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Katee Sackhoff talks motorcycles, playing bi and her lesbian fanbase

Katee Sackhoff is all dolled up, and it’s not how you might be used to seeing her. As Starbuck on the cult hit Battlestar Galactica, Sackhoff was the tough, ass-kicking natural beauty that appealed to both men and women. At the Cable TCA day in January, Sackhoff is wearing her blonde hair long and curled with more make-up than she seems to ever wear on screen. But once she talks, her demeanor exposes that same kind of Starbuck-esque straightforwardness Sackhoff carries in real life. Even in a frilly top, she seems like she could throw down with any person in the room, not that anyone would dare challenge her.

“Somebody at one point in my life told me I’m very androgynous,” Sackhoff told me. “And I never saw that in myself. I think what it was I lived in a small town and my dad always said ‘Play with the boys until you get hurt.’ And so I was bound and determined to keep up with the boys. I think he was speaking mostly in the context of soccer, but I took it in this life sort of way because I was hanging out with the boys and jumping over barbed wire fences and kind of had this desire to keep up with boys physically.”

Sackhoff said she embraced her own masculinity, but enjoys her femininity just as much. “I also love wearing a pair of Louboutins and looking like a piece of ass and walking in and having every man in the room want to f–k me,” she said. “Let’s be honest! I know that’s straightforward. I love to have to play both sides of the coin. And I love to have both of those attributes in my characters as well because I think that’s real and I think every woman has that, it’s just what side you lean more toward and I think I’m just more down the middle.”

The actress’ mass appeal was part of what made BSG such a hit. It was even the focus of a recent Portlandia sketch, in which the characters become so obsessed with Battlestar that they have to marathon it until they lose their jobs and stop paying their bills and refuse to believe it’s over once they’ve finished. Then they take it upon themselves to track down the show’s creator Ronald D. Moore (or at least the first Ronald Moore they can find in Portland) and demand he write more. Two of Sackhoff’s former male castmates showed up in the sketch, and Sackhoff, who is actually from Portland, said she can’t believe they didn’t call her to join in.

“Do they know I’m from Portland at all? Now I’m actually offended. Now I’ll never watch the show. I was too busy anyway,” she joked.

In reality, she just might have been. Sackhoff is starring on the new A&E series Longmire, which is adapted from a series of mystery novels by Craig Allen Johnson. Sackhoff plays Vic, a deputy in a small Wyoming town working with Sheriff Longmire, who is grieving over the death of his wife. The show picks up a year after she’s passed and Vic needs Longmire’s help in tracking down a murderer and a missing girl.

Vic is just as androgynous as Starbuck and she’s the show’s sole female star. When it comes to what we’ll see for her character, Sackhoff jokes we can just read the books, although things might be changed a bit on screen.

“[In the books] there’s a love triangle sort of thing kind of happening,” she said. “It’s an interesting thing to try and figure out where to go because it’s in a book to say Robert [Taylor] and I could end up together. I think that Robert and I – we get along like pigs in s–t and I love him to death – but I think that they’re looking at us together on camera and the age discrepancy looks huge. I think that he and I sort of almost have this father/daughter relationship kind of going; almost like this big brother type thing going on. It could change and morph into something different. I think that was the intention but I don’t know where it’s going to go. I think that’s what I’m so excited about. The writers are so fantastic and I’m kind of looking forward to see where they’re taking the character because they do have preconceived notions because of the book.”

There doesn’t seem to be any sort of sexual tension between Vic and Longmire in the pilot, but then again, neither of them seem to be in any place for a romantic relationship. What drew Sackhoff to the show, though, was the setting as a character all its own.

“I loved the idea of the space,” she said. “In Los Angeles and in city living, we live on top of each other and I loved the idea of this wide open space. And in Battlestar, the ship was a character. It was part of what I loved about it. In Longmire, Wyoming is part of – it’s a character. The range, the wide open spaces, the topography – everything about it is a character. And the setting really inspired me to do this as well.”

Just like in Battlestar, Longmire is set in its own little world. Viewers will find themselves in a tight-knit community where everyone knows each other’s business and outsiders rarely come through to stir up trouble. (There’s enough without them!)

Besides Longmire, Sackhoff is also working on several films, including Sexy Evil Genius, co-starring Seth Green, William Baldwin and Michelle Trachtenberg, all of whom play her ex-boyfriend or girlfriend, respectively. Sackhoff said she had to make out with “everyone on set” and talked about those Twitpics that surfaced of her kissing Trachtenberg.

“That was my first female kiss. It was really interesting for me because Michelle has done it before, I guess. She kept grabbing my boobs and saying ‘It’s almost here!’ I was like “Jesus!” I kept saying to the director, ‘I think she’s going to rape me. I really do. I’m actually scared for my vagina!” she joked. “I’m just kidding.”

Despite playing bisexual in Sexy Evil Genius (which Sackhoff said is being shopped around to film festivals for 2012), Sackhoff said she is often mistaken for a lesbian.

“Everybody wants me to be a lesbian!” she said. “The other day I was saying, I say this quite often, actually: Everybody wants me to be a lesbian, I might as well go for it! But no, I’m not.”

That being said, Sackhoff knows she has a large lesbian appeal, which might make for some instant fans of her venture with former BSG co-star Tricia Helfer. Together, the motorcycle enthusiasts make up the charitable group Acting Outlaws. They hope to do another ride across the country when their careers slow down. Sackhoff said they also want to start a clothing line for female cyclists.

“It wasn’t a one time thing for Tricia and I,” she said. “It’s something she and I both adore, so it’s not going anywhere.”

First, though, Sackhoff has to film her new role in The Chronicles of Riddick, which she’s bulking up. “I don’t like working out and looking this buff but I’ll get over it at some point,” Sackhoff said. “I’ve gained like eight pounds of muscle and my arms are huge. I keep saying my ass is popping out of my jeans and I don’t like it.”

Sackhoff is funny, which is something that might not come across in her roles thus far. She seems to take on very serious characters, but her dream role might be something a little more fun.

“There is a script called Paper Wings that I have been trying to do for eight years of my life,” she said. “It is about a female country singer and a bull rider and it is my dream job. At one point, I was taking meetings and it ended up at a different company and they want to make it into an $80 million film, which it is not. It’s one of those things that I’m fighting, fighting, fighting because I think now Reese Witherspoon has backed out of it, Renee Zellwegger has backed out of it, I think that it’s been offered and given and taken back and quit and it’s my dream job.”

I had to ask: She wants to play the country singer, right? “No, the bull rider,” she joked. I wouldn’t have put it past her.

Sackhoff said she’s a huge country music fan and would want nothing more than to sing on camera. “I’m obsessed with country music. I grew up on it. My sister is 10 years older than me and we had so little in common, it was the one thing that we shared,” she said. “And that script, I still have it. I’m waiting for Will Smith and Overbrook to call me and tell me I’m famous enough to do it.”

When it comes to her most famous role on BSG, there’s one plotline she would have changed.

“The storyline of Kat – I thought it was ridiculous,” she said. “I don’t know what they were trying to accomplish. That storyline made absolutely zero sense to me. The fact that Starbuck would stand there and let somebody punch her in the face because she admires her? No. I was pretty happy when they killed her off, I have to admit. I find it ironic now that I was supposed to get one article of clothing from Battlestar Galactica and I asked for my helmet and they said they would give me the helmet and they gave me Kat’s f–king helmet and they sold Starbucks’ for thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars and then gave me Kat’s stupid ass helmet.”

See? She’s funny, right?

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