So the men of Warehouse 13 sat down to talk all things holiday and the Warehouse 13 holiday special. They’re both very personable fellows with McClintock being personality plus. So without further ado let’s see what they had to say:
Eddie McClintock started off the interview right by sharing his favorite current holiday traditions:
“Well, my favorite holiday tradition would be having to pick my mom off the kitchen floor and put her into a cold shower, after she had had too much cooking sherry. But other than that, I have two sons now and they’re just starting to really enjoy Christmas and the holidays and we try and make sure to put out some cookies and milk for Santa and make sure that they have lots of toys under the tree as it were.”
Next Eddie and Saul share their favorite parts of working on the holiday special:
Eddie McClintock: I think the Christmas episode is it’s right in line with what we’ve always tried to do with the Warehouse 13 episodes. They’re a lot of fun and there’s some tense moments but again at its heart it’s a nice family show about this family of people that have come together at this strange warehouse out in South Dakota and I think it just stays true to the series and it’s fun.
And Paul Blackthorne who is our guest star does an amazing job and I guess my favorite part was when the nutcracker…
Saul Rubinek: I could’ve told you that that was his favorite part just because he gets to say the word nutcracker.
Eddie McClintock: And I get to say nuts.
Saul Rubinek: Yeah you’ve talked long enough. I have three favorite things. One is that I got to work with Judd Hirsch who I’d never met but had been such a fan of for so many years and we’d never even meet before, and that was a huge thrill, he’s a wonderful performer, great actor and was just a pleasure to have him on the show, and they had to age him up a little bit to make him old enough to be my dad, but that was a joy.
And the second thing was that for the first time Jack Kenny, our head writer and show runner directed an episode and he was wonderful to work with and it was great to have him as the director of the show, and he wrote the script as well, so that was a pleasure, a real pleasure.
And then I got to perform this little nocturne, or at least part of it, that I had been writing myself on the piano, which took the place of the nocturne that Artie has been working on for years that his father is so happy that he finished it. So I got to do that, so those were three great things for me.
Ever wonder what these two characters would want for holiday gifts? Saul and Eddie speculate:
Eddie McClintock: Pete would like to get all of his CD collection back because apparently it was lost in the mail from Washington, D.C. to South Dakota. He’s kind of stuck out there at Leena’s with no tunes, because Leena has Justin Bieber and she plays the same CD all day.
Saul Rubinek: That’s funny.
Eddie McClintock: I know.
Saul Rubinek: I think it actually happens for Artie. I think Artie is kind of like a Christmas and Hanukkah grump and he’s kind of not really into all of that stuff and really would prefer it all to go away, and partly because it would remind him of the family that he doesn’t have and he’s reminded that he does already have a family, which are these people, in fact we’re all reminded of that in this episode.
And Artie’s life has been so solitary and so removed from ordinary family life and he has to deal with so many dark things that holiday season for many people around the world brings up what they don’t have and what they can’t have, and that’s certainly true for Artie and it’s brought home to him in a very real way by having his estranged father as part of the episode.
Of course we want to know if there’s an artifact in the holiday special. You’d expect that there would be since these special little antiques are integral to the formula but what sort of artifact could it be. The fellows don’t want to answer but we give it a try anyway.
Saul Rubinek: There always are, right. There always are and so yes absolutely there are, there is stuff that we can’t talk about on pain of death but that’s one of the joys of the show is that they throw in stuff more than one usually. But in this case in our show I think it’s just one…
…it’s just the one. It’s unusual, usually they throw in a bunch but it’s a special Christmas artifact that’s all we can tell you.
If you’re like us you may be wondering if Myka’s leaving at the end of last season will have any impact on this special episode.
Saul Rubinek: No. The holiday episode is a stand alone, this Christmas episode; this Christmas/Hanukkah episode is really called the long lost episode in a way. It’s a standalone episode that has nothing to do with any of the other story arcs and…
The two actors also share their thoughts on their character’s love lives in future episodes:
Saul Rubinek: Well I mean if Eddie’s character and Allison’s character have anything to do with it they would like to have Artie hook up with somebody just to get him off their back so much, but also because I think that they want to see him have love and some kind of connection other than work in his life.
And so he would but he’s very reluctant, and people get stuck in their ways when they get older and if he hasn’t had it already he would be very nervous about it.
We definitely, or I know that we’re going to have Lindsay Wagner back, and it’s a wonderful character that she and the writers have created and it’s a very interesting little dance that’s going on between Artie and her and that Pete is trying to encourage.
One of my favorite episodes of last season was this, when Eddie and I got to work with each other, actually the truth is that whenever Eddie and I get to work with each other now we have a blast. We don’t do it that often, very often you know he’s with Myka and I’m with Allison which have their own joys for us but when we have gotten together in episodes and we do have byplay we really have a blast, so that’s some of the favorite stuff we’ve done.
Eddie McClintock: Yeah I mean for me watching Saul and getting to see Lindsay Wagner and Saul work together for me was just, two such great pros and I just sat, you know if you remember the scene up in the loft where Lindsay’s character is inadvertently tickling Saul, or Artie and it was just so great.
I mean it was funny and it was kind of one of those surreal moments for me as an actor, who by all rights should be probably digging a ditch in Ohio somewhere that I can sit back and watch two pros finesse a scene and I always try and learn from stuff like that.
So I would love to see Lindsay come back and have an opportunity to participate in some more of those scenes.
Saul and Eddie have truly been threatened within inches of their lives if they reveal anything which is evident when they attempt to discuss what’s to come in season three:
Saul Rubinek: We’ve been told some stuff so I can’t tell you. If I haven’t been told anything I could’ve started guessing. Now I feel if I pretend to guess stuff I’m going to lead you away from what I actually know is going to happen and we’re not…
…Here’s what’s really going on is that they’re going to have to deal one way or another with the fact that Myka has left the warehouse and try to figure out what to do about that so obviously that’s going to be dealt with.
And the other thing is you’ve got a show that people like, the audiences have liked it, it’s a hit show for them, they’re going to continue doing what they’ve been doing, but that said you know we’ve had unpredictable shows. We’ve had two unpredictable seasons.
We’ve had villains who are not painted with just one color. They’ve been wonderful, Jaime Murray and Roger Rees have played multi-faceted characters, great actors and the writing has matched their inclusion in the show.
So giving them a lot to work with and I suspect that that’s going to be something that will continue, giving an audience the unexpected and continuing that family feeling that we’ve got on the show and that people care about us.
As far as the particular adventures are concerned and what the arcs are they’re, that’s going to be stuff that’s going to be revealed probably starting with the first episode you’ll start to get a feel for where that’s going to go.
And we love the fact that our fans guess and make, look we like the fact that our fans are critical as well. If they’re involved in the show and there are things that they don’t like they talk to each other. A lot of people read what they like and what they don’t like and it’s a new universe, as Eddie said a few interviews ago. It’s a brand new universe. We have an interactive television audience that’s never existed this way before.
I mean it’s really by leaps and bounds so it’s going to be a new media. I just read for example there was some kind of press release recently that said there was going to be a comic book of Warehouse 13.
I’m hoping that eventually there’ll be a really good game, that there’ll be webisodes dealing not necessarily even with our characters, that the universe of this show can expand on a lot of levels because it’s 3,000 years old this warehouse and been doing things for a long time.
A lot of great stories can be told in different ways so I think that the modern term for this is called transmedia.
It was inevitable that we’d have to know how these two got into the holiday spirit when they were shooting this episode in the middle of the summer:
Saul Rubinek: You know there’s an old joke about doing winter in summer. The writers on MASH used to get, years ago used to like getting comments from actors and they used to get all kinds of notes.
But then sometimes, this is a story Alan Alda told me, that sometimes you know one actor would say well he’s getting changes, maybe I should get changes and sometimes when they got too many changes the writers would write a winter episode shot in 102 degree Calabasas desert where they’d be around a barrel filled with fire wearing parkas, you know.
So they’d be shooting this in 102-degree weather and that was the way they would get back at the actors. It was tough, we were hot, it was August and it was (unintelligible) turn into winter and covered in whatever they called, whatever that snow was, I think that’s probably why they set part of the episode in Los Angeles so that they could at least get outside and do summer looking Christmas but.
Eddie McClintock: Yeah the snowball that Myka throws at Pete… it hits me in the back of the head and then it kind of fell down into my shirt and it was this gooey, the glyceriney like conglomeration of like goo. It was like a ball of goo.
Saul Rubinek: Excellent. A snotball.
Eddie McClintock: A snowy snotball if you will…
These two continued to clown around with each other in a very relaxed lengthy interview. They are both obviously excited about Warehouse 13 and they take pride in the work. The show airs tonight at9 Central!
Check out our interview with Collin Ferguson from Eureka which also has a holiday special tonight