By Jamie Ruby

Syfy Digital Press Tour 2012 - Day Two

Part Two - Defiance Q&A
October 15, 2012

In October I, along with other journalists, were invited to Toronto, Canada for the Syfy Digital Press Tour, where Defiance was one of the series highlighted. Having never received a transcript, I finally decided to sit down and transcribe the full interview in anticipation for the premiere on Monday. Without further adeu...

As part of the Syfy Digital Press Tour, journalists were taken on a tour of the Defiance set.

After arriving in the Need/Want bar at the end of the tour, everyone sat down for presentations. First we heard from Gary Hutzel who gave a VFX presentation, and then we heard from David J. Peterson on the creation of three of the alien languages in Defiance, including Irathient, Castithan, and Indogene.

The main presentation was a Q&A panel with the cast of Defiance, including Grant Bowler, who plays Nolan, Stephanie Leonidas, who portrays the Irathient, Irisa, Julie Benz who plays Amanda Rosewater, Jaime Murray and Tony Curran, who play Castithans Stahma and Datak Tarr, respectively, and Graham Greene, who portrays Rafe McCawley. They were joined by the executive producer of the series, Kevin Murphy, and President of Original Content at Syfy, Mark Stern.

Exclusive Interview with Nico Tortorella for The Following
Interview by Jamie Ruby
Written Jamie Ruby

The Fox drama The Following revolves around Joe Carroll (James Purefoy) and his devoted cult followers, as well as Ryan Hardy (Kevin Bacon), who works with the FBI to try to catch Carroll, who has escaped from prison for the second time, and is now living in a house with his kidnapped ex-wife, Claire (Natalie Zea), and son (Kyle Catlett), as well as his followers, who are generally sociopaths and killers.

One of these followers is Jacob Wells, who up until recently had never killed anyone. Jacob was recently betrayed by Emma (Valorie Curry), who left him with a dying Paul (Adan Canto; the three were lovers). After Paul begged him, Jacob suffocated him. That action, as well as Emma's betrayal, has changed him.

The actor, who plays Jacob, Nico Tortorella, recently sat down in an exclusive interview with Jamie Ruby of SciFi Vision.

When he first read the script, Tortorella was thought to be too young for the role. "It was the first script I read for pilot season last year, and originally they thought that I was going to be too young for the role, but as my team does, they pushed hard, and I got in the room and was testing the next day, and chemistry reading with Paul the day after."

Exclusive Interview with Edwin Hodge for NCIS: Los Angeles and NCIS: Red on February 27, 2013
Interview by Jamie Ruby
Written by Jamie Ruby

Last week, NCIS: Los Angeles introduced the audience to the NCIS agents of Team Red. One of the new agents is technical assistant, Kai Ashe, played by actor Edwin Hodge.

Hodge will be guest starring again tonight in the conclusion of the episode arc as part of the NCIS Red team, which is a planned spinoff pilot for CBS. In preparation the actor sat down with Jamie Ruby of SciFi Vision in an exclusive interview to talk about the role.

Hodge talked about his character. "I play Kai Ashe and he's basically the team's technical assistant and he's the computer savvy guy; he basically maintains their hub. They drive these 18 wheelers called Laverne and Shirley and they basically transform into their office and their sleeping quarters and interrogation room; it's actually pretty cool. But he just makes sure that he maintains the vehicles and makes sure that everybody gets to where they need to get to, IDs, passports, things of that nature."

Exclusive Interview with Malana Lea for Olympus Has Fallen
Interview by Jamie Ruby
Written by Jamie Ruby

From director Antoine Fuqua (Training Day), comes the new action thriller, Olympus Has Fallen, which stars Gerard Butler, Aaron Eckhart, and Morgan Freeman, which opens nationwide tomorrow. In preparation, Malana Lea, who plays the villain in the film, talked to Jamie Ruby of SciFi Vision in an exclusive interview.

Lea talked about the film and her role. "Olympus Has Fallen is an action movie about a disgraced secret service agent (Gerard Butler) who tries to save the president (Aaron Eckhart) in the midst of a terrorist attack on the White House. I play "Lim" - she's a commando/computer hacker terrorist."

The actress did not have a hard time getting the part. "I worked for the production company in the past; they called me in to read for this part, and the rest is history."

In the upcoming film The Host, based on the book by Stephenie Meyer (The Twlight Saga), a race of aliens have taken over the earth by taking over people's minds, but not everyone is willing to give up so easily. One "soul," Wanderer (a.k.a. Wanda) takes over Melanie Stryder (played by Saoirse Ronan), but she refuses to let go and they form a bond over the love (Max Irons) she left behind. As Wanda starts to share many of Melanie's feelings and emotions, her views change, and she decides to aid other humans who remain, in their fight against her kind.

One of these remaining humans is the character of Wes, played by Shawn Carter Peterson, who recently talked to Jamie Ruby of SciFi Vision in an exclusive interview about the film. "Wes is one of a group of human beings that remain on Earth once the earth has been taken over by an alien invasion, if you will. And the aliens take over human bodies so you can't really tell who's human and who's not. The only way you can tell is by a silver ring that's around the cornea of the eye. And there is a small group of humans that have remained human and are hiding out in caves out in the desert, and Wes is one of those people."

By Jamie Ruby

Shawn Ashmore is probably best known for his role as Bobby Drake aka Iceman in the X-Men films, but has numerous credits to his name, including Smallville, Earthsea, and Fringe to name a few.

Ashmore, who will soon be starring in the upcoming film Mariachi Gringo, currently plays the part of Mike Weston opposite Kevin Bacon in the new series The Following, premiering tonight on Fox.

The Following is about serial killer Joe Carroll (James Purefoy), who has cult of followers, and continues to gain more. The protagonist in the story is retired FBI Agent Ryan Hardy (Kevin Bacon), who is called back to consult with an FBI team when Carroll escapes. He is joined by new partner Mike Weston, played by Ashmore, the only one who seems to idolize Hardy and is accepting of working with him.

Ashmore recently talked to Jamie Ruby of SciFi Vision in an exclusive interview about his new roles.

By Christiane Elin

The Paley Center in Los Angeles paid special tribute to Fringe with the Fringe Benefits fan art and screening event on Wednesday, January 9, 2013. The event featured a special exhibition of posters commemorating the series' memorable moments selected by Fringe fans worldwide and presented by Gallery1988.

Jamie Ruby recently attended the Syfy Digital Press Tour for SciFi Vision and got some great exclusive photos during the two day event. These include photos from the sets of Syfy's Defiance and Warehouse 13, as well as from dinner with the casts of Being Human and Haven. More coming as time permits. They are all available in the Syfy Digital Press Tour 2012 Gallery.

By Jamie Ruby

This year the Syfy Digital Press Tour was held in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The night started with dinner in C5 Restaurant, inside the Royal Ontario Museum, where the press got some time to hang out with some of the Syfy stars. In attendance were Sam Witwer, Sam Huntington, Meaghan Rath, and Kristen Hager from Being Human, Lucas Bryant, Eric Balfour, and Adam "Edge" Copeland from Haven, and Jesse Rath (Meaghan's brother) from Defiance.

This year SciFi Vision once again attended the Syfy Digital Press Tour, this time in Toronto, Ontairo, Canada. We not only hung out with the stars of Haven and Being Human, but we also got to visit the sets of the upcoming series Defiance, as well as Warehouse 13.

In the coming days, look for full coverage of the event, including reviews and tons of photos. You can also find a lot of the photos I took at Twitter via @scifivision, which will eventually all go in the gallery on this site.

For now, you can check out the stream below of what the press (including myself) was saying during the event, including all the photos and videos that were posted.