Our second clip from our interview with Star Trek’s Nichelle Nichols as she talks about her new role as CJ in The Cabonauts!

The days leading up to the pilot often seem more fraught with problems than the bloody shoot itself does. 24 hours before shooting, we were still finishing up the set, installing A/C in the green screen studio, and having to deal with finding a new wardrobe stylist because the one we’d had decided to take a different gig at the last second. Nowt like people. Anyway, believe it or not, all was dealt with and a new stylist was found within 15 minutes (gotta love Twitter).

I woke up at 5am the day of the first shoot, and in the news: Dr Who’s signed on a new companion. So instead of learning lines, I’m on the web trying to find who she’s repped by to see if there’s a chance of getting her on the Cabonauts.

Back to reality. The day went as days in production normally go - fraught with problems. We were using an HD camera for the first time and that means everything is shot digitally – no tape. But that also means that you have to take the filled up card and download it to a hard drive, dump the contents onto it, then begin shooting again. That wasn’t the problem. It was discovering that the particular camera we were using had just had its firmware uploaded and the drivers that the computer needed to be able to recognize the HD card…were nowhere to be found. So while camera whiz Paul Wojciak worked on that problem, we all had to wait around for 3 AND A HALF FRUDDING HOURS. But it wasn’t all bad. We had lunch. We shot lots of behind-the-scenes stuff. We learned – rather Monica and Norm learned – the unbelievable dance moves that Monica McSwain our amazing choreographer had come up with. I sort of wimped out and grabbed the synth and stood behind that nodding.  Then Paul called us all back ‘cause he’d figured it out.

By 6pm or so, we’d gotten a few scenes in the can – some stuff with Cyril and Harry in the cab, some stuff of Lolita and some intense dancing for the music video. We were all very hot, sweaty and ready to collapse but I was over the moon. Finally, I am starting to see my vision come together and it’s looking pretty damn good dare I say it myself. It’s colourful, it’s vibrant, it pops - and then you throw in music and dancing and you’ve got something so unique that…Well, I shouldn’t get too far ahead of myself (but I’m so damn excited!!!). Our next shoot is scheduled for next Wednesday and we hope to pick up all the stuff we missed. And while we won’t have to deal with HD drivers next time,  trust me - there’ll be something entirely new to screw it all up.

One of the most insanely fun things about the Cabonauts is the fact that we’re getting some majorly iconic sci-fi actors and actresses to play the roles of passengers. Well that was the initial idea. You write that into a pitch and then you scratch your head and ask “how the hell am I going to do that?”. First off, as I quickly discovered, agents are more than useless. I say more than because they actively try and put the kibosh on it. When you’re on a small budget, agents don’t wanna know – not because they’re concerned about their clients (that’s the LAST thing on most of their minds) but because it means the money they’re bringing in to their agency isn’t big enough to warrant their own jobs. Actually, it’s not really the agent’s fault; it’s a plan set up by the agencies themselves and Hollywood’s now a slave to it.

But not us.

Very early on, we met with an absolute angel with a massively impressive acting resume herself. Erin Gray – you will remember her as Wilma Deering from the Buck Rogers TV series and the mom from Silver Spoons – now runs a company that represents iconic sci-fi/fantasy/horror genre actors for conventions and speaking engagements. Over a lunch at the Daily Grill (the one in Studio City, on Laurel), Erin told us that she’d never been involved in casting before. I told her I’d never done a sci-fi musical comedy - and she was in!

While talking, she mentioned a couple of big sci-fi names that she was very close to. It squirreled itself away in my mind as people we could get in our backseat. It was only a few weeks later that I had the thought “What if we got PERSON X as a regular? How unbelievably frakken amazing would that be?” So I made a call, someone else made a call, Erin made a call, and the next thing you know PERSON X said…Sounds interesting. I want to see more.

So more is what I sent ‘em. A script. An outline. And a character breakdown lovingly created 100% for PERSON X. A week later, the phone rang. PERSON X had said Yes.

They. Said. Yes.

I think I jumped up and down and screamed like a 10 year old girl when I got that phone call.

PERSON X said yes? To me? PERSON X will be saying back my lines? Singing my songs? Acting next to me? Holy shizzles. This was big. So big that we thought it best announcing at ComiCon ’09 (not that I’d ever been). And here’s the great thing about ideas, especially ones that spring up around The Cabonauts – it’s going to happen. Daily Motion’s PR firm, run by the very professional Ephraim C., made a call and voila. Looks like it’s happening.

But it hasn’t stopped there. More and more people are expressing interest on a weekly basis. People from Star Trek: Voyager, Star Trek: Enterprise, Buffy, Dr. Who (the new series), Alien Nation, Stargate… Every week, I get to have my own personal freak out when we get a call from Erin or some of other well placed industry friends who are reaching out on my behalf (thanks to Marti R too for some massive gets!).

Who’s next? There are some people I want to work with just ‘cause I’m a huge fan, so that’ll be fun, just reaching out and asking. I also think once they see the show they’ll say yes because it’s so different – but the sky’s the limit, and there’s only one way to find out!