Hursta la vista, baby!
As Hercules: The Legendary Journeys nears its end, Michael Hurst talks to our on-set reporter Kate Barker about his character’s long road.
Official Xena Magazine: Issue 03
It’s a sad day when a sidekick must finally hang up his jerkin.
After almost six years playing lolaus, loyal companion to Kevin Sorbo's heroic half-god, New Zealand actor Michael Hurst filmed his last episode of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys just three weeks before filming of the seven-season series came to a close.
For Hurst, that last day on the set is an emotional time. “I've been seeing lots of people whose faces I’ve seen almost every day for the last five and a half years,” says Hurst, “and Kevin and I have realised that everything we do today is probably for the last time. So it’s quite significant.
“It’s sad. Sad, and a bit crazy. I can say I’ve been awash with emotions today.”
lolaus is the longest-running starring role Hurst has played on screen. However, the actor is initially hard-pressed to recall any one high point of his time with the series. To him, everything about Hercules has been great. “There are too many stand-out moments for me to actually recount them,” he says. “They all come crowding in…”
When it comes to praising lolaus, however, words do come easily, and Hurst cannot say enough. “The thing about lolaus is... I always liked the constant incredulity. That’s what I think drove the character.” The actor pauses for a moment, listening to himself. “God, it sounds like he’s dead!
“But I think that’s where it all comes from,” he continues, “all the characteristics, all the situations he was ever in, all the things I ever did with it. The common thing is his incredulity. It feeds his genuine curiosity and that feeds his humour.
“I’ve worked out a lot more ways to do it, I guess, but the driving thing has always been there.”
In the throes of extolling the character’s virtues, Hurst finally picks out one particular highlight. “It was one of the first episodes of the first season, where Herc nearly died; he got stabbed in the chest or something. Kevin and I did this whole thing... I was weeping and he was dying, and I went for that, big time. I remember that being an indication to me that lolaus was quite flexible, going from funny to really pouring it on.”
Another of Hurst’s high points took place in the shooting of the first TV movie, Hercules and the Amazon Women. It was when he witnessed the sight of 30 Amazons on horseback galloping down the sand dunes of a west Auckland beach that Hurst first realised that he was actually starring in a big-budget production. “I remember thinking, this is so big!”
And what is it about Hercules in general that has held his interest for the last seven years? “I like all sides of it,” the actor admits. “I’m a happy face and a sad face. I relish the opportunity to be funny or creative, but I also [like] the times we’ve gone into emotional stuff... I’m an actor, I like it all.” Hurst does point out, however, that despite what people might think, “comedy has to be so much more ingenious. You can fool around with tragedy, but comedy's a serious business.”
On the subject of variations, is there anything Hurst might have liked to have happened to lolaus if he’d had the chance? “I thought lolaus could have visited Niobe in the land where he looked like the king.” By the tone of the actor’s voice, it’s clear that some convoluted plot is about to come out of his mouth. "I thought there was another adventure there that I would have loved to have seen, in which I could have played lolaus, the ghost of the king, and the king’s hitherto unseen wicked cousin - who’s me, but with black hair.
“That would have been amusing,” he says with a smile. “But we didn't do it.”
There have been other amusements, of course, such as the humour Hurst has put into his other roles in Hercules and Xena: Warrior Princess. He has played the part of Charon - the boatman who delivers the dead to Tartarus - and another version of lolaus, who lives in an alternate reality. Were any of these characters more of a challenge than the regular lolaus that fans have come to know so well?
“lolaus is pretty much me on a stick,” the actor admits.
“lolaus 2 [the ‘court jester’ character from an alternate universe in which Hercules was an evil tyrant] was the same thing, with a few quirks knocked out of it, and sincerity ramped up. Basically I didn’t have to keep them separate.” As for Charon, played by Hurst with a Jewish accent, the actor describes him as “almost a characterisation.”
Hercules may have wrapped, but Hurst and his colleagues are by no means at a loss for further work. “There’s a lot happening,” Hurst says enthusiastically. “Kevin [Sorbo] is going to do the thing that he’s doing in the States [Andromeda, a new television series based on unfinished works by Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry], a good deal of the crew are going on to other films in New Zealand and there are other shows replacing Hercules.
“I’ve got lots to move on to. I’m preparing to direct a feature called Jubilee - so that's my world for the next six months.”
A decade ago, Hurst’s ambition was "just to keep doing it.” He has most certainly achieved that goal, and intends to keep going in the business as long as he can.
As for his role in the adventures of one of television's most successful mythological characters, Hurst sums it up in classic New Zealand fashion: “I’ve had more fun than you can shake a stick at!”
The Michael Hurst Scrolls
Hurst has been working steadily on both stage and screen since the age of 18. The actor’s first professional stage production was Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest; the company hired him, he says, because they were impressed with his “good energy levels”. From there, Hurst became internationally known for his roles, both acting and directing, in a large number of Shakespearan productions. He has admitted to having played “all of Shakespeare’s fools” at one time or another during his stage career.
Even compared with the long hours co-starring in a phenomenon like Hercules, some of Hurst’s toughest roles have been during his early theatrical career.
For example, performing the role of Mozart in Amadeus proved especially challenging, since Hurst couldn’t play the piano! In the four-hour Torch Song Trilogy, playing the lead character, a Jewish drag queen from New York, was a tough act. The actor also took on the title role in Macbeth at age 28, a part not usually played by actors under 40.
While starring in a long-running series like Hercules, it’s not unusual for an actor to have other projects on the side. Hurst himself has done this, starring in films such as I’ll Make You Happy, and a television police drama series, Duggan. However, the pressure is a little greater if the roles are in two separate stage productions, both having a simultaneous seasonal run. At one stage in his career, Hurst played a supporting character in The Mikado for matinee performances, and would then co-star in the evenings in a gruelling production of the two-man play, Kiss of the Spider Woman.
Hurst’s first major screen role was as Dave the drummer in Heroes, a New Zealand television series about a small-time rock band trying to make it big. At 25, the actor had already been working for seven years on stage, yet amazingly he landed the Heroes role without having learned a musical instrument! The producers then sent him on an intensive course to learn to play the drums.
One ‘instrument’ that Hurst has played from an early age, however, is the standard fencing foil. Towards the end of his school career in Christchurch, New Zealand, the actor was a regional fencing champion, and has since utilised the skill in choreographing fight scenes for stage plays, and of course in playing lolaus.
In 1993, Hurst co-starred with fellow Hercules and Xena actor Kevin (Ares) Smith in the melodrama Desperate Remedies. Playing the central character in the feature film was Hurst’s wife, actor Jennifer Ward-Lealand, who has also appeared in Xena as the fiery warrior queen Boadicea.