Letting Them Talk with Will Harris - Ep. 51 - Mark Sheppard (Ever After / Supernatural / Battlestar Galactica / Firefly / Doctor Who)

This time I'm letting Mark Sheppard talk. Mark's availability for an interview came up with a press release for his latest film, a horror movie called EVER AFTER, but my reasons for asking him to do the podcast were admittedly tied to the fact that he plays a key role on my wife’s favorite TV series of all time. Yes, Mark Sheppard plays Crowley on SUPERNATURAL, and given that my wife is part of that show’s substantial fanbase and has attended SUPERNATURAL conventions here in Norfolk, Virginia as well as in Rome (shout-out to JIB!), I’ve heard his name more than a few times. But I was already well aware of him as a character actor thanks to his work on a number of other series, including Battlestar Galactica, Firefly, Doctor Who, NCIS… The list goes on. I was also aware of him because of his father, Morgan Sheppard, who I first discovered on Max Headroom but who I remember most fondly for playing the Klingon in Star Trek VI who delivers the rules of Rura Penthe to Kirk and McCoy. What I wasn’t aware of until I started prepping for our conversation, however, was the depth of Sheppard’s musical history. I knew that he was a musician, yes, but I hadn’t realized that he’d been a member of the Television Personalities in the early ‘80s and been one of Robyn Hitchcock’s live drummers. Mark is a man who was made for a podcast called “Letting Them Talk.” Indeed, when I told his SUPERNATURAL cohort Jim Beaver that I’d talked to him, he simply asked, “Did you get to say anything?” Spoken like a man who’s been on more than a few panels with him, but it’s a fair question. To be honest, I made good on the name of the podcast and let Mark talk. As a result, he brought up most of the topics I’d planned to ask about before I could ever get to them, and it felt a bit superfluous to return to them, so if you’d like a sequel to this episode that involves more specific questions, let me know, and I feel like it’s something we could make happen. As you’ll soon hear, we talked about the aforementioned EVER AFTER, which in theaters now (and I confirmed this via Fandango, because it’s playing in my area), we talked about his music career, as well as how his return to music was the direct result of his connection to SUPERNATURAL and its conventions. This is definitely not a conversation that’s heavy on SUPERNATURAL minutiae, but if you’re interested in Mark and his life and times, then I think you’ll enjoy it, and if you’re coming into this episode without knowing much about Mark, I think you’ll find him to be a fascinating individual. One minor technical note: during the course of the conversation, there were a few occasions where the video hesitated, making us both think that we were frozen, but the audio seemed to be fine throughout, so when you hear those moments of slightly confused conversation, that’s what was going on. All right, that’s probably enough of an intro. It’s time to let Mark Sheppard talk.