Real Gunn Kid
Interview mit J. August Richards
 
 
 

Would you believe J August Rilchards' favourite actor is Maggie Smith? The Angel star reveals all to Paul Simpson and Ruth Thomas

AUGUST RICHARDS SITS DOWN, LIGHTS UP A cigarette, revelling in the fact that he's allowed to smoke inside buildings here in Britain, and laughs when he's asked if he's got any hints for SFX readers about what Joss Whedon has up his sleeve for the next season of Angel. "The whole of the last week I've been trying to pump Joss for clues about the future, but 1 haven't gotten any," he complains jokingly. "But 1 haven't been pumping him, because 1 don't want him to think that 1 am pumping him - but 1 am pumping him! But 1 haven't gotten a single clue."

The handsome black actor (who's acquired some hair on top of his normally bald pate during the hiatus between seasons) is sitting in a palatial office at the Radisson Edwardian Hotel, which is hosting this year's Nocturnal 3K Buffy The Vampire Slayer convention. For the past week he and a number of other members of the Buffy and Angel casts have been on a signing tour of Great Britain in the company of the shows' creator Joss Whedon - who has been spectacularly unforthcoming about the future for any of them. Richards doesn't really mind: it's a game that all of the cast seem to enjoy playing.

Richards enjoys his job, even though he doesn't know what's coming next. Born in Washington, and raised in a suburb of Maryland, Jaime Augusto Richards was originally torn between two unusual careers: actor or inventor. At the age of 14, he decided to be known as J August, since no-one outside his immediate family could pronounce his names in the correct Panamanian style. His career path was decided when a casting director spotted him at summer camp and gave him a role on The Cosby Sbow. Richards moved to California and started taking acting classes taught by ER's Eriq La Salle. Guest shots on The Practice and Nash Bridges followed before Richards got his big break. While acting on stage at Los Angeles' Mark Tapert Auditorium early in 2000 he was spotted by the casting agent for the Buffy spin-off series.

Changes were in store for Angel towards the end of its first season, as it continued to try to find its own direction away from its parent show. After the demise of Doyle, and the introduction of Wesley, the producers still felt that something was lacking in the mix. The answer: Charles Gunn, the streetwise leader of a band of vampire hunters, who was hardly likely to believe that anyone who possessed fangs was going to be on the side of the angels.

"My manager called me and told me they were looking for a new character on Angel," Richards recalls. "I had never watched the show, because I was in an acting class on Tuesday nights when it was on. So I went in for the audition, and it was kind of weird. The script 1 have audition with was basically three solid pages of Gunn going off, railing at Angel. 'Get away from me - you vampire. I hate vampires! Get away from me! I can't stand you! You suck!'There were three whole pages of that and I was having a hard time making it work. I wasn't going to go in for the audition initially, because I think that I could do a good job.

"Right before I went in, I had this epiphany," he continues. "I thought: why don't I do the same dialogue, with the same negative words, but instead ask him if he'll take me on. So I used the same words, but in a manner that was trying to push Angel away the same time pull him closer."

Once he had passed that hurdle, Richards also had to deal with preconceptions from the WB about his clean-cut appearance, as he is naturally a conservative dresser, and the part of Gunn called for someone whose dress sense and style were a million miles away from that. "When I auditioned for the part, my hair was red," he laughs. "I had dyed it because the network knew me from other work I´' done. I am a very clean-cut person, but we all have sides to us. Gunn is a side to me, and i felt that I could bring that out with red hair. I wanted to show them something different!"

Gunn's first appearance was in the 20th episode of Angel's first season, "War Zone". "He was homeles was a vampire hunter," Richards explains. "I had to fill in a lot of the blanks as to how he became homeless, an he hunted vampires. The answer that came to me was that Gunn is a very family oriented person. He will go to any means to protect his family, and when we first met him, that person he was protecting was his sister. He was on the streets with her, and he became a vampire hunter in order to protect her. The way I look at Gunn is that he ist just a protector of what he loves. Consequently, heIs taken Wesley, Cordelia and Angel into that family, and has decided to protect them as well. That's why he stays there."

Initially, Richards believed that Gurnn was only appear in that one episode, but executive producers Joss Whedon and David Greenwalt had other plans. "There were talks of him becoming a recurring character or even a regular character," Richards recalls, "but you never know in Hollywood what's going to happen. Either the wrong person doesn't like you, or it's not going to go well, so I just thought of it as a one-time gig. I did the first episode, and then they told me I was in the next episode -and then I did the third, and finally I came as a regular in the second season."

Richard has enjoyed Gunn's journey during the second year, as he has become more and more involved with Angel Investigations. "I thin it´s cool", he says, sitting back in the chair and running his fingers through his hair. "When you first meet him, he´s kind of intimidating, and you don't know where he's coming from. But I think I've gotten the chance to warm up and be more friendly with these three people. I think his relationship with each of them is different, but I think he's loosened up in a way, and helps solve the cases that Angel Investigations get. I like that he's grown that way."

The actor is surprised that many viewers believed that a romance between Gunn and Cordelia was in the offing. "Everyone did, but I don't know why," he says. Maybe it had something to do with the way in which some of the episodes were edited together so that whenever Cordy was in danger, it was Gunn's reactions that the directors focused on? "I think that she's an attractive woman, and I think that Gunn finds her attractive. But beyond that, I've never really been certain where that might go. In the last scene of 'First Impressions', where Cordelia's supposedly saving my life, there was a moment of reconciliation that might have been interpreted as attraction. Gunn doesn't think that Cordelia's got anything to offer him, because she's a beautiful woman wearing high heels, but 1 do think that that was a reconciliation between them: he can see where she's coming from, and they're all on the same team."

The end of season two took Angel Investigations away from the urban terrors of Los Angeles and into the home world of the Host - a territory that Richards describes fondly as "very Lord Of The Rings-ish. The fantasy was fun, coming out of what was going on previous to that," he adds. It was just pure letting down of hair - although I'm usually bald! It was really incredible to play that and take part in it." He can't decide which of the two genres he prefers. I think I love the last four episodes just because they were so different from what we were doing all season. But I absolutely love this genre. It brings out that child in us all, where we get to fight, use swords and do that whole thing. It's more fun than anything."

The next season of Angel will be different from its predecessors in part because in America Buffy and Angel are going to be produced for different networks. Although it will normally be aired on the same night as Buffy, in the time slot immediately after the Slayer, Angel will he going head to head with Roswell, which UPN is hoping will benefit from the lead in from Buffy. Pre-emptions for different sporting events on the two channels could also disrupt the scheduling of the series, so the direct crossovers that have characterised the last two seasons - where events on Buffy have directly led into those on Angel - are going to be difficult, if not impossible to arrange. Richards doesn't think that that will alter the creativity on display."I definitely think that the degree of parallel will be 100% intact," he maintains. "Because we're on two different networks I don't think that that can really affect how Joss corresponds the two shows thematically. However I think that whenever Joss is given a roadblock, he becomes more creative, so I think that as a result of there not being able to be direct crossovers, you're going to see things that are just going to blow your minds in terms of creativity. He's so inventive and creative that he's going to come up with something that will make the two shows intersect." He sits there, wracking his brains for a moment trying to think of how, then gives up with a laugh.

Richards' friends and family sometimes find it hard to equate the person they know with his character on the show. "They think I'm so different," he says. "In some ways they don't recognise me as me, because I'm not really like that. But I am. I think it's the same person: I love my family and friends so much that I'll go to any lengths to protect them. That's who I am; that's who Gunn is."

Fleshing the character out has been part of Richards' enjoyment. "I think the anger is still there on a certain level, but when we first meet him, because of the circumstances regarding his sister, that was a lot of what was going on inside him. I think it's like that with anyone: when you get to know them, they show more sides. The hardest guys I know, if you catch them at the wrong time, you wouldn't think were tough at all. Everybody has sides, and I like to bring out more of those sides. The more Gunn gets to know the other characters, the looser he can become."

Playing against type appeals to Richards. 1 really don't like to play something you've seen a lot of times before," he points out. "I really hate that. I like to play original characters who have no foundation in people's minds. In a play prior to doing this job, I played a rapping bike messenger who's been abducted by aliens, and who now believes himself to be an alien. That's the kind of charaet like most because you have no point of reference for that. I felt the same way about Gunn. A lot of times people compare him to Blade in a way, which is so lazy, because the only thing that Blade and Gunn have in common is tidhi they're both black."

Richards is utterly amazed by the reaction of the fans around Great Britain to the cast. "They're just being so nice to us," he says, "we've had a load of fun." Their tour has taken them in a stretch limo from Wolverhampton to Glasgow at the dead of night, and on a bus around London, organised by Alexis Denisof and Alyson Hannigan. "I wish I had gotten to see more of Scotland," Richards says. "We didn't get to see much of it. I just love how cities here have so much history and style. I've been thinking about Jimi Hendrix a lot recently, because he c over here and became a star in England. I realised why England is so inspiring to American artists: everything is exploration of an idea. The architecture and the streets, way you speak, the words you choose, your clothing everything is an exploration of an idea. If you lived in the, States, you'd understand the difference, because everything there is about the homogeny of an idea."

He becomes increasingly passionate when he talks about those people he regards as heroes. "Sean Penn, Morgan Freeman, Denzel Washington, Johnny Depp, Judi Dench and Maggie Smith - I love actors like that," he says "I am very impressed and touched by people who give community service, and by people who do something for the world. People who teach us more about ourselves, and take us to a higher plane. I'm thinking of Martin Luther King, Muhammad Ali, Mother Teresa - people like that. People who take us to another level as a species. Everybody should be free to live no matter what they believe in. Everybody should have a certain amount of rights, no matter who they are."
 

Article by: SFX, August 2001, S. 52 und 56
Source: Katie (mit freundlicher Genehmigung)