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Stunt Double for "Faith" played by Eliza Dushku |
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A Look At Where It Began ~ At the time she won her first title, there weren't that many woman competing as Karen explains, "Woman comprised less than 1% of martial artists at that time compared to now, it's about 50% of practitioners. So it's grown leaps and bounds involving woman period. I've seen a lot of growth and change come about." She was also very substantial in having made those changes. "At the time when I started competing the
Raised mostly in Oregon, she studied Wun Hop Kuen Do under Al Dacasos (father of Mark Dacascos of 'The Crow' television fame), which incorporates Jujitsu, Judo, Karate as well as Chinese boxing. In competition, her specialty weapon was the Chinese Steel Whip Chain. "For me it was seeing this certain weapon being used by a couple of male competitors. I thought it was really cool and never saw any woman compete with it so that's what I wanted to do. But I like all weapons really. Weapons are just an extension of your body so really all the basics are the same. Once you learn how to handle one you can pretty much handle all weapons." Karen studied in Colorado until a film opportunity brought her to California where she decided to stay. The expertise of another weapon, the single broad sword, landed her the very interesting role as Red Sonja in Universal Studios live show 'The Adventures of Conan'. "Yeah, when I auditioned," she recounts humorously, "it was like, 'oh no sweat she's hired!' (laugh) Because there were very few people that even had any formal training using weapons as far as the woman." Karen kicked some serious Barbarian ass but was it still exciting after an impressive 3,200 performance run? "It was! Actually doing the show was a blast, we had a lot of fun. I really enjoyed it when it was good, when the cast was good. Unfortunately, sometimes they hired people who really had no business holding a weapon in their hand who were a danger to other people and there were quite a few injuries. So it was a very dangerous show to do." One of her co-warriors was martial artist Mark Dacascos who later started in the movie 'Boogie Boy' which she appeared in. "It's different, real dark kind of thing. I have a very small part, no martial arts in it. I play a real, (laugh) a beer drinking, drug using, fowl mouthed biker chick. It was fun." From Conan's Red Sonja to Hercules' The Enforcer ~ Karen took the lead roll in an episode of televisions' Hercules, the Legendary Journeys and turned it into an outstanding performan
"The Hercules character kind of evolved," she explains, "It was very plain dialogue, you know, 'must kill Hercules,' it was like really dry and not very colorful. There was no explanation about the character other than she was made out of water and sent to kill Hercules. So I had to come up with something to make it more interesting for me and to give me some motivation. Actually that character evolved through the costume and the director. The costume designer phoned me up from New Zealand and she was fabulous, very talented lady and she asked me my input, 'do I have any suggestions for the costume, how do I envision it?' I gave her my suggestions, you know I said, 'well I have really great abs. (laugh) and my arms I want to be bare. I said it would be great to have some kind of knee padding covering for the stunts and it's got to be flexible and on and on. And she came up with a design that was just outstanding. When I got there I had a make up and wardrobe test and put the costume on. Then the make up artist put the wig on and it was like I started to feel really different, the
The Enforcer, "Must kill Hercules!" By the second episode, the director T.J. Scott was writing in a variety of extra things based upon Karen's movements and what she had created. "Then the people in the sound department put this cool sound effect in. Every time I would move my head that would make this water sloshing kind of noise. It was fun to be involved with something like that from the ground floor and the producers of the show are so great, so open minded about anybody bringing great ideas to the show as a team. There were no attitudes and in fact in the second episode my husband wrote my death scene and they loved it! All the changes I made, I suggested for the character to have her tired in with earlier story lines and they went with it because they're just so cool about that. If it's better for the show, they were like 'cool, let's do it.' Instead of, 'we can't listen,' instead of shutting off. That's what was part of the success of the show and everybody was that way on that crew including Kevin Sorbo. Very open minded, very easy to work with." Last season Karen most of her time doing all of Natalie Raitano's stunt work on V.I.P. and doubling Nia Peeples on the action series, Walker - Texas Ranger. What's impressive about Walker is the talents of the editors. When it comes to splicing together their fight sequences it's hard to tell where Nia ends and Karen begins but she is quick to explain that Nia is really talented. "She can do a lot of stuff because she's a dancer. So a lot of when you see her from the front, most of the time it's her, and most all the time it's me if it's from the back. But she's really good so she's really easy to double." |
