First off, she says she’s always been drawn to stories with great characters. That’s why she joined Firefly and liked working with Joss Whedon. “He likes to write strong ass-kicking females. Thanks, Joss,” she said.

She is grateful to Firefly, and how it changed her life. “We have this conversation where we all think the show was made so we could meet each other,” she said, “We’re really, really good pals.”

Staite has been in acting since he was five, and considers herself very fortunate. She can be seen on April 24th in the SyFy movie, Mothman. She joked that she is worried the movie may not be as popular as the channel’s highest rated movie, Mega-Piranha. She urged the crowd to watch.

The film also gave her a chance to visit New Orelans ,and she said she enjoyed that a lot. “There was something about that city that just captivated me,” she says. “It’s just so romantic. The people are really soulful, and I just loved it.”

She also said she did musical theater when she was young, and would like to do it again sometime. This led to speculation about whether she’d do a musical version of Serenity. She wasn’t too sure about that, but later admitted she’s a big fan of Glee…and wouldn’t mind being on that show.

Someone also pointed out that Jewel has only been in one Joss Whedon show, while Nathan Fillion was also on Buffy and Gina Torres was on Angel. So, she was asked if she’s lobbying Joss to put her in the Avengers movie.

Her answer: “I do it all the time.” She hopes she can be part of the movie, but she’s also asking Nathan Fillion to put her on Castle, but not as his girlfriend. She’s consider being a villiainess, though.

Later, she recalled how Firefly got started, starting with the first table read. “The only weird thing about it was Morena wasn’t there, ” she says. “because Inara was the last person to be cast. Apparently it was really difficult to find somebody.” Jewel said that once Morena Baccarin was cast, she immediately went to the set to meet the cast, which surprised her.

The table read for Serenity was different, though. “So, we were on the Universal lot,” she said, “and all these Universal executives were in the room, and they had it set up all like Firefly-ey, with like candles and pillows. It looked like Inara’s lair, basically.

“As soon as we started that first scene where everybody was in character again,” she continued, “it was just like, we were all like laughing and all giddy. It was just crazy. I couldn’t believe that we were back there.”

Jewel is also well-known to Stargate fans as Dr. Jennifer Keller in seasons four and five of Stargate Atlantis. “I don’t know if anyone knew where Jennifer was going to go, or who Jennifer was, really, ” she said. “As time passed, a lot more of me was put into that character, like she kind of all of a sudden had this really dry sarcastic sense of humor. Once they realized David Hewett and I got along so well, we were like best pals on set, we were like Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum, they realized we had all this natural chemistry. So, I think that’s why they decided to go with the McKay/Jennifer relationship in the end.”

Jewel hopes that maybe she’ll be in another Stargate movie where that relationship can be explored again.

Later this year, though, she will be part of a new episode of anoher Syfy show, Warehouse 13. She’ll also be reunited with Firefly co-star Sean Maher, who played Simon Tam. Jewel was very happy about this role. “I love Sean. Sean’s awesome,” she said. “He’s so funny and we have the exact same sense of humor, and all we did was laugh.”

It was also a chance to reconnect with Maher. “We lost touch a little bit,” she said, “and it reconnected us. We live a couple blocks away from his home in L-A.”

Jewel also talked about meeting the fans. She remembered that someone had given her a hand-made Kaylee action figure, while another person gave her bruise cream. She admitted the fandom part of sci-fi surprised her, and the cast. “The first convention I did was in the UK. We were totally unaware anybody was watching us over there,” she said. Summer Glau and Nathan Fillion were with her, and they were surprised as well. “There was so many people,” Jewel said, “and they all had gifts and they were all in costume, and we were just like ‘what?'”.;

That was followed by San Diego Comic-Con, the biggest of all. In fact, she gave someone who planned to go for the first time some advice, such as wear comfortable shoes, bring Aleve and plenty of water.

She also talked about how she learned Wash would die in the Serenity movie. She admitted she had a feeling about this because Alan Tudyk had another project, and that at one point three Serenity movies were planned. She also admitted she never expected Shepherd Book to die in the movie.

She is often asked if there will be a Serenity sequel. Even when she returned from Toronto Wizard World last month, she said the US Customs agent asked her “Is there going to be a Serenity 2?”

For now, Jewel Staite will remain a very popular sci-fi star. Aside from Warehouse 13 and Mothman, she will be in a movie called Doomsday Scrolls, where she’ll be an archaeologist. She even revealed her husband will play her assistant.