Date of publishing: 12th April 2006

Paul was born in the wee hours of the morning on June 22, 1979 on the wet coast of British Columbia. He grew up in a rough oceanside retirement town just a few miles north of the 49th never more than a stone's throw from the hairy blue sea or a sea of blue hair. After highschool he decided to leave his mark on the world, to utilize his "potential" if you will. Theatre school flew by in what seemed like days. In his final stunning perfomance as the herald in Roger and Hammerstein's musical masterpiece "Cinderella" he was spotted by a talent agent and shortly thereafter began his career in film and television. You'll recognize him as Billy KeiKeya on Battlestar Galactica.

This interview was completed in collaboration with BSGTNS.com/MediaBlvd and was conducted by Kenn aka "NetRanger". Special thanks to him.
You can listen to the full audio interview on this weeks MediaBlvd Podcast
Warning for our non US readers, the following interview contains spoilers thru episode 16 "Sacrifice" of Season 2 of Battlestar Galactica.


MB/TSW: Thanks a lot for taking the time to talk to us Paul.
Paul Campbell: You’re very welcome.

MB/TSW: Can you start out by telling us what you’ve been doing since you left Battlestar Galactica?
Paul Campbell: I’ve been busy, busy, busy looking for work. Let me tell you. I just got back from Pilot season in Los Angeles, which was fairly dismal I think, all things considered. But I did have the fortune of working on a feature with Al Pacino. A little bit on this movie called 88 minutes, shooting in Vancouver. It’s a thriller. That was rather exciting, and that actually happened sort of in the two weeks following my departure from Battlestar. Then basically had Christmas then went down to LA for a couple of months and sort of ground out the process of pilot season. And I’m just back in Vancouver now regrouping. I’m attempting to get a work visa for the US, which will make it a lot easier to do guest stars and smaller sort of walk on roles in features and stuff, which now are sort of unavailable to me. Once that goes thru hopefully, I’ll head back down to Los Angeles to become gainfully employed.

MB/TSW: So is it a fairly complicated process getting the work Visa?
Paul Campbell: You know, it’s not terribly complicated, but it’s very… you have to be very prepared. It’s usually based on the applicants resume, then there are a certain number of letters required from various industry people… producers, you know, people of note who have pull. So you have to gather your letters and submit an application packet which includes your resume and any press that you might have from your various jobs. So obviously the more press the better, and the bigger the name that have singed those letters the better. It’s kind of a crap shoot. It ends up being one guy or one woman at homeland security who ends up signing off on it. And if they’re having a bad day, they can say no, sort of on a whim.

MB/TSW: So there’s a lot more work in LA than Vancouver?
Paul Campbell: Yeah there is actually quite a bit of work in Vancouver, but it’s the quality of the work. I would love to get into comedies. Into the half hour sitcom market, and there’s absolutely nothing as far as that goes in Vancouver. The irony of working in Vancouver, if you want to get a lead role in a TV show or a feature, typically those are all cast out of LA, so even if you are a Vancouverite, wanting to work on a show in Vancouver, you have to go to LA to be cast in the show to come back to work in Vancouver. And that’s kind of the way it is. Otherwise, there’s a lot of principal roles and supporting roles and stuff, and the occasional guest star on the Smallvilles, and Supernaturals and those shows, but usually those are cast out of LA. I think the difference is on those big shows they have two sets of casting directors, or even three. They’ll be casting out of New York, Los Angeles and Vancouver, but the principal casting is out of LA, and for me the difference every time has been whether I can spend five minutes in the room chatting the producers and directors up before even starting to read the sides, and I think that’s usually the difference- being able to sell them on who you are rather than what kind of actor you are.

MB/TSW: So you say you’d like to get into comedy, but I see on your filmography on IMDB that you’ve been in several of the Sci-Fi shows…..Smallville, John Doe… some of those. Would you say that you’re a Sci-Fi fan?
Paul Campbell: You know to be honest with you, I’m not really. I’m a fan of good film and good TV, and if it happens to be good it doesn’t matter if it’s sci-fi or fantasy or comedy. I’ll enjoy it. But for the most part I find a lot of those shows, Andromeda and Stargate… to be a little campy for my tastes. I also don’t really jive with the “Not Another Teen Movie” genre of comedies as well. If it’s smart and it’s well done, then I appreciate it. And that’s one of the great things about Battlestar, is that right from the get go, I could tell it was just a top notch show through and through. The other credits, John Doe was the third job I ever had, and I had four lines. On Andromeda, I did too episodes and they were very small. As it happens about forty or fifty percent of what’s shot in Vancouver is Sci-Fi for some reason. SO half of the available jobs are going to be science fiction. So when you are just starting out, I was just so happy to have anything, it didn’t really matter if it was a Sci-Fi or some children’s after-school special, I would just do anything. And I’m still sort of the same way, I’m not terribly picky but certainly as far as long term choices, I don’t think I’d take to another show like that. Leaving Battlestar was pretty difficult. But I think it was the right choice.

MB/TSW: Do you think that Billy’s death was necessary for the story? Or how did that decision come about. Were you involved in it?
Paul Campbell: It was kind of my choice in a way. I was kind of given an ultimatum eventually because in between the end of season one and the beginning of season two I had actually gone to LA and booked a pilot. Because Battlestar production didn’t have me under contract, I was free to go and do that. And it was their loss if the show got picked up and I wasn’t able to come back for season two. I think that was a problem they had with a few of the cast members, that everyone was a free agent after season 1, and I think that scared them a little bit. They could have potentially lost half their cast after season 1, and I think after that, they pretty much ended up signing everyone to a contract. But I’d already been cast in another show and decided to go off on my own and see if it worked. As it turned out it didn’t work, and I ended up having a two episode hiatus after episode 4. I was gone for 5 and 6, then came back for Home Pt. 1, I think it was. Or Home Pt 2, I came back for. So after that kind of gave me the ultimatum and said sign a contract for 5 years, or we kind of need to go our separate ways. And I kind of put it off and put it off, then eventually they just said “Look, we can tell your not really committed to the show, and we can’t write story lines. So we’ve decided to kill the character". It wasn’t really a surprise, but I wasn’t expecting it to happen when it did. But I certainly wasn’t surprised that they had to do that.

MB/TSW: I don’t know if you’re aware, but a lot of the internet fan sites have been running polls or questions about who among the cast are Cylon sleep agents. You were the leading contender before the sacrifice episode.
Paul Campbell: I read a few of those!

MB/TSW: So if they were to offer for you to come back as a Cylon, would you think about that?
Paul Campbell: I think that it would have to be… Obviously, I’ve thought about that every time that I get rejected. And every time I get told the audition is going to go no further, I wonder if I can go back and beg for my job as a Cylon. But if they phoned me and said they would love to bring me back as a Cylon and do an occasional episode here and there as a guest role, I’d just be over the moon. I’d love to do it. But I probably wouldn’t say yes, I’d sign on for a 5 year contract. It’s probably pretty tough to work around what I’m offering them, and I don’t blame them at all for letting me go. But, damn right!, I’d love to come back as a Cylon. I can be a creepy bastard! I’m skinny, but I’m creepy.
It was interesting, just the way they ended up cutting it, and I was like “Where are they going with this. I think I am going to end up being a Cylon—forget the presidency. I’m going to kick some ass, and take some names.”

MB/TSW: So I was going to ask if you watch the episodes, but it sounds like you do.
Paul Campbell: Absolutely, that was my Friday night. Well, I was in Los Angeles, so I was watching, and they were ten episodes ahead—the US was 10 episodes ahead of Canada, so none of my friends and family were with me. Actually, I don’t even think my death has aired in Canada yet… I think it’s a couple of weeks away. My family hasn’t even seen it yet. We actually had a party on valentine’s day- it was a Billy’s death/Valentine’s party naturally. I had all the friends over, it was good.

MB/TSW: Was that friends from the show?
Paul Campbell: No, just friends from Los Angeles.

MB/TSW: It was actually kept fairly quiet. I didn’t start seeing rumors about the death until maybe a week or so before the episode.
Paul Campbell: And how did those come out, it wasn’t Lisa was it? (Note: Lisa is the webmaster of Paul’s Official site, and a director of MediaBlvd)

MB/TSW: No, I think it was on… I think it was on Hollywood North Report.
Paul Campbell: Oh, really? Well I think I had gone back down to LA to test for another show too, so people started to wonder why I was taking these auditions, I don’t know how the word got out. They really tried to keep a lid on it, and I know for a fact it wasn’t Lisa, and I managed to bluff my way thru that one too. She asked me outright if I was dying, and I told her I wasn’t. I think it was the night before the episode, she’d heard that I was dying and I told her no. I like to keep it a surprise. I was searching the internet as well, and I didn’t find any hard evidence I was dying. There was some speculation, but I think for the most part, it was a pretty well kept secret.

MB/TSW: I think what I saw was mostly speculation also.
Paul Campbell: There was a press crew that was on set during the filming, and they did a little bit about it. There were a lot of people around when we were shooting it, so I don’t know if word might have gotten out that way. It’s pretty tough to keep a lid on those things too. It’s not very infrequent that scripts would delivered to my apartment building, and I’d have four or 5 scripts with revisions delivered, and sometimes people would take them. There was no way to get them to me directly so they had to drop them off in the middle of the night, and people would snag them, so I didn’t even know who had them in their greedy little paws. It’s pretty tough to keep that stuff under wraps.

MB/TSW: I’m sure there’s a big market or big desire for that sort of stuff.
Paul Campbell: Even telling my parents that I was dying, they were like “Yeah, I told so and so” and I’m like “Mom, you can’t tell anybody”. Because if one person writes it on the internet or something, who knows how quickly that could leak out. Then I could be in big, big trouble.

MB/TSW: So what did you think about the character of Billy? Was he anything like you, or did you have anything in common with him?
Paul Campbell: I think to a certain extent, yeah. I think he was sort of confidant in his own right, but a little insecure. I think I’m kind of the same way. He was a little awkward, a little socially awkward. For the most part of my life, I’ve been very similar to that. He’s a smart guy, but just really, really too handsome for his own good, and I think that came across. A real ladies man, really strong, really under rated in the gym, that’s me mostly. I’m kidding here, play along with me! I think just incredibly ambitious. One of those characters that I read the sides and just instantly felt like I’d have no problem doing it. It’s very often that you’ll read a character and have to act it, but for me, it just felt very easy. And I think I slid into it quite easily.

MB/TSW: So was that the only part you tried out for in the miniseries?
Paul Campbell: Yeah. Yeah, I know there were a few actors that tried out for multiple parts but that was the only one I would have worked for. I’m certainly not a fighter pilot, and even though I could kick Tamoh’s ass in a heart beat, I didn’t want to embarrass him, since he’s a friend of mine. And he wouldn’t have done very well playing Billy, because he is just too tall for Dualla. So, I actually didn’t even meet any producers or anybody, I just read for the casting director, and that was it. I really had no idea when they were casting it how far it would go. I thought it was just going to be a few days on this miniseries. I hadn’t been a fan of the original series. I was born in 1979, so I missed the boat. And I didn’t really understand what a cult following the original had had, and how much transfer there would probably be to the new show. So imagine my surprise when I found I was on this TV show that had been picked up.

MB/TSW: Have you seen any of the original series?
Paul Campbell: No, I haven’t. It would be fun to watch, but it’s not the type of thing I’d sit down and get really into.

MB/TSW: So are you still a fan of the show? Are you still watching the new episodes?
Paul Campbell: Absolutely! Absolutely. I’ve been in the process of moving back, or was in the process of moving back when they aired the last episode. So I’m going to have to watch it when it comes on the air here, but I’m excited to see it.

MB/TSW: So how did you get into acting? How did you get your start?
Paul Campbell: Rather strangely actually. I was framing houses. My whole life I’d dreamed of being a carpenter. So out of high school, I went to framing houses, and I did that for nearly four years. Then I just decided that I was going to try to make a little extra pocket money doing extra work, and took an acting class, and that was it. I was sold from the very first class I took, and knew that was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. And I literally dropped my hammer and signed up for theatre school for that file. And two months later I was in college for the theatre program, and after I graduated I began working. I did The Dead Zone, and I never looked back. And I haven’t ever gone back to the trades. Kind of random luck.

MB/TSW: Have you ever done theatre, or has it been mostly TV and the films?
Paul Campbell: Well I did theatre in school, and did a number of plays. There was a great facility at the school, but theatre just doesn’t pay the way film and TV does. I’d love to get back into it, but it’s a huge time commitment. Particularly in LA, there’s really not much of a theatre scene. I think there’s more of a theatre scene in Vancouver than there is in LA. So there’s not much opportunity for that. And I’ve tried over the last couple of years to get a couple of shows up and running, but I’ve had trouble getting the rights and stuff. But absolutely, I’d love to get back to it one day. Because there really is no comparison between theatre and film, they are just two different mediums. And theatre is absolutely electric. I think the closest I’ve come to it is on the pilot, Nobody’s Watching, that I did for the WB last year. It was a half hour before a live studio audience, and it was just incredible to be in front of that audience doing the comedy. It was just unbelievable.

MB/TSW: Between television and movies which would you prefer if you had your dream job?
Paul Campbell: I think the great thing about movies is you get to keep reinventing yourself every time you have a different movie. I think there is a very tangible character arc, and it’s sort of like theatre, that you get to travel the entire road pretty quickly. But with a TV show, it’s a longer straighter line, I think. But there’s something to me that’s really appealing about working in the half hour genre for a studio audience, in a multi-camera format. That’s just something, because I really haven’t had any experience with it, that’s still incredibly novel to me. And I’d love to spend some time exploring that. But if I had my chance to become a film star, I would certainly not turn it down. Because I think there are so many phenomenal actors and directors and writers out there for a person to work with. For me it would just be like being a kid in a candy store.

MB/TSW: Is there anybody in particular that you would like to work with?
Paul Campbell: I’d like to work with Paul Newman one day. But I think that’s pretty quickly passing me by. I think I read somewhere that he would do one more film, and I think he was looking to do something with Robert Redford. And he’s getting pretty old, but he’s one of my all time favorites and I would just kill to have a chance to work with him. It would be a pretty incredible experience.

MB/TSW: So I understand that you’ve written your own screenplay and tried to market that around?
Paul Campbell: I actually wrote a pilot. It was a half hour pilot, and I haven’t tried to sell it yet. I’m currently working with another writer, a friend of mine, to polish it off. It’s a really tough thing to sell a pilot. But I’ve made some really great contacts in the half hour world, and once it’s ready, I believe in it. And I think it’s pretty darned funny. So once it’s ready, we’re going to shop it around and we’ll see what happens. Fingers crossed, but I really have no expectation for it. I mean there are a million pilots out there and it’s sort of the luck of the draw. But I think it’s a great exercise for actors to be writing and constantly trying to do their own things. Because if you sit around and wait, it’s not going to come to you. So if nothing comes of it, it was a good exercise. I guess it’s cathartic.

MB/TSW: On your message board, you go by the name Newt. Does it have any meaning, or is there a story behind it?
Paul Campbell: It’s kind of silly. When I was in grade 12, a friend and I were helping my grandfather move some furniture. It was a big glass cabinet, and it started to slip and my grandfather just started screaming. He yelled at me to grab the one corner, and he forgot my friends name. So he just yelled “Newt! Get the door!,” and for some reason the name stuck. And we began calling each other Newt. For years we were just Newt to each other, and that was my handy screen name after that kind of a bizarre thing.

MB/TSW: So what do you like to do in your free time when you aren’t acting?
Paul Campbell: Well, I have lots of interests. I like to read a lot, and my girlfriend has taught me surfing in the last couple of years. And I ride my bike a lot. I love to write and watch movies. I pretty much do the things regular kids like to do.

MB/TSW: So how’s the surfing up in Vancouver?
Paul Campbell: It’s terrible…well, there is none actually. You have to go 6 hours east or 5 hours south to find any decent surf. But we spend a lot of time in LA, so if you like surfing in toilet water, it’s paradise.

MB/TSW: We had some questions come in from people that read the message board, and one of them was from Aaron Douglas. (Editor’s note: The question was actually from an earlier interview with TheSciFiWorld.net). He said that we should ask you about the names that Paul and Aaron made up for the race horses that Mary took her husband to see.
Paul Campbell: I was thinking about that the other day. We had this ridiculous…Did he give you any names?

MB/TSW: No, but he said you were all laughing so hard that you ruined take after take.
Paul Campbell: Absolutely, and once you get Mary on a roll, once you get her giggling, she will not stop. So we had a field day. We were shooting Home Pt. 2, and Mary was talking about taking her husband to the horse races and just randomly picking names. And we were talking about if you were just randomly picking names having no knowledge of the horses, what names you might choose. It would be like Lighting Steed, and Farts Dust, and choosing between the two. Or Beaten by A Nose, and A Nose for silly horse names. Three legged old man, and Guaranteed to Win. But for some reason it just struck us as incredibly silly, and we must have gone on for two or three hours, and we had hundreds of names. I think Mary laugher her way thru about 50% of those takes.

MB/TSW: So how is she to work with?
Paul Campbell: She is amazing! Just imagine working with somebody who is an absolute veteran who knows their craft inside and out. I can’t say enough good things about her. She is incredibly humble and gracious, and lovely. But when she wants to be this amazing sharp on the ball actress, she can go from being this laughing giggling woman to the incredible woman you see on the screen in the span of a second. It’s just unbelievable. It’s one thing to see what she ends up with on the show, but to see the twenty other takes in which she is equally brilliant…It’s just unbelievable…truly awe inspiring to watch that lady work. And then off camera, she’s just so humble and gracious, and knows everybody’s name, and says good morning to everyone and goodnight to everyone. It’s just an awesome experience. Without a doubt the one thing that I miss most about not being on the show is having the experience to work with her.

MB/TSW: So do you keep up with her and the other cast members?
Paul Campbell: I tried looking her up in LA when I was there, and I think she was out of town. We just didn’t end up crossing paths. But she’s probably back in town this week to start shooting again, so I’ll get her to take me out for lunch or something. And I think because I didn’t end up working a lot with the other cast…I spent a lot of time working on Colonial One, just me and the Prez, I didn’t forge those incredible friendships. Though we were all good friends, not to the point where we’d go to each other’s house and just stay for a week. But if they invited me, I probably wouldn’t say no. I’m still good friends with Candyce and Mary, and I knew Niccki before. All those guys are Vancouver kids, I see them around occasionally. But it’s tough to keep I touch, people are really busy.

MB/TSW: So what are your best memories about working on the show?
Paul Campbell: Just silly things like the day with Douglas joking about the horses. And just being able to watch people like Mary and Eddie do their stuff…You can’t pay for classes like that. It’s just a truly unique experience. And there are also a lot of times I was really challenged as an actor and got work with some wonderful directors. Eddie in particular was just unbelievable to work with as a director. One of my favorite episodes was the one he directed. And just being able to be silly. You don’t see it a lot in what they end up using of me, but I was able to be incredibly silly. It was just such a treat to be able to go to work every single day. It was kind of a really difficult decision to leave the show in the end.

MB/TSW: You say they do a lot of different takes in an episode. Are you ever surprised by how it comes out in the end in what’s aired?
Paul Campbell: Yeah, there was a lot of time when I was expecting something very different. But they have their own ideas about the show. I tried to ham it up occasionally in the begging, and in the miniseries, did a lot of physical comedy that I think never intended for the character, and they cut all of it completely. At times it meant that big chunks of a scene were cut. But they had a very different idea of the character than I did. I think eventually we got on the same wavelength. But a lot of times when I had done things that I wanted to see, it ended up being a totally different choice. Which is fine. But I was excited at times, and ended up being let down at times. But at other times they ended up using stuff that I didn’t think worked out at all, but ended up being really good and I was pleasantly surprised. For the most part I knew what they were going to end up with.

MB/TSW: So what do you think about the story after you left, and the trouble Mary’s character got herself into? After your replacement came in she kind of had a fall there. Do you think that would have happened if you were still there to watch her back?
Paul Campbell: You know, I don’t know if they could have. Billy had so much integrity, that under his watch, I don’t think that would have happened. And maybe he would have had to step down, and Mary would have gone about that route with someone else. But I don’t think if he would have been in the picture, that would have gone down. Because that’s some shady crap, and I don’t think it would have cut it. We obviously butted heads on a few things like that in the past. In particular when I ended up leaving her at the ship. As it turned out, I had another pilot to go shoot. As it turned out, it was more my schedule that didn’t work out, but it worked in the writing. But no, I don’t think that would have flown had I been in the picture. So I don’t know what they would have done. I’m sure that was the story line from the begging, but how they would have worked me into it, I don’t really know.

MB/TSW: About the number of survivors that showed up on the board, that got to write a few times, did anybody actually keep track of that? A lot of people on the net try to track that, and it never seems to quite jive.
Paul Campbell: It’s pretty random. If there were specific mention of a dead civilian….no one was really keeping track of pilots in the big Cylon attacks. No one was keeping track of those as far as I know. There were never any big conversations or no one lost any sleep over that number. But when there were say 3747 people dead and it was mentioned, we would keep track of that and calculate, but in general it was pretty random. It was an approximation.

MB/TSW: Can you talk a little about your movie Ill Fated? That was one of your bigger roles outside of BSG.
Paul Campbell: Sure, it was the first film I’d ever worked on. It was a lead, a second lead role. It was a small independent film written by a guy out of Vancouver, and produced in Vancouver. It was a small budget, and ended up being a really wonderful experience. Nicki Clyne worked on the film as well, and that’s how we met originally. It was a great month that we spent shooting out in the dessert. Then they spent about a year editing it and perfecting it, and it went to the Toronto Film Festival, and SlamDance, and decent festivals, and it’s on shelves at the local video store. It was a really neat, fun, challenging film. And it had a couple of screenings at the local theatres, and it was really just a great experience.

MB/TSW: Do you think you will be spending more time back on the net, and on your message board talking to fans?
Paul Campbell: I probably should. I’ve never been particularly adept with computers, but it’s probably time I paid a little more attention to that. I know Lisa spent a lot of time and energy with that site, and I never seem to get it updated. But I end up forgetting my password, and silly things like that. I just don’t seem to have a head for it. And to be honest with you, I usually feel like I’m the only one reading it. Maybe if I thought other people were actually looking at it, I might put some effort into it. But it’s beyond me if anyone would actually really care about that stuff.

MB/TSW: Actually I’m the person that tracks those kinds of stats for sites at MediaBlvd, and it’s been fairly active. We linked the site to the main Battlestar page, so it’s getting 300 or 400 hits a day.
Paul Campbell: Then I should probably do something with that. There have been a few updates since, and I guess if people are going to put the energy into having a look at it, I can certainly put the energy into keeping it updated. Now I feel like a Schmuck!!!

MB/TSW: You shouldn’t feel that way, I think you are actually one of the more accessible people out there and the fans really appreciate that.
Paul Campbell: Well, it’s my pleasure.

MB/TSW: Is there anything else you’d like to say to the people listening to this or reading the article?
Paul Campbell: I don’t know, those famous last words that I don’t seem to ever have. I guess I’ve pretty much said it all.

MB/TSW: Well, thanks again for taking the time to do this. We’ve been trying to do it for awhile, so I’m happy that we finally got our schedules to match up.
Paul Campbell: Me too, and I’m sorry that it was such a hassle to get a hold of me. And I'll absolutely get on that website.

MB/TSW: We look forward to that. Take care Paul.
Paul Campbell: You too Kenn, bye.