Edward James Olmos is a a man whose career has spanned over thirty years. During that time he’s played quite a diverse set of characters and also managed to find time to write, produce and direct some movies as well. Recently, Olmos starred as Admiral William Adama in the critically acclaimed series Battlestar Galactica.
In the time since BSG concluded its run on the Sci-Fi Channel, Olmos has been busy directing The Plan, a TV movie that tells the BSG story form the perspective of the Cylons. I caught up with Olmos during press for The Plan at the San Diego Comic-Con. Among the topics covered were that Olmos has been working on BSG non-stop until very recently, how proud he is of BSG, that The Plan will both surprise and inspire BSG fans everywhere and how Blade Runner started it all.
QUESTION: How was it, once you finished the show, coming back and doing The Plan?
EDWARD JAMES OLMOS: I never stopped. Matter of fact, I never had a wrap. I never wrapped Battlestar Galactica. I didn’t wrap it until 4 days ago, I finally finished (The Plan) and you guys are gonna, if you really have fans of the show you guys are gonna be very very happy.
Q: Can you tell us why?
EJO: A lot of questions are answered, a lot of them. You guys are gonna sit there an go…alright! And, you’re gonna want to see the entire series over again and that’s really all we are asking because I wanna see the show again. I get a new friend that hasn’t seen it so I say “Please, c’mon over to my house sit down man, let’s watch it.”
Any reason under the sun to watch it, you watch it, especially when you have someone new so you can say “Whatdya think of that, huh? Oh, man you ain’t seen nothing yet. Wait sit down, we’re only gonna do this 12 hours, here.”
But I gotta tell ya right now, what I said today and I gotta say this quick, The Plan give us an ability to look at ourselves, after experiencing this world and it’s gonna answer a lot of questions. Caprica gives us the opportunity to feed off the energy of Battlestar whether it be for maybe half the season, who knows when they’re gonna pull the plug on it.
Maybe it’ll be 5 seasons, maybe 7 seasons, maybe 9 seasons, but whenever it does finish, it’ll lead you right into Battlestar, and then if you get to the very end of Battlestar and you put in Blade Runner man, boom.
Q: What’s the connection to Blade Runner?
When I told Ron “I wanna be in this show, I wanna do this series with you.” Iit was Michael Rymer, director, Davide Eick, Ron Moore and myself in a room and I said “I walked in to Blade Runner and we created a world, Ridley and myself and a lot of people created this world and nobody, no one has ever walked into that role again. Didn’t even try, they just didn’t wanna like even get involved with it.
They tried Aliens, a couple different kind of Aliens came out, Predator, all this stuff, and then they tried to copy the design, the feel, but nobody messed with Blade Runner, they didn’t even try.” I said “I wanna do that, I wanna mess with it, I wanna walk right through that door. Its been left open and nobody’s walked in in 20 years.” 1983 is when it came out, 80-81 is when we were doing it.
So, basically no one had walked through that door and it was left open, I said “let’s go walk in, what the hell’s wrong with us, are we afraid of it, you guys are not good enough to stand there and walk into that world and decide?” Cylons and Replicants, Okay, it’s technology that we created that ends up becoming, you know, comes back and tries to kill us. Okay.
Of course the Replicants are even more deadlier than the Cylons are in some ways even though the Cylons wiped out humanity, if you leave the Replicants they way they were going they would have been…Batty, Batty was bad.
Q: Are you going to direct any episodes of Caprica?
EJO: Yes I am.
Q: Have you chosen an episode yet? Do you know when?
EJO: No, towards the end. They gave me a little, hard time, just about an hour ago, and it will be decided that I’ll be doing something towards the end of the season.
