A New Lees of Life
When Renaissance Pictures successfully cast a talented local actor, we can generally assume that that person will return to play further roles in other Renaissance series. Such was the case with Nathaniel Lees, whose role in Hercules and the Lost Kingdom led to many more roles in Xena and Hercules, as he reveals to Ian Rentoul.
Official Xena Magazine: Issue 19
New Zealand actor Nathaniel Lees first became involved with Renaissance Pictures when he made a guest appearance in the second Hercules TV movie, Hercules and the Lost Kingdom. Cast as the villain of the hour, the Blue Priest, Lees starred alongside Kevin Sorbo as Hercules and a pre-Gabrielle Renee O'Connor as Deianeira, Hercules' wife-to-be, a part later taken over by Tawny Kitaen.
“I was asked to audition for the role of the Blue Priest by the director [Harley Cokeliss],” Lees recalls . “So I went over and read for the part, and was then asked to try the prosthetics. But basically, by that point, I had already got the role. So it was pretty much an offer and an audition at the same time.”
Lees remembers that plans to produce a regular Hercules television series were already being discussed at that point. “It was funny,” he explains, “because everybody was thinking, 'A television series about Hercules? That will last all of one season, if that!' But the movie went really well, and it was very enjoyable doing it. Plus I got on really well with Kevin Sorbo,” he adds. “We used to play golf together!”
The role of the Blue Priest represented a departure from Lees' previous television guest appearances. “It was a strange one,” he admits. “You didn't know whether he was good or bad for the first part of the movie. You didn't know whether he was protecting Deianeira, or if he was a bad influence on her, and I think that's what stuck in my head about the character, plus the fact that he had a kind of attraction and secrecy about him.
“I didn’t try and make him an all-out bad guy,” Lees says, “but his potential for being evil was always just bubbling underneath the surface. That was the way I always thought of him, and when I came to do the audition, we experimented with him. We initially tried to portray him as being completely seductive, and then we tried to have him as completely evil, to the point where he would kill anything which got in his way, including Deianeira. We played with the character quite a lot at the audition, but I was pretty much left on my own to come up with his reactions to the events of the story. So I was able to make what I wanted of him, which was fun, because you don’t often get that sort of opportunity.”
The prosthetics required to turn Lees into the Blue Priest were fairly extensive. Nevertheless, the professional actor took it all in his stride. “Make-up artist Richard Taylor, who worked on the Lord of the Rings films, was responsible for the prosthetics,” the recalls. “The company had only just been set up at that point, so the Blue Priest was one of the first full prosthetics they had done. We started by playing around with the make-up to decide what he should look like, and once we settled on everything, I was in the make-up chair for three to four hours each day before filming started. So if shooting started at 7am, I was in the chair by 4am. That got very tough.
“We also found that we had to modify the makeup,” Lees continues, “because initially it encased my head completely, which meant that no heat could escape. It got to the point where we had to take the top off to ensure that there was some ventilation. But we soon got around that by my wearing a hood. The heat got particularly bad when we were shooting in the studio, so that was difficult. I also had to do the voice-over for all the dialogue in post production, because with the prosthetics and the fangs, you couldn’t hear what I was saying during filming!”
Lees particularly enjoyed working opposite Renee O’Connor. “That was the first time I’d met her,” he explains. “We had a nice chat, and then the next thing I know she’s back here playing Xena’s sidekick.”
According to Lees, working on a 90-minute TV Movie is very different from working on episodic television. “There was quite a difference in the amount of time they spent on particular scenes and the number of angles they shot from,” he says. “For example, they were prepared to let shooting continue for a while, but the establishing shots were given a few more seconds to build than usual. It’s a timing thing.”
Following Hercules and the Lost Kingdom, Lees became a familiar face in Renaissance Pictures productions, guest starring as various characters in Hercules, Xena and Young Hercules, as well as reprising the role of The Blue Priest in the season two Hercules episode The Wedding of Alcmene.
One particular favourite episode of Lees was the Xena season one show Dreamworker, which resulted in a deja vu for the actor: once again, Lee’s character was that of an evil priest, this time Manus. But instead of being in the service of the goddess Hera, Manus was devoted to the god Morpheus, and it was Gabrielle, not Deianeira, who was chosen as a sacrificial victim.
“I was offered the part of Manus because of my portrayal of the Blue Priest,” Lees admits. “I was actually directing a play at the time, so I couldn’t take the part on because it conflicted with that. They said, ‘OK, we’ll have to find someone who looks something like the Blue Priest’. I said, ‘You do what you like, they’re your characters’, but about a week later they rang and said they were going to wait until I’d worked out my contract and then shoot the episode.”
Further characters followed, including the role of Nicklio the Healer in the season two Xena episode Destiny. “I don’t remember very much about that one now,” he admits, “but I’d worked on a cop series here in New Zealand called Shark in the Park, and Lucy [Lawless] had a guest spot on it. That was the first time I'd met her, so what I remember most about going back to play Nicklio was catching up with Lucy and [her daughter] Daisy, and finding out how she was. I’ve been doing theatre and television in New Zealand for such a long time that every now and then I meet up with the same people, and I just remember that whole shoot as giving me the chance to sit down and talk to Lucy.”
In Young Hercules, Lees played the part of Chiron the Centaur. “It’s the silliest thing in the world,” he says of playing a centaur. “You walk around with a prosthetic up your bum! When we did the Young Hercules TV Movie, I played the same character, but the horse part of my character for that show was a big one. In the series, the horse part was more like a pony, which actually looked a bit silly. But I guess that’s the difference between a film and a television series.
“That said,” he continues, “doing that was interesting to me as an actor, because you had to be aware of your body movements. And I also had to be conscious of any sideways or forward movements I did. I had to spend a lot of time going through the movements over and over again in front of a blue screen after filming, so that they could graft the rear of a horse onto me in post production.”
So how did Lees become involved in acting? “I started work in the theatre in 1978 at the Mercury Theatre in Auckland,” he recalls. “I had no desire to be an actor early on, but I went to an audition because I’d just got back from being overseas, and I needed the money. The first play I did was The Naval Officer, which is about Captain Cook, and while I watched the older actors as they worked through their characters and the story, I became more and more interested in the way they were thinking and the work itself.
“They asked me to stay on and do a few more shows in which I had very small parts, and the experience of watching those people was so captivating to me that I kept on going from there. I also started my own theatre company in South Auckland, which was very much the rougher side of town, but that’s where I actually really enjoyed working.
“My favourite play (and character) is Othello,” Lees states. “I first played him about 10 years ago, and I think I’m about to take him on again. I prefer to perform much more dramatic roles, although I do enjoy watching comedy. I’ve played dramatic roles throughout most of my career to date. I guess you could say that I’m not an up-front, funny kind of guy!”
So what projects does the actor currently have on the go? “I’ve been doing Lord of the Rings for the last few months,” he reveals, “as well as another movie. And I’m currently about to take on The Matrix sequels in 2001. In between that, I’ve been directing a play. I haven’t actually acted in anything on stage for a while because I’ve been too busy directing, but it’s good to go out and do the variety of work I have and to see the different ways of acting and then come back again. This is something that Lucy and I used to talk about quite a lot - she really wants to do theatre. I’d love to direct her in a play.
“I'm writing a play at the moment, because my heart is in theatre and I’ve been asked to direct some short films and write screenplays. I'm actually trying to keep theatre alive here in New Zealand now that there's so much television and film work going on.”
Lees admits that working on Xena and Hercules has been a high point of his career. “I had a great time playing characters in Herc and Xena,” he affirms. “It always worked out really well, because they would call me up and ask me to do a couple of weeks on an episode, which was just long enough for me because I didn’t get too involved in the hype that has started to build around the shows over the last few years.”
So what does Lees see as the most positive things to have come out of his involvement with Xena and Hercules? “If anything, it’s just the contact I've had with Lucy, Kevin, Michael [Hurst] and everyone else,” he slates, “and the level of fame they have got to. Both series have been great for everybody. I can’t stress enough how good it’s been for New Zealand actors to have this opportunity. It means that actors who’ve cut their teeth on Hercules, Young Hercules and Xena are now working in quite big Hollywood movies and around the world.
“Who would have thought it would all fly like it has, especially in the case of Xena, where an offshoot of a series has actually become bigger [than the original series]? There are web sites now with these people’s names on, and it's great. I still get fan mail from the United States for my roles as The Blue Priest and as Chiron the Centaur. So it's an amazing thing.”
But would Lees like to go back and make another appearance on Xena? “Yes, I would actually,” he enthuses. “I’ve chatted to a few people about maybe bringing the Blue Priest back, and it would be nice to be part of the show's farewell. I would enjoy that. If, of course, I could fit it in between my plays.”