David Blue on Stargate Universe, Twitter's Dark Side, and His Galaxy Quest Obsession

So you're currently shooting the second season. How much do you know about what's to come?

I know the general arc of at least the beginning of season two, but I don't know how it'll fit into each script. It's almost comical, when we're shooting and we get scripts. All of sudden the actors disappear and you can't find them, and it's because we're all sitting in corners or on parking lot curbs with out iPhones and computers, reading the scripts between takes. We just love to know where things are going.

You're a fan yourself. What is it like to have fans of your own now?

We live in a completely different time than I think has ever existed in American entertainment. If I was a big fan of Star Trek: The Next Generation or Quantum Leap, if I wanted to get an autograph or talk to an actor, it involved writing a letter and mailing it. That doesn't exist anymore. I'm on Twitter, and that's an instantaneous way for fans to talk to you. While it's very fast and cool, it's also dangerous, and I think halfway through the season people [on the show] realized that. As great as it is that there are so many people out there and so many websites, it's really easy to make a website, and you could find a whole blog about how horrible your character is and how you're ruining the world. It gets to be kind of hard to differentiate these things.

The one good thing about our shooting schedule is that the writers have an idea and then we shoot it. I know that people are going to look at things in the second half of our season and be like, "Oh, they listened to us. Ha ha, we changed it." If that's what they want to feel, that's great, but the truth is that most of these episodes were shot or in production before any opinions came out.

Fess up: have you ever gone and looked at a blog right after an episode airs, to gauge the reaction?

I try not to, but with Twitter, it makes it harder. As much as people try to be friendly, they don't realize what they're doing sometimes -- they'll be like, "Did you see this article?" and there's a link. And I'll be on set in between takes, and I'll think, "Oh, let me see this link," and it's like this scathing, horrific thing that says bad things about me. [Laughs] You can't avoid it these days. I don't try to find it anymore, but I'll be honest, I did during the first few months of the show because I was curious and overthinking. You never know...I find people who come up to me who say, "Oh my God, this is my favorite show on television and you're my favorite character," and it's humbling, and then I turn around and there's someone saying, "You should retire from acting because you're ruining television." You kind of have to trust that you're doing the best work you can and that the scripts are so good that they'll continue making people tune in.

It's such a strange thing. The people from Glee are on Twitter. I love Lost, and the creators are on Twitter. There are time where I almost have to avoid Twitter because it spoils things for me, because I watch shows on a DVR, not live. It's becoming almost hard to go on the internet in general.

You've appeared on some shows with some very ardent fans, from Ugly Betty to Moonlight to Veronica Mars. Do you ever meet, like, some gay sci-fi fans who also loved culty, canceled dramas and have a shrine to you?

I wish that were true. I've always loved and joked from the beginning that my fanbase is so incredibly diverse. The moment that someone approaches me, I tend to know what they're a fan of before they even speak. If they're under a certain age, it's Suite Life of Zack and Cody, if they have a certain demeanor, I know it's probably Ugly Betty or Stargate. It's fascinating to me, and actually I've joked for a while now that my life will be complete when I meet somebody who's a fan of all of them. God bless Robert Carlyle for playing a character like Rush or Hugh Laurie for playing a character like House where people love him because they hate him. I've been very lucky in that I play characters that people identify with.

Pages: 1 2