Gabriella Ascari : Hello Anthony!
Anthony Simcoe: Hello!
Gabriella: Welcome back to Italy.
Anthony: Thank you very much, it's
so fantastic to be back in Italy. It's...I've been... I've said to the conveners of DeepCon today at lunch, I've said that I feel I've come  to DeepCon Ambassador, because I've been going around the world to a lot of different conventions, and I've been asked "What are conventions like?", and they're all wonderful in a very different way, but my favorite? DeepCon! It's the most amazing, wonderful group of friendly people, and fantastic experiences and you've got really great interaction between the fans and the guests, so... it's fantastic to be back in Italy.
Gabriella: We're very, very happy to have you back, here.
Anthony: Good.
Gabriella: And, would you tell us a little bit about your life and how the passion for acting was... became a reality for you.
Anthony: Well, I think I... in high school I wanted either to become a lawyer, or I knew I'd be wanting to do something with my mouth, 'cause I have the gift of the gab and... which is an expression meaning "talk a lot of rubbish", all the time. And I knew I wanted to do something with the arts, and I just fell into... into performing in high school,  and I was lucky enough to get into some great drama schools, and that's how my... my career into the arts started, initially it was in theater, and then in later years most of my work is all around... films and television.
Gabriella: And what would you think is the influence that your role as a teacher brought on in your career and on your role as Ka D'Argo?
Anthony: I think teaching is impacting me in a way that this ... ah... let me rephrase that. Teaching has impacted on my life in that it's become incredibly more meaningful and important to me than performing, so the goal of my life in the arts is not to achieve any great heights with my own performances, but to help other people achieve great heights with theirs, and I think there's something in the act of the generosity of teaching that the older I get, it's becoming more and more appealing to me. So it's about that idea of um... selflessness, and giving, and giving to others that in my old age it's becoming more important.
Gabriella: So this is a little change from what we were used to the last time you were here, and my next question is: what do you prefer between the role of an actor, and that of a director; but you've already given some of the answers to that, but what about acting and directing?
Anthony: Yeah, directing is a fantastic... it has a lot of different elements to performing, as well, and certainly moving the camera around and constructing a story, and directing, working with the actors,
and working with the crew, it's a fantastic... fantastic way to live, and I really enjoy the opportunities that I have each year to direct, and certainly I think I will continue doing it. But for me it's really more about behind the scenes, but I'm lucky to say that, because it's not a choice of one or the other for me, because my year is luckily, very luckily divided between wonderfully different experiences, so part of my year would be performing, and part of it would be directing, part would be teaching, part of it would be corporate work, politics and media, and all these things - so I don't have to choose one or the other, so, I'm saying that now, but I imagine that if I wasn't performing each year, there would be a great need in me to go back to it. So I'm lucky that I can explore my work life in all those different ways.
Gabriella: Going back to your character of D'Argo, how much of you is there in D'Argo, and how much did you add to the basis that you were told was the character.
Anthony: I think there's a incredible amount of any actor in the characters they play, if they're going to do it well, and I think that over time D'Argo and myself became very, very aligned and close, and I think we both, both have a lot of bravado, and we're both very... I'd say front-foot people, and yet we're both quite vulnerable and insecure, behind things, so the... there's lots of similarities around that, lots of similarities around that, like all humans go through, I think, wondering where your place in the world is, and where your identity lies, and what's going to best serve you as a person, I think all those things are really connected with D'Argo. And whenever I was lost in my world, I felt he was lost in his; and whenever I was confident in mine, the same as well. So I felt a real parallel in my life, between D'Argo's experiences and my own.
Gabriella: And about the issue of prosthetics, and the time it takes to put that on, if you had the chance, would you take again a role that required the use of heavy prosthetics, or would you prefer not to?
Anthony: I got absolutely no problems with prosthetics, in fact one of the great gifts of Farscape was working with the prosthetics, people often ask whether I would rather play a character like Crais, or... or any of the other sort of humanoid characters, Meeklo Braca or whatever, you know, and it's "absolutely no way!", my first love in Farscape is D'Argo, and not only... because of who he was... primarily because of who he... is as a per... as a character, but also because of the prosthetics. For me to do it again, it would have to be with someone as high quality as Damien Martin, of the Creature Shop - Jim Henson's Creature Shop - to look after me, to insure that I can get the same level of performance through the mask: there's no way I would ever want to work in a job where I felt like I was wearing bad prosthetics, but if I feel I could get a good performance, through the prosthetics, I would love it.  In fact I prefer it... I really, really enjoy working with prosthetics, because there's an added level of challenge, an added level of transformation, which just makes your day... interesting. And the more challenges that you have in front of you, the more creative obstacles force you to be more creative in their solutions, like in any job, and that in itself creates a wonderful working experience. And hopefully creates an interesting character for the viewers.
Gabriella: And how about your relationship with the fans? Is it something that you like, or is it something that sometimes frightens you, to have so much interest in you, from people you don't know?
Anthony: It doesn't frighten me at all!  It's... what I would say it's... it's like an "on/off" switch for me, because in Australia no one knows Farscape, I'm not famous at all, so it really only exists for me, when I come to... to Farscape conventions, that I experience science fiction fandom, and in my experience all over the world, in Europe or the United States, in Australia or New Zealand, I've experienced nothing but wonderful, generous, incredible people who have interest in the same things I'm interested in, because they're drawn to Farscape, I helped create Farscape, so even though we don't know each other, we have this amazing thing in common, and it enables us to start a dialogue, and then that dialogue can move us to other issues, but always comes back... it starts and ends with Farscape, and I see that as an amazing, amazing gift. So, every time I meet a Farscape fan, I count it as a real blessing that I have something in common with them, and something that I'm proud of that's in common with them, so it's a fantastic experience.
Gabriella: Is D'Argo alive?
Anthony: Ah, D'Argo lives! There is no doubt about it.
Gabriella: How was it to act with Henson's puppets? How would you describe that experience?
Anthony: That was... my main joy, was working with The Jim Henson Company, because my... I grew up with the Muppets, I grew up with films like "Dark Crystal", and all the other work they put into things like Yoda, and the original "The Empire strikes back" films, they're just such a seminal part of my childhood, and such a seminal part of creating wonderful fantasy characters and stories and worlds, that I have this enormous amount of respect for them, as a company, as a creative force, so that to come face to face, and hand to hand with those people who'd actually done that, it was an amazing privilege and also a great opportunity that I hope I took... I took advantage of, because I wanted to learn as much as I could from working with these people. And I did. When I very first got the job I had to fly straight to London, to the Jim Henson Creature Shop in London, and there were the original Skeksis from "Dark Crystal", and there was one of the original Kermit the Frog, and all these amazing artifacts from the history of the Company, and I just felt - at that stage - completely overwhelmed by the history of the Company and the fact that I would now play a small part in the Jim Henson story. The fact that my name and my work is now linked to the Jim Henson Company so closely, especially by being the main prosthetic character in Farscape, is something that I'm immensely proud of, and I hope that I can live up to that... that my work lives up to that great tradition.
Gabriella: So if I told you, if you had to make a comparison, or to make a judgment of working on a green screen, that would be used for CGI, or working with puppets, what would you think would be the easier one for an actor?
Anthony: Oh, it's definitely easier to work with the puppets, but it's in degrees: because if you've worked on stage, it's nothing to imagine what's in front of you, so I think it's only for less experienced actors, or actors who have only worked in films or television, that have difficulty with working with puppets or CGI, because they're used to having the world filled out in front of them; but if you're used to working on stage, and there's a blank wall, and you say "there's a castle", or "there's an army approaching", it's completely normal, that's exactly the same with CGI, with a green wall, you're imagining the army approaching. So there's a very little difference, in an imaginative, in an imaginative sense to working on a green screen, or working with puppets, than there is to working... on stage.
Gabriella: Which is the craziest Farscape episode that you can think of?
Anthony: I can't... We always come back to "Out of their minds", because on screen it was a crazy episode, but I'm not sure it was the most crazy to shoot. We always worked so hard on that show, running two units, extremely long days, I think 80 hour  weeks, plus, every single week that I shot, because I was the first to arrive on set, and the last to leave, because of the make-up. It's hard to pinpoint a crazy one, because they were fun, and challenging, and wonderful experiences, but when I reflect on it, I think less "crazy" and more "hard work", and that's what... and that's what makes me proud of it, because like anything in life, the harder you work for it, the more you value the accomplishment you've made once it's finished. So, I'm sorry not to have a real answer to that question, but...
Gabriella: But what about some episodes that you thought was the craziest, in terms of the storyline, or...?
Anthony: Well, I think we had the obvious really crazy episodes, but for my mind, they're actually the ones that didn't work; I felt that when we went really out on a limb, when we had people turn into other people, and all that sort of thing, that was when we... we took it too far, and yes you can get some entertainment value out of that, but I think it really took people out of the world of Farscape, so I know a lot of people would disagree with me on that,  but... that was my perspective.
Gabriella: What can you tell us about webisodes for Farscape?
Anthony: I am not hooked in to anything about the webisodes, so I don't know anything about them. I know... where I go to find out information about the webisodes, is to sites like farscape.it, 'cause it will have information about it well before I have information about it. All I know is that years ago they asked me, would I be prepared to be a part of them if they went ahead, I said "of course!", and that's the last thing I heard about them. So, as far as I know at the moment, they're not happening but, I don't know, take nothing from that - they could be made, be made, they could be being made now, somewhere else, for as much as I know.
Gabriella: Last question: what's in store for Anthony Simcoe in the future?
Anthony: Ah, for me the future is really about trying to keep this blessed life that I have at the moment in balance, so at the moment, my life seems... my... my career life is...is just perfect, because it has amazing balance between government and corporate teaching, teaching to young artists and actors, performing in television and film, and also directing, so the future for me is about keeping that balance, and it's also about putting as many other people in the spotlight, so that they can fulfill whatever it is that they want to do with their life. If I can be an instrument in helping other people do whatever it is they want to do, then I'm a happy man. So that's my future.
Gabriella: Thank you!
Anthony: My pleasure. Thank you for having me.