Guests Just Wanna Have Fun
Anthony Ray Parker may have played countless parts in Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and Xena: Warrior Princess, but the face behind such memorable characters as Mephistopheles and Bacchus has remained largely anonymous thanks to the heavy prosthetics Parker has had to endure. The versatile actor recounts to Xena Magazine's Ian Rentoul the long road to his successful acting career.
Official Xena Magazine: Issue 22
Michigan-born Anthony Ray Parker didn't plan to become an actor. “My driving force was to become a professional football player,” reveals the actor. “At the age of 22, I found myself migrating over to the West Coast so that I could be close to the ocean and further my football career. It was fantastic and, at the time, the best move I had ever made.
“I’d played football in High School and went on to play a little bit in college, which provided me with an athletics scholarship,” he explains. “After that, I continued to play semi-professional football and had a small break with a professional US team. But that was a very short-lived career, so I then went on to coach a semi-professional team.”
Parker confides that during his career he has been a personal bodyguard in Los Angeles, a personal trainer and the manager of one of the largest health and fitness facilities in Southern California. He was also a courier for seven years, working for United Parcels Service, and was accepted into the Sheriff’s Department, but decided not to take that up as a career.
“I decided back in 1993 that I wanted to give acting my full attention,” he recalls, “so that meant I had to have a part-time job so that I could be available for auditions and different jobs that would take me away for a week or two at a time. Before that I'd been involved in stage productions back in Michigan and had had a part in a movie which shot in LA as an American Football player. I’d taken a 10-12 year break from acting, but I enjoyed every second of that role.”
Parker’s acting career was soon to take off thanks to an important change in his life. “I’d met a New Zealand woman in Los Angeles and we’d lived there for five years as a married couple,” he says. “But my wife was a little homesick, and I’d been over to New Zealand a couple of times and found it was a beautiful country to live in. We also thought it was the best place to raise children, so we decided to move to New Zealand to start a family.
“When I arrived I had no work, no job and no trade of any kind,” Parker recalls. “My first acting role in New Zealand was for [the US network] ABC, which was over shooting the pilot for a television drama. That happened about a month after I arrived and took me to the South Island for a whole month. I also did some small auditions and commercials just to try and get my name, face and voice out there.”
Parker was working part-time as an instructor at a local gym when the work of Pacific Renaissance first came to his attention. The Hercules TV Movies were in the middle of shooting, and the company already had plans to develop these into a fully-fledged series. “Renaissance casting director Tracey Hampton was looking for people to audition for a few characters on Hercules, and someone knew I was trying to get into acting,” Parker explains, “so they gave her my name. She called me and was quite impressed with my voice, and asked me to come in for an audition.
“I went in to meet Tracey that night, still in my gym clothes,” Parker continues. “She rushed me in to [then unit production manager] Eric Gruendemann’s office and I was signed on for the part of the Minotaur in the last Hercules TV Movie, Hercules in the Maze of the Minotaur, then and there.”
Playing the titular Minotaur in the episode required Parker to be in make-up for a good many hours. “The Minotaur had a head moulding and some prosthetic work, as well as contact lenses in the eyes,” Parker admits. Surprisingly, however, Parker was actually delighted that the character had such heavy prosthetics. “I know it might sound a little weird,” he acknowledges, “but I really enjoyed the prosthetics part of performing and acting and being able to take this mould that they put on your face and create a character. I also had a great deal of patience, because I sat in a make-up chair day after day having it all put on and then taken off again. I didn’t mind it at all, because I consider it a real blessing for me to be able to act. So for me it’s all part of the job.
“They’d put the make-up on,” he continues, “and you’d go to your trailer or you’d go to the cafeteria and eat lunch, and everybody would just stare at you! They just didn’t know what to make of you, so it was good in that way. I really loved it.”
Not surprisingly, Parker quickly impressed the producers at Renaissance Pictures with his positive working attitude, and it wasn’t long before he was asked back to play further characters. “I loved every minute of that role, and it was my foot in the door,” he acknowledges. “My other roles, even Bacchus, were as a result of that.”
Parker's first Xena role was as the Bacchus in the tongue-in-cheek horror episode Girls Just Wanna Have Fun. This time, however, Parker faced stiffer competition for the role. “I had heard through the grapevine that they were considering someone else for the role of Bacchus,” he states, “but when they asked if I would do it, I said sure anyway. Once we’d worked out all the fine details, I then had to wait a couple of weeks before they finally made the decision to give the part to me.
“The make-up for that character meant that I had to sit for about five hours in the make-up chair. I think there were about 45-50 different pieces on my face, so it was very time-consuming. I didn’t mind, though, because I found it quite amazing to watch the process grow, and I was happy to have the opportunity to do it.” It then took another three and a half hours to take it all off again at the end of a day’s shooting.
“The earliest that I was picked up to go to the set in the morning was 3.30am, and there was one day when I went through all of that with the makeup and was then told that they’d run out of time for the day so they had to take it all off again! But those things happen,” Parker adds good-naturedly.
Parker stresses that the heavy make-up didn’t overshadow his enjoyment of working on the show. “You’d go to work and have fun,” he says. “That’s not fun in the sense of playing all day. I just mean that it was a very light atmosphere and attitude. Everyone was relaxed, but at the same time we all knew that we had to take care of business to get the product completed. But it wasn’t a stressful job to go to every day. So whenever I took on a new project on Hercules and Xena, I always knew I was going to be relaxed and not stressed out.”
Another role which Parker will be remembered for but unrecognisable in was as the Deliverer in the season three episode of the same title. The actor recalls that this particular part didn’t require quite as much time in the make-up chair as Bacchus. “The Deliverer only took about three hours, because it wasn't as detailed,” he explains. “It was a lighter prosthetic because there was a lot more fighting and moving. I had to use a sword as well and a lot more martial arts came into play. So Bacchus was a lot longer in make-up.”
Parker's most recent role in Xena was as Mephistopheles in the season six episode The Haunting of Amphipolis, in which Xena and Gabrielle return to Xena’s home village only to discover it has literally become a ghost town. The fight scenes were central to the role of Mephistopheles, and Parker found this quite a challenge. “You’ve got to watch what you’re doing,” he says. “You don’t want to make mistakes and punch anyone by accident.”
As Parker reveals, however, he was actually on the receiving end of one such mistake during the filming of Girls Just Wanna Have Fun. “Lucy Lawless got me in the nose,” he admits. “We were trying to get as close as we could to make it look as realistic as possible, and at times she got a little bit too close. But it was funny, and we all laughed. There was no harm done, and Lucy felt the worst out of all of us. But it looked good on camera!”
In spite of such incidents, Parker always enjoyed being on the set of Hercules and Xena, and remembers in particular the courtesy of the shows’ cast and crew. “Kevin and Lucy had to work with different actors and people behind the scenes every day they came to work, but every day I was there I was greeted, spoken to and treated by them as if it was the first time every time,” he acknowledges. “It was great. They really made a genuine effort to make me feel at home.
“Because Auckland isn’t a big town, I’d meet them on the street and I’d get the same warm welcome, and that really stood out,” he says. “You didn’t get any of the, ‘I’m too big for you', typical Hollywood attitude. You got a very down to Earth, ‘Hey, we’re all working to make the finished product’, response. So that was good.”
Bacchus is one of the only roles in Xena and Hercules in which we hear Parker’s real voice. “They enhanced my voice for Deliverer,” he admits, “and for the Minotaur you hear someone else’s voice and you’ll see at the very end when he reverts back to his human form that it’s not me - it’s another guy.”
Viewers Down Under have been lucky enough to catch a glimpse of the real Anthony Ray Parker, however. “I’ve co-presented three television shows in New Zealand,” he reveals.
Parker is also currently busy developing a career as a professional stand-up comedian. “I do improvisation and comedy,” he says. “I’ve been top-rated for the last three and a half years in New Zealand, but I just haven’t had an opportunity to do it on a larger scale outside the country. People in New Zealand recognize me on the street quite frequently because of the shows that I’m on, where I'm a comedian or a slapstick, goofy kind of guy. Unless New Zealanders see me in Hercules or Xena, they don’t know any of the serious stuff I’ve done.”
One other serious major break in his career was The Matrix. Parker was cast as the surgeon- come-chef in the groundbreaking science fiction film. “My character was a very analytical and intellectual type of human,” he says of the role, “so I got the chance to play a very serious role, which was a challenge for me.
“Working on The Matrix opened a great many doors for me," Parker acknowledges. “It allowed me to be introduced to the industry outside New Zealand. I moved back to Los Angeles recently, back to the thick of it all, and allowed myself to be close enough to work in Hollywood, so it’s all working out well for me. I’ve just been approached by a couple of film companies, and I’m sitting here with four scripts in front of me at the moment.”
Aside from further acting opportunities, Parker has other talents which he is currently developing further, including theatre direction. “I’ve recently started studying Sound and Camera Operation,” he says, “because I feel that a good director should have some knowledge of every facet behind the scenes, and have done a little stint in front of the camera, too. I know fantastic directors like Ron Howard have done just that. Maybe somewhere down the line there might be the opportunity for me to direct film and television, but right now my number one focus and passion is being in front of that camera and being able to act.
“I’d love to do a cowboy movie,” he adds after a moment’s thought. “I love spaghetti westerns, Clint Eastwood movies and that type of thing.”
Parker has certainly had a wide and varied career, but he attributes his development as an actor to his involvement in Xena and Hercules. “It was a real blessing that Pacific Renaissance decided to move to New Zealand and open up shop, and that they hired me to be a part of it all,” he acknowledges. “It allowed a lot of talent to work every day, and that has been a real major plus for the industry down there.
“I’m just hoping that any other productions they put together are done in New Zealand as well. The industry in New Zealand has grown tremendously, and Pacific Renaissance have been a major contributor to that.
“Plus, in reality, I know that my three beautiful children love Hercules and Xena, and they especially love the ones that I’ve been a part of!”