Edward James Olmos Shares an Interesting Demand He Had Put in His BATTLESTAR GALACTICA Contract

Edward James Olmos has had a hell of a great career, and one of the projects that he’s best known for is his role as William Adama in Ron Moore’s Battlestar Galactica. This was a role he was actually very excited about taking, but there was one demand he made before taking the role and he had this demand actually written into his contract.

During a recent interview with The AV Club, Olmos was asked what made him sign on for the series having previously turned down a role in Star Trek. Olmos was offered the part of a Klingon character in 1984's Star Trek III: The Search For Spock. This was his response:

"The writing. The storytelling. The originality of the story itself compelled me to be part of it. It was just amazingly well written by Ron Moore. If you see the pilot, it’s just like, 'Whoa, what a movie.' It’s like a movie. It was a television show, but it was just really thought through, which made me want to be part of it. But at the very first meeting I had with the producers, including Ron Moore, I said, 'Listen, I’ll do this with you. But I must ask you to be very understanding of what I’m about to say. I don’t want to see any four-eyed people, or weird jellyfish people, or weird outer-space people. Creature From The Black Lagoon-ish type of people. I don’t want things that are out in outer space; you get to this world and all the sudden they have these creatures, giant creatures.'"

He went on to say that he made sure that this was written in his contract, and he hilariously says that if some kind of weird alien showed up, “I am going to look at whatever it is that I’m looking at on camera, and I’m going to faint.” He then says they’ll have to kill off his character because he’s done:

"I will be very honest with you, on my contract I put down that if I see someone that is like that, like some kind of science fiction-type idea of some weirdness out in space, I am going to look at whatever it is that I’m looking at on camera, and I’m going to faint. And I said, 'You’re going to have to write, ‘Adama died of a heart attack.’ You’re going to have to write me out. Because I’m out.' [Laughs.] And so they chuckled and said, 'No, we’re more to the understanding of Blade Runner.' I said, 'Now, that’s really good. There was no monsters in that, they were all human beings.' Well, it was replicants and Cylons, but you know."

One of the many reasons why I loved Battlestar Galactica so much is because there were no weird aliens that showed up. It was a smart decision and is one thing that helped set the series apart from things like Star Wars and Star Trek.