Eureka star’s brush with the law

On the sci-fi series Eureka, he plays Sheriff Jack Carter but during his Australian visit, Colin Ferguson was very nearly on the other end of the law.

While visiting the Blue Mountains last week, Ferguson found himself in the middle of a bushfire.

“I’ve told that story a few times so I’m going to tell it a little bit differently,” he cheekily tells TV Tonight.

“I single-handedly put out a brush fire. A bush fire in the Blue Mountains. That’s what I’ll go with!

“There were firemen, policemen, but truth be told it was me. I put it out!”

But in all seriousness, it was a snapshot of Australia he hadn’t expected to experience, and it led to a moment of being reprimanded by local Police.

“It was actually massive, they evacuated a bunch of schools and some houses, and they stopped us from going back to our car for 3 or 4 hours. And then stupidly, and I feel bad, we snuck through the roadblock to get back to our car prior to them letting us.

“But the Police don’t like that. They have issues with you breaking through their roadblocks so we got chewed out for a while by a Policeman who called us a bunch of names. ‘Five year olds, children, stupid people’…. and then we were let go through the roadblock.”

Lesson learned, no doubt.

Canadian-born Ferguson is in Australia for a fan convention in Sydney and Melbourne for Eureka and Syfy sibling, Warehouse 13.

He is extending his stay here for around one month, already visiting Bondi Beach, the Harbour Bridge, and Sydney Aquarium. Although this is his first visit, his interest in Australia extends back many years.

“I was going to move here when I was in High School. My folks had the opportunity to come here but we had been moving about for 6 or 7 years at that point so my mom said ‘No, we’re going to stay in Canada. I want my kids to do High School in one place,'” he says.

“But Australia was the only place I wanted to come. I thought it would have been a game changer. Oh well.”

He has starred in the Syfy series about a fictional town inhabited almost entirely by geniuses and scientists since 2006. The show is filmed in British Columbia, but set in Oregon.

“There’s a Eureka, California and Eureka, Washington. But we couldn’t locate the town legally speaking, and I don’t know why, in a state where there was a Eureka. So we had to locate it in Oregon where there wasn’t a Eureka,” he explains.

“It’s some weird legal thing when you’re creating a show that there has to be either less than a certain number or more than a certain number. I don’t know why that is. Sometimes when you’re reading scripts the name will change because it didn’t pass Legal.”

He knows the feeling. There are duplicate Eurekas in existence (including, he learns, in Australia) and according to Wikipedia there is also another famous -or infamous- Colin Ferguson, a mass murderer who killed six people in 1993.

“I’m proud to say that my name now comes up first. For most of my career when you enter Colin Ferguson under Google it’s the massacre on the Long Island commuter train. Which wasn’t me, just so people know. He was a different guy who defended himself in court, I believe.”

Thankfully he isn’t mistaken often. Fans of Eureka, including those at fan conventions, are usually far more knowledgeable and complimentary. Ferguson says fans aren’t usually prone to nerdy questions or obsession.

“The stereotypical thing would be ‘In this episode you said this and what did that mean?’ But people just don’t do that. For the most part they’re wonderfully appreciative and all they want is to talk for a couple of minutes and that’s a lovely thing,” he says.

“Once in a blue moon you get somebody who has some boundary issues, who says some inappropriate things but that’s absolutely nothing for all the amazing interaction that you do have.

“Every now and then somebody says something that hurts your feelings, or tweets something, and you shake your head and it haunts you a bit, but for the most part you let it go.”

Filming has now completed on Eureka‘s fifth and final season, to premiere in the US next summer. He insists the first episode of the new season is the best episode yet.

But the show had originally been picked up for a sixth season, which was then reversed to its fifth season of 13 episodes plus one additional episode.

“Syfy picked the show up but it was their new bosses, the new masters ComCast and they said no afterwards. This is all rumour but the money that would have been spent to shoot 6 episodes of Eureka was the development budget for 2012. So they could either have a full development slate or 6 episodes. So at that point they said ‘We really need to develop stuff,'” he explains.

“For one episode of Eureka they could do 7 or 8 Reality shows.

“My big fear was I that I didn’t want to be held for another year to shoot 5 episodes. So my big concern was that they would say ‘We’re going to go again but it’s just for 5 and we’ll have to wait until another year.’ I was grateful to be done then. I would have been grateful to do another 5 in 3 or 4 months.

“But it’s been a fantastic run and none of us were put out. We were grateful they announced it before the final 3 weeks of the show so we had time to soak each other up and really enjoy the time we had.”

So what’s next for Ferguson now that he has finished a lengthy run in one role?

“Right now I’m travelling and looking to do a show maybe in Los Angeles and I’d love to stay within the umbrella that I’m familiar with: USA, NBC and Syfy.

“I want to stay in either the one-hour drama / comedy or move to a half-hour. I did a lot of half-hours before and really enjoyed the schedule.

“They wanted me to do another show in Vancouver, but I just couldn’t bring myself to sign for another 6 year contract right away. I’ll probably be regretting that at some point.

“Ideally I’d like to stay in Los Angeles or go really far afield. I don’t really want to go back to the same city I’ve been to for 6 years.

“I’d love to shoot in Australia for 5 or 6 years!”