INTERVIEW WITH BRUCE CAMPBELL & SHARON GLESS FROM BURN NOTICE
USA NETWORK
By Lena Lamoray
If you have not been following BURN NOTICE then first off, where the hell have you been and secondly now is the time to do so, the season finale is going to be full of action. MICHAEL WESTEN (JEFFREY DONOVAN) is a spy who has been burned and is trying to pick up the pieces by helping people in desperate need with the assistance of FIONA GLENANNE (GABRIELLE ANWAR), the very handsome SAM AXE (BRUCE CAMPBELL) and the mother of all mothers MADELINE WESTEN (SHARON GLESS). Together, they form one of the slickest problem solving teams around.
BRUCE CAMPBELL and SHARON GLESS submitted to a conference called and answered some key questions about the series and their characters. BRUCE was such a gentleman and SHARON was on the top of her game.
Here are some highlights from the Q & A:
BRUCE, you played in Xena and Hercules as sort of a rogue who helped out the good guys as well. And Sharon, obviously you played Cagney, a bad-ass cop and she also knew her way around bad guys. So I was curious how these roles and others may have helped to cultivate the characters that you play on Burn Notice.
SHARON GLESS: Well, the only bad guys I have to find my way around are Jeffrey and Bruce. I mean, my job on the show is the mother from hell. I don’t get involved in the heavy stuff like they do.
BRUCE CAMPBELL: Sharon, your character is scarier than some of the bad guys.
You helped out in that case when Bruce got captured and you were sort of interrogating the one guy.
SHARON GLESS: Right, that was very, very funny. It’s not often that I get to do one-upmanship on Bruce Campbell.
BRUCE CAMPBELL: What’s amazing is she turned out to be a very good interrogator and then who knew. I actually think we’re going to see in the scenes that come – because Sharon, you were also on a stakeout and you had to spot somebody. You had to be a lookout. So don’t kid yourself. You’re going to be an operative before too long maybe.
SHARON GLESS: Okay, look out.
BRUCE CAMPBELL: Well, I mean, I’ve always enjoyed playing a little left of center characters. Otherwise I’d be on a soap opera, you know. What’s attractive to me was that these are real characters. These are characters who drink and smoke and make mistakes and have foibles in love and try to fix their mother's garbage disposal. That’s what’s attractive to me. That’s what got me into this show and knowing that I’m with four, three other kind of seasoned adult actors. That’s always attractive when you know you’re going to be working with people that it’s going to be worth showing up for. It’s made a big difference. And this show, I can’t speak for Sharon, but this show came out of nowhere.
SHARON GLESS: Yes.
BRUCE CAMPBELL: The things that I plan never happen. Things that I don’t plan do.
SHARON GLESS: Exactly. That’s how I thought. I think that when Bruce and I first – we were interviewed together. Do you remember that, in Pasadena or somewhere?
BRUCE CAMPBELL: Yes.
SHARON GLESS: And I was actually sitting in the fat farm and this script arrived and I was sitting all alone in my room and it made me laugh out loud and I was all by myself. And I thought, this is funny. This is fun, I like this. It had substance to it, too.
BRUCE CAMPBELL: It probably didn’t hurt that you live in Miami, too.
SHARON GLESS: I forgot about that, but I didn’t tell them that during the interview. I wanted to live in a hotel like you guys. And then when it sold, I had to ‘fess up.
What sorts of methods and what type of influences do you use to kind of inform your characters and your portrayal of each of your characters? Like what do you draw upon to, in your characterization of Sam and of Madeline?
SHARON GLESS: Well, my husband said, when he read the script, chain smoking half the time. And he said, how lucky are you, they’re paying you to smoke. So he said, wow, you do all the things with the cigarette. I said, “Well, yeah, I already knew how to do that.” What do I draw on? I’ve never actually had children, myself, but I just connected with Jeffrey’s character and every week it’s different and as the show goes along, Madeline, my character, first she’s totally in the dark and very needy and very sort of just all sort of emotional things that are unattractive. And as time went on, Matt Nix said, “Sharon, she’s smarter than what I was writing.” And he gave me one clue, he said, “Remember, he gets his smarts from her.” I said, “Oh, okay.” So I just took that information and it gave me and my character a little more confidence. But I don’t know, how do you prepare for playing someone who’s manipulative? Is it built in? I don’t know.
BRUCE CAMPBELL: When you’re in show business, you know lots of manipulating people.
SHARON GLESS: Yes, that’s true. But I try to do the manipulation with humor. Hopefully, that’s how it’s coming across.
Why doesn’t Sam Axe’s personality match the normal ex-military stereotypes? He seems really upbeat compared to how most shows depict characters that have been in serious military situations. I was just wondering why that was.
BRUCE CAMPBELL: I think my character is actually more accurate. I think I run into some of these guys. My first wife remarried a police officer, and I’ll tell you these guys like having a good time when they’re not working. They don’t sit around mopey dope, they sit around and crack gallows humor, lots of gallows humor, dark humor. Frankly, I think they’re happy that they’re alive most of these guys after going through all of this and they have a good joie de vivre that the average executive might not have. So I should think Sam is very indicative of the real guys, you know guys who are my age who have mustered out in their 50’s. Believe me, most of them are drinking beer and sitting around a pool cracking jokes about the old days.
SHARON GLESS: In my experience in having done Cagney & Lacey many years ago, we had technical advisors on the set and we had detectives and police. Not exactly in the role that Bruce is playing, but these guys who see so much really do have a very macabre sense of humor. And I do think that’s how they stay sane.