Joshua Jackson Online // get your josh fix here

Multimedia » Articles & Transcripts » Transcribed

The Skulls: Joshua Jackson Interview

by: Prairie Miller
Big Star.com - March 2000

Unlike the stressed out, imperiled character Joshua Jackson plays in The Skulls, the young regular on Dawson's Creek is a surprisingly laid back, all natural comic in person. Jackson delved into the plot particulars of The Skulls which, far from being a horror story, is an eerie collegiate thriller about fraternity intrigue at an upscale campus.

PRAIRIE MILLER: Nice shirt Josh.

JOSHUA JACKSON: Thank you!

PM: Was that you rowing in The Skulls?

JJ: That was me rowing, rowing my butt off.

PM: Do your arms hurt after you row?

JJ: Actually, it's your legs. That's what everyone assumes, that you're rowing with your arms. But it's really your legs.

PM: You were rowing with your legs?

JJ: Yeah, the legs are the strongest muscle group in your body. Your arms are like hooks. You just lay them on top and don't let go of the oar. But the power comes from your legs, and it's the transfer from legs, back, shoulders, and arms real quick. That's the pattern.

PM: Have you rowed before?

JJ: No, this is all new. And painful all the time.

PM: I see that you're wearing a Vancouver hockey shirt. Is that your home team?

JJ: This was our original hockey team, before we became the Suckaneers.

PM: The Suckaneers?

JJ: Well, Vancouver... sucks! Because we haven't won anything in years. Fifth highest payroll in the league, and not one win. Aw man, it's my team.

PM: I guess that's why you're still wearing the shirt.

JJ: That's right! Because I'm a true believer.

PM: Does the title of the movie The Skulls have anything to do with the Skull and Bones at Yale?

JJ: It has everything to do with it, the whole foundation of the story, the rituals and everything. And people know little about the actual organization of the Skull and Bones.

PM: Did you do any research into the real Skull and Bones?

JJ: Yeah, the rituals are intense, arcane, and some of them are just perverse. I mean, the stuff that we put in the movie is tame in comparison. Like the rebirth ritual, where a guy lays naked in a coffin masturbating in the dark. George W. Bush was in the The Skulls. So if that man gets elected president, I will never, ever be able to take him seriously. C'mon, you were in that coffin!

PM: Well, Clinton probably did stuff like that too.

JJ: Yeah, but with Clinton you can see it. Clinton would be like, yeah of course I was in the coffin! But W.B.? He'd go, well I'm not sure it was a coffin. And there may not have been anything actually going on in there, we'll have to check.

PM: How did they find out that George W. Bush was in the The Skulls?

JJ: He was tapped in, and then the CIA was actually founded at Yale when it was the OSS. And George Bush went on conveniently to the non-official head of the CIA, and then to the official head to the CIA. Then he went on to the White House. He's on record from the time he got tapped at Yale.

PM: What was the last club you were in?

JJ: Last club I was in was midget hockey!

PM: Is there tapping involved in that?

JJ: There's a lot of tapping. Scraping and kicking and fighting!

PM: You're a really unusual guy to interview, in that you're very comfortable with yourself and you don't hesitate to say just about anything into this recorder. Where does that uninhibited side of you come from?

JJ: Yeah. I grew up in a single parent family, so there's an inherent amount of freedom with that. A working mom removed herself from my sphere of influence twelve hours out of the day. And I come from a long line of nonconformists. My grandparents were opera singers in Ireland, and my mother was a model. She worked illegally, then moved to Geneva and forged her papers to go to Canada and become a fashion photographer. She later became a production manager in movies, and was George C. Scott's assistant. So there was no life plan for me. I mean, I could have told her that I wanted to be anything and she would have gone okay, go do it. But do it well.

PM: What specifics lure you into movies like Cruel Intentions and The Skulls?

JJ: It's the people you get to work with, it's the story that you get to tell and it's the diversity of opportunities. Like I play a certain character on Dawson's Creek. So when I came off for the first year and I got offered Cruel Intentions, I wanted to see whether or not I was more on the acting side or more on the personality side. I was fearful of my role in Cruel Intentions initially, because quite frankly I thought they wanted it to be the flaming three steps up guy. Which I didn't think was a very interesting character. So I did it out of the conquest of fear, and I wanted to see whether or not I could do it or go there.

PM: Can you tell me a little about your next movie, Gossip?

JJ: I could talk forever about Gossip! The concept of the film is, what happens in a society where truth is inconsequential? And the first thing you hear is infinitely more influential than the retraction that you hear tomorrow. In Gossip, the piece of information is that three students decide to create a rumor, and track it as it lives, grows and breathes within the closed society of a college campus. You have to watch the film, and then when you get to the end of Gossip, you have to put together the pieces of the puzzle that came up along the way.

PM: Are you the main character in Gossip?

JJ: No, I'm a supporting character. He is somebody who basically becomes the accidental subject of a rumor. His girlfriend is a virgin, and a rumor is spread that they had sex and she was drunk. Then she passed out at a party, so she doesn't remember anything. The whole point of the movie is to see how a piece of gossip, how a lie when observed in a close society, how it changes and mutates within that group. So it goes from, well she's not as clean and innocent as we thought she was, to well, she has no recollection. So if they had sex, are you sure they had sex? And that becomes, I saw them having sex. Then it's, I heard Suzy said that she had sex. And, if they had sex and she didn't remember, that's not sex. It's rape. So now he's a rapist. Well if he's a rapist, then he's got to go jail and have charges filed against him. So that's the whole story behind gossip.

PM: Have you heard any strange rumors about yourself over the years?

JJ: People don't bring up the rumors to me. So I guess I've escaped fairly unscathed so far, from the gossip mill. The only rumors are the Anakin Skywalker rumors.

PM: And...?

JJ: I'd be in Australia if I were Anakin Skywalker. No, I haven't been called. Believe me, I would be the first person to tell you if I were called. But every actor between the age of fourteen and thirty is interested.

PM: What if you got that call?

JJ: What, are you kidding me? I would quite literally do it for free. I think I do look like the kid, thank you very much. But there's nothing I could do to get myself that job. I'm not going to be able to bribe Mr. Lucas, or sell or pitch him. So anyway, he's going to make his decision and he's going to let the lucky candidate know. But I don't know how that rumor got started.

PM: How do you think you ended up where you are today?

JJ: The most drastic change of my life is that I'm being given opportunities. When I was eighteen, I was literally begging. Then Dawson's Creek comes along, and it became the success that it is on the heels of Scream and She's All That. So I find myself as a young man being given the opportunity in The Skulls to be the lead character in the film. And I wouldn't have had the role in Cruel Intentions if the film were made five years ago. You wouldn't be able to put those characters that age on the screen. And Gossip wouldn't have gotten made five years ago. None of these films that I have been getting the opportunity to work on would have been made, because the market wouldn't bare it. That is show business.

PM: Do you have a legion of girls running after you now?

JJ: Not really. I mean, if you're looking to ask someone that, ask Leonardo Di Caprio. If there's one guy on earth who gets a mob of girls, it's him. And he has to deal with thousands of people following his every move.

PM: What's your funniest experience with a girl fan?

JJ: There's particular pitch girls can hit with their voice. And there's nothing else on earth like it. You can't even simulate it in a lab. Like my sixteen-year-old sister. When my sister is alone, she speaks in a normal voice. But when you put her in a room with other girls her age, they kind of hit this nervous twitter level. Half of the room will be Hee Hee Hee, Cackle Cackle!... And the other half will be quiet. Then they shut up and the other girls go Hee Hee Hee! And they hit this decibel level. Ooh. So I think the funniest thing is to see how little we progress from monkeys. We're such social animals! We're primates, we get around each other. Our behavior patterns completely shift, depending upon the people we find ourselves in company with.

PM: Have you ever been on a date, and a group of girls comes storming after you?

JJ: Well, there's certainly been poor timing. There have been some moments in my life where I was in a conversation that really shouldn't have been broken up. But it's usually not that bad, I find that most people are intensely respectful.

PM: Do you get all kinds of goofy stuff from fans in the mail?

JJ: The best thing I ever got was a big teddy bear. When you squeeze the foot, it says "I love you."

PM: No underwear or anything like that?

JJ: No, but I'm waiting. I thought about that yesterday. I want to move on to the underwear and the sexy pictures, but given that the audience of Dawson's Creek is mainly below eighteen, I'm like well...

PM: How long do you think you're going to stay with Dawson's Creek?

JJ: Well, they own me for the next three years. I don't really know if I'll stick around after that, because doing the same thing for six more years is a long time.

PM: In your dream of dreams, what happens to Pacey Witter in the show? Does he take over the town? Does he kill Dawson?

JJ: Yeah! My dream of dreams is that I go around murdering my cast mates one by one, until it's just me! Just kidding... In my dream of dreams, I don't think I would want to be the leading man. The more interesting characters to me are the one's that revolve around him. So I think I would just want to see my character grow up. I could look to spending three more years there, because I'm optimistic the writing will continue to progress. But if it got stuck in one place, it would become incredibly tedious.

PM: People are saying that the show's quality has dipped this year.

JJ: I would be the first one to agree with you. We can't lose a writer like Kevin Williamson, you can't lose someone of that caliber. But we've got four more episodes left, and we've just received one of the best scripts ever. So we definitely had growing pains this year, and I'll be the first to admit that. And it took a while for the other writers that we do have, to assimilate themselves to the voice of the show. You can't expect anyone to mimic what Kevin Williamson did. So it took us the bulk of the season to get back on track.

PM: What kind of kid were you in high school?

JJ: I was just a pain in the ass. I was one of those problem with authority kids. They wanted me to do something and I was like, you do it. And that's not how the student-teacher relationship worked.

PM: Did you see the principal's office a lot?

JJ: I saw the back side of the boot a lot. I was kicked out of two high schools!

PM: You were kicked out of two high schools? For what?

JJ: Oh, for being mouthy. The first school told me I wasn't part of the school spirit. I'm still convinced it was because of my drama teacher, that she was a frustrated actress. Then I went away to do Mighty Ducks, and when I came back she failed me in drama and kicked me out of school. And I was like, I'm paid to be an actor, someone must like me!

PM: How old were you then?

JJ: Fourteen, I think.

PM: What about the second time?

JJ: The second time was absolutely for being mouthy. The teacher called me stupid, and I got into an argument about it. They told me that I was making it impossible for the woman to do her job, which was probably true. They said, if you go back and apologize to the class for your behavior, then you could stay. And if you don't apologize, then you can't. I said, but I'm right! You shouldn't call a student stupid. But after all that, my college years have been in Dawson's Creek!

PM: So do you have a girlfriend now?

JJ: No... No girlfriend.

PM: What about Dawson's Creek's future? What's the latest scoop?

JJ: About Dawson's Creek, they're either going to use me to bounce her back to Dawson, or they're gonna let me stick with her and do that some other time. They'll decide within the next few weeks. But personally, I don't want to be the bounced back guy. I know maybe I'm taking my job too seriously, but nobody likes to be the guy who loses the girl.

PM: Why should Katie Holmes pick you?

JJ: Because I'm funny, man! Everyone likes a funny guy. And I'm nicer than Dawson.

PM: Will there be more kissing with Katie Holmes?

JJ: There can never possibly be enough kissing with Katie Holmes!