Interview: Amanda Tapping

What has it been like working on the same franchise,

Stargate, for 13 years now?

You know what; it seems to be that there’s always something new. Throughout the course of SG1 they gave us something else to sink our teeth into, so I never got bored on that show. I always felt that it was such a gift that the character was so rich and every year they gave me new challenges and creative things to do.

Then when I was moved over to Atlantis that was a completely different ballgame, so it was completely energising creatively. Then the movies of course were a phenomenal experience, especially Continuum, being able to go up to the North Pole. And then to be part of, in a very small way, the new series, to me I was completely honoured. For me 13 years has gone by incredibly quickly and whenever people say that to me I’m like “Really? 13 years? Wow”. But yeah it’s just been an amazing gift.

I have you ask you about your hair, it seemed to change every year on Stargate, was this your choice or done for a reason?

You know girls; we’ve got to change our hair. Most of the time I would start a season looking the way I did at the end of the previous season and that’s because we’d always end on a cliff-hanger so I would have to come back looking exactly the same. And then one time my hair was coloured really badly and it got all burnt so that’s why I got really short hair for a while. So sometimes it’s by circumstance and sometimes by choice, if I want to mix things up a bit. Sometimes it was bad choices, Christopher Judge and I joke about our bad hair decisions.

And now of course you’ve got brown hair for your new show.

Yeah and that was very much a conscious decision. I wanted to look completely different from Samantha Carter. I think it was important for the fans to not have any vestige of Sam in what I was doing. And just as an actor, creatively I wanted to try something completely different and it ended up being a really good thing because it felt I was just revitalised.

Do you want Carter to end up with Jack?

Erm on an ongoing basis I don’t know but I think that they should get together once because it’s been really frustrating. It’s sort of become this joke between the two of them. Honestly after all this time I think just get it over with. At least once. I don’t know if they need to get married and go off to his cabin for ever and ever amen but I think that they should at least just get rid of all that frustration just once, have one hell of a great night together or a couple of days [laughter].

The two new Stargate films coming out, you’re involved with both of them aren’t you? The SG1 and the Atlantis one?

Well I don’t know because right now they’re all kind of still in the rumour phase. If there is an SG1 movie then I definitely hope to be involved in that, I don’t know about Atlantis. There was a lot of talk ramping up to them happening sometime in fall or winter this year but it didn’t transpire so I’m not sure what the situation is but I’ll be there.

How do you think the new Stargate show Universe compares with the older ones?

It’s completely different, it’s like they’ve reinvented the wheel which I think is really kinda cool. I think that if they tried to make another SG1 or another Atlantis

the fans wouldn’t have bought it. I think they needed to

do something original and they definitely did.