An Interview with Teryl Rothery

How did you get involved with Stargate? Oh, so I was down in Los Angeles. I booked a movie that was shooting in Vancouver, which is my home. So then I went back home to do the movie, and while I was there, my agent called and said, Hey, we have an offer for you to play the doctor. There's gonna be a doctor on Stargate. It was the gift that just kept on giving. It was supposed to just come in and be the doctor, and seven seasons later, I was still, you know, on the show, so that's how I got on.

So, with Janet. Yeah. Yeah. She brought so much humanity to the show. You know, um, so looking back now, what do you think Janet gave Stargate that might have been missing without her? Okay, so she gave compassion to humanity to the show. So, if you were looking back now, what do you think Janet gave to Stargate that might have been missed without her? What I liked about her is, um, as the doctor, you're to be a certain way, right? You don't get involved, there's a distance. But there was a moment that comes up when Apophyus, the body, the host is dying. And this is a office, right? And when we were doing this scene, I still felt emotion, because I'm looking at this, the human, not the symbiote. I'm looking at it, and the tears came, and I didn't. I thought oh, they're probably going to cut that, because I'm supposed to be stoic. But they didn't. And that was, to me, was such a gift to her, to that character, because that's who she was. She was still in the military, still in the Air Force. She still had all of that strength, but she never lost that. Like you say, the compassion. Right. Humanity, regardless of where they were, or what alien person it was, there was still that compassion.

Playing off that question your friendship with Sam Carter on the show turned out to be really important for women and STEM. What does that mean to you when you hear people say you inspired them to go into STEM? Um, everything, to be told you, you know, your character was an inspiration. It's also a testament to the writer who created the character, but certainly, yeah, the actors who then bring life to the character. Sorry, you have to go back home, because I get sidetracked. I start going on a tangent, and I'm not gonna get right to your point. Oh, the friendship. Both Amanda and I loved it, because so often in television series, or, you know, they're always, they have to have the women have to butt hands. There's always that some kind of, you know, envy or jealousy, and there's always that budding of heads where they didn't have that. They were so close, there was such a respect there. There was such a joy there. There was a not just camaraderie, it was like a family, like, she truly was, you know, the aunt, you know, to my child. It was, we loved it, and that's something both of us really made a concerted effort, was to continue to show the strength between two women, as opposed to brown, you know. But that makes sense. Yeah, I hope so.

Did you have a favorite episode or stunt that you did on the set? Oh gosh. There are so many, so many episodes that I loved for various different reasons. I loved Lifeboat because working with Michael, portraying all those different characters, was just such a treat. Um, because then I'm responding to a young boy, then an old man, and then this, it was, that was one of my favorites. It was just so nice to spend so much time one on one with his character. But the one that I always go to is her introduction episode, which was Broca Divide. Just because it was just working with Richard, and I remember his eyes, they had red dye in his eyes because of the, he was turning into that...creature… And it was just so... I loved his performance. I loved where she was at. It was sort of that start of who she really was, who the character was all about. So I still sort of go to that episode to be considered one of my favorites.