Ain’t no mountain high enough
After playing The Mountain on ‘Game of Thrones,’ Australian actor Conan Stevens joins GMA fantasy serye ‘Encantadia’ and proves how good it feels to always play the bad guy.
A ctor Conan Stevens doesn’t do romance. Not in movies, at least. He made it very clear many years ago when asked in acting school if he’d ever consider taking on a romantic comedy lead. No, he said back then; not even with a gun to his head. He’d much more likely take that gun and use it against the good guys in an action film. Stevens is a cinematic baddie through and through, and he has no plans of changing that anytime soon.
In fact, he’s played one of pop culture’s favorite guys to hate in recent memory — Ser Gregor Clegane, or The Mountain in season one of acclaimed show Game of Thrones. Soon after that, he portrayed various iterations of the same hulking, terrifying character: Orc chieftain Bolg in The Hobbit film franchise, Goliath in both The Bible for television and the film Son of God, among many others. And now he’s come to the Philippines to join in the retelling of beloved teleserye Encantadia, whose pilot will be airing this Monday, July 18. Stevens’ role in the show is currently kept hush-hush — we’ve yet to find out if he’ll be a friend or foe to the four Sang’gres — but he assures us it’s a character that will have no shortage of action in every scene.
And while Stevens has no trouble playing the bad guy onscreen, he reveals himself to be a pretty cool dude to hang out with. Straight out of the Encantadia press screening, Stevens sits down with Supreme to talk about the realities of joining a Philippine TV show, the joys of the fantasy genre, and why he doesn’t mind being compared to Colgate. Conan Stevens may claim to be unromantic, but we actually think he’s kind of a softie.
SUPREME: You’re quite a long way from home. How’d you end up joining a television show in the Philippines?
CONAN STEVENS: A friend of mine was working on the fight choreography (for the show). And he’s had to go back to the US for work, which is good. So I visited him on set one day, and met director Mark (Reyes), and we chatted. Then I saw it on the news everywhere. I’ve got friends in Cebu saying, “You’re on the news!” Then I had a friend in Makati riding a cab who said, “You’re on the radio!” That made a bigger splash than I imagined. I got talking with the producers, and they asked if I was interested. We talked a bit, and I said yes. I was surprised at how serious they were. It was very interesting.
I always do my research, and the show was a hit previously. For me to say no to another show that, chances are, is going to be another major hit… it’s primetime, too. It’s every actor’s dream to be on primetime. And, okay, it’s in the Philippines, it’s in Tagalog, or whatever the Western people say. I’m sorry, but there are 100 million people here! There are only 20 million Australians! C’mon, some people are a bit hoity-toity, but there’s a big market here. The industry here has big potential, and everyone’s focused on the Philippines because the market’s so strong. That doesn’t exist in many places in the world anymore. You have a pretty extensive experience with fantasy films. Was there a conscious effort on your part to work within this genre?
I’m really interested in history, and my interest in history may be partly stimulated by my interest in fantasy. Anyway, one of my mother’s friends gave me The Hobbit when I was maybe 12 years old… And you’re in the Peter Jackson movie.
I’m in the movie. And I’d like to say that it ruined my life, from when I was 12. Thirty years later I’ve reclaimed my life by actually working in the movie. So I’ve got The Hobbit; I went and read all of that. I read the Lord of the Rings, then Greco-Roman mythology and Viking mythology. I realized they were all sort of tied together, so I started reading more into the history, even The Illiad. Pretty heavy reading for a 13-year-old. ( Laughs) Then I started getting into role-playing games. We’d dress up and then we’d actually make our own armor. Like playing swords but authentically weighted. So we’d beat each other stupid, then next thing I knew, I thought, “I could get paid for this!” That is my passion, and now I get paid doing what my passion is. One of the more well-known franchises you’ve joined is HBO’s Game of Thrones. Your character, The Mountain, is one of the most brutal characters on the show. How do you feel about violence on television?
Everyone likes soft and mushy these days, all-PC and all the rest of it. The character Gregor (Clegane) goes and kills a baby. If you look back in history, Alexander the Great’s army did this, and he was “great” while he did it, but “great” at being bad. He actually killed babies — maybe not personally — but his armies did, because it stops children from rebelling against him. I don’t see Gregor as too bad a person or too violent. He’s practical. It’s business. But myself, personally, to properly answer your question, I would say some of the shows are really getting a bit… all for shock value. It’s the genre, but it’s getting a bit mainstream now. There are still lots of shows out there, like Encantadia for instance, where the violence is there, but you’re not chopping someone’s head off and seeing blood and getting someone’s face cut off, like in Spartacus Vengeance where they actually did that to me. ( Laughs) That was a shock-value one.
You’ve mentioned before in interviews that you tend to get typecast because of your physically imposing stature. If you could play any other type of role, what role would you play? None. You would just like to play the big bad guy all the time? Photo by JL Javier There’s no use — at this stage of my career — there’s no use trying to prove that I’m a good actor or that I’m an artiste or something like that. It’s like Colgate, you know? You get toothpaste, you know you can trust Colgate. Colgate’s not going to branch out into airplanes just to prove that they’re a good company. I’ll keep continuing doing this, because this is the role that I want in larger movies. I recently had some interesting auditions; I didn’t get the role, but I’ve signed NDAs for it so I still can’t talk about it till after the movie comes out. If I continue doing this, and I keep playing the bad guy, then you’ll see me in Marvel (movies) or something. They say, “You keep playing the bad guy, how boring!” Not boring, because you’re doing something exciting. It’s about creating a unique selling product. Acting is less about acting and more about crafting yourself as a product, and positing yourself in the market correctly. As well as behaving onset and not being difficult. ( Laughs)