And while “Alias: Season Six” never materialized, Rachel continued to catch the eye in a smattering of big screen adventures (“Star Trek,” “G.I. Joe” & the upcoming “Conan” reboot) before recently returning to the small screen. And a gun holster.

As team newbie Ashley Seaver, she lends “Criminal Minds” a fresh energy and brings a new skill set to The BAU. But it’s another upcoming team reunion that Rachel is particularly stoked about — especially since reuniting with her “G.I. Joe” crew affords her the opportunity to finally kick Sienna Miller’s ass!

PopWrap: Congrats on the “Criminal Minds” guest-star gig turning into a full time role!
Rachel Nichols: Thanks, they’re stuck with me now [laughs]. The last time I did a TV show was “Alias,” and that’s a huge family. I mean, they were the nicest people. You truly think that can’t happen twice – especially with the schedule of a one-hour drama, but after one episode I wanted to spend years with these people. Luckily they came back and asked me to join the BAU – it was the best Christmas gift ever. I was thrilled.

PW: What was about it Ashley that clicked for you?
Rachel: There are a lot of similarities with us. I mean, obviously my father is not a serial killer. At least not to my knowledge [laughs]. I also love playing women who have something extraordinary in their life.

PW: And it’s good to see a gun back in your hands!
Rachel: I would joke with everyone – I’ve played FBI, CIA, LAPD and it just feels right. I’m happy to be back fighting for freedom!

PW: Growing up, did you have any real law enforcement aspirations?
Rachel: No. I grew up in Maine and my dad always says that I was ready for college in kindergarten. So from a very young age I was very excited about school. I went to Columbia with visions of briefcase, powersuits and Wall Street. Like everybody else I had read the bible that is “Liar’s Poker” and being a banker sounded so cool, so flash. Obviously I’ve taken a very different path, but it was never going to be crime fighting. Even though one of my favorite movies of all time is “Silence of the Lambs.”

PW: Well there are shades of Clarice Starling in a lot of your roles.
Rachel: I think there’s some Clarice in me – “The Inside” was a lot like that, and I’m literally now realizing how much of her there is in my work [laughs].

PW: Plus being an actor lets you try all the professions.
Rachel: Exactly. I’ve never been a big fan of Halloween because I spend my days pretending to be other people as it is. So I don’t need that one day, I’m lucky enough to do it every day.

PW: You actually spawned a Halloween costume a few years ago with Scarlet in “G.I. Joe,” that had to feel epic.
Rachel: Yes, especially seeing pictures of people in it. That was also the first time I had an action figure. That was a game changer. And it was so much fun to make.

PW: Do you own the Scarlet action figure?
Rachel: Somewhere. My mother does a great job of collecting and preserving. Hasbro might not like me saying this, but I don’t think my action figure is very attractive. Sienna [Miller] and I actually fought over who’s rendition was uglier. She kind of wins because hers looks like a cross-eyed 80-year-old woman with an overbite, but I look like a man with a very large forehead and a unibrow, so…

PW: Well, I’m sure you can rectify that with the sequel.
Rachel: I would love to. They’ve been very tight-lipped about it — I haven’t even seen a script, but I would jump to do it in a second. Making the first one was a blast.

PW: Well at least you’ll be well-represented this summer blockbuster season with “Conan the Barbarian.” Do you consider if a reboot?
Rachel: I’m so excited about that. And yea, I think it’s a reboot, but more than that it’s a totally fun, flashy ride.

PW: Pictures of Jason Momoa as Conan make it look like he’s a wall.
Rachel: Yea, he’s a large individual. I’m just shy of 5’ 10” and I still felt dwarfed by him. My dad is 6’ 6” but Jason is massive – which was nice because you could go anywhere with him and no one would screw with you, which is helpful since we were filming in Bulgaria [laughs].

PW: And Rose McGowan plays your nemesis in it, right?
Rachel: Yes, she’s Marique — the bad girl to my good girl. We have a fight scene and she is after my blood. Let me tell you, her make-up is unreal. I mean, Rose is barely recognizable under all these prosthetics. It’s quite cool.

PW: Hmm, you’ve already committed one of the better girlfights to film with Sienna in the first “G.I. Joe,” how does this one stack up?
Rachel: [laughs] I should probably say the savvy thing — that “Conan” is better … but it’s not. I’m so sorry! Sienna and I had the dopest chick fight ever. Mine with Rose is much shorter. I mean, Baroness & Scarlet fought on elevators! I think that is going to be my favorite scene ever … until we make them give us a better one in “G.I. Joe 2!”

PW: It’s a pretty hard act to follow!
Rachel: Well, I need to win! I was complaining that the good girl gets her butt kicked, but the [producers] kept telling me – “in the sequel, you win!” I think it could just be “G.I. Joe 2: Scarlett vs. Baroness.” That’s all it’ll be, just the two of us fighting.

“Criminal Minds” airs Wednesdays at 10pm on CBS

Source: Pop Wrap

Actress Rachel Nichols, a former model who was seen earlier this summer as a green-skinned alien in Star Trek, is a member of the GI Joe team out to defeat the evil Cobra organisation, headed by Sienna Miller.

The 29-year-old plays Scarlett, whose ninja skills and talent with a crossbow come in useful when dealing with deadly assassins.

We caught up with Nichols last month on a day that began with her and her co-stars being sped down the River Thames for a photo opportunity at HMS Belfast.

That was quite an entrance you made this morning…

Oh my gosh, they did not adequately prepare us for this morning! It was so much fun: I’m from New England, from a world of boats and oceans, so I had a real laugh. It was hysterical: there were these little dinghies, we’re bopping through the water and all of us got drenched. It was a riot to start a day of press that way.

GI Joe is called Action Man in the UK. We don’t recall there being an Action Woman…

Scarlett is the one female GI Joe, the one girl in the group of boys, and I was very much the one girl in a group of boys when we made the film. She grew up with the boys, she’s a tomboy, she’s really smart and she beats a lot of them at most of their games.

Does that mean you have your own doll now?

Yes, we’ve been having a real good laugh about the action figures. They came and scanned us – we had to make these crazy faces. Sienna and I don’t particularly look our most attractive, but it is good fun to have an action figure.

Was it fun also to knock seven bells out of each other?

Sienna and I had a riotous time doing our fight scene – we trained for six weeks so I’m very proud of it. There were a lot of minor injuries – I took a punch to the head, she slipped on a rubber bullet, a spark went off and went down her top – but nothing we couldn’t laugh about afterwards.

Didn’t you suffer a more serious injury during another scene?

We were doing a big fight sequence and I was doing a stunt where I had to launch myself over a console. Some squibs that were supposed to go off after I passed the console went off in my face; I landed with my hair on fire and had burned-off eyebrows and eyelashes on my right side. I was very lucky that it was all superficial. My hair grew back and I’m not blind!

Do you think people will want to see a film based on a toy?

I think Transformers did us a huge service. I went into it thinking what is this? It’s based on a toy my brother played with, and I was blown away. I think preconceptions are okay. You hope that people with low expectations will be completely blown away and go out and tell their friends.

The state of our armed forces is generating a lot of debate at present. Isn’t it strange to be releasing a film about soldiering and militarism in this current climate?

People shouldn’t go in thinking it’s a military film. It doesn’t take itself seriously; it’s a summer blockbuster and certainly not a movie about war. It’s a good, fun, rollercoaster ride; we’re not making a statement or anything like that.

When you were first offered the part, though, did you not have concerns that the film might be misinterpreted?

Of course the movie could be open to all sorts of readings, but I knew upon reading the script it was going to be much more on the side of fun. It could go any way I guess, but I didn’t spend a lot of time worrying about it being negative.

There are a lot of guns in the film. How did Miller cope?

Sienna had never held a weapon before and had certainly never fired one, so she was probably intimidated in the beginning; she talked about being from the UK and it not being a gun culture. I had grown up with guns though and wasn’t at all intimidated, so hopefully my ease with them helped her be at ease as well.

The Eiffel Tower takes some punishment in this movie. What do you think audiences in France will make of the scene in which it’s destroyed?

The Eiffel Tower is my favourite sequence – not because I have anything against the French, but to see something so iconic actually fall and have it done so well is really remarkable. Obviously, I hope the French will forgive us!

How were the tight costumes to work in?

I think Sienna had it a lot worse than I did. Although the battle gear for the Joes was extremely tight and not exactly forgiving, her leather outfit was the toughest to get into. She’d lay on the floor and pull her pants on – it was quite a spectacle! But then you go and watch the movie and everything looks so fantastic you forget you didn’t like wearing it. You just want to don the suit again and make another film.

Is that on the cards?

I hope so; we’ve discussed sequels and we’d all be on board. If they want to make more we’ll be a part of it.

Rachel Nichols was talking to BBC News entertainment reporter Neil Smith. GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra is out on 7 August.

Source: BBC

Drew here, Is she just another hot babe clad in black leather in a tentpole toy movie or something more? After some ‘I know her, she’s that girl’ roles in everything from teen chick flicks (Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants 2) to sci-fi (Alias, Star Trek), I ask just who Rachel Nichols just who she thinks she is…

Drew: How hands on were you in the production?

Rachel: Very much so. Stephen [Sommers, director] loves to put the actors in the stunts and scenes as much as possible and I did everything they’d allow me to. It was really hard work but all of us got along so well that it didn’t feel as hard as it was and we had a really good time.

Drew: There were obviously a lot of digital effects in the film, so how many stunts could there possibly have been for you to take part in?

Rachel: You’re right there was a fair amount that had to be CGI but people don’t realize how much was actually real. The sequence where there are cars and hummers flying through the air? We actually did that. I think we set some sort of record for launching the most cars into the air for any movie. There were a lot of real explosions and there was a lot of real water, believe or not.

There’s the scene where the underwater bunker is about to explode and I’m running out in a slo-mo shot and they actually dumped 500 gallons of water into that bunker during the take. I had to time it perfectly, knowing when I saw the water coming down that I had to start running. So a lot of it is actually real.

Drew: It’s very much a boy’s movie, full of explosions, toys and hot girls in leather. How much of a crossover do you think there’ll be in female audience members?

Rachel: First of all, you got two really kick-ass girls in the movie. And I like to think Scarlet [Nichols' character] is a role model. But you’ve also got Channing Tatum and Marlon Wayans and those boys aren’t hard on the eyes. So I don’t think women are going to have a problem watching the movie. Plus it’s not only action, shoot ‘em ups and killing people. There are two really sweet love stories. There’s the Baroness/Duke love story which is difficult and dark and arduous and there’s this really sweet romance between Ripcord and Scarlet. I think women will actually really like the movie because it’s not just an action flick, there’s so much more to it.

Drew: Did that sort of stuff appeal when you read the script or was it all the action and thrills?

Rachel: It was all of it, just the sheer magnitude of it. I actually went through the audition process and met with Stephen but I hadn’t read the script until after I’d been offered the job, but then I was even more excited after reading the script just because I’m a huge fan of explosions and the effects and all of that. But I was also a fan of the character development and the relationships and the idea that there are so many faces that could go in future films.

One of the hardest things about doing the movie is where there’s a certain legacy. Some people are worried it’s going to ruin their childhood memory of GI Joe. But this film remains true to the original franchise and will keep the fans it always had and create new ones of children and teens who have no real idea about what GI Joe is (or was). So it’s going to hopefully bridge the gap between the two groups and then everybody will come see it.

Drew: Did you know much about the whole mythology in GI Joe before reading the script and signing on?

Rachel: I didn’t know a lot of it. I mean, once they started the auditioning and I got offered the film I did some research on Scarlet and her back story, but I was more of a Barbie girl growing up, so that was something I had to start fresh.

Drew: Maybe if GI Joe had been on the scene he would have been sitting down having tea with Barbie or something?

Rachel: Well I do have to say my brother played with GI Joe and they always dated Barbie because he could kick Ken’s ass.

Drew: I’m sure Barbie could stand up for herself though when called on for?

Rachel: Oh well totally. I mean, Barbie could totally kick butt too but she thought GI Joe was just a little cooler than Ken.

Drew: Any worries about type casting?

Rachel: No. I love action. Alias had a lot of action which was great and that’s why I started to learn fight scenes and weapons training. And this is just totally, totally different from other films that I’ve done and my next choices will be different from this one. And it wouldn’t be the worst thing to be type cast as extraordinarily smart, bad-ass, butt kicking kind of girl.

Drew: Was it more of an acting challenge because the set was so fast and furious and the focus is a lot more on the action? Do you not have much room to bring to the performance because of that?

Rachel: I got really lucky because yes, a lot of the time the action is so fast paced and so much is going on at once and the dialogue is quick one-liners which actually tend to be very difficult to get across. I’d rather do a long speech than a couple of one-liners. You have to work to make them authentic.

There are also scenes where we got to bring a lot to the table. There’s a tender moment between Ripcord and Scarlet after she’s lost her fight with the Baroness and we had an opportunity to expand on our characters and not have it be rushed because things were blowing up and motor cycles are flying through the air. So it was a pretty good split.

Drew: Because the mythology isn’t like Batman or Superman where everybody knows the story behind these characters, did you feel like it gave you freedom to bring a bit more than you read into Scarlet or that you came across in your research?

Rachel: Yeah, definitely. In Batman and Superman there’s such a high expectation and visibility level. The GI Joe franchise has so many different characters they could chose in future movies. But there was a strong expectation of what Scarlet needed to look like, which of course I completely understand, but as far as personality and the relationship with Ripcord, I got to be flirty and sweet and charming. It was definitely nice to have that leeway because I certainly didn’t feel as though there was a lot expected from her personality wise.

Drew: Everyone’s going to be watching what you do next after such a big movie. Do you feel the pressure?

Rachel: It’s fine. I work very, very well under pressure.

Source: MovieHole.net

Adam Richard interviewed the G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra villainess and co-star Rachel Nichols on the Australian “Matt & Jo” radio show, and it didn’t take long for the conversation to head south.

After the DJ referred to Nichols as “the green b**** from Star Trek” and referred to one of their scenes as a “scrag fight,” he asked Miller if she’d been cast because she was a real-life bad girl.

“Don’t you dare even go there,” Sienna responded. “And no, I’m an actress. I don’t think I am a bad girl, but thanks for calling me that … d*****bag.”

Richard then asked Nichols about her stint on Alias, where she worked alongside Balthazar Getty, who had an infamous fling with Miller last year. Getty was married at the time of the relationship.

“Sienna, you’ve met him, haven’t you?” the DJ teased.

“Oh, piss off,” Sienna responded. “Honestly, we’re here to talk about a film. You’ve called us scags, b******, knocked up — we’re not here to talk about him. But yes, as you know, I’ve met him. What a scoop, congratulations.”

The DJ then steered the conversation back to the film, and to Sienna’s looks.

“You’re wearing a skin-tight lycra, does that put a lot of pressure on you to watch what you eat, go to the gym every five minutes?” he asked before a publicist interrupted the conversation to say it would be the last question.

“No … we trained really hard for this,” Nichols responded before the girls signed off.

G.I. Joe is due in theaters on Aug. 7.

Source: MSNBC

This summer, local audiences enjoying the critically acclaimed Star Trek movie have the right to point at the screen and say, “She’s from Maine,” when they see Rachel Nichols, painted green in some wonderfully steamy scenes with Captain Kirk.

Not that it’s easy being green: “It took four hours to paint that on her,” Rachel’s mom, Alison Nichols, tells us from the same house in Augusta where Rachel grew up and pointedly did not dream of becoming an actress.

Of course, Nichols is only the second Maine-connected star to look green and fabulous. In the original Wizard of Oz (1938), Margaret Hamilton, who retired to Southport Island off Boothbay, was painted a lurid copper-based green while playing her unforgettable Wicked Witch of the West. When she scares the scarecrow, the pyrotechnic special effects set poor Margaret’s paint on fire, too. She was in the hospital for days.

“Oh, no!” Nichols says. “In Star Trek, I don’t think my paint was flammable or copper-based, thank goodness. That process, including hair and makeup, took five hours.”

Nichols has come through being green comparatively unscathed. After bursting on the national scene in Dumb and Dumberer, she won recurring roles in Sex in the City, Alias, parts in films like The Woods, and this summer has vaulted up to far greater renown with the major motion pictures Star Trek and G.I. Joe.

This must be such an incredible year for you. Is this something you’ve wanted all along?

I had no plans to be an actress. I left Maine to go to Columbia with aspirations of power suits and briefcases and working on Wall Street. I started modeling my sophomore year at Columbia.

Was there a crystallizing moment, then, that changed your life around? It’s not as if they have a Schwab’s Drugstore in New York, or do they?

There were several moments. I used to work in Abercrombie & Fitch at the [South Street] Seaport in New York, and a casting director for a photographer who saw me contacted me.

Not that I didn’t have my doubts…You know, the girl from Augusta, Maine, being bamboozled by people in film.

It was funny and strange-I was still working at Abercrombie & Fitch when the Abercrombie & Fitch catalog came out, with me in it!

Your Star Trek opportunity is huge, but your role in the blockbuster G.I. Joe this summer is even bigger, isn’t it?

I’m extremely excited about it. It’s definitely the biggest role I’ve ever played, in the biggest movie. I’m playing the role of Scarlet, the good girl. She grew up with all the guys, working with all the Joes all her life. Some people think G.I. Joe is one man, but it’s really a group of guys who make up a high-level covert unit she’s worked with all her life. Scarlet is like their kid sister. The bad girl is Sienna Miller.”

So you’re Sienna Miller’s opposition character?

“Yeah. My biggest fight is against her. She’s extremely funny, really easy to work with. She’s a fantastic actress-I like her so much. We’re pretty much the only two girls in the movie, so if we hadn’t liked each other, it would have been a disaster.”

Was it out of character for you to fight? How many gangs could there have been in Augusta?

On Alias, I was told, ‘as Sydney Bristow’s protégé, you have to work out like Jennifer Garner works out.’ So I trained with Valerie Waters, Jennifer’s trainer, on Alias, where I also had some weapons training. I still work with her.

When I got the role in Star Trek, I wasn’t really familiar with [all the episodes and movies beloved to Trekkie universe]. Of course, I knew who Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner were. But I wondered if my not having been [a card-carrying Trekkie] before would be hard to overcome, and then I was relieved when the director, J.J. Abrams, admitted he wasn’t, either.

When I read the script, I was immediately fascinated by it. The old Star Trek fans really like the movie, but it’s wonderful way of creating a starting point for a new generation to love it, too.

How hard was it to get the green paint off?

They air-brushed the color on me for the scene with Capt. Kirk, so it wasn’t so much paint and paintbrushes. My hair was sprayed a sticky red. To get it off, they used shaving cream to break the chemicals down and loosen the color. A week later, there were still places of green that kept showing up-I’d look down and see it turn up on a toenail, or between my toes. I’d find it behind my ears! I think I was green behind my elbows the longest. I don’t even want to admit how long it took for me to notice that!

Your mom has told us you’re homesick sometimes.

I’m always homesick. I’m really, really close to my family and love returning to the same house I grew up in, close to the edge of town. I’m definitely coming home this summer, before the extensive press tours for G.I. Joe. I always fly to Portland. A visit to Maine isn’t complete until I get to see my friend, Christine York, in Augusta. Then I know I’m home.

The scary thing is, won’t Trekkies be bothering you for the rest of your life? Liv Tyler’s still being pestered for having been the Queen of the Fairies in Lord of the Rings.

My management company has been contacted by some Star Trek fans, but I was lucky, since I was painted green and had bright-red hair in the movie, they don’t know what I look like otherwise!
Nobody’s going to be following Gaila down the street.

Source: PortlandMonthly.com