Avenging Angel

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A conversation with “Avenging Angel” star Kevin Sorbo

          For most of his long and successful career, Kevin Sorbo (“The Preacher”) has played heroes, be they of the distant past (“Hercules”) or of the distant future (Captain Dylan Hunt in Gene Roddenberry’s “Andromeda”).  But in The Hallmark Channel’s “Avenging Angel,” Sorbo plays a different kind of hero – one who has turned to his darker side, trading dispensing spiritual truths on Sunday mornings to dispensing bullets whenever required.  “He’s got quite an ‘arc,’” Sorbo says.  “From an actor’s standpoint, it’s a beautiful character to play.”

          The Preacher watched as insidious landowner Col. Cusack’s henchman burned and bombed his church in 1875 Texas Hill Country, killing his wife and daughter.  Having all but given up hope in the goodness of mankind, he returns anonymously to the town three years later – as a ruthless bounty hunter bent on justice.  “I kind of think of it as ‘Pale Rider’ meets ‘Death Wish,’” notes the actor.  “I love the feel of this.”

Are you a big western fan, Kevin?  What are your favorites?

Oh, yeah – I’ve wanted to do a western my whole life, actually.  My dad, who’s 78, loves them.  He can’t wait for this to air!  I’m a big fan of Gary Cooper’s “High Noon,” the stoicness that he used in that role.  Clint Eastwood’s “High Plains Drifter” is one of my favorite movies of all time.  This film’s a lot like that – except the town doesn’t get painted red and it’s not burning behind me!

There’s a lot to the Preacher in this film.  He seems to have a lot of pain behind his face, the way you portray him.

He became a preacher, really, as a way to deal with the guilt and the pain he had about killing so many people during the Civil War.  And when his wife and five year old daughter are killed, and he sees that the town’s not going to do anything about it, he kind of goes off the deep end.  He disappears and comes back three years later a bounty hunter.  I think he just couldn’t face the town anymore.  He returns hardened to this whole issue of killing bad people, but also dealing with the issue of how empty it’s made him feel as a man.  He’s lost every connection he had with God, every connection with any relationship with another human being.

You’ve got three kids – did your being a parent affect your understanding of the character?

Absolutely.  If somebody did something to my family, I don’t think there’s any way that anybody could stop me going after these guys.  I don’t know how people do it, and God bless them for holding back.  John Walsh [“America’s Most Wanted”] is a friend of mine, and when you talk to him about his son, Adam, who was killed, you see the anger and the emotion just pouring out of his eyes, even today.

He’s got all this inner turmoil going on, about fighting violence with violence.  It comes down to instead of “turn the other cheek,” he just looks at another bible verse, “An eye for an eye.”  Throughout history, as we’ve seen, if you want peace, sometimes you have to throw a rock or two.

The characters of Maggie (Cyntha Watros) and her daughter, Amelia, seem to have a healing effect on him.

She’s an ex-prostitute that’s got a child, and he falls for her immediately.  He falls for the goodness that he sees inside her, but also a hardness that he understands, that he can relate to, of her life and what she’s had to go through.  They’re both broken-winged birds, in a way, and they both need to help each other mend.  And Cynthia’s an amazing actress, wonderful to work with – very giving.

He sees Amelia, who’s 7 or 8 years old – the same age his daughter would have been – who brings back the innocence of his own child.  There’s a very touching scene – which is very quick – where he gives her his daughter’s doll, which he had found after the church was blown up.  It’s a big step for him to pass it on to somebody also, but it also represents some closure in his life, as well.

You do a fight scene or two in this film – you’ve actually done quite a lot of stunt work in your career, haven’t you?

I did quite a lot of my own stunt work on “Hercules” – I have two knees that have been operated on since as proof of all the abuse I took! (laughs)  It’s the athlete in me – I think I’m 21, and I’m not, obviously, but I still want to go out there and do it.

It’s funny, we had Anthony Quinn playing Zeus for the first year of “Hercules.”  It was just such a treat to work with someone like him who came from old Hollywood.  And he used to see me doing my own stunts, and he told me about doing his own stunt work in “Lawrence of Arabia,” with the horse work and fighting sequences.  And he said that just before the director yelled “Action,” even though you rehearsed it and went over it in your head, the butterflies and the nerves and the adrenaline start going, and you think, “Wait a minute – what’s my first move?  What’s the fight scene?”  And I felt the same way about it, because sometimes I’d have to fight 12 stunt guys – just me in the middle. 

I’d have to memorize 24 movies, they only have to memorize two.  But the athlete in me would just kick in, and I would do this stuff.  It’s like a dance – you just get into it, it’s so much fun.

You’re working with a director, David Cass, who’s got a long history in both westerns and stunts.  What was he like to work with?

He’s been around this genre for such a long time.  He’s very easy, very good with actors – he’s been on sets forever.  He just comes up and says, “This is how I want you to play it.”  He’s a gruff guy, but he gets the point.  I like his sensibility and his style.

On “Andromeda,” you played another heroic character, Captain Dylan Hunt.  How did you manage to jump from playing Hercules to doing sci fi?

At the time, Universal wanted me to go three more years on “Hercules,” but I was spent, I was really beat up.  After seven seasons working in New Zealand, putting in 14 hour days, lifting weights for two hours a day.  It was fun, but I just felt, “I’ve done it.  I want to go back to the States.”  Majel Roddenberry – you remember, Nurse Chapel – called me and told her husband had written a couple of different shows and wanted to see if I might be interested.  It turned out he had written “Andromeda” back in 1969.  They actually did a pilot with John Saxon as my character.  And I was always a “Star Trek” fan anyway – I still love “The Trouble With Tribbles.”

What did you like about Dylan Hunt?

You know, we all want to see the good guys win.  You knew Hercules was going to win every fight – so we put the humor in there.  But Captain Dylan Hunt was fallable.  I liked playing him because he wasn’t going to win every time.  He was going to lose a lot of times, too.  He was dealing with the humanity of his character.  He was stuck in a black hole for 303 years, but to him, five seconds have passed, and he’s lost everything – all the people who loved and cared about have been dead for 250 years.  So, from the actor’s standpoint, it was a fun character to play.

How much of Kevin Sorbo is in the heroic characters you play?

The biggest difference between me and the character I’m playing now or in “Hercules” or “Andromedia” is – they’re a lot braver than I am!  Which is probably one of the reasons I like being an actor – I can pretend to be something I’m not.  “Hercules walks around the corner, there’s 12 guys there with clubs.  I think I’d walk the other way!

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