Flashback Friday: Gigi Edgley Gives Back

(Once upon a time I got to sit down with actress Gigi Edgley in a semi-quiet corner of the Bay Point Mariott (now Wyndham) conference center. The former star of Farscape was in town as part of a sci-fi convention. She was lovely and charming and sweet, and genuinely enjoyed being there and meeting fans. (Unlike a couple of others who were there to make money by autographing stuff.) I got photos of her chatting with my friends Jayson Kretzer and Mattie Jankowski in the artists' room. (Though I couldn't locate those shots for this post.) Anyway, this interview ran in the News Herald's weekly Entertainer tab on June 12, 2008, the weekend following the event.)

Gigi Edgley Gives Back

Photo by Andrew Wardlow/The News Herald

Gigi Edgley thinks she may be on the verge of creating her own multimedia entertainment empire -- if she doesn't lose track of herself in the process.

"It's just been stunning, the adventures of the last sort of two or three months," she said. "I woke up this morning like, 'Where am I now?'"

The Australian actress, best known for her role as "Chiana" on the long-running Sci Fi Channel series Farscape, was in Panama City Beach recently. She was a featured guest at the "Wrath of Con" science fiction convention held at Marriott's Bay Point Resort.

Fans have kept Farscape alive since it went off the air in 2002. Their support helped revive it for a mini-series in 2005, and it is now advertised to return to SciFi.com later this year in the form of 10 all-new webisodes produced by the Jim Henson Co. (2013 edit: This web series never came to be.)

"I wanted to give something back," Edgley said, explaining why she attends these "cons" all over the world.

Edgley as 'Chiana'

Throughout the three-day Wrath of Con, Edgley mingled with fans in the vendor room, talked with artists, signed autographs, traded friendly barbs with fellow guests, and hit the dance floor during after-hours parties. One afternoon, she sat still for an interview in the lobby of the convention center, laughed easily, and showed off samples of her work.

She's now based in Los Angeles, but in recent weeks she has opened a film (Newcastle) at the Tribeca festival in New York; visited Biloxi, Miss., and Seattle, Wash., for more sci-fi conventions; shot a new movie in Louisiana; and made a stopover to see her family Down Under.

In the meantime, she has also been working on an album (the EP So it Seems is now available), written a comic book (Blue Shift) and a graphic novel (Nobody Knows), and filmed vignettes based on the comic -- using her EP as background music for the short films.

This kind of frantic juggling is second nature to Edgley: Her list of skills includes dance, singing, martial arts, trapeze and fire twirling.

"It's been amazing," she said. "It's been really good to learn how to put my writer's cap on and following my passion into directing and producing and creating projects that, really, I'm very passionate about.  It's been very exciting."

(The rest of the interview is here, in this video:)