Dean Haglund and Tom Braidwood have been talking quite a bit about their coming X-Files spin-off series, The Lone Gunmen.
While talking to Fandom.com's Smilin' Jack Ruby, the actors touched upon a number of points regarding the coming show, as follows:
What's the show's emphasis?
Braidwood: Oh, yeah, it's quite different. It doesn't go into the spooky realm or the alien realm. It's aimed at the conspiracy realm.
Haglund: Urban myth kind of thing. All those stories that you've heard about - we go investigate. We're taking it from the newspaper that we run, The Lone Gunmen, so we're like investigative journalists going into these things so it's like Mission: Impossible with us three.
Was starting as supporting characters on X-Files helpful?
Haglund: I find it’s actually really good to start as a small recurring character, because then you know your character and you’ve got everything down. Once you get into that pressure of fourteen hour days you’re like, what’s my lines? You know?
Braidwood: We definitely had the benefit of having done the characters for seven years.
Haglund: ...and having known each other...
Braidwood: We kind of rolled into it rather naturally other than the day-in and day-out aspect of it which we did a couple of times when they did the shows that were dedicated to us. But none of us had ever done anything like this which was basically day-in and day-out, week-in and week-out for two, three, four months. But the character part of it was easy because we’d already had our character relationships and our personal relationship worked out by that point. So, we kind of just rolled into it and started doing it I think quite naturally.
How will the characters change to support a whole show of their own?
Haglund: I don’t know if it’s changed our approach to the characters so much, but they’ve also cast two other people. Their real names are Zuleikha Robinson and Stephen Snedden. Zuleikha Robinson plays a gorgeous computer hacker who is smarter than is, but she’s doing it for the money whereas we’re doing it for the American people. And then Steve Snedden plays Jimmy Bond – he’s the...
Braidwood: Big-hearted...
Haglund: ....big-hearted dumb lunk who’s got the money to fund the paper.
Braidwood: He likes us. He likes our morality, so he wants to become a Gunmen so he hangs around a lot.
Haglund: Sort of like the Fourth Gunmen.
Braidwood: There's talk that there's a mythology behind Zuleikha's character...
Haglund: But that just might be more of a character arc than a whole mythology story arc because they found that you can't write that every week and now with The X-Files you get a mythology episode and then suddenly there's four or five where they're just chasing some monster and everybody goes, what about the oil in the eyes? And how can they just go into the...? And you run into that kind of problem when you do large arcs like that.
Braidwood: I think you might see more that's hints of where we came from and where we were, what we've done, individually and not just as a threesome.
X-Files crossovers?
Braidwood: We’re only just now doing our first crossover. Up until now, the pilot and the first eight shows have really just been us and guest stars, but Skinner – Mitch Pileggi – is in the one that we’re doing now. There’s always been talk of doing a crossover, but we don’t know how many more there’s going to be. We know that Skinner’s signed up for two or three of them. Whether we see anybody else, Mulder, Scully, Krychek, anybody Well, hopefully. It’s everything I could think of to ask. I wish I could just transfer my tapes over to a .wav file or something as to fully get Dean Haglund, you really have to see the man live. Being a stand-up comic, he’s got the presence and the energy and transcribing what he actually said is going to be difficult.
While talking to Fandom.com's Smilin' Jack Ruby, the actors touched upon a number of points regarding the coming show, as follows:
What's the show's emphasis?
Braidwood: Oh, yeah, it's quite different. It doesn't go into the spooky realm or the alien realm. It's aimed at the conspiracy realm.
Haglund: Urban myth kind of thing. All those stories that you've heard about - we go investigate. We're taking it from the newspaper that we run, The Lone Gunmen, so we're like investigative journalists going into these things so it's like Mission: Impossible with us three.
Was starting as supporting characters on X-Files helpful?
Haglund: I find it’s actually really good to start as a small recurring character, because then you know your character and you’ve got everything down. Once you get into that pressure of fourteen hour days you’re like, what’s my lines? You know?
Braidwood: We definitely had the benefit of having done the characters for seven years.
Haglund: ...and having known each other...
Braidwood: We kind of rolled into it rather naturally other than the day-in and day-out aspect of it which we did a couple of times when they did the shows that were dedicated to us. But none of us had ever done anything like this which was basically day-in and day-out, week-in and week-out for two, three, four months. But the character part of it was easy because we’d already had our character relationships and our personal relationship worked out by that point. So, we kind of just rolled into it and started doing it I think quite naturally.
How will the characters change to support a whole show of their own?
Haglund: I don’t know if it’s changed our approach to the characters so much, but they’ve also cast two other people. Their real names are Zuleikha Robinson and Stephen Snedden. Zuleikha Robinson plays a gorgeous computer hacker who is smarter than is, but she’s doing it for the money whereas we’re doing it for the American people. And then Steve Snedden plays Jimmy Bond – he’s the...
Braidwood: Big-hearted...
Haglund: ....big-hearted dumb lunk who’s got the money to fund the paper.
Braidwood: He likes us. He likes our morality, so he wants to become a Gunmen so he hangs around a lot.
Haglund: Sort of like the Fourth Gunmen.
Braidwood: There's talk that there's a mythology behind Zuleikha's character...
Haglund: But that just might be more of a character arc than a whole mythology story arc because they found that you can't write that every week and now with The X-Files you get a mythology episode and then suddenly there's four or five where they're just chasing some monster and everybody goes, what about the oil in the eyes? And how can they just go into the...? And you run into that kind of problem when you do large arcs like that.
Braidwood: I think you might see more that's hints of where we came from and where we were, what we've done, individually and not just as a threesome.
X-Files crossovers?
Braidwood: We’re only just now doing our first crossover. Up until now, the pilot and the first eight shows have really just been us and guest stars, but Skinner – Mitch Pileggi – is in the one that we’re doing now. There’s always been talk of doing a crossover, but we don’t know how many more there’s going to be. We know that Skinner’s signed up for two or three of them. Whether we see anybody else, Mulder, Scully, Krychek, anybody Well, hopefully. It’s everything I could think of to ask. I wish I could just transfer my tapes over to a .wav file or something as to fully get Dean Haglund, you really have to see the man live. Being a stand-up comic, he’s got the presence and the energy and transcribing what he actually said is going to be difficult.
