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An Interview With MainMission:2000 September
2, 2000
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MainMission:2000 was the first
science fiction convention appearance for Catherine Schell, who played
Alpha’s science officer, Maya, during the show’s second season, and who also
was a guest star in the first season episode “Guardian of Piri.” At MainMission:2000,
she was interviewed by John Muir, author of Exploring Space: 1999. JOHN MUIR: Ladies and gentlemen. We have
just seen Alpha’s one science office, and we are about to see Moonbase
Alpha’s second science officer. It is my great privilege to introduce the
beautiful, the gracious, the elegant… Catherine Schell! [Applause as Catherine takes the stage and
embraces Barry Morse.] CATHERINE SCHELL: How long have we waited to see these two together? Where else will you see these two together? AUDIENCE MEMBER: “Guardian of Piri”! JOHN MUIR: Oh, okay. Together again, then. CATHERINE SCHELL: We were old mates! BARRY MORSE: We go back a long way! CATHERINE SCHELL: We worked together doing a show
called The Adventurer and we were working with some horrible people,
weren’t we? Horrible people! What was his name? Gene Barry! Not very nice. EDITOR’S NOTE: Science
fiction fans may remember Gene Barry best for his role as Dr. Clayton
Forrester in the George Pal classic The War of the Worlds. BARRY MORSE: I had almost forgotten his name! CATHERINE SCHELL: Mercifully blacked out. Anyway,
I noticed that Gene Barry’s got photographic shops. Oh, he did in 1987, when
I was here the last time. I saw these photographic shops you’d go in to have
your film developed or whatever, and there were these cubicles with “Gene
Barry, Gene Barry.” He deserved to work out of cubicles. JOHN MUIR: Well, I thought what we would
do, Ms. Schell, if it’s okay with you is — I know these folks are going to
want to ask you a lot of questions, but I thought maybe a good thing to do to
start out, since I am so excited to see you, is that I could ask you a couple
of questions first. Many people don’t know this, but Catherine Schell was the
first celebrity that I interviewed. I was not long out of college, I didn’t
know what I was doing, and she was just the most gracious, wonderful, giving
person. She spent so much time with me on the phone. She asked me about my
life, where I was, who I was... CATHERINE SCHELL: I was interviewing him because I
was writing a book about him... JOHN MUIR: I hope not. But I felt we would
do a little Q&A first, then if you would like to say anything to the
audience, or you’d like to take questions from the audience — however you’d
like to do this. But I’m going to fulfill a personal fantasy, and I am going
to (being a red-blooded American man) I am going to ask her to first speak
about “Guardian of Piri,” the first episode she guested on in Space: 1999,
where she was the temptress of the stars, the seductress, the siren.
Specifically, I wanted to ask you about the dress and how you felt about the
dress.
JOHN MUIR: I doubt there are many people
who agree with your description of your so-called “bad qualities,” because I
don’t think you have any. But when we spoke many years ago, you talked to me
a little bit about your reservations about playing a robot, and essentially,
the Servant of the Guardian, how to play sort of sexy, but also that you were
a robot and you felt that the director did not like what you were doing. It
was actually a fairly difficult role. Would you like to talk about that? CATHERINE SCHELL: Well, the way I saw it was that
robots, I don’t that in the future, they would be very emotional, so it was a
very flat performance. There was no depth to it. I had the feeling that
people thought, “she can’t bloody act!” But I hope that, in the end, when you
realized that it was a robot, that is why you know why the way that she spoke
was not natural. There was a depth behind the form, though I never saw it
myself. I don’t know whether it worked. JOHN MUIR: You’ve never seen “Guardian of
Piri”? CATHERINE SCHELL: No. JOHN MUIR: Is it being shown at the
convention, does anybody know? CATHERINE SCHELL: I never saw the whole episode. JOHN MUIR: Well, I don’t want to come off
like a fawning fan, but it really is a great episode. [Holds up a photograph of Catherine Schell in her “Guardian of Piri”
costume.] This is selling all over the convention. CATHERINE SCHELL: See— big waist. JOHN MUIR: Not at all. CATHERINE SCHELL: This is exactly the thing I
didn’t want to look like. JOHN MUIR: She doesn’t realize that we all
have a copy of that photo. In the last day, they’ve sold that out and have
had to reprint it. Catherine, we’d like to know— when you got to the sets of Space:
1999 — what was your feeling being there, on “Guardian of Piri,” when you
walked in. Can you tell us what it was like? CATHERINE SCHELL: Yes. I had never seen something
so bizarre in my life. I have to say, my mouth was agape. I mean, it was just
so straight, with all these balls, and I didn’t know how that would convey
onto the screen. I’m told it conveyed beautifully, but that was Keith’s work.
He had the imagination. Actors don’t always have that same kind of
imagination: we do something else. But I have to say, I thought “this is
either going to be the biggest disaster ever, or it’s going to be a fine
film.” JOHN MUIR: Okay, so a year passed. This had
been a guest shot to do the first season of Space: 1999. I guess about
a year passed, and you got a call on a Sunday. Can you tell us how your continued
association came about? CATHERINE SCHELL: I got a call Sunday night from
my— it wasn’t my agent; agents never ring on Sunday. I got a call from Gerry
Anderson, I’m pretty sure, direct. He wanted to see me. He wanted to speak
about doing another series, and he sent the Rolls to come and pick me up. He
has a house in the country, and I went to see him out in the country, and
that’s when he actually said, “We are doing another series. We are
introducing another character, and we would be very interested if you were to
play that character. It’s the character of an alien.” Of course the only
alien I had seen until then was Mister Spock with the long ears, and I just
said “no ears.” You know, it just sort-of developed from there. Yes, okay,
it’s interesting. It’s always a risk to play a part like that, because it
could be fairly difficult to find a job afterwards for a long time, because
people identify you with that part. He was terribly keen— we talked about the
makeup. He said to me, “go home,” — I can draw — and he said, “go home and
think about the makeup, think about how different you would want to be.
Having explained to me, of course, that this has to do with Barbara [Bain].
Barbara was very against my doing the part because we are very similar. Obviously,
I’m younger than she is, but as types, we are similar. She was looking for an
Asian girl or an African girl, someone who could really never be confused
with her, so that these two women were completely alien to each other. But
the production side wanted me to do this, and so obviously I was going to
have to look incredibly different, and I don’t know what happened to this
drawing, because the drawing disappeared. I made a drawing for Gerry and it
is very similar to what the makeup eventually turned out to be. Keith had
made her add the octopod eyebrows, but in the picture, it looked like fuzz
that had been put on my head. It was a thing about doing animals —
pigmentation, different pigmentations, looking almost like a badger or
pandas. That would be my idea, to do something like that. So, in the end, a
lot of that is what you see. In the drawing, I even did a little whisker, my
neck was completely dark and my ears were dark. Now as you remember, in the
first episode, my ears are dark. The American producers said, “clean her ears
up— she looks dirty!” So the make up to the ears went, we didn’t do the
throat anymore, and instead of pigment here [points
to forehead] we had a little piece of hair — that was fox, the animal.
So anyway, when I gave him this picture, he was really amazed. “You mean you
would change yourself to that degree?” Oh— this is important— stars in my
eyes. The pupils were stars, and I worked for a whole month trying to wear
piggy-backed contact lenses, soft lenses and hard lenses on the top, with the
stars, and my eyes could never take it. The moment light would shine in my
eyes, my eyes would cry. Anyway, he was quite surprised at how far I would go
to actually change my look. Then, we did the test with Keith, and he added
peacock multi-colored, then he did the octopods all over my face, and we
said, “if you want acne to become popular, then perhaps this is a good idea.”
So, we compromised, and that’s where the eyebrows came in.
CATHERINE SCHELL: Yes, brown ears. That’s only in
the first episode. JOHN MUIR: Now, you told me that you got on
very well with your fellow cast members, but I thought maybe we could ask about
maybe a couple, just about what you remember about the relationships, for
instance, Tony Anholt. Certainly, Maya and Tony had the romantic relationship
in the second season. How did that go, and how did that work between actors. CATHERINE SCHELL: Well, Tony and I just had jokes
together. There was never a scene that we were actually racy, but we had this
little joking relationship. This relationship continued off the set as well.
The lovely thing about doing that series was that we had a lot of laughs.
Everybody laughed a lot. I wish I could dig the dirt, but there’s nothing
more interesting. I don’t remember moments of conflict, though things may
have been happening off the set. But on the set, we all greeted each other
happily in the morning at makeup. I thought some of the fellows were far more
vain than the women were. My makeup took less time than Tony’s, and Tony and
Nick [Tate] made many comparisons with each other’s hair— “should I put a
little brown pencil on this balding spot here?” It was quite interesting, to
watch the vanity. JOHN MUIR: When you were talking about
having laughs, that reminds of me where there was the episode, the rock
story, as you know— “All That Glisters” [Pained
look on Catherine’s face, laughter from audience.] I understand there
was some laughter on the set, is that correct? CATHERINE SCHELL: Yes, and I would have to be
actually shouted at, very rudely, before I would stop laughing. It was like a
cold shower. (At least I hope the writer’s not here... I don’t know who wrote
that script.) There were things we had to say that were so unbelievable for
us. If you’re really into the part and you’re trying to say something with
conviction, and then you realize that there is always a monster on your
shoulder saying “this is rubbish.” [Laughter from
audience.] I wept. It was actually worse than working with Peter
Sellers, and I laughed. I can’t remember the name of the director— JOHN MUIR: Ray Austin. CATHERINE SCHELL: Yes, Ray Austin. Absolutely, it
was Ray. He really shouted at me: “Catherine! Be professional!” — “I am,
that’s why I’m laughing!” JOHN MUIR: That was fairly early in the
filming. Was that the second or third week on the set? CATHERINE SCHELL: No, it was fairly late. I would
have never been kept around with that kind of behavior. JOHN MUIR: What was happening was that you
were supposed to be looking to an eagle that was not on-screen that was
flying up and then sort of flying down, and you had to say, “it’s going up,
it’s going down.” CATHERINE SCHELL: No, it was a piece of rock. It
was a piece of rock that was changing before our eyes or whatever: we say
“it’s doing this, it’s going up, it’s going down, it’s gone green, no it’s
gone read...” And when you knew what you were saying, and knew what you were
supposed to be looking at, what you were conveying. Writer… JOHN MUIR: I think that’s the thing people
like to hear as far as what was going on, you know, on the set. How did you
do it? CATHERINE SCHELL: Perhaps you’ll see it today — if
you ever see that episode, because really, there are still creases in all of
our faces, and we’re actually turning our faces from the cameras because we
didn’t want to cameras to see us laughing. I’m sure Martin [Landau] was in
this one, and Tony [Anholt] — I think maybe Nick was even in it the three of
us became totally hysterical. Anyway, it was a good afternoon. JOHN MUIR: You also shared with me that at
one point, Fred Freiberger had asked you into his office and mentioned the
possibility that Maya would go off into a spin-off series. Could you just
tell us a little bit about what really happened? CATHERINE SCHELL: It wasn’t only Freddy, it was
also Gerry. The two of them mentioned the fact that there is this thought
that they would do a spin-off on the Maya character, which would have been
obviously very interesting for me, but the conversation was really about,
“what would happen, what do you think, would you want to do it?” Yes! Of
course. Then, they were very sweet, because I was with an agent at the time
who was really a small time agent, and when I received the contract to be
signed, I had to send it back twice because I thought there were mistakes in
the contract. “They’re having me here, and I’m only being paid for so many
episodes, and I know it takes two weeks to do each episode, so that means
there are two episodes being done back-to-back, so anyway… JOHN MUIR: If it was about Maya, you’d have
certainly been taken off Moonbase Alpha, out of the family so to speak, where
the character developed such great relationships. CATHERINE SCHELL: It was in such the beginning of
the planning stages. There were no scripts involved. It was just a theory of,
if there was some interest, perhaps we could do this, then obviously outlines
of where it would go and whatever, but we never really discussed it
theoretically. JOHN MUIR: I don’t want to hog all the
action here. I know people are dying to ask questions, of you, so if it’s
okay, I’ll hand over the mike to you and let you work with the audience.
Anybody just like to raise their hands to ask questions of Ms. Schell? AUDIENCE MEMBER: You said you were worried about
not getting another acting job after this series? CATHERINE SCHELL: Yes, absolutely. I did not work
for a long time. I didn’t work for well over a year after the series. I guess
I am just trying to think of what I did after that. JOHN MUIR: The Doctor Who episode
“City of Death” with John Cleese. CATHERINE SCHELL: But that was two years after the
series. Then, in 1979, I did another film with Peter Sellers, The Prisoner
of Zenda — [one person applauds] You remember the [chicken clucking sounds] — you know,
that was my idea. The producer came up with me and says, “Catherine, you have
to meet in the forest and you have to make noises, animal noises. Can you do
an owl?” No. “Well, what kind of noises can you do?” I said, “I can do a
chicken.” He says, “all right, do me a chicken.” So I did a chicken just like
that, and he said, “That’s not bad.” So they went running to Peter, and said,
“Peter, can you do chicken noises,” so Peter had to try. That was another
moment when I had to be shouted at that. There is a close-up of me, and I
know I am dressed incredibly elegantly, with wonderful makeup. There’s this
woman going bu-u-uck-buck-buck-buck and I knew how funny that would look, so
I kept laughing. The producer was standing there, “Catherine! Be
professional!” I am told it is a very funny scene. You see, I never saw the
film either. I am told that it’s very funny, with these crazy people running
like chickens, making chicken noises in the middle of a forest. What are
chickens doing in a forest? JOHN MUIR: You don’t like to watch your own
work? CATHERINE SCHELL: No. JOHN MUIR: Did you see On Her Majesty’s
Secret Service? CATHERINE SCHELL: I saw that years later, when it
was out on the television. The one film that I was forced to see was Return
of the Pink Panther because I was there sitting in the audience at the
first showing with the press, so I had to see it. I just go into a terrible
depression and it’s awful. So why torture yourself? When we started doing Space, Martin and Barbara
went to rushes every night, and they forced me — “C’mon, Catherine, you’ve
got to go” — so I thought that if I was really being professional, I have to
go watch myself. I walked out totally depressed. “I don’t know why you’re
doing it. Why are you doing it? What are you learning from it?” Of course,
Barbara was learning about the best camera angles, what to do when you’re— [At this point, Catherine poses herself like a
marionette to lampoon Barbara Bain’s way of holding herself, turning her
whole body instead of just her head, and holding her hands up so she would
not have to be photographed below the elbows. The audience applauds wildly.]
Sorry, Barbara! That’s what you go to rushes for. I mean, you should try to
be as natural as you can, so tough. JOHN MUIR: It’s the opposite of the acting
process. It kind of limits you. CATHERINE SCHELL: Yes, because you’re looking at
yourself. Some people love to see themselves on the screen. I see myself on the
screen and I hate my voice, I hate myself on the screen. I would never go see
that person on the screen. I don’t know why people pay me to do this. It’s a
torture for me, and I wouldn’t learn from it. I learn more from the theater,
because you don’t see yourself in the theater. If you’re doing a stage play,
and you know that a line was delivered badly on one performance, you know you
can correct it the following day. You think about it. “Oh, my timing was
completely wrong there.” You can’t do that when you’re doing television or
film, because it’s finished, gone, unless you have the power to say, “we’re
going to do a re-shoot— I didn’t like the way I said that. I didn’t like the
way I looked that way, or the way I was photographed.” So, it’s a waste of time
actually. I think it actually harms. JOHN MUIR: Would you say that Maya was such
a warm, bubbly, vivacious character, and if I may presume, you’re almost a
kind of shy person to some extent. Are you just incredibly modest that you
don’t like to see yourself? How did you get into acting if you’re so
tentative about seeing yourself on the screen? CATHERINE SCHELL: I didn’t think that was part of
the acting. That wasn’t part of my job, to watch myself. My job was to
present myself. My job is to present what has been written for me, in
whatever capacity I can do it. My job is not to watch myself. JOHN MUIR: So your work ends when you
finish the shoot? CATHERINE SCHELL: Absolutely. My work ends at the
end of the day. I go home. It’s like whatever jobs you do— you’re in an
office, you do this, you do that. As far as I am concerned, I leave the
studio, and other than studying my lines for the following day or whatever,
my day has ended. I mean, it’s a job, or it was. I am doing something else
now. AUDIENCE MEMBER: How long did it take to do the
episode “Guardian of Piri”? CATHERINE SCHELL: There was a two-week schedule,
fifty minutes. Fifty minutes normally takes two weeks, six days in a week.
That would have been twelve days. I don’t know whether I was shooting every
day of that, but that is normally what is scheduled for 50-minute television.
Yes, absolutely— there were two weeks. They do them a little bit faster
today, depending sometimes they now do fifty minutes in ten days. AUDIENCE MEMBER: What are your thoughts on being
in one of the best Bond films? CATHERINE SCHELL: Did you consider it one of the
best? You know, they’re doing a remake, and it’s not with George Lazenby.
It’s not with Catherine Schell either. AUDIENCE MEMBER: I appreciate it now because they’re
very different, in terms of that they’re more— CATHERINE SCHELL: Yes, they were more emotional. I
think that’s why they’re redoing it. They’re doing a remake of it. AUDIENCE MEMBER: What were your thoughts on
George Lazenby as a director. Did you enjoy yourself? CATHERINE SCHELL: Not a lot. [Laughter] He was fine. He wasn’t meant,
actually, for that part. It wasn’t right for him at all. AUDIENCE MEMBER: Knowing that you’re getting
laughing over some of the lines of dialog— like you talked about a lot of
times when you had to set your body posture into whatever kind of animal you
would be transforming into, like it ended up with a leopard or tiger leaping
or something. Did you find that difficult to get down for the first time? CATHERINE SCHELL: That’s interesting that you
would say that. Does it look funny? AUDIENCE MEMBER: No, it doesn’t. CATHERINE SCHELL: I didn’t find that funny. I
found that quite a challenge. I rather liked doing it. JOHN MUIR: We could tell that you put
yourself right into it. CATHERINE SCHELL: Yes. I mean, I don’t know what I
did for the mouse. Did I shrink? I remember the leopard, I remember doing
that. That was something where I had to trust the director as well, because
obviously if you do that, it’s pretty funny. You could be making a fool of
yourself. It was up to the director to actually do it and go to photograph me
in such a way that it was realistic. AUDIENCE MEMBER: How did you get along with
Martin Landau? I personally love the episode where you kissed. I kind of wish
that you and him had gotten together. Did you get along well personally? CATHERINE SCHELL: Yes, yes. Absolutely. We were
great mates, and we laughed a great deal together. You know, it was a
pleasure to work with them, and when we finished, we kept in contact. He used
to come to London quite often and he always rang us and we would meet up.
When I went to Los Angeles, we would meet up with him, so that contact
remained. I am very disappointed that he was not able to come. I was really
looking forward to seeing him. I haven’t seen him now for about twelve years. AUDIENCE MEMBER: Could you talk about the one
where you ate the plants and they were life forms— “The Rules of Luton.”
There were the three aliens on the planet. You spoke about Maya’s brother,
and Koenig talks about his wife— CATHERINE SCHELL: I had a brother? And Martin had
a first wife? AUDIENCE MEMBER: She was killed in a world war,
and he talked about racism, and Maya was horrified. She says, “People killed
people because they were different? That’s disgusting.” CATHERINE SCHELL: I’m sorry, I do not remember
this at all. AUDIENCE MEMBER: It was filmed out in the
countryside. CATHERINE SCHELL: Ahh, there was one. There were
very few that we did external shots. There was one that was in, like, a gravel
pit. Was that it? AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yes. CATHERINE SCHELL: Birds… I had to be a hawk or
something like that. The only reason I remember that is because we were all
so ill when we did that. So I remember it as we were working with 104º fever.
England was suffering— oh, god— a drought and heat wave that had hardly ever
existed before. Working in the studios, which were obviously air conditioned,
and going home or just coming from work. The differences in temperature all
the time. Everybody came down with a terrible, terrible flu. Some of us had
pneumonia and we were working, so I remember that one, because we were having
to film outside and we were sweating like everything. Everybody was terribly
sick. That’s all I remember about it: I don’t remember what I had to say, I’m
afraid. I’m sorry. AUDIENCE MEMBER: What was it like working with
Gerry Anderson? CATHERINE SCHELL: Well, it was a civilized
business in England. Nobody takes guns to work, so I think everybody behaved,
certainly superficially. We behaved terribly well toward each other, and I
have to say, I never had any problem with Gerry at all, as I didn’t with
Freddy. There was never a moment of an argument. Things went more sour
afterwards, but certainly not while we were working together. You never knew—
the actors behaved terribly well. There was never a single moment of
temperament. I know that there were other stories, but we didn’t speak to
each other about them. I know Zienia [Merton] had a lot of problems, which I
had no idea about. AUDIENCE MEMBER: First of all, thank you for
coming all the way transatlantic… [Applause.] The one question I have is,
every actor has an interpretation of the character. Did you feel that the
producers and the writers were able to convey what you wanted from Maya? Did
you have ideas that were never implemented for Maya? CATHERINE SCHELL: In a way, yes. There were some
things that I talked about with Freddy to make it just a little more
imaginative. I was thinking of things of the future, where people would never
wear glasses: there would be something that we do today— ear implants that we
would be able to hear much better. These things could be picked up eventually
in the future, seeing humans behave with instincts which animals have, which
we were born with anyway, which we would have been born with because we’re
animals, but our science has actually stopped us from developing the
instinctive things that we have, the telepathy we might have between us, so
we talked on those types of subjects that people from another planet, perhaps
Maya, would still have these instincts— that would not have been
over-developed. That is, something could have been placed on top of it, if
you know what I mean. We wear glasses. Cows don’t wear glasses. Horses don’t
wear glasses. Dogs don’t wear glasses. They have other senses that take over
when one sense begins to wane, and we have stopped developing that because it
is easier to put glasses on, easier to wear hearing aids, so we haven’t
developed the senses the way we actually should have. These are the things
that I talked to him about. Also, I was very disappointed in all the
monsters. I mean, why always monsters, all these old, great hairy apes. There
could have been far more interesting things. If you think there is life on another
planet, then it would not be much different to life on earth, because we
would have all developed. There’s the planet that’s been discovered recently—
Europa? There’s life. They think there might be life on Europa, and it seems
to be in that state of development, that some day they might find the
beginnings of life. Well, it would have developed the same way that it did on
earth. So all these monsters you see from outer space— why? They should have
been more, okay, so the gorilla rules on another planet, but don’t make it so
different to what we know is life. I mean, have the unicorn. Why don’t you do
a unicorn? On a planet there might be a unicorn? [Mimicking
Freddy] “That sounds like a different idea, I think we’ll forget about
that one…” Most of the scripts had originally been done anyway, and all the
outlined scripts had been done. There is very little that actors can do once
they’re doing the part of changing it. If there is another series, then you
can have long discussions of how you want to change, how you see something
developing— but it’s almost too late. AUDIENCE MEMBER: Something I was unaware was that
you were up for the role or Captain Janeway on Star Trek Voyager, that you
had submitted your resume for the part of Catherine Janeway. CATHERINE SCHELL: Catherine Janeway? Who’s— AUDIENCE MEMBER: She’s the captain on Voyager. JOHN MUIR: I remember, I said, you know
they’re casting a new series and you would be terrific as the captain. You
said, “I was up for that, my agent—” This was seven seasons ago… CATHERINE SCHELL: That’s a long time ago. Yes,
there was something my agent put me up for. I never saw the series, so
obviously I didn’t get the part. JOHN MUIR: You would have been wonderful.
Is there anyway you can tell them the story of your meeting with Fellini.
They have never heard that one. CATHERINE SCHELL: My agent telephoned me to tell
me that I had an interview with Fellini, who was waiting for me at a
particular hotel. Everything got confused. A, I knew Fellini liked very
strange people and he cast very strange people, and I thought, ‘he won’t want
to see me, I’m far too straight,’ so I had to do something to myself. I have
a girlfriend who dresses very bizarrely. So I borrowed shoes with enormous
heels that I was not used to wearing, and I wore very strange make-up and
jewelry in my hair. My hair is naturally curly, but I would never wear it
like that. I used to have great arguments with them, “straighten it,
straighten it,” so anyway I looked very odd. I went to a hotel for the meeting
and I actually looked a bit like a tart. Unbeknownst to me, I picked this
hotel— in the lobby, a few of these people of the night had gathered to, you
know, make a bit of money, and I think he thought I was one of those. So I
went up to him rather brazenly and said, “I’m here to see Fellini,” and he
said, “oh, yes, madam, you just sit there.” I remember having to wait ages
and ages, and I think I was smoking. I put a plant alight. It was a rubber
plant, not a proper plant. Anyway, I don’t remember the entire story, except
that it was a complete disaster. In the end, Fellini was waiting for me in an
office that he was borrowing for this production, and I was waiting at the
hotel. The whole thing fell to pieces, and I never met Fellini. He left the
following day, so I obviously never got the part. [Pouting:]
And I tried so hard. AUDIENCE MEMBER: Do you have any favorites among
the episodes you made? CATHERINE SCHELL: I don’t know them anymore! I
can’t choose. I would have to see them all and say, “oh, yes, I like that
one, and…” I don’t know. I can’t say. I suppose if I see them again, I would
think, “Oh, yes, that was a fun one to do.” It was so long ago— 1976. Some of
you weren’t born yet, I bet! How dare you be so you be so young?! Is that it? I have to go get a glass of
wine. JOHN MUIR: [Offers a glass of
water.] CATHERINE SCHELL: Oh, no, no— that’s okay. Wine is
better. You know, an edition came out of something like “The 200
Worst Films Ever Made.” And I am proud to say that I am on the back cover of
this particular edition wearing a space-suit and looking horrified (what you
could see of my face beyond the space suit), with a big bubble coming out of
my mouth saying… There is a joke, but I can’t do it because it’s a little bit
naughty. JOHN MUIR and AUDIENCE MEMBER: [Encourages her to
go ahead and tell it.] CATHERINE SCHELL: There’s a joke— “I know who I
had to fuck to get on this picture, who do I fuck to get off?” [Laughter, applause.] On the balloon, it just
says, “What do I have to do to get off this picture?” Not as good as the
original joke. But I’m proud of that actually! I remember hitting Warren
Mitchell rather heavily with a space helmet. I had never done any action
until then. I had done romantic things or whatever, but I had never had to do
a violent action until then. Warren Mitchell was a baddie in it: he is quite
a tough character. I had to try and get away from him, so I take the space
helmet which I’m holding in my hand and I whack him in the stomach, and I
meant it! He went bwaaaah! Oh, Jesus, I’m supposed to be acting— I’m not
supposed to do these things for real! He says, “Warn me next time!” It was
fine, quite a fun film to do. AUDIENCE MEMBER: What was it like working with
James Olson? CATHERINE SCHELL: James Olson? Very nice. Very,
very nice. He used to run to work. He used to get out of his car— we filmed
it at Elstree, and there are two roundabouts before you get to Elstree, and
he would get off at the first roundabout, which meant that he had a good ten
miles, almost, to run. I used to wonder, “Why is this man arriving in the
morning all sweaty? He just got out of bed!” That’s why— he used to run to
work. Do you know anything of him? I’ve seen him in things for a while. AUDIENCE MEMBER: He’s done theater. CATHERINE SCHELL: I haven’t seen him in a long
time now. Okay, I’ll take one more question, then I will take a glass of wine. AUDIENCE MEMBER: Do you remember working with
Edward Woodward on.... CATHERINE SCHELL: Ed Woo-woo-woo-woo-wood. Can I tell
you something rude about him, as much as I like Eddie because he’s adorable.
His name— you know what we called him in England? He’s “a fart in a bath.”
“Ed-wood-wood-wood-wood-wood-wood- wood…” Oh, we’re awful, aren’t we? JOHN MUIR: That’s what we’re here to hear. CATHERINE SCHELL: What was the question? AUDIENCE MEMBER: Do you remember working with
Edward Woodward on Callan. I understand it’s one of the most exciting
car chases. CATHERINE SCHELL: That’s right— and I was in it
most of the time, actually. They couldn’t afford a stand-in, so “do your own
stunt, Catherine— get in the car!” JOHN MUIR: They all must got tired of
seeing the space helmet… CATHERINE SCHELL: Well, I was wearing the space
helmet in the car for protection. That’s right. I don’t know whether the film
was terribly good though. JOHN MUIR: Let’s give a big hand to
Catherine Schell… [Applause.] |
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