As ‘Buck Rogers in the 25th Century’ Turns 40, We Catch Up With Erin Gray — Colonel Wilma Deering Herself

Luna Eclipse

Erin knew she could do something, but needed to wrap her head around what it could be. Then an opportunity quite literally presented itself in the form of actress BarBara Luna, who has appeared on dozens of TV shows — though is likely best remembered as Lt. Marlena Moreau in the original Star Trek TV series episode “Mirror, Mirror.” She was the one who gradually introduced Erin to the convention world. Recalls Erin, “BarBara called me and said, ‘You’re going to go to this place and you’re going to show up with 600 photos, you’re going to sign them for a lot of fans [for a fee] and you’re going to call me up and say thank you.'” So I went to my first convention center and there was this big line around the building. I found the promoter, introduced myself and asked, ‘By the way, what is that line for?’ He said, ‘Oh, that’s for you.’ So I entered this whole new world and had a great time. I enjoyed meeting the fans and being told that I’m the reason they went into the Marines and became a fighter pilot and that sort of thing. I really didn’t know how the character had connected with so many young women and so many men as well.”

The Business Grows

Before her next convention, she was talking to her Buck Rogers costar, Gil Gerard, who, upon hearing about her experience, wanted to get involved and promised her 10% of his take. She tried to refuse, but he insisted. “He said, ‘I’m going to make you work for it,’ and he did. Then Marc Singer from the movie Beastmaster and the TV series V — I’d worked with his sister, Lori, and we knew each other — called me up and said, ‘I want to go to the next convention.’ I said, ‘OK. And it’s 10%.’ Suddenly the business is off and running.”

The Original Goal

“When I started the company,” she continues, “I wanted to be of service to people who wanted to inspire others. It didn’t quite work out that way, but in a way it did. What I find is that actors are great storytellers and these conventions are a chance for them to go out and share their knowledge and dreams and inspire people. One of the actors the company represents, Neal McDonough, says, ‘I live for the Q and As with the fans. If I can get off that stage and know I’ve inspired somebody in the audience to make the right choices in their lives, I feel like I’ve done my job.’”

Early Days

Erin was born January 7, 1950 in Honolulu, Hawaii. Interestingly, she clearly remembers the things that would draw her to both acting and modeling. “When I was 5 years old, I was in the kindergarten play. My mom was never able to come to school or see whatever program I was in even though I begged her to. But I went on stage and all I remember is I had this line, ‘Doctor, doctor, come quick, quick, quick. My baby is sick, sick sick,’ and right when I got halfway through that, my mother walked in the door at the back of the auditorium and I proceeded to cry. The audience was just amazed and I thought, ‘What did I do? Oh, I think I got everybody’s attention in this room.’ So that was one thing that happened.”

“The other thing, to be very honest, is I became aware at a young age that my look brought with it a certain power,” Erin continues, not with arrogance but as a matter of fact explanation. “I say power, because it can also be used as a threat against you. In other words, I experienced at a young age stalkers that really had an impact.”

A Turn to Modeling

Although Erin’s mother wanted her to attend college — which she did do, briefly, at UCLA — in her early teens she recognized that the academic life was not for her. “The modeling world opened up for me at a very young age,” says Erin, who got her first modeling assignment in St. Louis when she was 14, and progressed from there. “It became this other way of making a living, where I could be more in control of my life in terms of where I worked. I could travel around the world, I could get a great education by just going through the various countries that I could have learned about in the classroom. So I could actually go there and make a living at the same time, and that really appealed to me. I guess you could say I liked being on my own. I was fortunate to go off on my own at a time — which was the ‘60s — when we were all breaking the rules. I wanted to explore the world, and modeling gave me the opportunity.”

‘Malibu U’

Modeling also led her to Los Angeles and TV Commercials, but, she explains, “Once I started with a modeling agency, I had visions of myself as being a high fashion model, which I wasn’t. I eventually learned that you need to be yourself. They want to see the real you; somebody else can be exotic. So at one point I went into a print job for Teen magazine, which I thought was a print job. They said, ‘Can you dance?’ I said, ‘Sure, what do you want to see?’ And I went into The Monkey, The Swim … whatever was popular in ’65 or ’66. Then I go home and my agent calls me up going, ‘Erin, what did you do? You’re now one of the dancers on Ricky Nelson’s Malibu U.’” That series featured pop star Ricky Nelson as the dean of a fictional college, where music stars of the time would perform once a week. Erin found herself billed as a “Malibeauty Dancer.” A summer replacement series, it lasted seven episodes.

“But that,” she points out, “is what propelled me into this career, because there’s a part of me that’s fearless, innocent and stupid and doesn’t know what I’m doing. But another part of me that just kept taking chance. Why not? You want to see me dance? Sure, let’s dance.”

Embracing Acting

By the mid-1970s, Erin was reportedly one of the top models working television commercials, pulling in $100,000 a year. While modeling in Los Angeles, she also began auditioning for acting roles. In 1978 she guest-starred in an episode of Police Story. That same year she played reporter Gail McKinnon in the four-hour miniseries Evening in Byzantium. “The doors would open because I was a model, but the mental thought behind everyone was, ‘Can you act?’” she explains. “So you went to acting classes. There was always a question of whether I had acting abilities or not, but part of me inside is screaming, ‘I have 30 minutes of commercials on TV every day. There must be something the public likes, so give me a chance.’ But I had no credits, which is why I ended up going under contract to Universal Studios, because I needed credits. I was 28 years old and in the modeling world I’m getting too old and need to start transitioning out. I could see that train ending. It’s extended much longer now, but at the time it was something I needed to think about, like if I was an athlete where you only get so many years.”

The Road to ‘Buck Rogers’

The contract with Universal wasn’t necessarily all that she thought it would be. For starters, she was being paid $600 a week, meaning that she had to continue modeling to supplement it. On top of that, she found that she had little control over her life. “When I was shooting Evening in Byzantium, on my last night, which went from 6 p.m. until 6 a.m., the studio called me and said, ‘We’d like you to come in at 10:00 a.m. for screen tests for Buck Rogers.’ ‘I’m sorry, I just finished a four-to-six week shoot and this is my last night and you want me screen test for Buck Rogers? I haven’t read a script. I know nothing about this project. Please let me go home and we can do this another day.’ ‘Nope.’ I came in with such an attitude. And I got the part.”

What’s it All About, Buck?

The character of Buck Rogers was originally created in 1928 by Philip Francis Nowlan in comic strips, novellas, radio, television and movie serials. Buck Rogers in the 25^th Century seemed to have two influences from its era: Star Wars and disco (which isn’t as strange a description as it sounds if you watch a few episodes). The focus is on 20^th Century NASA/USAF pilot Captain William Anthony “Buck” Rogers, who is plunged into suspended animation for 504 years, awakening in 2491 where he ultimately works with the Earth Defense Directorate alongside Erin’s Wilma Deering. For Erin, working in sci-fi was probably as strange as the world that Buck found himself in.

What Language Is This?

“I was scared to death on the one hand,” says Erin. “You know, ‘Oh, this is science fiction, which means that everything I’m dealing with isn’t real.’ There’s no normal telephone, I’m saying words that are a little Greek and a little Latin put together to make something new. The only way I thought I could get through it was just try to make it as real as I possibly could. I think it was Barbara Stanwyck who said, ‘Speak the truth and the character will play itself.’ That was kind of my guiding force. So it’s like, ‘OK, just make it real. Just commit to the realness of this.’ You know, use my memory training to create the reality and sort of commit to it.”

Living Fearlessly

“Again, I throw myself into things that are scary and hope for the best,” Erin continues. “The other thing is that there’s a part of my personality that is fearless, but there’s also a part of my personality that has dealt with a certain amount of abuse in my life. So there’s a very fragile part, right? There’s a part that is not used to speaking up for herself. I was raised as an only child in that old situation where children are to be seen and not heard. I never felt the freedom to speak up or argue or discuss certain things. My mom was a single mom and working long hours and had to fend for herself. Going in to Colonel Wilma Deering, I had to think, ‘How does a colonel act? How does a colonel posture themselves, how do they hold themselves, how do they speak, how do they react?’ I’ve never been a colonel in my life or a commanding officer or anything like that, so it was like putting on a cloak of strength. I got to pretend to be strong, and it was a really wonderful exploration to bring that within myself. It was an opportunity for me to work that muscle and see how it felt. That absolutely had an impact on my life.”

Playing it Straight

Gil Gerard was well known as a cut-up on the set; the jokester and the guy always looking to lighten things up. Erin … not so much. “My family knows that I am and always will be the straight man,” she admits. “It’s just how my brain works. On Buck Rogers, I’m still the new kid and still trying to learn things. Everyday at lunchtime they would look at the dailies from the day before in a theater. So I would go in there and sort of huddle down in the first row, so the director, editor and producers didn’t know I was there. I’d just watch and listen, and every day I would watch myself when they said “action” and clapped the slate. Well during that period while they were setting up the shot and the camera was still rolling for a few seconds, there was Gil always cutting up, always telling a joke, never stopped, and then there was me, Miss Serious. Not a good image I wanted to project. I mean, I take my job seriously and I didn’t have Gil’s witty, charming personality. I have my own, but it’s different. So I decided to play a joke. I came in one day and said to the cameraman, ‘When the scene is over and they say ‘cut,’ please keep the camera rolling.’ He was very nice to accommodate me. I think it was ‘Planet of the Slave Girls’ and we’re shooting this scene where we’re being thrown into this volcano and definitely going to die. They go ‘cut,’ and I turn around and say, ‘You know, it’s really tough being an egg. You only get laid once, eaten once and it takes 10 minutes to get hard.’

Erin the Jokester

“Well,” she elaborates, “first there was dead silence and then you saw the ladder with the guys holding the lights starting to shake, just dying of laughter. Nobody expected that out of me. From that point on it became, like, who’s going to get the joke on camera this week? Gil, of course, had to top me, so it was a constant back and forth. Gil is very funny and there would be times when I would say to him, ‘Just shut the f–k up. Just stop. I’ve got a stitch in my side and I can’t remember my lines anymore.’ But that’s just his natural way.”

Looking Back at ‘Buck Rogers’

Buck Rogers in the 25^th Century ran for two seasons (which is surprising when one considers how well-remembered the show is by so many), and it ended up being an experience that was … alien … to Erin in a lot of ways. “There were episodes that I like more than others,” she reflects. “It was a little out there for me in terms of sci-fi. I’m the girl who likes all the cop procedural shows. My first book was, like, Nancy Drew and Agatha Christie and I go from there. I wasn’t into sci-fi except for things like Fahrenheit 451 or The Twilight Zone. So I didn’t really know Buck Rogers. One of the biggest things about the show for me was meeting some of the actors that I looked up to, like Anne Jeffreys from Topper — she was my favorite actress growing up. Or Jack Palance, who brought this energy in life to the set.”

The Impact of Wilma Deering

Her biggest takeaway from the series is no doubt the character of Wilma Deering, and its impact on both her and, as previously noted, the audience. “I wanted to be her,” Erin points out. “I didn’t want to take crap from anybody, you know? That helped that part of me to grow and, as it’s turned out, I inspired other women to be strong. I don’t feel responsible in one way because I didn’t go out there and lead the way or something — it just happened. But I’m very grateful for it. It’s a certain legacy that I have that I’m honored to have been part of.”

Mixed Blessing

When the show was over, Erin found the experience to be something of a mixed blessing. “When I got Buck Rogers, it was like getting the golden ring. I worked hard, I studied all those years in acting class, I traveled to Los Angeles and stuck it out. At the same time, I had a baby, so the timing was not really optimal. Also, I was on the set for so long, for so many hours, and sometimes sleeping in my dressing room over night, because there was no point in driving an hour to your home and then driving an hour back to the studio. I might as well just stay in my dressing room kind of thing. But that pulled me away from my responsibilities as a mother and it just killed me. I ended up moving so that I could be close to the studio so I could just drive home at lunchtime and just hug and feed my baby. Then head back to the studio.”

‘Silver Spoons’

Following Buck Rogers, Erin appeared in several TV series as a guest star, including Fantasy Island, Magnum P.I., The Fall Guy and Simon & Simon. In 1982, she returned to regular TV playing Kate Summers-Stratton in Ricky Schroder’s sitcom Silver Spoons. “That was great,” Erin enthuses, “because I had the best schedule an actress could ever hope for. You didn’t have table reads on Monday until noon, and then the chances are maybe we put it on its feet for about an hour or two and then head home. So I could pick up my son from school every day, I could take him to school every day. I find driving kids to school is the best time to find out everything that’s going on in their head. So that’s a precious time for me as a mom. I loved being a mom and being a wife. I loved cooking and doing wifey things. And because Ricky went to school in the mornings, that meant we didn’t go to work until noon.

The Joy of Sitcoms

“I loved Silver Spoons,” she elaborates. “It wasn’t Shakespeare, but it was a family drama in a sitcom format that dealt with family ethics. Some of the messages could be corny, but I was proud of the work there. It was a different muscle for me to use. Like I said, I was always a straight man and didn’t know anything about comedy. Even when I was working with Ricky Nelson and playing the airhead ‘dumb blonde’ on the beach in my polka-dot bikini, but for me, here I am 17 years old and they’re giving me these really stupid jokes to say and I didn’t know how to act them. So I’d say them with an absolute deadpan face and it was hysterical. But I didn’t know what I was doing, they just happened to like it. So later on with Silver Spoons, Joel Higgins was brilliant at comedy and a great teacher. Working with Ricky and the rest of the cast was great — and Jason Bateman was a pleasure. Even at 15 we all knew he was going to be a star.”

A Career Derailed

Silver Spoons finished its run in 1987, not long before the Writers Guild of America went on a 153 day strike (the longest in history), which essentially shut down Hollywood. Erin feels that her career definitely took a hit as a result. “You quickly learn that this business is so strange,” she says. “One minute you’re a star, the next you’re nobody. The next you’re back to being a star again and it’s back and forth. It’s an interesting ride. For example, I remembering being on Buck Rogers and The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson and I’m parking in Johnny’s place and all that. Then Buck Rogers gets canceled and seven days later I go to the same lot and couldn’t get on. I had an audition and had to park six blocks own and walk back for this audition in the heat of the valley. Guess I’m not a star anymore.”

Regime Changes

“After I finished Silver Spoons, every studio wanted to work with me and I was taking meetings with everyone. But I wasn’t ready to make a decision just yet and thought I had time. Now had I agreed to do one of those shows that were offered to me, and the strike happened, I would have still been paid. But I didn’t and over the course of the strike the money was draining. Then, strike ends and all new studio regimes came in with a whole different agenda. Enough time had gone by where the bloom was off. I was able to guest star, but getting another series at that time didn’t happen. At the same time, I ended up getting a divorce.”

Heroes for Hire

Which, essentially, brings things back to Heroes for Hire and this new stage in her life — which is going just fine, thank you very much. “I truly believe that wherever you place your focus, that’s what grows,” Erin muses. “I had to focus on my company and my company then demanded I spend time with it if I was going to keep it going. So it’s been this dance of, ‘I’d love to work, but I am working.’ I’ve never worked harder as owner of my own company than I ever have in my life. There’s no doubt.”

‘Pandora’

Erin continues to act and, in fact, makes a September 10 guest appearance on the CW’s summer sci-fi hit, Pandora. The series focuses on the title character (played by Priscilla Quintana) who, in the year 2199, has lost everything but finds a new life at Earth’s Space Training Academy — where she learns to defend the galaxy from a variety of threats (one of which could actually be herself). Erin guest stars as a ship captain (she finally gets a promotion from colonel!) who finds herself involved in the unfolding mystery of the series. “When I read the script,” Erin recalls, “I remember going, ‘Oh, my God, it’s a Buck Rogers script. I haven’t read one of these in a long time.’ That’s how I felt. Then I’d read through it and say, ‘That kind of reminds me of that movie … I wonder if they’re referencing that movie.’ Then I get on the set in Bulgaria an I find out that everything is making a reference to something sci-fi, whether it be my costar’s uniform or even my uniform, which is a take on Buck Rogers. I’m realizing I’m working with a bunch of sci-fi boys — the producers and director — who are having fun, which is great. So there’s that sense of play, and it was fun to delve into that.”

Tai Chi for Life

But nothing — not Pandora, not Heroes for Hire — compares to her passion for tai chi, an internal Chinese martial art that is practice for its defensive training health benefits and meditation. “I teach tai chi and, if I had my druthers, I would be teaching it all the time, every day to everybody on the planet,” Erin reflects. “To me, it is the ultimate exercise and I’ve done everything from training marathons to aerobic classes, jumping rope to climbing mountains to you name it. It’s the one exercise for everybody for the rest of their lives. It’s a way to strengthen your immune system, calm your mind and give you great tools to survive. Flexibility is the key to good health and longevity — and not only flexibility of the body, but of the mind and the spirit.”

Final Thoughts

With all of that in mind — and the journey she’s been on from 15-year-old girl who decided to become a model, saving the galaxy as part of Buck Rogers and, now, Pandora; creating her own company and truly living a tai chi life — how does she view her personal journey? “I feel very blessed,” Erin replies simply. “There’s no doubt I’ve had people come into my life without whom I don’t think I’d be the person I am today. I feel very blessed for the genes my parents gave me and their acumen. I’m glad I did it my way, even though I made some mistakes. I’ve been very blessed with beautiful children and an incredible husband — my second husband — who I’ve been married to for 27 years. I pinch myself every day. I’m glad I took chances. I’m glad I took risks.”