Venue: Richmond Room, Norbreck Castle, Blackpool ... about 12:25 PM
Interviewer: Gloryisagod.com (GIAG)
Camera: Sean Harry
Clare has a most charming and distinctive voice. It's just plain fun to listen to her talk. She sort of draws out and rolls certain syllables of many words is the best we can do to describe it. It's not what we expected as the norm for growing up in Ohio, via New Orleans and Atlanta. Though we had heard her speaking this way in BBC Cult video clips and the ESPN interview, when Clare goes into loud rapid-speak during her MC spiels, this charming pronunciation disappears.
Clare's also an interviewer's dream; Adding to and elaborating her responses. When Clare's talking, she's usually very animated with her facial features, laughing or smiling, and almost always using her hands and arms to illustrate her words.
The universal description of Clare at Starfury is that she's a hard-working trouper and more guest/staff than guest, plus being a real sweetie-pie personally. No disagreement here.
Clare looks at the camera as Sean starts to record
SEAN: Here we go.
Clare waves to the camera
GIAG: We'd like to take a couple of stills. Don't trust just one camera.
CLARE: Yeah. No. That's cool. I'm open. And I want to say I appreciate everything you do so much. I know I said it briefly before but honestly its such an honor and a pleasure. I mean, really, it's people like you that make people like me. So, thank you.
Clare uses her hands and arms to illustrate her words
GIAG: It's not just us. We represent the groups here, Michelle, Emilie and you.
CLARE: Right.
GIAG: We have three Yahoo groups. There are about 300 in yours. Emilie's is gaining on yours. And [one of many assistant managers on] the Michelle MSN group, with over a thousand. So there are a lot of people out there that are silent that follow you.
CLARE: Wow.
GIAG: Like those that did a bang-up job for Michelle in getting everything she ever did online.
CLARE: Right.
GIAG: That's enough of that. That's not part of the questions.
CLARE: OK.
GIAG: The first thing we want to talk about is that the Q & A starts here. How did you get to the first Starfury in 2001? What are the steps? How did you do it the first time?
CLARE: Well, if I remember correctly, Sean contacted my manager who I don't think he met or worked with before and just sort of introduced himself. And I'd already appeared on Buffy but not in the UK. The episodes hadn't aired over here yet, I don't think. Right?
Clare looks at Sean and the camera
SEAN: They had it on satellite. Hadn't on terrestrial TV.
CLARE: And said, "Hey. My name's Sean and I work these conventions." I'd never done a convention before so I felt that it'd be a pretty cool way to meet friends of the show and meet people who are passionate about Buffy the Vampire Slayer - about Glory. And kinda get like feedback from the people who the show is made for, so I decided that, yeah, that was something that I was definitely interested in doing. And when I came over here, I was completely blown away with the passion and excitement of the fans. And just with Sean's organization and the whole Starfury kind of like theme. You know, it's all fair. Every one has fun, everyone enjoys themselves. That's why I've continued to come back and work with Sean.
GIAG: Thank you very much. Since this is the fourth year that you've been not just to Starfury, but a large number of other events, scattered between now and the end of June, are you in-country all this time? Or are you going back and forth?
CLARE: I've been here, I got in on Tuesday the 28th, Wednesday the 28th. Tomorrow I go to Paris until the 8th. And then I'm coming back to London for the two signings - next Saturday and Sunday, and staying until Tuesday. Then I'm flying back. And I'll fly back over in June.
GIAG: Is the Paris thing an event or just personal?
CLARE: That's just a vacation. I've never been.
GIAG: You finally get your Paris vacation.
CLARE: I finally get my Paris vacation! And I'm really excited to do all the Paris stuff though.
GIAG: OK, now we get into the less easy stuff.
CLARE: OK.
GIAG: OK. In the BBC Cult interview in May 2003, we believe, when you were over here last, you compared your movie "Mummy an' the Armadillo" to some of Mamet's work.
CLARE: MAM-et. [Correcting our Louisiana pronounciation of MA-may] David Mamet. Yeah.
GIAG: We accidentally discovered that he was on the faculty at NYU at one time. Was that when you were there?
CLARE: It wasn't when I was there. No. I wish it would've been. I love his stuff. Some of the movies he's written, "Glengarry Glen Ross", adapted from a play that he wrote. He's just amazing. The thing that really reminded me of his earlier work, 'cause "Mummy an' the Armadillo" is a very dark character-driven piece. All takes place in one location. So that initially when I read the script, I was like this is familiar to me.
And then I found out that the writer, J. S. Cardone of "Mummy an' the Armadillo" wrote it in '79, which was when Mamet was writing some of his first stuff. So yeah.
GIAG: Did you ever make it to the showing out in Arizona, in Sedona?
CLARE: Yes I did. It was good. It was fun. Yeah.
GIAG: We remember that it was snowed in.
CLARE: Yeah.
Clare laughs
GIAG: But the newspaper never reported anything about it [Clare's visit].
CLARE: I don't believe they did.
GIAG: A followup question is - your familiarity with Mamet.
CLARE: Yeah, MAM-et. [Correcting our revised Louisiana pronounciation of MAM-ay]
GIAG: Is that part of the curriculum or is it your personal familiarity that you obtained somewhere?
CLARE: I think, well, I would have to credit NYU for that. When we, the way the NYU program works for your BFA, which is what I have, is you spend 2 days actually at New York University studying your academics. Like your histories and your languages. Stuff like that. And then you spend 3 days studying at a studio in the city. So I studied at Lee Strasburg Theater Institute 3 days a week when I was going to college. And there they really are - it's a theater school. It's method acting. And so we did take not only Chekhov and Shakespeare, we worked all the way up to Mamet. So that's I first became familiar with his work. But I've always had a passion for his writing. Him, Sam Shepard, Chekov. Those are probably some of my favorite playwrights.
GIAG: Have you ever done Shakespeare?
CLARE: Not since college, No, just scene study work really.
GIAG: Meant in college.
CLARE: Yeah, yeah.
GIAG: Had a Shakespeare question, but it was too esoteric.
CLARE: No.
Clare laughs loudly
GIAG: You just reminded us of that. In about the "Bring It On" time, this is something people ask about, there are photos of you with a butterfly tattoo [on your back left shoulder]. And we've seen another photo of a tattoo.
CLARE: An angel
Clare reaches down toward the inside of her right ankle
GIAG: Oh, an angel. We thought it was a buttterfly, too. Is there any significance to these?
CLARE: I got them a long time ago. I love 'em and they just faded. But I personally love 'em. I may get them touched up some day but I just haven't felt the need to.
GIAG: Thank you.
CLARE: I like my little tattoos.
Clare laughs uproariously
GIAG: They're not as large as the one Bianca [Kajlich] has.
CLARE: Exactly.
GIAG: Hers is like a shield.
CLARE: I know.
GIAG: At the Grimsby event [2003], you mention that you moved out of rooming with Bianca. We heard she'd moved in with a soccer player.
CLARE: She actually just moved to another apartment. Yeah.
GIAG: We thought we'd seen that she'd moved in with her soccer player.
CLARE: She may have now at this point.
GIAG: But you said you were living in a house, we guess as opposed to an apartment.
CLARE: Uh-huh.
Clare nods yes
GIAG: But that's not part of the question. With your two famous cats.
CLARE: Yes, Zoey and Waker.
Clare laughs
GIAG: Waker, not Walker?
CLARE: Waker.
GIAG: Waker? They've been spelling it all wrong.
CLARE: Um-huh. They spelled it wrong in the "Bring It On" popup thing.
GIAG: Is it Zoey or Zooey? [Zo-e or Zoo-e?]
CLARE: Zoey [Zo-e] and Waker. W-A-K-E-R. It came from, I'll tell you the history behind the cats' names, if you're interested. I got two cats. And I wanted names that matched. Like, I don't know, Jack and Jill, or whatever. But I wanted them to be different. I'd read J. D. Salinger's book "Franny and Zooey" and I thought, 'that's cute. I'll do that'. Well, Franny, they were really little abandoned kittens when I got 'em, and Franny died a couple days later of feline distemper. So then I have Zooey, so I'm like 'Oh, my god, what am I gonna do?' So. I'm like, first of all, Zooey [ Zoo-e], I'll change your name to Zoey [Zo-e], you know. And then in the book, I decided that if I'm gonna have one cat, I might as well have two. Because they can keep each other company when I'm gone. And it's really no more work or anything. So, I had Zoey at that point. I'd already changed his name. And I looked in the Village Voice. I was living in New York at the time. I found 'Abandoned kittens, come get one' and went and got this cat. And in the book the cousin's name is Waker, who comes to visit. So I'm like 'Ah', just name her Waker. And she has a tendency to wake me up at night and everyone's like 'Oh, is that why her name's Waker?' I'm like 'Nooo!' It's from the book. Waker's the girl. Zoey's the boy.
GIAG: What are their colors?
CLARE: Zoey is sort of long-haired black and white. He has like a white tuxedo. And Waker is gray and white. And she has, I call it a bikini, because she has white like here and here, Clare draws her hands across where a bikini would be on her to illustrate and Zoey has white here. Clare illustrates in front of her with her hands again They're really beautiful cats, for being both of them were abandoned.
GIAG: And you've had them how long?
CLARE: 10 Years, 9 years?
GIAG: That's a long time
CLARE: Yeah.
GIAG: Are they well-behaved?
CLARE: Super. They're great cats, really.
GIAG: Who takes care of them when you travel here?
CLARE: I have a lady who comes in twice a day. So they won't have to go into boarding. They can stay at the house, relax. And she comes. she works at the vet where I take them. She's a real cat lover, so.
GIAG: Excellent.
CLARE: Yeah.
GIAG: On to "Skulls III" DVD.
CLARE: OK, yes.
GIAG: In the extras you have a long segment where you talk about your underwater stunt work. And we were impressed particularly with your calmness hanging there underwater, [[/i]at this point Clare is barely supressing her laughter, like she has a secret[/i]] when there was no shooting going on. Were there any difficulties associated with that?
Were there any problems?
CLARE: I was petrified. Look, I was scared. We trained in the swimming pool. No problems at all. And I thought 'This is great. This is going to be easy. Going to be fun'. We got there to shoot the scene and went through the rehearsals and we shot the easy stuff - the swimming down to the place. That wasn't hard to shoot at all. Then all of a sudden it was time to get the tanks and the goggles and everything. And what they required, we shot it in a big tank, and what was required was to go down with the breather thing and the goggles on. And then the director would call through, 'OK, take your goggles off'. And then like 'Air gone. Take your last breath. Throw it away." Then you have to wait for all those bubbles to clear so it was like 10 more seconds and then we'd start filming and you couldn't see anything. Especially by the end of the day. You couldn't see a thing. The water was so chlorinated. Supposed to look like a river. And I found I am very buoyant so I kept floating up. And they're like "No, you have to stay down'. I ended up wearing like 30 pounds of weights in my pockets but when I first went down to do that, the second half of it, I was just scared., you know. I felt like, not hyperventilating necessarily, but, I don't know, it's the only time I've ever been scared doing anything. And so I came back up. I'm like 'I'm floating away'and that was before they put the weights on me. 'Like I'm floating away and I can't see anything'. So they're like "OK, just calm down'. The safety guys were great. We had like two safety guys each, you know, to help us in case anything went wrong and so the safety guy would like grab my feet and hold my feet down if I wasn't in camera. I acclimated to it as the day went on and wasn't scared after the first couple takes doing it but it was definitely hard.
GIAG: That's great information. Because it looked like it was easy.
CLARE: Yeah. I had to say, 'Clare you're just going to have to do this. Like "Don't think about it." Don't think about the fact that you're underwater with this and that [Clare hits near her right knee area lightly several times with a karate chop to emphasize her words] blah-blah-blah. Just put your mind to it and do it. So that's what I did.
GIAG: Prior to "Skulls III" there was "Skulls 2". There was a sign on the wall that said: "Glory is forever, Pain is temporary". The same sign was above you when you got out of the pool in "Skulls III". What was your reaction to it?
CLARE: I looked at that sign when we were filming, and was like, "Yeah" I'm like "I don't want to say anything about it because I didn't want them to move it." I didn't know if they'd put the two and two together but I knew it was there and I kinda positioned myself so it could be seen.
GIAG: That was one of the captures we did.
CLARE: Yeah.
GIAG: Are you still boxing and hiking for exercise?
CLARE: Yes. And I do a lot of different stuff.
GIAG: How do you handle exercise when you're travelling?
CLARE: You know, I went to the gym yesterday, but most of the time you just have to work really hard when you're not travelling. Just kinda hope that it pays off especially doing something like this, you just don't have the time. And when you're filming, same thing, there's just not the time. Maybe time for a 10 minute walk, or a 20 minute walk, but not the time to put in your normal hour, whatever. So you just kinda cross your fingers.
GIAG: There are a couple here for other people. In a prior discussion you mentioned Emilie de Ravin. How did you first meet Emilie and how did you become friends?
CLARE: I love Emilie. I met her through just auditioning. And she's managed by Darren [Darren Goldberg, Clare's longtime manager]. And she's a great girl. Really sweet.
GIAG: When did you first meet her?
CLARE: I don't know if I can even remember. A while ago. A year or two.
GIAG: When you were on "Tru Calling" with Eliza, one of the things that happened before, in 2003, was when she was Punk'd by Ashton Kutcher. And she went kinda crazy. It was almost all bleeps. Very earthy. And we were wondering if she's that excitable in person.
CLARE: Oh, yeah. Well you see, the thing I like about Eliza is what you see is what you get. There're no false walls put up, so, yeah.
GIAG: Hmm. When you worked with Michelle Trachtenberg in Season 5 there were a number of tense scenes between Glory and Dawn. When these were over, what was Michelle like when the camera stopped rolling?
CLARE: You know what, she was very professional but I think she had a difficult time because she was being tutored and had her Mom there. She had a lot of obligations. I didn't necessarily hang out with her a lot on the set. I just don't really remember what she was like afterwards.
GIAG: She's gone on to make an R-rated movie and a lot of other stuff.
CLARE: Yeah.
GIAG: She's broken out of her image.
CLARE: Yes, she has. [Laughing]
GIAG: Your first movie role was in "In and Out". Were you still at NYU, theater touring or what?
CLARE: Yes, I was at NYU. Yeah. And I actually had a line in that movie that never made it in. "I'm gay" was my line. At the very end where everybody is standing up saying "I'm gay. I'm gay. I'm gay." I was like Student 1 of 3 or something. It was very exciting, you know, my first time on a big set.
GIAG: And that's the next question. "In and Out". Not the burger place.
CLARE: OK.
GIAG: While you were playing with your pencil, smiling and doing other things in the classroom, were you ever aware that on the back wall was a Shakespeare quote that read "... how like a god..."
CLARE: Nooo!
GIAG: And a few years later you were playing Glory.
CLARE: That's great. I didn't know that. That's amazing.
GIAG: We noticed that [in 2001] while capturing from the movie's tape. It's on the site somewhere.
CLARE: Oh my God! That's amazing.
GIAG: What are you reading for leisure or inspiration?
CLARE: Let's see. I just finished, I read, all of Dan Brown's books. "The Da Vinci Code" "Digital Fortress", Deception Point", "Angels and Demons". Of course, after reading "The Da Vinci Code" I'm so set to go to Paris. I just finished the "The Life of Pi" and I just started yesterday "The Alienist". Which I'm about 25, 30 pages in it. It's about a serial killer in New York City in 1894, 1896. So that should be good. What other good books have I read lately? Oh, "Five Till We Meet in Heaven"was great, a quick read. "Seabiscuit", I loved that.
GIAG: Pretty varied.
CLARE: Yes it is. I try to go fiction, non-fiction. Fiction, non-fiction. I ry to go back and forth. But I love to read. I can go through a book a week. If I have time I can go through a book a day. I read a ton.
GIAG: That's good. You don't have to answer this next one if you don't want to. Any comments you'd care to make about your role in "D.E.B.S.", that some people consider controversial?
CLARE: You know, I can comment on that. Sure. "Lucy in the Sky", she was a character just like any. Acting is about being someone you're not. And, you know, I had a great time playing her. If people, I always feel that it's better for people to dislike a performance than to be neutral about it. So if people like something, or dislike it I'm fine with that. If they're neutral, 'Ehhh, it was OK', then I feel like I really haven't done my job.
You know, it's better to have passion one way or the other, than no passion al all.
GIAG: Thank you very much. This is the last one, not really a question but a bonus for you.
CLARE: A bonus?
GIAG: Yeah. In October 2002 Lions Gate's property manager put the Diesel pants you were wearing ["Rules of Attraction"] and the camo top up on e-Bay. And we rescued them.
CLARE: Ohhh.
GIAG: Always intended to to send them back to you, if you still wanted them, via your manager.
CLARE: Oh my gosh, that's great! But you can keep 'em if you want 'em.
GIAG: We have no personal use for them.
CLARE: Yeah, I wanted that stuff.
GIAG: The property tags were still on them. And you could read them in the photos he had online. One said, 'Claire [Clare] wants to buy these'. The property tags are still on them.
CLARE: Oh my Gosh.
GIAG: They're yours.
CLARE: Well, thank you. [big smile]
GIAG: And that's it. Thank you.
CLARE: Did you get everything you need?
GIAG: This all we wanted to do. We tried to be within 10 minutes.
CLARE: No It's great.
CLARE:
looks at camera and waves
Thank you, and Gloriana.
Clare does her chortling laugh again
Interview by Gloriana at GIAG |
