Amanda Tapping and Sandrine Holt lock lips on screen. Was it a stunt or true to the character? We chatted with the Syfy star about the kiss, her role as a director and embracing the full spectrum of our reality.
Known for her role as Samantha Carter in the television series Stargate SG-1 (1997 - 2007) and Stargate Atlantis (2007 - 2008), award winning actress Amanda Tapping continues to thrill audiences with her Syfy series Sanctuary (2008 - present) as Doctor Helen Magnus, a British teratologist. Magnus and her team advocate for the people of the world to accept extraordinary creatures and people that live amongst them, known as Abnormals. Strapped with an arsenal of sonic stun weaponry, Helen Magnus attempts to house the Abnormals while containing those that threaten the human race. Her on-screen battle for understanding, tolerance and compassion for Abnormals speaks to today’s society and the need to embrace our own diversity.
In "Monsoon" (Season 4 Episode 4) Magnus and Charolette Benoit (played by the stunning Sandrine Holt) share a passionate kiss with a harrowing experience. While waiting in a remote airport, both Benoit and Magnus find themselves hijacked by enterprising thieves with a hidden agenda. Magnus saves Benoit and the two rescue the hostages. The episode not only ends with a jaw dropping kiss, Magnus adds a huge cliff hanger when she says, "I haven’t been kissed like that in a very long time." She then passionately reciprocates, hinting that there’s an ocean of information we have yet to discover about this immortal character.
The kiss has received positive and negative reviews. From praise, to bewilderment, some bloggers have even wrote they will no longer watch the show. The kiss may have rattled some audiences, but Tapping is unfazed by the furor.
"I have always maintained that, Helen, having lived as long as she has and having the type of personality she has, that she would be a bi-sexual person. After 270 years, men are fabulous, but, there is so much more out there. I think she is a very open, sexual and engaging person." Tapping and the producers of the show have gone though history, asking themselves, "Who would Magnus have had affairs with?" Tapping entertains the idea of people like Dorothy Parker would be of interest to Magnus. "I have always maintained that Helen, in as much as her paramours have been men, would have really amazing relationships with women and I have never shied away from that."
It is a natural assumption that the immortal character, Helen Magnus, would have explored sex and sexuality over her long life span. Tapping admitted she was surprised the kiss was a big deal. "I knew that people were going to be negative because it is two women kissing and, sadly, there are people who still find that ‘repulsive’ but, for me, it was a woman who was so lonely... and there’s this beautiful woman presenting herself (Benoit) and why wouldn’t she?! It was such a natural facet." There have been other scenes with other actresses, where there is clearly sexual tension between Helen and the other characters. This was the first time where the producers decided to take the sexual tension that step further.
Rather than risk offending the LGBTQ contingent of her fandom, Tapping sought ways to reach them in a supportive way. "For me, it was amazing, that just one little kiss would make people feel open enough to talk to me about their stories. That was a beautiful thing." Today, the level of shock and backlash caused by the seemingly trendy same-sex kisses on television is surprising. "It is a shame. I think it is slowly changing. I think people are slowly coming around, but I do think it is a long battle and that saddens me. Sanctuary is all about embracing what people view as abnormal. It is not only embracing it, but celebrating it and protecting it. We have always had that agenda on the show, no matter what we are dealing with - so this was no different. There are people that think that [the kiss] is abnormal so we will always embrace that. We’ll turn it on its ear and say, maybe, what you see as normal - isn’t." Unfortunately for the fans of Sandrine Holt, she will not be appearing again in season four. It appears this was a short island affair.
Magnus is testament to the fact that women, like a fine wine, continue to get better with age¬ - or, in her case, a strong scotch whiskey. The 274 year-old character chases monsters, travels back in time and occasionally saves the world. Does Tapping think this means the glass ceiling for women of a certain age in film or television has been broken?
"It has been cracked - but I don’t know if it has been totally broken. There are a lot more women in their forties, fifties and sixties on television. I think North America is coming around to the idea that the demographic is changing and that men and women like to see older women on television and not just pretty young things - not that there is anything wrong with that. I think that this is something that Europe has embraced a long time ago." Tapping praises actresses starring in their own series like Judy Dench and Helen Mirren. "These [women] are beautiful, valid, sexy, vibrant characters and there doesn’t seem to be the same stigma of getting older in Europe than there seems to be in North America. I definitely think it’s changing when we see people like Glenn Close on television doing phenomenal work," the career time for women onscreen is definitely getting longer.
Action, leather and bullets, Helen Magnus is also a mother, compassionate, fearless, highly influential while still managing to remain demure - Tapping is inspired by her character. "I find that I am pushing myself further than I ever have before." Tapping brilliantly conveys an even balance of femininity and the femme fatale in her role. "We are multi-faceted beings and I think women have long-been fierce protectors as well as nurturers, since time began. I think that just has been our role - sort of inbred through generations. I had a very strong grandmother who lived to a hundred and three and a half and she embodied all of that and so I feel that I may have a little of that in me. I don’t find it difficult to balance the yin and the yang of this character." Taking a page out of her character Magnus’s book, Tapping has learned that "You CAN do it all, but the best way to do it is with a bit of grace."
The most difficult scene of her career was the death of her onscreen daughter Ashley in Sanctuary. "Ultimately, it was [Helen’s] decision to pull the trigger. She brought her daughter into this crazy lifestyle and tried to raise a child in this insane little bubble and protect her but also give her freedom and, ultimately, it didn’t work out in the way that Helen would have liked - obviously. I think that playing Ashley’s death was the hardest, emotionally, for me to wrap my head around." Since filming of Sanctuary went on hiatus back in August, Tapping has played several roles that are extremely different from what her audience is used to seeing. "I just did a movie-of-the week where I play a mother who is completely off-the-rails. That was really hard because at one moment, she is really sweet and the next moment she is losing her shit." The Lifetime movie is called Taken Back and should be out in the summer of 2012. "Having played Helen Magnus and Samantha Carter, these are women who, no matter what is going on beneath the surface, tend to keep it together. The veneer is very strong. To release that veneer, crack it open if you will, [this role] was very different for me."
When it comes to kicking and punching, Tapping says, "I’m in!" She tries to do most of her own stunts, regularly training by boxing and kick boxing. "I have an amazing stunt woman, Ashley Earl, who will do the falling off of things because I am a bit of a klutz but, for the most part, my fight sequences are a lot of practice... I have clocked a stunt man on the chin [by accident]. It’s not always pretty." The choreography may take several days and result in only a few seconds on screen.
Now a mother of a seven year old daughter, Tapping still finds time to volunteer at her daughter’s school and run a household while taking on additional roles as Executive Producer, Director and philanthropist. She has started a charity called Sanctuary 4 Kids that provides funding, computers and nutrition to kids from here to Nepal. Directing an SG-1 episode and several episodes on Sanctuary, Tapping is about to take on three episodes on Prime Evil, a brand new series.
"It’s the first show where I am directing and I am not in it. I am the only woman director on this show. I am stoked to be branching out that part of my career - not that I will ever give up acting." It appears to be a natural progression for actors to go from in front of the camera to behind it. "It was the technicality of it that really jazzed me. I’m a huge fan of the techno craze." She is even referred to as ‘Techno Tapping.’ Tapping sat behind the monitors of SG-1 for ten years and became fascinated by the process.
"It is a different part of your brain, you get asked a hundred questions a day and it is a little stressful but it is really rewarding when you come up with a really cool shot. For me, I was painfully aware that, as a woman in this industry, my choices as an actor were going to become more and more limited. I really wanted to branch out and try different things. There are few female episodic directors in Canada and I hope to be one of them in the future."
Tapping put her career on the line when she faced the sexualization of her SG-1 character at her very first wardrobe fitting. "Actually getting the part and realizing that I was going to be able to play this kick-ass, strong, incredibly smart, female character and going down for my first wardrobe fitting and being handed a push up bra and a low cut tank top? I looked at the [costume designer] and said, what is this?! I was, very surprisingly, non-confrontational considering the characters I have played and this shocked me. I am an Air Force Captain, I carry a gun and I am an astrophysicist. Why would I wear a push up bra? Why, that just flies in the face of everything this character stands for!" Tapping told the Costume Designer, "I can’t do this. If they want this, then they cast the wrong girl. That was scary." The producers backed off immediately. She ended up wearing the same black t-shirt, military uniforms and army boots her male cast members wore. She even carried the same gun. "It took a little while for the powers-that-be to warm up to the idea but, a couple of weeks in to shooting the pilot, one of the directors came up to me and said...you were right."
Tapping left us with the following motto she lives by in order to remain true to her integrity: "Live peace, speak kindness and dwell in possibility. And, at all times, carry yourself with grace." You can see this Syfy action heroine in person at the Calgary Comic & Entertainment Expo on April 28th, 2012.
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Contributor Jade Cooper |
Person Amanda Tapping |
Topic Calgary Expo | Celebrity Interview | Comic Expo | Sanctuary | Stargate | Supernatural |
Photo Gallery Amanda Tapping |
