Actor of all Trades
Volatile actor Stuart Devenie talks to K. Stoddard Hayes about his regular guest appearances in Renaissance Pictures' series, from playing villains in Hercules: The Legendary Journeys to turning on the laughs in Jack of All Trades.
Official Xena Magazine: Issue 18
The fact that he was cast as a villain in each of his three guest roles on Hercules: The Legendary Journeys came as no surprise to veteran actor Stuart Devenie. “I'm generally cast on television as anal-retentive villains,” he says, and hastens to add that he has a much broader range in theatre, where he is well known as an actor, director and coach in his native New Zealand.
Devenie arrived on the Hercules scene because of his long professional friendship with Michael Hurst, who directed ...And Fancy Free and thought Devenie would be an ideal Magistrate Asturias. The fact that Hurst also played Widow Twanky in the episode gave an outrageous twist to the director's role. “The funniest thing was watching him direct it all in drag,” Devenie recalls. “He was in full make-up with a wig and that outrageous costume of Widow Twanky. And he’d be doing that and would then suddenly go behind the camera. It took a few days for me to be able to take him seriously [as a director].”
For the magistrate and the similar role of Count Von Verminhaven in Greece is Burning, the only character preparation Devenie needed was to “give away any sense of dignity.” He took special pleasure in skewering the fashion industry with his portrayal of the Count, whose German accent, he explains, is “loosely based” on Lagerfeld. “I’ve got a lot of problems with Lagerfeld, because he seems to support anorexia,” Devenie notes. “He describes his models as weightless when they’re actually starving to death... Verminhaven had a line about, ’Here’s to a new season of hemlines and eating disorders.’ The writers had a certain passion to express that view, and it certainly concurred with mine, having a daughter of 17 - who is not anorexic, but it’s people of that age who are influenced by the whole fashion industry. The only way I think actors can make a social commentary is through their work.”
Devenie’s portrayal of Kernunnos, the evil Irish god of Render unto Caesar, was a very different proposition. “The two villains in Michael’s shows were what I call light villains, whereas Kernunnos was a really dark, evil, wicked man. So there’s a different sort of pitch to the performance. For that one I had to have a three-hour make-up job involving prosthetics. Everyone was fascinated by the horns. All the extras were coming around and wanting to touch them and be photographed with them on. So the horns were a great success!”
Devenie created a different accent for each of these roles, and Jack of All Trades fans have heard him do two more as Governor Croque and the Marquis de Sade. So how many different accents can he do? “I can generally do any accent people want,” he says. “If I don’t know it, I’ll find out how to. People think that accents are very difficult, but it’s really just a case of linking the ear to the muscles of the mouth. All of us are capable of making all of the sounds that human beings can make. It’s just a matter of getting used to our own voice and then being able to shift it out of the way.”
It’s a shift that Devenie seems to find as easy as speaking. Every time he quotes someone in-the course of the interview, he uses the accent of the original speaker, whether it’s the comic accents of the fictional Croque and Verminhaven, or the very real and unmistakable voices of actor Bruce Campbell and Xena Executive Producer Rob Tapert.
While Devenie clearly enjoyed his Hercules appearances, his enthusiasm glows brightest when he talks about working on the recently cancelled Jack of all Trades. Devenie’s mincing, over-the-top Governor Croque proved the perfect foil for Bruce Campbell’s brash Jack and Angela Dotchin’s aristocratic Emilia. With the addition of Stephen Papp as Croque’s henchman, Captain Brogard, Devenie felt the cast had an ideal chemistry. “One of the things that I think was great about the four of us in Jack, the core cast, was that everybody had a highly developed sense of humour and they were all very different. That combination of sense of humours was really great.”
This cast chemistry created an ideal matrix for improvisation, which began, Devenie recalls, on the first day of shooting, and became the norm throughout the production of the show. As an example he relates a scene from Croquey in the Pokey, in which Croque and Jack are in jail and decide to stage a fight to get the guard’s attention.
“In the script, it just said, ‘They fight.’ Bruce said, ‘Why don't we make it that Jack’s trying to get some good punches in to pay Croque back?’ We didn't have any time to discuss it beyond that, so he started doing that and I just responded, and there are a few lines in there that weren’t in the script... Croque gets his just desserts, but that whole thing was improvised by Bruce and me. That was great fun and very typical of that whole period and also of the whole company.”
Practical joking was also very much a part of the daily routine. Bruce Campbell, who is known for his jokes on set, had the tables turned on him during the shooting of Dead Woman Walking. One scene required Campbell to hide in a closed coffin until the camera stopped rolling. “Bruce got into the coffin,” Devenie relates, “and then everybody went away. We cleared the entire studio, and Bruce was left in there by himself! It took quite a while [for him to catch on]. He was very professional. He was waiting for the word ‘Cut!’ That was sort of a payback for some of the stuff that he'd done to us.”
Devenie recalls a different kind of encounter which he still finds extraordinary months later. “It’s very rare for a producer to come to an actor and say, ‘Look, I’m just concerned with pushing the boundaries of this character too much.’ You don’t get that. Normally, it’s the actor saying, ‘What are you doing with my character?’ But when Mr Nipples was introduced, Rob [Tapert] gave me the first draft of the episode [Up the Creek] to read, and he said, ‘I just wonder if we’re pushing this character too far. What do you think?’”
When Devenie read the Mr Nipples scene, he thought, ‘This is not rational behaviour even for Croque!’, and suggested that a line be added to explain that Croque had been under a lot of pressure. “We did it, and it worked, so Mr Nipples became a regular feature. That’s what I mean about pushing the envelope.”
Devenie feels that it’s the mix of improvisation and outrageousness that makes Pacific Renaissance a wonderful company to work for. “There’s a superb combination of professional rigour and permissiveness in all of the work that I’ve ever done for Renaissance that also encourages you to be ready to try things out,” he affirms. “Some companies I've worked for, it’s obvious that someone will tell you what to do and you can't change anything, so you’re not prepared for that kind of spark that happens. Whereas if the atmosphere and the environment is ready for experimentation, I think you’re more keyed to that possibility. And of course the work is more exciting.”
That excitement was always present during the production of Jack of All Trades. “The runner would be due to pick me up at six o’clock in the morning to go in for the day,” Devenie recalls, “and I’d be out there at 10 to six saying, ‘Hurry up, I want to get to work!’ And that was every day. There wasn’t a single day on that shoot that I didn't really want to get to work. And I think that was the case for most of the people who worked on the show. That’s a great tribute to everyone's professionalism and sense of fun.
“I think Pacific Renaissance should be very proud of all the series they’ve done.”
SIDEBAR: Cast Aside
Stuart Devenie offers his impression of the Renaissance Pictures actors he’s had the fortune to work alongside.
Kevin Sorbo
He’s wonderful! He has an enormous respect from the profession here because he’s very generous with other actors, and was always able to make everyone feel as if they were part of the process, from the people who were playing the guest starring roles to the humblest extra or crew member. He was a very good leader of the series.
Angela Dotchin (Emilia, Jack of All Trades)
With Angela there as the only woman, the three men were very protective of her. She was our Angela. She might find that insulting. She was the queen of the show… and she looked so fantastic. The costumes were just brilliant. She scrubs up very well!
Bruce Campbell
He was fantastic to work with on Jack of All Trades because he was confident enough to give out offers but also confident enough to take them if you gave them to him. You’d be in the heat of the moment and he’d do something, and you’d think, ‘All right, if you’re going there, I’ll have to go there.’ That’s the sort of magic that makes things work. He was sometimes overwhelmed once the three New Zealand cast members closed rank on him in terms of jokes, but he gave as good as he got, I can tell you.
Tamara Gorski (Morrigan, Render Unto Caesar)
She was so present, and there was an awful lot of intensity in what she did, which was great to work with. She had a very individual process to prepare herself for each scene, which grounded it and made it very, very intense, which is what the things required. It was great to work with her because there was such a lot coming towards you, and then you just sort of gave back from that.