Playing God
Charles Keating returns as Zeus in God Fearing Child. Interview by Kate Barker.
Official Xena Magazine: Issue 06
Charles Keating has certainly been around. An experienced actor of stage and screen, with an accent equal parts British and American, he definitely appears regal enough to be king. As fate would have it, on the set of the Xena episode God Fearing Child, Keating not only gets to play king, but King of the Gods at that.
“What’s it like to be Zeus?” Keating muses. “Well, it all depends on what they’ve given you to say, doesn’t it?”
What they’ve given Keating in God Fearing Child is the premise that Zeus and the other gods of Mount Olympus, scared of a prophecy foretelling their doom, are trying to prevent the birth and survival of Xena’s new baby. In a fashion perhaps closer to the more traditional stories of mythology, Zeus has no qualms about causing one death in order to prevent several more. “That seems a rather appalling notion,” Keating says of his character’s motivation. “I have to apologise to her [Lucy Lawless] before I do any of those scenes!”
As well as making life difficult for Xena, Keating also has a few dramatic scenes with screen son Hercules (a final guest appearance by Kevin Sorbo). In those scenes, the events of the aforementioned prophecy loom a little too close for comfort…
Death and destruction aside, Keating is clearly relishing the opportunity to reprise his role as Zeus. “I was here for the final episode [of Hercules] with Kevn,” he enthuses, “and that was a treat.”
In the UK, Keating is renowned for his roles in such British mini-series as Edward and Mrs Simpson and Brideshead Revisited, and for his theatre work. “I worked in the Royal Shakespeare Company,” he says, “then finally my wife and son said, ‘when are we going back to America?’ I’d gone over [to England] initially to open the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, and 12 years later I got back to the US.”
Keating is probably best known in the US for his role in the soap opera Another World. The series was recently cancelled after 35 years on the air, which just happened to leave Keating free for a little change of scenery.
“I’d never been to New Zealand before,” he says, “so when they called back [after Hercules] and said, ‘come and do it again, only in Xena,’ I was delighted. It’s great fun playing… inflated parts, shall we say.”
“It is a great delight being here. The atmosphere, this crew, Renaissance Pictures… they have such a low-key, easy-going approach to all of this very heightened stuff. It’s quite unique.” Keating pauses, thinking about what he’s just said. “You can’t say, ‘quite unique’, can you? It is unique.”
Speaking of unique, Keating has a rather interesting take on the philosophy of acting. When asked how he sees the scenes he’s about to play, the answer seems more simple than one might expect. “I suppose your feelings are, ‘What’s the scene, let’s have fun with the scene, enjoy the scene.’ I mean, it’s not like wrestling over very dense classical text, where you’ve got to winkle out obscure meanings. It’s up front, on the money - you just do what the bloke tells you! One tells you where to stand, another one tells you what to say, somebody puts the slap on you, somebody else puts the [costume] on you, and there you go!
“You get so tired of these actors on these interviews saying, ‘Oh, it’s so hard - it’s so difficult - the emotional stuff I have to dig up to do it…’ Working in a coal mine is difficult. Thinning turnips is difficult. On the factory floor in Detroit is difficult. This is a joy.”
If it’s a joy to play, it’s certainly a joy to watch. Nothing like seeing the King of the Gods enjoying himself in his role.