Suanne Braun is not easily fazed or
distracted. Sitting in the late-summer sunshine between appearances at the Wolf
10th anniversary event, she hardly seems to notice the 747s taking
off every minute or so from nearby Heathrow Airport as she chats to Carole
Gordon about her portrayal of the Egyptian goddess, Hathor, her early career in
musical theatre, and her current projects.
Suanne began performing at a very young age.
And, it seems, she was destined never to do anything else.
"My mum says I've been acting from the
time I came out of the womb! She tells a story about when I was really little,
about two, when they lost me on a beach. My mother was frantic and was running
up and down the beach. Suddenly, she saw this little crowd of people and she
thought, 'My baby, it's my baby!' She stormed through the crowd and there I was
playing a game, playing all the characters to the audience."
Although Suanne doesn't remember this incident,
she does have a vivid memory of the exact moment she decided she wanted to act.
Her mother had taken her to see a performance of The Sound of Music
and the seven-year-old Suanne was fascinated by the young Von Trapps.
"I remember at interval saying to my
mum, 'These children, what are they doing? They're not Mr. von Trapp's children
in real life, so what are they doing?' She said, 'It's called acting.' I
stopped in my tracks and I said, 'That's what I'm going to do when I grow up.'
"
For Suanne,
that determination led to the title role in Annie three years
later, a role she played for more than two years – and loved every minute.
"I remember clearly on opening night
the curtain going up and the opening scene of the play. The orphans are all in
bed and Annie sings a sweet little song to one of the babies. A lot of the
girls I worked with on the production have said in latter years that they were
really nervous when that curtain went up. I just remember absolutely feeling completely
at home. It felt like the most natural thing in the world."
So, Suanne totally agrees with a friend who
once told her that “you don't choose acting; it chooses you.”
"I think that lots of people have aspirations
to act or be film stars – and reality TV has been the downfall of
mankind," she says, not entirely in jest. Though she does have some hope
that this particular trend has peaked.
"It's starting to get to the point
where everybody's sick of it. How much lower can we go? This is your claim to fame that you shagged someone under a blanket
in the Big Brother house? Your parents must be so proud!"
She is particularly vocal about reality-show
"stars" who become chat show hosts.
"It's less prevalent I think in England
than it is in America. One of the first years Big Brother was on
in the States, the girl who came second got her own talk show. The studio heads
said, 'We can't understand it! We're totally amazed that the show didn't last.'
Well, that's possibly because she thought Salman Rushdie was a fish dish!"
Such transient TV show hosts cannot compare
with seasoned interviewers such as Michael Parkinson, Suanne says.
"With somebody like that, it's just
effortless. Just because you like to talk and have an engaging personality,
doesn't qualify you to be a good interviewer per se. I feel the same about acting."
Acting, she says, is about so much more than
just a desire to be in films, or to be famous.
"It's sort of a love-hate relationship.
It's such a brutal industry when you're not working, but one show is enough to
get you over the next hurdle of six or seven months' unemployment. For me, I've
never wanted to do anything else ever."
Unlike many actors though, she has no desire
to direct.
"No, I want to act," she says
firmly. "I want to entertain people. That's what I love to do."
She would definitely like to return to
musical theatre. But, she says, it's hard to find suitable roles, as most
female roles in musical theatre seem to be either for an ingenue or an older
character role. She also regrets not having continued dancing.
"I took dancing, but never really
continued. I think today if you want to be a musical theatre actor, you have to
be able to do all three, you have to sing, act and dance."
Suanne has been invited to audition for the
role of Velma in a South African production of Chicago being
staged next year, but feels she may have to turn it down.
"I'm the right age to play Velma, I
could do the accent, I could sing the hell out of the tunes. But I don't think
in the time allotted I'm going to be able to pick up Bob Fosse's choreography.
I know I'm not a good enough dancer and I don't think it's professional or fair
on them to turn up and do a half-assed job."
"Half-assed" is definitely not how
the audience at the Wolf event describe her singing – and she would like the
opportunity to sing more, preferably in a cabaret setting.
"I love the idea of the “Evening With”
concept, where you get to entertain, tell stories, do a bit of acting, a bit of
singing. That really appeals to me."
She is currently working on her own material,
developing a show with a friend, which they plan to stage in 2005 at one of the
fringe venues in London and perhaps later take to Paris.
"It would be a personal dream for me. I
talked about doing it on my own, but when I met her, I thought it would be
great because it takes the pressure off when there's someone else helping
you."
While in South Africa, Suanne sang with a
young jazz band, Breakfast Included, who she describes as 'fantastically
talented'.
"We've done a couple of jazz nights and
I have a song, a Nina Simone cover, on an album called 'The Best of Passion
Jazz'."
Constantly taking on new challenges, Suanne
says her most terrifying and simultaneously exhilarating experience was
stand-up comedy, which she describes as similar to jumping off a cliff. She did
fine, she says, until one night when she bombed and lost her confidence.
"I was working with a lovely comedian
who said to me, 'You've got to go back out tomorrow night. It's like falling
off a horse. You've got to get back on.' Sure enough, the following night I
went on and got a great response."
Suanne agrees that stand-up can be a very
brave form of entertainment.
"I have seen people really crash and
burn and it's the most painful thing. You just want to say, 'Please get off the stage.' "
Suanne resisted the idea of stand-up for a
long time, insisting that she did not want to tell jokes. Friends and family
finally convinced her that she was funny, and that she should tell her stories.
Even so, her first outing wasn't an easy ride.
"The first comedian got up with all
these terrible sex jokes and I thought 'Oh no!' The second got up – it was all
rugby jokes and I remember thinking 'I'm going to be crucified.' It was one of
the only times in my life that I was physically sick before I went on stage. I
had to ask the compère to put the microphone in the mike stand because I was
shaking so badly. I thought, if they see your fear, you're dead! But I told my
first story and got a round of applause at the end of it and I didn't look
back."
Has she considered taking her show to the
Edinburgh Festival?
"I did a musical in Edinburgh last year
but it's such hard work. When you're 19 and fresh out of drama school, it's
great. But the average audience in Edinburgh is four people per show."
So, if stand-up is scary, what about
conventions? Does she find them frightening or fun?
"It was scary the first time because I
had no idea what to expect. And it was weird, not in a bad way, but in the
sense that I was completely floored that people would attend something like
that and then I became completely paranoid that I was the only one who was not
a leading actor. I had this vision of walking on stage and getting a limp round
of applause – and I was just blown away. I couldn't believe the response and
the support. It's humbling really, because I haven't been on Stargate
for six or seven years. Even though," she says with a combination of
determination and humor, "it hasn’t been for the lack of hinting that I
would love to go back. Heaven knows,
I bring it up at every
convention!"
What about the fans? Suanne has found that
her perception of sci-fi fans has changed since attending conventions.
"I think there is a perception of
'sci-fi nerds,' but I have met some of the nicest, warmest, friendliest and
most interesting people."
Unfortunately, not all fans fall into that
positive description. She encountered a fan at one convention who subjected her
to a twenty-minute diatribe on his hatred of Hathor and how he was glad to see
the character die. But Suanne is able to shrug this off as a one-off incident.
Mostly, people have expressed appreciation of her portrayal of the character,
including Michael Shanks, who was reported as saying that Suanne was the first
actor to give one of the bad guys a degree of psychological depth. He said,
"When you've got power, you don't have to be angry all the time."
For a moment, Suanne is taken aback by
Michael's comment and is at a loss for words.
"That's a very flattering thing for him
to say and very kind," she says. "For me, at the time, I didn't know
enough about who she was. I genuinely didn't even know there was an Egyptian
goddess called Hathor until I visited Egypt and got the shock of my life! She's
everywhere!"
As for her portrayal, Suanne was keen to
avoid Hathor coming over as a bad panto queen.
"One of the things I liked was in the
beginning, where you are not sure if she is actually deranged and someone who
has escaped an institution or if she actually is who she says she is. So I
tried to be true to that, but I imagine the psychological depth came from the
writers."
Suanne
finally confesses that she's not a science fiction fan, though her husband is.
"I'm so sorry," she laughs. "But somehow something in my
universe seems to be drawing me towards it, because I'm about to do another
one."
"Another one" is Star Hyke,
a British sci-fi series due to begin filming at the end of October, starring
Claudia Christian and Jeremy Bulloch.
"The story involves a starship, about
40 or 50 years in the future, when the world has become a place of complete
automatons. People don't have emotions, they don't get angry, they don't fight.
Everything just functions. Due to something that happens on the ship, we get
sucked back to the 21st century and all the people on board suddenly
find their emotions are completely haywire. It's about how this captain and her
crew cope in what has now become an alien world for them. They are dealing with
extreme emotions, psychotic anger or absolute joy or passion."
Playing a character called Dotty-KY, Suanne
thinks this sci-fi/comedy has the potential, to be "very very funny".
Although Suanne has landed this role, she is
finding the film and TV industry in the UK, where she is now based, difficult
to get into. It is, she says, every bit as hard as trying to get a start in Los
Angeles.
"When I moved to the States," she
says, "I watched everything on TV to get familiar with the accent and the
people and who was working. Seven years down the line, the same people were
still being employed. I see a lot of that here."
She agrees that this is partly due to
producers being unwilling to take risks with new faces.
"Definitely. If you've got a stellar
cast of wonderful actors who are established in this country, why bother to see
someone you've never heard of, who might be a liability?"
And, she says, as well as foreign actors
such as herself trying to break into the industry, there is a new crop of young
actors leaving drama school every year.
"So it's a tough business." She
pauses and smiles, her Hathor-like determination evident. "But it's all
right. I'll persevere! I simply can't imagine doing anything else. They can't
get me off the stage – they'll have to drag me off!"
With grateful thanks to Suanne Braun, and to
Katherine and Karen of Wolf Events for arranging the interview.
Biography: Suanne was born in South Africa on 29 February
1968. She has worked as a continuity presenter on South African TV, and hosted
the Miss World and Miss South Africa pageants for three years running. In 1993
she received the People's Choice award for South Africa's most beautiful woman.
In the theatre, Suanne has starred in the
smash hit musical Nunsense which ran for two years. Her other theatre
credits include Whodunnit, Lend Me A Tenor, Slice
of Saturday Night, Things We Do For Love, The
Secret Lives of Henry and Alice and Bedside Manners.
After moving to Los Angeles, she appeared on shows including Wings,
FX - The Series, Babylon 5 and Silk Stalkings
as well as Stargate SG1. She now lives in London.
Further information can be found at: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0105855/
Wolf
Events organize conventions and events
around the UK and in other European countries. Full details of their current
program of events can be found at: http://www.wolfevents.com/php/
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