PART 1
According to the actor, Adama is the Queen and Apollo is Prince Charles

By: SEAN ELLIOTT - Senior Editor                                                                                                     Published: 12/13/2006

It’s been an interesting roller coaster ride for Jamie Bamber who plays the role of Lee "Apollo" Adama on SCI FI Channel’s hit series BATTLESTAR GALACTICA. First he had to grasp and grapple with the familial relationship between his character and Edward James Olmos’ Admiral Adama, then came the on again off again love affair with Katee Sackhoff’s Starbuck character.  Following that there has been a marriage, fat suit, and a lost command for Lee Adama, but Bamber takes all of these changes in stride and tells iF MAGAZINE how he looks forward to the more challenging things the series has given him to do over the years and in up coming episodes.

iF MAGAZINE: What have been the most interesting things they have thrown at you over three seasons?

JAMIE BAMBER: My character has always been about his relationships.  I suppose the most interesting things have been the characters that he has had the relationships with; the arguments are similar and yet they keep being fresh and realistic and they cease to boor.  A relationship between a father and son in real life tends to re-iterate itself constantly because all such relationships are formed during a childhood of some sort and your stuck in a repeating circle. The interesting thing for me is that the stakes don’t diminish and we don’t get bored with it.  Every season there is something new to play with, especially with Starbuck and Adama, and this season has raised the bar.  I was talking to Grace Park yesterday and she asked, “How can you do the same thing every year?  You almost get with this girl [Starbuck] and you almost get on with your dad and then you break up.”  [Laughs] That’s kind of true and I find that informative about life.  I think that’s very much how we are.  I think it’s very hard for people to change and to move on in a relationship whether it’s with your dad or would-be mistress/lover/whatever she is.

iF: With the characters on the show it has to be tough since everyone is running for their lives, they probably don’t have too much time to stop and introspect about what needs fixed in their lives?

BAMBER:  Exactly.  I don’t think we have a great time to contemplate, instead it’s more time to react and get on and do things.  The most interesting thing for me this season is a new character that is being introduced right now who is a breath of fresh air for Lee.  He’s an insight into a whole way of being that is entirely different than everything he has been exposed to.  He kind of represents the grandfather figure, this champion of humanity and all that it means to be human, the squalid as well as the noble.  Lee goes off in a different direction at the end of the season.  A very different direction.  That’s kind of been brewing for a little while.  Where the character is concerned the military has had a question mark attached to it, and that question mark has been what else is there?  What else might I have been?  How much have I been meant to follow this path and how much have I been railroaded into it?  Lee gets to finally open his intellect and his way of think with the influence of this character that gets introduced towards the end of season three.  I think that’s an interesting departure.  I don’t think he’s had an external influence like that at all. Zarek was a potential one, but he pretty quickly turned out to be a bit of a nutter and Lee didn’t go down that road.  Roslin was an influence for a while and he still respects her, but she and Adama are an item basically this season.  She’s very much in harmony with the Admiral.  They represent the establishment.  They are the new structure to humanity. 

Lee is in a unique position where he is kind of party to everyone.  He knows everyone.  He’s done more jobs than anyone; he’s been a commander, he’s been a CAG, he’s been a Presidential Advisor, he did a stint as a marine and as a security guard.  He’s done everything and he’s a young guy who needs a challenge and he doesn’t really have one.  In a way I liken him to Prince Charles in that his dad is the Queen until death, and he’s almost the heir apparent but he’s got no prospects of promotion or challenge really.  Other than the challenges of getting through on a day-to-day basis as a pilot.  It’s really only in season three that new avenues open up to him and he’s kind of in a position to change things. 
 

iF: Season two we got a little bit of background on Apollo.  I know we’re getting some more background on Adama, will that mean more of your character’s story as well?

BAMBER:  Yeah.  There’s a whole revelation about Lee’s life and family. Basically how Adama was really in denial about what he had at home and what kind of relationship he had with his own wife and what kind of mother she was to his two boys.  There’s a scene I have yet to see which is basically Lee telling his dad what reality was, and how Adama has been deluding himself.  It’s a very interesting season for Adama.  It’s the most interesting season for Adama.  You find out that this is a man who finds refuge in his job and in the military; it gives him absolute certainties where he had none in his personal life and in his life as a father.  You see that he’s kind of a shell and all of this weight and gravitas and conviction that we’ve been witnessing from the beginning is lifted and it’s embarrassing. I think it’s embarrassing for any son to see that side of his father and have to accept it.

 

Part 2
GALACTICA'S JAMIE BAMBER AND WHY STARBUCK CAN'T COMMIT- PART 2
The actor also shares his opinions of where the series should end and how

By: SEAN ELLIOTT - Senior Editor                                                                 Published: 1/3/2007
 
Jamie Bamber playing Lee “Apollo” Adama in SCI FI Channel’s hit series BATTLESTAR GALACTICA is in his own words a sort of reactionary character that gets what he gives from the relationships he forms with the people in his storyline.  Bamber explains to iF MAGAZINE in part 2 of our exclusive interview; how he feels about real fathers and sons, and why Kara “Starbuck” Thrace can’t commit to any kind of real relationship.  Of course we also get to touch on his opinions of where the series should end and how.

 

iF MAGAZINE: Do you like the fact that Lee and Admiral Adama have a back and forth relationship which changes practically every episode?

JAMIE BAMBER:  Yeah, I do, it’s a lot more interesting to play than if they stayed buddies all season.  The other thing is that they are, more in season three and the end of season two, more as one and totally in accord.  Even in that accord they quarrel and things happen; external things happen to act as a catalyst in their relationship and the old struggles rear their heads.  Then they see that they aren’t as similar as they thought they think they or they think they have become and they have issues with each other. P ersonally, I find that very true to life.  I don’t think there is a father and son relationship out there that doesn’t constantly reiterate itself, whatever the grudge is, it’s very hard to let it go.  We look at our childhoods as such a formative period because we only have one and whatever happens in that childhood, if something between two people, it just gets dredged up again.  The writers are to be applauded.  I always kind of looked at the maternal figure, the latent mother, his wife and Lee’s mother as the “idea parent”, but the writers have flipped that on its head. It makes sense if you see what’s gone on between them, and play back every scene, it adds to the drama when you get the reality that Lee couldn’t stomach his mum and Adama.  I had always thought that she was the perfect mother because she is never seen or spoken of, but the writers had other ideas for her.

iF: Along the same lines, what is Lee’s status in regards to his relationship with Starbuck?

BAMBER:  The bar is raised again in that relationship.  More happens this year than has happened at any time in the past.  We have indications of feelings between them that they can’t acknowledge and they kind of deny that and got he other way and go almost whole hog and become an item.  One of them can’t deal with that and goes entirely the other way and gets married and now she can’t even deal with being married. Inside of both of their marriages is the idea that they should still be together and there’s a ton going on where you see the depth of feeling between them and also the fear about actually giving into the genuine feelings and Kara [Starbuck] can’t quite do it.  It doesn’t really happen as a result and it’s just this combination of illicit infatuation.   It is a fatal attraction.  I think Lee has grown to a point where there is no reason why he can’t have what he wants and he really can’t get over how beat up she [Starbuck] is and how she can’t allow herself to get that level of intimacy.

iF: Of course, in terms of the character of Starbuck, she was tortured on New Caprica so that has to be a contributing factor in the romantic distancing equation?

BAMBER:  Exactly, she went through more than any other character in a way.  She’s damaged goods. [Laughs]

iF: How has this season been for everyone to be back on one set filming instead of on two different ship sets?

BAMBER:  The nature of the show is that the cast is quite broad, and even if you are on sets that are next each other, they tend to be mutually exclusive storylines.  I rarely see James Callis or Tricia Helfer, the Cylons really, in any other meaningful capacity other than in the lunch cue for an hour.  They’re off being naked together and sleeping in big beds, they’re welcome to that, I’ll let them have it.  [Laughs] Meanwhile I’m making a gritty reality TV show next door with wounds and warts, and they [the Cylons] have the best of it and that’s fine!  [Laughs] I have to say season three has had a funny feel.  It’s our best season, and yet there’s a kind of security that comes with being around and wondering where we’re going to go and how long it’s going to go on for, or how many storylines they can come up with.  There’s almost an itch, it’s like a seven-year itch, and it seems like to me that season three in television is the itchy year.  I still think that this is the best season we’ve ever done, but at this rate it raises questions about what directions we can go.  This season we went inside a base ship and spent time with the Cylons for a while, and I guess some people will like that and some won’t, but at least we’re always trying new things.  The show has been a huge pleasure to do, and it just remains to be seen when and how and where we’re going to find Earth.

iF: Where do you see the series ending?

BAMBER:  I really hope it does have a happy ending; there have been so many individually dark endings to episodes that it would be really nice to think that they will find Earth.  I don’t know, and I don’t think anybody knows, that’s the difficulty of making these types of projects on TV is that you are balancing to someone else’s needs.  We’re all working for big corporations and networks and advertisers and they’re all involved.  I regard my employers as Ron Moore and David Eick, and I know that they have ideas of how they would like to do things, but even they don’t necessarily get to finish things the way they like.  They have to read the financial and budgetary signals from the network and try to sort of mold their vision accordingly.  My only hope is that we get to finish the story and don’t get the plug pulled before we do.  I guess if I was going to pick I would rather we finish sooner than later so that we actually get to finish the story.  I think the longer you draw it out, the more you expose yourself to someone just cutting the show.  We are one epic story and we have one destination; it’s a road really that we are.  If we got cut say at the end of this season there would be so much left hanging that I would completely identify with Richard Hatch and how he felt when his show got cut.  I just hope we get to push this premise as far as it will go, and that we get to conclude it in some way.  There will never be a complete conclusion, the only absolute conclusion would be to have the Cylons kill us all and its over [Laughs], but even if we find Earth that leads to questions of new beginnings and what that will go on to.  It’s been a very powerful exploration to be involved in and I hope we get to have a full lifetime.