ROUND-TABLE: 'Burn Notice' stars Bruce Campbell and Sharon Gless

Burn Notice has been heating up the television set since the premiere of its first season. An original USA Network series in its third season, the show tells the story of secret agent Michael Westen (Jeffrey Donovan), who wakes up in Miami to find himself blacklisted; with the help of his friend Sam (Bruce Campbell), his ex-girlfriend Fiona (Gabrielle Anwar), and sometimes even his mother Madeline (Sharon Gless), he is determined to find out why—and how to reverse it. It's smart, sexy, funny... basically the perfect TV show. Campbell and Gless totally agree, and during a recent roundtable-by-phone they proved themselves more than eager to talk characterization, interrogation, and intoxication. Enjoy.

So wonderful to speak to both of you. Bruce, I know that you played in Xena and Hercules as sort of a rogue who helped out the good guys as well. And Sharon, obviously in Cagney & Lacey you played Cagney, a bad-ass cop, and she also knew her way around bad guys. So I was curious how these roles and others may have helped to cultivate the characters that you play on Burn Notice.
BRUCE CAMPBELL: Go ahead, Sharon.
SHARON GLESS: Well, the only bad guys I have to find my way around are Jeffrey and Bruce. I mean, my job on the show is the mother from hell. I don’t get involved in the heavy stuff like they do.
BC: Sharon, your character is scarier than some of the bad guys.

You helped out in that case when Michael got captured and you were sort of interrogating the one guy.
SG: Right, that was very, very funny. It’s not often that I get to do one-upsmanship on Bruce Campbell.
BC: What’s amazing is she turned out to be a very good interrogator. Who knew? I actually think we’re going to see in the scenes that come—because, Sharon, you were also on a stakeout and you had to spot somebody. You had to be a lookout.
SG: At the bingo game.
BC: Right. So don’t kid yourself. You’re going to be an operative before too long, maybe.
SG: Okay, look out.

How about you, Bruce?
BC: Well, I mean, I’ve always enjoyed playing a little left of center characters. Otherwise I’d be on a soap opera, you know. What’s attractive to me was that these are real characters. These are characters who drink and smoke and make mistakes and have foibles in love and try to fix their mother's garbage disposal. That’s what’s attractive to me. That’s what got me into this show—and knowing that I’m with four, three other kind of seasoned adult actors. That’s always attractive, when you know you’re going to be working with people that it’s going to be worth showing up for.
SG: It’s true.
BC: It’s made a big difference. And this show—I can’t speak for Sharon, but this show came out of nowhere.
SG: Yes.
BC: The things that I plan never happen. Things that I don’t plan do.
SG: Exactly. That’s how I thought. I think that when Bruce and I first—we were interviewed together. Do you remember that, in Pasadena or somewhere?
BC: Yes.
SG: And I was actually sitting in the fat farm and this script arrived and I was sitting all alone in my room and it made me laugh out loud and I was all by myself. And I thought, “This is funny. This is fun, I like this.” It had substance to it, too.
BC: It probably didn’t hurt that you live in Miami, too.
SG: I forgot about that, but I didn’t tell them that during the interview. I wanted to live in a hotel like you guys. And then when it sold, I had to ‘fess up. I do, though. I do live here in Miami.

I was wondering, what sorts of methods and what type of influences do you use to kind of inform your characters and your portrayal of each of your characters? What do you draw upon in your characterization?
SG: What do I draw on?

Yes, for your characterization of your character. What informs that?
SG: Well, my husband said, when he read the script, “You’re chain smoking half the time! How lucky are you? They’re paying you to smoke.” So he said, “Wow, you do all the things with the cigarette.” I said, “Well, yeah, I already knew how to do that.” What do I draw on? I’ve never actually had children, myself, but I just connected with Jeffrey’s character and every week it’s different and as the show goes along, Madeline, my character, first she’s totally in the dark and very needy and very sort of just all sort of emotional things that are unattractive. And as time went on, [writer] Matt Nix said, “Sharon, she’s smarter than what I was writing.” And he gave me one clue, he said, “Remember, he gets his smarts from her.” I said, “Oh, okay.” So I just took that information and it gave me and my character a little more confidence. But I don’t know, how do you prepare for playing someone who’s manipulative? Is it built in? I don’t know.
BC: When you’re in show business, you know lots of manipulating people.
SG: Yes, that’s true. But I try to do the manipulation with humor. Hopefully, that’s how it’s coming across.

Bruce, why doesn’t Sam Axe’s personality match the normal ex-military stereotypes? He seems really upbeat compared to how most shows depict characters that have been in serious military situations. I was just wondering why that was.
BC: I think my character is actually more accurate. I think I run into some of these guys. My first wife remarried a police officer, and I’ll tell you these guys like having a good time when they’re not working. They don’t sit around all mopey-dope, they sit around and crack gallows humor, lots of gallows humor, dark humor. Frankly, I think they’re happy that they’re alive, most of these guys, after going through all of this, and they have a good joie de vivre that the average executive might not have. So I should think Sam is very indicative of the real guys, you know, guys who are my age who have mustered out in their 50’s. Believe me, most of them are drinking beer and sitting around a pool cracking jokes about the old days.
SG: In my experience in having done Cagney & Lacey many years ago, we had technical advisors on the set and we had detectives and police. Not exactly in the role that Bruce is playing, but these guys who see so much really do have a very macabre sense of humor. And I do think that’s how they stay sane.

Sharon, Madeline seems to go with the flow a bit more nowadays with Michael’s past. Will she eventually come around to just trusting him blindly or will curiosity get the best of her and she’ll find out on her own where her son has been for the past ten years?
SG: I think Madeline is slowly figuring it out. I don’t think, to this day, she really understands the full impact of what it is he really does. But she knows he helps people. That’s how she phrases it. That’s how she lives with it. And yes, she is getting more informed. I think there are moments where she does trust him. She has to, she is, despite what you see, she loves him. It’s her boy. But I think there’s always a bit of doubt because he’s never completely forthcoming. So what she finds out she sort of finds out on her own. He’s a little vague when he explains things, enough to calm her down or to get her to help in an indirect way.

Bruce, is there a beer or cocktail that Sam has yet to meet and enjoy and if there is, what is it and why haven’t they met yet?
BC: I don’t think there is a cocktail that he has not found yet. I think Sam has been making them up, he knows so many of them. But the one thing I want to point out is you never see him drunk. You know, a lot of people go, “Oh, Sam’s an alcoholic.” Hey, he’s a guy who likes to drink like a lot of Americans. So that truly is—sometimes we pick our battles. If I’ve got a morning meeting with the feds, Sam will have a cup of coffee. He’s not a complete party boy.
SG: Bruce and I are still trying to get Matt Nix to write us a . . .
BC: He promised us, season two, he promised that we would get drunk together.
SG: I know, he lied. When Sam babysits with Maddie, wouldn’t it be a fun thing to sit there and get loaded and not talk about anything that has to do with the work?
BC: Exactly.

Sharon, I think it’s interesting that Matt told you specifically that his idea was that Michael’s skills might have come more from his mother than we first thought. Talk a bit more about how you think that might play out. It’s quite clear from watching the characters over three seasons that there’s a lot of Madeline in Michael. So talk a bit more about what other skills Michael has that he might get from Maddie.
SG: I don’t know. I can’t say he gets his skills—I mean, his technical skills he certainly doesn’t get from her. I think what Matt wanted to establish is that he gets his smarts from her. The father was a loser, and I don’t think there’s a lot he got from him. And Maddie is smart, she can be very keen and sometimes she plays a little manipulative. No, she doesn’t play dumb, but I’m very pleased that you see that she is very smart. She’s not totally informed as to what he’s doing, but she knows him. It’s her boy, it’s her son.

I guess we really get the sense that Maddie knows more than she’s letting on, like most mothers.
SG: Yes, and she knows when to use it and when to not, but I don’t think at this point—I think the story would start to end soon if she was totally understanding of what has happened to him and what it is he’s attempting—that is, to find his way back. So I don’t think she knows all of that yet. She just knows that he’s doing stuff that’s not ordinary and I think she fears for his life, I’m sure.

I’d like to know if Sam’s role of making the blood in “Shot on the Dark” was given specifically because Bruce Campbell has experienced making blood, and did you use the Evil Dead recipe?
BC: I don’t know if that was assigned to me. It just sort of fell in. Every week we make stuff, so we have different things where you hold this and someone does this. It made sense that I made the blood, certainly. It wasn’t the exact Evil Dead recipe since I wouldn’t want to give it all away. It’s far too secret, just like military secrets, ... this shows you how in this show you really can make an incredible amount of different things in your kitchen and fake blood is certainly one of them. It’s one of the cheapest—for anyone making a horror film, it’s probably the cheapest prop you can get. It’s mostly Karo syrup, red food coloring, a little bit of cremora, and a drop of blue to make it not get too pink, you know, too bright.

Aside from you two getting drunk together, how do you want to see Sam and Madeline’s relationship evolve?
SG: Well, I think Sam and Maddie have kind of a really cool relationship. We were given a chance to live together. That helps. I didn’t tell you this, Bruce, that I really miss the fact that you moved out.
BC: I know.
SG: But that gives you a chance to come back. How do I see the relationship evolving? I see it as all good. I see that it can get rougher, it can get more tender, and I think there’s a myriad of things that can come out of a relationship with two people who do respect each other and who both love this one man, this boy, my boy and his friend.
BC: I can’t speak for other actors, but I don’t really probe the writers, I honestly don’t. I haven’t bugged them in three years about what’s coming up with Sam—whether he’s going to have a home or a girlfriend. I like to sit back, just like the audience, and let it happen. I get excited reading the next script, because I don’t really know what they have planned. The season finale, I couldn’t tell you sitting here right now what’s going to happen. Not because I’m lying or I’m not supposed to; I don’t know because I haven’t asked, I don’t want to know.
SG: I’m the same way. I never ask about what’s going to happen with my character.
BC: As we’ve seen, they’re good writers, so I get out of their face. We don’t like them in our face, I don’t get in their face.

Burn Notice has been renewed for a fourth season, and as we all know, the show is extremely successful. How many seasons do think this show will have and do you both plan to stay on the show through to the very end?
SG: I don’t know. I mean the show – it used to be in the old days when you signed a contract, it was for seven years. But in this day and age, I don’t know. I do think it has some longevity.
BC: Come on, Sharon, pick a number, pick a number.
SG: Okay, seven.
BC: Seven. I’m going eight.
SG: Okay, baby, I’m sticking with you.
BC: The reason I say that is because Monk went eight and we’re outpacing Monk in the ratings. So we’re kind of the new tentpole for USA, and I think we’re going to be around for the long haul. And mentally, I have to say, I’m not looking over my shoulder. I’m fully prepared to ride this show to the bitter end because what would I be looking for? Actors always seem like they’re looking for a better gig. This time I can’t—there is no better gig. This is a good gig, and I’m happy to ride it until it ends.
SG: Yes, me too. I want to stay. My husband, who is a producer, used to tease me and he’d say, “You know, I wouldn’t give these people any trouble, because how I would open the next episode is—there’s this rainy morning and everybody’s just standing in this rain under umbrellas. Is that a tear on our hero’s face? You pan down and the tombstone says ‘Madeline’.”
BC: In a season finale or a season opener. Exactly.
SG: Yes, right. So I’m just playing myself and I hope they let me stay the whole time.
BC: Yes, gee, Sharon, do you think they’ll let you?
SG: Well, you know, you never know. They may want to move somewhere. But knowing Madeline, she’d pack too.
BC: Yes, she probably would.

For more about the show, which returns with the second half of Season 3 in a few months, check out the official website.