Katee Sackhoff’s portrayal of Kara Thrace (aka Starbuck) on “Battlestar Galactica” – originally played by Dirk Benedict in the 1978 TV series – was hailed as one of television’s most complex characters on a show that’s still widely acclaimed as peak science fiction. But it sure didn’t start out that way.
Sackhoff appeared on a Saturday episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience,” and spoke candidly about the open derision she endured as the show launched in 2003. Rogan asked Sackhoff, who was in her early 20s when “Battlestar” debuted as a miniseries, whether there was backlash to her casting as a character originally played by a man.
“Yeah, there was,” she said. “The first time we went to Comic-Con in San Diego.”
“Oh, those nerds,” Rogan said.
“They had us in Hall H, and I was booed,” Sackhoff said. “I was booed!”
There were no camera-phones in those days and YouTube was still a year away, so it appears there’s no video evidence of the moment – but Sackhoff remembers finding out about the backlash long before she ever went to San Diego.
“The internet did not exist yet, mind you,” she said. “It was brand new. You had to go down to the internet café and buy 30 minutes … So I went down to an internet café because someone was like, ‘I guess they’re talking about the show on these message boards.’ And I was like, ‘What’s the internet?’ So I went on down. I logged on, and I saw this thread – and just the hate that I was getting in this thread!”
Comic-Con first expanded its main-event presentations to the newly built Hall H in the summer 2004, and later that year “Battlestar” began its transition from miniseries to full-series on the Sci-Fi Channel.
“And then, you know, we went to Comic-Con, and I was booed,” she said. “I think it upset me a little bit. I would be lying if I said it didn’t upset me. But luckily there were enough people championing the show that I really didn’t pay any mind to it.”
Sackhoff, now 45, says her youth at the time helped her cope with the negative reaction.
“I mean, I think now it would probably break me,” she said. “But at 23, it was like the blissful ignorance of youth. I didn’t think the show would last anyway, so it was like, whatever, not a big deal — just a blip on the radar. I’m in Hall H, you know?”
Of course, “Battlestar” took hold as a serious, complex and hugely influential show that to this day is lauded as what sci-fi can be.
“It slowly started winning people over,” she said. “I would go to cons after that, and the line would be longer and the people would be more supportive. People would say, ‘I didn’t want to like it, and I love it.’”
Despite its blooming reception and long-term accolades, Sackhoff says she still hasn’t watched the series – but plans to, and soon.
“I’ve never seen it,” she said. “We would have DVDs that you could watch that were uncut … I would watch them just to keep track of where Starbuck was, because in film you often shoot out of order, right? So I just wanted to know, okay, in her story, she was here.”
She said she and her husband, Robin Gadsby, recently decided to give it a go.
“I was like, ‘We should do a ‘Battlestar’ rewatch because people keep saying it’s good,” she said. “My husband had never seen it. So we’re going to do that in January. That’s the plan.”
Watch the entire segment in the video clip above.
