The Aurora Chair

“You just don’t know what Stark is going to do next…”

Stark has faced many interrogations in the Aurora Chair, and now it’s time for one more!  Actor Paul Goddard is questioned by Paul Simpson and Ruth Thomas.

As the former Banik slave, Stark, Paul Goddard has mystified audiences since his first appearance as Crichton’s cellmate in season one’s Nerve. During a break before filming begins on the fourth season, he told Farscape Magazine about the pleasures and pitfalls of working on the series…

How did you become involved with Farscape?

I did the round of auditions for Scorpius.  Obviously I didn’t get that, and I was then offered Stark, who was in the same episode.  Justin Monjo went through [the Australian acting school] NIDA a year behind me in the acting course.  He knew my work fairly well, and was writing a character that was somewhat inspired by a character he had played in a movie.  I think he suggested me for the part – he knew I could do crazy stuff.  Stark was supposed to appear in just those couple of episodes, but then they started talking about bringing him back in some way - and then it took another 15 episodes of the next series before they brought him back.

How far in advance did you know that Stark would return?

I knew before they started filming the second season that they were bringing him back.  They started in November, and they had temporary dates for me in January, so originally it was going to be at the beginning of the season.  Eventually it got put back, and it was April before I returned.  It took them a while to get through the ideas they had to before he could return.  It was exciting.  I didn’t know how many episodes he would be in, but I always new that Stark would end up trapped on board for a great period of time.

How was the Stark character initially described to you?

Rowan Woods [director of Nerve] and I talked about madness.  He suggested that I look at One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest and 12 Monkeys.  I had a look at those and a couple of other things and took it from there.  It was a matter of trying to figure out how far you could do it, watching a number of episodes and getting quite excited to discover that they pushed the envelope in acting style.  I realized that this was quite different: it was more adult and hip.  It’s the same with any show.  If everybody doesn’t know the style, then you’re going to have problems.  I think there’s a definite in approach between Australian, American and English acting styles.  An English director came over here to do a play – she was originally from Australia but she was at the Royal Court Theatre in London for some time – and said that the English actors were very good on technique and power, but there was a resistance to throwing themselves in and make fools of themselves, getting down and a little dirty.  Australian actors weren’t that skilled technically and with the language, but they have this enthusiasm.  I think that quality comes through in Farscape.  A lot of the directors are not as concerned about the refined taste.  You can have some over-the-top things.

What do we know about Stark’s abilities?

He says in his first episode that people think the Banik can’t feel anything, because they have the ability to hide their feelings.  I thought at the time that this was a little confusing.  Clearly from his behavior in wasn’t that he was stubborn, which is what hiding his feelings implies to me.  Stark’s emotions are quite on the surface, quite hysterically so, but I thought it must refer to the thoughts that are behind them.  It’s never been mentioned again but it’s an intriguing idea that hey can hide their feelings – that there’s a lot going on.

He has the ability to give people nice images, when they’re crossing over to death, or when they’re ill, nut there is a cost involved.  Yin and Yang – you get something not-so-good back.  As it develops, it seems that this ability to allow light from behind the mask can allow him to other things.  In Liars, Guns and Money, he interrupts communications with Scorpius.  In …Different Destinations, he’s conduit through which they go on the adventure.  He’s the time tunnel: everyone else puts on the goggles and they see a little replay of history.  He puts them on, and passes straight through.  It seems to me that it’s quite a handy little device dramatically to provide all kinds of things, a catalyst for adventures.

There hasn’t been much extension of his spiritual abilities in the third season: in a sense, they’ve been put in a back drawer.  That’s partly because it costs a awful lot of money every time Stark takes his mask off!

Why does Scorpius want Stark?

I think that Scorpius is intrigues by Stark.  First of all, the fact that I can hide images and hide part of my brain alerts him to the possibility of there being something of value hidden in there.  And then my skills would be useful.  I’m not sure why – in the later episodes of season two, Scorpius refers to me as the Stykera, and that he’s got to keep me alive, I’d be very useful to him if he was dying.  I could help him cross over with nice images.

Is there ever any intention of viewers actually discovering that special place that Stark shows, when he shines his light on people?

I don’t know.  They’ve got some idea.  In my mind as an actor, it’s Devon!  I knew I had to have some special place, and that as the image I had.  I grew up in Devon [a county in Britain – Ed] and I thought the image he had was an idyllic one from when he was young before he was a slave, before his people were taken over by the Peacekeepers.  Rolling hills and big hedges.

How much input have you had in the character of Stark?

No much, really.  There’s always the invitation to talk to the writers, and I’ve done that over lunch, but I like to be thrown things so that I go, ‘wow, that was different’.  The main thing I keep focusing on when I have a chat is how mad he is.  Is he calm and spiritual, or is he a little nervous, and when he’s grounded by someone like Zhaan, does he then become calm and spiritual?  I thought that Zhaan’s death would push him to the edge for a little while, and it would take him a time to recover his sanity completely…if he ever does.

When Zhaan and I were having this romance, it had to be consummated in some physical way.  She has photogasms and I thought that Stark had got exactly what would turn her on: fantastic, intense light.  I thought that maybe on her death bed it could help her get through.

How was Stark’s mask made?

I did a facecast for it.  You sit there and your face is virtually entirely covered.  It was perfectly moulded to my face: it’s suede on the inside, with leather straps.  The outside is some sort of synthetic material.

What do you look for in a script?

I find it hard to read the scripts and see the whole.  It’s not like reading a Harry Potter book, which is written in such a way that you see every shot.  You look at one of these scripts and you can’t quite hallucinate what it’s going to look like.  Then you see the sets!

I read the scripts and get the general story, but I’m looking quite selfishly at what they’re asking of Stark.. I’m looking for opportunities to have some fun, for dramatic moments, see how much exposition I’ve got as a character, how much technobabble I’ve got to say, and how much active dramatic stuff I’ve got.  If you’ve got two good moments, then it’s great; one and it’s okay; none and you know you’re helping support the main story here.  When I watch them, it looks like a really exciting movie.

Did you have any idea what was going to happen in season three?

No, because there were four or five months when there were huge shifts, cast-wise.  We were all told at some point that we were coming back, and that we were going to be split up into two groups.  One episode on, one episode off.

What do you think of Stark’s progress?

I don’t think there was a forethought plan about how he was going to develop.  He is written in such a way that how he develops is to serve the situation.  He doesn’t make things happen generally; things don’t happen to him to create the drama.  He’s on the periphery.  I remember reading…Different Destinations and thinking ‘I’m unconscious for most of the episode’, but then I had to find the little moments, like when he’s sitting there talking to the female leader of the group.

There were some elements mooted early on in the year:  hints of the obsession with Aeryn, which came to a climax in Fractures.  Aeryn turns on Stark and is very cruel.  How much of it really went on, and how much of his interest is benign, and how much malign, you really can’t tell because it’s not here on screen.

For me it’s tricky treading the fine line between being nauseatingly and gratuitously crazy, and being interestingly so.  I always had a fear that Stark’s emotional and mental instability could become a little annoying.  We didn’t explore his calmer, spiritual side in season three, because of Zhaan’s death and, as everyone was, he was plunged into a rather fractured world, with the two spaceships going their separate ways.

It would have been nice to have found moments where his status could have been raised.  I think that’s why the comedy with him and Rygel worked, particularly in Green-Eyed Monster.  They’re both very low status people on the shop and Stark was one character that Rygel could plausibly get the upper hand over.  The other cast members tend to put him down, but Rygel could lord it over Stark.

I liked Meltdown, because it was a fantastic opportunity for Stark to do something left-field again. Something that David Kemper often talks about is that you just don’t’ know what Stark is going to doe next.  He can throw the whole ship into peril and danger because of his instability and his passions.  That was one episode where that was brought to the fore.  His status was raised because he was powerful, and that was fabulous to play.  I loved the power that he had.

Your costume as Talyn’s pilot looked very unusual…

It was just my costume with some pits sticking out of the padding that they put on, which the tubes stuck onto.  We shot it in reverse, so it looked like the tubes were going in.  I was harnessed up, floating on a crane for most of the time.

What was the biggest challenge of the season for you?

Not being irritatingly zany, and I’m sure for people I didn’t that off al l the time.  The challenge when he’s not being crazy is what is he being?  One of the easiest and most comfortable moments was at the end of Fractures, when I had those guns out and was firing.  It’s so easy to raise the status of a character when they pull guns out and shoot people.  You feel different.  After doing those scenes, I felt different on the set: I felt more powerful as an actor.  Being Stark, being put-upon, and still being treated a bit like a slave, isn’t as glamorous or as fun to play.  You’re role-playing, and don’t completely slip out of the role, especially when you’re still dressed in the clothes.  If you’re dressed as a clown, and you walk past a mirror, you feel like a clown when you see yourself.

Paul Goddard, thank you very much.