I wouldn't trade the experiences I've had over the past 36 years for anything.
Then I got the offer to play Buck Rogers, but I turned it down thinking it was a cartoon character. Well I was wrong, it wasn't at all. So I read the script and decided I liked the character, it had a good concept.
I brought my personality and sense of wonder and I think they wrote as much of my personality as they could. I do not go around kicking butt and saving the universe all the time but they tried to capture me as best as they could in the character.
I made the character as much of myself as I could.
It is amazing that something I did 23 years ago still has an audience that people respond to and I am touched and surprised that people are still very positive about.
The basic answer is that I wasn't happy or fulfilled by the job I had and I wanted my life to mean something to me, so I searched my life experience and realized that acting and performing were activities that I enjoyed all aspects of.
The show originally started out as a ten hour mini-series. We shot two hours and then were excused for a while, for no apparent reason. Things went very quiet for a time and then a few months later we were called back and told that it was going to be a full season.
Some writers and producers are currently writing a sitcom for me, so we'll see what happens there. I'm somewhat reluctant to talk about some of the upcoming projects that I'm working on; I've a lot of stuff on the go, including five pictures that I'm looking at producing.
It's more fun having him as everyman in the 25th Century. It is better to concentrate on what this planet will be like 500 years from now, and not be dealing with little aliens in space and all that related stuff.
I have a project at HBO and one at the Family Channel coming that are being looked at. Aside from that I am not doing much more than playing golf and some skiing.
I liked working with Tom Christopher as he was great as Hawk, and Wilfred Hyde White but I wished it were in a different context as the changes really tuned off the audience.
No, I was talking to the network and Universal about plans for a third season where Buck would go back to Earth and would focus on stories around the planet and show what it was like 500 years later.
Although there were only about 24 episodes made it seems to run forever. They take a couple of episodes and put them together, making a feature film once in a while. I had good fun making the series.
Other effects in the show included models of the ships which were extremely expensive to make. We used to do our shots in front of a blue screen and they'd put the effects on after.
Up to that point I never really knew what my character would be expected to do, and prior to accepting the job I had actually turned down the role three times before finally giving in.