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The Jennifer O'Dell Interview with Tony Bray
So you are entering your third season on "The Lost World". Yeah, we're going into the third season. This year we didn't start shooting until two months later than we did last year. They really pulled things together quickly. Some people don't realize that you film the series in a real jungle. It takes us about 45 minutes to an hour to get to a location every day. We're shooting in the rain forest. The weather has been pretty nice to us this year, which has been very fortunate. The past two years we had an overwhelming amount of rain. The first year it rained about 90 days out of 130 shooting days. We had to sit in the rain waiting for it to stop. But, sometimes we didn't have a choice, so we'd shoot in the rain. And it is freezing when it rains here. The temperature drops about 20 degrees as soon as you go into the rain forest. You've got kind of a skimpy costume there. That's has to be rough. It's not very pleasant at times when you've got to stop your teeth from chattering and try to do the scene. It's difficult concentrating on the scene as fast as we shoot everything. We're shooting probably one episode a week. It takes six to seven days to shoot one episode, depending on how big it actually is, with special effects and so forth. That's really fast. We're shooting like mini-movies in a week. Your shooting time sounds like an episode of "Survivor". Sometimes it is - it really feels like that. We're out there for twelve to fifteen hours a day, sometimes. I wake up about two hours before I get picked up in the morning just to work out, because that's the only time I get a chance to. Do you still have the personal trainer? No, I train myself. What's the main thing you're doing to stay in shape? I get up spin. A spinning program is basically exercising on a bicycle. It's done to music and so forth. I get up and spin. That's what keeps me in shape, basically. And I go the the gym on the weekend, usually about once a week. When I was back in the states, I got certified to be a spinning instructor so that I could actually do it on my own here. I needed some kind of an exercise program that I could do that was high in cardiovascular work, but that I could do in my own house. I don't have time to go to classes or anything like that. Sometimes I get up at three in the morning to work out. You're a very disciplined young woman. I have to be. I'm running around half-naked all the time? How much break time do you get? Oh, my God! We shoot about eight pages a day. You don't get break time? No. My breaks are on the weekends. That just gives me the time to run my errands. Maybe go to the spa and relax, or something. They have a spa out there where you are, near the rain forest? Well, yeah! A lot of people think we're out in Never Never Land, but I actually live in a place called Main Beach which is right on the coast of Queensland, in surfers paradise. It's like a little tiny town area - kind of like Palm Springs. I'm hardly ever here, though. They usually just bring me back to my apartment to sleep, and that's about it. How long do you stay in Australia each year? I'm over here for about eight months every year. We shoot about twenty-two episodes each season. Any of your family ever get to come out? Yeah, my whole family actually came out last year. There was seven of them. They came out for about a week and a half. They just loved it. Are you happy with being a "sex-object" for right now instead of working in Shakespeare films and Broadway stuff? I'm content with it. I'm flattered by it. With my character, I can be considered a "sex-object", as you say, but on the other hand my character isn't just that. She's extremely strong-willed and strong-minded and can obviously take care of herself and that kind of thing. It's not like I'm just on "Baywatch". Do you have a favorite creature that you've had to battle so far on the show? I don't know if I have a favorite creature because when we're doing stuff with the dinosaurs, of course, it's all special effects. There's nothing ever there for us to actually work with. It's either a blue screen or work with thin air. I think my favorite character that I get to work with on the show, or favorite person, would be Rachel Blakely, who plays Marquerite. We don't get to work together all that much. When we do, we really enjoy it. Over the past couple of years we've just really grown to love each other's character on the show. When did you get to the point where you could pay your monthly bills by acting only? No waitress or delivery jobs. It came when I met the right agent, who is my best friend still to this day. She just believed in me. I think it's because I gave her the belief in myself. She saw that I had belief in myself to go through anything and that I was going to give 200% of myself. She in turn was going to do the same thing for me. That's what I tell a lot of people who are trying to find agents - that they need to find somebody who actually falls in love with them. You're going to have all the agents in the US sending you roses after this interview! They're going to love it. You can be the best actor in the world, but if you don't have somebody who gets on the phone to the casting director and convinces them to see you, you're not going to walk into their office on your own. I have somebody who believes in me, sometimes more than I do. I think that's the godsend, right there. She's not a huge agent. Even if I changed agencies I'd probably want to take her with me. I could move to a bigger agency, but then I'd be on the bottom of the totem pole. Those people wouldn't know anything about me, and they wouldn't care as much. They wouldn't have the heart behind it. I just came to a certain point in my life when all I wanted to do was act. It was the only thing that was going to make me happy. My agent still says, "Jen, I don't know how you did it. There were times when I didn't know how you were going to pay your rent." Neither did I. But she always came through by booking a job, whether it was a national commercial or a guest spot on a cable show or a bit part in a movie. I have always been able to pay my bills. You're in another country as we speak. How have the bombings of America been covered in Australia? My boyfriend called at two in the morning to tell me. It was on every channel over here. I think it has affected everybody. It's a catastrophic event that affects all of humanity. It was hard for me to go back to bed, but I had to. In the morning, it was really strange being on the set. We had a moment of silence, and there was just this eerie kind of sadness that everybody had throughout the day. Everybody was really kind of quiet, and just listening to the news. It was my first taste of what war would really be or what it has been in the past -- like living during WWI and WWII or in the `70's when people were going off to Vietnam. It was covered quite extensively over here because Australia is also a place of freedom, just like the United States and Canada. It's been hard on me because I feel so helpless over here as an American. I feel like I want to contribute in some way, even a little thing as giving blood, because I'm type "O". I feel like I can't do anything. As Americans, we definitely need to push through this kind of thing and show the world that we're stronger. There's a holy war that's going to be happening, I'd say over quite a few years. I don't think this is going to settled anytime soon. It's scary. I've got family and friends back home - my boyfriend is back there. His mother is in Florida. I'm hearing stories about Anthrax. It's just so frightening. Have you had to fly since then? No, but I'm actually flying back home in about two weeks to take a three week break. Then travel in peace. I appreciate all of the time that you've given me today. It's been my pleasure. |
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