Christie Burke as Lt. Sharon Garnet in 'The Ark'

INTERVIEW: The Cast of ‘The Ark’ Break Down the Joy of Sci-Fi

The Ark is a new show on SyFy that is, well, a sci-fi show. In the best of ways. It’s about a team of people on a ship to try and colonize a planet but when something goes wrong, we’re left with the scientists and passengers that are not exactly the most qualified for the job.

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Luckily, the Mary Sue got to talk with Christie Burke, Richard Fleshman, Reece Ritchie, Jonathan Glassner, and Dean Devlin for the series!

In talking to the cast, I asked them about the joy of getting to play in the genre and for Richard Fleshman, it was about checking things off his sci-fi bucket list. “Well, I mean, without doubt I know what it is for me, is just from as a kid when you’re watching these shows and people are walking through doors, and flying spaceships and stuff and my bucket list of things I’d love to do in a sci-fi show was just being answered on a daily basis,” he said. “So, for me it was just all the gadgets and gizmos and being a pilot and flying spaceships and all that stuff. It was just fantastic.”

For Reece Ritchie, it was the changing up of our typical sci-fi tropes that was exciting. “I love that it just took that trope of kind of everybody has to be kind of old and wise to run a spaceship and just smashes it on the ground in the first episode, and says like, here’s a bunch of unlikely candidates. Figure it out.”

Christie Burke responded in turn by saying that she agreed with both Fleshman and Ritchie but also that the show made her feel like a badass when she did her own stunts. “I felt like badass,” she said, noting that she’d never done her own stunts before. “And then, you know, they kept giving me more and more and there was something so physical about Garnet for me, where I really found her through the fighting and the amazing choreography that the stunt guys had designed for me. It was just so much fun.”

You can see our full interview here:

The Ark airs on SyFy!

(featured image: SyFy)


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Rachel Leishman
Rachel Leishman (She/Her) is an Assistant Editor at the Mary Sue. She's been a writer professionally since 2016 but was always obsessed with movies and television and writing about them growing up. A lover of Spider-Man and Wanda Maximoff's biggest defender, she has interests in all things nerdy and a cat named Benjamin Wyatt the cat. If you want to talk classic rock music or all things Harrison Ford, she's your girl but her interests span far and wide. Yes, she knows she looks like Florence Pugh. She has multiple podcasts, normally has opinions on any bit of pop culture, and can tell you can actors entire filmography off the top of her head. Her current obsession is Glen Powell's dog, Brisket. Her work at the Mary Sue often includes Star Wars, Marvel, DC, movie reviews, and interviews.