{"id":16348,"date":"2012-04-09T13:55:50","date_gmt":"2012-04-09T20:55:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.trektoday.com\/content\/?p=16348"},"modified":"2012-04-09T13:55:50","modified_gmt":"2012-04-09T20:55:50","slug":"biggs-behind-the-mask","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/2012\/04\/biggs-behind-the-mask\/","title":{"rendered":"Biggs: Behind The Mask"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-16351\" title=\"BiggsDamarWykoff040912\" src=\"http:\/\/www.trektoday.com\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/BiggsDamarWykoff040912.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"580\" height=\"225\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Some actors don&#8217;t like having their faces hidden behind makeup and prosthetics, but for actor <strong>Casey Biggs<\/strong>, working behind the Cardassian makeup was liberating.<\/p>\n<p>According to Biggs, actors don masks of some type anytime they act anyhow. &#8220;It was magnificent because you didn&#8217;t have to do anything,&#8221; he said. &#8220;The guy who was my stuntman, he hated the makeup. He couldn&#8217;t stand being in it. To me, you&#8217;re most free behind a mask, as an actor, anyway. Every role, you put on a mask of some sort, and this is actually almost a literal mask. All you had to do was stand there and trust that you were interesting enough to be paid attention to.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><!--more-->But the actual process of being made up could be tedious for Biggs. &#8220;I did get tired of it at the end, though, of it being four o&#8217;clock in the morning and then having three hours of makeup applied,&#8221; he said. &#8220;It was very exciting and interesting at the beginning, but by the fifth year it was, &#8216;OK, let&#8217;s get this over with.'&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Biggs was able to avoid that long preparation time in the makeup chair when he played a human character, Dr. Wykoff, on<em> Deep Space Nine<\/em>. &#8220;That was [the producers&#8217;] idea,&#8221; he said. &#8220;I think they honored me by doing that, because they could have hired another actor. But I got to play Damar and Dr. Wykoff in the same episode, which was great. It&#8217;s like what they did with <strong>Jeff<\/strong> (<strong>Combs<\/strong>). I finally said, &#8216;Jeff, just let other actors play some parts, too, will you?&#8217; He was playing Brunt and the Weyouns and the blue guy, whatever his name was. Same thing with <strong>Vaughn Armstrong<\/strong>. He played like five hundred characters.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Still acting as seen recently in <em>Shameless<\/em>, Biggs has branched out a bit since his <em>Star Trek<\/em> days. &#8220;I just directed a really great production of <em>The Elephant Man<\/em> down in Richmond, Virginia,&#8221; he said. &#8220;I teach at the Master&#8217;s program at the New School for Drama (in New York City). I teach directing and classical acting. In October, I directed <em>Henry VI<\/em>, Parts 1, 2 and 3 at the New School.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Biggs is also involved in the Enterprise Blues Band. &#8220;I&#8217;m still doing the Enterprise Blues Band,&#8221; he said. &#8220;They want us to play in Europe, but the problem is that all the guys live in L.A. and I live out here. Trying to get together and rehearse and put together gigs around Europe, that&#8217;s a very complex thing, but it&#8217;s a whole lot of fun when we play. That&#8217;s me and <strong>Vaughn Armstrong <\/strong>and<strong> Steve Rankin<\/strong> (plus <strong>Richard Herd, Ronald B. Moore <\/strong>and<strong> William Jones<\/strong>). So, I&#8217;m bi-coastal and very busy.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Some actors don&#8217;t like having their faces hidden behind makeup and prosthetics, but for actor&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2413,2663],"tags":[3148,4264,4267],"class_list":["post-16348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cast-crew","category-star-trek-ds9","tag-biggs","tag-damar","tag-wykoff"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":"","thumbnail":"","medium":"","medium_large":"","large":"","1536x1536":"","2048x2048":"","newsphere-slider-full":"","newsphere-featured":"","newsphere-medium":""},"author_info":{"display_name":"T&#39;Bonz","author_link":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/author\/tbonz\/"},"category_info":"<a href=\"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/categories\/cast-crew\/\" rel=\"category tag\">Cast &amp; Crew<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/categories\/star-trek-ds9\/\" rel=\"category tag\">Star Trek: Deep Space Nine<\/a>","tag_info":"Star Trek: Deep Space Nine","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16348"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16348\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16354,"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16348\/revisions\/16354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}