The Tulip Ride 2016 charity event featuring Katee Sackhoff, Tricia Helfer, and Karl Urban was a huge success, raising over $40,000 for the Seattle Humane Society.
The Tulip Ride has grown since its small beginnings in 2001 and now hundreds of people show up, including some of our favorite celebrities who couldn’t be more giving and genuinely nice people. Sackhoff and Helfer have been participating in the event for six years now and have helped make this an amazing charity event that also allows fans to interact with them in a more intimate setting.
The Seattle Humane Society had one of their kitty trucks on site, as well as a wonderful lab named Dyson who was up for adoption. He really took to Sackhoff and was adopted by one of the attendees!
Attendees got to mingle with the celebrities including getting photos and autographs, all while helping support such a great charity.
Not only did I manage to get pictures with all three of these wonderful people, I got a chance to ask Sackhoff a couple of questions. Rain, the sci-fi series Sackhoff announced last year, is moving forward and is currently hiring a writer. I really cannot wait for yet another great sci-fi show featuring a strong female lead. Having had beers with Aaron Douglas and margaritas with Edward James Olmos, I asked Sackhoff which drink we’d cheers with if we were having drinks. “Vodka and soda.”
I also got to spend a handful of minutes chatting with Karl Urban, who is not only as ruggedly handsome in person as you’d hope, but is also very friendly and personable. My biggest worry when meeting famous people is that they will be total a-holes and shatter any preconceived notions I may have had, so I’m always overjoyed when they are just humble, down-to-earth folks. We both talked mostly about our kids. I asked him if he had made any decision to do, or not to do, specific roles because of his kids. He said he has definitely made a conscious decision on several occasions to choose a role specifically so his kids could watch the films since he does so many that they aren’t (or weren’t) old enough for. He also said that when he is doing a lengthy job, he tries to make sure he can rent a house for his whole family near the production, especially one with a pool to help occupy his kids for long stretches of time.
The event wasn’t an ideal setting for formal interviews so I’m hoping I’ll get a chance to interview all three of them in more detail for GeekDad in the future!
