MANILA, Philippines—Summer is here and well, it’s really too hot to go outside. Unless your “outside” consists of a beautiful pool, hot cabana boys or at a gorgeous resort. There is not much point in getting premature wrinkles otherwise. Thankfully the people at AXN and AXN Beyond sympathize with my plight to stay indoors as they launch the much awaited “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles” on AXN and the new season of “Supernatural.” Take note, even if I was at a gorgeous resort I’d inevitably end up curled in front of the T.V. while slathering on the after sun.

AXN was kind enough to take me from staring at these stars on T.V. in my pang bahay to Sydney, Australia where I got to meet Thomas Dekker and Summer Glau, the stars of “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles” and (sigh) Jensen Ackles of “Supernatural” (not in my pang bahay).

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles: They Are Back

“I’ll. Be. Back.” Perhaps the most famous movie line, ever. Before you go ahead and think the “Sarah Connor Chronicles” to be a cheap version of the Terminator trilogy, think again. The show is a completely different take on the Terminator film that follows a story and time line of its own. There is action, drama, lots of stuff breaking to satisfy action junkies, but enough drama to make you feel like wanting more every week. Thomas Dekker plays John Connor, future leader of mankind.

Summer Glau plays Cameron, the cyborg assigned to protect John Connor. She is the farthest thing from Arnie’s muscle bound accented Terminator and really quite beautiful in person. Her looks seem to be mixed, but before we put her in the “she must be part Pinoy” category (as I attempted to do at the interview) she sadly isn’t.

Both Thomas and Summer have to step into large shoes to make the Terminator T.V. series believable. Both actors seem to be cool and collected as they take on roles that would have potentially been cheesy, but have in fact turned it around and made the characters of the Terminator and John Connor their own. Thomas Dekker and Summer Glau were kind enough to indulge me with what the show is about, how Summer is the new Arnie and how Thomas Dekker’s has a soul of a musician trapped in a hunky body.

What is the show about? Is it like P100s coming in every episode?

THOMAS DEKKER: No, no. I think that would get pretty boring. The films were about protecting John, about being on the defensive of these terminators. The show is about being on the offensive, where we are trying to stop this future apocalypse from happening at all. My character is preparing for a war, if they can’t stop it. Our show is about that desire, and it’s a very complicated road of situations that take place to try and put an end to this. It is a very complicated thing they are trying to do.

Summer, are you a mix of anything, like from your parents?

SUMMER GLAU: Everybody asks me this and then they’re disappointed with the answer because I’m just European, but a lot of people think Asian, or South American, or Hawaiian. I don’t know what it is. My sisters, all three of us, look different. It is just something about my face that doesn’t really look. My parents aren’t telling me something.

What appeals to you about this character?

SUMMER GLAU: I have played very vulnerable emotional characters so far in my career. I thought it was awesome to be the girl on the scene who is not crying or falling apart. I love the action. Who doesn’t want to play Terminator? I wouldn’t pass that up. I have loved every aspect of playing the character.

The only hard thing is, being a scene partner for my fellow actors. It is a very odd experience to have to be so placid, no matter what is going on, no matter who is crying, not matter who is yelling at you, no matter how upset someone else is, I can’t give anything back.

When you do the action scene, especially when you are running, you are not breathing or anything. Is that hard to do?

SUMMER GLAU: It is hard. One of the things that I tried to incorporate from the very beginning was even making a blink deliberate, not blinking because I need to but blinking more slowly so that it looks more like a robot. And also Cameron wouldn’t talk with her hands, Cameron wouldn’t move her hair out of her face, or cross her legs. All these little things I had to strip away from being a human, and add it back in a false way, because Cameron is an infiltrator and she isn’t supposed to appear human, so everything has to have something deliberate. It has to go from the mind through the body.

Thomas, is your own mother as protective as your on-screen mother?

THOMAS DEKKER: Absolutely. My mother has never been placed in the situation of machines trying to kill me, unless you consider Internet bloggers that way. I come from a very hippie family, all in the arts, and very protective and very maternal, so I identify with that. I think it also helps that Lena and I—Lena plays Sarah O’Connor—are inseparable. That, I think, makes it very easy to play that bond. We really love each other. It’s kind of crazy.

Summer, you are stepping into really big shoes here.

SUMMER GLAU: Yeah, I know. Well, I’m glad if we’re going to make a TV series about a terminator, Arnold is such an icon and it seems that Terminator and Arnold Schwarzenegger are synonymous. It would be hard if we were trying to recreate a character like him. If we were trying to get some huge man with an accent to play the new Terminator, I think it wouldn’t work. So they went as far away from it as they could and got me. It’s different. I think it was a smart decision because no one should mess with Arnold. He should be left alone.

How is the dynamic of the set?

THOMAS DEKKER: It is really hard to grasp for people who haven’t been there, because it’s such a deathly serious show, and it’s so miserable. It’s a non-stop laugh factory.

Thomas, do you have any album projects coming up?

THOMAS DEKKER: Yeah, I’ve done two albums. The first one took a really long time because it was my first one. I wasn’t as able yet. I did that from about, I think I was 16 when I started it, and I finished it when I was 18. That is coming out really soon on iTunes, and then a store release. Then this new one I only did this year—2007—and that one is not coming out for a while.

So we can go to YouTube and listen to your songs?

THOMAS DEKKER: Yes. It’s under “Music,” “MySpace.” It’s really cool because it’s really popular online. A lot of people don’t know me as an actor, but have heard my music on someone’s page. It’s nice because it’s not what people expect. When you are an actor/musician cross-over it’s a little more, you know—and I think they’re surprised that it’s very European electronica. I’ve been told that it sounds like Bjork and Nine Inch Nails. Those are the two combos that I have been told, but I don’t know. I am trying not to sound like other people. Maybe it’s not a good thing.

Since you are so young and really optimistic about everything, are you afraid that it’s not going to work and it will all come crashing down?

THOMAS DEKKER: Absolutely. I’ve been lucky, with things I have done and made, they have all panned out. The way I saw them happening. So even if nobody sees this new film—and I am hoping that they will—it is exactly what I wanted to make, so I haven’t had this disappointment yet of attempting something and it didn’t work. I’ve been really in lucky that way.

Supernatural: Fighting evil has never looked so good.

With supernatural and horror genres becoming more and more popular, there are a lot of slayers, witches and warlocks to choose from. So why not pick the hottest of them all? Jensen Ackles returns for the third season of “Supernatural,” with a big change in his character’s attitude. His clear blue-green eyes are enough to turn a monster into a little puppy. Why all the ghouls and goblins haven’t noticed his good looks, I will never know. How can you be scared with Jensen around?

Any new surprises happening in the third season that we should know of, that you can tell us?

JENSEN ACKLES: At the end of the second season there was a deal that was made, and so that really kind of puts it towards the third season, and it kind of switches up the driving force a bit. Now that Dean has been given a year to live, he’s not as proactive on wanting to hunt down the ghosts and demons and spirits, and stuff like that. He’d rather pick up a couple of girls and head to Atlantic City and enjoy the night … So it’s interesting now, because Sam is really the driving force behind where the two brothers are going and why they are doing what they are doing. And Dean is all the time saying, “Let’s enjoy ourselves. Let’s have fun.”

Do you believe in the supernatural?

JENSEN ACKLES: I’d say that I’m a little bit more of a realist. I’d like to think there’s a logical explanation for things that go bump in the night. I am not the first to jump to the conclusion “oh, there’s a ghost outside the door,” “there’s a spirit in here,” or “something’s wrong.” “It’s probably the wind. It’s probably the pipes. It’s probably something else.” But it is nice to know that if it is something, I know what to do.

Why do you think there’s this renewed interest in television shows in the States that deal with this sort of thing?

JENSEN ACKLES: This kind of goes back to the first season. I think this genre really kind of took off a few years back when the movies were coming out, when all these horror movies were coming out. There was The Grunge and others. You had all these scary movies coming out and people would just flock to the movie theaters to see this kind of thing. I think that is what really separated “Supernatural” from these other kind of mysterious shows. You’ve got “Lost,” you’ve got “Ghost Whisperer,” and you’ve got “Medium.” Those are kind of supernatural shows.

What separated us from the pack was that we were more of a horror show. We were a scary movie every week. We weren’t something that kind of left you wondering what could be out there. We showed you what was out there and we dealt with it. I think that that has always been the defining characteristic of our show.

Want do you want to be your signature calling card if you want to make a feature film? What kind of genre? That would be your calling card?

JENSEN ACKLES: It’s a good question. I don’t know if I’d want it to be my calling card, but I’d love to do a western. I’m from Texas.