For Starbuck, a `death' worse than her fate

Other details also worked in favor of the surprise. One seemingly unpluggable source of leaks of character deaths is casting news -- actors do want to continue working, after all. After she finished shooting her episodes, Sackhoff had a long hiatus from the Vancouver set and looked for other jobs in Los Angeles. "I was taking meetings for things and trying to tell people that they could hire me without really lying to them," she said.

The fact the Sackhoff was auditioning for new roles spread throughout the "Battlestar Galactica" community. Then Eick cast her in his NBC pilot, a remake of "The Bionic Woman." "I was excited to cast Katee as the guest lead in the pilot," he said. "Because if nothing else, when it hit the press, people said, 'Damn, she really is dead!' "

Meanwhile, Sackhoff -- after suffering through guilt-inducing goodbye cake from the unknowing crew at the show's wrap party and Champagne after her "final" episode -- had to stop giving interviews because, she said, she was "so bad at the lying." There was speculation that she was written out because she got pregnant, that she had been fired because she was difficult, and that she had quit because she was ... difficult.

"Everyone thought it was because of me," Sackhoff said. "It turned into, 'Katee Sackhoff, the angry actress, pulling a Duchovny.' Which is what we call trying to get the show out of Vancouver." (David Duchovny publicly prevailed upon "The X-Files" to move its production from Vancouver to Los Angeles after five seasons.)

"That was the most frustrating part," she said. "People like working with me! But you can't defend yourself, because a guilty person defends themselves."

Season 4 of "Battlestar Galactica" begins filming in the middle of May, and Sackhoff will be there playing Starbuck. And what will happen, exactly, when the show returns next year? "I wish I knew," she said. "I wish I could tell you. I wish I could tell you I'm not a Cylon. I don't know \o7that \f7anymore.

"Because now I know that they're so good at lying!"

kate.aurthur@latimes.com