Alexis Cruz joins us to discuss his time with the franchise, the duality of portraying “Skaara” and “Klorel,” and share his wisdom with our LIVE audience!

Alexis appeared on the show last month for the Stargate SG-1 Live Roleplay Session! Link below.

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Timecodes
0:00 – Opening Credits
0:33 – Welcome and Episode Outline
02:03 – Guest Introduction
10:56 – Formative Years
23:01 – What roles resonate with you and why?
31:42 – Stand Up for Justice
35:36 – Personal Heroes
38:56 – Getting the Stargate Feature Film
45:56 – Final Audition and Screen Test
47:43 – Potential Impact of the Film
56:33 – Differences between Kurt’s Jack O’Neil and Rick’s Jack O’Neill
1:02:17 – Thoughts on Shark
1:03:09 – Differences Between the Two Skaara Roles
1:09:10 – Klorel and Skaara
1:14:24 – Ending Skaara, Ending the Abydonians
1:19:24 – Which of the characters that you have played captures you the closest?
1:24:18 – Switching Between Klorel and Skaara
1:28:31 – Pranks On Set
1:31:30 – Zippo Lighter
1:33:13 – Working with Erick Avari
1:36:10 – Any Relation to Wilson Cruz?
1:38:32 – Thank You, Alexis!
1:39:43 – Post-Interview Housekeeping
1:46:34 – End Credits

***

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TRANSCRIPT
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David Read:
Welcome, everyone, to episode 24 of Dial the Gate. My name is David Read. Thank you so much for joining us today. It’s our third show and I am very fortunate to be with one of my favorite human beings, Alexis Cruz. He’s going to be joining us in just a moment. Before I bring him in, I’m just going to let you know how this is going to run. So, if you are part of the YouTube livestream audience right now, you can submit questions to Alexis in the chat and we’ll be getting to them over the course of the next around 90 minutes or so of the program. Afterwards, I have some Skaara artwork, that I would – well, Klorel, depending on how you care to look at it – artwork that I’d like to show you at the end of the show, and we’ll talk a little bit about next week’s guests. But before we bring in Alexis, if you like Stargate and you want to see more content like this on YouTube, it would mean a great deal if you click the Like button. It really makes a difference with YouTube’s algorithm and will definitely help the show grow its audience. Please also consider sharing this video with a Stargate friend, and if you want to get notified about future episodes, click the Subscribe icon. Giving the Bell icon a click will notify you the moment a new video drops and you’ll get my notifications of any last-minute guest changes. This is key if you plan on watching live. These talent are working and so changes can happen. And clips from this livestream will be released over the course of the next several days and weeks on Dial the Gate and GateWorld.net on their respective YouTube channels. Without further ado, Mr. Alexis Cruz. My friend. One of the people that, I think, still has a sane voice out there who can speak truth to reason. So. How are you, my friend?

Alexis Cruz:
I’m doing great, thanks, man.

David Read:
Right, I know! Jeez. It was wonderful to have you on for our game of… I guess a month ago? A month and a half ago now? What a stellar experience…

Alexis Cruz:
Oh my God, it’s been a… yeah.

David Read:
…to have so many heavyweights in one space playing a simulated Stargate adventure. That was cool. How are you holding up through this whole thing, Daddy?

Alexis Cruz:
Really easily. Really easily. So, we were talking… it’s… the whole world stood still and most people are like, “Stop and smell the roses, take it [in].” General platitudes throughout one’s life, of being present, in the moment, takes all of us years and years of trial and error. And so, since the world sort of stood still, and I became a new dad at the same time, it’s been remarkably easy because I stopped with it and allowed myself to be where I’m supposed to be. Any other times, I’d be raging about this or that, or “Politics this, spirituality that.” Who knows. But none of that matters any more. My job is now to just produce the world of my son, and I might otherwise be worried about work, worried about friends and networking, who knows. All these things that we are generally concerned about, none of that matters to me anymore, it’s all about being with my son every day right now. All that’s obviously going to change, life does move on…

David Read:
Of course.

Alexis Cruz:
…we have to go on and do other projects and what have you, but for now, to take a year… I’ve had a year, now, of just focusing with my baby and my wife, and it’s been remarkable, just really chill. Obviously, we are concerned for other people in the world who are not so fortunate, but we have to acknowledge the peace that we get. For me, my world is freaking amazing right now. Just amazing, you know? And I’ve been waiting for it, and I have to say, I’ve earned it! Man, we had some trenches and some corpses we had to…

David Read:
I know. Yeah, get through, for sure. It’s been a trying year for us on so many levels, and it’s one of the reasons that I started the show when I did. It’s important… and you’re right, those colloquialisms, “Stop and smell the roses. Count your blessings.” All that stuff. It’s so easy right now to say, and many of us are saying, “I’m having a hard time feeding my family.”

Alexis Cruz:
Sure, yeah, and that’s legit.

David Read:
“I’m going stir crazy. I have lost my purpose because my purpose was work,” or, “My purpose was something that required large groups of people to get together.” And it’s so easy to just be dismissive and get real jaded about everything that’s going on. I love…

Alexis Cruz:
That was me, my life was work. Work was my life, and when I wasn’t working I was miserable. And now, none of it – for me, anyway – my kid is my life, and making him happy and teaching him, even when he’s not happy, he’s throwing these tantrums and all these things, and working out the challenges and the math of that.

David Read:
Right, it’s not just making him happy, but making… “We have to begin the process of making you a productive member of society!”

Alexis Cruz:
Right, exactly.

David Read:
How has that, in any way, surprised you? As a process.

Alexis Cruz:
The surprise was how right I was about how easily I took to it, like, how naturally it’s been coming. That was really the surprise, because I always knew I’d be good at it, it was always something I wanted to do, I always saw myself as a parent. I waited a long, long time to get the conditions just right.

David Read:
Yeah, you’re not a young man, by any means. No offence.

Alexis Cruz:
Yeah, and taking what life throws at you along the way. So, then it was like, “Oh, I was right! I was THIS right! I was INCREDIBLY right! This is amazing!” And that was the surprise. You know, “Wow!”

David Read:
Are you going to have any more?

Alexis Cruz:
I’m good at this. Huh?

David Read:
Are you going to have any more?

Alexis Cruz:
No, no. I think we’re… so, there’s a half answer to that. We’re one and done, the regular way, but we’re open to adoption. We are open to…

David Read:
God bless you.

Alexis Cruz:
…to increasing our family. And we have a lot of love between myself and my wife, Judy. My own family at large, her family at large, which is amazing. Not everybody gets along with their in-laws, but mine are amazing, I love them and they love me.

David Read:
That’s important.

Alexis Cruz:
Yeah.

David Read:
If you get that, that’s great.

Alexis Cruz:
So, we’re surrounded with a lot of love and support, so we’re very open to adding to that. You know, as conditions improve as well, once we get through all these things, depending on the next few years with Luke and how he grows up and what he’s feeling. For me, I’m one of three – there was two of us initially and my sister came many, many, many, many years later – but at first, so, for nine years, I was the only child. And I hated being an only child, I couldn’t stand it, I knew I wanted a sibling, I wanted to walk this world with partners. So, that was a huge deal for me. I don’t know that it’s going to be that kind of a thing for Lucas, right? His mom is one of four daughters, so…

David Read:
Wow.

Alexis Cruz:
…for her, it was the opposite experience, right? So, we’ll see, it’s going to be a lot to just sort of see how life goes, but we’re so totally open to it.

David Read:
Good for you. Right now, it’s so important to find things that ground you, and I think you – for better or for worse – kind of fell right into this, and you’re right, you affirmed some aspects of yourself that you suspected were there all along, and now it’s just let’s go ahead and move forward. But you also said that you’re acting a little bit as well? Can you say anything about that?

Alexis Cruz:
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I can’t, actually.

David Read:
OK! But something’s happening.

Alexis Cruz:
Yeah, yeah, no, so this time I’m shooting this week, but I can’t talk about it because I haven’t done it yet! So, once I’ve finished… just because I’m a little superstitious about work and stuff, and just given the world the way it is…

David Read:
Right, I can’t blame you at all!

Alexis Cruz:
…until it’s done, I’m gonna sign out at the end of my day and then I can talk about… once it’s in the can, that’s it. Then we can go. Otherwise, [zips lips].

David Read:
One of the things that I have been endeavoring to do with this project is to provide an Oral History for the franchise and for the people who brought it and are – hopefully, again – going to bring it to life, and you are one of the pivotal keys to that. Not only because of your talent and the contributions that you made to the fabric of the franchise, but also, I think you provided legitimacy to the television universe, because you and Erick – later on Erick – provided the same voices that were created for those characters – voices, like in terms of the interpretations, in terms of who those people were – from the movie…

Alexis Cruz:
Their point of view.

David Read:
…into the TV show. So, it is a delight to have you on to discuss Skaara’s legacy, and Klorel’s legacy, and Alexis’s legacy, as far as the franchise goes. So, thank you for being here.

Alexis Cruz:
Thanks for having me.

David Read:
Before we get into the thick of it, I would like to know a little bit about who you were as a young person. Where you grew up, who your early influences were and how that shaped the man that you’ve become.

Alexis Cruz:
Wow. Alright, so, I grew up in the Bronx, in New York City, back when it was… when Times Square was ‘Sin Central’, like, it was just that city that you saw on TV and in the movies, that’s where I grew up, deep in the Bronx, doing all that. And there weren’t very many of us doing these sorts of things, becoming actors – kids out of the Bronx, Puerto Rican kids out of the Bronx – there weren’t many people doing that. But my mom was a songwriter when she was younger, was never able to go professional because her generation just didn’t do that. Unless you already came from a showbiz family who knew how to navigate it, right? But it was not the open industry that it is today, that entertainment today. So, that didn’t happen, so, when I was a baby she had these dreams for us and I agreed to it. I enjoyed it, I had this little talent, but I was an introvert too, I had to balance that as well. And as much as you could be an introvert where we were growing up, because you had to either socialize and be successful at it, or get picked on and, you know, to the back of the line. All that was part of those dynamics of surviving. So, eventually she found an ad in a newspaper for Showbiz Magazine, at the time – it was the equivalent of Backstage, at the time – it was an ad for a Personal Manager and she sent in a photo of me and they called me in for an audition and I went in and rocked it at nine years old. I sang, I danced, I did all my stuff, like, “What’s up!” And they signed me for three years right there, and the legitimate immediately auditions for commercials and stuff, so they come and da-da-da, and it was amazing, it just sort of blew our minds. And then I booked The Cosby Show, which was a huge thing…

David Read:
Yes. Huge win.

Alexis Cruz:
…at the time, yeah, and it took off from there. So, again, this was brand new for anyone like me, at that time and that place. But, for me, it was very much about, this was my ticket out of the Bronx, my family’s ticket to social mobility, this was my American Dream. And I’ve talked about this before, but what most people, and most kids, they think about, they dream about the art and entertainment – especially as kids – you’re usually coming at it from this perspective of fame and celebrity and lots of money and all these things, and the glitz in your eyes, that kind of thing, which is natural and it’s normal and all of that is there and it’s legit. But, for me, it was always about peace and security, it was never about that. Those were things that were going to come along with it, right? Because where I was, from my perspective at the time, there were plenty of people who had celebrity and money, and they would be driving their drug dealer cars – there were drug dealers and criminals all around me – so, in terms of being able to grasp it, that stuff was everywhere, but that didn’t bring peace and security.

David Read:
Right.

Alexis Cruz:
Right? And that’s what I wanted and I knew early on that’s what would help me develop, that would help eventually… I’m 10 years old thinking about this kind of stuff. This is ridiculous.

David Read:
That’s a lot on a 10-year-old’s shoulders.

Alexis Cruz:
“And then eventually, my kids… I don’t want my kids to be in the Bronx…” So that became what I was focused on, and I don’t think I was… I was driven, I was extremely driven, but I don’t… Now, in hindsight, looking back, consider myself that special, in that, there are so many kids that are that driven, and when you get a kid between eight and 12 years old who gets an idea in their head, that they’re like, “This is what I want to do, this is me.” You can’t stop that, because with that age comes all of this fire and energy and verve. And if that kid has the right support structure, it locks in, and that’s what happened to me, it locked in and I became my raison d’etre, my whole vocation was, “I’m going to be an artist, I’m going to be a professional artist.” And then I had to figure out what that was. Because it wasn’t like, “I’m going to be an actor,” I wanted to be an artist, because I did have influences and mentors, I had some incredible teachers. I was able to attend, for high school, finally, the Fiorello LaGuardia High School of Performing Arts and Music in New York City, the ‘Fame’ school, and it is a ‘fame’ school because of that. We had… our programs, for all of the departments, of music and art and dance and vocal and acting, were top notch. These were the equivalent of what you would find at private conservatories, that do all of their showcases and stuff. It was hardcore. One of my favorite teachers was an old Russian director, who came straight out of the Moscow Art Theater. He went from there to come teach at my school.

David Read:
Hard as nails, probably.

Alexis Cruz:
Yo! Yeah, and like ‘80’s ‘old-man-in-the-‘80’s’ hard as nails, not like ‘old-man-now-2020’, where even soft enough, like, “Oh, you know, my firm hand is still velvet.” No, no, no, no, no, this was like, if he could have beat us with a stick… that wasn’t legally allowed, but if he could have, he would have. And it became the Moscow Art Theater, it was all physical training and some acrobatic stuff. But he was hardcore about the techniques and the methods, the history of the theater. He had a love for the theater. And the two things that he taught me was that the theater was a temple and you can’t worship properly unless you belong to it. And so that helped set me in terms of, this institution that fills me, that educates me, that is my venue that I would work through, etcetera, it became something real, and then as an artist I had to figure out, had to make that expression real of the theater as a temple. You can’t belong to it unless you worship. What does that mean, how do I reverberate that idea in my life and in my voice, and it became so. And over time my own spirituality started melting with my training as an actor, an artist, so that as I started… you know, we have our techniques of breaking down our characters, but it developed my empathy engine, which is a whole other thing that we have to connect, in addition to learning lines and knowing where your light is, tempo and pacing, all these sort of technical things. On top of that, this empathy engine needs to be fueled, so the spirituality mixed with that, and in creating… So, when I went to the theater, just walking in, the smell of the scrims, the creaking of the floorboard, the give of the stage, the feel of the material on the seats, all of these things brought me back to, I’m like 6 years old in Catholic church and the drama of it and all the splendor, the art, the warmth that was all of that, right? And the communion that happens, and then you’re there and you’re watching the performance and you’re welling up and then you’re excited and then you’re sad. All these things that happen, this is church. So, that’s what I decided I wanted to be, was a minister of this church. And then the second thing was, that the same teacher had impressed on us was, “Actors are the repositories of culture.” And I was like, “What?” And it gave me enough pause that I decided to spend the rest of my life answering that question too. “What does that mean, right? Actors are the repositories of culture. Well, how do I do that? What do I need to learn? What does that mean?” Well, in the short term, it’s we have to learn as much about people, how people live, how people have always lived, in this place, in that time, in these given circumstances, how do we carry them with us and our ability to reflect that, like, to shine a light on me, boom, you get your moment in time. So, if you’re familiar with… do you remember Fahrenheit 451?

David Read:
Yes.

Alexis Cruz:
Ray Bradbury, right? And so – spoiler alert – but, towards the end, where everyone is assigned a novel, right? All of the refugees, the survivors that Montag finds near the end when he escapes, each one is a living book, right? “Hi, I’m The Great Gatsby,” and he’s memorized the entire thing…

David Read:
They are the order for that piece.

Alexis Cruz:
Right, and so this is a similar idea, in that, as actors we develop this ability to have these personas, and they come with their own stories, and their own moments in times, and their own contexts. The more we collect of that, it’s sort of being like an anthropologist as a verb, in motion, right? So, we are the living histories of the places and the people around us. So, in my case, man, I’m the repository of Gen X, with everything that comes with it. I know a lot about it, I know how people are, I know the feelings and the vibes, all these things. So, it all goes into the work and it comes out in little ways you might not expect as we sort of thread them through. You don’t think about this stuff consciously when you’re watching a performance, but it’s the thing that you feel, so, when people are watching my work – I hope – and they feel connected to Skaara, or they feel connected to Rafael, or whatever character I’m playing, whatever story they’re watching, the substance of that connection, that feeling, is part of this alchemy that I’ve started cooking up and I’ve put into the lines and into the scene, all this stuff and that feeling those vibes connect. It’s hard to describe because in the practice and in my head it’s so… the science alchemy it’s just difficult to get out, but there’s a method to it, so that it’s very intentional. Does that make sense?

David Read:
Yeah, you take a page and your goal as an actor is to do justice to the dialogue and your part in a story, to help push that story across to the audience. What roles, in this experiment that you’ve been invested in for the past few decades, in trying to discover what your role is, in terms of conveying stories, and conveying culture through stories, what roles – besides Skaara’s – really resonate with you, and why?

Alexis Cruz:
Of the ones that I’ve done?

David Read:
The ones that you’ve done.

Alexis Cruz:
OK. Sure. So, Rafael on Touched by and Angel was an important one.

David Read:
Oh, yes.

Alexis Cruz:
And on the surface, firstly, in the obvious sense because of what it was and the audience that it went out to and it was such a big show, but also because – again, context and timing – back then, when that first started happening and I‘d first gotten that, we were still very much in the throes of, “What will Middle America, what will the Bible Belt say about this thing of color,” right? “Will it play in Peoria?” Now, most people understood, because… what is that word? We’re talking some time… ’97 to 2000-ish, right? So, there’s plenty of people who already know the answer of, “It’s the same as everywhere else.” The Bible Belt is not a bunch of back-water hicks, even though that’s… right?

David Read:
Some people like to think that.

Alexis Cruz:
Any more than New York is a bunch of animals running round the streets! But, that was in the air, that was the culture and that was the perception in the industry, when you’d have casual conversations with people, that’s the nonsense, superficial impression people have. So, we were still very much in the throes of, “Who are the people of color that we look up to?” A lot of those barriers hadn’t been broken yet. We were in the process of breaking all of those things down. And so, it was just at the end of that, and here comes my character, and the Producers were really wonderful about it because they understood this too, that they were making a show that was universal and it wasn’t designed to be about, “Well, lets hammer this thing of, here’s God’s message, from a Black woman, from a Chinese man. We just want to get the word out and just do the show.” But all those politics were involved. So, with that, what I was proud about was, they got me on the show and I managed to do that, and sure enough, our ratings and the feedback for my part in it were stellar. It was amazing. And it really took… there were a lot of people who really just ate their words. Not when it came to me, because it wasn’t… or, I never felt anything on there where it was a personal thing of, like, “Alexis can or can’t do…” It was, “Can we have these kinds of angels? Can we tell these types of stories to our audience that’s mostly based in Utah?” Which is not true, but that’s what they would say.

David Read:
But you got a business that’s creating this show. For better or for wrong, they make certain assumptions.

Alexis Cruz:
Right. So, the Producers were really wanting to push that and say, “No, this is bigger than that, this is better than that, and people are better than that.” And she was right. She was 100% right, and I was there for it.

David Read:
That’s right.

Alexis Cruz:
And it at least cracked open some windows, let’s put it that way. And I’ll give you a sort of funny side story. Do you remember the comedian, Paul Rodriguez?

David Read:
Yeah.

Alexis Cruz:
Yeah, OK. So, I was driving in my car one day and I’m listening to the radio, and this guy is on the radio, he’s called in, right? No, he’s a guest on the show. He goes into his comic routine bit, and it was all about, “You’ve never seen Latinos in these shows, you’ve never seen Latinos here, you never see Latinos here.” And, of course, so, he had to go, “Touched by an Angel, right? There’s all these white people doing this and this and this.” And I was in my car, and I’m like, “This mother…!”

David Read:
Yeah. Come on.

Alexis Cruz:
So, that was a thing. And here I was on the show, and I’m like, “You don’t even watch it, man!”

David Read:
Della Reese. We tuned in… I was 11 years old when that show started. I mean, you came into it, obviously, later. But, Della Reese made that… Roma Downey made it too, but we were waiting for her to pull out a loaf of bread and start munching on it. Yeah, come on. My household loved Rafael as well. It broke some barriers.

Alexis Cruz:
Thank you, thank you. And with the story too, in terms… because we had a… the Producers had sat down with me early on, right before I started, to ask me and work with me on what did I want this character to be about because they had a few ideas of where he sort of fit into their cosmology for the show, because there was… the conceit of the show was that God ran this social service bureaucracy…

David Read:
It’s a hierarchy, yeah.

Alexis Cruz:
Right. Well, no, it was literally this was the conceit, it was a bureaucracy, like, you would go to Social Security office and you have all the people there, and you have some lady with the glasses putting the, “Oh, do you have a…”

David Read:
That’s right, yeah!

Alexis Cruz:
This was how they imagined it set up, and that God sends us, sends these little agents out to be doing what we were doing. So, it was like, “Alright, that’s neat.” So, part of when we had come up with my character was that he was a kind of a Special Agent, undercover Special Agent. So, they would send him in to embed himself in places where other angels and other people wouldn’t go, or shouldn’t go.

David Read:
He was able to talk with people that I would think that Roma Downey or Della would not have been able to.

Alexis Cruz:
Right, right.

David Read:
Because he was younger as well, and so he was able to talk with a lot of younger guys, too.

Alexis Cruz:
And people and places that, again, that were unsavory, that were dangerous, you know what I mean? So, we were sort of giving a light to this idea of the angel with the dirty face, right? Which I really dug, because I love playing… so, I was able to take this character and make it like this Alias before Alias, was the idea. And he would just show up and be in this constant… and I tried as best I could to change my look for as many episodes, every time, you know? And then one time, I came back from a summer hiatus and the producers were really mad because that summer I got really tired of… I was always a small, skinny guy, and that summer I was like, “I’m tired of this, I’m tired of just being a runt.”

David Read:
Did you buff up?

Alexis Cruz:
Yeah! I got a trainer, I went, “Boom, boom,” I hit it hard, I got ripped! Way buff. And I came back after the hiatus and they were all like, “What happened to you?” And they were all happy, they were like, “You look amazing! But we weren’t ready for this, for the show. You’re like a whole different person!”

David Read:
Yeah. Oh my God. Physical transformation.

Alexis Cruz:
There were some lessons there, too. And then there was… so, just to…

David Read:
No, please.

Alexis Cruz:
Then the next one was unlike either of those things, you had Stand Up for Justice: The Story of Ralph Lazo. And this was a short film, it was just a short. So, again, in contrast to, “Here’s this big broadcast TV thing,” and “Here’s this other franchise thing,” this was just a short film, but it was based on the life of Ralph Lazo, who was a Mexican American in the 1940’s who volunteered to go with the Japanese Americans that were interned at Manzanar. He was a teenager, a bunch of his friends were all taken away and he just up and decided to go with them, because that’s what you do, you take care of your friends. And that was his protest, and he stayed with them for three years as one of them, as a prisoner in the camp. And they just left him there until they all enlisted, him and his friends had to enlist, go serve overseas, in order to get their own freedom as American citizens, it was really crazy. So, this story was super important, and as a Latino American it was a story that I didn’t even know myself. I didn’t know about this guy. But, the entire Japanese American community of Los Angeles knew this guy. There was such a deep reverence. Like, I learned part of my own cultural history from them, and that blew my mind, right? So, being able to do a biopic – because this was a real person – I love biopics, I love the idea of… because, again, back to the intertwining of the spirituality, the repositories of culture. When you have a biopic, you have to play somebody real.

David Read:
Correct.

Alexis Cruz:
A lot of people might focus on their mannerisms, the way they speak, all these things, where I sort of go more for vibe, the representation. I do those things also, as best as you can, but ultimately I’ve found – not just with my process, but as I’ve watched biopics in general – all the best ones are not the ones that had every tic down, but the ones that just sat in the spirit of this person, and just presented this person to you, that you just believed in. They didn’t even have to look anything alike, but they had the same presence, the same manner, all these kinds of things…

David Read:
It’s coming across.

Alexis Cruz:
Yeah, yeah. And so, I’m proud of that kind of work, and I want… so, in terms, again, as an artist is to be able to do those kinds of things that let people sort of elevate their experience beyond what was just visually entertaining. Not everything has to be “deep, deep, deep” all the time, but I think that the deep things that I choose to focus on, that I think are interesting, I choose them for you guys because I think those are things that you’ll find interesting also.

David Read:
Well, you have to make selections.

Alexis Cruz:
Yeah.

David Read:
You have to do what you can with the time that you are given, and the budget that you are given, because, obviously, things are finite. But what time do I have? What resources are at my disposal? But also, how do I fit into the larger story? So, there’s also that box to color in as well.

Alexis Cruz:
Yeah.

David Read:
You mentioned your Russian instructor. Alexis, who are your heroes? Who are the people in your life who helped really to shape you into the man you’ve become?

Alexis Cruz:
My mother and my father. Primarily, my mother and my father, for all of the reasons that anyone who could say that would say about it. I had a great mom who put me on my path, I had a great dad who taught me about being mad, and being caring and strong at the same time, all these sorts of things. So, they were huge pillars for me, and it was in watching their relationship as well, as I was growing up, so that taught me how to treat other people, how to treat my partners and what was to expect. All these things which, again, are normal, but all these things that I was learning that were impacting, I had to put it into my work, so it was important that I pay attention to all these things. Beyond that, I take a lot… I was always really naïve and really impressionable. Not so anymore, but for most of my life, I was. But unfortunately I can’t say that didn’t come with burns, and consequences to that, that is impacted on me to close my borders a bit and be much more discerning.

David Read:
Selective.

Alexis Cruz:
And selective about that, and so there was constant wrestling with protecting myself while still engaging, while having other people that I wanted to engage with not think that I’m just being an elitist jerk, and I’m like, “No, I’m not, I just…” You know?

David Read:
You have to do right by you. And not always everyone knows how to do that, but after they’ve been throttled a few times, it’s like, “Oh, yeah, wait a second, I need to take care of me, too.” It’s important.

Alexis Cruz:
So, to answer the question more succinctly, in hindsight, looking back now, beside my parents, the people who made the most impacts along the way, ta-ta-ta-ta-ta, were just always the people who challenged me and got in my way, and told me no, and all these… The things that I learned about navigating through things to get to what needed to be done, often on behalf of other people. It was very rare when I’m like, “I want this for me.” Very rare. It was always like, “This needs to happen for all these people’s benefit, so let’s go and do this.” And then there would be obstacles in the way. So, each of those people, you know? Those things really made a difference. And I think I sort of ended up… like, those are the little star charts that I navigate the galaxy with, is that kind of stuff. And then, occasionally, there’s, “Here’s this beautiful planet, here’s another bright star, here’s these things.”

David Read:
Let’s go visit there for a while.

Alexis Cruz:
Yeah.

David Read:
Tell us about getting Stargate. How old were you? 16?

Alexis Cruz:
Sure, we’ll go with that.

David Read:
15 or 16.

Alexis Cruz:
Sure, yeah. I was 15, and so my agent calls me, and I hadn’t worked at all in, like, a year-and-a-half, or something like that, I hadn’t booked anything at all. And, for me, this was a living nightmare because I’d been an actor, now – again, I’m a teenager now, so it was, “I’ve been an actor since I was nine years old.” – and now I’m not working any more, I thought this was the end of my career, the end of my life. “What’s happening, nobody’s calling.” And it was bugging me, a lot, it was causing a thing. It was absurd, but that’s what happens. And this is part of being young in something and growing up in the industry. There’s a lot of kids that don’t get past those ages because of all these anxieties and…

David Read:
All kinds of horror stories that go along with it.

Alexis Cruz:
Right, right, all of that stuff. So, I was tripping on it, but my agent calls me, he’s like, “Look, I have this audition for you, and I have to give you the audition, I can’t pass on your behalf, but I think this is garbage, but I have to give this to you. So, basically, they want you to do this thing, and it’s three lines and none of them are in English, and it’s a low budget independent science fiction movie. So, I think you should pass, Alexis, it’s not something you should do. We have better plans for you.” Now, while my agent was clearly wrong in the end of it all, I have to point out and make a note that, God bless him, he loved me and he was sincere about his intention to look out for me. He’s passed away, God rest his soul, Bob Waters, but he took really good care of me and he was interested in me, he wanted me to stay at BU and finish my degree there. He was like one of those old-time, hands-on agents, he was great. So, anyway, he said, “But I don’t think I can do it.” Now, again, I was desperate, so I’m like, “I haven’t worked in… it doesn’t matter, just get me in. I’ll do it, I’ll do the audition. There are no small parts, only small actors!” And I actually said that, right, with my little hearty, pretentious, in my head. So, I went in for the audition and it was all mimed because there weren’t any lines, and in the script there were all this… very small role. Like, his presence was there, but the plot points, as you know them, were happening, but the character that you came to know wasn’t there originally, really, in that way. So, it was all a bunch of mime, improvisation, and I was there trying to connect with them, because I was thinking in terms of, ‘Skaara is an inquisitive, intelligent person,’ and most of the times, when you start seeing scenes where you have a difficulty in communication in translations and stuff, you’ll see, often – it’s a trope at this point – but the two parties will bumble back and forth, and at some point you’re like, “Are you guys dumb? There are some universal human gestures for things, like, you can work this out. It’s just charades, you know?” So, scenes tended to go on too long with that, and you’re just like… So, I knew I wanted to address that part of it, because it is so easy for… and then, especially, adding in the narrative of the elder mentor and the younger protegee, so there’s that patronage going on, right? So, in order to really make that real and organic, you have to be careful not to fall into these very easy tropes of, “This is just how it is. Look at the relationship you’ve already recognized from 12 other movies.” Right? We wanted to do something a little bit different, so, I really worked hard to get into our language, the Egyptian language, and know it really thoroughly, but also to listen very carefully for what O’Neil was saying, what Daniel was saying, how they were saying it. Because, obviously, “Oh, these gods just showed up, just like these gods, but these are real gods, but I don’t know their language, but I’d better understand what they’re saying or else me and my family’s going to get strung up.” So, that intelligence based on that survival instinct, how to do that, and then how to communicate back, so that even though I wasn’t speaking any English, you understood what each of us were saying and doing at every single moment…

David Read:
Yeah, intent comes right across.

Alexis Cruz:
…you were with us, boom, right? You speak with your eyes, with your tones. And we had to do that especially because in the Ancient Egyptian that we had learned, their vocabulary was much more limited than our vocabulary is now, right, because we have so many more things in the world.

David Read:
Yeah, there were fewer concepts. They don’t have ‘microwave’ and ‘radio telescope’ and ‘full-service gas station’.

Alexis Cruz:
But socially, they were born and raised and lived and died and built things and raised kids and they did farm, and they had to… they were just as smart back then as we are now.

David Read:
Yeah. They’re just oppressed.

Alexis Cruz:
We just talked about different things.

David Read:
They were under an alien boot.

Alexis Cruz:
So, it was about trying to get that across. I’m sorry?

David Read:
They were under an alien boot.

Alexis Cruz:
Yeah. Right, right. And I felt… for that made it a lot more interesting, and the turn when we get on board and we all rebel made more sense, right? I think there was a feeling that these people were aware of their oppression and were secretly hoping, looking for, dreaming, praying for this kind of a day and these kinds of saviors, but for hundreds of years, thousands of years, nobody could say anything. So, it’s just that bit of angst and determination and drive that… however you quantify that, is what we were going for, to fill in the life of the film and the life of these relationships.

David Read:
So, your agent says you should pass. You go in there. Tell us about discovering…

Alexis Cruz:
I do that. I did this that I just talked about…

David Read:
The miming, right. How big this thing was.

Alexis Cruz:
But what I’m saying is, in this way. Here’s the realness of this and this and this and this. And I think that’s what they… they were like, “Oh, OK.” And we all just clicked. So, then we had a call-back and then a third screen test. Back then we did actual screen tests where they flew me out to Los Angeles for that. So, I go out, I do my final audition, handled that, and Dean is really excited, and he’s excited about the production itself, too, so he’s a kid in a candy store who just found his new co-conspirator [inaudible] to share this with. So, he takes me to the Art Production, and he’s showing me all the designs for the mastadges and ships, and he pulls out… I don’t remember which one it was, but one of the figures, the action figures. “This is a prototype. You’re all getting your own action figure, bro! Isn’t this cool! Isn’t this super cool! You get an action…!” I was like, “Oh my God, that’s really cool! That action figure, it doesn’t look like me, but this…” He’s like, “Yeah, yeah, but…”

David Read:
It’s still you!

Alexis Cruz:
“…We made the deal before we did any of this stuff, so, that’s just what it is. So, they made the toys for us, we can handle it.” And that’s how I found out that I got the part, was really by Dean just sort of letting it slip right there in that moment, that, “Yeah, we’re done. Now we’re just shooting the shit.”

David Read:
Wow. Is that when you realized just how big a thing this had the potential to be? Did you know then that it was going to be a hit? Did you have those instincts yet?

Alexis Cruz:
Yes.

David Read:
You did?

Alexis Cruz:
Yep, yeah. We all did. I couldn’t tell you why or how, because I think a lot of us also had some skepticisms and different… like, “Man, this is really cool, but also, this is super cheesy, and how is this going to happen? You’re going to try to do what?” You know, things like that. But there was still a palpable excitement of… whether it was that each of us clued in, or Dean was just that damn good. And it could very well be the latter, at being a Producer that gets people excited about things, because we were all… like, everybody, top to bottom, front to back, was super excited about this. And I know that he had a big… I don’t know a lot of the other nuts and bolts, I was just a kid not paying attention to that stuff, but from what I saw, he was a huge reason why it was as successful in that regard. But we knew it. And it’s not that we wanted to say… because originally, the plan was to make three films, and my original contract was for a trilogy. So, there was certainly all these comparisons to, like, “We’re making the new Star Wars.” Now, obviously, that’s a tall order, right, by anybody’s standards, and we didn’t really think that we were going to hit that measure. Nobody can ever predict that, exactly, but we knew we were going to get close. We knew that we were going to be in the same field, in the same conversation, up there somewhere in that genre. We knew that. Because this hadn’t been done. And the whole idea of the ancient astronaut theory, that is so mainstream today, wasn’t back then. It was very, very fringe. So, they managed to grab this concept out of obscurity, that was making sense, too. They did just enough research… at the end of the day, it’s still a popcorn movie, but it’s a popcorn movie based on something so close to people’s ideas of the world and how things are made, and at the very least – especially for geeks – it’s fascinating.

David Read:
But it’s still accurate. I mean, like, the Egyptian is correct.

Alexis Cruz:
Right.

David Read:
That’s how it would have sounded.

Alexis Cruz:
Right.

David Read:
Well, with modifications.

Alexis Cruz:
And that was it too, right? So, we had an Egyptologist whose work was to vocalize this dead language. Nobody had spoken this language in 3000 years, right? What does it sound like, how do we know it sounds…? But, him and his colleagues, this was their work, this is what they do, these anthropologists. But they had never… apparently, they had been working very academically in all of whatever they did with that, but they didn’t take it into a live lab with people, communicators, in real time. And there’s a dynamic, there was a thing that happened because, as we were trained actors, part of that training is why certain punctuations happen at a certain point, what the tempo is, and that’s connected to the intention that I’m trying to communicate, which is connected to the timing that I have of your attention to look at this, before I refocus it on… all these formulas that happen in your social interaction within the scene.

David Read:
Yeah, they’re just unconscious.

Alexis Cruz:
It’s unconscious. But all of that informs the sounds that we make, why we make those sounds. So, there were a lot of times where Stuart hadn’t accounted for breathing, or how a proverb would differ in the telling from a joke, how a joke would differ in the telling from a memory, right?

David Read:
Wow.

Alexis Cruz:
These things. And that affects whether our ‘a’ would be ‘ah’, or ‘uh’, or ‘e’, you know? Then all of these things, which we have rules for these things in English, also, but we often don’t think about why those rules, or how, in just our conversation… this whole time, I speak with my hands, this is like… I paint pictures. If you don’t understand what I’m saying, I will paint it for you. You will get it, right? And it adds another level, a thing to comprehend. So, it was the same back then, too, and it’s the same thing how we spoke in the film, and how we adjusted to the language and how we bridged the gaps. “OK, you know how to say this word and you know how to say this word, but how do we get from this idea to this idea? Breath, smile, here, that, question, oh,” and then… it’s hard to explain, but it was just sort of…

David Read:
Articulating the process.

Alexis Cruz:
Take you through the life of it, through that process. And it opened up a whole world for these anthropologists on what these vocalizations could have, might have, would have been, right? Because, again, we were trained with phonetics, the phonetic alphabet, the breathing, all these other things, and they just hadn’t conceived. They were like, “Oh, woah!” And suddenly Erick and me and Mili were there, we’re having conversations on set, and he’s just like, “It’s come the life! The whole… all the work has come to life…”

David Read:
In Egyptian?

Alexis Cruz:
“…and that does sound like I thought it was going to sound like, but that does not sound like I thought it was going to sound. But that’s amazing.” And it went on and on like that. We were really, really proud of that work, and for me, at my young age, too… because I thought about things like this, and I wanted my life to have meaning. I had wondered, for a long time, “What is it that we’re doing here? Should I go be a doctor? Should I go be a rocket scientist? Should I look for life on Mars? Like, is what I’m doing really important?”

David Read:
“Why am I here? What have I been put here for?”

Alexis Cruz:
Yeah. And this was a perfect, wonderful example in practice of what we’re here for. We added to humanity’s body of knowledge, to the academic record, through and because of our skills in this field. Because we were the repositories of culture.

David Read:
That’s what you’re getting back to. It makes a lot of sense. What you talked about with the… working so hard to get the language right. You’ve talked about… I’m spacing out my thought here… what you’ve talked about with working to get the language correct, a pragmatist might say, “It’s a sci-fi movie. You don’t have to go off the deep end to it, it will be perfectly serviceable.” But it won’t be exceptional.

Alexis Cruz:
Right.

David Read:
And it won’t be something that will transcend what it is that you’re creating, so you know what? We’re going to go ahead, and we’re going to go all in, and we’re going to make it authentic and we’re going to get it correct. And that’s a wonderful testament to the work.

Alexis Cruz:
Thank you, thank you. You know, it makes a difference between… it’s the thing… there are a lots of things that were made 30 years ago, but very few things… So, there were lots of things made 30 years ago, and there are many things that were made 30 years ago which we discuss today, but there aren’t very many things that we have never stopped discussing for 30 years.

David Read:
I think this is a good example of why.

Alexis Cruz:
Yeah. Putting in the work. Being about more than just being serviceable is what makes that.

David Read:
That makes a lot of sense. I have a number of questions for you about the show but…

Alexis Cruz:
Yeah, it looks like a lot of our viewers have [inaudible]!

David Read:
…right, so I’m going to let… a lot of them have asked those questions – no, it’s all good – can I have you back in 2021 to ask some more of my questions?

Alexis Cruz:
Yeah, sure.

David Read:
OK, thank you.

Alexis Cruz:
For you, yes.

David Read:
Oh, gosh. Aaron Banks, JohnFourtyTwo and Reno would like to ask, Alexis, what is the difference between Kurt Russell’s O’Neil and RDA’s O’Neill? And which one did you like working with the most, for different reasons? I’m interested to hear your answer for this, from your perspective, about the difference between…

Alexis Cruz:
The humor.

David Read:
Yeah, that’s true!

Alexis Cruz:
That was the key thing, and from that, all things sprung. Kurt’s root, his anchor, was the…

David Read:
Tragedy.

Alexis Cruz:
How he lost… his tragedy, how he lost his son, and that was his O’Neil’s storyline. He was operating off of that, his entire persona, his whole life became about that, and therefore, anything new that came along that related to or had to pull him out of it, like the mission and things like that. Whereas with RDA’s, I never got the sense that any of that was there, at all, like, it didn’t come up, it wasn’t there… not that it actually wasn’t, or anything, but…

David Read:
Well, the story plot is that he’s dealt with it.

Alexis Cruz:
Right.

David Read:
Yeah. He’s digested that.

Alexis Cruz:
So, I didn’t feel that in him at all. I didn’t miss it. That’s not a critique, that’s just a notation. But, that wasn’t there. With Kurt, it was very much there, front and center, so when he spoke to his soldiers, his command still came from a place of hurt.

David Read:
It’s raw.

Alexis Cruz:
Everything came from a place of hurt, you know? And it was fascinating, it was interesting, and because it’s Kurt and he knows what he’s doing, it wasn’t just angry hurt or boo-hoo hurt, it was just the vulnerability, while he’s being a General and arming a nuke! You get this sense of… he’s an amazing actor who knows how to access those feelings and project them so that you can see bad-ass and softy at the same time. That’s an amazing skill to have, and to put it into a story for us to watch. So, that was a major thing. I think my preferred experience was probably with Kurt because it left the biggest, earliest impression on me, in a lot of different ways, in terms of him being Kurt Russell The Star and then him being Kurt The Person and him being Kurt The Actor that was teaching me things about how to be on set. I had my first steak and eggs breakfast with Kurt, little things like that, right? The things he would talk about, and I was, again, at my young age I was really naïve, so that left an impression that was different, and to me a little bit more acute than the impression that RDA left on an older Alexis, later on when they met.

David Read:
That’s a fair point.

Alexis Cruz:
So, it was really, so much of that is tied up in who I was, watching what I was watching at the time. And they’re such very different places, several years apart. And then with Kurt, I spent three months with Kurt, just three months, every day, all the time. I never spent three months with Richard.

David Read:
That’s true.

Alexis Cruz:
Right? We spent two weeks at a time, and really three to five days in real time, because we didn’t hang out afterwards, go get drinks, or anything like that, so, three to five days at a time, once, twice every year. The relationship’s going to be different.

David Read:
And you were older, too.

Alexis Cruz:
And I was older, yeah. I was doing a lot of other… yeah. Yeah, I had different things on my mind.

David Read:
Of course. There’s a subtext running here. Alexis has had an interesting…

Alexis Cruz:
There’s nothing about me that doesn’t have subtext.

David Read:
We’ll just say, Alexis has had an amazing journey and there was a lot of stuff that was happening at the same time that… was one of the reasons you were unable to take SG-1 full time, which we will get into in the future. But, boy am I thankful that you were there while you were. Claireburr, what are your thoughts and feelings on your role in Shark being cut short, or was there a reason you had to leave the show? I’m not familiar with this question, at all. Can you answer that? Can you speak to that?

Alexis Cruz:
Nah, I don’t want to talk about Shark, and maybe therein lies your answer. I understand the question, but no, in the end it wasn’t pleasant, it wasn’t a highlight, and not something that I care to revisit. I’m proud of the work that I did while I was on there, and I think it was the right work. I’ll leave it at that ‘til a later time.

David Read:
That’s fair. Edward Stowers, Tamás Méhész, they would both like to know was there any difference in playing Skaara from the movie to the TV series, for you personally, despite speaking in English, finally, and how did that manifest in your performance when changing from Kurt to Rick?

Alexis Cruz:
Good question. So, it changed in the sense that it was very different… I’m trying to find the angle of approach, because there’s a lot of different…

David Read:
Of course.

Alexis Cruz:
…answers that’ll come meet in the central spot. Taking Skaara from the film, which is a beginning that’ll end closed circuit adventure journey to something that was open ended, and it was created and run and developed by people that I was not familiar with, and who weren’t familiar with me, and I didn’t have any input on that – I didn’t expect to, again just making a notation, it didn’t – whereas in the first one I did have input, right? So, there was a connecting-ness, a sense of ownership of the process that I was able to have that I didn’t have with the TV series. With the TV series, I was pretty much a passenger at the whims of whatever they decided to do with the character. At various times, I had feelings about it, one way or another, different times there were different things, but I was not in any position to do anything about that, either way. So, all I could do was to take the things and ideas and, as I usually do, is I translate them into, “Alright, well, how do I make this thing interesting in the delivery, in the scene. I have this feeling here, I have this feeling, let’s put it into the work and see what happens.” So, that’s what I did, and I tried to… part of what I was navigating was the tonal differences between the film and the TV show. Our film was – popcorn as it was – was a damn drama. This is a drama thriller, right? Dark and stuff. And then the TV series was an adventure. Like, in the beginning, they were trying, because it was on cable, so it was for mature audiences, but it was…

David Read:
It was so much more like Indiana Jones.

Alexis Cruz:
Right. Later on, it became… So, now, that said, I agree with the direction it went in, and it was absolutely the right way to go. This needed to be an adventure show for everybody with – I agree – whoop, little dark spin-off here, maybe a little bright kitch over there, maybe this other thing over there, like, there’s room for Stargate of different types. But, in terms of our mainstream touchstones, we go from this to that to that. I’m good with all of that, but there was a difference that I had to navigate, so I’m going, “What do I do with Skaara in…” Because I understood that there was a certain expectation in the narrative, is you’ve grown up watching this young kid, and his enthusiasm, his ingénue-ness, his heart, but there’s a lot of very serious things going on, and happening to him…

David Read:
Oh, boy!

Alexis Cruz:
…that change him. That. And what became difficult was that everybody… it felt like everybody – when I say everybody, I mean audiences, I mean writers, producers, cast – I think everybody wanted to hang on to the… and they wanted to hug or something, this Skaara from the movie! But there was a circumstance being created that can’t allow for that, right? And again, I wasn’t writing this, but the character’s being changed in ways, like, “Bro! If you went through this, would you be the same person?” Right? And I’m sorry that people are sad that they can’t hug the same person.

David Read:
Jack eventually does, in Pretense, but still, I mean, no. There was a… what a cathartic process, though. I mean, you’ve literally played an angel in one show and a demon in another. Seriously, man!

Alexis Cruz:
Yeah, and this little kid caught in between. So, that wasn’t just… because, again, I didn’t really have… what I had to do was load that into the lines and the moments and the cameras, and half the time I was doing it around, in spite of the script for the day, the arc for the day, because… I can’t speak to what creators intended, but, obviously, nobody knows this character like I do. Nobody can unless they talk to me. You’re free to do stuff. Go ahead! But at the end of the day, right? So, I was having to do that. And I hope that it shows, ultimately, this will be what I’m proud of, that you can see these scenes and you find… you can keep looking back on each episode I’m in, look back and find something new in the performance, because it’s like tempered steel, like when you make katana, that’s what I try to do with each thing. Here’s a layer of this, and there’s a double entendre, and there’s a subtext to this and there’s a subtext to that. There’s a lot of all that through Serpent’s Grasp, through all those episodes leading up to Pretense when he’s flipping back and forth and Klorel is making all of his plans against O’Neill and these other people and then he uses the Skaara persona to trap them as bait-and-switch. There’s a whole thing going on there, not just with Skaara and Klorel and the people they’re talking to, but within himself, to each other…

David Read:
That’s correct.

Alexis Cruz:
…and this cat and mouse game that they’re playing psychically, that I was literally, in my head, playing it out, the back and forth.

David Read:
If you watch those episodes, as far as I’m concerned, it’s not… with most people you have… with most actors you have a character and you have their motivations, and they have different levels to what they are experiencing and what’s going on in their lives while the broader action is going on around them. Not only do you have that for your character, but you have two personalities that are fighting each other in the same body. Now, Klorel obviously, has dominance, but I think you would be wrong – you generally, because obviously not you – you would be wrong to say that Skaara is just passively along for the ride, because he’s fighting every step of the way. He says in Pretense, “Every day I am fighting him, I’m listening, I’m learning.” And that had to be just exhilarating to play, because you could play it any number of ways across any number of different takes.

Alexis Cruz:
It’s exhilarating now.

David Read:
OK.

Alexis Cruz:
In hindsight, that it’s over, it was done, and in that regard was successful and that story was told, but [whoosh] the thing blows up behind, car crashes, like, “Woah! That just happened!” It’s sort of like that. It was not exhilarating in the going through it.

David Read:
Were you not satisfied with the direction that the character was going?

Alexis Cruz:
I was never satisfied with its incompleteness.

David Read:
You’re talking post-Full Circle?

Alexis Cruz:
Yeah, the whole thing. What was started, where it went to. I just felt it very, very, very incomplete. Now, that said, again, “Hey, man, I’m not the star of the show!” I wasn’t available to be the star of the show. I didn’t write it, I don’t have rights, forget about it, I got no say on this at all, and I’m not trying to say that I wanted to have a say. There’s none of that, right? It’s just that, in hindsight, was I satisfied? Well, no, because it wasn’t finished. There was so much to do. And it couldn’t be done, because I wasn’t a writer, I wasn’t around for it, they weren’t doing… There were other storylines for other people that got done and wrapped up and explored, and all that, but there were serious writing eras, and the production had the time and the interest and all that, like, that’s what they were going for. I’ll be honest, nobody wants them to focus on, like, “Here’s the Skaara season!” Nobody cares.

David Read:
Right.

Alexis Cruz:
And neither do I! But the point is, but what was shown and what we were trying to do felt incomplete. And then besides that, because when I’m getting into it, there’s a distinction between the Alex that is on set and the Alex that is inhabiting Skaara, in that moment. So, Alexis was thrilled for six years to be working with this cast and crew, to be hanging out with friends, to be taking trips to Vancouver, right? Thrilled by all of that. Alexis walking this character through kidnap and torture and Hell and oppression and freedom and doing all… like, that was not fun at all, you know? As I said, it’s fun in the post, and I still remember it and I still getting uneasy about it. We all have tools to deal with all of that, but if I had found it fun, I probably wouldn’t have been doing it right.

David Read:
That’s fair. It’s interesting, you come away feeling that the journey is incomplete. I can see on one side, one person saying, “Regardless of how he achieved it, he has achieved a higher level of awareness in the cosmos, he has become a being of energy, and that’s all she wrote,” but you and I have had conversations, particularly about the method in which that was achieved in the show and how that would leave a person, or a society, who was not necessarily prepared for that journey in a situation that they would have to figure out, now that they have achieved a level of higher awareness, when they didn’t go on that journey for themselves. They had the eject switch pulled on them because they were all about to blow sky high.

Alexis Cruz:
Yeah, OK, so then we get into… there’s a lot of details and minutiae that is, to me, endlessly fascinating. And we have discussed it. I don’t want to give those… I don’t want to put it out there to the public yet, those specific things we’ve discussed, because those are great, fun things for people to have their private conversations about. If I do end up doing anything with those ideas in the future, I’d like to be able to be able to do something with those ideas in the future, though we won’t get to…

David Read:
I just wanted to tap on that goblet.

Alexis Cruz:
Yeah. It’s the sort of thing, like, where, if you want… this is a great… if you want a full circle, nicely wrapped up story to feel good about, you got that. Don’t worry about it. Don’t think about it anymore. It’s fine. Everybody’s ascended, it’s all good. If you want to think about it beyond that and you want to get into it, and you want to go on some geek stuff and get into the real about what really might this be that in the Stargate universe. If you want to get into all that then we can get into that. That becomes a much more interesting, in-depth conversation. But you can have either one, so those people that liked it and they want to just wrap it up, that’s their picture, you got that, that’s good. So, again, professionally – so, back to the satisfied or not satisfied – professionally, I couldn’t not be satisfied because yes, something serviceable was created for that, so, professionally that’s all boom, done, you know? Artistically, I think there’s just more to mine.

David Read:
Yeah. The issue is, is creating an opportunity to explore that kind of a story and also move the overall story forward. Robert Cooper and I had this conversation a few weeks back because there were so many threads that were left open. Stargate SG-1’s mythology of the four great races is one that’s fantastic and been bandied about for years. Fans were like, “Go back and tell the story of the four great races. The people who built the stargates, the Asgard, the two other races that were involved.” And Robert’s like, “That’s all great, but how does it move the story forward? You have to move the story forward.” And it’s like, “I get it. He makes a good point.” You can’t just tell a history lesson just to fill in the mythology. They can’t just bring a character back because it’s a character that we love, the character has to have some utility on a story that’s happening.

Alexis Cruz:
And that’s a classic challenge of storytelling since forever, right, is, how do you move the story forward but give the exposition that you need to appreciate that moving forward, otherwise then you get these scenes of exposition, talking heads, make it stop, so yeah, Robert was right, he was absolutely right about that. And again, you have your production concerns too, you’re like, “Man, this is such a great idea, but we’ve got three hours to get this shot and we don’t have in the budget for this other thing, and that character you wanted, well that actor’s not available…”

David Read:
“Sun’s going down, we’re losing our crane shot. Oh, crane’s gone.”

Alexis Cruz:
Yeah.

David Read:
Erika Stroem, which of your characters, Alexis, have you played that you think captures you the closest?

Alexis Cruz:
Ooh, that’s a tough one.

David Read:
I know, right?

Alexis Cruz:
I actually wasn’t expecting that one to be as hard as it was until I just tried to think about it.

David Read:
Process it, yeah.

Alexis Cruz:
Because there’s so much of… so many pieces of myself that go into these characters. So, there’s an idea in our world of us playing ourselves in the given circumstances, and this idea goes to… this is part of what makes it… that’s the step towards making something authentic, something organic, living in that moment, so that even though I’ve done the same action and said this line 12 times, it’s always as it was fresh the first time. What I tend to do within my particular philosophy, and I think it’s a philosophy because each actor has a different technique to get there, but philosophically, I consider us as people. People are capable of anything in the given circumstances. So, I spoke about my growing up in the Bronx, what that meant to me, and there were a lot of choices that I made. There were different choices that I could have made that would have created a kind of an Alexis that may or may not have survived his circumstances, who may or may not have become the good person Alexis wants to be. We’re all capable of it. It’s just a question of what the writer writes for us. So, the way I look at it is, our souls, the empathy engine that we use – there’s a lot of mechanics in my visualization of it – but it’s like a prism, a crystal prism, OK? Now, this crystal prism, we all have it, this is our soul…

David Read:
In the one, there are many aspects.

Alexis Cruz:
Right. And so, it’s simply a matter of when the light hits it this way, this is the character you’re getting. If I move the light over here, you’re going to get a different character, right? This object has not changed at all. This has. This has. Where this is, is what changes. And that’s where you get a different version. This is why you can have Klorel and Skaara in the same person. Right?

David Read:
Well, in that situation it’s literally a different being.

Alexis Cruz:
Literally in the same person.

David Read:
But they’re still using the same raw material at this point.

Alexis Cruz:
Right. And in the… again, because there’s a bit of fudging that we have to take between the real life in order to translate it for a screen, in order for you on the other side to get an accurate representation of the real life that we’re presenting through this very fake medium. Right? So, there’s all these contradictions in the process, and that is where the challenge and the skill, I think, goes, for everybody involved in it. So, if you have this thing, all you’re doing is moving the circumstances, and Klorel and Skaara are different, they were nemesii to each other, and in order to be nemesii, there has to be a common thread, and not just the literally, “We’re in the same body,” but there was something in their essence that is the same, that speaks to each other, that creates a dichotomy that can’t be resolved. That’s interesting, that’s drama, it’s fascinating and we love to watch that kind of stuff, “What happens next?” So, in that prism, I put so much of me into everything that I do, like, there’s often times that I’ve felt that what you see on screen is some of the most honest moments I think I’ve ever had in my life, because you have to squeeze everything that is real and honest and put it into a little box on display, which means I have to edit that very carefully, compress it, really stuff it with as much real life for you to feel within the boundaries of, like, “The writer gave me two lines.”

David Read:
Yeah, you still have to get all of that in there, though.

Alexis Cruz:
Right, I gotta get a whole life in two lines.

David Read:
Matthew Hall actually said, “Was it difficult to mentally prepare for and to switch personality for the transitioning part in the role of Skaara and Klorel?” I mean, was it… finding that headspace, like I mentioned earlier, “Exciting? Exhilarating?” “Yeah, when I look back on it, not when I did it!”

Alexis Cruz:
Right. So, that idea of being able to look at it and be in the moment at the same time, being divorced subjective from it, is super important to be able to do this, and so that was happening a lot, and thankfully I have a skill at that, and my brain is actually very… my mind is actually very organized and I create a lot of categories for things all the time and I will have competing, contradictory ideas sitting on top of each other, stacked, and sometimes arguing in a gallery, that’s normal for me in my head. So, there’s this moment of, “I’m Skaara. Skaara’s in charge,” right, but in my own head – and all this is fabricated imagination in my head – in my head, there is a Klorel figure, voice, looming over my presentness in Skaara. And he’s there, and you can’t see him, and you can’t tell he’s there, but I feel that he’s there. And then when it’s Klorel doing his things, it’s the same thing, but it’s Skaara in the background, looming like a presence, like a pet that just walked into the room, you don’t look at it, but you feel when your pet is in the room, right?

David Read:
Yeah, there’s a presence there.

Alexis Cruz:
That was what I was living in, moment to moment, if you want to come along with me, that’s what it was, constantly. In terms of the switching, it was a matter of literally, I feel-slash-visualize this switch just sort of come on, and I am very, very specific, and as an actor, as a craftsman, I’m incredibly specific, super, super specific. Once I’ve plotted everything out and I’ve created the scene, I know exactly what breath, what tempo, what spot on the floor I’m going to hit, what light, on which syllable of the word, each and every single time, I’m very specific. Because it’s like playing music, you have to hit that note, you can’t hit a different note, right? “You’re going to play this song, I created this song and I have composed it and I have arranged this particular song, and to get that feeling, it’s gotta be ‘do-do-do-do dudududu’, it’s gotta be those notes.” So I practice those notes, emotionally, and I hit those notes here, here, here, and I’ve already plotted out, intellectually, what those notes mean, and the narrative, and it’s gotta reflect this thing, and here’s a foreshadowing, and here’s a call-back, and I’m going to express it by doing this way and then this way and this way, and it’s very, very, very, very specific. So that when it’s time for Klorel to come out on his line, it’s not just, “And I’m Klorel!” He’s prepared in the moment before the ‘and’. It’s the… all that moment was already there, I’m already working on that while Skaara’s… so, specific, specific, specific. So, when you have these switches and these changes it seems effortless, it seems connected, grounded, authentic – I hope – it’s hard to talk about what you hope you’ve succeeded in! I hope y’all can agree that’s how it came off, because that’s what I was going for.

David Read:
Pretense was my favorite episode for a very long time. It was a tour de force for you, and it was a satisfying bit of justice for a story arc that had gone on through since the beginning of the show, at that point. Shane Pierce, if we want to take a left turn here, any pranking on set of SG-1, or any general goofing off?

Alexis Cruz:
Not by me. I’m not much of a prankster, in general. I’m not a good giver, or a good getter. Everybody generally knows me, I’m pretty chill, I’m just not a prankster, it’s not my thing. Most pranksters get to find out real fast that I don’t make a very good target. I just don’t. I tend to take things a little too seriously sometimes, like, if I don’t know you’re joking or whatever. But that’s part of my own issues of constantly being challenged when I’m just trying to go to the store for some milk. You know what I mean? Like, just live with me, man, stop… I’ve had too many bullies in my life to make it easy for me to distinguish in the moment when someone’s laughing with me or when they’re trying to punk me. And I don’t get punked.

David Read:
That’s fair.

Alexis Cruz:
So, when in that moment things happen and I’m like, “Ah, I totally want to be here with you guys and laugh with you, but I don’t find this funny AT ALL!” You gotta just be chill and I’m serious. So, I was never involved with the pranks, other people were the pranksters, it’s not my thing. I laughed along at some things when I was there, but, again, I was there for a couple of days once or twice a year, so all of these stories that you guys hear at conventions – and there’s tons of them – and you want to hear more of it, because I get asked this question a lot, I wasn’t there for that, the messing thing, I wasn’t there for that.

David Read:
You were there for your part, and to do your job.

Alexis Cruz:
Well, it wasn’t the tone of my relationship with anybody who was there, either. When it comes to my relationship with the other actors, with the cast, the connections that we have, like, how I’m connected to Chris is different than how I’m connected to Michael. The manner of their friendships to me, what they are, what I would talk to each of them about is different. So, I’m there for all of that, my love for Michael is… You and I, right, we have whatever this relationship is going to be very different from a friend of yours from high school, or a cousin, or whatever.

David Read:
It’s a different energy.

Alexis Cruz:
It’s just a different energy. Right.

David Read:
Makes sense. Jakub Olejarz – I got a couple more and then we’re going to let you go – whatever happened to the Zippo? Did you get to keep it as a souvenir?

Alexis Cruz:
I did get to keep it. I did get to keep it and I still have it.

David Read:
Is it within reach, or is it buried somewhere?

Alexis Cruz:
No, it’s in my house in LA. It’s not in New York with me.

David Read:
Ah, OK. I’d love to have seen it. Oh, which reminds me…

Alexis Cruz:
All that stuff is still in LA.

David Read:
Alexis, you’re going to get tripped out by this. Either that, or you’re gonna be like, “Uh, what the heck?” Completely forgot. Fans are going to be like, “Oh!” Do you know what this is?

Alexis Cruz:
That’s an Eye of Ra.

David Read:
Well, yes.

Alexis Cruz:
Turn it a little bit, let me see how the light reflects so I can see what it is. I don’t know what the object itself is supposed to be.

David Read:
So, this is from Full Circle.

Alexis Cruz:
Uh-huh.

David Read:
This is what killed your civilization.

Alexis Cruz:
You’ll have to explain, I just worked there, man.

David Read:
So, SG-1 is going to Abydos in Full Circle because they know that Anubis is on his way to get this…

Alexis Cruz:
Ah, that’s the thing he wanted, right, right, right.

David Read:
…and when he got this, he completed the weapon and blew up Abydos.

Alexis Cruz:
Right.

David Read:
I’ve always meant to show this to you, because it’s like frowny face next to Skaara. Oh, God. Teresa McAllister, how did you like working with Erick Avari?

Alexis Cruz:
Erick is great, I loved Erick. Yeah, we became friends immediately, and stayed friends since. He’s great. I mean, everything that you know about him and love is what I do. We got along instantly, and part of that, too, was the work, really buckling down for the language. Studying that language was really where Erick and I shined in our bonding together, because we took to it right away. Erick speaks Hindi, it’s his other language. I speak Spanish. But we both are very linguistic in the sense that we pay attention to the dynamics and the rules of the language, and we constantly compare our languages to English to see if we can get more insight in… we love playing with words and sounds, it’s a thing about each of us in particular. So, when we notice that the other has that too, we were like, “Ah!” And now we can really play, and that’s when those conversations would start happening, where Erick and I would sit around, be in our chairs, and we’d have conversations about the weather, about the day, our plans, in Ancient Egyptian and we would practice it with this, “Here’s the word.” But there was so much of this other animation, these filling in the gaps in the conversation through body language and emoting. And again, part of how we discovered, “Oh! Just like in English, you don’t have to say the whole word, sometimes you can just contract it and add a physical movement, the other person gets the concept that you’re going for, the conversation moves on.”

David Read:
You save time.

Alexis Cruz:
Right. That’s how slang is born. Etcetera, etcetera. So, understanding these things, we got along really well, and that happens often too, with actors, with artists in general, I think some of the best friendships, the most poignant ones, are formed over the work. Not necessarily any other interest or hobby, just over the work, the respect that comes out of that, because I respect how much he loves diving into that. I see the passion in him when he dives into it. And I’m like, “Man, that dude’s hardcore! I love that!”

David Read:
And it makes you want to up your game.

Alexis Cruz:
And then he sees that in me.

David Read:
Right.

Alexis Cruz:
Right. And then, how do you not become friends! You want to like each other.

David Read:
He’s so soulful. He’s so cool. We’ve been in talks to get him on the show, but he’s like a proton, he’s like pt-pt-pt, he’s so hard to catch! So, it’ll happen at some point. Dr Essex had a random question. The doctor in Star Trek Discovery, any relation to Wilson Cruz?

Alexis Cruz:
No, no relation.

David Read:
And there we have it, ladies and gentlemen.

Alexis Cruz:
Cruz is a fairly common surname. And Wilson’s great, just for the record. I’m a huge fan. And always have been, back when… before anybody knew anybody’s name we’d know each other here and there, because we all see each other at auditions and different things…

David Read:
Of course, yeah.

Alexis Cruz:
[inaudible], so I’ve always been a big fan. He’s great, he’s a really happy friend. I love to see the people that I was coming up with get their opportunity to do that great work. It’s great, it’s great.

David Read:
Yeah, it’s exciting to see people get what they’re owed. I mean, don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of people out there who are negative about that same thing, “Oh, they need to get what they’re owed!” But you know what? Talented people? Yeah, that’s really cool.

Alexis Cruz:
And just to have the opportunity to deliver everything that they’ve built up, so, somebody like him, it’s a great example, on Discovery, I can see a huge difference between his early work and what he’s doing now, in that it’s gotten richer and he’s like a full-on adult, you know? We knew each other when we were kids, auditioning. As an adult, with all this life experience, it comes through, he’s a grounded person, right? He has his relationship with his husband, and all the things that happen, you just believe him. He’s a life lived and he’s comfortable in his skin. So, I might not have noticed that if I just didn’t know him at all, just like, “Here’s a new person I’ve never seen or heard before,” comes out and he does a great job. “Great, I liked it, I don’t know why.” But in this case, I have a point of reference and so it’s even more flavorful to me when I see it. I’m like, “Ah, you did it, you did it! Yeah, you got it, you got it! That’s great.”

David Read:
My friend, it has been so wonderful to have you on, and I would love to have you back because I want to go through specific episodes and those character beats, that longer conversation that we had in New York that didn’t make it to YouTube for whatever reason. I want to have that on YouTube and really dig deep into what makes that character tick and the time that he lived with the demon and the time that he got set free of his mortal bonds.

Alexis Cruz:
Yeah, there’s a lot there.

David Read:
There’s a lot there to mine.

Alexis Cruz:
Oh God, I would love to get into that! …OK.

David Read:
Well, Dad, you need to go back to being a dad, and I really appreciate having you on, man…

Alexis Cruz:
Thanks, man.

David Read:
…and I’ll be in touch with you.

Alexis Cruz:
Alright.

David Read:
I’m gonna wrap this up, but you take care of yourself, OK?

Alexis Cruz:
Good, alright. Thanks, everybody!

David Read:
Thank you so much.

Alexis Cruz:
Thanks for coming and being with us tonight, appreciate it. Love you guys.

David Read:
You take care, love you, man. Bye-bye.

Alexis Cruz:
Thank you.

David Read:
Alexis Cruz, Skaara. Thank you everyone for hanging on for this episode, this is the third episode that I’ve recorded today. Phwoo! I’m so thankful to Alexis for his patience and for joining us. I do have some Skaara art that I’d like to show… well, I mean, you could actually argue that it’s Klorel art. Littledeadybear – there’s a name! – Skaara speed-paint. So, this was a speed-paint that blows me away! “I was inspired by Skaara,” littledeadybear says, “I can’t say I got the face right, but Lord knows, I tried. But I still have a ways to go for working out values, but I think this is probably my best speed-paint yet, especially considering that I went straight to painting instead of going with a sketch first. So, yes, my first sketch for you, speed-paint.” Very nice. Klorel from, I believe that would be, Within the Serpent’s Grasp. It was a pleasure having Alexis on. Thank you so much to everyone who asked your questions. I do have a couple here. Claireburr, this was actually submitted from the previous episode. Is there a way to archive the live chat when the interviews are re-broadcasted? It feels like a big part of the community. For whatever reason, and if someone’s out there who can figure this out, can email me at [email protected] with a way around it, I would be hugely thankful. I don’t know of any way to do this. The live chat is so weird, it’s like it disappears after a few days, and in some cases I can’t get it to play at all after the show has ended, but sometimes it’s there and sometimes it’s not and I’m not sure what I’m doing wrong to make it do whatever it’s doing, because I’m pretty sure it’s not designed to stay around forever. But after I finish a chat, sometimes I can go back in and have it play back so that I can watch some of the comments myself, as an audience member, and sometimes it’s not there. So, if anyone has some insight, I have tried to Google it and I can’t make heads or tails. So, that’s where it’s at with that. Jeremy, “Was that Eye of Ra a real prop, or a recreation?” This is the original. If you want a better look at it, because I was showing it off for Alexis. I acquired this from a friend of mine, it’s gotten a couple of dings, unfortunately, over the years, but it’s definitely one of my favorite pieces in my collection. Let me see here. Oh! Before we go, I’m going to let you know about next week’s guests, if I can find my buttons. Here we are. Jay Acavone will be joining us, 11AM Pacific Time, Sunday December the 6th, to discuss Charles Kowalsky. Jay, God bless his soul, any time I’ve called him – I’ve got his cellphone number, I’ll call him – “Hey, how you doin’? No, I’ll be happy to do a show. Yeah, I’ll be happy to be on it.” And he’s always been there for me. I love this guy, he’s terrific. So, he’s joining us December 6th, 11AM. 1PM, December the 6th, Pacific Time, 1PM, Stargate Trivia, round numero dos, with Darren, who is coming back to see if he can hold on to his title. And this time, we’re going to be joined by a third, moderator, Ian. He’s going to be involved as well to kind of break things up. And you will be involved as well. If you show up live, ask us Stargate trivia questions. Sommer will be in the chat and also her voice will be kind of over us, among us, in the Zoom call, to read us your questions, so, when we are finished with our line of questioning, we are going to go into yours, and your questions, your hard Stargate questions will make up who wins and who loses the Stargate Trivia Battle. So, be there to join us and ask your Stargate Trivia, Sunday December the 6th at 1PM. No number questions, please. How much Jack owed General Hammond with interest in 1969… I don’t know! I don’t know anyone who… Who knows the answer to that?! But yeah, have your hard trivia questions ready for all three of us, and Sommer will be dishing those out to us next week. David Nykl, Radek Zelenka. You asked, and here he is. He wasn’t going to be in wave one, originally, I had him at the top of the list for wave two, and fans were like, “Yeah, bring David on!” And I’m like, “Yeah, he’s in the works.” They were like, “No, you don’t understand. We want him now.” “Oh, OK!” So, I reached out to him and he said, “I’ll be there!” So, David, Sunday December the 6th at 3PM Pacific Time, will be back to discuss Radek Zelenka and his experiences on Stargate Atlantis. Potentially Arrow or some of his other shows, “You have failed the city.” Thanks again to Alexis and thanks to my moderating team, Sommer, Ian, Tracy, Keith, Jeremy, you guys are rock stars. Jennifer Kirby, who has been creating some memes for the social media channels. Linda “GateGabber” Furey, my right hand, I could not be doing this without her. And I’m also going to be bringing on a couple of other people to help me with some of the video editing as well, so those talks are happening. I think that that’s pretty much it. The sun has finally set. There’s no light left in this world, at least on our side of it. Next week, we’ve got the three different shows. Thanks again to Alexis, to Rachel Luttrell and to Julie McNiven. Wonderful day of programming, and thank you so much for hanging on and contributing, making this program possible and really special. I’m very grateful to all of you and it’s always surprising to me how many people are continually following this franchise, and this particular program, you know? We’re just a few weeks old and I’m very, very proud of the numbers we’ve been doing. My name is David Read, I appreciate you tuning in for Dial the Gate, we’ll see you on the other side.