Saul Rubinek plays Artie Nielson on SyFy Channel’s hit show Warehouse 13.  Artie is the caretaker of the warehouse, and he has a mysterious past that is going to be explored in tonight’s  first season finale.  Saul answered questions for the TV Talk radio show about how the role has evolved, and the addition of Claudia, as well as what we can expect in the first season finale.

Saul Rubinek was born in a refugee camp in Germany after WW II where his father ran a Yiddish Repertory Theatre company.  Saul started his professional career as a child actor in theatre and radio in Canada. He was a member of the Stratford Shakespearean Festival Company in Stratford, Ontario and later was a co-founder, actor and director of Theatre Le Hibou, Theatre Passe-Muraille, and Toronto Free Theatre.  Rubinek started working in the U.S. in the late '70's as an actor at the Public Theatre in New York, and he divided his time between theatres in both countries for several years.He got his early training in film and television as an actor for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and he continues to work as a producer, writer, and actor for Canadian independent features.

He has been nominated for awards for his work in stage, radio, television and film, winning DramaLogue awards for his portrayal of Touchstone in Des McAnuff's production of As You Like It and for directing Rick Cleveland's Jerry and Tom at Los Angeles Met Theatre in '94. He also won a supporting actor Genie award for his work in Ralph Thomas' Canadian feature Ticket to Heaven. Rubinek has been featured in such films including: I Love Trouble, The Singing Detective, The Contender, Family Man, Nixon, True Romance, Unforgiven, Man Trouble, Against All Odds, Bonfire of the Vanities and Wall Street. 

Rubinek's work on U.S television spans three decades. Some of his American television work includes: two seasons as a semi-regular on Frasier; Showtime's award-winning Hiroshima and HBO's award-winning drama And The Band Played On.  He also had recurring roles on Steven Bochco's ABC series Blind Justice, A & E's Nero Wolf starring Tim Hutton, Once & Again and The Equalizer.  His guest-starring roles include appearances on Eureka, Psych, The Practice, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Star Trek: The Next Generation, The Outer Limits and Lost. He played Jackie Gleason's manager in the CBS biopic Gleason starring Brad Garrett and network president Fred Silverman in NBC's Growin' Up Different. He was also featured in TNT's And Starring Pancho Villa as Himself starring Antonio Banderas.  Most recently, he was a major guest star on the TNT pilot Leverage opposite Tim Hutton.  He has also had supporting roles opposite Tom Selleck in two CBS movies for television, Jesse Stone: Sea Change and Jesse Stone: Night Passage.

TV Talk> The show has been doing fantastic, the most watched show on SyFy.  You must be floored how popular the show has become?

Saul> We were hoping that it was going to be successful, like you always do.  We did not expect that it would be as successful as it is.  Right now, we’ve got lighting in a bottle.  We don’t want to look at that too close unless it changes.

TV Talk> The last time we talked, you said you wanted a show that your children could watch.  Obviously, it’s a show that everybody can watch. 

Saul> It’s very, very fun.  It’s really imaginative.  The combination of David Simkins and Jack Kenny as our show runner seems to have worked out really, really well.  The show is really walking an interesting line that’s trying not to fall too far on either side of comedy or drama.  I think as long as we walk that tight rope, I think we’re being successful.

TV Talk> Adding Claudia to the show was nice.  You two have such a great chemistry between you.

Saul> Allison Scagliotti is a force of nature.  She’s only 19 years old, but she is a veteran.  When we started working together, it was like we’d been working together for decades.  It was very fortunate for the show that we had this instant rapport, because it shows on camera.

TV Talk> It does.  In one instance, it’s like a father, daughter relationship.  Then when you are bickering, it’s like a mentor and student.  She’s always surprising Artie with her new inventions.  That was a surprise this season.

Saul> Yes, it was very, very clever.  If it wasn’t cast right, and we didn’t have Allison, it wouldn’t work. But these things are always kind of magical when they work.  The components are strange.  They cast the show, they do the best they can.  The way they cast the writers too.  There’s a whole room of extremely talented people who are making this operate.  There has to be a relationship between the network executive, Mark Stern, who is running this thing, and the people who are running our show.  If you take one of these components, you don’t have anything that works.  The other thing is that this network is really standing behind this show.  You know, they rebranded this network and are calling it SyFy.  There were a lot of people making fun of them for that, but really they were hoping to broaden their audience, and this was their flagship show with which they were going to do that.  They put their money and their time and their effort where their mouths were.  And it paid off.  It was great for everybody.

TV Talk> That’s right.  Warehouse 13 was the show that they used to launch SyFy. 

Saul> Yes, you can imagine, if it hadn’t worked, then a lot of things would have gone south. 

TV Talk> I wouldn’t want that responsibility on my shoulders.  But you’ve handled it very well.  And Artie’s been through a lot this season, dealing with Claudia and Myka.  That episode with her in the mirror showed that she may not like Artie that much because he is keeping secrets.  That was a very powerful episode, in particular.

Saul> It was very well done, and she is a wonderful actress.  They hired Jack Kenny to be the show runner this season, and he’s somebody who has never been associated, or had anything to do with science fiction.  It was a very smart choice.  He’s done situation comedies.  He created a show called Book of Daniel which was about a gay priest, played by Aidan Quinn.  He’s somebody who is interested in families as a writer, in family relationships which he recapitulates in the show.  As a result, because he has such a marvelous sense of humor, and he gets along collaboratively so well with David SImkins who wrote our pilot, there is a nice chemistry between what is happening in the writers room and what is happening in production.  As a result you get a great episode like the Louis Carol episode.  And we have deepened our connections as characters to each other.  So were not just doing gadgets or artifacts of the week.  We hope that the audience, and it seems that they are, are getting invested in the background of the characters and their relationships to each other, and that’s everything in the show.  It doesn’t matter how far out in the universe you go, and how many fancy artifacts you have.  If you don’t care about these people, you are never going to turn it on next week.

TV Talk> That’s right; especially with the episode where Artie got jabbed with the sword.  I thought you were finished.  Here we go, they’re going to kill him off this season.  You must have felt the same way!

Saul> That’s part of what’s making the show work. We’re able to go out on a limb; the writers are with their imagination. These artifacts can do almost anything, and don’t have anything to do with aliens or space; they’re man made.  They are having a lot of fun, whether it’s a chair in the office of the person who invented psychoanalysis, or whether it is Copernicus’ students who created a compass, or that Nicholas Tesla created a gun that can disrupt memory, or FIlo Farnsworth has a communications device.  All of these are real people in history.  And we are of course having fun with what they may, or may not have created in the real world.  That is giving the show an imaginative edge that other series, maybe don’t have. Even though there are great science fiction series out there, and other great imaginative shows out there, some of them take themselves way more seriously than we do.  I think it’s a combination of sense of humor, and imaginations that is making the show work.  At least that is what I think is making the show work, who knows. 

TV Talk> I’d never heard of this phrase “Steam Punk” until this show.  Where does that come from?

Saul> Well, Steam Punk is a combination of the most modern 21^st century technology that looks like it belongs in a novel by Jules Verne.  So maybe Artie’s office is able to do stuff that even the most high tech people in homeland security can’t do because of the power that he has in this warehouse.  But it looks like it was designed in the 19^th century.  There is brass filigree and wood and beautiful objects that have a high technological power, but look 19^th century. 

TV Talk> Do you love all of this history; a little bit of Jules Verne here, a little bit of this that and the other.  How do you feel?

Saul> I love it, we all do.  You can see how much fun the cast is having with this premise.  They also went out there in terms of design.  The production designer, Frank Osef, are the best in the business.  I’ve done very expensive movies that have not got the quality of these props and design.  They really have put their money where there mouths are in terms of production design.  We are fascinated as actors at the designs the production team is coming up with.  Their conepts and execution are second to none, which is really interesting on a cable show. 

TV Talk> It’s been a great ride, talking about the guest stars now.  Mark Shepherd was on, Joe Morton, Risa Reese, all the way back to Tricia Helfer and Joe Flannagan.  I bet second season you are going to have people coming on in droves.

Saul> That’s right Michael Hogan was on as Myka’s dad with an episode having to do with an artifact connected to Edgar Allen Poe.  The final episode is probably one of the best episodes that we’ve done.  We’re in the same time zone as Eureka, and I’m really hoping that even though we’ve had actors from Eureka that have come onto our show as different characters, maybe next season we will cross breed our characters.  Maybe some of the characters from Eureka will play themselves on our show, and maybe we’ll play ourselves on Eureka.  Maybe that will happen.

TV Talk> That would be interesting and would make sense to have a crossover between those shows.  Other people are saying a Warehouse 13/Sanctuary crossover. That would be interesting.

Saul> Yes, it all kind of would work, wouldn’t it. 

TV Talk> I’d love to see you and Amanda Tapping in a couple of episodes together.  She’s the leader of the sanctuary, and you’re the leader of the warehouse. It would be interesting to see you two match wits.

Saul> Very interesting, good idea.  Maybe you should write the episode. 

TV Talk> What would you like to see in the second season, and when do you start filming?

Saul> We start shooting next March, and we will be shooting through August for next season.  We will be shooting 13 new episodes, and we’re all very excited about it.  When I first started doing interviews before the show was out there; and the writers laugh at me about this.  I said, “Every new show they are always trying to find out, what is a Warehouse 13 episode?”  Well, I’m of the opinion that as long as they keep looking for it, we’re ok.  The moment that they find it, we are dead in the water.  I don’t want to create a formula.  Every show that we’ve done has been different from every other show.  There’s nothing formulaic so far.  When you tune into this series, there is something new going to hit you about every show.  That is very hard for the writers, but it’s very fun for the writers.  They don’t know what to expect because things are going to come out of the blue.  They really are in the last two episodes of the show.

TV Talk> It sounds like you are really proud of the show.  Maybe that’s why people love it.  You love it, and you have such a great reputation.  At Comic Con it was a huge crowd pleaser.

Saul> Yeah, we were very gratified by the reaction we got at Comic Con and are continuing to get.  One of the things that is happening is that our audience is growing, and hopefully they won’t forget about us before next summer. 

TV Talk> I don’t think they will forget.  A lot of people are saying they wish they could get a tour of Warehouse 13, some kind of fan event. 

Saul> Well, you can by going to SyFy.com/Warehouse13 and my character hosts the website.  You can go right into that Warehouse. 

TV Talk> I was thinking physically.

Saul> Physically?  Then you will have to come to Toronto.  Maybe SyFy will open a theme park and there will be a Warehouse ride.

TV Talk> Well, I’ll let you go.  Congratulations on the show, and on it’s success.  It’s well deserved.

Saul> Thank you so much.