Firefly 10th Anniversary: Browncoats Unite Page #2

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[Gruffly] Oh, nothing, nothing,

nothing, carry the nothing.

[Normal voice] And Nathan goes,

"are... are you really

gonna do it that way?"

"Is he gonna do it that way?"

And when he said that, I looked around,

and Joss was like, "that's pretty cool."

I was like, "okay, good."

So, I could dive in

and chew as much furniture as I could.

Can't get paid if you're dead.

Can't get paid if you crawl away

like a bitty little bug, neither.

I got a share in this job.

10% of nothing is...

let me do the math here.

Nothing, and then nothing...

Jayne being the mercenary on the ship,

he's the least trustworthy,

and Kaylee is the most trustworthy.

One of the most important things

that you can do as an actor is

to set a tone at the beginning of a show,

and there are certain looks and things

that Adam and I would do to each other

to formulate kind of a bond

between those characters.

It was a brother/sister thing.

And one of my favorite

scenes in the whole show

was in the pilot when

Kaylee's being operated on

and Jayne's watching from the window.

And it was such an interesting moment

to see him do that

and show that he cared

a little bit about her.

My first day of working...

one of my first days of

working, I was in my costume.

And Joss came on set.

And I was wearing a Hawaiian shirt,

and my hair was red and spiky.

And Joss was standing

there wearing the exact...

[Laughter]

Exactly the same as me.

I was like, "oh, that's

my character right there."

Joss handpicked every single person

from crew to cast.

It was my first TV show.

I remember thinking,

"wow, I wonder if this is

what every show is like."

I wasn't expecting to see

a state official, either.

Ambassador. [Laughs]

I'm missing something funny.

Not so funny.

Ambassador is Mal's way of...

She's a whore, Shepherd.

The term is "companion."

I always get those mixed up.

- How's business?

- None of yours.

The sort of travesty of it was

Joss made this great two-hour movie

for the network,

and they didn't think

it was exciting enough.

Fox is a network that really

likes to court a younger audience.

And I don't think it

was snapping and moving

as quickly as they had hoped.

The thing that I remember

worrying about the most

was that the network deemed

the pilot to be too dark.

I don't understand.

You never heard of Reavers?

What happens if they board us?

If they take the ship,

they'll rape us to death,

eat our flesh,

and sew our skins into their clothing.

And if we're very, very lucky,

they'll do it in that order.

They wanted it to be lighter,

more humorous, I think.

They wanted more action, more adventure.

It was just the worst to know

that people upstairs weren't

really feeling the same way that we were.

They didn't know if they

were gonna pick up the show,

and then, literally, they called and said,

"we need a script on Monday."

We're like, "we can't

write one over the weekend!

That's crazy!"

[Laughter]

I'll do it!

And then we did.

Ladies and men folk,

we have ourselves a job.

It's a train heist.

See, we fly over the train car,

the Captain and Zoe sneak in,

we lower Jayne onto the car,

and they bundle up the Booty,

and we haul 'em all back up.

Easy as lyin'.

Torres:
Tim minear and

Joss really put together

a fantastic second episode,

which had all the elements

that Fox was looking for.

I mean, the truth is when they said

they didn't want to air the pilot,

you just knew that this was

probably not going to go well.

You know, we were on pins and needles,

waiting to see what was gonna happen.

Means you're looking to put us

on the defensive right up front.

Which means something's gone wrong.

It didn't go wrong on our end,

so why don't we start again

with you telling us what's up?

Staite:
The most frustrating

thing about doing television is

the night after you air,

everyone's getting a bead

on ratings and how did we do?

And it's just the worst.

It's like this anxiety attack all the time.

It was a sad thing and

a very frustrating thing

to know that we were on

the bottom, so to speak,

of the totem pole.

Was it easy to push that out of your mind

as you're making the first season...

The worries, the anxieties

that we might be going away?

In what can be a very stressful situation,

it actually wound up

being a unifying force.

Tudyk:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

We all knew that, "oh, shoot.

We're on the chopping

block from the get-go,

it just seems like.

So we really need to

make the best show we can

because we don't know how

long we're gonna be around."

This was part of this whole camaraderie

that we keep talking about.

We were in this together.

And I've been on other shows

where there's a real line

in the sand drawn between...

"These are the writers,

and these are the actors,

and never the two shall meet."

But it was not the comradery we shared.

So, Tim would come and

excitedly tell us about,

"this is how it's going.

And the writing, you're gonna be so happy.

You're gonna be very happy."

[Laughs]

And we filmed it. And

we were really excited.

Maher:
Yeah, every time they broke a story,

they would run to the set like little...

Now that I'm a father

and I have a 5-year-old...

they were like 5-year-old children, like,

"yeah, listen to this!

You got to listen to this!"

And it was kind of contagious.

Do you remember "divert the

nav sats to the blah blahs,"

where he comes on the bridge?

And I had to write all this technobabble

that literally meant nothing.

But I had to write it in such a way

so that when you guys had this exchange,

it actually made sense to the audience.

And I remember that I

think you probably got it

an hour before we shot the scene.

- And you were furious.

- Yes.

What do you expect me to do, Mal?

Whatever you have to!

And if you can't do it from here,

then get a suit on and go outside

- on the side of the boat...

- And what?!

Wave my arms around?!

And you're like, "I'm

gonna use it in the scene."

Divert the... right!

Because teenage pranks are

fun when you're about to die!

Give the beacon a boost, wouldn't it?

Yes, Mal.

It would boost the signal.

But even if some passerby

did happen to receive,

all it would do is muck

up their navigation.

- Could be that's true.

- Damn right, it's true!

They'd be forced to stop

and dig out our signal

before they could even go anyplace!

Well maybe I should do that, then!

- Maybe you should!

- Okay!

- Good!

- Fine!!

[Laughs]

You're hilariously angry in that scene,

and it's one of my favorite scenes

in the whole show.

It is my favorite scene.

Like, if I was to pull one scene out to go,

"this is what we did on that show,"

it's that scene.

It felt like a real

moment in a real universe

with real people.

Molina:
Some of my favorite scenes were...

I remember when I was writing

what had happened to you,

I had to sort of look back and go,

"well, what does that look like?"

And I went on Wikipedia, and I'm like,

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