USA Today interview with Sebastian Roche
May. 19th, 2011 09:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
agt_spookyExclusive: Sebastian Roche on Balthazar, ‘Titanic’ and the ‘Supernatural’ season finale
Cue the Carry On Wayward Son and the awesome montage, because another season finale of Supernatural is upon us. Tomorrow night brings a two-hour close to the sixth season — with a seventh already in the cards for the CW series — and finds Sam (Jared Padalecki) and Dean Winchester (Jensen Ackles) on the hunt for Crowley (Mark Sheppard) before he can find Purgatory.
One of Castiel’s other pals this year — and one of the best characters of the season — has been the decadent angel Balthazar, played by Sebastian Roche. (If you missed the brilliant episode where Balthazar went back in time to keep the Titanic from sinking simply because he hated Celine Dion’s My Heart Will Go On, check it out here.) I talked with Roche — a Paris-born TV veteran from General Hospital, Fringe and many other shows — today about what’s in store for him in the season-ender, so read below for our conversation and check out this exclusive clip from the finale featuring Dean, Crowley and one seriously heated phone conversation.
How large is Balthazar’s role in this big season finale?
We shot it as two different episodes, and it’s pretty significant in both. It’s not huge but his appearances are always pretty important. I can’t really talk too much about it but it’s important to the end of the season.
So pretty juicy.
It’s juicy, yeah. To tell you the truth, even when I appear briefly, I actually love those scenes because they’re so well written. For me, they’re really juicy. [Laughs] I have so much fun doing them.
You’ve done a great job with that character, because every time Balthazar shows up, you know he’s going to steal scenes left and right.
Yes, I try my best to steal every scene. [Laughs] You have to give credit to the writers. I brought my own little flair and parts of my personality into the character, but as soon as I started acting it out in the first episode I appeared in, they seemed to grasp my character really well. I have a tremendous amount of fun acting out those brilliant lines. The Titanic episode, I laughed out loud when I saw what I had to say.
Balthazar went to great lengths to change history because he hated the movie so much. What are your own personal feelings toward Titanic?
[Laughs] Actually, to tell you the truth, I auditioned for Titanic way back. I remember getting the script, and I read it from top to bottom and I was literally in tears at the end of it. I was living in New York at the time and I loved the film and I cried, was very emotional, etc. And I loved the song as well. I was living in an apartment and there was this neighbor on the bottom floor who played My Heart Will Go On on repeat nonstop all day. Any song that plays on repeat all day you start getting really annoyed with. [Laugh] The episode reminded me of that moment. The song’s beautiful, and I love Celine Dion — you like her or you don’t. She’s not necessarily in my Itunes folder, but any song that is played on repeat nonstop you will start to hate.
What has been your key to playing Balthazar, an angel who pursues the finer pleasures in earthly life and has not always had the greatest moral code?
I do think that I have strong similarities with the Balthazar character — I’m not saying I’m totally decadent. When I’m on set, I get along well with Jared and Jensen and everyone because they’re so much fun to be around and we all have a pretty good sense of humor. Basically my humor fits the character, and the persona fits the character. I really feel that he’s sort of an older, experienced lothario — not saying that’s what I am, but I have experience with that. Maybe. [Laughs] And I brought a little bit of my own spices to the table. It was very easy to slip into his skin. When I met the costume designer, the gray T-shirt I’m wearing [in the show] I was wearing! She said, “Oh, that looks great!” Literally, I was dressed like Balthazar. And what she chose fit me like a glove. We were like, “I love this, I love this, I love this.” It was really the easiest fit of any character I’ve played.
The preview for this week’s season finale teases to some Lovecraftian themes we haven’t seen before. Is Balthazar more on the heaven sort of things or the monster plot line, or are they finally coming together?
I’m actually in neither. I’m trying to help out a situation and I’m torn between being Castiel’s longtime friend and having become the Winchesters’ friend. There is a tense situation that arises where I have to make a choice. It is in the domain of heaven more than monsters.
Feel free to shroud this in mystery, but what are the odds we’ll see Balthazar again — maybe next season even?
You never know…
Anything you have planned for the summer?
I did this docudrama that’s part of a series for PBS on Pierre and Marie Curie, who discovered radium in 1898 and were the most extraordinary couple. I play Pierre Curie, who was French, and Marie Curie, who was Polish, is played by Juliet Rylance. I finished that in New York a week ago. I also have something coming up on Syfy called The Blood of Pegasus. It’s kind of a take on Clash of the Titans, with 1/100th of the budget. [Laughs]
Do you have a personal interest in Greek mythology, the supernatural and other stuff Supernatural has touched on over the years?
Yeah, I do actually. When I was a child, I was really interested in Greek mythology, and I’m actually interested in seeing what Immortals is going to be like. It seems to have a different take than Clash of the Titans. I was frankly quite disappointed with the Clash of the Titans movie, the one with Sam Worthington, and I have a feeling that even though it looks a bit too much like 300 in its film approach, which I find a little jarring after a while because it doesn’t seem to have any depth, it looks really interesting. And I’m a sucker for good sci-fi. But it has to be good — like the first Alien good, or Aliens.
I'm definitely hoping we'll see Balthazar next season, but I'm afraid he may become a casualty of the war in heaven. :-(
