Sources:Glen A. Larson on casting the "Battlestar Galactica" pilot

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Introduction

Glen A. Larson discusses casting the "Battlestar Galactica" pilot.

Transcript

Casting Dirk Benedict

Dirk Benedict is someone I had met in New York, and I just thought he had a lot of style, sex appeal. He's. I liked him right away.

Casting Richard Hatch

Richard Hatch came to me by way of the network. I think soap operas and some movies of the week and things that they had done, uh, I liked him right away.

Casting Lorne Greene and the Science Fiction Audience

Lorne was sort of a natural. I mean, it was is the idea of if you could take Lorne Greene who was the, uh, I mean, there's two ways to go, you know, totally unknown, or if if you are offered a guy who, uh, was instrumental in one of the longest-lasting family, you know, Westerns, and in many ways a space show is a Western. Um, Lorne Greene was, I guess one of those people you really couldn't say no to. It just made a lot of sense. Because one of the things that you deal with in science fiction, and one of the reasons it was hard to sell, is that it always enjoyed a very small niche audience. It did not have, you know, more and more of people who are here today who could look at this tape or other things, have grown up with space. But going back to the origins of Star Trek, we hadn't grown up with space, nor NASA, nor all of the things we've accomplished and learned, all of that, none of that was around. So a lot of people just didn't care. It didn't have relevance, especially women. You know, maybe the boys liked rockets, but women weren't too crazy about them.

Lorne Greene's Contribution

And so you, you know, the idea that a show like Bonanza was able to capture a huge Sunday night audience for that length of time. Uh, and I think Lorne was a blessing, too. He was very good at sitting down and really talking about stories and people and those kinds of values.