GateWorld: You return two more times later in seasons after that, but many might not be aware of that originally you had been approached to rejoin Alexis and reprise the role for a final time in the Season Six finale called “Full Circle.”
Erick Avari: Right, and I didn’t learn about that till much later but I was on another show at the time and was unavailable for that so I think my agents didn’t even inform me about it.
GW: The actor is the last to know.
EA: Yeah, that’s right.
GW: It’s been fifteen years since the original film came out and in that time Stargate’s become a hugely successful science fiction franchise. It’s recognized world wide. There’s been a feature film, two direct-to-DVD features, over 300 hours of filmed episodes between two series since 1994. A new series has just come out, hopefully it will be as successful as those in the past. How does it feel to know that you were there from the beginning and helped to create that foundation?
EA: It feels great. I think it’s always part of our reason for being is to leave a legacy. I felt like I’d done that in a small way in my contribution to the film and to the series. “It don’t suck.”
GW: Have you done any Stargate conventions?
EA: Yes, I have. Not a lot. I did one a few days after 9/11. That was Gatecon in 2001 in Vancouver. That was a very special one for me. It was the first one I had attended and I wasn’t sure what to expect. This terrible thing had happened, the world was in shock, and yet people came from all over the world despite the fact that flights were chaotic and the whole world was in panic and turmoil and this convention went on as scheduled and it was incredibly moving.
I was so touched, and moved, by the fans on that one that I have come back to do I think, a total of about six in all. Unfortunately, I was scheduled to do more and I’m always reluctant to take them on. Especially the longer term ones because, knock on wood, my work schedule has been fairly [busy] and unfortunately at this stage of my career, it does have to come first. I look forward to the time when I can travel the world and just go from convention to convention because I do really enjoy meeting the fans and talking to them, reminiscing. Again, it don’t suck.
GW: Can you tell us about some of the encounters that you’ve had with Stargate fans? They can be either good or bad.
EA: I have yet to have a bad one. A lot of them have been very, very moving, personal experiences. I find a lot of Stargate fans are handicapped in some ways and in other ways incredibly inspiring. I’ve always enjoyed talking to them about their lives and their triumphs, their failures, their stumbling blocks.
I’m always so touched to see how much what we do as actors and storytellers, affects their lives. I’m always very conscious. In fact it’s gotten me into a lot of trouble in the business because I see very clearly how we have a responsibility to our audience to tell the truth.
For example, after 9/11 there was a barrage of films that were coming out and I was getting offered significant amounts of money to play roles that I was not comfortable playing and telling stories, being a part of a story that I felt was damaging or hurtful to a group of people just because of our political situation.
Unfortunately, Hollywood does not like to hear the word “No.” The first time they hear it they think it’s a negotiating ploy and they reach for their checkbooks and you say “No” again. It gets taken personally and you start to tread on toes that you wish you’d never tread on. But that is at the end of the day what we do and I take it very seriously. I have seen how films affect people and the way they think and the way they act and the way they conduct their lives.
Without getting too molithic about it, I honestly feel that our industry actually shares a lot of the blame for much of violence we see in society today. The callousness, the rudeness, things to me [are] a breakdown in society. I feel it’s because we, as storytellers, are not living up to our obligations. It’s much easier to throw something up on the screen and shock people with violence or sex or language or even sound rather than to tell an interesting story.
GW: You can only shock so much before you start to become desensitized, too.
EW: That’s exactly right. And Desensitized to the point where an eleven year old child thinks nothing of picking up a revolver and shooting their parents in the face. How did this happen? I feel I have to, as part of this industry, shoulder some of that responsibility. I really brought you down, haven’t I?
GW: Oh, no, not at all!
EA: Coming back to the politics of it, it is something that I think has always been a strong element in me that has drawn me towards it. Being a minority myself, I am very aware of racism. I’ve seen it, interestingly enough, on so many different sides of the spectrum.
When I lived in India I was seen as one thing, when I went to Britain I was seen as another thing and treated in another light. When I came to America, pre 9/11, I was treated in another light and post 9/11 was a whole other situation. I’ve experienced, for a lack of a better word … racism … but I think we all have racist tendencies. It’s just part of the world we live in.
It’s an understanding of that. Tying it into Stargate, this was something that Dean was very insistent on, was that the brown people had to liberate the planet. That is, again, very different. It wasn’t the US cavalry that came in. It was an awareness, a social change, a realization, a rebellion if you will, of the people, the brown people that brought about Ra’s downfall and destruction. Certainly, aided and abetted by Kurt and James and so on.
GW: The change came from within.
EA: The cavalry charge was, in fact, the brown people. This is kind of revolutionary, as you pointed out, it’s ahead of its time. Even today you don’t see it.
GW: Not a lot.
EA: Years later. It’s things like that, harkening back to your earlier question, “What drew me to the movie?” There are so many elements that have drawn me to Stargate.
GW: Outside of Stargate, many know you from the NBC series Heroes where you played Chandra Suresh, the father of Mohinder. You were kind of the catalyst for him struggling to discover how all the characters on the show came to acquire their powers that they had. How did that come about? Was it a role you auditioned for or did Tim Kring [series creator] approach you specifically?
EA: I was in Vancouver when I got the call. I was just finishing a movie up in Vancouver and so they pushed the date of the appointment. It was a casting director I’ve known for many years. In fact he gave me my very first union job in New York on stage which got me my Equity card. Which, in essence, started my American career.
He called me into the office. We laid down one take in about 30 seconds and I was out the door. I got the call saying “We’d love to have you work with us and shoot these episodes.” While we were trying to work that out I had an offer to go out and do “Charlie Wilson’s War” with Mike Nichols and Tom Hanks. Which I was very excited about and was subsequently cut out of the movie. So we had to juggle schedules on that and it was just fortuitous that we were able to work those two things out.
Tim was extremely gracious in helping my agent work out the details and allow me to do both the gigs. We were shooting the episodes out of sequence and in fact I had already been killed. We shot my death scene before they had even cast “Sylar.” So while I was being killed it was like, “do we have any idea the size or even the color of this guy?” They’re like, “Nope! So we’re going to try to keep it as vague as possible.”
GW: The episodes you were in in the first season were all basically shot in the time period that you had, and then mixed in?
EA: That’s right.
GW: So many productions do that nowadays, too. It’s got to be hard as an actor sometimes to know your approach to the scene.
EA: Yes, and just to have a chronological sequence of what’s happened. So often you find yourself thinking you know something about the plot, but that doesn’t occur till the next episode. It can really trip you up.
GW: Well, the character of Chandra Suresh did leave a lasting impression. Even last season [Season Three] the character was referenced several times and was shown in an episode late last year, even though it was a younger version of you, obviously. Would you be interested in returning again if they asked you?
EA: I would love to, yes. In fact, I was supposed to come back on a spin-off series called Origins but then the writers’ strike happened. Unfortunately, that project has since gone by the wayside. But that sounded really interesting to me, the origins.
GW: Was that going back to the core of the Company and the Petrelli’s?
EA: Exactly, and the heart of the situation. That would be really a lot of fun. But we don’t know, we always live in hope.
GW: There are always other stories to be told.
EA: That’s right.
GW: What other upcoming projects can we look forward to seeing you in in the near future?
EA: I have several smaller movies that should be coming out early next year. One is called “Three Bales” and it’s a bit of departure for me. I play a husband who dotes on his daughter who seems to be making a mistake in her marriage. It’s a very touching little movie. I was very happy to do that.
There is another movie called “Hollywood Untitled” at the moment. It’s a movie I turned down twice. The director, God bless her, was very persistent and really solicited me to write and develop the character in a way that would not have the objections I had to the character going into it. So I got to do a bit of that and that’s a very interesting aspect of it. It’s not just improv, but actually writing and developing characters, it’s something I just love.
A director I worked with several years ago referred to me as an archaeologist. He says, “you go in there and you sweep away the dust very gently until you find the bones of the character and then you flesh that character out.” I thought it was a marvelous description of my approach to characters because I think that kind of does say it.
GW: If you could give one message to your fans, be they Stargate fans or fans of your entire body of work, what would it be?
EA: Keep watching, man! [Laughter]
Never, never, never lose your imagination. I think that is what is the one unifying aspect to all sci-fi fans … a heightened sense of imagination, and the sense that anything’s possible. I think that that is one of the things that makes America great, certainly it’s what drew me to America. It’s that quality that really draws me to the fans. And I think they really keep us honest and I love that about our audiences.
I’ve always said, I look forward to doing theater, in particular, in great theater towns, because it’s the audience that’s going to educate you. They are the ones who are going to make your performance better. And the same is true of sci-fi fans. I think that while their imaginations are certainly more heightened, I think more than your average movie-goers or television watcher, I think they participate much more actively in the experience. So, I guess my message is don’t lose that.
Interview and Transcript by Chad Colvin
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