Actor is willing to go where role in ‘Stargate’ takes him

“When the actor reads a script, they instantly go to the end: ‘What happens to ME?’... I don’t want to know what happens to me! I don’t want to know whether I live or die.”

Robert Carlyle

Actor

By FRAZIER MOORE

AP Television Writer

NEW YORK — Whether in Yankee Stadium or the Land of Oz, getting home is an all-consuming mission.

But not on “Stargate Universe.” Not for Dr. Nicholas Rush. It seems he would rather probe the far reaches of science while stranded in a rattletrap spaceship billions of light years from home.

As played by Robert Carlyle, Rush is at the core of “SGU,” a meditative thriller premiering recently on the Syfy network and watched by more than 2 million viewers. Airing Friday at 9 p.m., it builds on the mythology of the 1994 film “Stargate” and follow-up series “Stargate SG-1” and “Stargate Atlantis.”

The titular Stargates represent a perilous but potentially lifesaving transport system for the voyagers. Found throughout the universe (but don’t expect Mapquest to show you where), each is an imposing, ringlike portal stretched with a permeable membrane that allows the brave or brash to pass through and emerge who-knows-where, like in a hopscotch game spread across the cosmos.

The Stargates offer a chance at connect-the-dots salvation. Or maybe doom.

Rush, the brilliant scientist, just wants to figure it all out. Home definitely isn’t where his heart is, which puts him in regular conflict with his fellow journeyers, played by co-stars Ming-Na, Elyse Levesque, Lou Diamond Phillips, David Blue, Alaina Huffman, Louis Ferreira, Jamil Walker Smith and Brian J. Smith.

“This ship, coming here, was my destiny,” Rush declares. “My life’s work was to be here.”

Rush is a loner, who may or may not be trustworthy, who may be operating on sound scientific motives or, instead, in a defiant display of hubris.

“He’s very isolated, very much on his own,” Carlyle says. “He only goes to people if he needs them.” And they don’t like his neediness any more than he does.

Rush leaves viewers delightfully confused: Is this the one guy on board who, despite the others’ pushback, has a handle on their crisis? Or is he a narcissistic suicidal scoundrel? Viewers don’t know, and they feel for him and doubt him at the same time.

Shooting his 1991 breakthrough film role “Riff-Riff,” Carlyle was never privy to a full script, just each day’s pages from director Ken Loach.

“That’s the way I started — which I love,” Carlyle says. “When the actor reads a script, they instantly go to the end: ‘What happens to ME?’... I don’t want to know what happens to me! I don’t want to know whether I live or die.”