In the Presence of the Chancellor: JG Hertzler at FCD
He's
played several Klingons on TV, fan films and games, a Hirogen, a
Changeling (technically twice), a magazine illustrator and appeared in
the very first scene of Deep Space Nine.
In person, JG Hertzler is just as powerful a presence as every one of the roles he portrayed in the Star Trek franchise and was gracious enough to spare a few minutes of his time at First Contact Day 2016. A very decent chap indeed!
Our interview was opened up with us searching for fairground sounds which we discovered were emanating from a replica Enterprise captain's
chair but having quickly solved the mystery of the electronic chimes we
turned our attention to the franchise that put him into a lot of
prosthetics.
Aside from Martok though, would JG want to play any of his other characters again?
"No," said the actor very quickly, "Kolos would be fun who was the Klingon lawyer [in Enterprise]
but there's so much to Martok . He's such a conservative as well as
being the most progressive Klingon ever but I so identified with Martok.
In an actor's life you get the chance to maybe do five projects in your
lifetime that you are ever really dedicated to and mean everything to
you. Martok is perhaps the biggest at this point."
"I've
been on stage, on Broadway, but Martok and being able to work on it for
four years is also a gift. To have the writers writing for you, for the
character is wonderful."
JG
sees that Martok evolved from a very standardised, generic Klingon
character being loud, oppressive, overbearing, angry all the time into
the old leader, a Churchillian character or perhaps if Kennedy had lived
to be an older man that I would have been like that. He's my personal
hero in world relations. JFK was incredible."
The
Martok actor drew parallels between the American president whose rise
to the top was partially due to his experience in the US Forces. "He was
a true hero in the strictest sense," explained JG recalling an incident
where JFK had to drag an injured colleague through the seas and island
to island seeking rescue. "He never bragged about it and there's no
boasting in Martok either."
Herzler's
parents bred that into their son too. From humble origins they made
sure he understood that "it's about doing your job and not broadcasting
yourself."
Certainly
Martok's popularity was never something that Hertzler expected nor was
the opportunity to play the role after his initial appearance in The Way of the Warrior which opened Deep Space Nine's
fourth season; "I never thought about it. It was only supposed to be
for that two-part episode and originally it was going to be Gowron who
was going to be duplicated and was causing the trouble but they thought
that was too easy so they made it the Martok character. After that
appearance Ira Behr came up to me and said 'We're gonna bring you back
because Worf needs a friend'.
Of course the next time the general showed up was In Purgatory's Shadow and By Inferno's Light in
the fifth season. Herzler was told again he would be back and not
to worry because they would be giving him an artificial eye.
"I
said not to give Martok the new eye because it wouldn't be Klingon to
get an artificial one. He would rather wear the scars visibly which is
why he ended up with one eye. The other reason is that pirates work and
secondly I have a bad left eye anyway!"
As
Mini-Martok had joined me for the day it felt only right to ask his
bigger, real life model how it felt to be miniaturised; "It's very
rewarding!" he joked, "It's like Caesar who must have had their face on
every coin. It must have an effect and to have an action figure it's a
big step in an actor's career. It's a big thing that you're iconic
enough to have something built of you."
One thing that I spoke to both Aron Eisenberg and JG Hertzler about was the strength of the cast in Deep Space Nine;
"Ira Behr said to us that he was so proud of the cast of the show as
the executive producer. He didn't cast the original people but he cast a
lot of the later guys. He wouldn't let us go and he would keep finding
reasons to get us together after the show was over."
Currently
JG is on the town board for Ulysses in New York but is also a keen
writer. "Writing a script is the hardest thing I've ever done," he
noted, "I've written eight now and the latest one is out there. It's
about the uranium and the race to the atom bomb and the countries
involved. It's information I've never heard about and it's a hell of a
story so that's what I'm writing."
Thanks again to JG Hertzler for his time at FCD 2016.
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