PASADENA, Calif. -- When he could be solving the Navier-Stokes Equations, Colin Ferguson is portraying Sheriff Carter on Syfy's quirky "Eureka."
How could he have gone so wrong? Though Ferguson, 38, was a whiz at math in school, he also adored "Family Ties," and remembers - even as a kid - understanding when they got it right and when they didn't.
But the Canadian Ferguson was also agonizingly shy, so the idea of him performing was hard to imagine. "I needed money to go off to college and a buddy of mine wanted to do this improvising workshop. I didn't have much of a spine to speak of and didn't want to do it at all, but I did it. After two weeks they asked me to join the troupe and perform in bars," he says during an interview in a noisy café.
"And all of a sudden I was doing comedy in bars. I had a bit of a facility for it. I'd love to go back and watch myself to see if I was actually any good at all. That started it."
After six months he was performing five times a week and earning a living. "I had done school plays, little parts, I just loved it. But I didn't think it was - I was very shy - so I was very easy to dissuade. So whenever someone said it wasn't possible, I said, 'Oh, OK.' "
Ferguson - who spent five years of his childhood in Hong Kong - was so timid, that he'd panic when called on to speak in class. "So this one teacher decided to put me on the debating team. ... You had to give a speech and it turned into a competition every year. So long story short, I ended up winning the competition. I'd feel sick and not sleep the night before, just wanted to get through it, but I did well.
The waterworks
"So because I won that, [the teacher] said, 'I'm going to put you on the debate team.' I just burst into tears during our prep and go get some air in another room and he comes in and I apologize, 'I guess you'll have to get someone else.' He said, 'No, you're going, so figure it out.' I did terrible for that debate, but I made it through the debate and ended up winning the speech thing of that as well."
He even competed in an impromptu speech competition in Boston, his first taste of improvisation, which was to serve him well later when he helped establish a Second City in Detroit.
He remembers going onstage, dropping a couple of quips and suddenly realizing he had won over the audience. "And I knew that I had them, and I could feel myself planning it out, planning it out and hitting, and they'd laugh. 'Good, next one.' And it was really calculated.
"That was the first time I felt, 'OK, I'm on.' Now I failed many times later, but that was the feeling when you're on, when you've got it."
