Mad, Bad and Dangerous To Know
When casting the role of Caligula in The God You Know, Renaissance Pictures called upon the talents of a rather special actor. Kate Barker takes a break from dodging chariots to talk to the Roman Emperor's famous alter ego...
Official Xena Magazine: Issue 18
He was born in 1969, the son of actor Lewis Arquette and brother of David, Patricia, Richmond and Rosanna, all bitten by the acting bug themselves. He was by no means forced into the life of an actor, but he does conclude that there were “plenty of histrionics in our family; with five kids there’s always drama!”
His first real break into the acting world came in 1989 in the dark and disturbing drama Last Ticket to Brooklyn. Since then he’s played everything from desk clerk to drag queen, and says that his recent role in Xena: Warrior Princess is almost a mix of all of them. The character is Caligula, decadent Emperor of Rome. The actor is the very versatile Alexis Arquette.
Arquette is well known for his rather left-of-centre roles in television and movies (such as the horror films Children of the Corn V (1998) and Bride of Chucky (1998), teen US comedies like Miracle Beach (1992) and Threesome (1994), and hit feature The Wedding Singer (1998), in which he played a Boy George lookalike with only one song in his repertoire. He also won a Grand Jury Award for Outstanding Actor in a Feature Film for his role in Never Met Picasso in 1996, and played the lead in feature Jack Be Nimble, helmed coincidentally by Xena director Garth Maxwell.
The actor certainly doesn’t shy away from controversy in either his public or professional life; he posed as the Hindu god Krishna for a cover of gay men’s magazine Genre, and starred as himself in Wigstock: The Movie (1995), a documentary following New York’s annual Drag Festival. The film’s tag line was ‘A celebration of life, liberty, and the pursuit of big hair!’
These days, though, as well as still being drawn to play those ’out there’ characters, Arquette does have an interest in playing roles that he calls run-of-the-mill and average. “Once you do something in this business,” he says, “people will see you in a certain way, and that’s what they’ll always see.” From the grin on his face when asked about his more flamboyant roles, however, it’s clear that Arquette still devours those crazy roles with relish. “I have plenty of opportunities to play the freak, the killer, the nutball, the drug addict,” he says with a smile. “And it’s fun when you get to play them all at once... like Caligula!”
It sounds like a natural progression, helped along by the actor’s interest in the real Caligula and just happening to be in the right place at the right time. After meeting director Garth Maxwell in 1993 on the horror feature Jack Be Nimble, Arquette eventually heard that Maxwell was directing episodes of Xena, and decided that being on the show himself would be a great idea.
He’d already had an interest in Caligula the man, and in his own words, “became knowledgeable about what that character went through.”
Arquette found the history of Caligula fascinating even before he auditioned to play him in the Xenaverse. “He was a tyrant, and instilled fear in people through murder and mayhem,” Arquette points out. “He’s a heavy dude, you know? As Roman emperors go, he’s probably one of the worst.” Arquette pauses, still grinning from ear to ear, almost revelling in it the way you’d imagine Caligula would. “Any actor would want to play that role. It’s the quintessential Caesar; decadence and manipulation. It’s something you can really sink your teeth into.”
Arquette had to delve deep into the darker side of the human psyche in his effort to capture the true essence and motivation of the character. “To play someone like Caligula,” he says, “you have to get into his head, at least partially. I always tend to think that even when a character’s bad, he may think he’s right. It’s about being right and wrong, so you always have to justify everything, and make excuses for all the bad things they do, to make it real for the character.”
Even actors have their limits, however, and Arquette is rather reluctant to go too far into what makes a character like Caligula tick. “I don’t know that I’d want to get so into that head that I really understood him,” he reveals. “I don’t want to become that head; that would be creepy. That would be dealing with a whole other part of myself that I don't want to go to.”
As Arquette explains, you need to really make a decision about how much of yourself you give to a character. “I’d rather just feign a little,” he admits. “So the less I’d have to truly feel and experience of that dark side, the better. Sometimes it’s hard to do scenes where you try to get in touch with the creepy side of the world... and it’s hard-core, you know? You don’t want to touch that stuff too much. I understand that there’s something deep about playing roles like that, but I don't want to go there all the time!”
Although Arquette portrays Caligula as a psychopathic monster, within that personality there are also traits that make the character bemusing and hilarious. “People were telling me stories of Caligula, like the one where he made his own horse a governor!” Arquette says, laughing. “He made this little golden stable right next to the rest of the guys in the council, and they just had to sit there and deal with it.
“Imagine doing that nowadays in Washington DC or somewhere? But to Caligula it was just comical, and to understand that completely, you have to get inside the head of this crazy, maniacal killer. Then you find that there are similarities that we all have, like wanting to be special and have some kind of pre-destined path. On that level, I think the character of Caligula is sympathetic too.
“What I love about this Caligula is that as far as tyrants go, he can be so completely non-threatening. People are going, ‘What? That guy’s the leader of the world? That little brat - how dare he?’ So I get to be funny and laughed at, and it’s even more natural that Xena would kick his butt!”
Speaking of “this Caligula”, how close is Xena’s interpretation to the original historical figure? “There are many parallels to be drawn,” muses Arquette. “A person with an open mind to the history of the world could accept this reality if they chose to. You know,” he continues, smiling at the possibility, “nobody has ever proved that Xena: Warrior Princess was not at all of these famous historical events; who’s to say that she wasn’t there when many of history’s famous empires fell...?”
It’s this kind of thinking, Arquette says, that has helped to make Xena the success it has become. “Xena’s always felt like a magical world,” he says. “It’s not exactly our history, because it’s not exactly our planet. It’s like a cartoon version of our own universe; it's the Xena universe.
“I went to the Astronomical Society here in Auckland and they had these fabulous photographs of space that this astronomer had brought along. Looking at how a star is born, and what the process of creating a galaxy is, there are plenty of universes out there. So there could easily be a Xena one!
“Xena is definitely its own genre,” Arquette affirms. “There’s no other genre for it. It’s a uniquely shaped world. There are a lot of knock-off shows going for the Xena style, but they fall short because Xena is its own entity and you can’t really put your finger on what it is. It’s high camp but it’s also high drama. You’re able to make a joke and then turn around and do something really creepy and dark and spooky. Lucy [Lawless] knows that better than anyone, because that’s what her character is about. It’s like two sides of a coin: unpredictable, tough and hard as nails, but funny as the day is long. You're laughing, but you’re thinking, ‘Oh, what’s happening next?’ You’re always on your toes.”
Arquette speaks like a true fan, and that’s because he's been one since the series first began. “I watched it all the time,” he confirms, “I always followed the story. I was sad to hear that it was coming to an end, but at the same time I felt it was a cool series that can translate to any language in any time. It’s always the right thing to end something when it’s still good, and Xena is fabulous. So it’ll run forever.”
Caligula may be a pretty crazy guy, but if Arquette had the choice of playing any other character in the Xenaverse, who would he choose? “That’s a really interesting question,” he says, musing on the answer. “I would really have liked to play Cupid,” he says mischievously. “Just put that blond wig on me, and I’m good to go...”