When it debuted last year on Syfy, "Warehouse 13" quickly became its highest rated original series in large part due to the chemistry between Eddie McClintock and Joanne Kelly, who star respectively as Peter Lattimer and Myka Bering: a pair Secret Service Agents tasked with protecting a vast storehouse of supernatural artifacts.
With the second season premiere debuting July 6 on Syfy, McClintock and Kelly recently took the time to talk about the new season, their relationship and more in this special extended interview.
Q: Is there any thing about shooing 'Warehouse 13' that continues to challenge you?
Eddie McClintock: The hours.
Joanne Kelly: Yeah, the physicality and the hours I think.
Eddie McClintock: Well, for me the challenge is to keep it fresh. We try and make sure that we don’t hit the same beats again and again in episode after episode. So Joanne and I try and communicate to one another if we feel like maybe a beat is stale or we’ve used it before. Just keeping the show fresh and new is a bit of a challenge for me.
Joanne Kelly: I think that as [Eddie] mentioned before with the hours, people get really tired and to keep the work — the focus on the work and to make sure that it’s continuously good despite the hours. It doesn’t matter if it’s 4:00 in the morning, it’s still important to make the scene as good as it can be and that sometimes is a challenge but one of the more interesting ones that we — I think we manage to pull it off most of the time.
Eddie McClintock: You know, people come over and they’re like "oh I feel so bad, you have worked so long and so many hours" and I’ve just been saying to them, "[I'm not a] ditch digger, coal miner [or an] oil rig worker. I mean, those people have hard jobs, not me. So when I hear myself say that, it keeps me grounded and keeps me from ragging too much about the hours.
Q: Do you have a favorite scene from the upcoming season?
Eddie McClintock: There is an episode called "Around the Bend" where an artifact has affected Pete to the point where he begins to lose his sanity. And I have a really good scene with Mark Sheppard that was really a challenge.
And then I had another scene with Myka and Claudia and Artie that — it’s always nice when we have scenes with all of us together because I really feel like we work pretty well together. So when you get everybody in there firing on the same wavelength, it really seems to be a great experience.
Joanne Kelly: My favorite episode this year which I think I always pick the one that was most challenging to me as an actor was probably an episode that involved an artifact that was a gryphon. I’m terrified to see that episode.
Q: Do either of you have input on the characterization of your characters? Do you talk to the writers at all?
Eddie McClintock: Yeah absolutely, I mean, I think the writers — no one really truly knows the characters better than we do. I guess at the end of the day even though they write the words for us. And if we have a problem basically we’ll ask, "what do you think about this?" and then generally what happens is they will say "well just try it as written and then we’ll do it your way too so we’ll have both." So that way everybody kind of is satisfied in that regard.
Q: What does the "Eureka" crossover mean for the show?
Eddie McClintock: Well, I think that "Eureka" has such a great following, I think it will be great for our show. You know, we went to Comic-Con last year and their panel was just enormous and I was just blown away. I really had no idea that the show is that popular.
Joanne Kelly: It’s such a great bunch of people and actors as well, like a really talented cast, really nice cast.
Eddie McClintock: Yeah, yeah.
Joanne Kelly: And a lot of them are Canadian as well. I’m Canadian so that makes me happy.
Eddie McClintock: We won’t hold that against them... But I think it will be good for both shows. And I think that it kind of opens up the door for maybe Pete to end up on 'Sanctuary' or I don’t know if — I don’t know what would happen if Pete ended up on 'Caprica.' I don’t know what they would make of him there.
But, you know, I think it’s great. Syfy has a great way of sharing the casts between shows and they don’t worry too much about it and they actually encourage it so I think it’s cool.
Q: How were you cast in 'Warehouse 13'? And what drew you to the characters?
Joanne Kelly: Basically it was a tough situation. Just like any network there were about ten Petes and ten Mykas. You know, you go in, you audition, and then they whittle it down and whittle it down and then there’s about ten of each characters. The network mixes and matches the characters in the room and there’s quite a story about the way that we got put together and I’ll let Eddie take over from here.
Eddie McClintock: Usually by the time you get to the test they have whittled it down to maybe two Petes and two Mykas. And in this case we walked in and there were like - yeah like seven or eight of each.
Joanne Kelly: All in suits all looking exactly.
Eddie McClintock: Everybody looking exactly the same. And I just thought "oh great, I’m not going to get this job either." This was shortly after the birth of my second son and I kind of had a thin year the year before.
Joanne Kelly: He was very sweaty.
Eddie McClintock: I was very sweaty inside and out and an actor’s greatest fear is to make a mistake during the test, at least that’s my greatest fear. You generally only get one chance in front of the network so you better not screw it up. And they had been mixing and matching us all day and I hadn’t gotten placed with Joanne so I was like "oh she must suck."
Joanne Kelly: He thought I sucked.
Eddie McClintock: So they finally said okay you two go in and we were in there together and we had been talking.
Joanne Kelly: We hadn’t been talking. Eddie you had your freak out session before we were in there together.
Eddie McClintock: Oh that’s right.
Joanne Kelly: So he comes out of the room and he’s like sweating and he likes takes off his tie and starts pacing. He starts talking about his baby’s birth and I’m like what is this dude talking about?
Eddie McClintock: Yeah we didn’t know each other at all.
Joanne Kelly: No and I’m pretty Zen at tests. Which is not how I am in real life at all.
Eddie McClintock: Yeah she actually was sitting like in a Lotus position.
Joanne Kelly: Not in a Lotus position but I’m very Zen.
Eddie McClintock: She had a (Bendy) on. So well what happened was the director put his arm around one of the other actors and I was like "that’s it, I’m not getting this job."
I took off my tie, I took off my jacket, and I said "you know what, I got my sons, they’re like two little birds in the nest and their necks are stretching right and they’re stretched and their mouths are open, they’re waiting for their mom to sweep in and drop in the chewed up, regurgitated worm and I’ve got no f***ing worm." And I was a little flipped out. And then literally Joanne was like "dude."
Joanne Kelly: I sat him down and I basically just talked him off the ledge. Tests are painful enough without some dude having a nervous breakdown.
Eddie McClintock: Hence her calling me dude.
Joanne Kelly: And they called us in the room the next - and we went in.
Eddie McClintock: And Joanne’s line — she was supposed to call me a showboat and she was like "listen you showbot." And so I just started going "Showbot, Showbot, Showbot," and doing a robot and then I did like a Michael Jackson kick with a hee hee verse.
Joanne Kelly: Yeah and I started getting mad at him and tried to get him back on track and everyone...
Eddie McClintock: And she punched me and told me to shut up. And so when we walked out apparently Mark Stern looked at everybody and goes there it is, that’s the show right there. And so ironically enough we kind of got our jobs through a mistake so it was pretty cool.
Joanne Kelly: Well we actually had to go in the next day because they had forgotten to turn on the sound. Yeah.
Eddie McClintock: The girl that was operating the camera forgot to turn on the sound.
Joanne Kelly: She is no longer with the network.
Eddie McClintock: So we had to go back the next day and they’re like just recreate the magic. Right.
Joanne Kelly: Give me a wand. So that was our test experience. That’s the story of our first meeting when we fell in love.
Q: Can you tell us a little bit more about your on-screen chemistry?
Eddie McClintock: Well Joanne and I figured we’d just get it over with the first week so we got together a couple of times and unfortunately she kind of fell for me and I had to tell her to back off. So since then she’s kind of, you know, she’s not quite as hands-on let’s say as she used to be.
Joanne Kelly: Shut up. You see how long I let that go for? Are you impressed?
Eddie McClintock: This is kind of mine and Joanne’s relationship in a nutshell. She and I were being pulled by a car — a camera truck andI was supposed to be driving, she’s sitting next to me, it’s a beautiful day, and we’re being driven. And I just looked at her and I said "do you ever get tired of the fact that I can never take anything serious?" And she goes "sometimes I want to stab you in the eye with a pencil. But if you were any other way, it just wouldn’t be the same."
Look, I have a personality that works for me sometimes and maybe not all the time but, Joanne is a good sport and she puts up with my Tom Foolery let’s say. And we truly are like a brother and sister. Like we don’t always like each other. We spend 15 hours a day 5 days a week [together]. I mean, most families don’t spend that amount of time with each other — so we’re in a very stressful situation. It’s like there’s always someone standing there with their watch pointing at their watch going "let’s go, let’s go, let’s go. Why did you mess up that line? Why don’t you know your lines? We’ve got to move. Haven’t you slept?"
I mean, so there’s a lot of opportunity for us to just not really care to like one another but, we love each other and I have a great deal of respect for Joanne and her work and I think that it reflects in the work that we have on screen. I think that’s maybe why it works so well.
Joanne Kelly: Yeah, you know, I think that a lot of actors can be very competitive with each other on screen and Eddie and I never competed. I think that’s one of the reasons [that] people call [it] chemistry is that we actually trust and like one another.
We never compete in things, we let each other do their own thing and I think the fact that we’re just so different, I think our personalities allow that to happen and again he puts up with me because I’m not the light of...
Eddie McClintock: The what?
Joanne Kelly: Why, are you curious?
Eddie McClintock: Yeah a little.
Joanne Kelly: I’m not the happiest chick in the world. Sometimes at 4:30 in the morning I can get a little testy and Eddie is the one, [who] tells me. He makes me laugh. So that’s all I was going to say, or not.
Eddie McClintock: I always love when I look over to Joanne and she has that look on her face like "do not look at me, do not touch me." So it causes me to like jump around — like it makes me want to jump around even more even if I’m kind of tired "I’m like ooh, all right, this is a good opportunity for me to poke sticks at Joanne." So it’s good man, it seems to work so far.
Q: Do either of you have a preference as to whether Pete and Myka should stay platonic partners or if they should start a relationship?
Eddie McClintock: Well I’ve been saying that in Season 15 Pete and Myka start bumping their wheelchairs into one another in kind of a mating ritual but that won’t be for a long time.
I mean, I like the fact that they have enough respect for the boundaries of their job and enough respect for one another not to cross the line. I think it makes Pete a more honorable guy. I think it lets Pete earn his other, you know, little idiosyncrasies and I think that it gives the character depth.
I mean, look, they’re two relatively attractive people that by all rights should want each other but again I think they have a respect and a love for each other that they don’t really go there.
Joanne Kelly: I think any human relationship, any interesting human relationship between two people is complex and it truly takes time to develop, anything that’s worth its salt. And for us to explore the romantic part of it without first exploring the complexities of these two people, the partnership that they’re creating and the friendship that they’re creating, I think would just short change everyone.
Q: Considering the high mortality of former Warehouse agents, does that affect the way Pete and Myka operate in season 2?
Eddie McClintock: I think that Pete never really allows himself to go there. Again I think part of his defense mechanism in regards to having those kind of thoughts are — his defense mechanism is his arrested development, the state of arrested development that he tends to live in. But, put him in a serious situation and you would want no one else backing you up.
But from the time that his father died at a young age, Pete has used his sense of humor as a way to escape and I think that’s what he does in regards to any kind of thoughts of being killed. And he’s a brave guy at heart and I don’t think that he’s all that concerned about that as long as he can die nobly and help the world and help his friends.
Joanne Kelly: I think Myka is — it’s quite the opposite for her. I mean, in [the first season] we see her having already lost a partner which I think comes from a lot of the mask that we see in Season 1, the kind of obsessive personality, the need for control, the need for structure.
I think that death is something that her partner’s death and her lover’s death was something that affected her and I think that’s why she holds onto everything so tightly and why she’s so regimented and has such structure in her life is because that’s something that she lives with every day and the fear of that happening again is a driving force behind her character. And I think that’s very much where her seriousness comes from.
Q: You have a number of impressive guest stars coming up this season, including Lindsay Wagner, Paula Garces and Tia Carrere. Can you tell us which characters they're going to portray?
Eddie McClintock: I know that they have released the fact that Lindsay Wagner plays the warehouse doctor so she has already been in one episode and I know she’s coming back to do another episode. Tia Carrere plays kind of a lost love interest for Pete.
Joanne Kelly: A lost love interest?
Eddie McClintock: Because they never - I don’t know if they ever...
Joanne Kelly: Actually consummated the relationship?
Eddie McClintock: I don’t know if they ever...
Joanne Kelly: I think they consummated it bunches.
Eddie McClintock: Yeah well there’s a lot of...
Joanne Kelly: But that’s just Myka’s point of view.
Eddie McClintock: A whole lot of consummating going on. Paula Garces of course plays...
Joanne Kelly: Yet another love interest...
Eddie McClintock: Love interest for Pete.
Joanne Kelly: There are so many love interests.
Eddie McClintock: They hooked me up pretty good this year.
Joanne Kelly: Yeah they kind of left me out to dry.
Eddie McClintock: Rene Auberjonois plays a love interest for Myka.
Joanne Kelly: Yes, Rene is sexy, sexy, sexy, sexy man.
Eddie McClintock: And it’s awesome man. I get to see all these people who, I grew up watching.
Joanne Kelly: We’ve been lucky.
Q: Will we meet Peter's parents this year or explore more of his background?
Eddie McClintock: In regards to his parents, no. I think we kind of touch on Pete’s alcoholism and we touch on his military history. He’s a former Marine and that was a thing that I really wanted. I wanted him to be an ex former Marine. I thought that it lent more credibility to [him]. It gave Pete some gravitas.
And it was a good opportunity for me to kind of give a shout out to all the people in the armed forces who have lived and died and continue to fight for our country. That’s just the way I kind of grew up so that was important for me. And so yeah, I think we continue to find out more and more about all the characters throughout the show.
Q: Is there any artifact that hasn't been on the show yet that you'd like to see?
Eddie McClintock: Well, I’ve kind of been saying that I’d love to have Janis Joplin’s backstage pass from Woodstock and whoever held this backstage pass could go to any concert through time. And so it would allow me to go back and see early Beatles or go see Black Sabbath or the Doors or Credence and all this music that my dad exposed me to as a kid that I never was able to see live.
I was supposed to go see Led Zeppelin when I was in like the 8th or 9th grade and then John Bonham died and I never was able to. For me music is such a huge part of my life and I use songs like memory triggers. So a lot of my memories of being a kid and growing up are associated with different songs. So it would be the backstage Janis Joplin laminate pass from Woodstock.
Joanne Kelly: If I could meet one person dead or alive it would be Shakespeare so we already did Edgar Allen Poe’s pen so I think it would be uninventive of me to say that. Maybe like Shakespeare's hat or Shakespeare’s — something so I could meet him.
Eddie McClintock: Shakespeare’s codpiece.
Joanne Kelly: No.
Q: Do either of you play with any of the artifact props? And if so, which ones?
Joanne Kelly: Oh that’s more of an Eddie question.
Eddie McClintock: No I...
Joanne Kelly: He tries to break stuff. He tries breaking down the door, it’s like 3:00 in the morning, he has to break down a door. He actually tries to break - I’m like do you understand if you actually break the door we have to build a new door and reset it and we will be here until 6:00 am. He continues to try to break the door.
Eddie McClintock: Well how many times do you get kind of permission to kick a door as hard as you can?
Joanne Kelly: A lot in the show. We get lots of time.
Eddie McClintock: Anytime I get an opportunity to kick the door or to slam into something, I like to break it. It looks real.
Joanne Kelly: Yeah, he just likes to break it, not because it looks real.
Eddie McClintock: Last year Joanne threw me through the wall.
Joanne Kelly: Oh I didn’t really throw you through the — well, I kind of did.
Eddie McClintock: She had her hands on me and I kind of threw myself around.
Joanne Kelly: No I threw you through the wall.
Eddie McClintock: Okay she threw me. And so, they worry that I’m going to break other things.
Joanne Kelly: Well I do all the stunts.
Eddie McClintock: On my body instead of the props per se.
Joanne Kelly: Yeah Eddie likes to break his body.
Eddie McClintock: Right and I like to break dance.
Q: After a full season on the show, do the scripts still surprise or scare you?
Joanne Kelly: Yeah, every time I get a script it scares the living daylights out of me with what they have planned sometimes. There is never a dull moment.
Eddie McClintock: To me it’s like Christmas. It’s like opening a present before sneaking and opening a present because I’m like "oh what do I get to play - I get to do that? I get to break a door because I love breaking doors."
Joanne Kelly: What is it with doors today?
Eddie McClintock: And it’s really a lot of fun. Because we get to do so many different things on the show.
Joanne Kelly: Yeah and this season, the second season, is even...
Eddie McClintock: Even more so.
Joanne Kelly: Even more so like I’m even more scared to pick up my scripts this year than I was last year so they have a lot planned.
Eddie McClintock: The show has gotten bigger, better, faster, and funnier I think.
Joanne Kelly: Bigger, better, faster, stronger.
Q: Earlier, you mentioned that your relationship with each other is a lot like Pete and Myka's relationship. How would each of you describe your co-star's similarities to their character?
Eddie McClintock: Why don’t you go first Jo?
Joanne Kelly: Why? I don’t want to.
Eddie McClintock: All right, I’ll go first. You know, I am impulsive... You know the expression don’t get your panties in a bunch Priscilla? So Myka is tall and Joanne is — Myka has very long legs and so does Joanne, Myka is very pretty and so is Joanne. You know... I see Joanne as a right brain, more of a right brain thinker and I think Myka is the same way. Myka is smart, Joanne is very, very smart. And Myka wants to give Pete all the money in her bank account and so Joanne wants to give Eddie all the money in her bank account. And go.
Joanne Kelly: I think everything you need to know you’ve just heard... I’m a big believer that every character you play you take a little piece of you and you just kind of run with it. In this case I think the writers tend to write for who they think we are as people and what we bring to work. And I’m very focused at work and very practical and very problem solving and that is who Myka is. And Eddie is five years old.
Eddie McClintock: You can say it.
Joanne Kelly: He’s five years old. But that’s — and that’s what is so fun.
Eddie McClintock: I know you are but what am I?
Joanne Kelly: Five years old. I think there’s a lightness and a real love of what he does and a real, you know, mischievousness that makes it, you know, mentally watchable. So I think that kind of my stick up the assedness and his...
Eddie McClintock: You made up a word.
Joanne Kelly: And his... lightness and kind of craziness, we allow each other to take that to the nth degree.
Q: Are either of you surprised that the show is such a hit among a variety of viewers?
Eddie McClintock: Am I surprised? I’m always surprised when something is a hit. I mean, the fact that viewers have 400 channels to look at and the show needs to be an immediate success or the networks kill the show. So I’m surprised that it’s a big hit.
Am I surprised that it’s a hit with such a wide audience? No I think that was kind of our — certainly it was my hopes that, ['Warehouse 13'] could be a show that would bring a family together, like something that everybody could like say "okay, you make the popcorn, I’ll get the blankets, you turn the lights down" and everybody sits and watches it. And the next day at the breakfast table they could talk about the show.
It’s kind of an old fashioned notion. But it just seems like maybe it would be nice to get back to that.
I know there were shows like that in the past and we used to do that when I was a kid. We’d watch "The Night Stalker," you know, Kolchak and everybody would get a little creeped out. it’s just such a great memory for me as a kid.
And if I can create those kind of memories for some other kid that has an overactive imagination like I seemed to have when I was a kid then that would be amazing. That’s kind of the dream come true for me.
Q: If the show goes on for years and years, do you think "Warehouse 13" might hit a point where it starts to go stale?
Eddie McClintock: You know, if you see the shots of the warehouse, the warehouse is massive. I mean, it goes on for... miles.
Joanne Kelly: It’s infinite.
Eddie McClintock: And so, as far as where the story can go, as long as they don’t put me on water skis in an Evel Knievel outfit and have me jump a shark... I’m still there, I’m still ready to go. I remember watching that episode and even I at that age was like "what? What are we doing here?"
So yeah, I think as long as you continue to enjoy what we’re doing and enjoy each other, I’m in. I would like the show to get moved back to LA, I’m not thrilled that we’re in Toronto just because my family is in LA.
