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He dished out a good 'fonging' in A Knight's Tale, dressed up as a pirate for Dodgeball and provided the voice for I, Robot's
deviant android. He is Alan Tudyk and he's Serenity's much-loved pilot.
Walk us through the character of Wash
Wash’s trajectory is whatever the crew’s trajectory is. They come up with the plan, I fly us there, they go off
and have these crazy adventures, and then right at the height of it, they go, ‘Wash, come and get us, we’re in
trouble!’ ‘You got it’. I take off again and go pick them up. The crew’s a family. Whatever happens
to one of us happens to all of us. So that’s my job, my track in the movie.
In the series you had a very specific set of three switches to always flick, were you glad they survived the transition
to the film?
You know what? I didn’t have my three switches when they rebuilt the ship, and I was looking but I couldn’t find
anybody and it was a new crew, I didn’t know who to talk to, and I was [disconsolate] ‘dammit!’ So I was
leaving and Nathan said, ‘what’s up man?’ ‘Well…I don’t have my three switches…it’s
sort of a drag.’ But then he called me that night and he’s like, ‘we got you three switches.’ And
he’d gone and found the person so it was like three switches, right here, clickc lick click [Beams].
How do you see the backstory for how your character asked Zoe to marry him? It's an undeniably odd pairing.
That’s a good question…well, on the TV episode Out of Gas, you see the first time we meet, where I’m interviewing
for the job of piloting the ship. And the moustache I have there? Oh I had to fight for that thing…and actually there’s
a shot of me in the moustache in the movie, but it’s brief so you’re really gonna have to watch for it. She first
sees me and she doesn’t like me, but I always just figured if I was on the ship and… well, she’s definitely
sexy, so I was interested and I guess my humour broke her down, got through her defences. Then once we made the step into
a relationship we had the greatest sex of any two people, ever. I open up her soft side, and she helps me to stand up for
myself a little bit. Just two people who connect, who fit perfectly.
Wash is the joker on the ship. Is it the same off-camera?
I’d say no. Nathan is the biggest prankster of all. We focus. I mean we all have fun, but it’s usually off of
Nathan. Nathan sets the tone, Nathan is really the leader.
Did you all keep in contact after the end of the series?
I kept in contact Jewell and I shot I, Robot in Vancouver so we hung out the entire time there. and Gina….and Adam would
come over to Nathan’s house the whole time and swim in the pool. Everybody would stay in touch here and there. Morena
came up to Vancouver as well. So…if I wasn’t directly talking to somebody, someone I was directly talking to was
talking to somebody. Nathan's one of my best friends so it doesn’t end on the ship. We go hiking… we’re
close friends and we hang out all the time. I wasn’t living in LA when we did the show, I was living in New York so
I didn’t know anybody. But he was shooting an independent movie in Vancouver I think and he just said, ‘here’s
the key to my house, I’m not gonna be there. Feed my cat.’ I got there and there was this videotape, saying ‘WATCH
ME’. I put it in, there’s him walking around his house… ‘alright so the backdoor , you’ve gotta
jiggle it like this before you lock it, and this is how this works and this is where the trash is, and…’. He just
opened up his house to me. The most generous guy.
That’s pretty rare…
Yeah, I mean in I, Robot Will Smith didn’t say ‘hey come hang out at my house!' I don’t have that kind of
relationship with anyone else that I’ve worked with.
We can't help but notice that yours is the only audition tape on the Firefly DVD.
I don’t know why mine is the only one. And I want to know why nobody asked me if they could put that on there. That
was my first audition. And it was in New York. I then flew to LA—that New York audition was not the one that got me
the job. There was no script. I was doing a play, I was completely wrecked and I was reading the lines off my lap. I didn’t
hear about it for a month…or over a month. And then I got this call saying they wanna see me for Firefly. I was like
‘I don’t even know what you’re talking about, what is that?’ They had to explain to me till I was
like , ‘oh right, right’. Seeing that on the DVD was mortifying. Mortifying! I watched that with Nathan, I had
to leave his house, I was like ‘No, nonono!’, I went out his door, then watched it through the crack in his front
door. I can’t believe that’s on there.
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