Summer Glau Talks Playing A Teenage ‘Terminator’

While plenty of America’s favorite
shows are out of production over the Writer’s Guild of America strike, fans
shouldn’t worry that their primetime schedule will become fully immersed in
reality. There’s plenty of already-filmed new shows gearing up for debuts,
including Fox’s “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.”

Summer Glau is getting ready to burst on to the small screen in the series,
beginning January 13 and 14 on Fox, by taking on the role first made famous by
Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The 26-year old, who sci-fi fans fell in love with when she played River in
the “Firefly” TV series and “Serenity” film, stars as Cameron, a teenage
terminator helping to protect the Connor family.

The role may have helped turn Arnold into an action hero legend, but Summer
told Access Hollywood she hadn’t even seen any of the “Terminator”
films when she got the call to audition. She did have an idea, however, of what
a terminator was and Summer told Access, it certainly wasn’t her.

“I had in my mind what I thought they would want for a girl terminator and I
definitely didn’t think that I fit that criteria and so I didn’t want to go on
the audition,” she said. “My mom was actually the one who said ‘You’re getting
in the car and you’re going to that audition!’ I thought I would get in the room
and I wouldn’t look like the rest of the girls. I thought they would want
statuesque, icy blondes.”

Summer said things changed when she found out “Black Dahlia” screenwriter
Josh Friedman was executive producing the project.

“I didn’t realize it was Josh Friedman’s show, that he was the creator. I
respect him so deeply and when I saw that he was in charge I thought, well maybe
he has some kind of idea and that’s why I’m here ,” she recounted. “Sure enough,
the kind of terminator that he wanted to create, was someone that you wouldn’t
expect, someone that could hide in society and fit in and look like a normal
teenage girl and [who] stepped up when she needed to.”

In the series, Summer plays Cameron, a terminator who pretends to be the
daughter of Sarah (Lena Heady) and sister of John Connor, played byThomas Dekker
of “Heroes” (he played Claire Bennet’s best friend in Season One) fame.

“Yeah, I’m kind of like John’s bodyguard. I go to school with him. If he goes
out of the house, I pose as his sister. I’m his bodyguard,” she explained.

Summer said that although they’ve only filmed eight episodes and despite the
fact her terminator is a pretend sister, a romance could be in the cards for
Cameron and John.

“I faked a lot of things at the show. I’m constantly mimicking humans and
they have subtly insinuated that things could go in that direction, but at this
point, our relationships, they’re developing,” she said. “There’s sort of a
strange family dynamic right now and we don’t know what we are to each other
really.”

Fans of Summer will be pleased to know the athletic star has plenty of
butt-kicking scenes in the new series. Right off the bat, in the first episode,
there’s a major fight scene with an evil, male terminator played by Owain
Yeoman.

“We rehearsed it for a while . . . There were a lot of breakaway walls, so we
had to know exactly what to do and then we shot it quickly because once you
break something, you can’t unbreak it,” she says. “So it was all choreographed
and we worked it all out and on the day we shot it, it happened real
quickly.”

“Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles” will feature of plenty of
terminators after the family — and detective James Ellison, played by Richard T.
Jones.

“It’s really cool to watch him uncover things he doesn’t want to believe are
true about [Sarah’s] life and what she’s been talking about over the past 15
years. So he’s constantly after us and then there’s terminators popping up
different places,” she revealed.

Summer told Access one of the reasons she’s drawn to so many sci-fi
parts is due to her mother.

“I think part of it is my mother used to read so much science fiction to us
when we’re little,” she said. “I didn’t go to regular school, so I was alone a
lot of the time and I had a really, really overactive imagination.”

“I believe science fiction actors — their suspension of disbelief has to be
huge, because the stories are so fantastical and out there. You have to be able
to really dive in and believe the world that you’re creating and that comes
really natural to me,” she continued. “Science fiction actors — sometimes we are
on set and we look at each other and we get the giggles because we’re doing
something so outrageous and having to say something that’s so [much] bigger than
life and it’s really fun for me. As a little girl I always dreamed of getting to
do something like this.”