Dollhouse, Firefly, Angel, Buffy : news, photos & videos

Mark Sheppard - "Supernatural" Tv Series - 5x10 "Abandon All Hope" - Sneak Peek - Watch The Videos

Webmaster — 2009-11-18T20:42:10Z

Mark Sheppard - "Supernatural" Tv Series - 5x10 "Abandon All Hope" - Trailer - Watch The Video

Webmaster — 2009-11-18T19:37:55Z

Mark Sheppard - "Supernatural" Tv Series - 5x10 "Abandon All Hope" - He will be a guest

Webmaster — 2009-10-10T10:36:05Z

A "Supernatural" source has confirmed that the ubiquitous and talented Mark Sheppard (the actor who has his own Full Employment Act) will play a "pivotal" crossroads demon named Crowley in Episode 10 of the season. The episode is called "Abandon All Hope...," and it was written by Ben Edlund and will be directed by Phil Sgriccia. It's the final "Supernatural" episode of 2009 (the show will resume its fifth season with new episodes in 2010. More than a month without "Supernatural" ? Say it ain't so !). The episode is "epic" and will "definitely ... have the fans on the edge of their seats going into the holiday 'hellatus,'" my source said.

Mark Sheppard - "Warehouse 13" Tv Series - He was a guest star on Syfy yesterday

Webmaster — 2009-09-09T11:23:07Z

Click on the link :

http://www.syfy.com/warehouse13/

Mark A. Sheppard - "The Middleman" Tv Series - 2009 San Diego Comic Con - Watch The Video

Webmaster — 2009-08-02T11:32:53Z

Mark Sheppard - "Warehouse 13" Tv Series - Newsarama.com Interview

Webmaster — 2009-06-09T20:25:55Z

Actor Mark Sheppard is what you might call a geek culture icon. His geek-fu includes recurring roles on Battlestar Galactica and Firefly, along with spots on Medium, Middleman, and most recently Leverage.

The upcoming SciFi Channel series Warehouse 13 is next on his list, though he'll also soon be reaching the small screen in a different way. As the voice for the main character of Wii exclusive, The Conduit, Sheppard shows that he is not just a geek (or someone who plays one on TV), but he believes in the story telling of genre in all of its many forms. We caught up with the prolific actor at E3 2009 last week and talked about all this and more, finding out just what a geek he truly is.

Newsarama : So Mark, to introduce ourselves to you, we are at heart a comic book website...

Mark Sheppard : Oh, All my friends write comics ; Javier Grillo-Marxauch... I'm in the Middleman, you know, I'm Manservant Neville.

NRAMA : Oh yeah !

MS : Mark Verheiden, he's one of my dearest friends. They're all my buddies. Jane Espenson is now in there. Yeah, a lot of my friends write a lot of comics. I'll be at [San Diego] Comic-Con this year, and we might be doing a Middleman reading of the episode that never got aired, which is essentially the last graphic novel. The Middleman panel is coming together nicely. I never got to be David Horner, which is what I was supposed to be in the end, you know ?

NRAMA : I don't know why that show didn't pick up the way it should have.

MS : It was fun. I was always happy to do it. I love Javier. And John Rogers did Blue Beetle, I work with him on Leverage.

NRAMA : You've become a bit of a geek culture icon...

MS : Well thank you !

NRAMA : With your roles in Battlestar, Firefly, and now in...

MS : [laughs] No, keep going ! X-Files, Medium, Star Trek, there's a lot of stuff out there. Jake 2.0...

NRAMA : You're a genuine genre fan then ?

MS : Of course I am ! Why would I do it if I wasn't ? I mean, even Leverage, I worked with Dean Devlin, and Dean's the biggest geek of them all. He did Stargate. We love to tell stories, and we're always going to tell good stories.

NRAMA : What about sci-fi do you think allows for great stories to be told versus any other type ?

MS : Imagination ! No constraints of space and time, no constraints of character. Grand stories, grand ideas, grand thoughts, the nuances, everything. It's not a medical drama where you're being operated on by George Clooney, it's a medical drama where you're being operated on by aliens [laughs]. I mean, there's your choices. I like them both, but I get drawn to the fantasy level more. I'm just starting Warehouse 13, and I'm back on Leverage ; I'm dead in Medium so I can always go back. Hopefully I'll go back on Dollhouse this year, and we'll see what else comes up.

NRAMA : Outside of the myriad of sci-fi properties you've worked with, what're some of your other favorites ?

MS : I wanna play House's brother ! He says he's an only child, but it could be a complete lie.

NRAMA : Just so you can be a smartass on there, too ?

MS : Oh, I am a smartass. [laughs]. But there's a lot of good stuff out there. The fun thing is, there's a lot of new stuff being created. Just as much as I might want to be on something that exists, there are some great writers out there creating new things. It's always fun to wait and see what they're going to do. You know, I've had some auditions this year for shows that I didn't get, that I hope to end up on anyway, you know ? There's a lot of goodwill out there. I have a lot of fun doing what I do. I've met some great writers, great actors, and we get to play, have fun, and get paid for doing so. It's kind of an honor.

NRAMA : You mentioned a lot of your friends being in comics. Is that something you'd ever think about doing ?

MS : Well, we're everywhere. It doesn't matter what the medium is, if it works it works. People like Felicia Day and Joss Whedon are proving that it doesn't matter anymore, “I just do this.” We'll do everything now, telling a story is telling a story. I've read great graphic novels, and I've read some awful ones, but it's a great format for storytelling.

Let me ask you something, what did you think of The Dark Knight ?

NRAMA : Well, I thought it was amazing.

MS : Why ?

NRAMA : Well, it distilled the idea of who Batman, Joker, and Two-Face are and presented them in a pure form on the screen.

MS : And that's because Chris Nolan made a movie before, created the world for you, setup the world, and makes a movie where he doesn't have to create the world again, and just hits a homerun with it. He really made a character story. There are three characters in the film ! I love that Christian Bale stayed out of the way, and Heath Ledger's performance was a performance that others will be held up to for a long time. But man, that's what it's all about, we want better entertainment, be it games, comic books, movies, and we're not settling anymore. You know, people are smarter, so we just have to have better and better stuff in every medium.

NRAMA : Well that's a nice segue into The Conduit here. You're lending your voice to this game, and you just spoke about better entertainment, so how is this a better sci-fi shooter than what we've seen a hundred times already ?

MS : Well, the main difference between this and anything else is it's a first person shooter [FPS] that's designed from the ground up for the Wii platform. Then everyone goes “why ?” You get the controllers in your hand and you see why ; this is what it's built for. The Wii is the perfect analogue for the FPS. Shooting, pointing, scrolling, all these things work intuitively.

We have a 480p console here, and look at the graphics ? They pushed this as far, if not further than anyone else has pushed this console. When you go to the single player game, it's the most clever and evocative story beats. If you're gonna build a game, it's gotta be this good.

NRAMA : How early on did you get involved with this ?

MS : Pretty early. They've been doing this for about 22 months, and I've been around for the better part of a year, and I've been aware of it as long as they've been doing it.

NRAMA : And have you been a gamer prior to this ?

MS : Hell yeah. I'm a 360 player most of the time. I'm a big Call of Duty 4 player ; my nine year old and I play Call of Duty 4.

I spoke to Jason, let me back up. I was doing an episode of NCIS with my dad. It was written by Jesse Stern. He also wrote Call of Duty 4. So Jason from Infinity Ward was visiting and I was like, “Dude, I love your game, I play your game all the time,” and he said, “Your dad's Colonel Hargrove !” So we were having a geek out moment. I told him, “You got me with that nuclear bomb going off in the middle of the game,” which, if that's a spoiler, you guys are asleep. I told him “I spent 45 minutes crawling around trying to get out of a nuclear wasteland.” He told me he went through hell to get that into the game. Those are smart, intelligent writers. That's a great gaming company, and to know they're coming back to give us that next push, I'm excited for it. I like the way that company approaches what it is they do.

The game market is changing. Voice acting has gotten very very good. They're evolving, too.

Then you look at these guys [High Voltage, developers of Conduit], they spent 16 years making other people's games. Then out of the gate, this is what they come out with on their own. Hitting a home run is really hard in the gaming industry, and I think they have here. I love the game, I love the story. They're just a fantastic company the way they behave and the way the do everything. People are asking, “Are you going to put Wii Motion Plus support in ?” and they say no. They've already got great one to one analogue that works really well, why add something just to have that bullet point on the box ? I mean, who thinks like that anymore ? It's kind of different, it's kind of interesting.

Here, we have 12 player multiplayer on the Wii, supporting WiiSpeak.

NRAMA : And real matchmaking ! You don't have to use friend codes !

MS : Pretty good, huh ?

NRAMA : Yeah, that makes the Wii sound a lot more appetizing for online multiplayer.

MS : Well, Nintendo has its things that it does, but gamers tend to change that. You vote with your dollars. If you buy games like this, they'll make more games like this, and that's the bottom line.

You know, we're Call of Duty fans, and we're Batman fans, right ?

NRAMA : Right.

MS : Well, we want better Call of Duty games and we want better Batman movies and better Batman comics, and we want better Wii games, [so we buy what's good]. Screenshot from 'The Conduit'

Screenshot from 'The Conduit' ENLARGE IMAGE

NRAMA : Well, any other specific things that gamers should look forward to specifically with The Conduit ?

MS : I just like challenging the player. The multiplayer is just a ground-up design. There's a mode in here called Bounty Hunter that's just amazing. If I'm wandering around the level here, I have a target that I'm supposed to kill, that's my Bounty. If I shoot anybody else, I lose points. It's great fun. No one knows who has the bounty on them. The problem is, then, there's also a Bounty on my head, and I don't know who that is. When you have 12 people doing it, it's terrifying. I think there's a lot of playability in this, and I think this is the start of something special for Wii games.

NRAMA : After this experience, do you want to be involved in games again ?

MS : I hope so ! I had a great experience. It depends on what the game is and who wants to play. But these guys ? High Voltage ? Without question. I'd do it again in a minute.

The Conduit is due out exclusively on the Nintendo Wii June 23rd, 2009. Mark Sheppard can be seen in Season 2 of Leverage this summer on TNT and Season 1 of Warehouse 13 on SciFi Channel, amongst many other shows.

Mark Sheppard - "Warehouse 13" Tv Series - Scifiwire.com Interview

Webmaster — 2009-06-07T21:03:57Z

Mark Sheppard, who is well known to sci-fi fans for roles in Firefly and Battlestar Galactica, told SCI FI Wire that he shot a quick-turnaround guest appearance on SCI FI's upcoming original series Warehouse 13.

"A while back, I got a lovely call from my friends at SCI FI, nine and a half pages of dialogue, to do in a day," Sheppard said in an exclusive interview Wednesday at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles, where he was promoting The Conduit, in which he does a voice. "I was actually out doing publicity for The Conduit on the East Coast. And they called and said, 'Can you go to Toronto to rehearse on Sunday to shoot on Monday ?' I'm like, 'I'm in New York. It's not that hard.' So it was perfect." Mark Sheppard reveals \Warehouse 13\<\/i\> secrets and his guest role Mark Sheppard at the High Voltage Software booth at E3

In the show, two Secret Service agents (Eddie McClintock and Joanne Kelly) find themselves abruptly transferred to Warehouse 13, a massive, top-secret storage facility in windswept South Dakota that houses every strange artifact, mysterious relic, fantastical object and supernatural souvenir ever collected by the U.S. government.

Sheppard will guest-star as Mr. Valda, the enigmatic representative of the Regents, the mysterious organization that controls Warehouse 13. He disapproves of Artie's (Saul Rubinek) methods as the team leader of the Warehouse and isn't afraid to let him know it.

Following is an edited version of our interview with Sheppard. Warehouse 13 premieres on July 7 and will air on Tuesdays. The Conduit comes out on June 23. (Possible spoilers ahead !)

You flew to Toronto ?

Sheppard : I went up there and got to meet Jack Kenny, the executive producer. Amazing guy. There are really good people up there. I love what he's doing. SCI FI has been great to me. NBC and SCI FI. ... I went up and did several scenes with Saul Rubinek, who is one of my favorite actors, and CCH Pounder. They're just two powerhouse actors. They created a role for me, and I would like to think that the role will come back.

So tell us more about your character.

Sheppard : Well, Warehouse 13 is the repository of all supernatural stuff that has existed through time, and, as I understand it, tends to exist in the dominant superpower's realm. So one time it looked the Nazis were taking over, and it managed to burn itself down and reappeared a little later in America, who seems to have had control of it for a little bit. I've always liked the analogy that it's like the warehouse where they would have put the Ark of the Covenant from Raiders of the Lost Ark. But it's a little cleverer than that. It's funny and witty, and it's got some great acting in it, and I think it's something that could be really exciting for SCI FI. We're dealing with Lewis Carroll's mirror and James Braid's chair. Some interesting stuff there, you know ? It's very clever writing and very, very good acting all the way around.

I've been brought in as spokesperson for the Regents, who are the organization who look after the Warehouse. Sort of a Knights Templar for the Warehouse, if you will. It's an interesting position. It will be an interesting time. We shot our scenes in a very strange location for what it is that we were doing. It's going to be very interesting to see how this unfolds.

So where was it ?

Sheppard : No, no, no. I'm not going to give that away. That's the good stuff. It was a lot of fun. I'm on Leverage, where Saul Rubinek played the guest in the pilot. I kept crossing paths with him, and never actually meeting him. I'm a huge fan of his. He's a fabulous actor, and he plays the guy who's really in charge, who runs the scene but looks after the Warehouse. It's a really good story. ...

You've worked more than once with Joss Whedon, first in Firefly and now in Dollhouse.

Sheppard : Joss is special. I don't always know what he's doing. I don't always understand what he's doing. I don't know that he always understands what he's doing [laughs]. But he's still brilliant. He's a lot of fun to play with. He likes to mix it up a lot. I play a role in Dollhouse called Agent Tanaka. You want to work out why I'm playing an agent Tanaka as a character in the show ?

I was wondering ...

Sheppard : Well, hopefully someday we'll actually explain it to you. If we ever get to it. And he likes to mix stuff up. I mean, I'm such the obvious bad guy when you bring me into something. But he put me in this role where you're never quite sure what I'm going to end up as. It's a lot of fun for me, and I'm sure it makes him giggle a lot. ...

So you're here at E3 promoting the Wii game you do voice work on, The Conduit.

Sheppard : I love these guys [High Voltage Software, the game developers]. These guys are straight up and dead honest. It's the same thing to me. A great storyteller is a great storyteller. They've had 16 years of building other people's games. They go to build their own game, and they decide to make a first-person shooter for the Wii. I mean, how insane has that got to be ?

Until you play the game and you go, "Wow, this is the smartest thing I've ever seen. ... They made it for us." I mean, we all have Wiis, so we all want something to play on it. ... But they brought me in real early for this. ... And I'm a gamer, and I love to play, and there's nothing better for me than to go sit in a Conduit booth and say, "Hey, I'll play multiplayer with you guys. I'll play with you all day."

Mark Sheppard - "The Grinder" Wii Video Game - He voiced the trailer

Webmaster — 2009-06-01T12:10:32Z

More The Grinder News & Previews

Mark Sheppard - "High Voltage" Wii Video Game - He voices the main character

Webmaster — 2009-05-25T11:07:53Z

Whoaaah. I just, unexpectedly, met Mark Sheppard, who played one of the cooler characters on Battlestar Galactica.

Here's the story : This morning I had a meeting with videogame company High Voltage, which is set to release a Wii "shooter" game set in Washington, DC next month. I was mainly interested to see the game because I always get a kick out of seeing Washington depicted in videogames (Fallout 3 by Rockville's Bethesda Softworks is going to be the high mark in this area for a long while to come, I expect).

When the group showed up at the Post this morning, I went down to the lobby and shook hands with the guy I expected must be the game's producer. Nope, not the producer. It was actually Sheppard, who does voice acting in the game. You might also know him as the somewhat twisted, cat-toting attorney from Battlestar Galactica.

Sheppard plays the protagonist in the game, a government agent trying to get at the root of a conspiracy that's causing both aliens *and* terrorists to attack our fair city (seems like most games just give you one or the other....). The game's maker's say the game's recognizable settings include Reagan National Airport, the Jefferson Memorial and the White House. For the demo I got, the action mostly took place in a familiar-looking version of the DC metro, a locale also used extensively in Fallout 3.

Forgive me for not recognizing Galactica's President Romo Lampkin right away. You see, the actor "talent" doesn't usually show up on these field trips to show off a new videogame. For most actors, I believe, a videogame gig is a quickie paycheck, but it seems that Sheppard is lending a hand to the company to try and generate buzz for this title. Heck, he talked about how great he thinks the game is at least as much as High Voltage's chief creative officer Eric Nofsinger, who also came to show off the game.

Of course, as soon as it dawned on me that I was actually talking to one of the cooler characters from Battlestar Galactica, I hit the pause button and dragged Sheppard around the newsroom to introduce him to some of the show's fans around here.

Sheppard, for his part, got a picture of himself posing next to Woodward's office. He also swiped a notepad with the Washington Post logo on it. (Kind of reminds me of his BSG character's penchant for kleptomania. Hmm....)

Mark Sheppard - About his current work - Sfx.co.uk Interview

Webmaster — 2009-03-10T16:40:17Z

The actor who plays Romo Lampkin has been in about a million sci-fi TV shows. We persuaded the busiest man in genre television to write a foreword for our latest special, dedicated to Battlestar Galactica, and we also ran a four page interview in that edition – but even that wasn't enough space for all his cool anecdotes, and so here on the SFX website over the next couple of weeks we're able to share even more of what he told us. The 44-year-old actor has appeared in Dollhouse, Firefly, Star Trek, Medium and more, as well as being an accomplished musician, and we spoke to him about all of it when we met up at the last Starfury convention...

SFX : You've worked with Joss Whedon again and have a recurring role in Dollhouse, right ? Sheppard : "Yes. Playing Tanaka in Dollhouse is a lot of fun for me. It's pretty obvious from the character's name that I probably wasn't the first choice for the role ! But I think Joss wanted to include me, and they asked me if I wanted to fill this particular spot. And I think they rolled the spot around the fact that they've now got me. As I arrived right outside the stage, and Joss is there, and my first words were, 'Can I keep the name ?!' He's like, 'I knew you were gonna say that !' So I think it's gonna be one of those things that we're gonna have an interesting time portraying Tanaka. He'll have to come up with a reason for the name !"

SFX : You played Badger in Firefly - was that Joss's choice of name too ? Sheppard : "Joss was gonna play it ! He wrote that part for himself. I only found out during shooting it. Adam [Baldwin] was like, 'Dude, he wrote Badger for himself !' So Joss was riding me hard, he says, 'We were great until you found that out...' Then he lost it and he couldn't get through the scene."

SFX : Sounds like there's a real sense of community working on all these sci-fi shows in LA. Sheppard : "It's a very big community in LA. I got to work with people like Eddie [James Olmos] and Mary [McDonnell], and Jamie [Bamber], Tahmoh [Penikett] - these are some extraordinary people. Nathan Fillion, Adam Baldwin I've worked with four or five times. Alan Tudyk. I mean these people are so nice ! You've met them ; you know I'm not bullshitting. They're lovely people ! There's a reason why they carry on working, you know.

"I've got to know every director that I've worked with more than once. But it's not a slam-dunk. You know who you know. If you want to go to work, then you want to go to work with somebody who you know can do the job. That's why people get hired. That's why Javier [Grillo-Marxuach] will use the same directors and actors in a lot of his stuff. He knows he's gonna get what he wants.

"I've been very lucky as an actor. I've got some fantastic friends who write fantastic stuff. How great is your job when somebody goes, 'Mark, I've got something I'd like you to do which will bring you accolades, joy, and money.' [Laughs] I'm like, 'Nah, I don't feel like it. I want to go home and play on my PlayStation.' It's kind of marvellous ! I feel I've been very lucky, you know, with Joss and Javier. I've known Javier for a long time ; I've done many shows with him, and he's truly a great friend."

SFX : Speaking of which, you were in The Middleman recently, but The Middleman's all over now. Do you miss it ? Sheppard : "Middleman's gone. Javier sent me a finished script for the episode we never did - which he beautifully paid me for, which I thought was the most amazing thing ! He's an old, old friend, and he's a wonderful man. Manservant Neville was supposed to turn into David Warner in Time Bandits and everybody on the planet has this iPod-type thing which is the instrument of destruction for the universe. And we never got to shoot it ! I was miserable ! So my character built this whole thing up, and I don't ever get to shoot me losing it all. So he's finished the script, he sent to me, I think it's hysterical.

"He always writes the word 'Panama' into everything ! And I was like, 'Where is it this time ?' and he wrote it. The title of the last episode was 'The Palindrome Reversal Palindrome,' which is, 'a man, a plan, a canal, Panama.' Right ? So that's how he got 'Panama' into it !

"He's hoping to stage a reading at Comic Con if we can get everyone together, do a charity reading or something. His readings are brilliant, and I urge any Middleman fan, if you can, to assault Javier's website and see if he'll give up any footage of any of the readings that we did, because they are so funny. The show was brilliant, but some of the table reads are the best humour I have ever seen. Fans of the genre would love to hear it. Javier actually reads all the incidental character's lines and the scene descriptions at an incredible speed. I mean he's one of the most intelligent men you're ever gonna meet. It's like having a comic book read to you by a genius, which is great, and then having all the characters come to your house and read their parts. [Laughs] But yeah, it's special. I know he's gonna do it as a graphic novel so he can finish up."

SFX : What are you working on at the moment ? Sheppard : "I've got this amazing series with Dean Devlin called Leverage, in which Timothy Hutton is the lead. Christian Kane, who's another great genre guy, has got this wonderful role in this ; he's basically playing a very, very cool thug. Bright thug, which is fun. Just a great heist-type Ocean's Twelve-ish, slick, fast, funny, weird piece in which Timothy Hutton basically is Robin Hood. And they decided they needed a 'Sheriff of Nottingham'. So they wrote me as the Sheriff of Nottingham, which is the greatest honour ever. They've certainly written the character of the nemesis for me - but a nemesis that can win was the dictate, a nemesis that just is gonna kick their asses. I'm interested to see what viewers have to say about that. I'm really proud of that show."

SFX : So have you ever written like a spec script yourself ? Ever pitched a series ? Sheppard : "I've written and made films. I've sold scripts. I love directing, it's a wonderful thing for me, because I don't have to shave or get particularly dressed up ! And I liked it cos again it's the storytelling. It doesn't matter to me where it goes, but what I really want to do is tell tales. I love directing, but then I love all aspects of TV and movies."

SFX : Thanks Mark !