GateWorld: Was there anything about the role itself that drew you to it as you learned more about it?
Erick Avari: Well, it was intriguing. What was fun about it was that it left a lot to the imagination. Especially as I got to learn more about the part and the project. And then once we started shooting it just kept snowballing because originally the role of Kasuf, I believe, was about one scripted line. Maybe two, but no more than that.
It was really the response that I got from both Dean and Roland, the director and producer, that I felt like I was in good hands and that they were truly interested in developing the role, so it was a lot of fun. I found the whole language thing certainly very, very interesting and challenging.
GW: And that’s something I know that you’re noted for, too, is that you have played through you’re decades on screen and theatres, many different nationalities.
EA: Yes, I have. I think that was more a case of opportunity rather than talent. Because as an actor you always say yes and get the job and then scramble and learn how to do whatever it is you have to do. And because I look the way I do, I’ve been able to pass myself off as many different nationalities. I had to develop an ear for dialects and really work at it. So I don’t really think of it as a talent so much as a lot of hard work. Which, again, I enjoy what I do, so when I say “work” you really have to take that with a pinch of salt.
GW: Are there any parts of your own personality that you brought to the role of Kasuf?
EA: I think there are parts of your personality that one brings to every part. Certainly, I wouldn’t say I am Kasuf, but there are a lot of characteristics that I share with Kasuf. The thing that I really latched on to was his naiveté. He was a man who had been raised on a planet with no contact with anyone else, so the only thing he knew was his small little village and what Ra told him. Which wasn’t necessarily true. So in essence he was not a man of the world.
What was interesting was how this naiveté and be taken advantage of, and manipulated, and exploited. I enjoyed that aspect of it. I enjoyed the challenge of not presenting myself in a modern light, whether it was the way I held myself or cocked my head, or certain gestures which would give it away that I am in fact — back when we shot it — [from] the twentieth century. Those things were a challenge to me and I really relished that aspect of it.
Then I got to work with James [Spader] and Alexis and Mili [Avital] and we had this really tight bond. Kurt was just a fountain of knowledge. Talk about been there, done that. Kurt Russell at the time, he’d been around the block several times.
Although, this was his first foray into the action-adventure genre. James was making his first foray into the comedic sci-fi element. On the other hand, you had Viveca Linfors, this was her last movie before she passed away. Leon Rippy and Djimon Hounsou, his first big movie.
All these people have gone on — French Stewart — I could go on and on and on. Derek Webster. Just this tremendous cast. And we were all thrown into very intense climactic conditions. It was incredibly hot. The sand was grueling because the wind would kick up and it was like sandpaper against your face.
GW: I know when I talked to Alexis last year he mentioned that you filmed some of it in Arizona.
EA: In Yuma, Arizona. By that stage I had done a war movie. We shot a movie in Israel. It was called “The Beast of War,” which is actually a movie I’m very proud of. Another very politically charged anti-war film that was originally a play and went on to become a movie.
I’ve been told one of the most underrated war movies of the era, so I do feel very proud of that. But to get back to the story, we shot that in Israel. We went on a ten day training camp into the Negev desert and were on Russian sea rations.
I thought I had been through the mill and really seen the rougher side of Hollywood. But Stargate had its own particular challenges. The size of it, to work with fifteen hundred extras, and they were made to look like even more, so you’re dealing with thousands of people. The scope of the film was so huge that it was exciting and challenging. You really felt like you were on something very, very special.
GW: So the movie does come out in 1994, and it does okay at the box office, not quite blockbuster status. Honestly, my own personal opinion I think it may have been a little ahead of its time, as far as what it was trying to do.
EA: I believe you’re right.
GW: But, four years later you get a call from Bridge Studios in Vancouver and you return for the first time to Stargate SG-1. The first episode we saw you in was, Season Two. It was called “Secrets”. How did you feel about reprising the role? Some actors choose not to retread some of the territories they’ve already been in.
EA: It was interesting. I was shooting The Mummy in Morocco when my agents called and said “Hey, they’re doing this TV series of Stargate, it’s called SG-1 and would you like to reprise your role?” I said, “Let me look into this and see just how they’re tackling it.”
I realized, obviously, that it was all recast and at the time I was the first one off the movie that they had asked. So I was a little trepidatious. But I was intrigued by the series. They had rounded off some corners, like Jack O’Neill’s character. In the movie that role would have been unsustainable for a series. But, at the end of the movie his character does heal and I think it’s one of the wonderful things about the movie is that a lot of the characters have that arc.
GW: It’s the personal redemption for his character.
EA: Exactly. Or are liberated. So he was able to now go down this other path that was much more … should we call it TV friendly? The issue that I had was the language. They’d written the role in English and it sounded like it had possibilities. But I had to bridge this hurdle. How do you reconcile the fact that he has learned how to speak English in a matter of three years? Should we then bother with an accent?
Then speaking to the creators and the writers they were of the opinion that they were more interested in the content rather than staying true to the details of when and how he learned English. And once I came to terms with that, then it was removed enough from the movie where I didn’t feel like I had to go back and recreate a lot of the stuff, which is very hard to do, and I think that is one of the reasons why people don’t do the series after the movie.
I was talking about the size and the scope of the film. The thing about the shoot on Stargate was that it was magic. This combination of Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich. Roland has this incredibly clear vision of how he saw this film. And Dean is a genius of telling story and character. And that combination came together in perfect harmony. The actors came together in perfect harmony. The fact that Alexis and Mili and myself and Jeanine were able to — we didn’t start out as family but the relationships got so tight that Dean actually wrote us as family. Originally we were disparate members of society.
The interpersonal relationships fell together and congealed, the film came together, the timing of the release of the film. I could tell you a story about The Beast of War, the movie I was just referencing, where everything came together except the timing of the release of the film and change in studio heads and studio politics. There are so many elements that have to come together for a movie to be a hit, and I’m talking about the smaller movies. With the huge big blockbuster movies, where they can just blanket the country with PR and advertising, that’s pretty much a no-brainer. You know that it’s going to get a strong opening weekend and then after that it’s a matter of if the movie will hold together.
Coming back to Stargate, the stars did in fact align just perfectly. You’re right, I think the movie could have and should have grossed more. It was certainly looked at as one of those upstart movies, it was not a movie that jumped everyone’s career right away. There was a certain amount of resentment to this film because it was essentially a negative pick-up. It wasn’t a big studio movie and it was a surprise and a bit of a sleeper hit.
On all those counts it made that experience very, very special, indeed. Now to come back and recreate it would be almost impossible, but then what you do get on a series — what you don’t get on a film — a film is a short period of time, very intense, and then it’s over and you go your separate ways. Whereas a series is slower moving, it’s a period of several years, or in this case a decade. Relationships grow and deepen, so there are other aspects to a TV series that one can look forward to.
That is essentially what I was hoping to capture a bit of and be a part of history. I had a very strong feeling about Stargate and I always felt, even when shooting it, that this was something very special.