The PCZ Interview With Erin Gray

Transcription by Katrina King. Katrina thinks Twiki did all the work while Dr. Theopolis got all the credit.

Erin Gray is best known as both Wilma Deering in the series Buck Rogers in the 25th Century and as Kate Summers, surrogate mother to Rick Schroder’s Ricky, on Silver Spoons. Erin is also a Tai Chi master while staying active in acting and also running “Heroes For Hire,” which books celebrities and notable individuals for conventions, personal appearances and speaking engagements. Most recently she has filmed scenes as Buck Rogers’ mother in a proposed series called Buck Rogers Begins, with her series co-star Gil Gerard playing Buck’s father. At this year’s Emerald City ComiCon, Erin was one of the special guests and she graciously agreed to talk to me for a few minutes. Enjoy the interview!

POP CULTURE ZOO: I wanted to start off asking if, before the series, you were familiar with the story of Buck Rogers and the characters?

ERIN GRAY: No I wasn’t.

PCZ: (laughs) Okay!

EG: Yeah, I had no idea what I was getting myself into!

PCZ: I was gonna say, being ’70’s sci-fi, what did you think when you read for the role and then actually started doing it?

EG: Well, actually, I was under contract for Universal at the time, and I really didn’t have much say about anything. I was working on a four hour mini-series called Evening in Byzantium by Irwin Shaw and literally the last day of my job I was thinking I was going to go home. They called me up and said, “No, you have to screen test for Buck Rogers.” I was like, “I don’t wanna do that, I wanna go home and go to bed, and take a shower, I’ve been working, I’m tired!” And they said, “No!” and I’m like, “Oh-KAY.” The good thing was my attitude actually worked, I think, in my favor, because the more tired I was and the more ticked off I was, the more Gil tried to cheer me up and make me happy! And you know, he’s a big goof, he likes to tease people and kid around all the time. Here you had all the other young ladies who were eager to do this pilot, to test! I’m like, “Can I just go home, okay?!?” And the more he kept teasing me, the more I was like, “Get a life buddy, who the hell are you?” Of course it worked for the character, not knowing that I was falling right into it! I hadn’t read the script! All I had was a scene.

I had to come in, I had to do this scene, and as soon as I got the scene done, I could go home. That’s all I was thinking about, “Let’s get through this!” The next thing I know, I’m doing what I thought was going to be a ten hour mini-series, and when we finished the first two hours, suddenly they stopped production for about six months. I went on to do The Rockford Files and other things, because I was a contract player, so they would put me in “whatever” Universal was doing at that time. Six months later I come back on the set and suddenly everything’s very different, and then I find out I’m doing a feature film. I go, “Wait a minute, I didn’t agree to do a sci-fi feature film! Y’know, I wanna direct my career, I wanna have something to say about it!” But I sort of feel I was meant to do the role, that no matter what I did I was still gonna get the role. I even turned down the series.

PCZ: Really?

EG: Well, I wasn’t into sci-fi at that time. I love a good story, but I’m more along the mystery/thriller kind of person, Law and Order, CSI, Bones, I’ll eat that stuff up! What happened was I went on to do Magnum PI and they were looking for another Wilma, and they had hired her, but the head of NBC was not happy, and then the woman who was head of casting at Universal said, “Well how about this girl who’s on Magnum PI?” He said, “That’s the girl!” I had gone back to being a brunette, and she was, “Well, that’s Erin Gray.” He said, “Well then, can we get her? I mean what do we do to get her back?” So, actually being called to the producers office and watching them beg was really nice. I didn’t know the power I was holding at the time. This, of course, I find out afterwards.

PCZ: One of the things I found interesting about the series being in the late ’70’s, watching it now as an adult, there were no “damsels in distress” or weak women characters in it. I mean, there was the girl of the week that Buck had to save…

EG: Always, yes..

PCZ: …but the ongoing female characters, refreshingly, seemed to be strong.

EG: Most of the time, except for the end of the second season. There were certain elements of my character that I think they dumbed down and made me more the damsel. I really got tired of saying, “Buck, are you all right?” “Buck!” That kind of “coffee, tea or me” kind of theme, that kind of started permeating through on the second season, which I was really not happy with. I mean, give me back my starfighter. I wanted to bring more martial arts into my character, because I’m a Tai Chi master. I was embracing that, and I thought that would be a cool thing. I think I only have one scene, where he’s teaching me golf and I throw him over my shoulders or something like that. That was the only time, and I was all, “No, I want more of that!” because I think that would’ve been interesting.

PCZ: It’s funny you mention that, because it seems like the first season was really strong.

EG: Yes.

PCZ: And then the second season was, well let’s kind of be Star Trek in a way, let’s just explore stuff, and that’s it.

EG: Yeah, unfortunately. My theory is that cable was new, just starting, and there were more choices. Just the fact that our numbers had gone down a little bit made the studio nervous, because it was very expensive project to produce. When they saw the numbers coming down, they went “let’s fix it” and it didn’t need fixing! It was just fine. Of course, we lost our captain, which was Bruce Lansbury, who was the executive producer, and that whole team had a clear vision, but they left us and abandoned us, and the step-father came in and it didn’t work. That’s how that went.

PCZ: So what do you think accounts for the enduring appeal of the Buck Rogers series?

EG: Well, from my point of view, and I can only share that, is I get responses from both men and women equally. For women, every woman who comes up to me usually says, “You were my role model. You were the first strong woman ever, other than Wonder Woman, and she was more cartoonist.” I was more real to them in a sense. “You’re the reason I became an Air Force fighter pilot. You’re the reason I became a police officer.” I mean, I get chills. I’ve gotten five or six women, just today, exactly the same, “I became a police officer and you’re the reason why.” I’m like, woah! I mean you get chills! To feel I had that impact. An entire generation of women who were looking for strong role models. Then at the same time, for every young guy out there, I was this babe in spandex, and I woke them up to their sexuality at the age of twelve. Every guy here says, “You were my first.” My son says I should have a t-shirt that says, “Yes, I know. I was your first, okay?”

PCZ: (laughs) That’s awesome.

EG: But, the other thing also is at that time the entire family came together and watched the show. This was a show for everyone, Mom, Dad, the kids and so on. You don’t have that now. You’ve got the kids in their room, Mom’s watching Lifetime, Dad’s watching his action film, and you don’t have that chance to create memories. Buck Rogers was [that type of show]. I mean, people came up and say, “I would run home from school” or “Mom and Dad and I would leave church on Thursday, and we would run home, and that was what we did Thursday night at 8 o’clock.” We created a lot of memories for people that stayed with them. I think it was the combination of action and tongue-in-cheek humor. I mean, if you really think about it, there was a lot of double entendres that the kids didn’t get but that Dad’s goin’ “Yeah! This is great!”

PCZ: Yeah, watching it now was like “Woah!”

EG: Even I thought that the other day, I was like “Woah!” Even now I’d be surprised to hear some of that. So it had a lot of appeal for a lot of different reasons.

PCZ: How’s it been, coming back and now on Buck Rogers Begins playing Buck’s mom?

EG: It’s very cool, but it’s even cooler to watch my daughter step into my role.

PCZ: I heard that! Yeah! That’s great!

EG: It’s really nice. My daughter is a different woman, but she’s a stronger woman, stronger than I am in many ways. I had my own issues, being a girl from my time period. I was strong on one hand, but there was another part of me that hadn’t fully gotten her strength, let’s put it that way. My daughter, on the other hand… In the original Buck Rogers comic strip is, when Buck comes out of the cave, he meets this girl who’s in a tree, and she is Colonel Wilma and she is on a mission to watch out for the bad guys and that sort of thing. He’s intrigued by her. My daughter plays Buck’s girlfriend in the early 1900’s, Victorian era, which is where Buck started – young boy, World War I, right? They’re starting with that story, and how he ends up going into the cave. Cut to 500 years later, and there’s a girl who looks an awful lot like the girl he lost 500 years ago, but she’s completely different. In my mind, I see her more tribal, because if you look in the original in Buck Rogers, there is that kind of tribal sense. My daughter has got the streak in the hair, so I could see her, that punk kind of look, almost tribal kind of feeling. They may take it a different way, but it’ll be interesting to see what they come up with.

PCZ: Well, I’ve seen the scene they have online with you and Gil as Buck’s parents and that I thought it was phenomenal. And if that is the feel of the show, and how it’s going, then I hope someone takes notice and it gets going. It’d be great to have Buck Rogers back.

EG: Thank you! I hope the fans get online and let Sony know, and the other studios, that they need Buck Rogers back, because I think it’s a great franchise, a great story. I’d like to see it.

PCZ: Great, well thank you very much!

EG: It was very nice talking to you.