We are privileged to welcome the return of Alexis Cruz to another LIVE installment of Dial the Gate! Alexis has been busy raising his family. We will discuss fatherhood, the nature of good and evil with Skaara and Klorel, and take your questions!

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Timecodes
00:00 – Opening Credits
00:51 – Welcome and Episode Outline
02:18 – Welcoming Alexis
07:50 – Skaara in a Future Reboot
11:25 – Theatre Project
19:30 – How Alexis Has Changed
23:44 – Skaara’s Accent and Learning the Language
31:26 – The Zippo and Mining Tools
32:06 – Film VS TV Series
36:37 – Improvised Scenes in the Feature Film
41:03 – The Battle Between Klorel and Skaara
49:16 – Who would you want to work with?
52:28 – Andor
56:00 – Wrapping up with Alexis
59:09 – Post-Interview Housekeeping
1:03:26 – End Credits

***

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TRANSCRIPT
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David Read
Hello everyone, my name is David Read and welcome back to Dial the Gate episode 151. Hope you enjoyed our GateCon content this past September. I had some family things that happened. We were supposed to start back a couple of weeks ago. But we’re getting into this now. I appreciate you joining. Alexis Cruz is joining us this hour, and I am thrilled to have him back. Stay tuned after the show, I have a message from Paul McGillion’s family I’d like to share. Before we get started, if you like Stargate, and you want to see more content like this on YouTube, it would mean a great deal if you click the Like button. It makes a difference with YouTube’s algorithm and will help the show grow its audience. And please also consider sharing this video with a Stargate friend. And if you want to get notified about future episodes, click the Subscribe icon. Giving the bell icon a click will notify you the moment new video drops, and you’ll get my notifications of any last minute guest changes. And clips from this live stream will be released over the course of the next few weeks on the gateworld.net YouTube channels. As this is a live stream, Alexis is here to answer fan questions. I’ll be starting off with him first. We have moderators in the live chat who will be taking your questions as well. So we will be sure to turn those around to Alexis. Alexis Cruz! If I can get my button here working right. And of course I’m…. Hello!

Alexis Cruz
Hey!

David Read
How are you?

Alexis Cruz
I’m great. How you doing?

David Read
I am well. I did not format this properly, so give me just a minute here. I’m getting you taken care of in real time here. OK, so this is this is what this…there we go…OK! The settings…I’ve been gone for a little while Alexis, and things have changed, let’s just put it this way. It’s great to have you back. How is life? How are things going?

Alexis Cruz
Pretty good. They’re safe and quiet. And it’s how I’m liking it these days, peaceful and staying busy. I’ve been pretty busy this year and working quite a few different things and going in a few new directions. And it’s been great. It’s been great. Settling into family life hasn’t…it’s been quiet but not sedentary. So it’s been a major sort of mix that I wasn’t quite expecting. But it’s it’s been better than I expected. I thought I sort of had to do one or the other, and it’s turned out I could do both.

David Read
Give me an example of finding your way to strike a balance with life.

Alexis Cruz
Well, it used to be I think – and it’s part of, sort of the whole paradigm mindset that you get in when you’re just sort of hustling for work, or hustling for your career and your ambitions and all these other things – and you don’t have anything else going on, there’s a different energy, and there’s a different carelessness that you’ll have when you take risks, right? So I found I planned a little bit less in that regard because I was free to be more careless. And now I have to be more careful, which has allowed me to actually take a breath and think about things more than I did before. I guess I was always a thinker, but really calculating, and what is worth my time, what is worth the value of my interest and my energy, because now I only have so much and not just because of my own reserves, because some of those are reserved for other people.

David Read
Exactly. So you’re finding yourself being more selective?

Alexis Cruz
Right.

David Read
OK.

Alexis Cruz
And that just changes all the happy things that are in my life, you know, and the quality of that happiness, and the quantity of that happiness, and how I’m able to appreciate it more, in ways that I never could before.

David Read
Are you more selective of the content that you want to take part in, considering the possibility that your child is going to view it in the future? Or have you always chosen family friendly stuff anyway?

Alexis Cruz
No, yes, not because of that!

David Read
OK.

Alexis Cruz
So it wasn’t about that I was I was about family friendly stuff to begin with. In fact, my own tastes are way, way edgier…

David Read
OK.

Alexis Cruz
…they always have been, but early on, I sort of fell into this family friendly track in terms of the career work. And that’s what was popping, and I was good at that. And I was with that thing. But my own taste was edgier. So it’s not so much about that. And it’s not so much about what my kid will see when I’m older, because he’s gonna be a lot like me, and….

David Read
You’re already seeing that?

Alexis Cruz
Yeah, he’s gonna take in everything. We can’t hide things from him. And I think, related to that, it’s a little different – in general, it’s sort of cultural patriarchy, I guess. You know, as a guy, I can get away with a lot more in my work that I don’t have to answer for eventually, by anybody’s [inaudible]. We just have a little bit more wiggle room with that kind of thing, if that’s something that you care about. It’s more about, for my own sake, am I having fun? Am I telling a good story? Is my participation being valued? What I’m bringing to it, are people digging it? Do you want more of that, right? The good time that you’re having, is where I’m more selective about things. And I don’t bother with…like I’ll certainly do small roles, and I’ll do cameos and I’ll do guest spots and walk-on things here and there, because they’re all just sort of cogs in my bigger wheel. But I don’t want to do the same cogs, or a cog that you’ve seen before.

David Read
So would Skaara be off the table in a reboot?

David Read
So Skaara would not necessarily be off the table in a reboot?

Alexis Cruz
Irrelevant cogs!

Alexis Cruz
Oh God, no, that’s a whole different…. That’s like a real thing.

David Read
That’s one of the important cogs.

Alexis Cruz
That would be a real legit thing.

David Read
Absolutely. Well, he would be a dad now. I mean, an Ascended dad. It depends on what they want to do. Who knows what’s going to be happening right now. Amazon purchased MGM, and….

Alexis Cruz
If they did a reboot, my Skaara isn’t coming back for a reboot, I can guarantee you that – not my Skaara, they can recast it. I’m not sure, they’d have to come up with something really spectacular to want to use the character in order to recast it. And OK, great if you do, but I think that there’s so many other characters to put that much effort into.

David Read
That’s true.

Alexis Cruz
Because you’d have to reboot it and start the story all over again, so here you’re introducing a character, in which case it can be any character. It doesn’t even have to be Skaara. Do you want you want “insert sidekick”? And not to belittle it in terms of the archetype, “insert sidekick” and then fill it out, and make it like we made Skaara, because that’s essentially how it started: here’s the show, pop in, and it turned into something. So they’d have to do that all over again. And they could absolutely do that. Or if it’s like a sequel, then they could bring back Skaara – again, this is all speculative, I’m neither a writer nor producer – then they could bring him back as now older (mature or whatever), and they’ll figure out what that story is. Again, assuming that’s the story they want to tell, because there’re so many different stories and everybody within a thousand lightyears’ proximity of the project has an opinion on what the story is going to be. For Skaara to be in it is going to be like 0.011….

David Read
I don’t know.

Alexis Cruz
…of those ideas. I wish it would be more. I love the character. So do a lot of other people. I agree, but just thinking realistically. And then of course, the third option is – and I think probably my preferred, maybe most people’s preferred after it’s all said and done – is this idea of bringing back the people that you connected with, and that you love, in new ways in a new role. Because ultimately our franchise and our fandom is very meta blurred. Right? It’s not just that you love the characters, you love the actors, and it’s not just that you love the actors, you love the characters. And so there’s an interesting combination there that can be used and exploited. Right? By everybody. That’s what they did with Richard Hatch on Battlestar Galactica – that’s the move. Right?

David Read
Agreed.

Alexis Cruz
For everybody in any context, that’s the move.

David Read
You got the best of both worlds with that.

Alexis Cruz
Bring him back, give him something phenomenal and juicy that you know he can sink his teeth into, and you’ve got lightning in a bottle all over again, from a completely different angle.

David Read
I’ve seen you did Law & Order: SVU, a TV series called Blue Bloods. (No. 1 Dad – alright, there we go.) Any particular highlights in your work since we saw you last, about a year and a half ago?

Alexis Cruz
Yeah, I did a play, up in the Berkshires of Massachusetts, the Barrington Stage Company, a very prestigious theatre company out there. And it was Anna in the Tropics by Nilo Cruz. Anna in the Tropics is a very famous play, a Pulitzer Prize winning play, and I’ve been wanting to do it for a long, long, long time. Several of my friends have done the play, and several of the people who originated the play are friends of mine, or associated, so it’s sort of a thing that’s been peripherally around.

David Read
Circling.

Alexis Cruz
Man, if I got a chance to do that play, I’d do it. So the opportunity came up to do this up in the Berkshires, and not not just any opportunity, but with this phenomenonal theatre company, and these great people attached. So it was not just the opportunity, but a golden opportunity, as it were. So I went in, nailed it, and got in there, and we did the play this summer. And we opened to standing ovations, and it was just, wow, like, what a phenomenal experience. Certainly for the audience, because it’s a wild, wild piece about this family in 1929 who owns a cigar factory, and they’re sort of struggling with the times as they’re changing, and trying to figure out how to move into the future or stay connected to the legacies of their past. And my character is very much the modernist, and traditionally played as the foil, the antagonist. But I found a lot of nuances in the piece that I was able to sort of switch it up a little bit. He’s still very much the foil, but there is another foil, who is this lector. In the old days in these factories, they would hire lectors to read novels: famous works of literature, Tolstoy and Dickens, and they would read out to the workers while they worked.

Alexis Cruz
While they worked – wow, okay.

Alexis Cruz
You know, ease the monotony of things. This is how a lot of the educated labor force was educated, as well, because they would read out newspapers, and things of the day, all these things, and they were these masterful orators of their time; paid really well, what have you. So there’s this sort of adversarial relationship between that guy, who comes into the factory, and my character, who was running the factory but doesn’t own it, and had a bad experience with a former lector who ran off with his wife. But in the end, he ends up being absolutely right about this guy, because he’s totally exploiting everybody, but everybody thinks because I’m the modernist, that I’m the bad guy stripping away our traditions. So it becomes really this conflict between the old and the new, what is a part of our cultural history and our emotional legacies and what isn’t – what is just baggage? And what can we afford to cut and what not cut? What do we cut for survival, and what do we keep for survival? In there it’s mixed within this backdrop of what you would expect of 1929 Cuba – lots of vibrant colors and sweat and sensuality – all these things were a part of it. And so it was a remarkable experience as a spectator, and then for us as actors as well. And for me it was one of my – well not one of my first, I’ve done bad guys before – but he was supposed to be a bad guy. He wasn’t actually a bad guy, he was really just caught between a lot of different circumstances. And so I went into it…. You know, there’s this idea when actors play bad guys that they’re the character you love to hate. So I wanted to do something reminiscent of that, but upside down, and I wanted to be the character you hate to love.

David Read
Man, there’s something about him that just makes me want to root for him, but I don’t like it.

Alexis Cruz
Right! But think about that. That’s hard. What do you do with that? How do you create that? So that was the challenge that I set out for myself and for the production. And thankfully, the director and everybody else was down with it. It was really interesting. And it turned out to be, you know, this really sympathetic, angry, ferocious, legit fairpoint monster of a guy. That was fascinating. And really cathartic too, because I was able to really get into all these different pieces and boxes that I’d put away and, “Oh, let’s see what that looks like. Put that out there.” And so much of it came from a different place too, because I would have put it all together, crafted it very differently before I was a dad and a husband. And my ideas about the world and myself and all of these things. And prior to all this I was really struggling, to be honest, with coming to my age. Like most people, “nobody wants to get old” kind of thing, right? But I couldn’t get in my skin suit properly, you know, it was almost there and something was not quite right. And so this whole experience with this play…. There’s something about live theater, in the working through it that’s different. Day to day, you’re rehearsing, you try this line this way and this way, and you have feedback that comes back from your other actors and your director. And you’re talking philosophy while you’re doing the lines, would people behave this way. And all of us were Latin of some kind, and most of us were Puerto Rican, so there was a lot of familial banter and sharing of that work, from a perspective that only we know how amongst each other, and we speak our own language. So it became really cathartic to exercise a lot of these ideas that we all had about our families and our culture, and what’s the prettiness and what is the ugliness. And that sort of became a thing too, because oftentimes as ethnic actors, when we’re putting on an ethnic show as a biographical/cultural production, we often try to sanitize it and put our best foot forward, for all the obvious reasons we’ve talked about forever. But there’s also the truth that needs to be told too, and when “the sanitizing something” weighs down the effectiveness of those ideas. So there was a lot of that, a lot of confronting our own generational patterns because, you know, we’re looking at it through the eyes of these characters and what they’re going through, so it makes you really look at your own life at the same time. You have to; it’s inevitable, sort of the work hazard. So it was fascinating to come out, and now it’s cemented by the end of it, having done this play. This new turn-the-corner-Alexis, and this groundedness that a lot of people will say I always had, but I didn’t really, I was sort of treading gravel.

David Read
But you yourself personally have found more certainty in that place.

Alexis Cruz
Absolutely, yeah, authentic.

David Read
And as a voice as well, not just physicality, or looking in the mirror?

David Read
As a voice? What do you mean?

David Read
In terms of finding who you are as a performer when you speak, when you when you approach a part verbally.

Alexis Cruz
Yes, 1,000%, and I was able to exercise that. We had challenges too, and different points of view at different times that happened in the process. And I was really proud of how we all handled it, and how I stuck to my ideas, and the other cast members stuck to theirs, and negotiated things through. And yes, I very much feel – maybe for the first time – “my own artist” in a real way. The irony is that I’m not running around like fireworks now, trying to prove it to everybody. And that was an interesting corner to turn too, this sort of not having to prove it, to win and fight all the time.

David Read
I hear people talking about when they go into interviews and things like that, a lot of people turn a corner when they go, “You know what, screw this, I’m just gonna go in and be me.” And not be off the wall, but not try to prove yourself to everybody all the time. And how often people are like, “Well apparently that worked.” And also, I think it’s something interesting that you’re touching on as well, because we often ask – or I certainly ask myself – who am I? And it’s not just, who am I, but who am I right now? Who am I in this period of my life? Who am I going to allow myself to be, based on the things that are happening to me, based on the circumstances that befall us? What sort of breathing room am I going to allow myself to be? Set challenges for myself, but set reasonable expectations as well? I’m not the same person, we’re not we’re not the same person we were yesterday, or 10 years ago.

Alexis Cruz
Right. And some of that recalibration has to do also with balancing the books, because there’s things you might examine about yourself that you didn’t know you had to examine about yourself. Or you didn’t actually have to examine before, because you hadn’t been living in these circumstances. And now you are, so that’s where issues and things that I thought I had settled, that were very settled as far as I knew, suddenly came back up at full force. But what I noticed, it didn’t come back up in a sense that it was triggered by or for that younger person that had issues with it. I was right, it was settled. It’s that this whole new Daddy Alex has a whole list of new issues about that thing; it’s because I have stronger opinions about it. And now I look at it and go, “How the hell did I ever tolerate that at all? Wait a minute. Time to bury this one.”

David Read
Do you look at…. In terms of their triumphs and their failures, do you relate to your parents more and more?

Alexis Cruz
Well, as they say, you know, the older I get, the smarter my parents get.

David Read
That’s true. I keep on forgetting to ask this on camera. And I think that it’s an interesting perspective, because when we went to the series, we learned that Daniel had taught Skaara English. And I asked you after an interview once, and I never got it on camera, where your inspiration was for his particular accent. And you told me this story. I wonder if you would tell it again.

Alexis Cruz
I’m not sure if it was the same story, or if I remember correctly now. It was piecemeal, basically, it came together very piecemeal at the time, I have a very good ear for languages and for sounds, but that’s not necessarily always technically correct. I’m sort of a mimic that way. Back in the day I had known a man who was Egyptian, and he had a particular accent. And to me it sounded very lilty, with a lot of little rolling syllables in it. And there was something of what I take as elements of French/Franco influence in terms of the sounds and the clicks and things, with a more organic in-the-mouth like Spanish is, or some Hebrew – again to my ear, so listeners don’t cringe too much – as my 19-year old self was taking in. So I wanted to get this sound that was somewhere in between, like him – this man that I knew – and that’s how I approached it, but knowing that this was an Ancient civilization, and it would be different. So I also knew that I had a little bit of wiggle room, because nobody had ever heard it before. Context is everything – I think today there’s much more attention to specificity, and we have a much more sophisticated audience today.

Alexis Cruz
With more sophisticated tools right in their hand while they’re watching.

Alexis Cruz
Right. I remember as a kid that it was a lot easier to get away with accents, if you will. It’s sort of adjacent to, and then it’s good enough. For better or for worse, like it was a benefit for me in terms of…I could focus on other things, but in a larger, deeper way, it was kind of stuck in that, when it came to Brown people languages, to most people it all sounded the same. You know, and that’s kind of a cold reality. We could exploit that, on the other side of it to create sounds and contexts that would be familiar for the audience, which ultimately, whatever the sociology is, ultimately I understand my job is to make the transmission of the story relatable and easier for you to grasp and step into. And whatever trick I gotta use to make that happen, I’m going to use it, whether it’s authenticity, whether it’s reverse psychology, own projections, right? Smoke and mirrors, whatever it’s gotta be, there’s the story to get told, you get the point that I’m giving to you. Right? So as long as that all happens. And then luckily, I think instinctively I was more on the right track than not. And then by the time we got into it, we started learning the actual language from the anthropologist on set. And once that started happening, then things started getting a lot more serious, where because of what we all did actually know about language and our own actors’ training, we were able to recreate this language technically and organically, and find what the actual right sounds are.

David Read
Are you talking about working with Dr. Smith on the film? What a brilliant man, holy cow.

Alexis Cruz
Absolutely, it was an incredible experience doing that. But we were able to, in real time, discover how people spoke. Now, that doesn’t give a whole lot of, you know…. There’s always nuance for the the moment of their day, right? There’s slang you and I have today, it’s just hey, hey, hey, whatever….

Alexis Cruz
Right, it’s not always exact.

Alexis Cruz
It’s all about today, that nobody, the story will never figure out, so you know, sans all of that. But again, part of the relativity – and I think we captured that – is all the lines in between, not just the sound, so it’s in your body movements. I don’t think anybody doubted that when you heard the Abydonian people talking to each other and partying together that they were really saying stuff and they were relating to people. You weren’t just seeing actors translating lines and stuff, right? You felt like there were there were things unsaid between these characters, and you’re not quite picking up as you’re eavesdropping, right? That life was there. Because we made that relatable to you whether you understand the language or not.

David Read
There was a context going on there, especially in that first dinner scene in the movie. There’s layers because – as we come to find out in the film, Kasuf has been teaching his children actually reading and writing – but can’t let the visitors know that, because they’re wearing the symbol of their evil god. On Wormhole X-Tremists we went back and replayed the film, and there’s 10 levels happening there. They’re all trying to figure out who we are, the Air Force is trying to figure out what these people are doing and what their relationship is to this thing that comes and lands, and for a mid-90s action movie, a lot was put into it that didn’t have to be, when you think about it. That’s pretty legit.

Alexis Cruz
Yeah, and that’s what happens when you when you get great people, great professionals having fun doing what they know they’re great at, and you bring them all together. That’s what happens. Every piece of it, every person wants to go the extra mile. They see their part of the whole shining through, and, you know, you want to show up for it.

David Read
Absolutely. Lockwatcher wanted to know – and I think you’ve mentioned this before – Alexis, did you keep the Zippo?

Alexis Cruz
I did keep the Zippo. I don’t remember…I don’t have it, now. Maybe it’s in storage somewhere?

David Read
Oh, I would hope so. That would be worth some cash in an auction.

Alexis Cruz
Probably. Who knows? Who knows where that is? I kept some of the mining tools. That I have, proudly. I have a big naquadah pickaxe, too.

David Read
TomCZ11: What was a big change from going to the film to the series? You’re an ambassador from one to the other now at this point. Erick Avari would come later. But you were proof that the DNA from one was existing in the new thing. You’re going from Dean Devlin, well, Roland Emmerich to Mario Azzopardi. That’s quite the leap.

Alexis Cruz
Not…in that regard it wasn’t so much.

David Read
Oh, OK.

Alexis Cruz
I’ve been used to different directors and their different visions and takes on things already, that part hardly registered, to be honest. Aside from, by that point, I had had a three- or four-month relationship with Dean and Roland, so I knew that…. And I was never able to get to know just about anybody on SG-1 that well, right, for that long a time to bond with them, aside from the cast themselves. So in that regard, it’s a much different experience. But then that was sort of buoyed by, yeah, I was the ambassador from the other thing, so I didn’t have as much anxiety as I normally would have in that kind of a case, because I was like, alright, you know, I already did this. Cool.

David Read
I know this guy!

Alexis Cruz
I can’t really do it wrong.

David Read
That’s a good point. They had to have liked what we did before.

Alexis Cruz
Right, so what was different was more about the unknowing of what else would be different? Where do we go from here? That’s something I didn’t know, and I wasn’t privy to any of those conversations like I used to be on the film. And the film itself is a finite thing, as a story arc: beginning, middle, end, we’re done in four months, wrap it up. Completely different on a TV series. So that was a little weird. And I was always an awkward kid, too, you know? Like, I might have been cool and collected, maybe – I mean, everybody sees a different part of you, and I’ve been all over the spectrum in my years – but I was always kind of awkward and shy. I didn’t speak to people unless it was through the work because that was my work ethic. Like my work ethic was stronger than my social skills. And I get very nervous otherwise. So I just I fall back on the chain of command and doing the work. And if you like that, and you want to be my friend because of it, then cool, but I wouldn’t dare step out to try and be your friend. Not that I didn’t…I wanted to, desperately; I wouldn’t dare do it. So you also have opportunities to get to know people. On the other hand, you know, it balanced itself out too, because when you don’t know somebody, and you don’t know how to get to know somebody and you are awkward, you end up putting your foot in your mouth half the time, so I saved myself half of those.

David Read
That’s true. Yeah, you’re not overextending yourself. You’re not going to put yourself in those situations. But you know…. Yeah, it’s interesting you say that, because you think about, “What if I had just asked the girl out? You know? Where could I be?”

Alexis Cruz
Right. Well, and then, and then it turns like, and then you know, the girl turns around and goes, “He’s so stuck up.” Because you never asked her out. Well, you know, that’s the completely different direction, but that’s what ends up happening. And I’ve gotten that a lot. I’ve gotten that quite a lot. People have said that I’m unapproachable, stuck up, all this other stuff, and I’m just…

Alexis Cruz
And I’m sitting here talking about Dungeons & Dragons, bro. You know?

Alexis Cruz
Nooo! I mean, I believe you but….

David Read
This is…. I get it. One of my favorite scenes – and FindMeScout wanted to bring this up as as well – the scene in the film when Daniel is sneezing into the handkerchief and Nabeh takes the handkerchief from Daniel, and Skaara gives it back to him like, “Hey, I found this for you.” Do you remember this scene walking on the dunes?

Alexis Cruz
Yeah.

David Read
And then later on using this to connect to who Kurt Russell’s character is looking for? With, “Remember the guy who sneezes and he’s, he’s got the….” How much of that was in the script, and how much of that was just on the fly? Like, “Let’s try this, let’s see if this works, this will be a funny scene between O’Neil and the kids,” as they’re trying to find Daniel, who’s currently with Sha’uri.

Alexis Cruz
I’m not quite sure that I remember. I want to say that that that part of it was plotted. And in hindsight, it makes sense that it was plotted because it was a plot point. It led one scene into the next. Whereas we had a lot of improv, but we didn’t improvise the structure of the piece. And we didn’t improvise the plot points. We knew they were plot points, that we had a script, you know, it might have been bare bones in terms of the dialogue and these sorts of things, but there was enough in it to give everybody a sense of place and time and all these things, and the events were still immutable throughout…. So something like that. And again, I can’t remember specifically, but I want to say that that was plotted and not improvised. That said, the nuances of how it came around, and you know, there was a lot of improvisation in terms of that kind of stuff. Not just the delivery, but what we would load into a moment. We load this idea, this idea, this idea and this idea, and then whatever the makeup of the scene would then start being choreographed accordingly with that.

Alexis Cruz
But we knew that this scene was going to happen, even if we didn’t know how it was gonna happen, within it.

David Read
To fit that….

David Read
I think that a lot of that would apply in in pretty much most work, I would surmise,

Alexis Cruz
Not necessarily. It depends on…. You know, there’s different sort of cinematic movements, and director style. And you saw a lot more of this kind of stuff with cinema veritae, and some of the older directors from the 70s through the 80s, who would just run out and shoot stuff, you know, and occasionally you’ll hear a story about a movie being made by the seat of their pants. There was a lot more of that back then. And it was – what’s the word? – there was some cachet to that. But most films can’t be done that way. There’s just, logistically, way too much at stake to actually get away with doing that. And on a big, huge production with a big budget, you definitely can’t do any of that. And if anybody says they did, it’s a myth. That’s like, “Oh, the overnight sensation!” And these days, and especially now, people just aren’t making – certainly not big tent movies – that way. There’s enough ways to create content and distribute content, so people making movies all kinds of ways. But none of those, you don’t look at those like it’s this big tent movie, this is a theatrical release. You don’t…you know the difference.

David Read
Correct, yeah, absolutely. Elizabeth Lee: How did you get into the mindset of the battle between Klorel and Skaara? Skaara was a prisoner for three years. And I’m curious as to how you approach this, because in Pretense [S3 E15], Skaara is given an opportunity to speak for himself on the stand, and what he chooses to say is, “What I suffer each day is worse than death.” And he talks about reaching out his hand to kill his brother-in-law, in the end of Season 1. How would you describe what it was that you interpreted Skaara as being put through by Klorel? Was it just a neverending nightmare? And how do you resolve the PTSD coming out the other end?

Alexis Cruz
I designed Skaara to begin with along very mythic lines. So he was always, he started as an archetype and turned into this mythic figure, this ingenue type, and it was very crafted in that way, it sort of was like building a little internalized Pinocchio, you know, and I was Geppetto. And it was very intentional: he’s gonna be like this, and I want him to elicit these emotions, and he’s going to stand for this, and he’s going to represent that. And it was very clear and very solidified, and then I just stepped into it and gave it life. So by the time we got to…. You know, and that’s where the work is, of turning all that myth and myths into something relatable and organic. So I won’t go into the details, that’s all sausage making. But that would be the effect. So by the time Klorel came around, it became really easy. And it’s almost meant to be. I couldn’t have planned for it, but I instinctively did plan for it. And so as Klorel came around, it was a very simple matter of taking that and creating his nemesis. So it’s the Anti-Skaara. And it really is that simple. It’s complicated in the real time thing, but the idea of it is very simple. I just flip the coin. So every single attribute that Skaara has is just opposite, was just bizarro opposite on the other side, and as mythic and archetypical as Skaara is, so too became mythic, and archetypical archvillain Klorel. And these two things internalized…. Look, I’m a philosopher, and I’ve always been a philosopher, ever since I was a kid. Naturally, and then I studied it. So this just goes right back to most human beings’ sort of central conflict with themselves, and the id and the ego and the superego and all these things. And since I was a student of that already, all I really had to do for myself was let it play out in the ring in my head, you know, and take notes and eat the popcorn and just watch all this. So duke it out. I mean, it’s like it’s funny. Now, of course, the the actual practice of it is harder. But it serves…. This is the hostile part of our work, the hazardous part, because on the one hand, you’re on this little hamster wheel, you’re exorcising all of these ghosts and all of these demons and all of these things that people accumulate through life. And as actors, we are fishermen, as well. We don’t just get the barnacles on us, we go out and net some more, like, “Let’s go look for trouble! Put it in a box, save it for later to cry over!” That’s what we do. So now that we have there, like, “Who are our contestants? Oh Skaara, oh it’s Klorel! Fight!”

David Read
Fights, exactly!

Alexis Cruz
And you just let your psychology go. Like, I’ve got playlists, like mixtapes for both of them going on. Like I’ll sit – not just for them, but a lot of characters that I do – there are times I have full meditation sessions where I sit in the dark and listen to music and get in their head….

David Read
Like meditating on the work before a project?

Alexis Cruz
Yeah, on the character, on how he feels it, and projecting that, and empathizing. It’s the characters, that’s always the greatest tool that I’ve developed for myself, is my empathic engine to empathize with these fictional characters. Because I let them borrow that piece of me to get inside of it, and look at the world through their eyes, and let that affect me. And I understand what they’re feeling because those feelings are familiar, because I remember when I was betrayed, I remember when I was trusted. And I remember when I was…. Right, all these things, and you let that character remember as well. So yeah, once you got it, it became simple in that regard. And so I think maybe what was the hard part…. From the audience’s point of view…. It’s all complicated, but from the audience’s point of view, the challenge is having that fight be expressed in a way that you as the audience can see, but only in flickers, like you’re in a dark room and there’s a strobe light. And so all you’re seeing is just one frame of a whole story that’s happening in the dark. You see one frame and then it’s back to the darkness. And your mind has to wonder what else is happening in that darkness, in between those moments of flicker that you see. And every time you get a glimpse into something, it’s hopeful and horrifying at the same time. And you don’t want to know what you see in that moment of light, because it’s too clear. And then it goes back to dark. These are all the ideas that I was playing with the whole time, line by line, shot by shot: which frame of the strobe light are we on at that moment?

David Read
I think that fundamentally the character Klorel is pretty darn…. When you when you have to stand them side by side, I would say that that Skaara is the stronger, ultimately, because he’s able to hang on in the darkness. I would have loved to have seen just an episode focusing on you as just straight up Klorel fighting the battle inside, while also fighting his enemies on the outside. Skaara had to have been throwing some punches the whole time.

Alexis Cruz
It would have been incredibly cool if that could be done. That’d be really fascinating. You know just line up my enemies, all waiting for me.

David Read
Teresa MC: Who is a dream actor that you have yet to work with?

Alexis Cruz
My, my, my…. That’s a good question, because how do you narrow it down, and I’ve worked with so many already.

David Read
Anything that you’ve seen recently, that you’ve gone, “Aw, I would love to work with them”?

Alexis Cruz
You know there’s so many…there are great people doing some great work. We like people for so many different reasons. I also don’t think about it in those terms anymore. It’s more along the lines – because of what we started talking about – more along the lines of, “What kind of a project would I like to do with this kind of a person,” you know? So I’ll think like, “What would I like to do with Tommy Lee Jones? What would I like to do with Diego Luna? What would I like to do….” Right, these kinds of things. So rather than, “I want to work with that person.” Because context – I live in context…

David Read
Is relevant.

Alexis Cruz
…is relevant. I’ve had my years and run of “tag,” and photos with people and being on set, that whole – the mystique of that, the excitement, the energy – I’ve had all of that. So that doesn’t…that’s not a thing for me anymore. It’s now about, what can I get out of the actual story from working with these people? So yeah, I want to work with all of these masters, and acknowledge our masters too. But this is towards that.

David Read
Towards what end?

Alexis Cruz
And not so much for me, and what did…. Not I can’t learn from them, of course, that goes without saying, and so I won’t say it, because it’s not about that for me, what I can learn. I’m confident in what I bring, too. They don’t know who I am. I’m not an A list or a B list, you know – debate if I’m on the C list.

David Read
I disagree, but OK.

Alexis Cruz
But I show up and I know what I’m doing. Every last one of them that I have worked with acknowledges that. Nope, none of them will say like, “Nah, he doesn’t know….” I step up. So I’m not worried about that. I’m confident in that. So what are we going to do next? And there are a lot of people I want to do all that, for all kinds of reasons, and it’s okay that the shallowest of my reasons is I want to be in a Marvel movie and do all that stuff. That’s cool man, that’s fine.

David Read
Well, they’re not going anywhere, so sooner or later….

Alexis Cruz
I would like to work with Angela Bassett in a Marvel movie.

David Read
Absolutely. Tracy wanted to know, what are you binge watching right now? If anything?

Alexis Cruz
So the last thing that I got excited about…Andor.

David Read
How is it? I am waiting for it to finish, and then I’m going to mow it down. Because that’s how I consume. I’ve heard it’s some of the greatest Star Wars since Empire.

Alexis Cruz
Absolutely. Now, there’s Star Wars for everybody.

David Read
Yeah, that’s the thing.

Alexis Cruz
Grain of salt. But this is, I think, the definitive adult StarWars. So, as we were kids growing up with Star Wars as it first came out, the intensity that we approached it, the way it was so real in seven- and eight-year old minds –

Alexis Cruz
Yeah, it existed.

Alexis Cruz
– the reality, the stakes of that for that seven year old. Now we turn 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 and of course we look back on it and we’re like, “It wasn’t that important.” But the thing to remember is that from that perspective, it’s super important. So I look at Andor now, and I think what they made was the sequel to that experience. So now as an adult, we can look at Star Wars and take it seriously. This is the serious, underbelly, gritty adult…. Like, how would it actually happen if it was real, now that we’re all adults and can think about what it would be as if it was….

David Read
That’s Andor. That’s great!

Alexis Cruz
Boom, right there and it’s phenomenal. The cast is ama…. The writing, the dialogue, some of the speeches are just mind blowing. And it’s a slow burn. It’s a spy, resistance, you know, anti-Empire movie, it’s ground level. So you have to be there. You’re not going to be…. There’s not a lot of bright colors in it. So you have to be ready for it. If you can be ready for that, if you can go in with this Empire Strikes Back mindset…but like, for real.

David Read
I’m thrilled that…

Alexis Cruz
It’s amazing, so intense. And Diego Luna, God bless him, is just killing it, on it. He’s so easy and right and grounded in the role even in his anxiety. It’s all just a brilliant, brilliant, deep performance from that was very impressive. I’ve always been fan but….

David Read
Great. Have you seen…have you taken a look at Netflix’s 1899?

Alexis Cruz
No, I have not yet.

David Read
This is the one that I’m looking into getting getting hooked on next. It’s the next kind of Lost, kind of mystery box kind of show from the creators of Dark, which is another great series.

Alexis Cruz
I’m a little weary of mystery box shows in general.

David Read
OK, I can understand.

Alexis Cruz
So many of them just don’t go anywhere. They get lost in loop de loops.

David Read
That’s true. Anything on the horizon, immediately in your path that you want us to be aware of? Anything out of the ordinary or just….

Alexis Cruz
You know, usually I’ll plug these things as they come up. I’m in between…. I’m just here with family taking care of my kids, who started school this year. And Pre-K, loves Pre-K. But there is something that everybody should check out. I was fortunate to be invited to be part of this, called the Unauthorized Offworld Activation, this book. I wrote the foreword for this book.

David Read
Can you give it a little bit closer to the camera? Put it in front of your face.

Alexis Cruz
Oh, there we go. Okay, sorry. Hang on a second.

David Read
There it is, perfect!

Alexis Cruz
Is it reading properly? On my cameras it’s backwards, but can you…

David Read
Yes, “Forward by Alexis Cruz,” look at that.

Alexis Cruz
You can find it on Amazon. And it’s an anthology of some short stories, some essays, think pieces from people connected with the show, fans or pro fans, and other people, and myself. And so it’s an interesting read by a lot of really talented writers. And people who have given Stargate a lot of thought. So pick that up. You can find it on Amazon.

David Read
Yes, all right.

Alexis Cruz
And it was my very first foreword to a book, so I was excited about it, being invited to do it. And I think it came out really nicely. So go check that out.

David Read
Keith DeCandido, Rich Handley, Joe Duffy, Bryanna Elkins, Kelli Fitzpatrick and five others. “Alexis Cruz,” there we go! This is great! I think Gateworld…I think Darren Sumner was involved as well, if I’m not mistaken. But this is absolutely solid. $19.99 paperback edition on Amazon right now. And we’ll put the link below in the episode description. So great job, man. I’ve always appreciated having you on. Your perspective is always refreshing and thoughtful and insightful. And always excited to see what you’re up to next. Really appreciate you being involved with, continue to be involved with the fandom.

Alexis Cruz
Thank you. Yeah, I enjoy it, and you you do a fantastic job, just keeping everything alive and pushing it forward.

David Read
Gotta keep the lights on. Amazon’s gonna do something, it’s just a matter of when. Well, thank you so much, and we will be in touch. I’m gonna go ahead and wrap things up over here. Thank you, Alexis.

Alexis Cruz
Thank you, thanks Dave.

David Read
Be well, sir.

Alexis Cruz
You too.

David Read
Bye-bye. Alexis Cruz, Skaara and Klorel on Stargate. Thank you so much for joining. Paul McGillion reached out to me this past week, and he asked that I share something from from his family. This was posted by Courtney McGillion, Paul’s wife, and she’s organizing a fundraiser on behalf of Stacey Swanzey. I think this is Courtney sister. She said, “My brother-in-law Mike needs our help. Just over a month ago he suffered a massive stroke, completely out of the blue, and has been in critical condition ever since.” So this is a GoFundMe for his medical expenses. If you have the ability, please consider donating. And please share this, as well. This link is going to be…. Already you can find this in the description for the show below. And it means…. Paul is a big supporter of of Dial the Gate and our work, and he’s a huge Stargate fandom supporter, and it means the world to me that we have the opportunity to help him and his family, his extended family, in a time of need. So wanna absolutely make this aware to people, and we’ll be bringing it up in the Wormhole X-Tremists show tomorrow as well. The link in the description is below right now. So help Chef Mike beat the odds. Thank you so much for that. I really want to send out a huge thank you to my moderating team: Tracy, Antony, Summer, Keith, Jeremy, Reese. You guys are continuing to make the show possible on the back end while I work on the front. If you enjoy the work that we’re doing and continuing to put out, I’d appreciate if you’d click that Like button. It continues to help the channel grow. And if you enjoy Stargate merchandise, we have our own little shelf over at the…wherever I put it…. I’m so out of this, trying to get back into the rhythm of the show! You can go to dial the gate.com/merch and go through one of our portals here. We’ve got tank tops, T shirts, sweatshirts and hoodies for all ages, as well as cups and accessories in a variety of sizes and colors. As we approach the holidays this may be a perfect Stargate gift for you or a loved one. If you want to support the show, this is a great way to do it because, get an item and the show gets a little bit of financial support as well. My thanks to Producer Linda “Gate Gabber” Furey and Frederick Marcoux at concepts web, our web developer on Dial the Gate and Jeremy Heiner, our webmaster who helps me keep the site up and going. Tomorrow on Wormhole X-Tremists we will be covering – which were the episodes? – tomorrow it’s going to be The Enemy Within [S1 E2] and Emancipation [S1 E3] starting at 10 a.m. Pacific Time, and we will be watching those shows live. So if you have your DVD or your streaming service or what have you, and watch the shows live with us if you’d like on one device while listening on another. And that’s that’s our game plan there. So Nicole and Evie we’ve been getting into the rhythm of this. We’ve got a long way to go, but it’s a good time as well. And so that’s the Dial the Gate sister channel Wormhole X-Tremists. That’s not going to be on Dial the Gate itself, and I’ll be sure to put the link in the description below for that particular episode. That’s coming up tomorrow. My thanks again to Alexis Cruz. What a guy, a terrific human being. I’m so thankful to have him on the show and all of you tuning in watching. Please give the show a Like, share it with another Stargate friend. My name is David Read for Dial the Gate and we’ll see you on the other side.