Dollhouse, Firefly, Angel, Buffy : news, photos & videos

Alan Tudyk - "Dollhouse" & "V" Tv Series - Blast.com Interview

Webmaster — 2009-06-04T15:47:14Z

Blast recently got the chance to speak with the always charming Alan Tudyk, also known as the beloved Wash from the critically-acclaimed series “Firefly” and as (spoiler !) Alpha from Joss Whedon's latest series “Dollhouse.”

Tudyk also has a new series due out this fall from ABC called “V.”

Our conversation touched on such various subjects as a possible future for “Firefly” (”I've been telling Joss to do a whole TV series on Wash”), his thoughts on a Twitter war with former co-star Nathan Fillion (”I do not want to play that game with Nathan Fillion”), and his love for the new Star Trek film, capped off with a bit of exciting news for “Dollhouse”s next season.

BLAST : Tell me what it was like working with Joss again on “Dollhouse.”

ALAN TUDYK : It was really great, you know, I didn't work with him in a directing capacity, Joss Path, he was around, doing the extras for the DVD so I definitely ran into him. It was really great.

BLAST : What is it about Joss Whedon that makes these group of actors follow him around ?

AT : Um, he has dirt on all of us. Really embarrassing stuff. It's blackmail, really, I mean I'll call it what is. That, I guess, and you know in his shows — the two I've been on — there's a way that you can have really high-stakes, dramatic situations taking place right next to very funny, and wry, sarcastic commentary. Which is hard to pull off and nobody does it better than him. So you get the opportunity to do something that's rare.

BLAST : I caught that sneak mention of Firefly. You know there are always rumors of “Serenity 2″ flying around, and Joss does have a history of bringing back characters from the beyond. Would you do another one ?

AT : Oh yeah, I've been telling Joss to do a whole TV series on Wash. Forget about it, that's what I want !

BLAST : I don't think you know what you just did. I think the fans will explode.

AT : Well, I've said that to fans before and and they go, (unenthusiastically) “Yeah ! But actually the great thing about “Firefly” was everyone working together…”, and I say, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll start with one and go from there !” But yeah, of course I would do it.

BLAST : About Alpha…

AT : Great.

BLAST : What personality of Alpha's — I think, what, 38 of them ? — which was most fun to play ?

AT : Well… I think it's forty–well, I've been saying 42 but I think it's 48. It's tough to know. (laughs) The only one, you know… It's interesting doing episodic television, because you can't peer around the corner. When I was doing the episode of “Briar Rose,” I didn't know where Alpha was going in “Omega.” I knew that I was taking her… but I didn't even know what I was taking her to do. (laughs) I didn't know why I was taking her until the day after we ran “Briar Rose” and I read the script for “Omega.”

BLAST : You kind of had to play it by ear then.

AT : There are a couple of things that happened with the performance. It was like, wow, this guy talks a great deal. He always speaks quickly and he doesn't ever want to stop talking ! There are a lot of lines to learn. But also, I knew that he had 48 people in him, but I didn't realize that it was just a riot of people, of difficult, zany folks. If I had to do it over again I would have brought more personalities out in the first one. (hesitates) Eh, I don't want to say I have regrets, but I — I don't know who all the personalities are. And there's Kepler, you know whoever that is, whatever personality he's using there. But that was kind of, you know, Alpha was doing a little acting, also.

BLAST : The acting part was one of the things fans have kind of been wondering about. To what extent was Alpha in fact Kepler, or was he acting the whole time ?

AT : I think with Alpha, if I, personally, was able to know intimately 48 perspectives, and backgrounds, and upbringings — perspectives, I got it right the first time — 48 different perspectives, If I had the benefit of that, myself, I would be an amazing actor. That's what acting is, you're putting yourself in somebody else's shoes and really trying to get as close to them as possible. So Alpha has the capacity to be the greatest actor. I feel like his Kepler was an amalgam of who he is, he can borrow a great deal from himself. And you know, we get to see Eliza Dushku's character put on all these different roles. So you have to think about all these different pieces of her that she could borrow from. And there are a lot of differences between them.

BLAST : You mentioned one thing I was going to ask you about. If you could have one skill or ability downloaded into your head, what would it be ?

AT : Uh… Inner peace.

BLAST : Is that a skill ?

AT : It's not a skill… but you know, you get these perspectives so you could download anything, like enlightment. Some kind of thought process, not so much a religion. Like the Dalai Lama ! I could download a piece of the Dalai Lama and just chill. (laughs)

BLAST : Are there other characters in the “Jossverse” besides Wash and Alpha that you would like to play ?

AT : Buffy. I would love to play Buffy. I've always felt that Sarah Michelle Gellar did a great job, but there was stuff she missed. (laughs)

BLAST : Hey, you know they are supposedly doing a Buffy movie without any of the actual Buffy characters. So will you throw your hat in the ring ?

AT : (laughs) If I can find time outside of my new TV show “Wash,” sure.

BLAST : Well you do have a new TV show, “V.” Can you tell me about it ?

AT : Sure. It's kind of an “Independence Day” scenario. You know it's based on the original miniseries that came out in the eighties. And, it's aliens, and it's about this alien race…

BLAST : Are you an alien ?

AT : I am not at liberty to say.

BLAST : Oooh. Really ?

AT : Yeah, I can't say one way or the other. It's just about an alien race coming in, and the reaction to having another race of people with alien technology and all that would mean if we actually had spaceships parked over our cities and what that would mean.

BLAST : Is it the sci-fi of it that drew you to it ?

AT : No, it was the script. There was one part in the script, right in the beginning when the Vs first show up and this F-16 falls out of the sky over the streets of New York City and explodes, and it's like, oh man, what's going on ? This is great !

BLAST : I asked some Twitter people if they had any questions for you and one question was : why did you leave Juilliard before graduating ?

AT : (laughs) Wow, how to do I answer that ?

BLAST : From aliens to Juilliard, right ?

AT : Yeah, right. Well, (laughs). I was following in a long line of actors who left Juilliard in their third year. Val Kilmer, Robin Williams… Juilliard's fourth year at that time and I think it's still the case, was where you study for three years. You do plays, but it's in conjunction with classes. And then your fourth year becomes solely a performance year. There's a couple of classes that are like, “How to Audition !” and “How to get an Agent !” And I had worked really hard to get an agent before I left Juilliard, I had an agent before my third year. So I didn't feel those classes were necessary and I didn't need a year full of, you know, “18th century Spanish plays that have never before been translated until now !” That's awful. That sounds awful ! I like the people at Juilliard.

BLAST : What fictional character would you most like to play ? Have you ever thought about it ?

AT : Wow. Gosh. You know, I don't know.

BLAST : Maybe another round as Steve the Pirate ?

AT : (laughs) Sure.

BLAST : So we've got Alan the Vampire Slayer, we have Wash the TV show, and a Steve the Pirate movie. I hope you know I'll be holding you to your word.

AT : (laughs) You know I don't know that a Steve the Pirate movie would be very interesting without the rest of the cast. He doesn't say very much… His humor is best in small doses of “Garr !” and “Arrgh !” in the right moment. I would only want to undertake that with Justin Long, and Christine Taylor, Vince Vaughn, Joel, Ben Stiller. We'd need the whole group.

BLAST : (laughs) Fair enough. What is on your iPod ?

AT : What's on my iPod ? I've got a lot on my iPod. I can tell you what I'm listening to right now… My current favorite song is by a band called Band of Skulls, it's called “I Know What I Am.” Great song. And I've got a little throwback to when I was in high school, Anthrax's “I'm the Man,” hysterical song. A hard band but the song is really funny. And the Black Keys' new album is fantastic. There's a song on it called “I Got Mine,” which is kind of that bluesy, ballsy music. The whole album is great. I could go on, and on, and on…

BLAST : You are a regular at fan conventions, so I was wondering : are you a sci-fi fan yourself and will you be at this year's San Diego Comic Con ?

AT : I don't know about San Diego. Am I sci-fi fan, that was the other question ? I liked “Star Trek : The Next Generation” when I was growing up a lot, and the original “Star Trek” when I was a kid, watching re-runs. But “The Next Generation” is the first show that really grabbed me. I loved the characters, I wanted to know what was going to happen next. Then I kind of took a break, well you know, “Star Wars” and all that stuff is great. But I wasn't the biggest sci-fi fan until “Firefly “sort of brought me back in. Yeah, I am a sci-fi fan. The new “Star Trek” movie, best movie I've seen… you know, a lot of people say it's the best movie they've seen since “Iron Man,” but I think it's better than “Iron Man.”

BLAST : “Star Trek” was really good. It was a movie that had so much weighing on it, and managed to appeal both to the masses and the fans. Great movie.

AT : Yeah. I've seen it twice.

BLAST : Me too !

AT : Yeah. It was done, and I was like, let's roll it again ! I'm ready to see it again. Let's go. Like, now. So entertaining, so entertaining. You know, they have something in the “Star Trek” franchise… I definitely haven't seen all of it, but they have something in this one that I've only seen in “Firefly” before. You've got your hero, your Captain Kirk, getting his ass kicked. That first scene when you're meeting him as an adult, he gets his butt whipped in a bar, and it's hysterical. Very Malcolm Reynolds-y. And then also, when he lands in the ice planet before he meets Spock, and he's complaining and trying to cite the rules that have been broken, and he's looking off in the distance, and the the giant behemoth is coming at him. He's running from it, screaming like a girl, (high voice) “No-o ! No-o !” The hero can be very uncool, the hero can be afraid, the hero can be chicken. That was really refreshing. He can make mistakes, and be goofy. That whole scene with him and the doc, and the shots. It's just fun.

BLAST : There's a certain fearlessness with the way Joss treats his characters and I think with the way they handled the characters in “Star Trek.” I think you're quite right about that.

AT : Yeah. Absolutely, definitely.

BLAST : I have maybe one or two questions more, so my next one is : are you on Twitter ?

AT : No, I'm not ! You know…

BLAST : Are you going to get on that ?

AT : Yeah, you know I was hoping it would be gone by now. Is that going to go away any time soon ? (laughs)

BLAST : You know supposedly, the top 10 percent of Twitter users account for 90 percent of the Twitter traffic. So I guess most people's lives really are that boring.

AT : Yeah, I took that stance that I've heard… if I'm writing somebody that I'm standing in the park enjoying the smell of flowers, I'm lying because in fact I'm standing in the park twittering, being distracted from the flowers that I was smelling previously. I just need to live my life, not need to open that window all the time to let everybody know what's going on. But as a social networking tool, you need to be connected to your friends. We all lead such busy lives that it's hard to touch base with so many people. So if you can keep in touch just by a word here or a word there…

BLAST : I guess that's fair.

AT : (laughs) I'm telling you why I'm not on it, and I'm also explaining why I'm going to be on it. When I end up on it, that's my reasoning.

BLAST : (laughs) Everyone succumbs, right ? Well, you know Nathan Fillion is on it so maybe you should get into a Twitter war with him or something.

AT : What the hell is a Twitter war ?

BLAST : I guess it's where you see who can get the most followers the quickest.

AT : I do not want to play that game with Nathan Fillion. (laughs) He's a much more social animal than I am. I concede the fight before it begins !

BLAST : You might be surprised ! Oh, I think our time is up, so thank you for your time.

AT : Brilliant. Thank you. Hey, thanks for that top nine reasons why Dollhouse is back on the air, I appreciate it.

BLAST : Oh, thank you for reading it ! I'm as thrilled as anybody.

AT : (laughs) Cool. Well, I look forward to next season and I hope you like it. I think it'll be fun.

BLAST : Oh–will we see you next season ?

AT : (pause) Yes you will.

BLAST : That is the best answer. Thank you so much.

AT : All right, take care.

Alan Tudyk - "PG's Porn" Web Series - James Gunn Collider.com Interview

Webmaster — 2008-10-27T10:39:57Z

Alan Tudyk will play in an episode.

Click on the link :

http://www.collider.com/entertainment/interviews/article.asp/aid/9633/tcid/1

Alan Tudyk interviews Nathan Fillion in "Secret's Out" Tv Show on ReelzChannel

Webmaster — 2008-08-06T13:39:31Z

Former Secret's Out guest Alan Tudyk is hosting this week's show. His guest will be fellow Firefly and Serenity star Nathan Fillion.

The show will air Friday, August 8 at 7pm Eastern/4pm Pacific, and encore throughout the week.

Click on the link :

http://www.reelzchannel.com/show/16/secrets-out ?clipid=35611

Alan Tudyk - "Death at a Funeral" Movie - Reelzchannel.com Video Interview

Webmaster — 2008-03-23T22:37:43Z

Alan Tudyk - "Death at a Funeral" Movie - Dying for a laugh

Webmaster — 2007-11-03T16:30:54Z

PERCHED naked atop a family home while a funeral is being carried out below isn't the best way to impress your future in-laws. Then throw into the mix the unknown consumption of a hallucinogenic substance and you have one hell of a dysfunctional wake.

Texan actor Alan Tudyk was the lucky guy chosen to strip for the role of Simon in British comedy feature Death At A Funeral.

Also featuring Rupert Graves as Robert and Matthew Macfadyen as his brother Daniel, the film revolves around the boys' father's highly dysfunctional funeral.

Everything that can go wrong does (including the wrong corpse being delivered before the service) and leads to some unexpected and shocking family secrets being divulged through the tears of sorrow.

One of the funniest scenes is watching a whacked-out Simon climb out the window of the home, naked for the world to see, as mourns at the funeral congregate on the lawn.

Tudyk admits it was laughing out loud to the script while reading it that attracted him to the film, before he turns his attention to discrimination on film sets when it comes to men and woman revealing all of a role.

“When a woman is naked on set it's almost always a closed set, there is the utmost respect for the artist and their nudity and if you look that second longer it's like ‘Shame, shame on you', but when it's a guy everyone shows up to have a good old look,” the 36-year-old said from his home in California.

“It's like ‘You're from accounting, what the hell are you doing here ? … all to just watch the crack of my arse come out the window !”

While Tudyk has appeared in many films, ranging from Knocked Up to Patch Adams and I, Robot, his a name isn't one instantly recognised by the general public.

However, he prefers it that way (even more so now, given his bottom has been exposed to the world !)

Tudyk enjoys the notion of exploring characters and says Simon certainly challenged him as an actor.

“The one thing I underestimated was the amount of energy it was going to take to play that role,” he admits.

“I went in there going ‘Let's be high for a few months, yippee', but didn't calculate the idea of being on speed for 12 hours of the day. I would come on the set and start and (director) Frank (Oz) would go ‘You've got to get higher, higher, more intense'. It was full on.”

Watching himself back on screen is always a tense experience for Tudyk.

“It is always a nerve-racking experience for me to watch it for the first time, I am always worried because you can't change it at that point,” he said.

“But I was really impressed with Frank's editing of the movie. He did a great job of cutting my character. We shot so much stuff, but Simon is a very potent spice in that brew and Frank kept it to where it would be the right moment when people are going ‘where the hell is that high guy'.

It wasn't hitting you over the head with it because ultimately you are doing the same joke over and over again. You have to be careful how many times you can ring that bell.”

Tudyk will be seen next opposite Russell Crowe in western flick, 3:10 to Yuma and begins shooting a cameo role in Jennifer Aniston's new dark comedy, Management, this month.

“I am a porn shop owner and said I would do it as long as I get to her a perm !” he laughs.

“I have always wanted a perm in a film. I think it's the most disgusting thing, especially with my colouring. I don't even have to open my mouth and people will be like ‘Oh my god look at that !' I can't wait !”

Alan Tudyk - About new movies - Firstshowing.net Interview

Webmaster — 2007-08-28T09:00:32Z

Alan Tudyk is most well known as Wash from the “Firefly" series / Serenity as well as very distinct characters from a number of great comedies, including Steve the Pirate in Dodgeball and Jack, Katherine Heigl's boss in Knocked Up. He currently stars in Death at a Funeral, one of my favorite comedies of the year in one of his greatest roles ever, as well as the upcoming 3:10 to Yuma western. If you thought he was funny on screen, then just wait to you hear his story about the time he took mushrooms when he was 19 !

Alan Tudyk is one of those actors that I've come to really love in films and it was truly amazing to sit down and chat with him. I hope Death at a Funeral is one of his big breaking points and I hope everyone comes to recognize his face and his name soon enough !

Alex (FS.net) : Is there anything in particular that draws you to certain scripts or comedies, because I don't think there's anything you've done that doesn't have a really strong comedic character.

Alan Tudyk : Yea… I'm just thinking I'm just like a normal actor who gets scripts and I read them and… if I enjoy reading them, then that's what's exciting, then I get excited about the audition or the project itself. I don't have any set things that I'm looking for, like I've done this now I want to do this, kind of thing. Just read the material, if it appeals, if it makes me laugh, like Death at a Funeral made me laugh out loud. I also love farces, and then when I heard Frank [Oz] was attached then it became very exciting. Then it's just about hoping it works out, and it did.

It was an interesting audition process on this particular role, because everybody was already in London, and this was the only role they hadn't cast. And I was auditioning from the States with Frank on the phone and the casting director. My phone sat on the chair while he's giving me direction, listening to me. “Sounds like you're really going into the euphoria at the beginning and then getting the speed later on in the scene, let's flip that, do the speed at the front and then the euphoria." It's a testament to him that he can direct over the phone and actually be able to tell what's going on.

You know, you look for people that you like, people you admire, work that they've done, and the script itself is always where you start.

Alex : How was it working with Frank Oz ? How does he bring in the comedic aspect ? Is there improvisation on set ?

Alan : There is, he did though… which was different from any movie I've ever done, he had improv prior to shooting. We had rehearsal and then full on improvised exercises. Some films you're lucky enough to get some rehearsal, which is just basic going through the scene, and these are my questions, and this is what I'm trying to achieve, and you work things out and maybe a few line changes here or there. We did all those sorts of things but then he had Daisy Donovan and I, because of the way our relationship, you know we have this relationship that we're engaged to be married and we haven't told her father yet, and I'm a lawyer and… you never get a chance to see who we are as a couple.

So Frank had us come over in character, we met at his house and we went out for coffee. And we'd set up a scenario where he knew Martha's parents, Daisy's character's parents, he had know her since she was a child. And then he was also a relative of mine and known me as a child and thought it was amazing that we had gotten together. And we were meeting for the first time, all three of us, to discuss our wedding. And we went out for coffee and we had to be in character dressed in costume and I was Simon and she was Martha. And we sat over coffee and he just asked us questions : so when did you guys meet, where did you guys meet, what are you doing now with your life, how's the career going, how's your new job. Some of the things you knew the answers to, it was work that you've already made decisions about the character, then others, you just get put on the spot. “I'm glad you asked that actually, uh…" It's interesting, you have to come up with stuff. That laid a foundation for the two of us, since it doesn't get touched in the movie, but it really put our feet on the ground for our relationship. I've never worked with a director who's done that in film. Theater you get that, people doing real acting work, that kind of stuff, that improv…

As far as improv on set, he'll get his takes that he needs, he's got the script, he's fine, we can put that in the movie now. He always said, “show me your chops" was the term he uses. Which is really kind of an intimidating thing to say, because if you know what chops are, it's show me how good you are, it's kind of like saying “be good." It was a green light to say things that weren't in the script, come up with new little bits, things like that. There's a lot of them in the movie, not just the things that I did, but Andy Nyman. My favorite line of Andy Nyman's is after Peter Dinklage has hit his head and they come out and they say, “Touch him, touch him, see if he's ok." He's like, “What's his name ? I don't know, try Phillip." “Try Phillip" is not in the script, what a ridiculous line, it's so brilliant ! And that's because Frank allows you to, if it comes into your head you can say it. I had a bunch of them as well… especially with Simon, because a lot of the things with Simon would be, in the script, cut to Simon, he's out of his mind and enjoying life. So it's up to you to what that looks like, what is that moment, and that's how we get me spitting over the balcony.

We had so much stuff in the bathroom that actually got cut out, thankfully, because we don't want to overkill. It almost becomes the same joke again, ok cut to Simon, he's high, and he's doing something different, ooh wacky guys, he's doing something different ! But we came up with tons of stuff. It's fantastic, because [Frank] just has a bunch of stuff he can choose from. What's the funniest and what works the best and he's got all these different scenes to put in.

Death at a Funeral

Alex : I'm not making any judgments here, but have you had any past hallucinogenic experiences or is this just something where you just get naked and jump into character ?

Alan : I have… I had an experience with psychedelic mushrooms when I was 19, I guess, when I was in college. I was even able to use, not just my experience of that, but I guess I could describe what happened that night… I just want to say I haven't done acid or ketamine. Of the drugs, it's a mix of acid, ketamine, and mescaline, they're all like speed drugs, those are scary drugs to me.

But mushrooms, which are similar, it's a hallucinogenic drug. When I was in college, my first college, one in east Texas, me and my buddies had been looking for psychedelic mushrooms because it was in a rural area and you could actually go out onto the farms in the morning after a light rain and look in all the cow turds for mushrooms. And we did it for months leading up to our graduation. We couldn't find any, it was just basically scaring ourselves, because if you get caught on people's land you could get shot in Texas easily. I'm sure it's smiled upon by the community if you caught those damn college kids trying to get high.

But our last party, it was the last night graduation party at this lake, this guy who actually lived in Jacksonville, Texas, he's a townie, somebody said Rodney got mushrooms, he finally found some. Where's Rodney ? He's over there, and he was on a broken park bench. It was like a cement park bench that sat like that [motions like it's broken and slanted down]. And he was right on the back, the tip of it, just perched up like a cat and his eyes were closed and he has this sublime smile on his face. And we're just like hey Rodney ! Shhhh… [whispers] What ? Listen ? To what ? The crickets… Yea, I hear them man, uh did you get mushrooms ?

Here, and he pulled out like a Wonder Bread bag and like the last quarter of it was stuffed with mushrooms, and he pulled out a fistful and put them in my hand. What do I do with these, what part do I eat ? And he said, eat them all, eat them right now in front of me. So I ate all of these mushrooms, and it was… it was a bit scary in the beginning just getting into it, I felt like God was scratching his finger nails on a chalkboard, it scared me. But when that stopped, which only lasted a couple of minutes, it was if like Tinkerbell went [piff] and blew some fairy dust in my face and the world became this wonderful place and I had theories about everything. And I didn't move from the party. When I was feeling bad, I sat down next to a pickup truck that was parked out by the lake and I didn't move from that spot all night. And people just came to visit me, and I told them my theory about, I had a pinecone theory of life about how we are all pinecones.

It was a lot of fun, but the way that that guy, Rodney, was sitting on that cement park bench. In the movie, when I'm on the roof, that was from him. Then as far as acid and stuff, I have a lot of friends who've done it. Everybody has a different trip, everybody has a different experience. So it kind of told me, there's really nothing off bounds on an acid trip, you don't know what you're going to get and you can get a lot of hallucination, a lot of speed, a lot of happiness, some scary sadness and depression. Even that mouth thing that everybody does, fucking with their mouths the whole time, like that is definitely in there. And just ask people and took little bits and pieces from different people, what was helpful.

It's interesting, being on like hallucinogenic drugs, I think the main thing is like your feelings become actionable immediately. If you feel happy, you want to express it immediately. You can be happy, as we are now, and you can be cool about. You can be scared and suppressive but nobody would even know you're scared because you've got a smile on your face, you're happy, you're able to control your emotions. When you're on those drugs, you're emotions are what you're doing. And so it kind of becomes like a child, more like a special needs child. What's he into now, good god, get him away from there ! So that was what I used…

Alex : You've had a chance to work with Judd Apatow [in Knocked Up], Frank Oz, even Ben Stiller [in Dodgeball], what's your sense of the comedy atmosphere in Hollywood at the moment. What's the direction it's going in ? What are you seeing with Hollywood comedy now ?

Hollywood comedy has gotten really silly and absurd, and I like that. Our movie is not like that, Death at a Funeral is a very classic comedy. Like another Apatow movie, Anchorman, all the different anchormen show up and they have a fight and people are getting killed and stuff like that, then ah no it's all ok. All that absurd, wacky, wacky stuff. That's done a lot. I think that it's getting crasser. The scripts I've read, I can't point to a movie that's out right now, but I've read a couple of scripts that are… they get a lot of there laughs from oh my god, I can't believe they just said, they actually just said that, is this R, or is it X ? It goes so far, Judd Apatow did some of that. There's a lot of crass humor in [Knocked Up]. But I guess there's just a higher tolerance for crass humor, which I'm fine with. My mom is not too keen on it, you know going to see Knocked Up with her, when she's like that isn't your vagina, that's your asshole. It also seems very masculine humor…

There's a lot of history of that. Caddyshack, stuff like that, it's kind of like boys' humor. The good thing in Hollywood, it seems like comedies, what do they call it, the laugh pack, all those guys, those movies do really well, people go out and see comedies. So for studios, it makes sense to make comedies. Especially in the way the world is these days, people want to go have a laugh, have escapist films. They're making a lot of comedies, it makes business sense to make comedies, so that's good.

Alex : I was going to ask about 3:10 to Yuma, I haven't actually seen your character in any of the trailers at all, who is he ?

His name's Doc Potter. The reason, he really doesn't work for the trailers, because they give you the tone of the movie which is a very serious movie, he's a gunslinger, that kind of through-gritted-teeth line delivery stuff. And my character's a veterinarian who's in the town where Russell Crowe's character gets captured, he gets split off from his gang and captured, and they've got to put a posse together to get him to the town of Contention, to put him on the 3:10 to Yuma and it's a trek to get there, and his gang is following us and trying to free him before we get there.

My character doesn't want to go, my character kind of gets roped into the whole thing. So you're going, what, wait a minute, why are we doing this, this isn't apache country, we shouldn't be here. Like I'm that guy, “this is bullshit !" Everybody's corrupted, all the characters are very corrupted people, it's a hard time of history in the country, people have killed, just after a Civil War, life is hard and people have a hard view of life. And my character is the guy who believes in… man overcoming the darker natures, and he believes in what's right. He's an educated guy, he's the most educated guy in the movie.

So it doesn't make sense to cut… “We're going to go get him." “I'm going to burn you to hell !" “It's apache country !" He's the comic relief, but in a very… it's not any kind of broad comedy, just situationally, him being with all these outlaws. Speaking his mind tends to be kind of funny.

Alex : With 3:10 to Yuma and even with “Firefly" and Serenity's western aspect, do you see the western genre ever coming back around ?

Definitely, because 3:10 to Yuma got pushed up because there's two more coming out and they jumped to the front of the line, which is nice of them. We'll see, I think actually these next few months are going dictate how Hollywood feels about westerns. If they do well… You'll get one every once in a while, there was that Clint Eastwood one that won the Oscars with Morgan Freeman, that one [Unforgiven]. But you didn't see a bunch being made after that. It's an interesting genre and I hope people come out to see it.

Thanks especially to Alan Tudyk and everyone at Sidney Kimmel Entertainment for the opportunity to interview one of the best up-and-coming comedic actors. I strongly suggest you go out to see Death at a Funeral as soon as you can, as it was one of my favorite comedies of the year. And although I haven't seen 3:10 to Yuma yet, I'm looking forward to it quite a bit as well.

Alan Tudyk - "3:10 To Yuma" Movie - Collider.com Interview - Watch The Video

Webmaster — 2007-08-27T06:58:54Z

Click on the link :

http://www.collider.com/entertainment/news/article.asp/aid/5275/tcid/1

Alan Tudyk - "Knocked Up" Movie - About.com Interview - Watch The Video

Webmaster — 2007-06-04T20:42:22Z

Click on the link :

http://video.about.com/movies/Knocked-Up—Alan-Tudyk-.htm

Alan Tudyk - "Prelude to a Kiss" Play - Broadwayworld.com Interview

Webmaster — 2007-04-04T19:25:07Z

This week we interview Alan Tudyk who is currently staring in the Roundabout Theatre Company's revival of Craig Lucas' “Prelude To A Kiss.”

Alan Tudyk appeared on the television series “Firefly.” He's also been in the films “Dodgeball : A True Underdog Story ,” “28 Days,” and “Serenity” among others. He made his Broadway debut in the play “Epic Proportions” with Kristin Chenoweth. He also co-stared in the Manhattan Theatre Club's production of “Wonder of the World” with Sarah Jessica Parker. Most recently he replaced Hank Azaria in “Spamalot.”

“Prelude To A Kiss” is the story of a bride who switches places with a mysterious old man when he offers her a congratulatory kiss at her wedding. The play also stars John Mahoney and Annie Parisse and is directed by Daniel Sullivan.

“Prelude To A Kiss” is playing at the American Airlines Theatre through April 29th.

You can listen to this interview and many other great features for free on Broadway Bullet vol. 108. Subscribe for free so you don't miss an episode.

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Broadway Bullet Interview : Alan Tudyk from Prelude to a Kiss

BROADWAY BULLET : I am sitting here in the studio today with Alan Tudyk who has done film, theater, about everything you'd imagine, I bet there's some clowning in there too, and he's currently staring in Prelude to a Kiss at the Roundabout Theater. How are you doing ?

Alan Tudyk : Very well, very well.

BB : Starting off with Prelude to a Kiss, you've done a lot of quirky characters, to say the least.

ALAN : Yes.

BB : And you are definitely a leading man, straight man territory with this play. Was that part of the appeal ?

ALAN : Definitely, I lived here for a long time, I don't live here so much anymore, I live in LA a lot. When I was here before I was doing theater a lot more, it was the main thing that I did. And I did some lead characters, but they were always of the quirky vein I suppose. There was Epic Proportions, which was at the Helen Hayes for a short time which Jerry Zacks directed it.

BB : And Kristin Chenoweth.

ALAN : And Kristin Chenoweth was in it as well, yes. And it was a leading role, but it was a very physical comedy leading role. And then also Most Fabulous Story Ever Told which we started at the New York Theater Workshop, and then it went to Williamstown first, and there were readings and workshops and there were readings and workshops before all that. It was the story of Adam and Steve, it's a Paul Rudnick play, and I played Adam, and that was the lead of the play. And again, well it was pretty crazy because it was Adam and Steve and we started out in the Garden of Eden and went through time together, there was stone hedge and we went through Egypt and we went all over the place in Act One, and then ended up with the virgin birth. Act Two was set in modern New York at Christmas time. And now, you go and play roles in films and as you said, I definitely drift towards the quirky, supporting roles.

BB : The pirate in Dodge Ball was.

ALAN : Yes, that was a really good example. We need a guy who plays dodge ball and thinks he's a pirate, get me Alan Tudyk on the phone ! Those are the jobs I do. And when I read the script, it's a wonderful script, Craig Lucas is wonderful, I had only kind of peripherally seen the movie and wasn't a fan. I kind of thought of it as Freaky Friday, it's an old man and a young girl and I thought of it as light comedy. But when I read it, I realized it was much more than that, it was really a beautiful story about love and about life.

BB : For our listeners who maybe don't know the play, like you said you fall in love with Annie Parisse in the show, and all the sudden, at your wedding, this kiss happens with John Mahoney and then they switch souls in the bodies.

ALAN : Yes, and then her soul goes away. And the thing that I fell in love with what I married Rita for is gone, and then it's about trying to figure out what happened and which is outrageous. You know, magic happens, souls switch, you're in this, this does not happen, how it could be, he becomes so desperate and it's so scary. It deals with life and death and goes a lot of different places.

BB : It's a drama, it just happens to be funny because of the situation.

ALAN : Yes, yes.

BB : But they treat it seriously ?

ALAN : Definitely. It's somewhat of a, you know, think about if your wife or girlfriend or your significant other was kidnapped, essentially stolen from you and you want her back. She's stolen, she's taken, that drama, that's a drama. Also, if you think about "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" almost, you've been changed. And it's very scary and dramatic, but there is humor to it. I was really drawn into it for the drama, and also getting to play a lead again, definitely. Because I was fortunate enough to have leads earlier I sort of just took it for granted. Oh yeah, this is what I do, I just do this. And then doing movies and playing a lot of supporting roles ; I played one lead in a movie, but nobody really saw me in it, in "I Robot" I played Sonny the robot, I did that for six months, and then they digitally drew over me. And so everything I did, it was my acting - kind of - because they put whatever my face did on the face of this robot character.

BB : You know, I saw the credit of "I Robot" on your bio and I was thinking where, I missed that.

ALAN : Was he the quirky lab assistant ? Yeah, no I got to play that role and people don't know it was me. You have to really figure it out.

BB : Our engineer is out there shaking her head, she's a fan.

ALAN : But I wanted to come back, I wanted to do that but I wanted to have a little bit more to chew on and I got just that. And plays, I always feel that plays are an opportunity to learn to act. We get an acting class eight shows a week, and the show on Tuesdays changes every week. It may be the same, but basically, by Sunday you have essentially a different show. It's deeper in places, the dynamic is colored in different ways so that it is, hopefully, more specific. And after a run of doing a play for awhile, it really charges my batteries in acting. Those questions that you really need to ask yourself as an actor when you are approaching a role become more immediate, they're right in the forefront of your brain. So it's easier to tackle whatever role, if it's a pirate or a leading role.

BB : A lot of film actors will come and do a show, but you've - pretty consistently - done film and theater back and forth and back and forth. So I'm curious how you viewed theater as fitting into your overall career plan. Is it a release for you, is it something to do something different ?

ALAN : I consider theater, this is a vacation for me from LA, I sort of view this as I get to have this vacation and during my vacation I get to work on acting. It's like an acting class. And if I go too long without doing a play, I just feel empty. Like approaching a role, I feel like the pool is very shallow, like I'm drawn from it. So I need to come back and do a play, fortunately I've been able to, every couple of years. I think I once went three or four years without doing a play and I almost lost my mind, then I came back and did Spamalot. But that was a very different experience.

BB : Tell us about Spamalot because you were pretty nuts in that. I actually got a chance to catch you when you came in. You were like a nice surprise, when we found out all the lead actors we had paid to see were gone, we were like "oh wait, look Alan Tudyk's in it, we're happy !"

ALAN : Yeah, it was this lucky thing that happened. Hank Azaria, who originated Lancelot, the role is Lancelot then you also do the French Taunter and the Knight who says Knee, and Tim the Enchanter.

BB : You definitely ate up the French Taunter.

ALAN : Yeah, that was a fun one, I liked him. My favorite role is from the movie, that's how I came to it, like most people. He had that show "Huff" on Showtime that he had to go back to shoot a season, so he wouldn't be back for six months. The Tony's were on Sunday, Mike Nichols won best director, the show won best musical, and Sara Ramirez won best featured actress in a musical. And it was right at that crazy time where the stage door was just ten people deep, and the audience was rocking and it was amazing, and I got to step in with the entire original cast and play for six months. And it was just as the wave was hitting the perfect spot, Hank jumped off the surfboard and said "jump on buddy, it's yours". It was great, it was a great wave to ride for six months, and I say that not being a surfer. It was more of a performance. Like Prelude is great because it does change every performance and it's going to grow up until April 29th when we're done ; but for Spamalot, because you're playing four different roles and it is very sketch like. The Lancelot role had a little more meat to it because it had changed a little bit, even from the movie, there was some new stuff that Eric Idle had written. But like the French Taunter and the Knight who says Knee, you exploit every laugh and find every way to make it as funny as possible and use what you have to make it as funny, playing with the other actors and what they're giving you. It gets to a certain point.

BB : Rarely are you given permission to literally chew the scenery.

ALAN : Exactly. But at a certain point, you've turned over every rock for funny, and then it's about maintaining that for - I think I did about 200 performances of that - so for about 100 performances I was like "great, I feel like I've really exploited every place I can find for what is funny. Because it is so funny and it is such a performance, it's really entertainment. Once you're in a musical, there is a huge opportunity for that, singing and dancing, "aha !" and "tada" at the end of the numbers ; but it's a different kind of discipline you have to go through to maintain that kind of performance. The great thing with Prelude and straight plays is that you get to grow, and when you have one role that has a through line throughout then you get to play all between, you figure out what you want, how you're going to get it, what your obstacles are throughout the play, and then it just changes over time, it deepens, it's a blast I'm enjoying it. I'm sad that we're only going through the end of April ; but we're having a blast and we'll have a blast up until the end. I'm sure there won't be any point where we'll be like, "oh god, we've got two shows to do today." Nobody approaches it like that. I mean, every show you get a few people who are just beat tired and just don't want to do it today, and you're like how is this going to happen ? But it's not like that with this one at all and I don't expect it to be, because it's so short.

BB : Now you grew up in Texas, right ? So where did you migrate first as you decided you were going to make your career in entertainment ?

ALAN : New York City, I always wanted to come here. I went to Julliard, actually Sara Ramirez - who I mentioned earlier, was in my class so we were group 26, group 26 at Julliard. I had been to a school in Texas for two years and did drama and learned some things, and then was in comedy troops in Dallas ; I realized that I needed to make a choice, and also that I didn't know very much, and somebody told me Julliard was a good school and that's all I knew about it, this person had told me it was the best school in the country. So I said cool, I'll audition for it then. And did, and I got in luckily, and I was like "cool, now I'm going to go to this place in New York". And that really began everything for me, the education there was intense, and I only went there for three years. It was a four year program, but by the third year I was kind of done. The fourth year is all performance, and there's no more classes, and that's sort of what I was there for. "I want to take the classes", "there aren't any more classes", "what plays are we doing ?", and they're always like "it's a fifteenth century Spanish play called The Chambermaids Daughter, nobody ever does it and we're going to do it !" Yeah, nobody ever does it for a reason. What they were planning to do their season wasn't exciting and I had, luckily, worked at New York Stage and Film one summer between my second and third year and had made some contacts and started work early in the play Bunny, Bunny. This went Off-Broadway and was the first play I was in professionally in New York, with Bruno Kirby and Paula Cale. I got one of those Theater World awards, it was an exciting time. I got the Clarence Durbin Award, the Equity Award - which is cool because it has a cash prize which is cooler than a trophy, especially when you're a struggling actor and you can't pay rent. So that was a great introduction, for me into the theater and for the New York theater people to see me. In that one, again, I played multiple roles, I played like 20 something roles, it was a three person play. Gilda Radner and Alan Zweibel were the two lead characters and it went over their relationship - over several years - and told the story of their relationship, and then I played everyone else in the play. So there was men, women, different ethnicities, lots of accents, lots of wigs, mustaches, stuff like that. And I was always running offstage and changing, then coming back on ; and I think that was kind of neat to watch. But New York, and then LA just kind of happened over time, and now I live there, I don't know it just kind of happens.

BB : Now I know two years, in 2004 and 2005, you participated in the 24 hour play festival.

ALAN : Yeah.

BB : And you missed it last year, are you planning on doing it again ? And tell us a little bit more about that.

ALAN : I'm fairly sure I'm going to do the 24 hour plays until I do one I hate. Isn't that awful ? It's scary, it's so scary because you don't know what you're going to do, you don't know what you're going to do at all. People who know the 24 hour plays, you meet on a Sunday night at like 11pm, you introduce yourselves and meet the other actors. You bring in a couple of props - just that you had lying around the house and you thought might be useful to someone - there are playwrights, I guess there are ten of them or eight of them, four and four. There are eight playwrights, eight directors ; they can chose to use some of the props in their plays, others don't, and then everybody meets each other, the actors all go away, and the playwrights write plays all night long - and they tend to be about ten minutes long - they get assigned directors and assigned actors, you come in Monday morning at like eight am and you have a script that's been written all night long, and meet your cast and director and quickly get off book, and then you stage it and that night there's an audience on Broadway, in the American Airlines Theater - where Prelude is right now. It is so scary, it's so scary. It was the first thing I did when I had had three or four years off of theater, I did the 24 hour plays, and I had never had anxiety like that before I walked on the stage. Because I had so many lines it was very funny.

BB : Kind of like one of those nightmares where you feel like you're going onstage and you don't know the role ?

ALAN : Yes ! David Lindsey, of Airplane ! His things are always so funny at those, but they're very line specific and quick to get his humor, to get it right you have to be kind of quick. And if you've just learned your lines, it makes for a scary time. But the audience is so accepting of it, and so ready to support you, that it just becomes, it was a high that night, after that show I was so high just from that experience, it was great.

BB : So do you have any future plans for theater on the horizon, or is it back to film ? You have a couple of films opening soon, don't you ?

ALAN : Yeah ! I've got a couple. I have a small role in Knocked Up which is supposedly really good, it's got some great reviews, but I haven't seen it yet, but it's Judd Apatow's new movie. But the one that I'm really excited about I did last summer in London, Frank Oz directed, and it's called Death at a Funeral, and it's a farce. I am anxious to see how it does because Frank cast whoever he wanted, and they allowed him to cast whoever he wanted, and what ended up happening was you've got a cast of actors who are not necessarily name actors that people go "oh I'm going to go see the new Russell Crow movie". There isn't this star attached to it that gives it that kind of box office heft, it's just actors doing this very funny script. To the audiences they've shown it to, it's gone really well. It was just at the HBO Aspen Comedy Festival and it won the audience award, which was great, but I play a guy who's an Englishman and it takes place at a funeral, and he's a very sort of nervous fellow and on the way, it's my fiancée's uncle who's passed, and we're on the way and I don't want to go, the father hates me, and it's awful, the whole thing's just stressful. And we stop by to pick up her brother, and he's a drug dealer, we don't know that he's just made a drug deal over the phone, and he's a pharmacy student. And he's like, "listen, this is the best stuff you've ever take" because it's acid mixed with catamine mixed with speed, and he puts them in a valium bottle. We pick him up to go, he's dressed, and my fiancée offers me a valium to take to relax me because I am so upset, and I take valium and for the first ten minutes of the movie I am fairly normal, and then for the rest of the movie I am out of my mind.

BB : This is when they go, "Call Alan Tudyk !"

ALAN : You're absolutely right, we have a crazy person, we need somebody who's really good at losing their mind on film, get me that pirate ! You know, you do a film and you have hopes for it, and you read it, and you see it one way in your head, and you shoot it, and it'll always change from what you started out. Sometimes it turns out better, sometimes it turns out ; I don't know, but as movies go I've never experienced seeing and likening what I've read, and I liked what I read. I think Frank Oz did a wonderful job with it, I think he did an amazing job editing it, and it stays funny pretty much throughout the whole movie. Peter Dinklage also another New York actor, is in it ; we're really the only two Americans in it, the rest are all Brits. But it is wildly funny. It comes out in, and I don't say that about things, but this one's really funny. If you want a good laugh, see Death at a Funeral at the end of June. So the competition is going to be, there's like six movies opening that weekend and this is a little seven million dollar movie up against who knows what, Spiderman 9 ?

BB : It'll be this year's Little Miss Sunshine.

ALAN : You can only hope that it does something, because that was a fun movie and a little movie. I tend to like farces and if I could do another play, if I could just pick any play, I'd just do a farce, some farce.

BB : On a kind of random topic, you must know a little bit about that sci-fi geekdom appeal is because you also appeared in a show that has this insanely cultish obsession.

ALAN : Yeah, Firefly, it was actually when I moved out to LA, that's what moved me out there. We did half a season of a show called Firefly, Joss Whedon. It was space cowboys, basically. We were criminals but there were horses, it was an interesting idea. We loved it, and we got cancelled, it was on Fox, they didn't put us on, they'd take us off, we didn't get a fair shake. When it came out on DVD the DVD sales were huge and they realized that there was something there. And so Universal actually realized it, bought the rights from Fox, Joss Whedon who was writing was not done writing for the show, so they made a movie The Serenity and those fans were the most devoted, they were great, they were fantastic.

BB : And then you could've gone to Comedcon.

ALAN : Yeah, I've been to a couple of those things. And it's amazing, they give you a microphone and an audience of 4,000 people can say "could you just talk for about an hour ?" what an experience. Of an audience that just wants to support whatever you say, you can talk about anything. They usually ask questions and talk and it's fun. A lot of the cast members we got along really well and Nathan Fillion and I, whenever I go to one of those things I've got to make sure that Nathan Fillion - he played the captain - is there, we're very close friends. So it's like, "hey man you want to go hang out with a microphone and a few thousand people ?" It can be a lot of fun, it seems like everybody has a good time.

BB : Well I definitely thank you for stopping in, and everybody can get a chance to catch you through April 29th in Prelude to a Kiss.

ALAN : Yes.

BB : They extended it for a little bit, yes ?

ALAN : Yes, they extended it for about a week. We get that extra eight performances.

BB : Alright, well it's been a pleasure, and thanks so much for stopping down.

ALAN : Cheers, my pleasure.

Alan Tudyk - About His Career - Backstage.com Interview

Webmaster — 2005-06-03T17:45:18Z

Alan Tudyk is giving a bravura performance for an audience of one, recounting the typical exchange that occurs when he's recognized on the street.

"Man, weren't you in 28 Days ? What happened, what have you done since ?"

"Did you see A Knight's Tale ?"

"Who were you in that ?"

"The angry...redheaded...guy."

"Oh, dude ! I can't believe that ! What else, what else ?"

"I don't know, did you see Dodgeball ?"

"I love that movie ! Who were you ?"

"The, uh, pirate."

"Dude ! No way !"

The uninitiated can be forgiven for not distinguishing Tudyk right away. After all, in less than a decade of making movies, the actor has amassed a rather eclectic résumé, including a 14th century squire, a carnival con man, a space cowboy, a coke-addicted German stripper, a mental patient, a robot, and, yes, a man who thinks he's a pirate. "I guess people don't pick up on me because I change a lot in roles," he says with an unassuming shrug. "A lot of people recognize me from [the short-lived cult TV series] Firefly because it's the one I don't have an accent in ; it's my own voice. Also, those fans are very...enthusiastic is the word I would use." The actor can expect his profile to be raised considerably in the coming months. First, there's his role in Into the West, the Steven Spielberg-produced miniseries that debuts on TNT June 10. That will be followed by the fall release of Serenity, the big-screen adaptation of Firefly, in which the actor will reprise his role as wisecracking space pilot Wash.

It's strange to think that Tudyk wouldn't be instantly spotted from role to role, for a couple of reasons. His look is definitely distinctive : With his sleepy eyes and shock of reddish-blonde hair, he tends to stand out from the crowd. And his characters are unforgettable, often walking away with the best lines in the film — even if it's only a simple "Garrr...." Credit should also be paid to his agent, Bonnie Bernstein from the red-hot Endeavor Agency in N.Y. and manager Geordie Frey at the L.A.-based GEF Entertainment. Still, it's a testament to Tudyk's chameleonic skills that he is so absorbed by his roles, a trait he shares in common with greats such as Paul Giamatti and Sam Rockwell, two of his favorite actors. It's a niche he's more than happy to fill. "I'm definitely not looking for a leading-man role," he says. "Sam Rockwell is a character actor, but he can play a lead, like in Confessions of a Dangerous Mind ; he was a lead man with a character role. I'll do something like that one day, whatever's right for me. The idea is to hone your skill and one day, those scripts that are out there will find me. It's all about the script and being right for it." He also knows it can take time for the right role to come along ; and even then, he might have to fight for it. "At this point, I'm competing with these guys [such as Rockwell and Giamatti] for projects, and that's tough competition," he notes. "So there's a lot of stuff that needs to happen : Sam needs to be busy — luckily, he is a lot — Paul Giamatti has to say no.... Thank God Philip Seymour Hoffman seems to be doing theatre a lot more."

In a time when it seems every actor wants to be taken seriously and every supporting player wants to be a star, it's refreshing to hear Tudyk exalt the joys of his profession. "I'm so fortunate I'm a character actor and that I can do many things, and I think it will help me stay employed in life," he says. "There are a lot of different roles I can play, a lot of different projects I can fill in for here and there. And the older you get, the weirder you look, and you'll still stay employed. [If] I put on 50 pounds ? Fine ! Lose my hair ? No problem !"

Tudyk is also living proof that the offbeat roles frequently outshine the leading men. Take his work in 28 Days, the feel-good rehab comedy starring Sandra Bullock. In his breakthrough film role, he played Gerhardt, a fellow inmate in the clinic with a fey German accent and a curious obsession with his "package." The film originally ended with Bullock reunited with love interest Viggo Mortensen in a ballpark, until test audiences demanded to know what happened to Gerhardt. "It was very cool," he admits. "We shot it in a few hours, and there wasn't really a script for it. I was doing a play on Broadway at the time, and I flew out to the Universal lot and we shot it on their New York set." The scene was mostly improvised, and director Betty Thomas even had the actor pick what sort of pet Gerhardt should own. "I instantly said a bulldog, because bulldogs are the funniest dogs in the world," he explains. "I had just stayed with some people who have one, and I was laughing the entire time. It would run up this long staircase and run out of breath, and look back down, but decide it was too far to go. So it would stand in the middle, looking back and forth, trying to figure out which way to go." Thomas suggested Gerhardt own a pet pig, which Tudyk thought was "too much," but they agreed to shoot it both ways. In the end, the bulldog won.

If Tudyk got an ego boost from stealing scenes from Aragorn, he's been on the receiving end of more than his share of script cuts. Take Into the West, the Western saga being aired over the course of six weeks (a "maxi-series," as he puts it). Tudyk stars alongside Matthew Settle and Skeet Ulrich as Nathan Wheeler, the "oldest and least good-looking" of the Wheeler brothers, a family of Virginians in the 19th century American West. "My character was huge when I got the role," says Tudyk. "And then before we started filming, it was very nice of them to call me and say, 'Look, everything that your character was doing ? He's not doing anymore. You can turn it down if you want to.'" He stayed on the project, partly because of Spielberg's involvement and also because the Texas-born actor had always longed to appear in a Western. "It's good that they cut it before we shot it, because it would have been worse to put in all that work and have them say they couldn't use it and have me wondering what I did wrong," he says. "Originally my character was supposed to get in a fight with his brother and leave for Texas, and that's where his story really begins. Now, Nathan Wheeler goes to Texas and is never heard from again." Still, he is proud of his association with the show, which also follows the journey of a tribe of Lakota Indians. "The Native Americans aren't regulated to being an enemy or savages. It shows the families and people in a historical backdrop," he notes. "I think, for some people, it's going to be educational. Because the winners write the history book, and to see a story told in more of a factual basis should be interesting."

Critical Period

Tudyk began his acting career at the prestigious arts school Juilliard, a name he draws out and pronounces with a stuffy English accent. "Because I went to Juilliard, I learned to speak in this ridiculous way," he says, noting that, like many Juilliard-trained actors [such as Kevin Kline and Robin Williams], he never graduated. "I, um..." he struggles to locate the right word, "hated it there. While I was very passionate about disliking it while I was there, it's also something I've benefited from so much." In his second year, there was a playwright's training program that involved authors such as Christopher Durang, Marsha Norman, and David Auburn, who would go on to win the Pulitzer Prize for Proof. "David asked me to read from [Proof] to help show some potential producers," says Tudyk. "I ended up getting hired off of helping him to do a thing that ended up going Off-Broadway, the first play I ever did." That "thing" was Bunny, Bunny, a bittersweet comedy by former Saturday Night Live writer Alan Zwiebel about his lengthy friendship with Gilda Radner. Primarily a story between Alan and Gilda (played by Bruno Kirby and Paula Cale), Tudyk was hired to fill in a series of small roles that required him to do an assortment of voices. The role helped get his foot in the door with a voiceover agency and gave him enough of a start to leave Juilliard.

Tudyk's career plan can be summed up simply : "I thought I would go to New York, do theatre, gradually get film auditions, and start to do small roles that led to bigger roles," he explains. "And that's exactly what has happened." He made his Broadway debut under the direction of Jerry Zaks in 1999 in Epic Proportions, an experience that helped convince him to pursue a film career. The play was well-received by most critics, but not Ben Brantley of The New York Times, the only one who mattered. "It's so upsetting, because you workshop a thing, you take it out of town, you find your theatre — everything is like a victory," recalls Tudyk. "You put a year of your life into it, audiences are rolling in the aisles, and the Times review came out, and the laughter stopped. And you say, 'But this is the exact same show we were doing yesterday where everybody was dying laughing.' That's why I left New York. It was upsetting, because reviewers can close shows. But they can't close movies."

Tudyk began landing roles in films almost immediately, including a small role in Wonder Boys, a performance the actor says he wishes he could redo. "It's one of those movies I see and say, 'God, I'd love to be in that movie !' You were. 'But I'd like to do it again,'" he says. When pressed to answer why, Tudyk will only say, "I was very new, and I was just a little nervous, and I think it shows." He followed that by playing the aforementioned "angry redheaded guy" in the underrated A Knight's Tale, which created another strange experience with a critic. Inspired by The Canterbury Tales and even featuring Geoffrey Chaucer as a character, the movie was an ensemble piece that mixed jousting, action, comedy, and modern music. Columbia Pictures opted to promote the film as a starring vehicle for Heath Ledger, placing his face prominently on posters and even creating a fictitious critic named "David Manning," who was quoted in print ads praising Ledger as a new star. "That was odd," Tudyk says. "It was so shortsighted ; did they not think someone would find out ? But that was the marketing : They decided to put the movie on his shoulders as opposed to letting the piece just be what it is. The last thing Heath Ledger wanted was his face on the poster without the rest of us."

Luckily, the quirky film found a new life after its theatrical release, in which the anachronisms and Tudyk's hilarious performance as the always-seething squire Wat could be appreciated. "I loved it ; we had a blast making it," he says fondly. "From the first time I read the script and saw, '1370, The Middle Ages.... Queen's We Will Rock You begins to play,' I was hooked. There are some people I meet who are, like, 'What the hell was going on with that music ? It was so stupid !' There are people who get it and people who don't, and I was definitely in the 'get it' category."

Shanghaiing Scenes

After a brief detour to television for the woefully underrated and quickly cancelled Firefly, Tudyk earned the distinct honor of appearing in two of 2004's biggest summer movies. But the roles couldn't have been more different : a pirate and a robot. However lighthearted Dodgeball and I, Robot may have seemed on the surface, that didn't stop him from treating both parts with surprising seriousness.

The story of landing the role of Steve the Pirate in Dodgeball is almost as funny as the film itself, as Tudyk found himself walking into the audition with a bunch of actors in full costume. "It was very intimidating," he recalls. "We're talking full-on dark eyeliner, earrings.... One guy had a gold tooth. I had a colorful shirt and cowboy boots. I decided that was enough of a suggestion, which is how I was taught to audition — you suggest something, but nobody wants to see you coming in dressed like that. But everybody was. But I got the role, so I guess I wasn't wrong. It sort of suggests a certain kind of desperation, I think. If you can do the character without all that crazy makeup on, once you put it on, you're in good shape." For research, he even attended an actual pirate convention in Ojai, complete with dancing girls, parrots, and craftsmen selling knives. "I learned so much from the people there," he says, praising the kindness of the attendees. "They were all great. When you're a pirate, you drink a lot of rum, so everybody was really chill."

Once cast, Tudyk also had to resist the temptation to constantly mug and make faces. "Who doesn't want to do that in a big, broad comedy ?" he says. "I wanted to ground him in a reality. My reality was that he had worked the Pirates of the Caribbean ride [at Disneyland] and gotten a head injury. One day the swelling went down or something, but he made a conscious choice not to go back because he enjoyed it too much. He has to come to terms eventually with the fact he's not living his life in an honest way. It's a great theme, like the Pirandello play about the guy who thinks he's Henry IV. Everyone around him says, 'You can't go around pretending to be Henry IV.' But he says, 'It's my reality, I'm happy, I'm not hurting anybody, so why not ?'" Asked if he ever shared any of this intricate backstory with writer-director Rawson Marshall Thurber, Tudyk just laughs. "I may have mentioned it," he notes. "And he probably said, 'Yeah, that's great, Alan. Let's throw some balls at your face.' He seemed far more interested in doing that." As for the deeper question as to why a guy who thinks he's a pirate spends all his time hanging out at a gym, the actor can only say, "Hey, swashbuckling takes a lot of work !"

For the record, Tudyk's already heard just about every pirate joke on the planet at this point and still manages to have a sense of humor about the sublime absurdity of the character. In the original script, Steve the Pirate was set to stumble upon the pirate-themed Las Vegas casino Treasure Island and have a big action sequence in which he took over the stage show, complete with ripping sails and swinging on ropes. The chaos causes him to be arrested, which is why the character misses the climactic dodgeball finals. "That was another script cut where they said, 'You got the job ! Here's your new script !' And I was, like, 'What happened ?'" Still, he enjoyed "garr-ing" his way through the hit film, and, even without his big action moment, he manages to steal scenes from a cast of scene-stealers.

The same can be said of his work in I, Robot, even though Tudyk never technically appeared onscreen. As the possibly murderous android Sonny, he spent months on a soundstage doing motion-capture work and provided the eerily calm voice for the title character. "The voice played a huge part in the performance, and when you think of the acting, that's what you hear," he notes. "The voice that I used came from just thinking about a robot. Like when I talk, I stop ; I stammer. But a robot would have that words are individual things, like a program." It was also a case in which his schooling came in handy. "Because I went to Juilliard, they taught us to speak in this ridiculous way," he says. "When I first went there, people said, 'Don't go there. They take original actors and they make them all the same thing, and they teach you how to walk and talk, and they make you into a robot.' So I just kind of did that voice. Words. That. Every. One. Has. It's. Place. They all exist separately."

As Sonny, Tudyk achieves a poetic performance of a machine yearning to exist. Ironically it's the robot that gives the noisy blockbuster its heart. To play Sonny, the actor studied with theatre director Stephen Hill, who was brought on by director Alex Proyas to work exclusively with Tudyk. "Alex kept saying, 'We're getting you a choreographer,' and I said I didn't need one. Choreographer means dance to me, and I wasn't dancing. I wanted someone who was a movement specialist," Tudyk says, adding he was initially resistant. "I was going to meet him one day, and I brought some books along that I had been reading in preparation. So he sits down and he asked what I was thinking, and I pulled out a book on mime — a book on the Alexander Technique...and he pulled out almost the exact same books. It was immediate. We had a great time. The first month, I was in the studio with him doing mask work and physical work and meditation. We watched tapes of Noh Theatre and studied expressions and hand movements. It was so much like theatre school or a play, but it was on this huge movie budget, and I was in heaven."

Sky High

Tudyk was also on Cloud Nine when he returned to his Firefly role to make Serenity, elated that "they built my spaceship again." He acknowledges the movie came about from the intense fan support for the show. "We were a cancelled TV show, and the fact they let us make a movie is so ridiculous," he says. "If it wasn't for the fans, the movie wouldn't have been made, and we understand that." Partly to show his appreciation, he recently attended the first Firefly convention in London, an eye-opening experience for the actor, who usually flies under the radar. "I wasn't prepared for that. I feel like I got a glimpse of what it must be like for people who are really famous," he says. "You're taking pictures with people, and they're shaking because they're standing next to you. It knocks you a bit off-guard." If the film does well, there are plans for two more in the works.

In the meantime, it's just been announced that Tudyk is headed back to Broadway to join the cast of the hit musical Spamalot, filling in for six months in roles originated onstage by Hank Azaria, who is taking a leave of absence to film Season Two of his Showtime series Huff. Tudyk doesn't have to worry about critics closing this particular show — the raves have been universal and the show has been sold out for months. And, although he enjoys the relaxed L.A. life, he's happy to return to the East Coast. "I go back to New York and every corner I turn, I'm surprised," he notes. "Here the biggest surprise is, 'Oh my God, traffic isn't backed up on the 405.'"

He is also grateful for having reached a point in his career in which he has job security. "I'm very fortunate, I have to say. Even my class at Juilliard, the people who were at the school when I was there, were so talented. You look at them and think, 'He's going to hit it, she's going to do it.' That was 10 years ago since I left there, and I wonder what happened to some of them. They're out there, but they haven't had the fortune that I've had," he says. "The people that I got associated with right from the beginning were the people that helped me the most in my career, who led to other people that helped me. I just always work really hard and do my best. That's all I do, and the rest is just luck and fortune and nice people." BSW