
He was a nice guy, he thought it was funny that I got a little freaked out by it, as you can imagine.” It could have been a real gun, I don’t know. It not only smarted a little bit, it kind of scared me-your life flashes before your eyes. “He pulled out a (plastic) gun and shot me in the kidney area. “A nice fan made me a lovely quilt and matching pillows,” she recalls. My sense of humor is a little more bottom-rung.”Ĭhristian does not consider herself a SciFi fan, but she has appeared at conventions where she frequently meets die-hard fans. My one-liners are more sophomoric than hers. I think she let her hair down-well, there was her whole obsession with lingerie, jazz music and Russian literature. “It’s the Republican-Democrat thing, although I think she did have a sort of liberal side to her. “Ivanova voted for Bush, I voted for Clinton,” she laughs. “But, like Shakespeare, you get used to it.”Ĭhristian is extremely different from her technobabble-spouting alter ego, especially on the political front. It was an actor’s nightmare, every night,” she says.

And when the day actually came when we shot this one, I started to lose it because we did eight takes and I couldn’t get it perfect. “All those speeches-a lot of them made no sense. In fact, she can still rattle off a speech that she still remembers because it was so hard to learn. She battled enemies in small ships called Star Furies, acted as a traffic safety control officer on those rare, uneventful days on the station, and matched wits with the dangerous Psi Cops.ĭespite those hair-raising adventures, Christian notes that her biggest challenge on the show-especially in the first season-was getting a handle on technobabble. Over 88 episodes of “Babylon 5”’s epic space fantasy, the strong, sardonic Commander Ivanova practiced diplomacy with alien ambassadors, participated in a secession from the totalitarian government on Earth, engaged in a bisexual relationship with a telepath, and fell in love with the head of the Rangers, who died after saving her life. “It would have been a whole different show,” Christian says knowingly.
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Her latest projects include TV shows SciFi comedy “Star Hyke” and archeological adventure “The Ark,” which she also directs.Īctually, Straczynski hired Christian on the strength of her past work, despite the fact that he’d actually been thinking of casting model Iman for her role. Her voice also graces movies from like “Shrek 2” and “Atlantis: The Lost Empire.” You may even hear her distinctive tones in certain video games you play. Since “Babylon 5” ended, she’s also had roles in a 1998 “B5” movie and worked heavily in the genre. C’est la vie, my dear.”Ĭhristian may be best known for Commander Susan Ivanova on “Babylon 5,” but SciFi fans also know her from movies like 1987’s “The Hidden,” “Arena” from 1991, and “Hexed” from 1993. It’s too bad I had to leave on a sour note.

“The people were very nice, we had a great camaraderie. Ironically, Christian noted, her replacement (actress Tracy Scoggins) appeared on only eight episodes that season.
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However, since the series finale was filmed at the end of the fourth season (producers thought the show would be canceled), Christian’s character does make a return at the end. At the time, she didn’t have a contract and was let go. The actress says she wanted less of a presence in the final season so she could work on other projects, but Stracynski insisted she appear in all 22 episodes.

Prior to her appearance on the series’ very final episode, she did this interview with BellaOnline’s Helen Lee at a Chicago hotel to discuss her years on the show.Ĭhristian left her regular role on “B5” just before the fifth and final season, after a contract dispute with the show’s creator, J. She was, in her own words, “the first bisexual Russian Jew in space, with an attitude to boot.” Claudia Christian spent four years as Commander Susan Ivanova on “Babylon 5,” the influential science fiction TV show that aired in syndication between 19.
