Although the role of
the Minbari Ambassador Delenn may have proven to be something out of
the ordinary, actress Mira Furlan remembers that her audition for Babylon
5 was as ordinary as they come. "It was just one of the routine auditions
that my agent sent me to," she recalls.
As it turns out, not
only has the role proven to be out of the ordinary, but so too has the
series. Against the odds, Babylon 5 has survived, recently passing the
100 episode mark - a gauge of success for any TV show.
For each of the past
four years, Babylon 5's renewal was an uphill battle fraught with uncertainty.
The fifth season was no exception, especially given the business complexities
involved in bringing the series from first-run syndication to the TNT
cable network.
"Its always been a totally
nerve-racking experience," admits Furlan. "And there was never any certainty
- with any season." The fifth season has provided Furlan with an opportunity
to once again grow her character, this time as the wife of the new president
of the Alliance.
"The relationship that
we're sharing is much more solid and stable than it ever was," says
Furlan of Delenn and Sheridan's bond. "It's been a wonderful thing.
I love working with Bruce and things are so easy and pleasant with him.
We were always solving these huge, intergalactic problems, and so when
it comes to us, to the relationship, it's just such a relief. I'm enjoying
the happy ending."
Furlan hesitates to say
much about the fifth season, for fear of giving anything away.
"There are all kinds
of things happening. Some new political alliances and big political
decisions are being made of intergalactic proportions. The end of the
war happened, but there are other wars, little wars that have to be
fought." One new twist is the tension between Delenn and the new captain
of B5, Elizabeth Lochley.(Tracy Scoggins)
"I can't really say too
much about it without disclosing a bunch of secrets, but there are confrontations,
and there are all kinds of interesting things happening between these
two characters." For five years now, Furlan has imbued Delenn with a
delicate balance of old-world elegance and spirited individualism, the
epitome of grace under adversity. When asked about which episodes stand
out in her mind, Furlan pauses for a long moment.
"There are so many different
things," she begins, "that I couldn't really single out episodes or
scenes. It's hard to say. Some little moments have stuck in my mind.
There was the episode 'Comes The Inquisitor' - which was a really great
episode for me - 'Atonement' and 'Severed Dreams.' Furlan enjoyed the
opportunities afforded in the TNT television movie 'In The Beginning'.
"It was nice to return
to the openness, the innocence of the character," she says of the experience.
"In The Beginning explores a very important moment in Delenn's life.
It goes back and forth, which was a good thing for me. And it gave me
a lot of space, a lot of possibilities to play."
Delenn may have had a
chance to relive her innocence; however, it's more difficult for the
Yugoslavian-born actress to do so. Furlan, who studied acting at the
Academy for Theatre and Film in Zagreb, found it necessary to leave
her homeland in order to preserve a life for herself and her husband,
director Goran Gajic.
"First the war happened
in the media and then it spilled over into reality," she recalls, her
voice tightening with the memory. "It was in the media, in the papers,
on TV, everywhere around you. Life completely changed. Everybody was
supposed to choose sides and go to their own little backyard. And in
our case, that would mean that my husband and I would go to two different
sides, opposite sides. Which I couldn't imagine, and couldn't accept,
as a principle on which my life should be based."
Ultimately, Furlan had
been left with little choice; her refusal to publicly take sides led
to a backlash against the popular actress.
"In a way, I couldn't
be an actress anymore because my presence in one or the other of these
cities where I used to work - Zagreb and Belgrade - became a political
issue," she continues. "That's what the war does, it takes away your
individualism and freedom of choice. In times of war, this pressure
to think like the others does become a question of life and death. This
was not my country anymore, and I didn't recognise the people. People
changed. People were afraid. Afraid to speak up, to speak out, afraid
to have a point of view, afraid of everything, afraid of breathing.
I needed to breathe. I remember that feeling of breathing air when we
came out of the plane in Amsterdam and walked in the streets. All at
once I felt so much lighter physically."
When Furlan and her husband
arrived in New York in 1991, she was faced with the prospect of starting
all over again in a new country. But she was an actress, had been since
she was in High School, and nothing would change that fact.
"My first experience
of the delight that acting could give you was when I did a play in high
school with, surprisingly, a teacher from England who came to teach
English at our school," she remembers fondly. "We rehearsed the play
in English. Called 'Live Like Pigs', it was an English play where all
the girls were prostitutes and all the boys were drunken sailors."
Once the spotlights
came on for the first time, Furlan was lost to the allure of the theatre.
"Nothing matched that
excitement in my life. The excitement of just being on stage and just
seeing that things function while you have this incredible stage fright."
Although Furlan was fluent
in English, she had to play catch up when it came to understanding the
business of acting in the United States.
"Having grown up and
worked in this climate of pretentiousness in art and high aspirations,
the business aspect was completely unknown territory for me," Furlan
admits. "In that way I had to really make major adjustments."
Compared with the leisurely
pace of doing things in Yugoslavia, Furlan appreciated the faster pace
in America.
"You work much more quickly
(here) . There's no waiting around, no losing time, because as we know
time is money. I was actually bored and frustrated by the unprofessionalism
in Yugoslavia, where I spent time on films just lingering around doing
nothing, waiting and waiting and asking, 'what is happening?' But on
the other hand I miss some things (about the Yugoslav system). I miss
the creative process of the theatre. I miss the freedom of rehearsing
forever and trying different things."
As a member of the prestigious
Croatian National Theatre, Furlan's training was forged on stage.
"Theatre is definitely
the hardest thing to do as an actor because you're there from the beginning
to the end," she notes. "There are no escapes. There's no re-shooting,
there's no editing which can save you. Also, you're your own director
when you're on stage, you're in charge. That's wonderful."
But Furlan also has a
passion for doing film.
"I miss film. I miss
the intimacy of film and the process of film, the intimate relationship
between an actor and the camera."
Like many of her colleagues
on Babylon 5, Furlan has pursued outside projects concurrent with the
series run. In 1995, for example, she returned to her theatrical roots
in playing the heroine in an update of Sophocles' classic Greek tragedy,
Antigone. This adaptation, directed by Furlan's husband, Gajic, reflected
the tragic experiences of the war in the Balkans.
"It was a good production,"
remarks Furlan. "Moving and strong. It had a reason. So often theatre
doesn't have a reason to exist. This had another meaning to it - it
was our need to speak about what troubles us, what we saw, and what
we felt. I think that definitely showed in the production."
And in 1997, the final
film Furlan appeared in while in Yugoslavia - 'Dear Video', a black
epistolary comedy that was also directed by Gajic - was released on
video.
"It was done right before
we left Yugoslavia. That was actually the reason why we stayed for such
a long time. We would have left a couple of months before, but it was
impossible because Goran was editing his film," explains Furlan. "The
story is told through video letters of families. There are two brothers
- one of them lives in Yugoslavia and one of them lives in Germany.
The story is told by letters that go back and forth between these two
places. It's a very unusual, informal project."
Meanwhile, Furlan hopes
to be able to find other outlets to keep the memory of what happened
in her country alive.
"I would love to be able
to gather my self and to have enough concentration to write something
about it. That's my goal, but life is very distracting, especially here
in America," she says. "(Otherwise) it will all be forgotten after a
while and that's a horrible thought, actually. A totally depressing
thought."
"Even now it seems like
it didn't even happen and sometimes I ask myself what did happen? Did
it happen? But of course, it's always there. It haunts you."
The good will always
be there, too, and that's just one of many things Furlan takes away
from her five years on Babylon 5. Ironically, at the outset of B5's
journey, Furlan spoke with Straczynski regarding the direction of Delenn,
but she still didn't realise the potential of what she was getting into.
"Nobody could know that,
especially not me," she laughs.
The impending close of
the series didn't directly affect how Furlan approached her character
- in spite of the fact that the final episode had been filmed last spring.
"When you know you're
approaching an end, it never feels cheerful. It's kind of sad, in my
experience. But the end is always there as a possibility and was always
there. You just go through the episodes, try to do your best and see
what you can do with what Joe writes."
Copyright
© 1998 Melissa J. Perenson