
Elliot Knight as Sinbad. Photo copyright of Impossible Pictures.
Having possible Persian origins, the fictional Sinbad the Sailor is a young man who set sail throughout the Seven Seas where he explored a myriad of magical lands and battled fantastical as well as supernatural creatures. Over the centuries, his legendary adventures have been chronicled in various forms, including feature films, animation and on TV. The latest is the 2012 UK TV series Sinbad that stars Elliot Knight in the title role (which airs Saturday nights @ 9:00 p.m. EST/PST in the States on Syfy). With his good looks, buff physique and, of course, talent, he is the ideal fit for the role, but it is one that the British actor never thought he would end up booking.
“I actually heard about the part while I was at drama school in Manchester,” recalls Knight. “Up to that point I hadn’t done any professional work, but I had a meeting with my agent and she said to me, ‘There’s this great role called Sinbad that I think you’d be good for.’ I read the script and thought, ‘This sounds amazing. This is my dream role and I’d love to do it.’ It reminded me of the types of TV shows that I liked to watch when I was a kid and still like to watch now.
“So I eventually wound up trying out for the part and had four auditions, the first three of which were pretty much standard. I was given selected scenes to do from the first couple of scripts that showed the best as well as different sides of the Sinbad character. To be perfectly honest, I went in there never expecting to get the job. It was my first audition out of drama school, so I just figured I’d go along, meet some people, get some audition experience, and then later on down the road I might get a job out of it.
“In fact, I received an offer after my fourth and final audition, which was extremely physical. I remember waiting in the hall outside the audition room and there was this guy there who was pacing up and down with sweat dripping off his face. I realized it was the other actor who was up for the role. I began chatting with him and he told me how intense it had been. I suddenly thought, ‘Oh, wow, maybe it’s not going to be as plain sailing as before.’

Sinbad (Elliot Knight) finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. Photo copyright of Impossible Pictures.
“They [the show’s producers] had me run up and down staircases and through the crowds in Leicester Square, all the while being followed by a camera. I was doing martial arts moves and exercises I’d never even heard of before, again, all in front of a camera. It was full-on but I had a ball. A week later I found out I got the job and a week after that I flew to Malta where we filmed the show. So that last audition was tough, but I’m glad they did what they did because looking back now, if I hadn’t made it through the fourth audition, there was no way I would have lasted the next eight or nine months of filming.”
Like many men his age, Sinbad is high-spirited and not immune to engaging in some occasional mischief. He is also not averse to earning a quick gold coin or two by, for example, pulling off a pickpocket scam or accepting the challenge of a fist-fight with an equally testosterone-fueled young male. Our lead protagonist does both in the Sinbad pilot, but not without serious consequences. For Knight, stepping from the real world and into his character’s fantasy realm was initially a bit of a whirlwind.
“Everything happened so quickly. I didn’t have time to let what happened sink in, and it didn’t for a while,” says the actor. “I remember arriving in Malta and meeting the show’s second AD [assistant director], who started talking to me about all these things. Again, this was my first professional acting job, so it was all new to me. He handed me my production phone along with all sorts of paperwork as well as some scripts, and then began explaining about this location, this producer, the first read-through, etc.
“All I could think was, ‘This is crazy. It must be a dream. I’m not sure what’s happening.’ Oddly enough, though, I wasn’t scared, which most people, myself included, seem to think would have been my first reaction, but I just sort of road the wave and embraced everything that was going on. I said to myself, ‘OK, you’re new, but you’ll learn,’ which is totally fine. Two weeks after I arrived, we began shooting, so I spent those first couple of weeks in the gym and getting used to Malta’s sweltering heat. That’s not at all what I’m used to in England,” he notes with a chuckle. “It’s quite different here. So I had a great deal of time on my own, because I was, I believe, the first member of the cast to arrive in Malta.

What starts out as an "innocent" brawl ends with Sinbad's (Elliot Knight) life forever changed. Photo copyright of Impossible Pictures.
“The first thing we actually shot for Sinbad was a market sequence, and the scene I did never ended up making it into the final cut. It had to do with a sort of on-and-off love interest that my character had in one of the first versions of the script, and it was with Sinbad meeting her along with his brother just after a fight that he’d had. That scene also had him looking through the crowd of people and seeing Nala, the character that Estella Daniels plays, for the first time in the market,
“So on day one I literally walked onto the set and right into the middle of this amazing marketplace that the show’s creative team had put together. It really gave you a wonderful sense of the world we were trying to create for those watching. I felt comfortable right away, and it’s actually a good thing I did. A while into the shoot I had a chat with Andy Wilson, who directed our pilot episode as well as several others that [first] season. He said that they [the show’s producers] were keeping an eye on me because during those first couple of days if I either hadn’t known what I was doing or, for whatever reason, it all went horribly wrong, we couldn’t have carried on. They would have had to sort things out and get someone in to replace me. So I guess I couldn’t have done too badly in the end,” jokes Knight.
In the Sinbad pilot, Sinbad accidentally kills the son of the powerful Lord Akbari (Naveen Andrews) in a fist fight. Akbari subsequently captures him and Sinbad’s brother Jamil (Devon Anderson), who he executes in cold blood in retaliation for his son’s death. Sinbad later manages to escape, but his grandmother (Janet Suzman) then uses a magic talisman and places a curse on him for Jamil’s death. If he remains on land for more than a single day, the talisman will choke the life out of him. Sinbad must flee the city of Basra and travel the seas, unaware that Akbari is hunting for him. While Sinbad had no choice but to embrace the adventures that awaited him, Knight relished the chance to tag along and help bring his character to life.
“When I started, I wasn’t thinking about this being a TV series and I wasn’t thinking about acting, either,” he says. “By that I mean I strive to be quite an intuitive actor, so I like to just feel things as I’m doing them. As I mentioned before, this is the type of show I used to watch as a kid. I loved them, and as a kid I’d play as these heroes. At some point during their childhood, most people pretended to be the hero experiencing amazing adventures. That’s what I did pretty much as a hobby, so when it came to Sinbad I decided to do the exact same thing and just enjoy the fact that I was given this opportunity.

Sinbad explores the "House of Games." Photo copyright of Impossible Pictures.
“There’s this whole journey or adventure laid out with the show, not only for my character, but for me as Elliot as well. Like Sinbad, I was being thrown into these new and exciting circumstances. The biggest challenge for me acting-wise was, I guess, the technical side of knowing how a film set operates and how everything works. I just had to get used to that, and when you do, you become more aware of things in the technical sense of your performance and how you can improve it. Sinbad was very much a huge learning experience for me, probably the biggest that I’ll ever have in my career, because I did so much and learnt so much.
“As a character, I think Sinbad is fantastic and really inspiring, too, especially in the sort of world we live in today. A lot of people can take things quite seriously and get bogged down by them. Also, as you grow older, your priorities kind of change and it becomes more about work as well as money and making sure you have enough to get by and all these other kinds of things. Those are problems everyone faces, but the greatest thing about this show is that its central character doesn’t feel any obligation to those sorts of things. Sinbad’s only care in the world is to enjoy life.
“His is an amazing joie de vivre. Sinbad is a thrill seeker; that’s what he does. However, in only worrying about the fun he’s having and enjoying himself, he’s not really taking into consideration the danger that he could be leading himself as well as others into. You’ve seen that in the pilot episode, and it’s what leads him into a bad place at the start of the series.”
In order to escape from Basra, Sinbad stows away onboard a ship the Providence, that is preparing to depart the city. Unfortunately, it is the same vessel on which Nala and her father, who Sinbad and Jamil stole from, are passengers. Our hero is soon imprisoned below deck, but in the night, the ship is attacked by sea demons and a fierce storm kills most of the crew. Along with Sinbad and Nala, the only other survivors are a thief and fellow stowaway Rina (Marama Corlett), the towering Gunnar (Elliot Cowan), the ship’s doctor Anwar (Dimitri Leonidas), and Cook (Junix Inocian). Suddenly, the Providence has a new crew, and Sinbad gains traveling companions that he would come to care about as family.

(L-R): Gunnar (Elliot Cowan), Rina (Marama Corlett), Anwar (Dimitri Leonidas) and Sinbad (Elliot Knight). Photo copyright of Impossible Pictures.
“As I spoke about, I drew parallels between myself and Sinbad,” says Knight. “I felt like I was growing along with my character, and we had very similar journeys in terms of meeting new people. When I was at school, I never really fit into a group or anything like that. I was always the social drifter. I’d have my fingers in lots of different pies and I liked to do a lot of different things. I never really settled down anywhere, though, and I guess like a lot of people, have struggled for that sense of belonging to something.
“When we first meet Sinbad he’s this ‘kid’ who just loves life, but he doesn’t actually know what his purpose is. His entire world is Basra and his family. He knows other people there but he doesn’t have anyone as close to him as his grandmother, his mother and his brother. His relationships with them are quite strong, so I think when he meets Nala and everyone else in the pilot, he begins developing bonds with them and, in a sense, identifies the positive aspects of each character and tries to figure out how he can use those aspects in his own life to better himself as well as the experiences of those around him.
“So it’s very much a coming of age story for Sinbad,” continues the actor. “I was 20 when we started filming the series, and I turned 21 two or three months into the shoot. So the character was my age, and with him it was a matter of, OK, you’re growing up now, and prior to this you’ve never had any sensible responsibilities. Sinbad had an obligation to his family and to make sure that they were safe and well-provided for because he was the only one capable of doing that. However, he’s never had any actual responsibilities as an adult, and I think that’s the main thing for him throughout the series. He develops feelings for people other than himself and begins to appreciate them.
“Sinbad becomes a lot less selfish and his entire perspective of what’s important in his life changes. His whole world was torn to shreds in the first episode, and he’s about to embark on a journey that will completely change his view on the world. There is so much out there and he’s about to experience it all.”

Nala (Estella Daniels) and Sinbad (Elliot Knight). Photo copyright of Impossible Pictures.
As Sinbad‘s first season unfolds, viewers get to see the relationships between our hero and the other characters grow. In the process, Sinbad makes the leap into adulthood, but in doing so, he never loses his passion for adventure and zest for life.
“There are moments between my character and Nala where you get the sense that the two of them could be almost like a power couple because they’re both big personalities,” explains Knight. “However, I think it’s in Sinbad’s nature to be unpredictable, and when you least expect it, he seems to form a little bond with someone else, whether it’s a love interest or just a really strong brotherly bond.
“He has some wonderful connections with a lot of characters, and I had long chats with the producers as well as the other actors about what we felt our onscreen relationships should be. In the second episode [Queen of the Water-Thieves], Sophie Okonedo guest-stars as Queen Razia, and I really enjoyed my scenes with her. They started out as more of the obvious, oh, she’s the love interest of the week and won’t that be fun, but it was quite interesting to see how she then played it and how that, in turn, affected how I was with her in the scenes.
“Instead of it turning into a bit of shirtless time for Sinbad where the two of them go at it, he winds up learning lessons from this strong woman, the likes of whom he has never really encountered before. My character comes from a place led by strong men, and he’s quite cocky because of that, but then he meets this woman who has all the power and threatens his life, so everything that he knows is flipped on its head.

Sinbad makes a new friend in "Queen of the Water-Thieves." Photo copyright of Impossible Pictures.
“In this same episode, Sinbad makes friends of sorts with this huge bird that Razia is keeping prisoner. Funnily enough, inside this cave, which was one of the locations we shot in, there was this beautiful marking of a beast on this rock. It sort of had the head of a dinosaur along with horns and was just this curious concoction of different mythical creates that we ended up using in one of the episodes. Getting back to the monstrous bird, Sinbad forms a relationship with it because its story almost shadows his of being cursed and then the potential of being set free from that and how that could benefit him.”
Just as the Sinbad scripts helped Knight further hone his acting skills, the physical challenges his character faced allowed the actor to develop in other respects. ‘This was the most physically demanding role I’ve ever done and will likely be the most physically demanding role I will ever do, which is why I loved it so much,” he enthuses. “When I was in school I always enjoyed sport, stage combat and all those types of things. So I’ve done stuff like this since I was a kid. With Sinbad, almost every single day of shooting there would be something physical to do, and with that you had Malta’s sun and sweltering heat or the intense wind and rain,” says the actor laughing. “There’s no straying from that. You have to meet it head-on, which is what I tried my best to do.
“The entire series was shown here in the UK last summer, and when I watched it, it was amusing for me to see how I developed physically. One day during a lunch break, I grabbed some food and was walking over to the gym we had on-set. I was shirtless, as I was in most of the scenes, and as I walked past Andy Wilson, he said to me, ‘Elliot, you’ve completely changed. It’s like you’re a different person.’ I didn’t notice a difference myself, but then as I watched myself later on I thought, ‘Oh, wow.’ I was like a fresh-faced, scrawny little boy right out of drama school. I didn’t really work out or anything like that before I got the Sinbad role, but then just from doing what I had to do in the scripts along with a little bit of working out on the side, I physically turned into a different person.
“So the job definitely had its advantages that way, but, again, it was really demanding. To be fair, it was very physically challenging for all of us, but Sinbad was the athletic carefree one who would run into danger. One of my favorite scenes of the entire series is in episode eight [Kuji] there’s this epic fight scene that we shot on this absolutely beautiful beach in Malta. In the story, there are thousands of warriors from this mystical army and Sinbad and his friends have to try to fight them off. We were taught the fight three days, I think, before filming, then we rehearsed it the day before, and on the actual day we just had to shoot it. It was one of favorite days on-set and I had a ball. Like I said before, though, if I didn’t love doing the physical things I wouldn’t have enjoyed my time on Sinbad quite as much as I did.”

Sinbad (Elliot Knight) demonstrates his knife-wielding skills. Photo copyright of Impossible Pictures.
At the time of this interview [early June], the actor was in England and working on his latest TV gig. “I’m shooting a series for the BBC called By Any Means, which I’m really enjoying,” says Knight. “It’s very different from Sinbad, which was obviously a massive mythical, magical and epic fantasy adventure. In this series, I’m getting the chance to do something more real-life as well as more like myself and, perhaps, a little more easily relatable to people. That’s surprisingly difficult after you’ve been playing this big Arabian hero for nine months. I also guest-starred in an episode of Law & Order UK, so along with By Any Means, those are two things rather different in tone that people might want to look out for.”
Although it is early days yet in his acting career, Knight has already proven that he has more than enough passion and determination to turn his long-term dreams into reality. Sinbad was a big stepping stone towards helping him secure a future in acting, and one he will never forget.
“Sinbad was a massive break for me and I’m so grateful to Andy Wilson for casting me, and I’m glad he did so for the right reasons,” says the actor. “I remember in my third audition he said to me, ‘Why do you want to act?’ I thought, ‘God, this sounds like a bit of a game-changer. I need to come up with a good answer.’ I tried to think of all these clever responses, but then Andy didn’t seem overly impressed or just bothered with my answer. Ultimately, I decided, you know what, I’ll just be honest, so I said, ‘I do it because I love it, and I’m not going to do anything else.’
Andy said to me, ‘That’s exactly the answer I was looking for, especially for something like Sinbad. It’s so intense, and if you want to do this so that the people watching believe it, then you have to believe in it yourself and love what you do.’ So I’m thrilled he took that into his decision-making and made me remember it while I was filming because it made the experience that much better and more memorable.”
Steve Eramo
As noted above, photos copyright of Impossible Pictures, so please no unauthorized copying or duplicating of any kind. Thanks!