Interview: Neil Grayston Talks About Being The Big Man In Town On ‘Eureka’

The future is always changing, especially if you’re a fan watching Eureka on SyFy this summer. This season, Eureka’s main characters changed their time line when they traveled back to 1947. They returned to find their character’s lives slightly altered. Apparently, they never listened to Doc Brown’s words of wisdom.

Douglas Fargo, once an impetuous and lovable assistant, is now the head of Global Dynamics and finds his employees haven’t taken well to his dictator-like leadership tactics of the past.

We got the chance to sit down with the new director of GD, Douglas Fargo, played enthusiastically by Neil Grayston. Surprisingly, he was more than willing to spill the classified goings-on of this nation’s most secret and innovative town.

The Flickcast: Which of Douglas Fargo’s personality traits will help him in his new position as Director of Global Dynamics?

Neil Grayston: Well I think it’s his strange, I’m not going to say tenacity, but his curiosity is probably going to help him. Because you know he is the guy who always pushes the buttons and maybe now he might actually take a little sec to ask what that button does before pushing it, but he’s still going to go and investigate and see what’s what. You know, he’s not one to be lazy on the job. I think that will work well for him.

FC: Can you talk about the new direction of the series and how the alternate reality has effected this season?

NG: Well the big thing with the time shift is that everyone’s been completely reinvigorated by it, from the actors to the writers and even the network are all very, very excited. This year I’ve been in and talking to people and everyone seems really, genially enthusiastic about it which is great.

Especially on our side, we’re having so much fun doing it, we get to figure out our characters again and try to figure out, ok, well what would they do if they were another person but they still remembered who they were.

It’s a good thing- I find that interesting, because if I was trapped in some jerk faced Neil’s body, how would I balance all this and not let people know I’m from a different time stream? So, yeah I’ve been so excited about it.

I heard about it from the writers in December and I think everyone at some point has done a happy dance when hearing about it. And it usually starts out with, “So, in the first episode we send you back and then you come back to the present and everything’s a little bit different”. I’m like, “Ok, cool” and I’m expecting the, “And then you solve it and episode 2 you’re back and everything’s good.”

But, they’re just sort of sitting there with these big, huge grins on their faces, and I was sitting there and said, “And yeah we go back and everything’s different…” And they said, “And we don’t change it!”. Everybody’s like woah! (makes big, excited arm movements).

Fargo’s running GD, so for me just as an actor that’s awesome. Because I only started out as contracted for 7 episodes, and I was sort of a local hire because I’m from Canada- and it was sort of a last minute thing. So it’s really awesome to start out as the assistant to the guy who ran it (GD), and now I’m the guy running it, and I’m in all of the episodes produced. And for me, it’s like, finally my hard work has done something.

Stay tuned for the next part of Neil Grayston’s sit down with The Flickcast where we’ll discuss his amusing antics with his sometimes partner in crime, Allison Scagliotti of Warehouse 13.