Summer Glau

This Sunday, Lifetime Movie Network invites you to tag along on a ‘Deadly Honeymoon,’ during which a couple’s newlywed nirvana is turned into a nightmare when the groom (’The O.C.’s Chris Carmack) goes missing aboard a cruise ship. Summer Glau, who stars as the soon-suspected bride, revealed what she found creepy about the story, reflected on her ‘Terminator’ and ‘Firefly’ runs, and gave us a peek at the geeky-cool new pilot she just filmed.

The opening scenes of ‘Deadly Honeymoon’ are set at a beach wedding. Was that your first time ever donning a wedding dress?

Yes.… [Laughs]

How did it feel? Did you get all girly?

[Sheepish] I’m afraid so! It was really fun. I got to be married in Hawaii, in a beautiful dress… and then everything went terribly wrong.

Having done this TV-movie, have you ruled out a honeymoon cruise for when your day comes?

It’s not my first choice, no! I’ve heard a lot of stories since making that movie. “Well, there was this one time when so-and-so disappeared….” It’s kind of scary.

Your character at one point checks out websites that chronicle the number of cruise ship passengers who are mysteriously lost at sea. Did you do any research of your own?

When I read the script, I just thought it was a cool character. But once we got to Hawaii and started talking about my strategy as an actress, I started to think about it more and more. The most interesting thing to me was that certain people don’t want to be involved, because it’s international waters…. That was creepy to me.

Yeah, we see that here with the ship captain who tries to shrug off the suggestion of possible foul play. Did the cruise ship you filmed on actually sail anywhere… or were you not on an actual ship?

No, we weren’t; it was all green-screen. Some of the crew got to go on a cruise to do certain shots, but we had to be very creative about how we shot the deck scenes. We’d shoot by a pool, then make it look like [it was] a cruise ship. It’s funny because when we did ‘The Cape,’ some of those shots were of me running down the halls of the actual Queen Mary.

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Looking back on your past roles… Do you know what would have been next on ‘Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles‘? It looks like you would have been playing a human.

It looked that way, and I was really excited. [Executive producer] Josh [Friedman] had some amazing ideas for Season 3 and we were looking forward to exploring the past-slash-future. Yeah, we were going to be seeing Allison [Terminator Cameron’s human template] a lot more.

When ‘Terminator’ got canceled, did it soothe the sting at all that Joss Whedon quickly grabbed you for some ‘Dollhouse‘ episodes?

Oh yeah. I had a great time, and I had a blast figuring out how I wanted to play Bennett.

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It’s interesting to look at the cast of Joss’ ‘Firefly‘ – Nathan Fillion (’Castle’), Morena Baccarin (’V’), Adam Baldwin (’Chuck’), Alan Tudyk (’Dollhouse,’ the new ‘Rockford Files’), you… Virtually everyone has remained steadily employed since that short-lived series wrapped. That’s rather impressive.

It is. I was in amazing company. That was my first job and that was how I learned to be an actor, so I had amazing teachers. ‘Firefly’ has been a continual blessing on my life, to be sure.

Since the big-screen ‘Serenity,’ has there been talk of getting the “band” back together again?

We always dream about it and talk about it, but it’d be hard – everyone’s on a show right now!

Watch the original ‘Firefly’ pilot, “Serenity”:

How are you summing up ‘The Cape,’ the pilot you just did for NBC?

It’s a cop drama with a lot of other fun, exciting elements to it. It’s about Palm City, which is run rampant with crime, so the city is thinking about hiring a private corporation to take over the police. There’s a cop (played by David Lyons) that gets framed for causing these crimes, so he goes into hiding to figure out a way to expose the truth. In exile, he gets trained by this band of thieves on how to be The Cape. I play a blogger who seems to have a lot of inside information on what goes on with these crimes.

Is your character a thorn in The Cape’s side?

They don’t get along in the beginning, but she turns out to be his best ally. She shares his passion to stop this crime wave.

Do you get to kick some butt?

Absolutely. I got to do a lot of action, and I had a blast doing it!