Magazine Articles

Ever had sex with an alien?

Gigi Edgley has and it's not as straight forward as you might think. On sci-fi, the 23-year-old actor found herself rehearsing a love scene with a tentacled monster. "I said, 'Now do you mind if I put my arse here, and just say your alien cock is there, right? Just to be really technical about it.' The director walked in and said, 'What are you doing?' I said, 'We're having alien sex.' He said, 'Guys, it's got to look like sex, otherwise no one will know what you're doing.' I said, 'Okay, I'll jump on top.'"

It's all in a day's work in the alternative universe known as American sci-fi TV. Edgley even has her own action figure. ("Isn't it every girl's dream to sit in a room and play with herself?" she cheekily asked SFX magazine.) Her character, a seductive space minx called Chiana, arrived midway through Farscape's first season resplendent in monochrome body paint, black contact lenses, white wig and Wonderbra. It was initially only a guest spot, but the producers decided to keep her on as a regular.

"When I got the job I rang my dad," recalls Edgley, eyes sparkling - not black at all, but slate blue. "I go, Dad, dad, I'm a space trollip! He said, 'It doesn't sound like Sydney's doing too well for you.' I said, 'No, it's good!'" A kind of Star Trek for nonconformists, Farscape features a renegade crew of humanoids and puppets maintaining an uneasy alliance on board a living, breathing spaceship patrolling a distant galaxy. The idea for the series began in 1993 with Brian Henson, who took over took over his late father Jim Henson's Mupper empire. Henson's intention was to create an adult program incorporating puppetry in the vein of his father's movie Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal. Henson developed Farscape with Rockne S O'Bannon, creator of SeaQuest DSV and Alien Nation, and sold the idea to the US Sci Fi Channel in 1998. Soon afterwards production began in Sydney, first at Fox Studios and now at a facility in Homebush within phaser range of the Olympic Park. "It's good to be working here," says Edgley, "and be seen in India, France, Poland, the UK and the States."

The three female stars, rather than being sterotyped communications officers or nurturing types, are military hardcase Aeryn Sun, has a Vengaboys wardrobe and a take-no-prisoners attitude. Virginia Hey plays the blue-skinned Delvain priest Zhaan, who is flora, not fauna, and enjoys 'photogasms' - intensely pleasurable experiences when expose to solar fares. And there is Edgley's Chiana, a breathless, delinquent Nebari who flirts with the resident space spunk, Earth astronaut John Crichton (Ben Browder).

Auditioning for the role, Edgley, who studied drama at the Queensland University Of Technology, "went the whole hog. I frizzed up all my hair, put in glitter, wore my cyber stuff. I walked in and there were six goddess-like creatures - just beautiful and dressed casually - and here I am glittered up a treat, thinking, 'What have I done?'"

Of course her bravado worked and a few months later Edgley found herself telling housemates about her day at the office: "We went in there, killed a few aliens, then we ran from a few fireballs, then we devoured an alien species and then we had lunch." Or working on an intimate scene with an extra she's only just met and saying, "I hope you don't mind, I'm going to stick my hand on your crotch, you just tell me if that's too uncomfortable, then I'm going to go in for a kiss and I will use my tongue because that's the sort of character she is." Now filming series three and signed on for two more, Edgley has proved understandably popular with the series' fans, known as Scapers. Scheduled to appear at the San Diego Comic Convention last July for three hours, Edgley ended up signing autographs for three days. "I got in there and found the Sci Fi [Channel] booth and there was just a row of people. I thought they had a big celeb coming in, and they were like, 'No, it's you.'" America's fantasy mags can't get enough of Edgley, and she's even been a covergirl for US TV Week.

Chiana's look takes three and a half hours in the makip chair, meaning Edgley working day starts at 4am. Thanks to an alternatice upbringing, however, getting dressed up as a space creature seems perfectly natural to her. When she auditioned for the role her mother, a former Miss Australia who runs a retreat in the Gold Coast hinterland, said: "I think this is the one, you've grown up with aliens all you life, Gig." Edgley laughs, "Because she's a hippy, I'd be asleep at night and she'd run in and say, 'We've fount it! We've found the alien base. Come on, get dressed.'"

On her father's said, meanwhile, runs a deep showbiz vein. Her grandparents travelled the world performing vaudeville. Her grandfather, Eric Edgley, brought the Moscow Circus to Australia in 1965 at the height of the Cold War; the tour was a disaster as half the troupe were KGB. Things improved on the second tour and the family business was off and running on Eric's death, Gigi's father Michael Edgley took over.

Michael Edgley was on of the most flamboyant entrepreneurs of the 1980s. He drove a canary yellow Rolls Royce with personalised number plates, staged circuses, Russian ballet and major musicals, and produced films such as The Man From Snowy River and Phar Lap. The Sydney Morning Herald reported ice skaters Torvill and Dean sold in excess of $100 million worth of tickets for Edgley. Gigi recalls: "I've skidded on the ice with Torvill and Dean. We've gone to all the circuses, played on the trapeze. It's been beautiful, exciting life, but at the same time there has been a lot of dish throwing and a lot of full-on experiences that have evened it out." She's not kidding. One morning a pre-school Edgley woke up in a fireman's arms in the street outside her family's Vaucluse mansion. "I was a little kid going, 'What's going on ? What's going on?'" A car bomb had just gone off in the garage, attached to the car her mum would have driven her and her sisters to school in. Why? Edgley's response is flippant: "Basically some shit went down trying to get Russians in and out. Political crap."

But it was her parents' separation that Edgley rates as the "hardest, darkest year of my life. I couldn't understand it. It was a pretty long breakup and it got pretty darn nasty. All I wanted at that stage was for them to get back together." They finally split in 1987. Fourteen years later family life is much more stable. Christmas is a huge affair with bother parents, their partners, siblings and children. Now, says Edgley, "I can't imagine my family without all the extra bits on the side."

Has the family name helped or hindered her chosen career? Edgley's response is matter-of-fact: "If that's the thing that's going to open people's eyes to me then it's not a bad thing. But if I don't have the talent or the survival technique to live through it, then I'm out the door anyhow."

Edgley's immediate future is secure, her acrobatic alien poses, jung-fu moves and waiflike beauty having made her sci-fi's biggest sex symbol since Seven Of Nine. Not to mention all that leather. "It's funny," says Edgley, "when I was working in Brisbane all the parts I was cast for were sweet, innocent, virginal, girl-next-door types. As soon as I got to Sydney it's been like rauch-a-rama. It's fantastic." The Scapers think so too.