PLUME: It’s often heard on productions like these how much of a bonding experience is it for the actors that have to go through the make-up process…

SHIMERMAN: It was very much a bonding experience. The people I was close to then and am still close to are the people who went through the prosthetics. My closest friend from Deep Space Nine is Rene Auberjonois. We were both in the make-up chair many, many months together. After that comes Max, after that comes Aron. Andy Robinson. Those are my closest friends. These are all actors who did prosthetics. Deep Space Nine, I’d have to talk to Johnny Phillips about this, but Deep Space Nine had a sort of partisan shooting arrangement. How do I explain this? It’s amazing to me that for seven years I really never worked with Avery, really that much, or with Siddig, or with Colm, because our stories rarely interconnected. Now, they would come to the bar of course, and they’d get served, I would serve them, but most of their scenes were with the other Star Fleet people or with the guest stars that were appearing. Because most of my morning was spent getting into makeup with Max and Rene and Andy, that’s who I was bonding to. Although they’re good friends of mine, ironically, the people who didn’t wear makeup, I didn’t have that much bonding with. Pun intended.

PLUME: Would you say it’s almost a caste system that developed?

SHIMERMAN: Yes, I would. I would say that a caste system developed and it was sort of like two shows. There was Deep Space Nine and then there was The Quark Show. When Quark had large episodes, you wouldn’t see those people anywhere, really, except in a very small B story. Then I wasn’t shooting those days or at that time, and I wouldn’t see them then, either. It was sort of a caste system, and that’s what I have to talk to Johnny Phillips about, to see if the same thing happened with Neelix. I actually haven’t had that conversation with him, and I should some day.

PLUME: It’s interesting when a lot of people compare the “family atmosphere” that exists with the Next Gen cast as opposed to the DS9 cast, where there were subgroups that got along really well, but not an overall bonding experience…

SHIMERMAN: TNG were enormously gregarious. They were all pretty much the same age, and when they started the show they were all pretty much young people who didn’t have families. So when work was over they went and had a beer together. They bonded. They were all pretty much jokesters. They loved to have a good time, and that’s what’s so wonderful about watching that show, is you can feel the camaraderie between them. Deep Space Nine was made up of people slightly older, and when we were finished working, we went to our families and we had other lives to get to. So from my reference point, it wasn’t… and we were more serious people. Any time spent with Jonathan Frakes or Brent Spiner or even Michael Dorn or Marina [Sirtis], you’re just going to be laughing. You’re just going to be doubled over with laughter because they’re just fun loving people. That wasn’t really the makeup of the actors on Deep Space Nine. And that’s not bad – we’re good in other ways. We just weren’t predisposed for having a fun time. It was fun – it just wasn’t always that way. Also, all the people on TNG were Star Fleet. They all were on the bridge for the most part, and they all solved problems together. That’s what Star Trek is about. It’s about having a problem and a group of people getting together and solving it. That’s what’s great about the whole format. I wasn’t part of the problem solving process. Yes, on rare occasions I was, but for the most part the Star Fleet people would solve their problems on their own without me. Since I was left out of the process, in that sense, it was a caste system. In the sense that they bonded together because they were constantly solving problems together, even script problems. But I was never really part of that. No regrets – I loved having my own little Quark show. I wouldn’t change it for the world. But that’s just simply the way it was.

PLUME: Were there ever personality conflicts within the show, or did everyone basically keep to themselves?

SHIMERMAN: I think people pretty much kept to themselves. There were friendships made … but at least from my point of view – and again, you have to remember, most of the time I didn’t see them, so what I’m getting is sort of secondhand information. I really didn’t spend that much time working with them, because they spent so much time together, and I was not part of it most of the time. So I would assume from what I saw that people tended to go part their ways the moment the work was done.

PLUME: As you said, there was no real sense of regret that it wasn’t a gregarious set?

SHIMERMAN: It may have been for the others. It wasn’t for me, and I have no regrets whatsoever. None whatsoever. Because I had my own little family. The others probably can’t speak glowingly as much as I can about Max Grodenchik and Aron Eisenberg, or about Chase Masterson, or David Levinson, or about the people that frequented Quark’s bar. That was my family, and I was very happy with them. But, as I said, it was a bipartisan sort of show, in the sense that there were two separate families living in the same space station. There was the Star Fleet family, and the leaders, and then those of us who frequented the bar.

PLUME: At what point did Buffy enter the picture?

SHIMERMAN: Buffy entered about my third season… no, it had to be the fourth season… of Deep Space Nine. I was under the impression that I was only going to do three or four Buffys, because I thought, “How can I do more than that? I’ve already got a series that takes up a lot of my time.” No other production company is going to allow that. In the sense that, okay, let’s say you write an episode where Snyder has a couple of scenes. Then you have to wait to find out if the actor playing Snyder is free from Star Trek to do those scenes. That’s a major inconvenience that no production company wants to put up with. But what I didn’t know was that I had two major guardian angels. One was the second line producer on the show, a man named Steve Oster, who made the schedules out for Deep Space Nine. And Gareth Davies, who had the same job over at Buffy. These guys bent their production schedules into a pretzel to make sure that for the most part – not always – but 95% of the time, I could shoot both shows. Now there were, I think, two episodes that Snyder was a part of that were being shot during major Ferengi episodes. It was impossible, I couldn’t possibly do both of those. There wasn’t enough time. But, for the most part, Steve and Gareth were able to work it out. Amazingly to me, I ended up doing three years. Also understand, – I had a contract with Paramount which specifically states that I could only do three other TV shows during the course of a year while I was doing Deep Space Nine.

PLUME: Meaning three episodes?

SHIMERMAN: Yeah, three episodes of any TV show during the course of a year. Not only did I do Buffy – 17 episodes of Buffy – but I also did several episodes of The Practice, of Ally McBeal, of other shows… Lazarus Man. Whenever I got work somewhere else, Steve Oster pretty much always made sure that I could do it. To that, I owe him an enormous thanks.

PLUME: I can’t comprehend the juggling that must have been involved.

SHIMERMAN: It was phenomenal. And, one could sort of understand Star Trek doing it because, after all, I was one of the leads on the show, and they were trying to be nice to one of their leads. But I was not by any means a major character on Buffy, and Gareth Davies would often… I mean, I remember doing this on two occasions – I shot my scenes for two episodes on the same day. How do I put this? Different episodes, of course, have different directors. What they would do is, “Okay, Armin can only shoot this one day, so we’re going to bring in one director from one episode to shoot his scene on Tuesday morning. Then, when he’s finished with that, the production company will bring in the director for the next episode and shoot his scene for that.” See what I’m saying? They’re paying the director’s extra, they’re changing their shooting schedule, all to accommodate a recurring character who really only appeared, for the most part, in one scene per episode. It was amazing. I am enormously grateful to the people who allowed that to happen. All they were doing it for was to accommodate my schedule and my feelings.

PLUME: That shows you how much they wanted you.

SHIMERMAN: They did. And I’m honored by that, and I’m truly, truly – it touches me deeply that they did that. Recently, the last of that was a couple of months ago I got a phone call from the Buffy production company, asking me to do a photograph with the cast. I said, “Sure, I loved working that show, I’d be glad to come back.” I hadn’t seen them for two years. I expected when I got there to see a whole bunch of recurring characters to be taking this picture with them. When I got there, there were only five people being asked to be in the picture with the cast. That was myself, Kristine [Sutherland], who played Buffy’s mom, and Juliet Landau, and Danny Strong, and Mike Gershman, who was the DP [Director of Photography]. When I sort of got to Joss, I said, “Why aren’t more people here, and why did you chose the four or five of us?” He said, “Because you’re the only ones we all liked.” So I’m very honored by that. Especially when you understand I was playing a character that was so despicable on the show. People were smart enough and wise enough not to confuse the actor with the part.

PLUME: What was the dynamic like on the Buffy set, compared with the DS9 set?

SHIMERMAN: It was totally different. Deep Space Nine – very long days, and at this point, most of the crew and some of the actors had been working in Star Trek for a very long time. So it had a sort of machine quality to it, and it’s one of the ways that you could get through those long days, and get through the amount of work that has to be done in so short a period of time, eight days, is because of that machine-like quality. People know their jobs so well, that it works like clockwork. That is a brilliant asset – but at the same time, it can be slightly deadening. On Buffy, when I started, it was a brand-new show for the most part. People were learning their skills, nobody really knew where the story was going. The audience really hadn’t caught on at that point. Basically, working with very young actors who were enormously talented, enormously gifted and had great aspirations. And I wasn’t wearing makeup. So I wasn’t under the handicap of having to talk through rubber, or think through rubber. It was night and day. I didn’t really have very much responsibility on Buffy, so that made it easier also. I’d have one scene and basically have to scowl at her and say, “Summers, what are you doing this time?” It was just wonderful. It was summer camp. I had a great, great time and a got to love all the people on the show.

Continued below…

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