Cover your chests! Everyone’s favorite Wraith Queen, Andee Frizzell, returns to Dial the Gate to talk about life, her career, and take your LIVE questions!

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Timecodes
00:00 – Opening Credits
00:39 – Welcome and Episode Outline
01:56 – Welcoming Andee from Columbia
08:51 – Wellness, Happiness and Connectivity
20:55 – Voice Work
31:48 – Queen Personalities and Evolving the Species
35:46 – Make-Up, Costumes and Character Choices
44:02 – Fan Questions, First Impressions of the Atlantis Set
46:57 – Devour Horror Film
47:58 – Favorite Country to Visit or Live In
52:45 – Favorite Type of Voice Work
55:44 – Wrapping Up with Andee
58:12 – Post-Interview Housekeeping
59:12 – End Credits

***

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TRANSCRIPT
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David Read
Hello everyone and welcome to episode 154, goodness, of Dial the Gate. My name is David Read, thank you so much for joining. I have Andee Frizzell, the Wraith queen from Stargate Atlantis. She’s back to join us for another episode to bring us up to speed on what’s been going on in her life and share some more stories. Before we get into that, if you like Stargate, and you want to see more content like this on YouTube, it would mean a great deal if you click that Like button. It makes a difference with YouTube’s algorithm and will help the show continue to grow. Please also consider sharing this video with a Stargate friend and if you want to get notified about future episodes, click the Subscribe icon Giving the Bell icon a click will notify you the moment a new video drops and you’ll get my notifications of any last minute guest changes. Clips from this live stream will be released over the course of the next few days and weeks on the DialtheGate and GateWorld.net YouTube channels. As this is a live stream Andee is with us right now. If you are in the YouTube chat, you can submit questions to her through our moderators. They are going to provide them to me through the back end and we will get them over to Andee to ask live. Without further ado, let’s bring in the lovely Miss Andee Frizzell, in Colombia I believe, is that is that correct?

Andee Frizzell
Yes, it’s Andee coming to you live from the from the Andes.

David Read
How are you?

Andee Frizzell
Andee in the Andes. I am excellent. Thank you so much for inviting me on this show.

David Read
You are a ray of sunshine I love having you back.

David Read
And a true friend of the show.

Andee Frizzell
Aw, thank you.

Andee Frizzell
Love this show.

David Read
Why Colombia Andee? Why was this the next spot? You have been all over the world. You spent a fair bit of time in these different places, sucking up different cultures and absorbing their different energies. Why Colombia? Why was Colombia the next stop?

Andee Frizzell
It’s so funny? You and I have talked from Thailand. I saw you in Vancouver. Did I talk to you when I was in Sicily, Italy?

David Read
I don’t think so.

Andee Frizzell
And yeah, traveling around. I’ve been to Colombia before, I have friends that live here. I’m in the south in a little, very small village. I don’t think they call it a village, I call it a village. In the Andes. It’s called Pasto. I think I’m coming in at 2,200 meters above sea level, something like that. Machu Picchu is just a little bit higher. It’s really interesting. I mean, we’re talking about absorbing culture. When I first arrived here I’m trying to absorb oxygen. We’re actually 30% less oxygen here in Pasto. For the first two weeks, when you go to stand up…

Andee Frizzell
Absolutely. Absolutely. It’s incredible. Within about 14 days, about two weeks, you start to acclimatize and your lungs are like, “okay, we’re functioning at 30% less oxygen.” I was here before in 2018 – 2019 for five months. I believe that we actually saw each other at the last, not the Gatecon that just happened, 2022, but the Gatecon of 2018. I saw you, said goodbye at the Richmond airport, jumped on an airplane and then came here. I was here for five months from that point. So yeah, it’s really crazy. A lot of cyclists that do Tour de France and stuff like that, they come here to train.

David Read
You notice a difference.

David Read
To train, right. Oxygen deprivation.

Andee Frizzell
When you go back, everybody was telling me, “oh, yeah, it’s 30% less oxygen, you’ll acclimatize within two weeks.” But what no one told me was when you go back, I was like on Red Bull extreme.

David Read
From the oxygen. Wow.

Andee Frizzell
Then all of a sudden, I was sleeping for the first two weeks that I was back like lower. I was sleeping maybe four or five hours a night and just waking because my body was getting so much oxygen.

David Read
It was like, “What can we do next? What closet have we not cleaned out?

Andee Frizzell
Oh my god. I was like, “let’s organize 99 puzzles. Let’s do this.” Yeah, it was pretty fun. People talk to you about comedy, they don’t talk about when you go back. I’m back in Colombia visiting friends, it’s Christmas, December. I was just actually in Italy. I was in Sicily for the last two and a half months. It’s our first week of September. I left after that weekend, I left on Monday, and I went to Switzerland. Then I was in Sicily for the last two and a half months and then I just got here about two weeks ago so I’m just acclimatizing so if I start panting…

David Read
It’s oxygen deprivation. She’s not actually being fed on by a Wraith.

Andee Frizzell
There you go. Maybe, maybe. But yeah, you said why are you here? It’s a beautiful, beautiful, amazing country. I love the people here. I have also spent three months in the north, in a place called Cartagena. That was a couple of years ago, eight years ago now. Oops. I was in the north. Colombia is a massive country with so much history and so many different peoples in it. In the north, it’s more Spanish, i’s very vivacious. In the south, it’s very Andean. The people are really tiny, I mean tiny, tiny. When I sit in a chair in a restaurant and the waiter comes over to take my order, I’m sitting, I’m like [looks down].

David Read
And he’s down.

Andee Frizzell
It’s not everybody’s, not everybody, generally. Two weeks ago when I first got here I went to go get a phone card from Claro, it’s one of the local places, one of the local providers. I was with my friend who’s also Canadian, he’s like six foot one, I’m also just under six foot one. I was right behind him and entering into the place and some group of people were coming out, two, three ladies. Anyway, the lady walked sort of into my friend and she was like right at his sort of belt buckle. She looked up and her face was just “Uh.” He stepped out of the way and then I came in and she went like this [makes sign of cross on upper body]. She crossed herself.

David Read
These people are enormous.

Andee Frizzell
Does she watch Stargate. I was like, “maybe she thinks that lady’s the Wraith?” I don’t know. But yeah, it is pretty interesting when you go somewhere in and someone crosses themselves.

David Read
I was always asked in the Philippines, I lived there for a year, if I was a basketball player.

Andee Frizzell
I get that in Canada. Come on. I always tell people “No, I play miniature golf.” Miniature golf champion. I’ll be drinking a lot of tea.

David Read
You’re good. Oxygen and tea.

Andee Frizzell
Oxygen and tea. I’m saying.

David Read
You and I like to talk about…

David Read
Yeah but what it really leads back to I think in terms of our conversations is wellness and lgeneral happiness. I’m looking at these Pew Research polls year over year that really do suggest that people are becoming less and less happy. You yourself as a holistic person, you do yoga; you’re very aware of your body and your energy. What do you attribute a lot of this too? And how do you personally combat it when you feel down?

Andee Frizzell
Everything.

Andee Frizzell
It’s interesting when you say “unhappiness” because I feel the level of what my interpretation as someone who’s been traveling around the world extensively for the last five years, specifically the last five years, is it’s not so much an unhappiness but a discontentment. People just don’t know what’s wrong, but they know something’s wrong. My interpretation and it’s not about judgment, it’s just information. I’m just out traveling and I’m listening to stories and I’m meeting so many people. My interpretation is connection. This amazing thing, the internet, phones, the connection, Wi-Fi, we have connected and disconnected at the same time. Never more in history have we been able to access information and people and all around the world. It’s at our fingertips and yet, we’re separate. There’s a connectivity that’s missing. As someone who’s travelled extensively for the last five years, I had done years of traveling before and I can really see a massive difference. I can give you so many examples of that. To me, to go back to the original question, it’s this connection, this human connection. We’re connected but we’re not engaged, I guess maybe is the word. Maybe you can help me find the word. Do you know what I’m trying to say?

David Read
These things right here [holds up cell phone] are extraordinary, but they are a wall at the same time. They are a filter and they are a moderating tool that prevents, if I were in the same room with you this. This is one on one interaction, this eye contact, if we were in the same room.

Andee Frizzell
Energy, yeah, energy exchange. Yeah, absolutely.

David Read
Immediate feedback and I think we’re losing.

Andee Frizzell
Yeah and that to me is breeding this sort of discontentment. You and I are friends and we are disconnected through this machine. So much of the world has become automated now, you don’t even call an airline and talk to an agent to get your airline tickets anymore. Everything is done online. You actually have to pay to talk to somebody

David Read
You do. If you connect to someone, there’s a charge now. In those specific instances.

Andee Frizzell
If you go to the airport and you need to go up and talk to the person they’re like, “that’s 70 euros.” I was just in Madrid and it was $70 to go up and talk to [someone]. So I’m just talking about interaction. Not only our friends and our family and eye contact connection, but also just people in general. I would task yourself to about your day, in the next day or two, just go about your day and see how many interactions that you have done via your phone that say, even 10 years ago, that you would have done with somebody in person. Your groceries, going to the grocery store, walking around, picking things, up talking to the sales lady, the clerks.

David Read
It’s all self checkout now.

Andee Frizzell
It’s all self. That’s what I’m saying.

David Read
The kiosks at the fast food restaurants, which I know you don’t do, but I do.

Andee Frizzell
Yeah, but amazon.com is delivering food, .com, Amazon dot everybody, every country. I feel like I don’t think that we understood how much we depend on [the need to] feel like part of a community, to feel that energy exchange. How many times have you been out in your day, things aren’t going well and you pass a stranger that smiles?

David Read
Oxytocin, immediately delivered.

Andee Frizzell
And it changed your day. I’ve had so many experiences where I was struggling with something and then someone offered to help; carry your bags or gives you a seat on the bus. This interaction, and now we’re taking Ubers. It’s just information, it’s just an opinion, just observations, but that’s what I’ve seen. Very specifically, obviously through the pandemic for sure, just this further and further distance of connection and then you see these rising levels of dissatisfaction and unhappiness. I’m putting the two things together but it seems that the more disconnected we become the more unhappier we are. When you ask me, “what are things that I do?” the first thing that comes to my mind, and I would offer it out to anyone, is I take classes. I love taking classes for anything, like cooking classes. I’m actually taking a body combat class right now.

David Read
Body combat?

Andee Frizzell
Yeah but it’s in Spanish. I speak about NADDA, right? So the guy’s like, “dala dala dala,” and I’m like, what? And then you’re like [get’s punched], “oh, okay, that, all right. You were coming in with a jab? Okay.” It’s hilarious. I’ve taken yoga classes with Russian teachers that only spoke Russian, I didn’t understand a word. Even not totally comprehending word for word what was happening, just being in a community of people. In yoga, there’s a saying, “alone togetherness.” We are alone, all of us are alone in our journeys and we’re traveling along, but we are doing it together. So, I take classes, [inaudible], I’ve taken terribly so. To the neighbor’s chagrin, I took guitar lessons, classic, and I’m like [playing the guitar]. That to me, connects me, and volunteering, just volunteering somewhere. I told you, when we talked in Thailand, I was doing so many different volunteering jobs because it was helping me connect. The benefit of me volunteering is they’re getting something but the reason to volunteer is for me. It was a selfish reason, it was to connect, it was to connect with the community. Even if I didn’t understand the language or the words, you can understand people.

David Read
Yes, absolutely. It sounds like putting yourself out there, trying different things. I took a Bob Ross painting class with my friends a couple of years ago.

Andee Frizzell
Oh my god that must have been so fun.

David Read
I have never done anything like this, just taking a stab at something new and say, “hey, let’s try this. Let’s try and explore a new facet of me.”

Andee Frizzell
Yeah, and outside with everyone else. You can definitely do all this stuff online, there’s amazing resources online to taking classes and courses and stuff. But to reach that connectivity…

David Read
Some interaction

Andee Frizzell
I’ve been going to these, as I said, these body combat classes. No one speaks English. and I don’t speak Spanish. We’re high fiving at the end and everybody’s sweaty. We don’t need the exact words to understand the experience that we all have just had and it changes my day. I’m doing voice acting now, that’s my my main focus and that’s a very isolating job. I’m in a booth, I’m in a closet, which I love, I love, but it’s very isolating. I’m in a country where I don’t speak the language, in a small village in the Andes, with no oxygen. All of these things are isolating, isolating, isolating, right? So you know, that disconnect. So how do you find ways to connect? For me, it’s taking classes. You asked, “What did I do?” That’s what I would do. On anything, like you said, exploring parts of yourself, volunteering, “I’ve got time and I want to connect with people or animals or nature.” Volunteering allows you those opportunities and maybe it doesn’t work for everybody but even just going and seeing if it does. I wonder what those levels of unhappiness or dissatisfaction would be. I just know for me…

David Read
Are you still doing work with the elderly?

Andee Frizzell
Not here in Pasto I haven’t. No, no, but again, I just love to take opportunities in every country that I go to volunteer. Sometimes it’s where’s the space, where’s the need that I can fulfill? I have worked with the elderly but here I haven’t done that yet. Like I said, I’m just getting my oxygen and my muscles and then I will look for opportunities here. Most likely what I would like to do is volunteer as a, not that I speak very perfect English, but I would like to do conversational English. Sit in a room and have people practice English languages. I would like to do something like that because then you have multiple people. You would have older people, you have younger people, so it will be fun. It will be fun for me to hear them and help them express themselves and connect with each other as they’re all learning and then with me as well as a native speaker. I think that’s the job, or volunteering position, I’ll be looking for when I finally get settled here.

David Read
Were talking about the voice work that you’re doing now. When you’re in your booth or your closet or wherever your studio is, do you have a producer in your ear?

Andee Frizzell
Sometimes.

David Read
Okay, so sometimes, but other times it’s just you recording lines?

Andee Frizzell
Yeah. I’ve done voiceover for shows, narration for shows, where the director and producer are on the other line. I’ll have them listening through and there’s Source-Connect, it’s a way that they can edit while I’m recording. It’s amazing, it’s so fascinating, we go back to as you said, this box that’s kind of separating us. But at the same time, it’s making so much stuff possible. I could not have done this as extensively as I have for the last five years, through the whole pandemic and everything.

David Read
Anywhere in the world if there’s infrastructure.

Andee Frizzell
If there’s a closet, I’m in there. I can tell you some pretty funny stories. When I was in Maui I had to close down all the windows and you can’t have the air conditioner on. I’m in this closet booth that I’ve created, there’s no air coming in and I have four clients, two of them from Ottawa, two from Toronto, are online now. There’s no video, it’s just audio. I’m in there, there’s no air conditioner on and it’s very hot so I [have] not the most appropriate, entertaining other people clothes on if you know what I’m trying to say.

David Read
Right. It’s for the sound.

Andee Frizzell
Yeah. I have no clothes on because of the sound.

David Read
Well it’s because it’s hot. AC is loud.

Andee Frizzell
Yeah, so I have the cans on and I’m doing the recording and the clients like, “do you hear that sound? We’re picking up a drip, like a drip, drip drip. Is a tap or a faucet on?” All of a sudden I was like, “oh my god, it was my back.” I was sweating so much it was dripping down my back.

David Read
It’s all for the work folks.

Andee Frizzell
What I say to people is “the next time you’re driving in your car and one of those commercials comes on the radio you like and you’re hearing this amazing voice, just picture they might be in a closet naked somewhere.”

David Read
Yeah, whatever it takes to get the cut, to get the take.

Andee Frizzell
Yeah, and we don’t have to go into a studio. The technology is so amazing that we’re able to do all of this online. So yeah, it’s pretty fun.

David Read
What as a voice actor are you looking for when you go out for a role? Or is it “okay, this is interesting. We’re going to talk about yams, we’ll have a yam commercial.”

Andee Frizzell
It’s so interesting because being an actor was so very different than being a voice actor. With voice acting I don’t do character voices, I’m a narrator, I speak in this voice basically. Basically it’s like, “in a world” it’s like that. I’m right behind Morgan Freeman. That guy, he’s the goat.

David Read
When I die I hope god is Morgan Freeman.

Andee Frizzell
Oh my god. He is, no, he is, for sure. Anyway, so that’s the voice character acting. I do narration and I love it, I love it so much. I read for Audible so I read for fiction books, nonfiction books. My favorite clients, I have a few that I’ve been with, doing this regularly for a while, are colleges and I do the audio version of their textbooks. I am getting this incredible education. When we’re ever at party’s I’ll be like, “Oh, that’s called an early adopter and what early adopters are doing” and people are like, “what are you talking about?”

Andee Frizzell
“I just read it today.” It’s been absolutely incredible. I do e-learning modules for different companies, bringing their employees in. I get to be like the Siri of whatever the company is. I was actually in the swimming pool when I was in Mexico, talking to this woman who used to work for one of the big banks in Canada. We were talking, she said, “what do you do?” I said, “oh, I’m a narrator and do e-learning modules and stuff.” Her eyes went wide and she’s like, “oh, did you do it for this bank?” I was like, “yeah,” and she goes, “oh my god, every year they used to make us do these updates and it’s your voice. I knew I knew you. I was in the pool and I can hear your voice and I was ‘where do I know this woman’s voice from?'” It was these like, “welcome to your annual checkup.” She was like “oh my god, it’s you!”

Andee Frizzell
I just read it.

David Read
That’s fantastic when you come across someone in real life that you’ve made a connection to. I’ve never shared this story before, Andee. I don’t believe I’ve shared this story before. It was about 10 years ago and I was in a Subway restaurant. This was the one down the street from me and I was making acquaintances with the people behind the counter. I don’t know how it came up but I mentioned Stargate and how I was on GateWorld at the time doing a podcast, and the guy making my sandwich said, “David?”, and he is watching the podcast.

Andee Frizzell
Oh my god, that’s amazing.

David Read
Isn’t that interesting. Every once in a while you come across someone, and these are only the ones who make you aware of it. You can have a connection with someone in a pool, in a foreign country, who’s come across your work and it has affected them enough that they remember you?

Andee Frizzell
Well, it affected her enough that she was like, “oh god, we used to dread those things.” She was like, “God, every year, ‘Oh, she’s gonna tell us how to do this thing again.'” She didn’t associate necessarily what I was saying but more just that she was connecting it with “ugh, we have to do that today, it’s our yearly thing again.” I thought that was kind of funny. But that’s really cool, especially online because like we said, this technology, the ability to be able to connect. You’re talking to people all over and I imagine there’s people listening in on this and watching this from all over and then for someone to say, “hey, I saw that.” That’s amazing, right?

David Read
We connect with each other more than we think we do. I think it’s important to remember what ripples we make when we impact with someone else. It’s so important to make those as positive ripples as possible. Make good ripples.

Andee Frizzell
Yeah, that’s what we were saying about the connection. There’s human connection and we’re missing that but there’s this [holds up cell phone] and we’re able to reach so many more people and access so many things. Access to learning and to different groups of people, different cultures, different customs. I don’t want that to sound like the phone is a bad thing. I think the phone is an amazing, well, the phone, the phone is the phone, but the internet and all of that is an amazing tool, but it’s a tool. I think somehow we’ve shifted into making everything so automated that we’re not getting that interaction, or the same interaction that we used to get. I think it’s also an incredible tool. Like I said, I could not have done the work that I do and travel as much as I have in the last five years if it hadn’t been for this technology. So I’m very grateful for the technology at the same time.

David Read
I think it’s important to ask, “are we improving people’s lives by adding this technology? Could we be ultimately damaging people?” It’s down to the individual person to use the tool and hope that they use it responsibly.

Andee Frizzell
Yeah and that’s just it. If you give everybody a car, some people are going to drive it at excessive speeds and they’re going to get into accidents. Some people are going to drive it and just drive it to the local grocery store and fill up our environment with gas fumes. Then there’s going to be people that use it to carpool and get the elderly people from out of their houses and to their doctor’s appointments.

Andee Frizzell
The tool is the tool, it’s how we use that tool. Again, we go back to that level of dissatisfaction. We’re sitting at home, scrolling through stuff on the internet instead of going out and taking a class. Like you said, try something completely different, like a painting class and just interacting with the people there. It’s using the same tool but ultimately it’s up to us how we use and [how we] use our time when we use that tool and for what needs.

David Read
Keep drunk drivers off the streets.

David Read
You played Wraith queens of various intensities for four seasons. The approach of every one of them was slightly different. So much of it, I think, had to do with your makeup that went on and obviously what the script had to say. If given the chance, what would have been another angle of the Wraith Queens personality that you would have liked to have explored?

Andee Frizzell
Well, I just think that I don’t think that they were explored. I was the Wraith queen, but I don’t think the race was explored in its totality. They were the enemy so through the episodes they were like, “oh, there’s the enemy,” and then there’s trying to get around the enemy. They had that sort of function and what I would have liked to have explored was exploring the commonalities; they had human DNA, the commonalities of them exploring that about themselves. I just thought it would be very interesting to explore them as they explored themselves as they evolved. They woke up and the world was completely different so how did they explore themselves to see how they fit into this sort of new world? What could have happened? I just thought that would be very interesting to see.

David Read
Well, if they’re part human, I’m wondering if the Queen’s would have had, that we just didn’t see because we were only on missions here and there on the Wraith hives, a nurturing quality to them that we could somehow relate to the Queen’s themselves.

Andee Frizzell
It was you and I, I think every interview we go back to this, my first interview was with you when you said, “you’re evil.” I was like, “what are you talking about? I’m not evil, I’m hungry.” That would have been through time. Given more seasons and more time, just to be able to see them evolve, to see more aspects of them as in themselves. Not just interacting with the humans, like the Wraith, who are they when they interact with us humans? But just who are they as themselves? Exploring the different aspects of themselves with each other and what that meant in this new world ahen you have the new characters that Chris played. I’m trying to remember the names, was it Michael…

David Read
Michael was Connor and then you had Todd. That was Chris Heyerdahl, a big one.

Andee Frizzell
I think that’s where the storylines were kind of going; showing how diverse these characters were, even giving them separate names. They even started to look different, they were taking on problems differently. That would have been great. As an actor, you don’t want to see your character, not die, obviously. I died a lot. You don’t want to see your character egged. I think it would have been great to see how they evolved, how they fit into this new world. I think that would have been very interesting.

David Read
Was there any kind of makeup that you would not have done? Any kind of approach that would have been too extreme for you? “You know what, I really can’t go that far. I have to express myself somehow through some thing? Or would you have been game for anything?

Andee Frizzell
Well, that’s such an interesting question. It’s funny, I don’t think I ever thought of it as an option. I never thought to [say to] them, “yeah, no, don’t do that.”

David Read
You’ve done horror makeup, you’ve done it all.

Andee Frizzell
Extensively. One character that I played. I had a tie and a prosthetic tongue. I played, this baphomet, it’s like a female demon, Satan kind of character. I had these hooves, I had like a rubber suit. So these hooves that I put on and then they have this full suit, “Oh my god, this is crazy.” This is in the very beginning, I didn’t even know I could say no. It was a full suit that they had to actually glue me into every time. Underneath I had this apparatus that moves these insane wings. I had magnets on my head that had these horns. The body suit, they glued me into it and glued the feet, then these gloves and they glued them and I had these long, extended fingers and then the face and then these horns sat on it. I had contact lenses that pop the entire eye, they were like lava, they went from corner to corner, top to bottom. Then I had a prosthetic tongue that you slid on and it was forked. There’s somebody somewhere, maybe they’re a sci-fi fan of your show, there is a makeup artist that has a photo of me from that shoot. I had this long worked tail, so I couldn’t sit in a regular chair. I was sitting on a cooler, waiting to go on set and they snapped a photo of me. I’m sitting there in this full guard, I was in it for 14 hours, once you’re in you’re in. I was only able to sip little bits of Gatorade because you didn’t want to have to go to the bathroom, you’d be in big trouble. Anyway, there’s a picture of me sitting in this black ensemble, I think l didn’t tell you about the boobs in it. That was pretty funny. It had female breasts in the suit, they weren’t mine, but no one knew that.

David Read
They were attached to it.

Andee Frizzell
Yeah, but the first couple of days I was walking around wondering why everybody was avoiding me and then I realized “I got my Tatas hanging out.” They weren’t mine but they didn’t know that. Then they gave me this terrycloth green robe that was like a mini robe so it just went underneath there. It didn’t matter to me, I was in a full suit, but it just looked ridiculous. I had this Larry the lounge lizard, terry cloth 70s robe, sitting on a cooler doing the crossword puzzle in this outfit. There is a photo out there somewhere. I just remember that, somebody took it, but this was back in the day where they took the Polaroids and them back to the trailer and then printed them off. It wasn’t on someone’s phone. I have no idea where that photo would be now.

David Read
We’re going to have to poke around for it.

Andee Frizzell
But how hilarious would that be? My tail on the other side of the cooler because I couldn’t sit in an actual chair.

David Read
Fake things hanging out of ya.

Andee Frizzell
Tatas hanging out. Nobody would look me in the eye.

David Read
They were embarrassed.

Andee Frizzell
It must have been a week into shooting that I was like, “oh, they think they’re mine. They’re part of the suit, oh my gosh.”

David Read
Amazing job. At least they know they’re doing something right when people get confused.

Andee Frizzell
So funny that you just said that. I didn’t even think that I was in any position to be like, “yeah, I don’t want that.” I never even thought of that. When you asked me before the question about picking and choosing roles to voice, being an actor, I felt it wasn’t so much that I was drawn to characters per se, I was really drawn to stories. I think the crazier the story, the more interesting the characters are that come out of that story. The story makes those characters. Even this, when they said to me, “Oh, you’re gonna play the Wraith queen and she’s gonna have all of this kind of stuff.” I was like, “absolutely,” I never would never have stopped them, never would have said “I don’t about that.” They’re like, “we want a horn on that.” “All right, let’s do this.”

David Read
Let’s give it a shot.

Andee Frizzell
Let’s give it a shot because this character, this story is so cool, this story is so cool and it’s created such great characters. I wouldn’t even think to have said to them. I did an episode of Andromeda. I didn’t say no, but somebody else was like, “No.” Andromeda was a ship and I played Mila, who was also the visualization of the ship. When they were doing the makeup tests, they put like a paper towel roll, let’s just call it what it was, it looked like a paper towel roll. They rolled my hair around it and it stuck out like this and they were like, “yeah, no.” I was like, “yeah, no, I don’t think it’s gonna work.”

David Read
They were trying to do something different.

Andee Frizzell
They wanted something different, they wanted her to look spacey. I was like, “she looked like a something you know, I don’t know if spacey is the word I would use. It looked like I had a rolling pin going.

David Read
Like Chris Tucker in the Fifth Element with the whole paint thing.

Andee Frizzell
They have a character in mind and then you play around with it and you see if it actually works, or if it’s too distracting. Now that I’m re-remembering it, I think it was the thing and then it had like hair, like a hair propeller. It was just too distracting.

David Read
That’s the thing, are you gonna move the story forward or are people going to be looking at that and then have to rewind “what was she saying?”

Andee Frizzell
What is that on her head? Is it gonna take off?

David Read
That’s funny.

Andee Frizzell
When you say they might have come up with something for the character, like, “oh, we want the Queen’s to have this”. I wouldn’t have said no, but you would look at it as a team and be like, “is this moving the story forward or is it just distracting?”

David Read
The Wraith Queen’s head comes off and she can attach attach it to another Queen’s head.

Andee Frizzell
Like cockroaches, I don’t need my tail, I just need my head. One of the Queen’s heads did come off.

David Read
It’s certainly true. “Yeah, when I asked for, that’s not what I meant.” I remember that one.

Andee Frizzell
Throw in that little tidbit in there.

David Read
Lockwatcher wants to know – Andy, what were your first impressions of that set and cast when you arrived the first day on Stargate Atlantis? Obviously they were just starting a new show but what were your first impressions going in? “This is a cheap set or, man, they put some money into this?”

Andee Frizzell
You know what, it was excitement. When you go on shows everybody’s kind of got their character. Obviously the first days are exciting to be on a new show. But to be in another world, going into these sound stages, all the actors are walking around, it’s amazing to see. It’s not just like, “oh, it’s another day at the office.” I was a piece of that creativeness. We’re walking around and just seeing the ideas and concepts and all the people that had the ideas are now seeing them come to life. You can just imagine the excitement and the anticipation. It sounds like such a silly word, excitement, but it was, it was very frenetic, people were very excited to be part of this and to bring it to light. It was just such an interesting [experience], characters no one had heard of, no one had seen, it was very thrilling. It was very exciting to be part of that.

David Read
Were you surprised it lasted five years?

Andee Frizzell
No, I was surprised it didn’t go longer. That’s what’s so incredible about sci fi and about all the incredible people being brought into sci fi; the makeup and the costumes and the sets and all of that. Your imagination is the your limit, it’s unlimited what the talent was bringing. I was more surprised that it didn’t go further because I felt they had so many more stories to tell. The original Stargate and SGU as well, space and beyond, there’s just so many amazing stories. We go back to talking about how a race kind of woke up and it’s like a new world out there. We say, “it’s space and sci-fi,” but there’s elements of that happening in our consciousness, in the human consciousness. I think they had so many more stories to tell that we could have related to right as humans.

David Read
I think we batted a beehive here. GateGab wants to know – does Andee remember the name of that horror film for the photograph she described? They’re trying to find it.

Andee Frizzell
Oh my god, that’s hilarious. Look at me. I think it was called, oh gosh.

David Read
Was it before Stargate?

Andee Frizzell
Yes. I think it was called…

David Read
Was it Devour?

Andee Frizzell
That’s it. That’s it. That is exactly it.

David Read
The name is Beast, of course. “Revolves around a character named Jake Gray and his friends who have been playing a deadly game called ‘The Pathway’ which spirals out of control and threatens a worldwide epidemic of violence.” Devour. That’s it. Okay, we’ll have to look for it.

Andee Frizzell
Oh my god, that’s so funny. Oh my god, that’s so funny.

David Read
This is what they do. You throw the bone and they go and chase it.

Andee Frizzell
You guys are incredible. That will be hilarious.

David Read
Jeremy – Andee, what’s been your favorite country to visit or live in?

Andee Frizzell
You know what’s so funny. That is the number one question other than how tall are you? Like, “how tall are you” and…

David Read
You are privileged to be able to travel as much as you have. I have visited 28 [countries] and people are always like, “what’s your favorite?” I’m really curious, what’s your favorite.

Andee Frizzell
Well that’s what I was just gonna say, they’re all my favorites, they’re all my favorites, even the ones that went terribly sideways. I know there’s a lot of travelers out there that travel to see things. I’ve come to understand that I’m a traveler that wants to experience things. I’ll go to places and people will say, “oh, did you go to this tower or did you see this?” I’m like, “no, I didn’t do that, but I slept on a fishing boat in the middle of the ocean one night to see all the luminous fish and I just paid a fisherman five bucks and him and I sat on the on a boat and did this. I have different experiences so I can go back to a country and have a completely different experience than I did the first time. People ask me about Thailand because I was in Thailand, stuck, through COVID. People ask me about going back to Thailand now and I actually don’t think I can go back. The reason I say that is it was such an incredible experience. Imagine being in a country that welcomes 70 million tourists a year, to none. I’m on stretches of beach without a single soul, there’s no one. I’m not just talking about “oh, there was nobody there and you could suntan, I just mean the nature, it was so beautiful and unobstructed. You could look over the sea and there wasn’t 1000 boats, there wasn’t ferries, there wasn’t airplanes or helicopters, it was silent. You were seeing the most incredible nature in its rawness and it was such an amazing experience. The Thai people, oh my gosh. It is aptly named “the land of 1000 smiles,” they were just incredible people. I don’t know if I could go back.

David Read
I don’t think you could top that.

Andee Frizzell
If I go back now and there’s all these cars and those big tourist buses where they’re shuffling thousands of tourists on these massive buses. I remember from my place to Rawai, I was living in Phuket, where I was all the way down to Phuket, there’s the highway road. I would be the only motorbike on the road for kilometers and kilometers. You just have this unbelievable sea and then mounds of elephants and you’re just by yourself, like a jungle. It was such a beautiful experience. To think if I go back, you’re just one of the shuffle, it would change that experience.

David Read
Yeah, you’d be left with a different texture.

Andee Frizzell
Yeah, I don’t know if I want to mess with those memories. I just spent the last two and a half months in Sicily, literally eating my way across that isle.

David Read
Italy has the best food.

Andee Frizzell
Sicily has its own culture, its own cuisine. Its own, oh wow. To answer your question, every single place I visited is my favorite and I think everybody needs to visit places to have those experiences. It’s incredible.

David Read
Sommer wanted to know – what type of voice work has been your favorite? Textbook reading and getting to explore things yourself that way or character acting through Audible?

Andee Frizzell
I love stories. I love stories. I love reading books because I get to read the book and I just happen to say it loud so it’s kind of a win win for me. I’m an avid reader as you you know, we’ve talked about that before, so I’m just accumulating more books. I would say a lot of my favorite ones are really challenging ones like when when there’s drugs for the doctors. A new drug comes on, I just did one for Cariprazine, and you’re like “Cariprazine has these..” I don’t know, there’s something that makes me laugh every time, it just makes me laugh. There are 13 syllable words, I have to do a lot of work.

David Read
You have to get it right.

Andee Frizzell
Not only pronounce the word right but you have to put the right emphasis on the right syll’a’ble. You know what I mean? You can’t be saying these words like you’ve just heard them for the first time, you have to space it. It sounds silly but they’re really challenging, but they’re super fun. Not if you have the symptoms and not if you need the drugs, but it’s super fun to say them. Those are the challenging ones. The challenging ones seem to be my favorite.

David Read
I found this [shows a picture on his cell phone].

Andee Frizzell
Oh my god, that’s it. That’s the character.

David Read
It’s not you with a crossword puzzle but thank you to Linda “GateGabber” Furey for finding that.

Andee Frizzell
Gosh, I can’t believe you guys. That’s crazy that you guys found that. It’s amazing.

David Read
Look at that. 14 hours, geez.

Andee Frizzell
Unbelievable you guys. Unbelievable you guys that you found that photo. There’s one with me and a baby. There’s one with me in that outfit holding a baby as well, I’ve seen that somewhere. I give birth to this…it’s a good movie.

David Read
Pay the bills.

Andee Frizzell
Hey, there’s never small roles, just small actors.

David Read
There you go. Absolutely. And memories that will last a lifetime.

Andee Frizzell
Yeah, definitely, and because of the internet, all will last a lifetime. I can’t believe you guys found that.

David Read
That’s crazy.

Andee Frizzell
Yes, exactly.

David Read
I am so privileged to have you on. I love spending time with you and exploring just life and culture and Stargate memories.

Andee Frizzell
And chatting.

David Read
I hope that we can come across one another at the next Gatecon. Hopefully there’s going to be another one in 2024 and talk about more travels.

Andee Frizzell
Like you said, connection. That’s what we were talking about before; getting out and going to those conventions. When I go to them, it’s definitely wonderful to see all the actors that I’ve worked with. We’re all busy in different parts of our lives and it’s time to pass again and remembering shooting the show and stuff. But the fans, wow, it’s just incredible. It’s incredible to connect with people and it’s like family reunions, friends reunions. Tthey go to these things once a year to see us for sure, but also to share something that they love with people that also appreciate it. That’s the connection way. I think basically to just wrap this all up is go to more conventions and happiness levels will rise.

David Read
They do they, they do indeed. This spring, would you be interested in coming back to the show with James Lafazanos?

Andee Frizzell
Oh my gosh, when you first emailed me I thought that’s what this was gonna be. Because you remember? Not that I would have said no, I say yes, David, you know, I’m always there with you. But I did. We talked about that in September. I would love to talk with James.

David Read
I will reach out to him.

Andee Frizzell
That would be amazing. Yes, me and my henchman.

David Read
Right. Exactly.

Andee Frizzell
Yeah, we were the two. We were bringing this new character to the viewers. I would love to share a show with him. Let’s do that.

David Read
After the new year I’ll be in touch with you. You have a wonderful holiday season okay.

Andee Frizzell
Thank you, you too. Thank you so much. I just want to thank everybody that called in and had questions and stuff. It is this part of that connection that I really enjoy. Thank you so much David for inviting me. I love talking to you guys. Take care everybody and I will see you next year.

David Read
Talk to you really soon. Bye. Andee Frizzell everyone, the Wraith queen from Stargate Atlantis. I just love having her on, she’s just light. Okay, we have coming up here real quickly, we have the state of the gate. I’m going to go ahead and wrap this one up. Thanks so much to my moderating team, Sommer, Tracy, Keith, Jeremy, Rhys and Anthony. Big thanks to Linda “GateGabber” Furey for finding that photo. Thanks to Frederick Marcoux at ConceptsWeb, our web developer for dialthegate.com. You can go there and see our full schedule of content for the rest of the year, it’s pretty much all booked so we’re good. We’re good there. I’ve got a couple of questions for me which I will answer at the end of next show. We’re going to get the state of the gate going here, I know a lot of you are ready for that. My name is David Read for DialtheGate, I’ll see you on the other side.