Battlestar Galactica Cast Deprived Themselves Of Sleep For Crucial Episode
After its awesome miniseries, Battlestar Galactica hit the ground running with “33,” an episode where the crew had to deal with sleep deprivation due to non-stop Cylon attacks. One reason the episode proved so popular is that the cast gave an amazingly realistic performance. As it turns out, they had a secret weapon: Edward James Olmos and many other cast members slept for only three hours a night during production to better simulate sleep deprivation.
33 Minutes
Before we go any further in this Battlestar Galactica story, you need to know a bit more about what this episode is all about. “33” takes its name from the fact that the Cylons are somehow tracking Galactica and attack the ship every 33 minutes, ensuring that nobody can get much sleep.
This creates a multi-pronged race against time: everyone is trying to figure out how the Cylons are tracking them while dealing with sleep deprivation, and if they don’t solve the problem, it will only be a matter of time before someone’s sloppy mistake destroys the Galactica or one of the ships in the civilian fleet.
Consulting With Sleep Scientists
Now, how did this plot point about endless robot attacks end up affecting the cast of Battlestar Galactica? Proving that he’s the Commander both on and off the screen, Edward James Olmos reviewed the “33” script and began consulting with an expert on sleep deprivation. Always a consummate professional, the veteran actor wanted to do his part to make his onscreen portrayal of a weary, sleep-deprived military man as realistic as possible.
Every Actor Played A Different Symptom
Doing his own part to help the Battlestar Galactica actors give a great performance, director Michael Rymer took the expert’s advice and assigned each main cast member a different sleep deprivation symptom. The idea was that throughout “33,” each of them could play up that symptom and portray the different effects of sleep loss.
This was a real win/win idea: the actors didn’t have to worry about embodying more than one major symptom, and the audience could enjoy performances that felt fresh because the episode didn’t repeat symptoms from actor to actor.
The Cast Went Into Sleep Deprivation
By itself, all of this behind-the-scenes work might have been enough to make this premiere Battlestar Galactica episode great. However, Olmos and several other cast members decided to take things to the next level: of their own volition, they limited themselves to only three hours of sleep a night. This ultimately proved very effective, as the combination of the expert’s advice, the director’s assigned symptoms, and the actor’s sleep deprivation led to unforgettable performances all around.
33 Was The Most Important Episode To Get Right
It’s honestly impossible to overstate how important this first Battlestar Galactica episode was: it convinced SyFy to order the show to series even as it convinced audiences that the success of the miniseries was no fluke.
Obviously, there were plenty of reasons for the success of “33,” but it’s entirely possible that the show might never have gotten the green light from the network if Edward James Olmos hadn’t led the cast into actual sleep deprivation. Onscreen and off, one thing is true: where Commander Adama leads, others follow…so say we all.
