Tell us about your experiences on Roswell.
Oh God, I loved working on Roswell. It was such a joy to be a part of a new show like that. Once again it was a character that was just supposed to be on two episodes and then it blossomed into so much more. It was really an amazing experience for me.
I had been away shooting a movie that summer. I came back and had an audition the next day for the show. I remember reading the script and going, "I can’t play this, an FBI agent. Who’s going to take me seriously as an FBI agent?" I found out that David Nutter was involved with it and that he had actually requested for me to come in because he had remembered me from an audition I did for him for something else.
They had supposedly hired somebody and she’d gotten fired. So I came in and read for Jason Katims and there was a concern that I wasn’t old enough - in comparison to the kids - to play this FBI agent next to them, but they decided that they really liked me and they just changed the age on the character. She was supposed to be a lot older and they made her a little bit younger.
It was really a great experience working with Jason Behr, Sheri Appleby, Katie Heigl and Colin Hanks - who I just absolutely adore - and Majandra Delfino, who I had done a movie with before and so I’d known her from previously and Nick.
My favourite [was] Bill Sadler, just an amazing actor [who] just raises the bar for every other actor on that show. I loved playing Agent Topolski. She was a challenge in that she wasn’t 400 years old and she wasn’t classified as a villain or as a good guy. In the beginning you had no idea what she was and just to play her very straight, with no spin on the ball...
I wasn’t allowed to make her good or evil, she had to be very neutral, it was a challenge for me. I’m so used to playing characters who are either very, very evil who you want to kill or very, very loveable, so to walk that fine line of good versus evil and allow the audience to put onto her what they thought about her was very difficult for me but a great challenge and a lot of fun.
I would love to go back. At this point I think they’re so far removed from the story that it wouldn’t be possible. I always had this vision though, always made this joke that Topolski was living in Venice. She survived the fire and she went into the Witness Protection Programme and she’s living in Venice Italy. The kids of Roswell go on a class trip to Italy and there she is sitting in the big piazza drinking Espresso and they convince her to come back and help them out. I was just trying to get the show to go to Italy, because any reason to go to Italy is a good reason. But I don’t think it’s going to happen.
