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Kaylee is the grease-monkey that keeps Serenity in the sky and Jewel Staite is the Canadian-born actress who plays her.
Read on to find out what's between the character's 'nethers' and why everyone's asking for sweet barbequed crap.
So how did you end up with the part of Kaylee?
Well I had auditioned for Buffy a few years before, as a guest start. I think Joss was aware of who I was after that. So I
got the script and said 'yep, Kaylee, I wanna read for Kaylee.' And I read it, it described her as 'a sweet, flirtatious,
chubby, nineteen-year-old girl'. So I said 'I don't understand Who do you want me to audition for?' But they insisted 'No,
no, we want you to audition for Kaylee.' I look like this [gestures towards her decidedly un-chubby physique]and I was like
'ok, whaever.' So I put it on tape, and I sent it down, and a few weeks later I got a phone call 'are you willing to fly to
LA tomorrow to have a meeting with Joss and test for the series?' 'Yeah, sure.' 'Ok, well, are you willing to gain twenty
five pounds for the role?' 'Twenty five pounds? I don't know, I don't think so', I was stuck, I didn't know what to say, didn't
know what to do. In the end I told them 'Ok, I'll gain fifteen pounds, I'm not going to gain twenty five pounds. I'd hurt
myself.' So they agreed. That night I tested for the show, the next day they said I had the part. It happened that quick.
And then they said 'you have three weeks to gain fifteen pounds.'
Luckily though you didn't have to put it back on for the film, after all, they couldn't exactly replace you.
Well exactly! And I was worried, you know, I was like, are people going to be upset? How's this going to go over? And Joss
said 'I'm not gonna recast you.' He was like 'don't worry about it. Whatever.' So I did it. I mean every once in a while I
get comments, you know, that's one of the things I just never know how to react to, when a fan says 'You're so thin!' Like
it's a horrible thing! You, know I don't look like I'm dying! I'm healthy, I swear to God! It's funny, but what can you do,
right?
Serenity and Firefly before it is almost more a nautical drama than a sci-fi spectacular, just substituting space for the
sea.
Exactly. The only that's sci-fi about Firefly is the fact that we live on the space shuttle. But it's really a boat. It's
a boat that can fly and that's all. You know. And it's falling apart all the time, it's not a very glamorous boat. We're eating
dried food out of cans, and that's just our way of life. It's not sci-fi like we have laser guns or any of that jazz.
It's very grounded.
Yeah, very. Exactly! That's what it is, it's very, very grounded.
The ship's low tech but the set is very impressive, the ship built as a single unit.
It's very cool. Especially when you're doing a scene on the bridge you can see the engine turning in the very, very, very
back room, that's pretty cool! And the dining room set was built on hydraulics, so they press a button and it shakes and tilts…
it literally has you falling over.
You've been doing a lot of fan preview screenings of the film, how have you found the reactions?
I'm always… when you get reactions like we have than it never ever gets old. Ever. We've been doing these screenings
in secret for fans, the secret is that we show up and say 'hi', and that is just the coolest. It's the best when they don't
know. They separated all of us and we all went to different parts of the States and did screenings here and there and it was
awesome. We actually did one in my hometown, Vancouver. That was nice. The Vancouver fans, they know I live there and they've
probably seen me walking around, so they were like 'Oh, isn't that nice, hello.' The guy who works at the supermarket across
the street from my house was there and he was like 'whatever, I sell her bread every day.'
But entering into the Whedon world, you do gain certain sort of cult recognise-ability, don't you?
Yeah. It's weird. I really didn't know beforehand, I had no idea. It's actually hard to describe. I remember the first time
I did a science fiction convention, in Blackpool of all places, and they agreed to fly my husband out as well. Just the fact
that they were flying us, you know, across the world and paying me money to go, I was like 'what is going on?' I think it
was Morena's first convention and it was Summer's first convention and we had no idea what to expect. There was some cast
members from Buffy and from Angel and there were nearly a thousand people there. They were lining up to meet us and get our
autographs!
Kaylee has perhaps the most memorable line in the film...
Oh yes, I love the masturbation line. That is so funny. 'Twixting the nethers', what a way to put it! I laughed so much when
I read that. It was perfect. That is Kaylee, she tells it like it is. She wears her heart on her sleeve and she loves life,
she loves eating, she loves sex, she loves all of it, you know? She loves indulging in things so it made perfect sense to
me, I loved that.
Joss' unique patois for the film must be pretty hard to pull off.
It is but it works. It's hard to make that sound natural, they're tongue twisters that's for sure and then there's the Chinese
in there too and you're like 'Oh thanks, thanks Joss.'
As Kaylee you getsa fair bit of the Chinese, don't you?
In the series I did. They have the phonetics and then the translation in brackets at the bottom. I didn't have any fun ones
though, the rude ones. Mine were like 'shut up', just boring stuff. But like some of the boys had the most hilarious lines.
Alan had this line in the series where he had to say 'sweet barbequed crap!' But he didn't have the Chinese and the guest
director didn't know if he was supposed to do it in English or Chinese. So Alan did it in English four or five different times.
Over and over. And he's like 'sweet barbequed crap!' 'sweet barbequed crap!' 'sweet barbequed crap!'' And Nathan is sitting
there reading a magazine and goes 'I'll have the same.'
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