What’s it like working with David Suchet....

If you ask his fellow actor Brian Jacob Smith who plays Hector MacQueen in the 2010 Suchet version of the famous Murder on the Orient Express, he is the sovereign colleague and the sweetie we all thought him to be...

In this interview with Chicago Now Brian J. tells how he himself got the part in the TV film and about his approach to the script and character. In between all that he praises our own Suchet for being gracious, generous, meticulous and a lovely man who is grateful for his life and career. He also reveals how he learned from the Master by merely watching him in action - bricksite.com/davidsuchet

Brian J. Smith of 'SGU' 'gates to 'Orient Express'

Before he knew it, he had booked passage on the Orient Express. Well, actually he landed a part in the latest adaptation of Agatha Christie's "Murder on the Orient Express," which premieres at 8 p.m. Sunday on PBS (WTTW in Chicago).

"It came completely out of the blue," Smith told me this week during a break in shooting S2 of "SGU" in Vancouver. "I think I was in New York for like five days when my agent called ... I was really intrigued by the character."

Smith plays Hector MacQueen, the multi-lingual assistant to a hateful American businessman. They board the Orient Express and cross paths with the famed detective Hercule Poirot--and with murder. (I'm not going to tell you any more about that.)

"Murder on the Orient Express" is possibly the most well-known of Christie's 120 Poirot stories, and was made into an 1974 film starring Albert Finney as Poirot and Anthony Perkins as MacQueen.

For Smith, the film was an opportunity to not only spend time in Great Britain, but to work with an international cast that included the great David Suchet, who is attempting to play Poirot in all of Christie's 120 stories about the detective.

"He's just a lovely man, and so grateful for his career and for his life," Smith said, adding that Suchet often said he was lucky to have had such a long career and gotten to play Poirot so long. "It was great to hear someone at his level say that because it's like, 'Oh wow! He's still having a good time; it's not just a job.'"

As for Smith's regular job, he's grateful for a month-long break in filming "SGU." "Bring it on," he said. "We are very ready."

He's definitely not sick of Scott or the Destiny. The cast and crew has been working hard on some "big, big, big, big" episodes for Season 2, which returns to Syfy in October.

"I just read one that we're shooting this season last night, a new script that came out," he said. "And the way it ended I'm like, 'Ohhhh my God! Are you serious? How was it--what!?'"

Smith talked more about "Murder on the Orient Express," the "SGU" S1 multiple cliffhanger and Syfy's new "House of Imagination" promo. He also answered some questions from the Twitterverse.

How was the experience?
It was fantastic. ... They sent it over and I was like really, really intrigued by the script. I didn't read Agatha Christie or anything like that, but of course I went and got the book. And I didn't see the film with Albert Finney. I didn't see it but I'd heard a lot about it and I had seen clips. I was really intrigued by the character.

I love the story; I didn't know "Murder on the Orient Express" story at all so the ending completely shocked me. I wasn't expecting that at all. You knew someone was going to be the killer, but the way that it gets revealed ... it's so well-plotted.

So I was like, "Shoot yes." And also with six weeks in London and getting to work with this international cast, I couldn't say no. I'm thinking of people like Susanne Lothar, she is kind of like the Meryl Streep of Germany; Denis Menochet, who was in "Inglourious Basterds," and Jessica Chastain, who actually went to Juilliard four years before I was there.

She's about to explode. I think she did ["Wilde Salome"] with Al Pacino, which is going to be coming out. She did a film with Brad Pitt. She did a film with Sam Worthington. She's got all this stuff coming out. She's about to just explode. And of course, David Morrissey and Sam West and Eileen Atkins--these really incredible actors from all over Europe and the States. It was kind of hard to pass it up. It was fantastic.

The director, Phillip Martin, boy, is he one of the smartest people I've ever met in my life, like really good.

Did your agent just send your reel to these folks? No audition?
Pretty much. There's a lot of stuff that goes into it, but yeah. No audition. That's the kind of cool thing about where I'm getting to right now; I'm starting to get a kind of a body of work. And you put scenes from films you've done, and of course there's some stuff on there from "Stargate." Sometimes that won't book you a job, but it can at least get your feet in the door and give a director of an idea of what you look like on a set under lights as opposed to in an audition room, which is usually an office with florescent lighting.

Was it at all daunting because of the 1974 film was an Oscar winner with multiple nominees. And you're playing the role played by Anthony Perkins. Nerve-wracking?
Well, it wasn't that nerve-wracking because we're doing something so different from what they did in the film. I haven't seen it but apparently at the end of the film they do like a champagne toast and they all clink glasses. And everyone kind of goes off and lives happily ever after. I think the treatment of the story in the film was a little bit more lighthearted... You've got Anthony Perkins making mother jokes, which is a throwback to "Psycho." He's kind of really making fun of himself and his career more than he's playing a character.

I think what they wanted to do with this version of "Murder on the Orient Express" is to tell the story that Agatha Christie wrote; and not just that, but to really get into the darkness of it. It's a very dark, dark story ... And just to really explore the psychology of that kind of a person.

And it talks to people who follow David Suchet and the whole Poirot series. It's really a turning point for Poirot. It puts Poirot in a very dark place because it makes him ask questions about justice, and at what point is the letter of the law wrong. I went back and watched at lot of the Poirot [films] and he's always there defending the black-and-white, right-and-wrong execution of the law. And you're either innocent or you're guilty.

This story is just pretty unique because [it shows] there are some crimes that are so heinous that they deserve punishment and there are some crimes that actually might be just. That throws Poirot, a man of justice if there ever was one, into a kind of a tailspin...

I saw the PBS version and also the DVD version that will be released by Acorn Media. The DVD has added scenes of your character and Poirot getting ready for bed in the shared berth. It's actually kind of funny.
MacQueen is a lot younger; he's a little more free in his body and when you put him in the berth with someone like Poirot it's kind of funny because Poirot is so kind of uptight and prudish in a way. To see someone like MacQueen kind of getting in Poirot's space is kind of interesting.

How was working with David Suchet?
Oh it's fantastic. We had a read-through in the beginning and he told everybody, "Don't be shocked when you see me on set because I have to kind of be in character while I'm on set. It doesn't make sense for me to put on a costume and a moustache and the shoes without doing the voice and the walk and the personality." Of course, he was much more friendly and warm than Poirot is. He was very, very gracious. It was interesting to watch him on set because he always had that little walk, that kind of penguin shuffle and that kind of air or propriety. He had to stay in the head space ... so he's not just faking it.

But he was great. He was very generous. We had some great conversations.

That's cool. Someone on Twitter wanted to know if he gave you any acting tips?
[Laughs.] No. I'm sure if someone asked him, he would, but you're a colleague when you're working with David Suchet. I don't think he places himself above or below anybody. If you're doing a scene with him, whether you've been acting for a year of 15 years or five years, or 30, you're his colleague at that moment and he just wants to play with you.

But you pick up things from practically everybody you work with, right?
Oh yeah. You have to ... Yeah. Something I learned from him is that you can ask for things. You can ask for time if you know you're about to do a very difficult scene, it's actually quite OK to say, "Can we hold the work here for a minute before we get started just so we can all get into a place where we can concentrate?" Or something doesn't feel right in the blocking, let's explore this a little bit further before we shoot it. Things like that. He's very, very meticulous and gets everything lined up in rehearsals so that once the cameras start shooting, he can kind of just let go and play. And that was really cool to see too.

He's also very specific about in scenes where Poirot throws his focus because he knows he's central in the story and that we're kind of seeing the whole thing from his viewpoint. So, whoever he's looking at, the camera's also going to be looking at. And if he thinks someone's doing something kind of cool, acting-wise, he will very pointedly make sure that the DP and the director know that he's looking at them because he wants them to look at them too. It's very cool. 

Do you have a favorite scene from the film?
Favorite scenes? I think it's the moment when we are all on the train, the lights are out, everything, and there are just tons and tons of candles that are lit. And Poirot is unraveling what's going on. And he goes person by person and points out what he now knows about them. At least on the day, because I haven't seen it, I thought it was so interestingly shot; beautifully shot with the way the candlelight worked. The performances were really cool to watch. Really cool to see what people did.

I think you'll love the last scene too, in the snow.
Yeah, it's a very intense moment. Very, very cool moment. And actually it's funny, that was the first scene [I] shot. Yeah, all that stuff outside the train; that was Day 1 for most of us.

Did you know French beforehand?
No, I did not.

And now you know one line in French?
I know one line of French. And it's funny, no one can really tell me exactly what that translated into either because I have a vague idea that it meant something like, "No, it's OK, there's nothing here." Or, "Everything's fine," something like that. But it was a little bit scary because there were a lot of French guys in the cast and they'd hear me say the line and they'd say, "Brian, no. This is how you say it." So I was kind of nervous about it.

You sound pretty authentic.
That's good. It took a couple days, but I think we got it.

Was it difficult to take on a new role after having played Scott so intensely, or is that just a silly question because you're an actor and that's what you do?
It's a relief to do something different. It's a danger of being on a series. It's such a paradox because as an actor that's you want to get on a series. You spend a lot of time auditioning and praying to God you can get on a series that will let you work like that. But you realize after about a year that it can be very, very dangerous because it's very cozy. It's very comfortable and once you understand a character it can be very easy to just want to stay in that comfort zone for a long time. It happens to a lot of actors. You see them do a series and then you never hear from them again...

Right. Both have troubled backgrounds though.
You know with Scott though, he's so strictly working class and so strictly defined by the absence of family ... In MacQueen's case, you have a guy who grew up with everything, who had every single advantage and got to travel and could speak many languages and he's a lot more eloquent than Scott is, but then he lost it all. And I think Scott is driven more by a need to find redemption and MacQueen is much more driven by a need for revenge.