From the son of Anubis to a Wraith hiding in Las Vegas, Neil Jackson has certainly made his mark in Stargate. But an actor’s path isn’t often a straight line. We are pleased to welcome him to Dial the Gate to share memories from the set and bring us up-to-date in his current world of fitness!

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Timecodes
0:00 – Splash Screen
00:20 – Opening Credits
00:48 – Welcome
00:59 – Guest Introduction
01:52 – It’s A Wonderful Life
05:10 – Fitness Buff
07:36 – Neil is a Newlywed!
08:37 – The Industry Has Changed
09:34 – Neil’s Clients Are a Jolt of Joy
11:20 – Box with Neil
12:19 – Primal Movements
14:15 – Our Brain Defines Our Limits
18:35 – “Prototype”
20:35 – Khalek: What a Bastard!
22:22 – British Accents: Naturally Evil?
26:04 – How can Neil Relate to Khalek?
27:36 – The Special Effects of “Prototype”
29:21 – Khalek’s Death Scene in the Gate Room
31:47 – Alan Rickman’s Death in Die Hard
33:10 – Khalek’s Last Shot is a ‘Screw You’
34:24 – “Vegas”
36:50 – Uzi Weight & A Door in the Face
39:13 – Armorer Rob Fournier
40:35 – Trailer Explosion
42:40 – Wraith in Las Vegas
44:21 – Jumping Off the Building
46:21 – The Camera Didn’t Film the Jump
47:40 – Alexander with Horses and Elephants
50:16 – Releasing More Music & Playing Villains
53:36 – Evil Eyes
54:13 – Cartooning
55:20 – Congratulations on Your Marriage!
55:41 – Wrapping Up with Neil
56:06 – Post Interview housekeeping
56:51 – End Credits

***

“Stargate” and all related materials are owned by MGM Studios and MGM Television.

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TRANSCRIPT
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David Read:
Welcome everyone to Episode 270 of Dial the Gate. The Stargate Oral History Project. My name is David Read. I appreciate you joining me this midweek episode. I have a very special guest joining me for this show. Neil Jackson, who played Khalek in Stargate SG-1, and, you didn’t really have a name, [so] we kind of gave him one, Punk Wraith in Stargate: Atlantis. The Wraith have no names. They don’t need them. They don’t talk to anybody. Neil, it is a pleasure to see you for the first time. You and I spoke over the phone, like, 15-16 years ago so it is a real treat to be able to sit down with you again and catch up. How are you doing?

Neil Jackson:
I’m doing good my friend. It’s nice to see you. It’s nice to see, like, we were just talking just before, the array of stuff that you got behind you. It’s a little feast for the eyes. Enterprise. You got a whole load of things.

David Read:
Absolutely. I’ve been fortunate over the years. The fandom is a gift that can keep on going or keep on attacking your pocketbook, however you care to look at it.

Neil Jackson:
Well, there’s that, too. Yeah.

David Read:
Bailey Brothers Building & Loan. This is my mother’s favorite movie. It’s a Wonderful Life. And we watch it every Christmas. Tell me about your relationship with this movie.

Neil Jackson:
It’s hands down my favorite movie. Closely followed by another one I got the poster [of] up there. [It’s] another James Stewart [film] called Harvey. I don’t know if you ever heard of Harvey.

David Read:
Yeah. Púca.

Neil Jackson:
Yeah, the Púca. It was one of those films that I kept hearing people talking about when I was younger. It wasn’t a big stalwart of Christmas back in the UK. I finally watched it when I was, like 25 [or] 26, and was in floods of tears at the very end. I thought it was absolutely beautiful. And then I’ve watched it every single year, year-and-a-half after that. It’s just one of those beautiful stories that every time I watch it, it gets me and makes me cry every single time but at different points every time I watch it. The obvious bit at the end is Zuzu’s petals and he’s looking up and everybody’s showing up and it’s beautiful. There’s little moments there where it makes me cry when, I forget the man’s name, but the old guy that runs the pharmacy, claps him on the ear and [says] “Please don’t hurt my…”

David Read:
Mr. Gower, I think.

Neil Jackson:
Yeah, that was it. Thank you. Mr. Gower. Just, like, “Please don’t hurt my ear Mr. Gower. Please don’t hit my ear.” It breaks your heart because Mr. Gower has just lost his son. It’s such a compact movie. When you break it down you can understand why it wasn’t a success when it first came out. It bombed when it first came out.

David Read:
It wasn’t. And it also wasn’t scheduled to come out [and] it didn’t come out at Christmas either.

Neil Jackson:
And it was only thanks to television. Once it came on TV and started [to] have repeat viewings and people knew what they were getting into, it created this cult following. But it was this, I mean, Jimmy Stewart fresh off of World War II. That’s a beautiful scene when he’s in the bar and he’s got PTSD and said the only way he was able to cry was because of World War II and genuine tears started flowing from his face. It’s just this beautiful compact story that is about suicide and loss and death and war but within there it’s about how beautiful friendship is, and community, and it’s a wonderful life so it just gets me every single time. And I found these T-shirts and I end[ed] up buying about seven of them and giving them to friends. I was, like, “We’re all just gonna be wandering around with Bailey Brothers Building & Loan, “Get old Building & Loan!”

David Read:
Absolutely. “Merry Christmas Bedford Falls!”

Neil Jackson:
It is Bredford Falls.

David Read:
Bredford Falls. It’s one of the greats. I enjoy watching it every [time.] Especially now, that it’s in HD, you can watch it and see things that you’ve never seen before. It’s absolutely amazing. Great film.

Neil Jackson:
It is one of the joys. As I get older, the more I watch it, the more I see in it as you get older. You just take pits out of it. It’s based upon where I am in my life. It’s gorgeous. It’s the beauty of the thing that we do, storytelling. A good story is timeless, and it doesn’t matter whether it was made, I mean for that one, like, over 60 years ago. 78. [Over] 70 years ago, my goodness. It doesn’t matter when it was made. A good story is timeless.

David Read:
You are a fitness buff these days more than usual. What’s going on there?

Neil Jackson:
I’ve always been involved in fitness. I got two degrees in sports science, undergraduate and master’s degree in sports science, and I was a competitive boxer for years, and it’s been one of those things I’ve always dipped in and out of. I’ve always kept a hand in fitness because not only do I love learning about the body and the way the body moves [but] I’ve always believed that movement is medicine, that we can heal our bodies through movement. And through the correct movement done in the correct way with the right number of repetitions and application we can heal a lot of things in our body, internal and external. The skeleton and everything. When the pandemic hit, I was already working with a couple of people, training couple of people [and] helping people with some rehab before pandemic. When the pandemic hit and everything locked down, I kind of went back into looking at fitness and started working with the mobility coach and started really getting into animal flow mobility. Primal stuff. Crawling. Moving on the ground. Simply out of, mainly, fascination but also just the restrictions of the pandemic meant that the gyms weren’t open. I wasn’t able to go to boxing gyms and move and lift weights and everything. I literally had a space that was in my lounge to be able to move with very little equipment. I wanted to be able to get a good workout that didn’t require me having to run hundreds of miles or do the exercises that required an external place. And I just fell in love with the way that you can move the body and [I] used to get little lower back [and] midback issues that I was able to heal through movement. I got two avulsion fractures on my ankle in 2020, so split the ankle bone. They were saying that they needed to pin it in order to let it heal but there was a long waiting list. I live here in Canada, so we’ve got socialized medicine and there was a waiting list to see the orthopedic surgeon. And four months later when I finally got to see him, he said, “We don’t need to do a surgery. You’ve been able to heal the ligaments on your own and the ankle is as strong as it would be when we pin it.” And this really awoke something in me about the ability to be able to help and heal the body through movement. So, I started working with some people and people just sort of naturally gravitated towards me through referrals and friends. My now wife… I got married two months ago.

David Read:
Congratulations!

Neil Jackson:
Thank you. My now wife, she’s a physiotherapist. And a phenomenal physiotherapist. So, we’ve kind of got that in common. It’s funny that when we met, she went to film school to study film and within the first couple of semesters she realized that the academia of film studies wasn’t what she wanted to do. She wanted to be a filmmaker. But she really loved working with the body, and she loved helping people. We always joke that if it was a 200 years ago, she’d be a witch. She’s one of those people that has a witchy way of being able to look at the body and figure out how to heal it. So, she went into the body route after going film, and I studied the body in my university and then went into film. So, we’ve kind of got this wonderful crossover.

David Read:
Criss-cross.

Neil Jackson:
Yeah. And she’s wonderful. She’s a Scottish woman. I started working with people and then the industry essentially shut down during COVID. And then the industry has changed massively since COVID. We’ve all noticed a massive change in the industry. Not only are cinemas really struggling [but] it seems huge movies that are coming out, that would have lasted in cinemas five-eight years ago for months and months, are getting two [or] three week runs, and having pull them and put them on streaming, or on demand. And it means that there’s less and less projects out there. And also, in the way that socially we’ve changed with a lot of attention being given to more minority groups who haven’t had the same level of exposure in movies. That shift has happened which is necessary. So, there’s just been less work available and as that’s happened, I’ve started moving more and more into fitness and working with people and just really loving it. I’ve got a wonderful group of clients that I work with five days a week and a couple of different places. It just gives me that little [inaudible] of joy. Every single one of them is there for a specific reason, whatever that reason be. Whether to lose weight, to rehab an injury, to help their body move, to gain strength, to prepare themselves for childbirth [or] to repair their body after childbirth. I’m working with a whole range of people. And every day I get to show up and work with these people. And it’s not only the puzzle to try to figure out what their body needs and how I can use the information that I’ve got to help their body achieve the things that they want. But I get such a joy out of [it]. I’ve been working with this wonderful guy for about last six-eight weeks. His cardio wasn’t great, but he’s been having real problems with his knees. Real, real problems with his knees. And he’s 28 years old and for the last 10 years he’s been really struggling with his knees. He struggles to go up the stairs, struggles to go downstairs. He’s had two operations on his knees. He can’t bend them properly. And after about six-seven weeks working with him, he sent me a photo of him… I’m sorry, a video of him going up the first flight of stairs in his apartment. Because he’s never been able to do it because his knees wouldn’t allow him to.

David Read:
He’s rebuilding his strength.

Neil Jackson:
And after about sixth, seventh week… And his confidence and his sense of self-esteem and self-worth and the joy he had in the video going, “Look, I’m going up pain free up the first flight of stairs.” It’s a wonderful life thing. It just makes me so happy that I’m able to help some people in this way and the knowledge that I’ve gained over now nearly 30 years of being in fitness through my degrees and all the way through is able to give these people this little gift that nourishes their life in a way.

David Read:
And you’re also sharing yourself online. Boxing with Neil.

Neil Jackson:
Yeah. @boxwithneil. I’ve started moving into an educator role which is really fun. There’s a gym that I work at here in Vancouver [and] they’ve asked me to come on in an educator capacity to start training the personal trainers and working with people who are coming into the fitness industry who would like to top up their knowledge or align their knowledge in the way that we teach stuff. And I’ve got a very unique… I’m very Liam Neeson in that I’ve got a very unique set of skills. Because my background in boxing is one side of things, and I was a competitive boxer [and] won a British title. My brother was a professional boxer. I’ve worked in boxing for a long time, and I’m pretty dialed in to the way to help people learn the sport of boxing and progress in the sport of boxing. I’ve worked with a lot of professionals. I’ve learned with a lot of competitive amateurs. And now I mainly work with people who just wanna learn the sport and have fun with it. So, I’ve got the boxing side of stuff but the other side of the stuff [is] strength and conditioning and working with primal movements, [like,] crawling [or] bear crawling. A lot of it is, we kind of just play. We’ll get down and we’ll do things, like, gorilla walks and gorilla hops, chimp walks and bear crawls, and lizard walks, and things like this which are all mimicking the way that other animals will move which are huge total body movements that a lot of people think that wouldn’t be possible. I have a wonderful woman who just turned 57 and she hasn’t done any fitness in her life, and she has a very high stress job in HR, and she was actually referred to me by my wife. And initially it was so she can get some stress out, just hitting some stuff. And we started moving and she really enjoyed the boxing side of stuff and then it started coming out that her hips are very tight, her lower back is tight, she gets a lot of referral back tension, she couldn’t touch her toes, [and] she can’t crouch down to pick things up. So, [if] she drops something, she needs to have a little stick to pick things up to help her with stuff. And I said, “OK. We’re gonna make that better. I don’t have a time frame on that for you, but I believe within the next three or four months, we’re gonna be able to pick stuff up off the floor without you using an additional device.” And we started playing and moving and two months later I had her bear crawling. So, she’s on all fours on the ground crawling like an infant and then picking herself back up again. And her face was just suddenly, like… I mean, she’s only 57-58. She’d already made her mind up that she would never kind of confidently crawl on to the ground again. And life is hopefully a very long journey for her. Another 20, 30, 40 years maybe. And suddenly she saw this avenue of hope where she’s got this whole other spectrum of physical ability now that she’s gonna get to have into the rest of her life. There’s something magical about that to me.

David Read:
There’s something really to be said for the brain deciding that it’s incapable of something and having someone, or encountering something, to change her mind, and be, like, “You know what? Let me try this.” The brain’s a very powerful organ.

Neil Jackson:
It’s incredibly powerful.

David Read:
Pain’s all in there. And we condition ourselves to pull, in some cases, almost anything off. Not always, but in many cases, we box ourselves in. To protect ourselves from having to do anything that might hurt us.

Neil Jackson:
Well, it’s all survival. Our brain is built to keep this machine that we call our body alive and survive. And based upon our experiences, our brain will map out scenarios of what we’re capable of and what we’re not capable of, and what is safe to do and what is not safe to do. And invariably, if we’ve had injuries or we’ve had experiences that have cause discomfort and/or pain… And pain is obviously on a spectrum. And a lot of people just see pain as one color. But pain is a spectrum. You can have discomfort all the way through to agonizing pain. And if the brain has decided that pain therefore is bad [or] pain equals signals of terror [and] you’re not gonna be able to survive, we’re gonna lock up. And a lot of what I deal with is helping people overcome the psychological barriers that they’ve created themselves, that these movements are not capable for my body because my body is in fear mode and my body feels that it will not be safe when it does it. And it’s re-educating the brain that through small increments towards movements we can help the brain realize that this is safe, and not only it’s safe [but] it’s healing. And out of that, you start getting dopamine hits [and] you start getting lot of serotonin hits. It reduces your cortisol. You start to notice that your moods are better. Anxiety is less. And as we gradually introduce movement patterns into the body, you start to notice that you’re vastly more capable than you’ve ever thought. I find that what a lot of people think is their ceiling is often the floor. And we have so much more that we can go on there. We’ve just gotta be educated in the right way and move in the right way that pushes that boundary just enough, and then moves it back. A lot of things with injuries… When rehabbing an injury, because the brain has realized this site is injured, and it was a very detrimental injury, sometimes requiring surgery, if we start to move that area, the brain sends signals, “Danger. Danger.”

David Read:
“Don’t go there.”

Neil Jackson:
“Don’t go there.” And it causes it to cramp. The muscles around it will start to tighten and cramp to protect that area. Now, cramping…

David Read:
Out of fear.

Neil Jackson:
Yeah. And so, the cramping sends another fear signal. Now, I’m not only in pain for the location site [but] the area around that is cramping.” So, we have to re-educate the body that it doesn’t need to cramp, that you’re gonna be safe. We’re not gonna push it past its barriers. And then as that starts to flow, and I think it’s all a gentle flow, the body starts to flow with the mind, then everything starts to open up. But it’s about repetitive and considered movement that just pushes the boundaries, just a little bit each time. And a lot of the stuff that I do, I’ll show on day one, and people be, like, “Never will I ever be capable of doing that.” I actually had a guy yesterday… Wonderful guy, he’s a young fella, 26 years old. And he’s had shoulder surgery, and he isn’t able to move his shoulders particularly well. We started doing some boxing with him and I showed him a bridge which is on all fours but with your belly facing up, kind of like in a crab pose, like, you’d move sideways. And you lift your hips up so you’re getting a very deep stretch into the shoulder and then you rotate out of that. I showed him that move at the beginning. I said, “I guarantee we’re gonna get you doing that within six weeks.” He’s only been training with me for a month, and he did the move yesterday and I videoed it for him and sent it to him. And he’s just, like, “I thought I’d never do that after my surgery.” And it’s these little gifts that I’m just, like… I love storytelling. I’ll always be involved in film and storytelling. I still am involved in film and storytelling. But thanks to the pandemic… I guess one of the gifts of the pandemic for me was this re-awakening of this whole other side of my life that gives me a whole other thing that is just so nourishing.

David Read:
You’re taking care of people.

Neil Jackson:
Yeah. It’s lovely. It’s community. It’s what this is.

David Read:
It’s community building, for sure. Tell me the story of finding your way to Stargate SG-1. Were you in Canada at the time?

Neil Jackson:
Stargate SG-1. No, I wasn’t in Canada at the time. I just moved over to the States. I’d had my first big feature film, and I came over to the States with that premiere. It was Alexander. Oliver Stone’s Alexander with Colin Farrell and Val Kilmer and a load of other people. And [I] had a manager, and we just started going out on stuff. We were having some meetings and I’ve been in LA for maybe three or four months and trying to find the right fit. And she reached out and she said, “Would you be interested in…?” We hadn’t gone out for TV yet. We were looking at mainly feature films. And she said there’s an audition that’s coming for a standalone episode of Stargate, “Would you be interested?” I said, “I love the movie Stargate” which weirdly enough is hard to find. It’s not on any of the streaming sites and I finally was able to find it [and] we watched it again about a year ago. It’s great. The Kurt Russell film. I was, like, “I love the movie. Haven’t seen the TV show. I’d love to go for the audition for it.” Went for the audition, they hired me straight on the spot, brought me over to Vancouver. Vancouver’s always been this little place for me. I came to Vancouver, I don’t even know what it would be, 20 plus years ago when I came over and met Bryan Singer at audition for X-Men 2. They flew me over because they were interested in me in the Nightcrawler role and spent two days with Bryan Singer, hanging around and fell in love with Vancouver. So, SG-1 was the first time I came back to that and just had the best time. It was such a tight-knit crew of people. Everyone had been working on it I don’t know how many seasons have been by that point.

David Read:
Eight were done.

Neil Jackson:
Definitely three or four. Eight were done by that point when we came in. So, they were a well oil machine. It was just really really fun. Just a really really fun experience coming in and playing the son of Anubis.

David Read:
Tell me about Khalek. I just rewatched the episode and man, what a bastard.

Neil Jackson:
Yeah.

David Read:
Geez. “Let me just pontificate about taking the life of another human being.” And you can tell he’s trying to get under Daniel’s skin because he has his father’s memories of Daniel, and they were rivals.

Neil Jackson:
They weren’t the best of friends.

David Read:
No. Tell me about tapping into such darkness.

Neil Jackson:
I had a chat with the director, and it wasn’t a long conversation. I just said, “What are you looking for here?” He said, “We obviously want somebody who it looks like they’re sympathetic and it lulls them in because he looks scared and fearful.” Because they wanna help him but then the turn happens while he’s in the chair and suddenly you realize that he is not who he says he’s gonna be. And he said, “So the term for us is vital. We wanna have somebody who we as an audience may believe is sympathetic and that they wanna root for and help but then has the ability to turn. We originally played it American.

David Read:
Oh, the accent?

Neil Jackson:
Yeah, we did the accent. We originally did the accent as American.

David Read:
Because Anubis had an American accent.

Neil Jackson:
Yeah, and then we did a couple of takes and it… I’m forgetting the director’s name. Peter…

David Read:
Was it DeLuise?

Neil Jackson:
Yeah, DeLuise. Peter DeLuise. We were chatting and he came in and he said, “Can we try one of your natural accents?” Because that was the very first scene that we did which was the scene where he’s in… “Yeah, we can try it in natural accent.” And I had a little think about it and played around with it and somehow in the natural accent, that turn was more pronounced. It’s one of those things, you know, studying language as an actor. One of the gifts, I think, of a British accent, and the British dialect, and the way that we speak is because [of] the tongue positions. And I’ll go a little in the weeds with it but bear with me for it because I find it fascinating. The tongue position in Britan is at the front and the back of the mouth. We use a lot of plosives and T’s and P’s, and everything is very precise. And so, the way that we’re able to use our language is very clipped and precise and has this very measured style to it. And the way the Americans speak, on the American accent, the tongue is a lot more relaxed and sits in the middle of the mouth. So, there’s a lot more lyrical playful sound with it, then there’s a lot more rhythm to it. It’s smoother. Which is why often people say that they find American accents more calming and British accents have more sort of peaks and troughs to it. One of the things that comes from that is, because Americans, when the tongue is in the middle position, if they wanna make something more expressive, they don’t have the plosives to hit certain words and make it sound harsh. So, the only way they can do it is with volume. So often when the American style baddies wanna exert their force, they’ll become louder because it’s the way that the tongue will work. Whereas we can actually become softer and more precise and more specific, which actually makes it sound more sinister. And it’s why, in my opinion, Brits tend to play [villains], or at least British accent people. And you can take that into Europeans. [It’s] the same with German, same with French, same with Russian. We tend to play more villains because we can actually be a lot quieter and more sinister when we’re speaking because you understand every word we say, and it comes across in a more clipped and therefore more cold, sterile way. And there was something about when we played with Khalek and doing the American [accent] and I was trying to make him sinister, the dance between harmless Khalek to harmful Khalek wasn’t as big a drop, wasn’t as big a transition. But the moment we did it in English, suddenly it was, like, “OK. He seems cold and mean and sociopathic,” and suddenly went, “OK. That’s the character. Let’s go with that.” So, we just stuck with my natural accent.

David Read:
I think so much of that goes back to cinema and Star Wars and even before. I think there’s something to that where it’s, like, “British accent? Oh, often a bad guy.”

Neil Jackson:
Well, there’s often… I mean, you just look in American [history]. Brits were the bad guys anyway in the Civil War, and colonialism, and then obviously you take the Germans. So, all of that kind of European side is very much associated with the baddy. But I think on a deeply subconscious level for a lot of people, it also sounds in a way that is different and alien to North American, which is easier to set aside. But there’s also, like I said, a very controlled, clipped, sterile way that we get to speak that has a wonderful preciseness to it. If you’re Mary Poppins, [it] makes it sound very matriarchal and matronly and tutorial, “Don’t do that children,” and it’s, like, “OK.” My mom telling me off in her voice, she didn’t need to raise her voice. She would just point her finger and just say, “Don’t do that.” “I ain’t doing anything mom.”

David Read:
“We are not a codfish.”

Neil Jackson:
Yeah. So, there’s a subconscious level where I just think the accent lends itself to that colder, more distant kind of character. And so, it just worked for Khalek and then we just ran with it and just played with it, and it was just really really fun to just get into what he was.

David Read:
How do you relate to something like that? You’re looking at the dialogue for this guy and you’re reading through, it’s, like, “This guy’s nuts. This guy is sociopathic.”

Neil Jackson:
I don’t think… There’s a little bit of relating in the fact that we’ve all had moments of sociopathy.

David Read:
We get angry.

Neil Jackson:
We can get very angry. And I know I’m not alone in this. There are some dark thoughts in there I’m very glad don’t get vocalized and I’m glad people can’t read my thought bubbles sometimes. I think that that’s that Jungian thing of that we are most scared of our capacity, not just for good but for evil. The idea that we are a few choices, either thrust upon us or made by us, away from doing something that is evil, on the spectrum of evil. And we all have the capability for it. So, delving into that side of it obviously allows a little exploration that helps with these kinds of characters. But also, it’s just play. It’s, like, you ask a child to be the villain. I got nieces and nephews, a little older now, but when they were younger, when they were five or six, we’d play little games and sometimes I’d be, like, “OK. You’re the baddy now,” and without even thinking about it…

David Read:
They know what it is.

Neil Jackson:
They know how to become mean, and they know how to tap into these primal feelings. [It’s] just part of who we are. So, I see it as a mixing board and just dial up a little of this, dial up a little of that, dial down a little of this, and there you find your characters.

David Read:
You were present for a lot of special effects. That is a special effects heavy episode. Did anything take an awfully long time to rig? Was it, like you said, because it was eight seasons behind them, a pretty well-oiled machine? Or was there anything that Peter and you guys had to re-assess? There’s a lot of throwing people, there’s a lot of poles, there’s electricity being involved in some of these points here. And some of it is added later digitally with, like, the bullets, for instance. But still, a lot of firepower is going off in closed spaces. Ear plugs.

Neil Jackson:
A lot of earplug wearing and a lot of earplug painting. They’ll put the wax ear plugs in and then paint them to my skin color so you can’t see them on. And then I’m not allowed to take them out because it gets all on my fingers. So, there was a lot of that in play. There was a couple of things that I loved. First of all, I genuinely thought that the Stargate itself was gonna be added in post and I was amazed when I showed up to the thing and it was just a big screen that was projected and it was there. And it made it so much more visceral because I remember seeing the Stargate for the first time and I was in awe, having been a fan of the movie. And then started to see someone because they gave me some episodes to watch as research as I was coming over to Vancouver, and just going, “The Stargate looks amazing.” It looks incredible, just to see that big portal and see them walk through it, and it’s wonderful. But then to realize it’s practical and to stand on the set and see this beautiful blue shining orb and know that I get to interact with it, there was no acting necessary in those moments. You just get to look at this thing and go, “My God, that is incredible.” So, I loved seeing that. There was a scene where, spoiler alert, it’s been a few years, Khalek gets shot and killed. It was 16 squibs, and it was the most that I’ve ever been squibbed, and most I’ve ever been squibbed since. So, squibs, as I’m sure people know, are small little explosive charges that are put with a blood pack. So, they’ll place them underneath the clothes with an explosive charge so explosive charge will burst outwards. They’ll score the clothing to make it easy for it to burst outwards. It’s a small little charge. It gives you a little flick on your skin, but the charge is going outwards, and they’ll often put a little blood pack there just to accentuate the wound. So, 16 of them. And each of them was rigged up to a small little wire, and the wires are then bunched together and all put through my arms and down through my leg and out to a wire leading to the detonator that’s gonna be rigged. Nowadays they’ll do it remotely. But often… I did a film four years ago that required a lot of squibbing. They’ll still do it manually because if they do it remotely with a radio signal, that radio signal can be detonated by something in a similar frequency, so they haven’t got it dialed in. So, when it’s that specific that you’re doing a stunt that’s got that many things, that takes a long time to rig. We had two of them, [but] we only used one of them. They only had time to do two of them on the TV schedule, so we knew we had to get it right at least one of the times and ideally the first time because you don’t want the pressure of only having another one to do it and effing it up the second time. So, having all of that wire and everything, and my character’s backing up as I’m being shot and they’re unloading into me, and the dance of trying to move where the bullets are hitting as well. So, we worked with the stunt coordinator, knowing the coordination of where the bullets were gonna go so I would have some semblance of movement that would mirror the ricochet of the squibs going off. That was so technical and specific, and then they wanted my character to fall off a ledge. And it was about six, seven-foot drop that they placed crash mats on. And they said, “We can do it with a stunt double but ideally we’d wanna see Khalek himself being shot over the edge.” Because you wanna see Jaws blow up. If you got a baddy that’s that bad, you wanna see it blow.

David Read:
You’ve been waiting for this.

Neil Jackson:
And you don’t wanna suddenly cut away and lose that sense of the continuation in the audience’s mind. You wanna see the actual bad get shot and fall. It’s Alan Rickman in Die Hard. You don’t want it to be cut away to a stuntman falling. You wanna see his face falling down. I always loved the story of that. I’m sure you’ve heard it.

David Read:
Nakatomi Plaza? Yeah.

Neil Jackson:
They said to him… They were gonna drop him onto a crash mat. And they said, “We’re gonna do a three-two-one count and we’ll drop you on one,” but they dropped him on two. So, they look of shock on his face is real because he was being dropped at a time that he didn’t know he was being dropped, which is so perfect in the movie. It’s so technical in this. And then I had to stay in that position on the crash mats as they moved all of the cameras [and] slid the crash mat from under me. Because they had blood on the squibs, if I’d had gotten up, all the blood would have dribbled and pooled and moved in different areas. So, we did the take, boom, boom, boom, I fell of the thing, landed on the crash mat, the stunt team were there to make sure I was OK. And then they had to pick me up and slide the crash mat out from under me and lay me back down again while they repositioned the camera. I was laying there for about 25 minutes before everything was all set to go again and not able to move. I could only move my eyes, they said. Because they didn’t want stuff… Any physical movement would cause the pooling. It was such a technical shot but when you see it in the final thing, it gives the audience that payoff of, “Good. He’s dead. We got him.”

David Read:
I love the last shot before you fall where he smiles at Daniel. And it’s, like, “Screw you.” Just, like, “You’ve defeated me, but you don’t have me up here.”

Neil Jackson:
“I won’t even give you the satisfaction in death.” It’s so sinister. And again, I’d forgotten about that because it’s a long time since I’ve seen it.

David Read:
Was that a note in the script or from Peter or was that you?

Neil Jackson:
It wasn’t in the script. It was a thing me and Peter talked about. He said, “I don’t want him just boom, boom, boom and falling off. We need a little moment for the audience.” And that was Peter saying, “We need a little moment for the audience to register that he’s beaten.” And we were talking about saying but… He’s not the kind of person that would accept defeat. I don’t think there’d be fear on his face. I don’t think there’d be a sense of resignation on his face. And Peter said, “Then smile.” I was, like, “Oh, there it is. OK. Great.” So again, that gives you the tingles on the back of your neck, “You’ve beaten me but,” like you said, “not up here.” And he was reincarnated once. Can he come back again? So, the idea that “You’re not rid of me yet, even if it’s just a smile in your face or haunt your dreams. You’re not rid of me yet.”

David Read:
Did you think that Stargate was done with you?

Neil Jackson:
I did.

David Read:
Tell me the story.

Neil Jackson:
I genuinely did. We finished afterwards and we talked. I had a great time with everybody, and they said, “We loved working with you.” About six months later, I met with one of the creators on a different project and he was saying, “God, we’d love to bring Khalek back,” and we talked about bringing Khalek back but it’s not looking like it’s gonna work. There was only nine seasons that they did. Was it nine seasons?

David Read:
It was 10 at the end of the day.

Neil Jackson:
Oh, it was 10. OK. 10. So, they were moving into their last season. They said, “It’s just not looking like we’re gonna be able to do it.” I was, like, “It was amazing fun. If it works as a standalone, that’s great.” And they were also doing Atlantis at the time. And then, randomly, I got a call from the creator.

David Read:
Is this Robert Cooper?

Neil Jackson:
Yeah, Rob Cooper. And he said, “We’ve got a role that I’d love to bring you back. And it’s a completely different role. But we won’t see your face. Are you OK with that? And I was, like, “Dude, I’d love to come and work with you guys again. It’d be fantastic.” He said, “It’s to play a Wraith.” And I was, like, “OK. This is amazing.” And he said, “It’s the first time we’re gonna see the full body Wraith. Because you’re gonna have all of the things…” And that, I think, was six hours the first time we put it all on. And we got it down to three. Because they have no nipples. They have no belly buttons. Because they’re not incubated in the same way as humans. So, everything had to be covered.

David Read:
They’re not born. They’re grown.

Neil Jackson:
No, they’re grown. So, the spine had to be changed in different ways and the body painted and everything. And they sent me the script and I was already in. The idea of getting to come back and play a Wraith and just run around in that world would be amazing. But then when they said it was a Wraith stuck on Earth who was trying to get back, who was building up his resources to be able to contact the home planet, and the way he’s doing it is using his cerebral ability to count cards to win at poker, in Vegas, I’m, like, “Oh, come on.” It was just such a gift to go back and do it, and just to not have lines, and to not have my actual face on camera. There was a freedom in that to kind of play around with the character in a different way, and it was just really, really fun. There was one humbling moment in there. There’s a bit in there where he’s in his trailer, and he finds out that the goodies have arrived and they’re coming to get him and he loads up two Uzis, kicks open the door to the trailer and unloads the Uzis at him. And nobody ever told me… I’m British, we don’t fire a lot of guns. Nobody ever told me, one, how heavy Uzis are. So, holding an Uzi at arm’s length is not light. You’re talking easily 15-18 pounds, so holding it out at weight… But then you add the recoil of that from the gun which increases the load on the shoulder. So that was one factor. And then the other factor was, the door was so flimsy. We went to do it [and] I’ve got this badass moment. I’m loading the clips, I’m getting the Uzis ready, and I walk up to the door, and I kick the door. It slams open and slams in my face. We’re like, “Cut!” “OK. Sorry. Let me kick it less hard but still hard enough it looks like a badass exit.” So, then we did it again. I kicked the door open. That was great. I stepped down, I load the guns up, and as I’m shooting, let me move my legs, I went [arms down], “Shit, these are heavy. My God, these are heavy.” Because we’ve never actually done it because we didn’t have time. So, I didn’t get to play with the rounds with the full clip. So, they said, “If you can try to hold them up the whole time.” I was, like, “Yeah. I didn’t realize, I’m sorry. I did try. It’s incredibly heavy. Let me try again.” So, we went out again, I kicked the door open, I did it OK this time. I stepped down, [arms going down again], I looked at the guys [and] I was, like, “I don’t know if this is possible.” Because they wanted me to walk 20 feet just unloading the clip, release the clip, load another clip, and so we ended up having to shoot in segments. Because I couldn’t hold the guns up long enough to look like a badass. It’s, like, one of those things that, you watch Arnie movies, and of course these guys are massive, [but] you watch Arnie movies, holding these big submachine guns with one arm, “Yeah. Get to the chopper,” and he makes it look really easy. And there’s me. It comes time with my Uzis, and I’m, like, “Nope. Not working again.” So, that was a humbling experience of going, “OK. I maybe not gonna be doing the next Arnie action movie.” Or maybe Arnie has bolstered wood guns just to make him look good. I have no idea. That was very humbling.

David Read:
That should have been, if I’m not mistaken, Rob Fournier [who] should have been the armorer on that episode. And he’s usually pretty good about that. I’m surprised he didn’t warn you, you know, “You need to get used to it.” At least to the weight of it so you yourself know what to anticipate. But sometimes you just have to piece it together with different shots.

Neil Jackson:
Exactly. And it worked perfectly, and it looked great when it came out. It’s one of those things that you’ll just never know but it looked amazing when we did it. It was one of those humbling things… It’s one of those things as an actor, when things go right on set, it can be a very personal experience. For me, at least, my experience is, if I’ve nailed the character and I know I’ve nailed the scene, I’ve done it well, and they call “Cut,” there’s this little peaceful moment of just, like, “We did it. We nailed it.” When it doesn’t go well, the blinkers widen, you realize there’s 50, sometimes 100 people staring at you from the various different departments who all now need to reset so that you can then do your job again. And that was one of those moments. It happened, and I’m shooting the floor very quickly. You suddenly look up and realize there’s a whole bunch of people that need to reset a whole load of things. I was, like, “I’m so sorry guys. I thought my shoulders were stronger than that. I’m gonna start doing a little more exercise, I think, and get my body ready.”

David Read:
What about that explosion? Were you there for the explosion?

Neil Jackson:
I was there for the explosion, “I’m not gonna miss that.” I was there at video village watching it. I love movies. You can see by the T-shirt on my chest. I love movies and I love the power of story making and there’s nothing more fascinating to me than the magic of stunts. Whether it be explosive stunts, and the detonations, or what stunt performers do. I just think that they are by and large unsung heroes of every single film and TV show that I’ve been a part of. And on slightly political scale, it’s criminal that they don’t get recognized for that at the Oscars.

David Read:
I agree.

Neil Jackson:
You got people who, at times, [are] literally putting their body and life on the line to try to make the shot work in the best way possible. And often the actors will take credit for their work and say, “I did all my own stunts.” And we know there’s a few people who say that. And I’ve also been at the Taurus Awards, which is Oscars for stunts, and I’ve seen people receive Taurus Awards for the actors that say they do their own stunts. And you show the stunts that they did, that made the actor look badass, it’s, like, “Oh, no. But they took credit for it.” So, there’s this funny machoism that, I think, helms back to old MGM days of Hollywood, of wanting to make sure that the mystique in audience’s eyes is never broken. James Bond does his own stunts. Because we wanna believe and invest in James Bond character. I get that. But back to what I was talking about, any chance I get to watch this magic happen on set is just incredible. And that explosion was bigger than I think a lot of us thought it was gonna be. We’re, like, “OK. There’s gonna be an explosion,” but God, that was incredible to watch. And you felt the heat of it. That wave of heat as it exploded. And we were a very large distance, safe distance, back, and even that far back, it exploded, [and] you got this wave of heat, going, “Oh my God.” It was very cool to watch.

David Read:
I suspect the Wraith is dead. Hail, Dorothy.

Neil Jackson:
They wanna make sure every character I played on that, there’s no coming back from it. We’re gonna riddle him with bullets and watch him die. And then we’re gonna blow him up. We don’t want there being any chance of him coming back. But it was funny being… It was actually interesting. I worked with a costume designer on that again recently, on a movie, and we hadn’t seen each other in a long time, and we were reminiscing about our time in Vegas there. A lot of the shots that we were doing were after hours in Vegas, so 2-3 o’clock in the morning, so we can walk around the casinos. And it’s a Wraith who has painted himself to look human. And by any stretch of the imagination, he didn’t look like a normal human. He looked a little odd. And it’s in full goth gear, and the long coat, and he’s got the long flowing silver hair. He’s an odd-looking dude. But then when you add to that, every time I was walking through to go to set, or we were setting up shots in the casinos, and we were in MGM, there’s an entourage of people that are there, makeup, hair, everybody else like that. And the thing that amazed all of us, and we were joking about it just a couple of months ago when we were doing this film, in Vegas, nobody bat an eyelid. There’s this odd-looking dude who’s wandering around looking like he’s out of some bizarre movie and there’s the people at the craps table or the people at the slot machines at 2 o’clock in the morning with the things, and they’re, like, “Oh, there’s a Wraith. OK. Let’s carry on and see if we can get the jackpot,” which just… Anywhere else in the world, you get people looking and taking pictures and staring. In Vegas, it was just, like, “Yeah, we’ve seen weirder.”

David Read:
Robert Cooper had the right instinct to set the right tone with that city.

Neil Jackson:
Yeah, exactly. And we also got to see Vegas sleep. Vegas does sleep. Around about 5 a.m. Vegas goes to sleep. The lights go off in the Paris Hotel, and the MGM… We were up on the roof doing one big thing where he was jumping off the building.

David Read:
Yes, we were talking about stunts. Let’s just discuss that. I have a story that you may not know about so go ahead.

Neil Jackson:
Oh, OK. That one was a wonderful stunt performer who’s become a friend of mine. It was hell of a jump. We wanted to try to link it in the best possible way, so they actually built a false ledge that looked like it was the edge of the building so that my character could jump and jump off it and then land down onto a crash mat and then when they mirrored it, it would look the same. And so again, I’m not gonna miss watching that. I was down at the air mat and just waiting there for the moment he jumps down.

David Read:
So, you’re at the bottom?

Neil Jackson:
I was at the bottom. So, I did my bit and then they rigged the stunts up, and I was, like, “I’m going down. I’ll be at the bottom. I’ll see you when you get to the bottom,” [and] gave him a hug. And then went down and watched him jump. It’s something, like… It’s awe-inspiring and terrifying to watch a human being do what a human being shouldn’t do.

David Read:
What if he misses? What if something goes wrong? What if he loses his nerve?

Neil Jackson:
What if he misses? What if he loses his nerve? What if he lands wrong? Because it’s not fool-proof. You have to land in a specific area where the air pocket catches and then the airbags release to kind of cushion you down because otherwise you bounce off which wouldn’t be good either. And if you don’t land in the specific area, it’s a little harder and it doesn’t cushion. You can break arms. If you land head first, you break your neck. There’s a lot of areas for problems to happen with it. And then to watch this person, who I knew beforehand but then through spending time in Vegas, we had two or three days in Vegas hanging out, I’ve grown to know him and love, jump off a building, it’s terrifying and exciting in even measure. Just watching this small speck of a human being [fall], “God, please land safe. Please land safe,” and then watching him crawl out and get all the accolades he’s due. It was amazing. What’s the story you know?

David Read:
The camera didn’t film it.

Neil Jackson:
Tell me that.

David Read:
The main camera did not… The mag ran out.

Neil Jackson:
I did not know that. Wow.

David Read:
So, if you go back and see it, there were gonna do the main camera all the way down, and they had one or two others going for safety. And Rob had it all set up and ready to go. “Action!” He does the stunt. The cameras follow him down. They check the mags, [and] he asks everyone, “Is it OK?” “Yep, it’s good.” “OK. It’s good?” “Yep, it’s good.” “Cut!” A few weeks later in Vancouver, they come into Rob’s office…

Neil Jackson:
They realized.

David Read:
“Rob, I have terrible news.” The guy risks his life, and the main camera didn’t film it.

Neil Jackson:
So, what we watching is the ancillary cameras they got as backup cameras? All right. Wow. And it looks amazing on those cameras. I can only imagine what the main camera would look like.

David Read:
Exactly. This person’s risking their life. At least film it guys.

Neil Jackson:
At least get it on camera. At least get it in the can. Wow, that’s fascinating. And again, it’s a miracle to me that anything gets made, and it’s a miracle to me that anything gets shot, and it’s a miracle to me that anything gets shot and ends up working well. And the litany of perfect things that need to happen at once to make one moment happen. And it’s just a perfect example of that. I remember when I was working on Alexander, we had done this sequence in Thailand where we’re fighting the Indian army, and we had this army of elephants. And it was this wonderful place in northern Thailand where they’d rescued elephants that had been held in circus and various different things. And we got to work with elephants for a week and a half before filming which was gorgeous. But there’s one moment that they trained an elephant to rear up on its back legs at the same time as Alexander on his horse reared up on his back legs, and an accident happened. And the accident that happened was, as they reared up, they staggered and moved together which means when they came back down again, the horse and the elephant headbutted. And then elephant, before it’s gonna charge, backs up. And so, they reared up, both animals staggered a little bit, came down [and] they headbutted. Alexander’s horse stayed where it was, and the elephant backed up, and thankfully the wranglers were able to get in there and calm it down before he charged.

David Read:
He was gonna go for it.

Neil Jackson:
He was gonna charge at the horse and at Colin Farrell that was on the horse because they were doing it all in one… And they got this shot and they’re, like, “This is incredible.” Because what it looks like on camera is the elephant got scared of the horse and backed up, but the horse held its ground. They sent… And this is back in the days when they were still using film. They sent the film back, and the film ended up accidentally being put through the X-ray at the airport and they found out that they’d lost seven reels. It was something, like, six or seven reels of film. And everyone was panicking because they wouldn’t know until the dailies came back which reels were lost. And thankfully, that one was there, and ended up on the screen and it’s this incredible moment because it does look like the elephant has lost the battle and it’s backing up. And it looks so powerful that Alexander’s horse stands its ground. But it could have very easily been the wrong mag was put through and that little moment of magic that you’d never get again could have been lost. It’s why when anything is captured on screen, you’re, like, “So many things had to align to make that moment happen.”

David Read:
Wow. Thank you for sharing that. I have some fan questions. Do you have a couple of minutes?

Neil Jackson:
Oh yeah.

David Read:
OK. Jupiter2, “Will you continue with your music and are you planning on releasing more? And also, do you enjoy playing villains?”

Neil Jackson:
Two questions. One, I don’t have any plans of releasing music and I’ll give a slightly longer answer to that. I always played music and love playing music. It was big thing… There was a point in my career where I was looking to make a choice of seeing if I pursued the music more or pursued acting route. And I decided to go the acting route, and it was the right route for me that I really enjoyed. And then I shot a pilot for NBC. I finished the pilot, and I went back to Britain to see my family. And I came back from the UK and as I landed my phone was blowing up and it was all these messages finding out that the pilot had been picked up to series. We’ve got 13 episodes. It was exciting. Everyone was over the moon. We were gonna make some money. It was great. And there was one call on there from my manager, slightly stressed, saying, “Please call me when you get a chance.” So, I got off the plane, called her, and I found out that they were recasting my character. Out of everybody, they decided to recast my character. It was a chemistry thing that they said. But I got a lovely call from the director, and he said, “It’s not you. It was the studio. They wanted something different.” And so, it deflated me. And I needed to go and do something that was kind of reclamation of my own sense of sovereignty with my art. And I had a friend of mine in the UK who was a music producer, and he said, “If you ever wanna record some of your music,” he’d heard some stuff, “I’d love to produce it and work with you.” So, I said, “You know what? Let me go and spend a month, which became six weeks, I’ll pay for it myself, and just produce this album that is me, on my terms, with my money, doing what I wanna do with my art that nobody else can tell me what to do or take away from me.” And it was very necessary at the time because I was a little disillusioned with the industry, because a couple of things had happened, but that was one. So, the music served this huge purpose for me in terms of cleansing me from that and giving me a sense of space from it. But I always knew that in order for me to properly pursue a music career, it would take, at least in today’s market, a lot of energy that would take me away from storytelling, be it as an actor or as a writer. I do a lot of writing now. That wouldn’t necessarily feed me in the right way. And so, I always knew that it wasn’t something that was gonna become a career, but I love it, and my guitar is sitting there, [and] I still play guitar, and still write music, and still play around. Who knows? Never say never. Maybe one day.

David Read:
We only have so much time and bandwidth.

Neil Jackson:
Exactly. I love the fact that somebody’s even interested in hearing more. That makes me very happy.

David Read:
Absolutely.

Neil Jackson:
And villains. Yes. A quick one. I do love playing villains. Villains often… We’re getting a lot more anti-heroes that are coming through which is great. But normally the villains are the more bland of the characters that are on there. Because they have a very strict moral compass which they need to have. But the villains don’t so you get to play in the arena that… Normally as a human being, you don’t get to play it, and like I said, you get to tap into those darker thoughts that we all have as human beings but then act them out through that character. So, the color palette that you get to play with as a villain is vastly more interesting and rich than you do as a hero, in my opinion.

David Read:
They are what… Your heroes are only as good as what your villains throw at them.

Neil Jackson:
Exactly.

David Read:
Marcia, before we let you go, she says, “You can give such intense evil through your eyes. How do you cultivate that ability? Do you practice your evil eyes in the mirror, and can you give us a look please?”

Neil Jackson:
That’s all my mom. She had four boys, and like I said, she didn’t need to raise her voice. She would just look at us and give us a look and you’re, like, “OK, mom. Mom means business.” So, I think I inherited the eyes and the look from my mom, of just that cold impassiveness, of just that very cold stare. And it’s a fun thing to play with. My old acting coach, Michael Armstrong, who I love to death, and a wonderful coach, and an amazing film director, had a module within the course that we did that was called cartooning. And cartooning is often used comedically, and it’s the ability to go from one state to a completely polar opposite state in as clean and as sharp a movement as possible. The obvious version of that is a pratfall. You can have somebody talking, talking here, and suddenly you get the slip, and it’s used for comedic purposes that you go from one state to another. But cartooning also works in going from one [state] into a slightly sinister one, which is what Khalek does. So, the idea of going from vulnerable to evil and in control in a nanosecond is a form of cartooning. So, we played around with that a lot in this semester when we were working on cartooning and playing around with it, whether it be for comedic or dramatic purposes. And I think a combination of my mom’s death look stare that would put her four boys in check, and the training that Michael gave me meant that you’re just able to turn it on and turn it off.

David Read:
Good for you, man. And last thing from the chat, “Congratulations on your marriage.” Everyone is saying so.

Neil Jackson:
Thank you. Thank you. It’s wonderful. It’s great. It still feels strange to be on my finger here, but I love it.

David Read:
You have to count your blessings in your life because it’s so short. And when you find your person, that’s an awesome gift.

Neil Jackson:
It feels pretty incredible.

David Read:
This has been such a treat for me to sit down and see you in person and to go back over these memories.

Neil Jackson:
Me too, David.

David Read:
And to catch up with you a little bit. I put the link on Instagram to @boxwithneil in the description so people can check you out and dude, seriously, all the best. This was a pleasure.

Neil Jackson:
Thank you, my friend.

David Read:
Be well, OK?

Neil Jackson:
We’ll do it again. You, too.

David Read:
Sounds good. I’m gonna wrap up the show on this end. You take care.

Neil Jackson:
OK, brother. Bye.

David Read:
Bye-bye. Neil Jackson. Khalek and Punk Wraith in Stargate. What a guy. I’ve always enjoyed his roles and just absolutely wish him continued success. I am going out of town for two weeks so the next two weeks of programming, starting this Saturday, are gonna be pre-recorded and you can check all that information out over at dialthegate.com in terms of what’s coming down the pike. You guys in my moderator group today did fantastic. Really appreciate all your work. Antony, Summer, Marcia, Tracy, Jeremy, you guys make this show possible week to week. My name is David Read for Dial the Gate. I’ll talk to you really soon. See you on the other side.