Michael Trucco Talks Battlestar, Big Bang and One Huge Meteor Storm

Sometimes people recognize him as Samuel Anders from Battlestar Galactica. Other people know him as Cooper Lee from One Tree Hill and if you’re a Big Bang Theory fan, you’ll remember him as the brainy but hunky Dr. Underhill in the infamous Christmas episode. But with more than 40 different roles to his credit, Michael Trucco says most people recognize him as Michael Trucco and that’s a nice place for any actor to be.

This weekend, Michael runs headlong into danger as the star of Syfy’s original movie Meteor Storm. Having survived the rain of fire from the sky, he and I both were muddling through the worst LA rainstorm in recent years when we sat down to chat.  Bright, funny and immensely welcoming,  Michael talked with me about the challenges of making a disaster film, his biggest roles on TV and the career change that changed his life.

Here’s ten minutes with Michael Trucco:

Cynthia: Let’s start by talking about what goes into making a disaster movie. What are some of the challenges involved and how close were you to some of the explosions?

Michael: There’s a lot of discussion of the scene before you start to shoot something, there’s a lot of storyboards, our director and our special effects guys, they get together and they did a really good job of explaining it to us before each shot. They would show us renderings done on the computer of what the final scene was going to look like once they had put all the plates in, but at the end of the day you gotta roll up on a motorcycle and look at a bridge collapse that’s just not there, and it’s a little bit daunting at times. So the challenge in making a movie of this scale is being able to conjure and fabricate images of impending doom that will be seen on screen but at the time you just get talked through it and the director’s going… ‘and then that blows up, and there’s collapsing and there’s devastation and there’s fire’ …you know, because there’s only so much you can do.  I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but you can’t actually destroy the city of San Francisco to make a movie

Cynthia: Really?

Michael: Yeah, they won’t let you do it, it’s weird. We were gonna just kind of carpet bomb and they said no.

Cynthia: I’m pretty sure Irwin Allen did it when he made Towering Inferno, and I loved the little shout out to that film in Meteor Storm.

Michael: There you go, that was intentional so I’m glad you said that.  We’ve been talking about this as sort of in the vein of those 70’s disaster movies, this is certainly not some big you know, Roland Emmerich disaster 2012. We don’t have that kind of a budget, nor do you need it. I think in a good disaster movie you have your story, you put the world in to some sort of impending doom and hopefully all’s well that ends well.

Cynthia: I was particularly surprised by the storm strikes so quickly and then it’s over, and I thought now what are they going to do for an hour and a half?

Michael: Yeah, when I read that is was like, ‘wow they don’t waste any time here,’ they just get right in it. In it to win it. Which I like.  I like that we don’t mess around, just boom and then things start falling, but then there’s. . . you know it goes on in certain ways and it gets more intense and a hell of a lot of fun dodging fireballs coming out the sky that just aren’t there.

Cynthia: Was anything real?

Michael: We did some stuff. There was that guy tossing me out of a car, we lit some things on fire and we had our fair share of explosions and used pyrotechnics for certain explosions. They can throw things with debris cannons, which is basically compressed air and they put a bunch of cork and dirt and dust in them and blow those out of the cannon and that looks pretty realistic. We crashed some cars and turned them on their side and got flame bars and stuff, I like that and for me that just heightens the stakes, heightens the reality.

Cynthia: So I wonder, are you calm under pressure?

Michael: Yes, absolutely.  I was raised the son of a policeman. My father retired as a police captain after 40 years and there’s something inherently stoic in his mannerisms that I think I, in turn, received in my DNA.  I’ve never seen anyone as collected under pressure as my dad, but I think that it just came with his job you know. You have to be able to keep your head clear, and the more you are, the less you incite panic, and that’s generally where things go awry in a dramatic or traumatic situation. I’m a good ballast to my wife. She’s on the other end of the spectrum. She can jump from 0 to 60 just like ‘bang!’… ‘What’s going on?’ I’m just like, ‘wait, hold on a second, it’s just the alarm. Let’s just figure out why it went off, the cat maybe opened up a window. Let’s assess the situation and deal with it accordingly.’ I got that from my Dad, he was like that growing up and I think I have inherited some of that to a degree, and I like that, playing characters like that.

Cynthia: Did you ever consider going into law enforcement yourself?

Michael: Oh yeah absolutely. Before I was a theatre major I was a criminal justice major, because at the time, you know, if your dad’s a cobbler it’s not unlikely that you’re going to make shoes.

Cynthia: So how’d you end up becoming an actor?

Michael: Because he said ‘nah man, you should go try out for one of those plays at the university there. I’d done some high school stuff and I think his intention was ‘be a well rounded individual, extracurricular activities, a new environment. He was saying socialize a little bit. That first audition for a theatre production at Santa Clara University, the chair of the theatre department talked me into taking a class called ‘Theatre for Non Majors’ and upon completing “Theatre for Non Majors” she talked me into changing my major into acting. You can imagine that phone call home.  ‘Hey dad, mom, guess what? Remember that college education we talked about? Yeah? Well mines going to be studying Shakespeare.”

Cynthia: You could say ‘I’m not a police officer but I play one on TV.’

Michael: That’s it exactly. For years that’s always been another dream, like eventually I’d love to be able to play a cop, a beat cop, like a uniform, in the car, the motorcycle cops at my back, because I have a keen insight into that world. When I watch cop shows, I always take my cue from my dad and he would say what’s a good cop show? NYPD Blue, that’s a good cop show, they got it right. See the way those guys interrogate that suspect, see the way those detectives…that’s right, that’s the way you do it. He hated when they put on funny dialogue, or when the cops are yelling on the radio, like they would never talk that much on the radio. You know so, so yeah, one day somewhere down the line I’d love to be able to play a cop; that would be great.

Come back tomorrow for Part Two, where Michael talks about what he’s taken away from his time on Galactica and the most adventurous thing he’s ever done.

Don’t forget to set your DVR for Meteor Storm with Michael Trucco, Invasion’s Kari Matchett and Flash Gordon star Eric Johnson. It premieres on Saturday, January 30, 2010 at 9:00 on Syfy.

Photos: Screencaps from Meteor Storm