small part in a movie, that kept getting smaller.  It was a movie with Jennifer Anniston called Traveling.  I had so much fun on that show, because it was just party scenes where we were hanging out and having a good time.  This girl was a happy girl and I laughed in every single shot.  It was a good break from all of the dark stuff that we do, for sure.  In the future, I want more of everything.  I’d love to do it all.  I haven’t been doing the show for the entire four years like everybody else has, so I do not need as much of a relief as some people are.  But I can’t imagine how Mary or Eddy are feeling.  They’re probably dying to do a comedy, but I’m dying to do anything.

 Kenn> Are you a fan of the sci fi genre or do you just end up in a lot of sci fi shows.

Rekha> I am a fan of it, but I don’t like sci fi just for sci fi’s sake.  If there’s a story there that has some weight to it, that has something going on, it doesn’t matter what genre it is really.  What I do like about sci fi, sort of like I was saying earlier, you get to tell stories in such fantastical metaphorical ways that you can’t always tell with just a straight up story.  You can talk about politics, and planets where people look completely different.  Basically, there’s no racism in the future is the idea, right?  I love that about the sci fi genre.

Kenn> I think that’s one thing that is so great about the Cylons, they’ve got all different races and ethnic origins covered.  It’s really cool and I think they must have thought that out.

Rekha> Yeah, I think so.  It’s really delightful and it makes me happy to see all those different colors and shapes and sizes.  That’s the way the world is.

Kenn> Do you have a favorite episode?

Rekha> Well, I’m partial to the mini-series in a way, because it was so shockingly great.  You watched it and you were hooked.  But I really can’t pick, there are just so many episodes that are fantastic. 

Shaun> We do have a question from the chat room.  How does Tory sleep at night knowing what she did to poor Cally?

Rekha> I don’t know, Cylon programming maybe.  I think we all justify our actions, or we try to, and she’s just trying to put it behind her.  You can forget something you did out of wanting to forget it, till you look at that person’s face.  I think every time she looks at the chief’s face, her gut just wants to implode. 

Shaun> We have a caller with a question.

Caller>I’m a little nervous.

Rekha> It’s ok, I’m nervous too.

Caller> I have a question for you.  How did you get into acting, what made you get into acting.

Rekha> Well, that’s a big question.  It may take me awhile.  I’ll start with my little funny story.  Back when I was a little girl in grade five, they made an announcement that there was going to be a school play and auditions.  I wasn’t planning on auditioning, but I was curious.  What was this about, how did this work?  So I went down there to watch the auditions for awhile.  It was hilarious what was going through my mind.  Kids have such hubris.  I was going, “Oh, she’s good.  Nope, he sucks.  I could do better than that.”, just completely analyzing their work.  The teacher asked, “Do you want try?”  I said no, and just sat there for a little longer.  Then I was like, “Ok, I’ll try.”  And I ended up booking the lead role for the school play.  And I had so much fun, and I was completely shocked  and confused when other people’s parents came up to me and told me how good I was.  I kind of logged it in my mind as, “This is something you know how to do.”  I just kept coming back to it.  My initial dream was to become a painter, and that started in grade 4.  Then grade 5 came along, and I did the play, so I was confused and that went on through all of high school.  I couldn’t decide if I wanted to be a painter or an actor.  And I’d drive myself and my friends crazy asking them which way I should go.  Then what actually happened, my high school acting teacher was a great man, but he was a little old school.  So every time we’d do a play, I would get a really small part.  The more you get to grade 11 or 12, he makes a point of making sure you get a bigger part if you are part of the solid drama team.  And he came up to me on two occasions when it came time to cast the play.  He said, “You know, you are such a good actor but I really can’t figure out how to put you in this story.  I tried to even change the script, but these people have to be related so I don’t know what to do with you.  Would you mind being assistant director?  Would you mind being makeup?  Would you run the back?” I said, “Sure.”  Because I wanted to be part of it.  So early on I got the message that the color of my skin was a problem and it meant that I couldn’t be an actor.  So I went to art school.  That was a bit of a disaster going to art school straight out of high school.  I was not ready for that.  Something wasn’t right and I was kind of off for a little while.  Then one day I saw an ad in the paper.  This Indian woman I know now, her name’s Veena Sood.  I was like, “There’s this Indian woman and she’s teaching acting.”  So I was curious and I called her up, and she told me about this studio called the Ivana Chubbuck Acting Studio.  And I went and checked them out, and it was fabulous  Ivana Chubbuck is a coach who is in LA and works with lots of stars.  And I started to train, and the reason why I started to really go into it, aside then that this is some inborn innate talent that I have to do for some crazy reason, I looked around on television.  I was like, “My God, my face is not anywhere.  This color of this skin has been told to me and probably to hundreds of other people out there, that it can’t exist in this world.”  And I said, “Screw that.  I’ve got to change this. I’ve got to give it my all.”  So that is the other reason I’m an actor.

Shaun> Good for you.

Rekha> Sorry it was such a long story. 

Shaun> No not at all.  There are a couple of acting students from New York in the chat room. One is African American, one is Hispanic, and they are saying, “God bless you for your story.”

Rekha> Yeah, well there’s only one way to change it.  When I was in high school there was like maybe two or three Indian faces.  Now there’s more.  You’ve got Parminder Nagra on ER.  You’ve Cal Penn on house.  And you’ve got me.  There’s more stuff coming up in film.  It’s changing.  But the only way it’s going to change is if we’re willing to change it. 

Caller>I just wanted to ask one more thing.  The Lone Gunmen on IMDB is first, was that your first acting job?

Rekha> No it wasn’t actually.  The first was Dark Angel, and I guess it goes further up because it was recurring and went on for awhile. 

Shaun> Do you have a website or anything that you want to plug?

Rekha> I’m not that together!  I have a domain name and I’m going to do something with it eventually, or I’m going to make one of my friends do something with it for me.  I can check my email, I print out my audition papers, but that’s about all I can do on a computer.  You know, I just finally got a laptop a few months ago.

Kenn> Here you are playing a Cylon, the most advanced robotic race in the universe, working for the president of the universe….

Rekha> I know and on John Doe, I was such a tech geek.  I spent all of my time just trying to figure out what the hell I was saying. 

Shaun> You were in that with Sprague Grayden, right?

Rekha> Yeah.

Shaun> She’s going to be on with us next week.

Rekha> She’s a lovely actress.  I really like her. 

Kenn> If you had to say there was one thing you’ll take with you from Battlestar, what will it be?  What’s the one thing that will stay with you?

Rekha> You know, maybe it’s because of what I just said, but the confidence that an Indian woman can be one of the Final Five.  That’s huge for me in what I want to do with this career of mine.  In this moment, that’s my answer.