HOLLYWOOD Q&A

Q: Is it Jewel and her dad who sing the theme song on “Alaska: The Last Frontier”?

A: Despite being a world-famous, multi-platinum singersongwriter, Jewel would have been a pretty easy booking for the show to get — all of its stars know her number.

Discovery’s “Alaska: The Last Frontier” is about the extended Kilcher family and their constant struggle to eke out a living from the hard Alaskan wilds. One of the principal stars is Atz Kilcher, who’s a musician (as well as a logger, trapper, farmer and everything else you need to be to lead a subsistence life in the Far North).

When Discovery came calling to make a show about his family, Atz figured, like everything else, he’d do the theme himself, with some help from family. So he called his daughter, Jewel Kilcher (yes, Jewel is her real name).

Jewel grew up leading the same life as the others you see in the show. When she was 15, however, she won a partial scholarship to a fine arts school down south in the mainland U.S. As they do for so many other things, the community pulled together to help her raise the rest of her tuition money, and she left.

Success came soon after, in the form of a record deal and an album that went platinum 12 times over — “Pieces of You” is considered one of the defining albums of the 1990s.

Q: Is it true that Ben Affleck guest starred in an episode of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”? A: Close, but not quite. Ben Affleck appeared as an uncredited extra in the 1992 film “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” which eventually spawned the show (though actually “sired” is the more popular vampire term).

The generally accepted narrative attached to Affleck is that he and his school friend Matt Damon exploded onto the Hollywood scene with their indie smash “Good Will Hunting,” in which they wrote and starred. However, few remember that they both struggled through a series of small parts before getting the film made and becoming the megastars they are today. (Adorably, the inseparable buddies even did some of that struggling together — they appeared as uncredited baseball fans in 1989’s “Field of Dreams.”)

One of Affleck’s small parts was as “Basketball Player #10” in the surprise-hit 1992 comedy “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”

He was in good company, too. I’m not necessarily referring to the stars — it actually toplined some ‘80s and ‘90s stars who were on the downward slope of their fame arc, namely Luke Perry and Kristy Swanson — but rather to Affleck’s fellow extras. Rock star Slash (of the band Guns N’ Roses), talk show great Ricki Lake and film and TV star Seth Green were among those putting in appearances.