Press
Source: TVGuide BroadBand
Kings: Susanna Thompson 4/14/2009
————————————————————————————————————————————————
Source: movieweb.com
Comic-Con 2008 Exclusive: Susanna Thompson Interview 7/24/2008
————————————————————————————————————————————————-
Source: nbc.com
Kings Panel – Comic-Con 2008
————————————————————————————————————————————————
Source: TVGuide.com
Has NCIS‘ Gibbs Met His Match in Susanna Thompson?
Oct 24, 2006 04:00 AM ET by Michael Davis
On Nov. 7 (postponed from its previously announced airdate of Oct. 24), Susanna Thompson (Once and Again, The Book of Daniel) pops up on CBS’ NCIS (Tuesdays at 8 pm/ET) as an Army investigator who catches the attention (or is that a-tenn-shun?) of special agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs (Mark Harmon). The versatile actress recently took a call from TV Guide to discuss what may blossom into a full-fledged love affair for Harmon’s oft-taciturn, coffee-addicted character.
TV Guide: Cranky-pants Gibbs in love? Will this be the start of something big?
Susanna Thompson: I’m not sure where they’ll take it, or how far they’ll take it, but certainly they’ll take it a couple steps further. I love the dynamic between the two of them. They don’t give each other any slack.
TV Guide: How hot does it get?
Thompson: There’s interest in the other on a suppressed level, or a hidden level, right now, because they’re doing their job. But to get that out of the way, she’s had to call him on some of his stuff, to say, “Look, you’re going to have to trust me. If you haven’t trusted other people before, you’re going to have to trust me because we need to work on this.”
TV Guide: As an actress, how were you able to communicate that kind of interest in him while also maintaining the seriousness of purpose of a lieutenant colonel?
Thompson: A lot is conveyed through the eyes and conveyed through humor. I think if there is something being felt and thought and the camera’s there to pick it up, it’ll pick it up. And so whatever is being felt, on so many different levels, it’s seen. And it’s not hard to do that with Mark Harmon.
TV Guide: NCIS is known to have a loose and fun set, with a cast that’s fast on its feet.
Thompson: That crew has worked with each other since JAG. They like working with each other and they’re respected for what they do, so it was a great environment to step into. They know how to take care of problems really fast, and the actors are just crack-ups. They’re always sort of playing jokes on each other. Michael Weatherly and Cote de Pablo were doing this whole routine about what the show would be like in its ninth season, just spoofing the show. Those two, boy, when you get them started…. For me, I had to actually remove myself from it, but not all the time. I kept gravitating over towards their military advisor, this really strong ex-Marine. He’d come over and just very subtlely, very gently — but with that strength and power of his stature — just grab my shoulders and just say something little like, “Your arms are swinging a little too much as you go up that hill.”
TV Guide: Your character gives Gibbs the opportunity for the first time to have some kind of love life in the present. It will be intriguing to see what he’s like at the beginning of a relationship. We’ve really only seen the middle and the end of Gibbs’ relationships, in flashbacks.
Thompson: Well, you’ll see subtle things there because this first episode is just laying the groundwork. It’s mainly about the case that they’re trying to solve. But you see little moments of him holding the door, and his crew notices that. And I also think you see a sense of jealousy in his crew, like, “Who is this lady?” There’s a real protective sense from them about him.
TV Guide: They all want to please Daddy. They all desperately need his approval.
Thompson: David McCallum was hilarious. I guess his character and Gibbs’ are still a little bit at odds with each other, and so when I walk in, the doctor just turns all his attention to me, to my character.
TV Guide: It’s going to take Ducky a long time to get over the fact that his friend and colleague Jethro left everybody and headed off to Mexico. To [creator] Don Bellisario’s credit, he writes in these things to remind the actors that that’s how people behave. They don’t get over things in an hour.
Thompson: It’s very smart writing. He’s brilliant that way, because you need to give these people a backstory. You need to have a history. You need to help them to show up as real people. And that’s how the writers and the creators can help the actors do that.
TV Guide: I can’t have the Borg Queen on the phone and not ask a Star Trek question. Did you want to purchase a piece of memorabilia at any point during the recent Christie’s auction?
Thompson: I used to joke that I was saving every piece of anything from Star Trek for my old-age pension.
TV Guide: For fanboys everywhere, you are part of the lore and legend. The Borg Queen is a humanoid we love to hate.
Thompson: I do realize that. Next Generation was one of my husband’s favorite shows when it was first on, for its stories and caliber of acting. When I got a small part on Star Trek: The Next Generation, I could go home and just say, “Here’s your gift. I did it, now leave me alone.” But it unfolded into another Next Generation appearance, and into a Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and then into Voyager. I had no idea it would be the first step on a path into Star Trek history.
TV Guide: Well, all I can say is live long and prosper.
————————————————————————————————————————————————-
Source: Detroit Free Press
‘Once and Again’ hopes for a miracle
March 4, 2002 by Mike Duffy
It’s tough to put on a happy face when fate is kicking you around.
And while Susanna Thompson’s emotionally bruised character on “Once and Again” has been having a miserable year, the actress also knows that the exquisitely drawn ABC family drama is in deep peril.
Off the air for the past seven weeks, “Once and Again” finally returns to the ABC schedule at 10 tonight for what is sure to be its last shot at survival. If the ratings don’t zoom upward, the show’s a goner.
“It’s such a strange time right now,” Thompson says. “Even talking about it feels like abandoning ship.”
“Once and Again” is an achingly intimate and affecting portrait of divorce as seen through the eyes of adults and children. It’s the sort of classy, intelligent series that fairly screams “Quality TV!”
That may have been part of its problem.
Executive producers Ed Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz, who previously explored the human condition with brittle wit and bittersweet subtlety in “thirtysomething” and “My So-Called Life,” don’t make conventional, lowest common denominator television. They take chances; they create layered characters with flaws who don’t always behave the way they should. There’s a painful honesty to the anguish some of their characters experience occasionally.
Just ask Thompson, who has been giving one of the season’s most intensely pure and impressive acting performances as Karen Sammler.
“I didn’t want to just play someone’s image of a bitter ex-wife,” said Thompson. And she hasn’t.
“Once and Again” tells the story of Rick and Lily Sammler, played by Billy Campbell and Sela Ward, divorced parents who fell in love and got married. But the show’s real emotional depth and artful stories have grown from the tangled relationships of all the people in Rick and Lily’s life — their children and former spouses.
“I’m just so attached to ‘Once and Again,’ ” says Thompson, sounding fretful about the future.
This season, Karen fell into a deep depression and was nearly killed in a shocking auto accident during the last episode, which aired in early January. And Thompson has delivered a haunting, Emmy Award-worthy performance.
“Karen is one of many of us who has had to push through her days, to get up in the mornings feeling a low-grade depression and not even knowing what it is,” says Thompson. “She’s a person who has had dreams for her life. Some of that has fallen into place as she thought it would, but in other ways, it didn’t happen.
“She got to a place and said, ‘Is that all there is?’ “
Passionate fans of “Once and Again,” who gather online at such sites as www.saveoanda.com or www.oandafans.com to organize their efforts to pressure ABC to renew the series, are surely asking the same question.
By returning the series to Monday nights, where it drew its biggest audiences during its first season, ABC is clearly hoping for a minor miracle. Viewership declined from 10.9 million to just 6.3 million over the past three years. A fourth season is unlikely. And ABC, despite giving Zwick and Herskovitz the creative freedom to make great television, bear some of the blame.
The series has been bumped around the schedule six times to five different time slots. Moving it to Friday nights last fall proved disastrous. And ABC’s promotion of the series has been lukewarm and spotty.
Meanwhile, Susanna Thompson isn’t giving up.
“I refuse to be pessimistic. I don’t want to say it’s gone until someone tells me it’s gone,” she says. “I want to hold on to the possibility of hope.”
————————————————————————————————————————————————-
Source: The San Diego Union-Tribune
Local actress’s next big role could be fame
November 16, 1999 by Patricia Morris Buckley
Christening Susanna Thompson the latest overnight success in Hollywood would be all too easy. After all, this fall she debuted as a regular on ABC’s much-touted series “Once and Again” and she played Harrison Ford’s wife in the recent film “Random Hearts.”
But local theatergoers know a different story. In the ’80s they watched this San Diego native establish herself as a versatile actress on local stages. In the ’90s, they saw her move to Los Angeles’ larger pond, guest starring on numerous TV shows and tackling featured roles in such films as ” Ghosts of Mississippi” and “Little Giants.”
Now all that hard work appears to be paying off.
“There seems to be a lot of energy going on around me right now,” said Thompson, who expressed doubts about the celebrity side of a Hollywood career. “But I don’t know that I’m getting famous. I still feel like a working actor. It’s not like people recognize me on the street.”
That could all change. “Once and Again” (10 p.m. Tuesdays on KGTV/Channel 10) is produced by the critically-acclaimed team of Marshall Herskovitz and Ed Zwick, who were also the creative force behind “thirtysomething” and “My So-Called Life.” Many are calling the show “fortysomething” because it follows two midlife singles, Rick (Billy Campbell) and Lily (Sela Ward), who fall in love and have to face the many complications of blending their families.
“It’s all about the hidden wounds and baggage that we bring into a relationship once we reach a certain age,” said Thompson, a graduate of Chula Vista’s Castle Park High and San Diego State University, “those different transitions in life that affect how you grow and connect with others.”
After Thompson read for the part of Rick’s ex-wife, Karen, the role went to actress Harley Jane Kozak. Thompson had already signed on for the upcoming Wolfgang Petersen movie “The Perfect Storm” with George Clooney when she got the call that the pregnant Kozak had to bow out (Kozak is now being written in as another character). When Thompson landed the role of Karen, she agonized about passing on the film, but thought the TV series would be the best choice for her career.
“I felt I could learn a lot from these people,” she said of Herskovitz and Zwick. “They’re so careful and sensitive in developing their characters. The writing is so real, there’s no room for a dishonest moment. I don’t know if I could work with a higher class of people in TV today.”
The first few episodes have centered around the two leads, but the producers plan to make it more of an ensemble show, not unlike “thirtysomething.” So while audiences see Karen mostly as the bitter ex-wife now, Thompson visualizes the character growing throughout the season.
“Karen is someone who had an idea of what her life would be like in terms of career, marriage and kids and that shifted into something else,” said Thompson of the character’s reaction to her divorce. “After three years of being hurt and angry, she’ll go through the awkward steps of growth and finding a new life. I’m excited to see where the character goes with that.”
Another giant step in her career was playing opposite Ford in “Random Hearts,” directed by Sydney Pollack. While Thompson’s screen time was small, the role is such a pivotal one that her face is featured prominently in the TV commercials.
“I loved working with Harrison,” she said. “He came to my trailer on the first day to say hello and made me feel comfortable. I told him I felt like it was the first day of school. He said, ‘No, you’re in the fourth grade now. ‘ “
This is what Thompson dreamed of back in 1991 when she made the leap to L.A. Shortly after making the decision, she lost out on a role in “Three Sisters” at the La Jolla Playhouse (she ended up an understudy). That turned out to be a blessing because she instead played the lead in “A Shayna Maidel” at the Gaslamp Quarter Theatre, which led to her securing an agent.
Once she moved to L.A., Thompson started landing parts in a variety of series. She has appeared on “NYPD Blue” and “Chicago Hope.” She’s also tackled the leading roles in two failed pilots, UPN’s “The Caseys” and ABC’s ” Bermuda Triangle.”
But it’s with the “Star Trek” franchise that she’s had the steadiest working relationship, appearing on “The Next Generation” twice and “Deep Space Nine” once (in a controversial episode where she had to kiss another female character who had once been her character’s husband in another incarnation). After auditioning for the role of the Borg Queen in the film ” Star Trek: First Contact,” she played the same part in a two-part “Voyager.”
Now that ” Once and Again” and “Random Hearts” are bringing her plenty of exposure with the public, she’s aware that fame could be the next big step in her career.
“That’s not what I wanted, but if it comes I hope I can handle it graciously,” she said. “And if it puts my name out for more quality work, that’s wonderful. I like to do work that speaks to my heart. I love what I’m doing. It’s quality and it feels great.”
