Re: What Did You Watch? 2025-02-06 (Thursday)

Arthur Lipscomb <arthur@alum.calberkeley.org> wrote:

On 2/7/2025 8:58 AM, Adam H. Kerman wrote:

Arthur Lipscomb <arthur@alum.calberkeley.org> wrote:

Babylon 5 (blu-ray) - "Rising Star" Season 4, penultimate episode.  With
the liberation of Earth complete, Earth has to decide what to do about
Sheridan.  Meanwhile back on B5 the aliens form a new alliance, and it's
going to need a leader.  And Ivanova is clumsily written out of the
show.  :-/

Claudia Christian wouldn't come to terms. She wanted paid time off
during production weeks, which would have forced production to increase
the pay for the other actors with triggers in their contracts to avoid
favoritism for specific actors. After she'd rejected the contract, Jeff
Conaway tried to talk her into renewing anyway. There was a lot of back
and forth nonsense that the renewal offers didn't give the actors enough
time to reconsider, given that the show had been cancelled but there was
still time to offer new contracts to actors if the show were to go back
into production, which is what happened with the TNT 22-episode order.

I wasn't sympathetic toward her position and I have no idea what she
wanted to do that year in preference to Babylon 5.

I don't remember the specifics, but I do remember the controversy at the
time with her wanting time off to film something else.  The way I recall
it he offered her his word that he wouldn't write her into the episodes,
but she wanted something in writing which he couldn't do for contractual
reasons.  It's all a bit fuzzy, but I *think* I sided with her at the
time, although obviously bummed she didn't come back.

Straczynski's claim was that he would have accomodated her but was not
going to pay her for the weeks she wasn't available for production. I
never read that she dened this.