Janina Gavankar and Colin Ferguson at the Alabama Phoenix Festival

By Nathan Young on May 31, 2013

The Alabama Phoenix Festival had two very special people who have appeared on very popular TV shows! Let’s first talk about Janina Gavankar and her work on True Blood, The League, Arrow, and other shows!

Janina Gavankar plays shapeshifter Luna Garza on HBO’s True Blood. Some of her other roles includes Papi, a lesbian lothario in The L Word, Leigh Turner, a cop with a big secret on The Gates, Ms. Dewey, the personification of a Microsoft branded search engine who comments about the user’s searches, Shiva, the namesake of the sought after trophy on The League, and the role of Mckenna Hall on the TV show Arrow. She did say she has gotten scripts from superhero movies but so far, no one has offered her a role. I think that needs to change!

As she is on the HBO show True Blood, you knew someone would ask about the next season but Janina said she can’t talk about it, sorry folks! She went deep into her personal life which I really like about the guests. Her parents were huge supporters of the arts and she had to prove her worth to them. Her parents were immigrants to the United States and their work ethic was pretty big! Janina loved playing the piano as a kid and she did musicals while in school to study voice.

Janina Gavankar was on the drum corp and in the marching band while in school. Yes, she even went to Yale and admitted she loved getting her butt kicked! She went to acting school at the University of Illinois at Chicago and majored in Theatre Performance. Janina is also a trained pianist, vocalist, and orchestral percussionist, and if she had to pick between her acting career or her music career, she would pick music! She said “music is therapeutic, but I also love acting as well!” Some of her music has done very well and she has released several songs. Here is her own version of the Kayne West song Love Lockdown.

And here is Janina Gavankar latest single called Waiting For Godot. I thought the song was awesome!

Janina Gavankar also talked about the trend we are seeing in Hollywood today of several young stars getting in trouble with the law. Janina does not like seeing child stars growing up too quickly. She said “children are wanting to act like adults when they are not ready to be adults.” Janina was also involved with the G4 show Attack of the Show and she was the final guest on the show before it was cancelled. She loved being on the show and had a blast at San Diego Comic-Con helping out with the show!

Janina Gavankar really loved talking about her acting career. She said “turning into other people is what she is attracted too.” She is not wanting to be herself while on TV and she loves it when people are thanking her on the different looks. Yes, she did say True Blood is the best show on TV currently but sadly I have never seen it because I am too poor to afford HBO. Surprisingly, Janina is allergic to wolves on True Blood. And if there was a remake of a female superhero in a movie, she would love to be Wonder Women or Elektra!

One more thing, she provides her voice on the video game series Assassins Creed. Janina is a huge gamer and loves playing video games! She really does not care which console, she just cares about playing games. Yep, she is a geek and nerd just like all of us!

To learn more about Janina Gavankar go to: http://janinagavankar.com/. Follow her on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/JaninaGavankar and on Twitter @Janina

Now on to Colin Ferguson! Mr. Ferguson is best known for playing Sheriff Jack Carter on the TV show Eureka. Ferguson has a long resume of shows he appeared on in his career! Colin Ferguson loved to talk about his time on the show Eureka.

Eureka went for five seasons from 2006-2012. Colin Ferguson even produced some episodes of the show! The crew up in Canada took a lot of time to get the show right. It took the crew many takes to just get the right scenes correct for the show. On some days, the crew would shoot two different episodes on the same day! And that is tough for any actor or actress to do. Colin was bruised, burned, and even had some broken bones while working on Eureka. Yes, the show had several science mishaps which the fans liked!

The TV show Eureka had a high budget because the show went through 14 different Jeeps. The show also used several Go Pro cameras so the viewers could see some awesome action! Since the show was filmed during the recession, Ferguson said the recession helped to bring in guest stars. And he loved to play the role of the sheriff. He loved the role so much he wore his sheriff suit whenever he could! He called the role of sheriff Jack Carter an ironic role.

Episodes were always 44 minutes and 30 seconds. So when too much was shot for one episode, Colin hated seeing some good stuff being cut out. The first stuff gone would be any comedy scenes. If more had to be cut, any character scenes would be cut next. Colin also liked talking about the Syfy channel. Since Syfy was bought by NBC Universal, he feels like the network has been going downhill with the addition of several reality shows. Syfy always gives a new show a high advertising budget for the first season, a small advertising budget for the second season, and none at all for the rest of the series. Syfy also has a strict five seasons and you are done limit which I hate seeing!

Syfy was fortunate to give Eureka one extra episode in the final season to close out everything or the show ending would have been bad. Colin Ferguson said 80 episodes was a good run for Eureka. And now he has a new role on TV! Colin will join the Syfy show Haven for its fourth season. Ferguson will play William, a mysterious stranger whose secret agenda leads him to FBI agent-turned-cop Audrey Parker (Emily Rose) in the small town of Haven, Maine. I look forward to seeing him on my TV screen!

Learn more about Colin Ferguson by following him on Twitter @ColinFerg

By the way, Colin Ferguson has a lovely wife!