Exclusive Interview with 'Stream' star Whoopi Goldberg!
While mainstream audiences may know her for her comedic roles, fervent social advocacy, liberal political opinions and ability to get under Elisabeth Hasselbeck’s skin, fans of the horror/sci-fi genre know the drill. Under that Sister Act habit or Ghostly crystal ball, fans of sci-fi long remember Whoopi as Guinan in almost 30 episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation and as a resident Trekki, who proclaims her fan-hood started around age 7. But since her Strar Trek stint, Whoopi’s been basically non-existent from the genre. So what prompted the spontaneous return? As the star and executive producer of FEARnet’s newest and sixth original series, Stream, Whoopi says her love for the genre never left and she’s always wanted to make a come back. Even more of a reason to return via the web series, Stream, she also says the sensation of “streaming” is not too far from real life experiences she’s had. Check out our interview with Whoopi after the jump and the first episode of Stream now!
After such a long time away from the sci-fi genre, what made you come back?
This is a genre I’ve always been a fan of and I’ve always wanted to participate in it and that’s how I was lucky enough to get with the folks at Star Trek. But since then, in trying to find things that are really interesting, I’ve not been approached to do anything. Tom, my partner, who runs our company One Ho, had a friend who was doing webisodes for young, hip people. They were these one minute things that were just fascinating and I said to him there was something for us to do. He explained a project to me and I said, “that’s the one I want”. And he was like, “you should know we have no money”, and I said “that’s okay”. He said, “you should know it’s unusual’, and I said “that’s okay, so am I”. I loved the idea. We had been trying for years to utilize this platform and find a way to become part of the internet. This was the perfect opportunity and this particular story, in a nutshell, is about someone who thinks they are schizophrenic and alone in the world and it turns out that that’s not quite what’s going on with her. It’s about time travel and recognizing different patterns in your life.
In Stream, the characters talk a lot about “streaming”, sort of seeing the past and the future in the present. Have you ever had any sort of out of body experience similar or otherwise? Jodi is quite an introverted character because of that. So how did you handle splitting the role between yourself (adult Jodi) and The Wire’s Shamika Cotton (young Jodi) for such an introverted character?
My whole life is an out of body experience. [Laughs] I sometimes see my life before it happens. I get these sort of flashes of things and I don’t know what they mean. A year later or five years later I think, “Oh my god I know this, and this is what this is.” I feel like lots of us “stream”, but no one ever talks about it because of course that makes you sound crazy. Which is of course what is this lady’s [Jodi] problem…
Well I think that the key was when she was younger, she had much more fire and a much greater desire to fight and get it together and figure out what was going on. By the time you get to my character at her age, she’s been beaten down so her being “inside” is normal. We get to see how she got there, why she got there—because you know a lot more than the characters know—but you can’t quite put it together and neither can they. Slowly they begin to put together what happened and what happens to them as they meet others who are like them. It’s closer to real life in that when you are different, you tend to go inside because you don’t want to draw attention to yourself because you get a lot of annoying attention. Suddenly when you find other people like you, it’s not so bad. You can handle it. You get more confident and believe in yourself more.
In the series there are huge names like William Sadler and yourself. What is it about the short form online webisodes that make it so desirable for actors to get involved?
Part of it is it is short time. You can do great stuff in a short amount of time. If you have an every day job, you can go after work for a few hours and take care of business. You can shoot them virtually anywhere and make it work. It’s convenient. There’s not a lot of dough in it. There’s a lot of honor in being able to exercise your craft. That more than anything is what people love. If you’re a big star, you’re expected to be a big star in big star vehicles but if you want to be part of something smaller you can do that with this. It’s the flexibility.
The internet series expands your multiplatform career of TV, film, Broadway and now online in a sci-fi series. Where do you see your career going with all multi-genre’s and multi-mediums under your belt?
It’s ubiquitous. Any new genre, any new platform, I want to try it. I want to see how we can make it because communication is what I love to do. I love to communicate different ideas that you get with sci-fi. I love to be scary and want to be musical. You can do musicals [online] like what you see with Joss Whedon [Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog]. There are places that you’re able to play that you were never able to play before. It’s exciting and happily with the web it’s not about how old you are, it’s about how interesting can you be. You don’t have to be beautiful on the web; you just have to be interesting.
Since Steam deals with the fears and nightmares of Jodi’s psyche, personally what is your biggest fear?
Flying. I hate to fly.
I assume you do fly though…
No. I don’t. I haven’t flown in 15 years. William Shatner on Twilight Zone [Nightmare at 20,000 feet], that’s me… [Laughs]
