by “Aussie Dave” Lobato, Tanya Lobato and Jayden Leggett, Reporters

Being the obsessed Firefly and Serenity fans that we are, the Aussie ComicsOnline team could barely control themselves when they were given the opportunity to interview Sean Maher, aka Dr. Simon Tam from the epic Joss Whedon series.

ComicsOnline: What’s it like working with Joss Whedon?

Sean Maher: Oh my gosh, I don’t even know how to articulate that! Joss is (at the risk of sounding like a cliché) a genius. He’s incredibly brilliant. Obviously he’s one of the most gifted people I’ve ever worked with, but at the same time (and I think what makes him so amazing) is he’s just so accessible. As well as being my boss, he became a dear friend, and he’s a mentor. It’s amazing to see somebody who’s wearing so many hats have time for everybody, and when you’re with him he makes you feel like you’re the only person… It’s a rarity in Hollywood for someone of his stature to be like a friend, to bum around and go to parties with and hang out, you know? I would consider him family now.

According to the behind the scenes content on the Firefly DVD, the ship used in the show was actually built for real. Can you tell us where it is now?

You want to hear the most awful thing? I think it’s gone. What’s crazy is when we did Serenity, because the ship was almost exactly the same. It’s crazy to have the same set built on a different lot, so we all had trouble when we had to pee because we thought we were on the Fox lot, going out the north-west corner of the stage to go to the bathroom and now we were at Universal, so we all got confused because we were on the same exact ship, but now in a different studio in L.A. I was like “This is so crazy, they saved all these set pieces and just put them back up.” No, no, no, no young man, you are so naïve. They tore that down the day we were cancelled, so it’s unreal to me that it’s just so much money and the set we had for the series was just torn down when we were cancelled, and then they just rebuilt the exact same thing for the movie. So I hate to say it, but I think the movie set is gone.

What is one of the funniest things that has gone wrong for you on set?

I have a lot of trouble suturing. So all of my medical activities (not my jargon because I was pretty good with dialogue) as a doctor was to do it so fast and to make it seem so effortless. You know, just to have someone’s life in my hands and to make it seem so cool, and I would always just screw it up and/or stick my finger with the needle while I was doing the suture. Also, there was a running joke, I don’t even know how to recreate it because I don’t even know how it happened to me, but I have a line in the movie where I say “Well, sleep easy” and I said “Schwee peasy” – I don’t even know what I said, and Nathan started laughing and he just goes “I’m sorry, did you just say ‘Schwee peasy’?” and then of course Jewel is like “Schwee peasy!” and everyone on the set just started mocking me, but I couldn’t recreate it myself. Which is so funny because any time I said “Well, sleep easy” Nathan would just start laughing, I think on the bloopers reel there’s a take of me smacking his face because he’d done that ten times at that point.

The cast seem to have a phenomenal chemistry, when the camera’s weren’t rolling on set did you guys have a really good bond?

Yeah, I had never worked with a group of people where there wasn’t really a missing link. There was instantaneous chemistry, I felt like it was very organic and we had such mutual admiration for each other as people and respect for each other as actors. When the cameras weren’t rolling, we weren’t in our trailers, we were hanging out on set with each other and when we wrapped from set we usually went to Nathan’s house and played games. In our industry, it’s really such a rarity to have a group like that, it was actually almost like a family dynamic, you know? There were the older brothers and the sisters and there was just such a wonderful blend of all these different personalities, and it really happened right away. Joss will always say that he started writing story lines from how he was watching us interact as people, and I think because we were so close there was just a lot that he was tapping in to, and like I said he was one of us, so he was hanging out at Nathan’s house after work, he was such an intricate part of the dynamic. I almost feel like he was just another character on the show. It sounds like a cliché but we were and still are like a family unit. We were all in such close contact and if we were in the same city we were spending time together, and that’s hard because our lives were so busy, but I love them all.

We have recently read that some of the actors from Firefly (including yourself) are going to be or have already finished working together for Joss Whedon’s film adaption of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing. Does that feel like a reunion for you guys?

Oh yeah, we’re actually done with it, we finished it already. Joss is probably going to wrap picture in July, I just saw him last week, we did some ADR. Nathan and I are in it, but then everybody else is from the Whedon-verse, so some Angel actors, some Dollhouse actors, and the crew as well. He sort of just reached out to all of these people, it just sort of happened… it came out of nowhere. I was shooting another series in Chicago and I got an email from Joss late one night saying this is what he was doing and he wants me to come play Don John, the sexy villain, what sayeth me? I was like “Wow this is insane”, and I was terrified, but it really was one of the most exhilarating experiences of my career. We shot it all in twelve days, so to shoot a feature-length film in twelve days is unheard of, and it was all shot in this house and it was Shakespeare and it was incredibly challenging, but it was just such a remarkable experience, and I’m thrilled for people to see it.

Have you got any other projects you are working on at the moment?

I don’t right now, I wish I had more to talk about! I just wrapped a play in Los Angeles, which I was busy working on, and then Much Ado comes out, but such is the life of an actor: I don’t know what’s next. Which is kind of exciting, and terrifying, all the same.

Tanya has one final special question for you before we sign off. What do you believe happens to the missing odd socks?

Hmm. That’s a good question, because I’m thinking of three that are missing in my life right now. I always save them, like if there’s a lonely sock I save it because I know the odd sock is going to reappear and I never know where it reappears from. I have kids, and my daughter likes to pretend that she is certain animals so she’ll take socks and put them on her feet and hands and run around on all fours, so that’s where my socks go. But other than that I think there’s somebody who probably lives in our dryer who eats them.

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