INTERVIEW: Dan Payne, Alex Zahara on the their love of acting, appreciation for sci-fi
Photo: Courtesy of Creation Entertainment / Provided with permission.
Although Creation Entertainment’s annual Gateway: The Official Stargate Convention was not able to happen in 2020 because of the coronavirus pandemic, fans of the sci-fi franchise should not fret. The convention company has already booked the weekend of June 25-27, 2021, for some genre fun in the Chicago area.
Expected to attend next year’s con are many of the actors associated with Stargate: SG-1, Stargate: Atlantis and Stargate: Universe, including Michael Shanks, Amanda Tapping, Ben Browder, Joe Flanigan, Rachel Luttrell, Jewel Staite, Gary Jones, David Nykl, Alexis Cruz, Dan Payne, Alex Zahara and Kirby Morrow.
Payne is an accomplished film and TV star whose many credits include The Flash, Legends of Tomorrow, Descendants, Human Target, Battlestar Galactica and Smallville, among many others. On Stargate Atlantis and SG-1, he played multiple roles.
Zahara’s credits include everything from The Dead Zone to The Man in the High Castle to voice acting on My Little Pony, Lego Jurassic World and Marvel animated projects. He played multiple characters on SG-1.
Both Payne and Zahara are working actors who have been deeply impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. They find themselves itching to get back to work in the Vancouver area, where they are both based, but they don’t know when and how that will happen.
Recently, the two had an open and candid talk with Hollywood Soapbox about COVID-19, Stargate, fandom and their love of sci-fi. Here’s part II of that conversation (click here for part I) …
On what motivates a working actor …
PAYNE: “If you as an artist are focused on the finances, I think you’re in it for the wrong reasons, and your career will either flame out or burnout. If you’re not doing it because you loving doing it, then you’re missing the point, and there’s no longevity in that. The stress and fear of financial greatness or ruin are going to distract you from the whole benefit and focus of doing your job brilliantly, which then a byproduct of it is getting paid reasonably to do it.”
On how they became friends …
ZAHARA: “Where did we actually meet? I think Dan and I met at conventions. …”
PAYNE: “I don’t know, Alex.”
ZAHARA: “But that’s the beauty of it. We’ve been friends so long we can’t actually remember where we met.”
PAYNE: “It was kind a love at first sight. My filter is pretty strong. I don’t have a lot of friends at all, and the people I do want to spend time with, they better be that kind of person that you know is going to reciprocate what you want to give off. For Alex, it was immediate. That guy’s heart is the most prominent feature on his sleeve, I guess, and to me that was just huge. Egos kind of fly in our industry, and some of the conventions we’ve gone to, I’ve seen egos in work. Not that they’re screamingly painful, but it’s just not something I’m drawn to. And Alex had none. He was all about the fans, all about the people and all about the connection, and I live off the connection. It’s my fuel for being, and he was giving it out in droves. And I’m like, can I ride that ride? And here we are.”
ZAHARA: “And vice versa. … Dan is funny. He’s got a sense of humor. He’s warm, caring, whatever, all of the above. … Dan and I are like Russian dolls because I can fit inside him.”
PAYNE: [laughs] “That’s because we’re very similar creatures, just different sizes.”
On how they ended up in Vancouver …
PAYNE: “For me, I’m not from Vancouver. I came to Vancouver via the UK and England. … If I want to do this for a living, these are the places I need to go to. And I very specifically started in the UK, so I could fall flat on my face and completely suck. And nobody back home would know. So I learned the hard yards the hard way — sort of undercover in disguise being a foreigner guy. And I came back to Canada specifically wanting to go to Toronto or Vancouver because of the fact that the industry is there, knowing that Hollywood North would be my first access. … But, yeah, I made a very conscious choice to go to Vancouver because of the industry there, because I knew it was the hotspot of the two basic hubs in Canada. … I made a conscious choice to go where the work was. I feel it’s an aspect of how you get where you need to go. You pick the brains of the people who know what you want to know, and you go where the opportunities are to do those things.”
ZAHARA: “I agree. I’m from Alberta, so I didn’t grow up here. But I came here to go to school at UBC, University of British Columbia, and I originally went to do directing and become a film director. And I took all these basic courses I needed to get in to the program, and I found the acting the hardest thing. I produced and directed a bunch of stuff, and I won a scholarship for college based on my direction of the stage play of M*A*S*H, which is one of my all-time favorite shows.
“It was sort of indirect how I got into acting. I became an actor at school so that I would become a better director when I got out, and so I could speak the language. It just so happened that I was in Vancouver, and there’s a film industry here. After I graduated, I thought, well, I better start trying to put this skill I have to work and produce and do other things. Luckily enough, there was a fair bit of filming going on in the late ‘90s, early 2000s when I got started, and the opportunities came up. …
“The average is 18 months to two years before you start really booking. I did landscaping with a buddy for $10 an hour under the table back in the day. He let me come and go to auditions, so I wasn’t making any money when I went to auditions during the day. At night, I didn’t want to be a waiter like everyone else because they work until midnight-2 a.m. When do you study your lines? So for about two years I did this study all night, work all day, go to auditions, run back and forth, make like no money. After I paid my bills, rent, etc., if I had a loonie, like a dollar, at the end of the week I bought myself a can of Coke as a treat. That went on for two years.”
PAYNE: “There’s the passion though. That’s why you’re at where you’re at.”
On their love of sci-fi and genre fiction …
ZAHARA: “I’m a big sci-fi nerd. I love Star Trek, Star Wars, Stargate, anything with star in it.”
PAYNE: “And you’re a star.”
ZAHARA: “I didn’t watch all of Stargate, I’ll be frank. I watched a lot of it, not all of it because when I was a starving actor in the beginning, I didn’t have television. I had to watch it as it came on. I think we all should be fans of it because it [asks]: How are we the best humans? How can we be the best humans to humanity? … How do we represent in the universe as the best human as the best being we can be? And that to me has always been a massively attractive question. How can I be a better human? I still struggle with that to this day.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Dan Payne and Alex Zahara recently appeared at a virtual fan experience with Creation Entertainment. They are also scheduled for the company’s in-person Gateway: Official Stargate Convention in June 2021. Click here for more information and tickets.
