Alexis Cruz as Skaara in Stargate.
In today's Sci-Fi Blast From The Past, Alexis Cruz talks about his debut as Skaara in the Stargate feature film as well as subsequently reprising the role in the Stargate SG-1 TV series.
Alexis Cruz is, perhaps, best known for his television work as Skaara on Stargate SG-1 as well as Rafael on Touched by an Angel. However, not many of his fans know that this versatile and talented thespian actually made his debut in a “cheesy” role.
“It was a Spanish-language commercial for boxed macaroni and cheese,” he says. “I was a nine-year-old kid and had never had macaroni and cheese in my life. On the day of the shoot, there was a great big bowl of it on the set and I thought, ‘Jeez, that smells really good.’ I tried to taste it and they said, ‘No, don’t touch that. You can’t have any.’ I’m thinking, ‘What do you mean? I work here.’
“In the commercial, I’m at school and writing on the blackboard, ‘I will not talk in class.’ The teacher is sitting at her desk and she opens one of the drawers beside her to reveal a hot plate of macaroni and cheese. I look over my shoulder at the dish and start licking my lips. I really wanted it. Maybe they thought I couldn’t act or something and decided to starve me so it would look real. Believe it or not, when we finished that afternoon they still wouldn’t give me any! Well, my mom took me to the store, we bought a box of macaroni and cheese and she made it for me when we got home. I have to say I enjoyed it very much. Talk about defining moments in a child actors’ life,” laughs Cruz.
Despite such early adversity, Cruz continued to pursue an acting career. He trained at the Performing Arts High School in New York and went on to study directing at Boston University in Massachusetts. Much of the actor’s early work was in the theatre, as both a director and performer. In 1984, Cruz had a small part in an episode of The Cosby Show. This led to guest-starring roles on other TV series including ER and Dangerous Minds. Feature film work soon followed. However, his agent was hardly impressed with a job offer that came in for a 1994 science fiction movie called Stargate.
“My agent called me and said, ‘There’s this low-budget independent sci-fi film that’s being cast. The part has three lines and they’re not even in English. I don’t thing you should audition for it.’ As it happened, I hadn’t been working for a few months, so I said, ‘Hello! It’s work. I’ll do it. I’ll speak without speaking, you know?’ I decided to take it on as a challenge.
“So I went in, met with Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin [who wrote the film script], auditioned and got the job,” recalls the actor. “It was shortly after that when I realized this wasn’t some low-budget flick. To top it off, they explained to me, ‘Your role is going to get bigger and bigger,’ which it did. The film turned out to be one of the best things I could have done because it opened a lot of doors for me in this town [Hollywood].”
In the Stargate film Cruz plays Skaara, a young boy who lives with his father Kasuf (Erick Avali), sister Sha’uri (Mili Avital) and their people on the planet Abydos. Long ago, their ancestors were abducted from Earth by the Goa’uld, a parasitic alien race that live in humanoid hosts. Disguised as Egyptian gods, the Goa’uld took the humans through a portal called the Stargate to use as slave labour and hosts on worlds across the galaxy. Centuries later, an archeologist, Dr. Daniel Jackson (James Spader), and a team of military men led by Colonel Jack O’Neill (Kurt Russell) journey through the Stargate to Abydos. They help Skaara and his people liberate themselves from the false god, Ra (Jaye Davidson).
“Working on the film was incredible,” says Cruz. “Everyone there was very good to me. Kurt was awesome and so was James. I met a lot of interesting people and made some friends that I still keep in contact with today. The story arc for Skaara was great. He starts off as this feisty little kid who must suddenly confront his god. In doing so, Skaara learns that this all-powerful entity, Ra, who he and his kind have worshipped for all their lives, is, in fact, ‘full of crap,’ and he helps O’Neill defeat him.
“Originally, there was supposed to be three Stargate features, but then MGM bought the rights to the film and decided to turn it into a series,” continues the actor. “The producers [Brad Wright and Jonathan Glassner] asked me if I’d like to be a series regular but I declined. I didn’t want to be tied down to playing the same role week-after-week, plus I didn’t know how they planned to develop Skaara. However, I still wanted to be involved in the series, so they very kindly offered to make my character a recurring one.”
In the two-hour Stargate SG-1 pilot, Children of the Gods, the Stargate suddenly flares into life after sitting unused for months in a secret underground military base. A group of armed Jaffa troops led by the Goa’uld Apophis (Peter Williams) emerges. They kidnap a female sergeant and disappear with her back through the Stargate. Colonel O’Neill (Richard Dean Anderson) is called out of retirement and ordered to take a team back with him to Abydos. Their mission is to find Dr. Jackson (Michael Shanks), who stayed behind on the planet to marry Sha’uri (now called Sha’re). They must return with him to Earth and destroy the Stargate on Abydos.
“We had a great deal of creative freedom with that first episode,” says Cruz. “The director was Mario Azzopardi and he was quite willing to let us play with our characters and try different things. It was a little strange for me, though, to be working with a whole new group of actors that were playing characters from the film. Amazingly, there wasn’t any difference at all. Richard and Michael slipped right into their respective roles. It was a little uncanny in Michael’s case because he looked so much like James Spader.
“I’m happy to say we all got along very well. I remember Richard and I met on the first day of filming and he said a really complimentary thing to me, which was, ‘It’s an honour to have you here and to be working with you.’ I was blown away. I wasn’t expecting that, especially coming from an actor of Richard’s calibre. It made me feel even more relaxed and really helped set the tone for the entire shoot.”
In the climax of Children of the Gods, Sha’re (Vaitare Bandera) becomes host to Apophis’s wife and Goa’uld parasite Amonet, while Skaara is joined with Apophis’s son, Klorel. Skaara/Klorel returns with Apophis in the first-season cliffhanger Within the Serpent’s Grasp and, together, attempt to invade Earth in the second-season opener The Serpent’s Lair. “At that point, I was much more comfortable with playing Klorel,” notes Cruz. “There was one scene in particular in which I’m switching back and forth between personalities and I had to burst into tears. We had to keep re-shooting it because of all this noise going on in the background. I was becoming so frustrated. It was late and I just wanted to get it right. I can’t tell you how thrilled I was when I heard the director say, ‘Cut!’ and ‘Print!’ ”
The Stargate SG-1 third-season episode Pretensemarks the actor’s fourth and most recent appearance on the series. In it, a Goa’uld death glider piloted by Skaara/Klorel crash-lands on Tollana, a planet inhabited by a highly advanced human race. It seems Klorel has temporarily lost control of Skaara, who requests the Tollans remove the Goa’uld parasite within him. However, because Klorel is a sentient being they cannot do this. So Colonel O’Neill and Daniel Jackson are summoned to Tollana to represent the young man in a civil trial that will decide who will control his body.
“This is my favourite episode to date,” he says. “It was great to be back after a year-and-a-half. Once again, we got to see that struggle between Klorel and Skaara, which I enjoyed playing out. I was free to use my imagination in so many different ways and have some fun with my character. This is one of the reasons why I’m drawn to the sci-fi genre. As a Latino actor you’re trained to be serious and very intense, so you’re often cast in reality-based dramas. There’s nothing wrong with that, but you need a change every now and then. Sci-fi and comedy, which I’ve been doing more of recently, allows me to experiment with my craft. I can’t wait for my next Stargate appearance so that I can try out what I learnt while doing Pretense.”
Besides his work on Stargate SG-1, Cruz also had a recurring role as Rafael, one of the Lord’s heavenly messengers on the popular TV show Touched by an Angel. “That job really centred me artistically and taught me to be more disciplined,” says the actor. “I demand nothing less than totally honesty from myself when I’m working, so I had to get up off my butt and get it together. A big part of the show is God helping people to help themselves, which is something I strongly believe in. That’s such a important message and I was glad to help get it out there to audiences.”
While some of his peers dropped out of the profession once they reached their late teens, Cruz became more determined than ever to become an actor. It is a decision he does not regret. “Growing up, I always longed for freedom of expression and a certain amount of control over my life, and the arts have given me just that. This is what I do and I love it,” he enthuses.
Steve Eramo
that is a interesting idea ! i liked his character in the movie but i do not believe he would have added to the story line since he was a teenager not an adult .
fate was lucky for us sg-1 fans because if mgm had made two sequals i doubt if the series would ever have been made .
at present i am still very dissapointed that syfy cancelled sgu . that is another can of worms as they say .
i guess we fans are lucky the stargate era lasted as long as it did .
Posted by: willard duke | 04/10/2011 at 01:18 PM