Katee Sackhoff Hasn’t Forgotten How Battlestar Galactica Fans Booed Her

Nerdy fandoms, the Joe Rogan show, and toxicity seem like the most natural combination in the world. But that doesn’t make them easy for stars like Katee Sackhoff to forget, even after two decades and plenty of acclaim.

On a recent visit to The Joe Rogan Experience (via Deadline), Sackhoff remembered the hostile reception she received after being cast as Starbuck on the 2004 reboot of Battlestar Galactica. When creator Ronald D. Moore brought Sackhoff and her co-stars to Hall H at San Diego Comic-Con, Sackhoff revealed, “I was booed!”

“I think it upset me a little bit. I would be lying if I said it didn’t upset me,” Sackhoff admitted. “But luckily there were enough people championing the show that I really didn’t pay any mind to it.”

On one hand, some resistance to the series is to be expected. Even though the original Battlestar Galactica only ran for 34 episodes across two seasons from 1978 to 1980, it had garnered a strong cult following. The original series, about human survivors of a battle against robot enemies called Cylons traveling back to their ancestral planet, had appealed to some viewers with its combination of sci-fi concepts and religious thought.

So when even a person as respected as Moore, who had written some of the best episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, pitched a radically reimagined version of the series, some pushback was certain to occur.

In Sackhoff’s case, the pushback was directed toward her character, Kara Thrace, the fighter pilot with the call sign Starbuck. In the original series, Starbuck was also a pilot, but he was a male, played by Dirk Benedict. While Thrace had much of the same swagger of Benedict’s character, fans assumed the worst and rebelled.

Again, none of this is particularly surprising. Such negative reactions continue now, whether it’s about changes to Star Trek lore, the casting of a new Time Lord in Doctor Who, or, you know, a new Battlestar Galactica series.

Yet, Sackhoff was quick to note one key difference between the negative fan response today. “The internet did not exist yet, mind you. It was brand new. You had to go down to the internet café and buy 30 minutes,” she recalled. “So I went down to an internet café because someone was like, ‘I guess they’re talking about the show on these message boards.’ And I was like, ‘What’s the internet?’ So I went on down. I logged on, and I saw this thread – and just the hate that I was getting in this thread!”

Fortunately, the hate eventually subsided. Not only is Sackhoff’s the definitive take on Starbuck, but she’s played key roles in other nerdy projects, including a villain part in the CW series The Flash and the fan-favorite Bo-Katan Kryze in Star Wars: The Clone Wars and The Mandalorian.

Of course, none of this means that she’s immune from criticism. After all, as long as fans are fans and the Joe Rogan podcast is the Joe Rogan podcast, some toxicity will exist.