Comic Con 2011: Vivica A. Fox, Femme Fatales, Masquerade Ball

Yesterday at Comic Con (trip sponsored by Tout), this blogger had the pleasure of meeting some of the many cast members of Femme Fatales, the Mark A. Altman, Steven Kriozere-created show on Cinemax.

For those who’ve not seen it, Femme Fatales is described as an anthology of “powerful, sexy and dangerous women.”

Of all of the “powerful, sexy, and dangerous women,” only one was on hand: Vivica A. Fox. The 25-year movie veteran, who looks all of 25-years old, was part of a group of cast members the media interviewed between 1 PM and 3:30 PM on Saturday, from a room at The Marriott reserved for Comic Con.

The other staff and cast members who came to the interview were: the creators Mark A. Altman and Steven Kriozere, Robert Lasardo and Robert Picardo, and Jeff Fahey, who I also met at the Sushi Girl Red Carpet Friday night.

The newly engaged Vivica A. Fox, set to marry Omar Slim White, the promoter of Atlanta’s nightclub called “Primal”, talked about how she commonly plays strong, independent women – Femme Fatales offered a perfect role for her.

Fox plays the dean of a college who discovers that her professor husband has another woman on the side, and takes matters into her own hands. “That’s about as much as I can say,” said Fox. But she did talk about how she’s able to separate her professional and personal lives in a Hollywood that produces a lot of tabloid blog material. “I just don’t reveal too much,” Fox said about how she manages such an effort.

Overall, the Comic Con conversations with Mark A. Altman and Steven Kriozere, Robert Lasardo and Robert Picardo, and Jeff Fahey, were mostly good and really interesting, but more often than not, with some gaps of silence that seemed like an eternity.

There were two problems: first, some of the press people in the room didn’t seems all that into the show, second, the design of the show is such that there’s not much to talk about with any one cast member.

What I mean is, if an actor plays one episode, you can talk about that episode and what they did, and how they did it, but even then it’s like milking a cow without much milk. After a few minutes, you’re left with talking about the actor’s life, and not their role in, in this case, Femme Fatales.

It would be so much different if Femme Fatales had a permanent ensemble cast, rather than the 13 episodes with many different actors in them, and the chance of having “a permanent ensemble cast” in the future was something the producers did mention.

But that’s not to say the talks weren’t fun (and the video’s coming this week). Fox talked about the importance of having “a personal brand;” Robert Lasardo and Star Trek’s Robert Picardo talked about their roles as, in Lasardo’s case “bad guys with a heart,” and in Picardo’s case, “men (and robots) who are always feeling disrespected” in some way. Lost star Jeff Fahey is a World traveler, as he has a role with the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI), that takes him around the World. “I’m always somewhere like Afghanistan when my manager calls for an assignment,” he said.

In all, it was a cool opportunity to get into the backgrounds of what makes some of these great actors and pop culture figures who they are. As the creators of Femme Fatales said, it was important to get great actors, first. They did just that.

Comic Con Masquerade Ball

Last Night, the real must-see event was the Comic Con 2011 Masquerade Ball. And it was a great way to stay in the San Diego Convention Center if you were just plain tired of walking for miles each day. For this Comic Con trip, sponsored by Tout.com, I used my Tout account to capture, up-close, the many costumes from the event.

Check out the Tout stream below where you can see 15-second accounts of that event, and my other Comic Con activities:

Stay tuned.