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But unlike Samson, Judge turned his new, close-cropped look into an advantage--Teal'c (pronounced "tealk"), as it turned out, was intended to be bald in the series. "For all the other principal roles, there were three actors at the audition. But there were eight other guys for Teal'c. I thought to myself, 'Wow, they have no idea what they want.' After the reading, they read off the names of the people who would no longer be needed. The list included the names of every other person who had read for Teal'c. So I had a pretty good idea that I was going to be hired. It was either me or nobody," he laughs.
Born and raised in Los Angeles, Judge (who claims his age as "somewhere between 28 and 35") attended the University of Oregon as a telecommunications/film major with a psychology minor, and achieved All-American football status three of his four years on campus. "But I always knew I wanted to be an actor," he recalls. "The television set was my babysitter growing up. I can remember wanting to invoke the feelings that I was getting from television--I wanted to be the one who was the catalyst for those feelings in other people. Performing was something I've always known I was going to do."
His inspirations were varied: "the Sidney Poitiers of the era, the old Batman series and Star Trek. Every Friday I would go to work with my father, and we would stop on the way home and pick up burgers. Then, we would come home and watch Planet of the Apes [the TV series]. I would never miss an episode of Planet of the Apes--I lived for that show."
In 1989, he began studying acting at the Howard Fine Studio in Los Angeles, applying what he learned in such films as House Party II, Cadence and Bird of a Wire, as well as several TV shows, including Gabriel's Fire, 21 Jump Street, Wiseguy and MacGyver, the latter starring future Stargate SG-1 colleague Richard Dean Anderson. He was also a regular on the little-seen police drama Sirens.
Teal'c, he explains, is "a Jaffa. The Jaffa race is enslaved by the Goa'uld ["ga-oold"]. Some of the Jaffa are the actual guardian of these particular gods; they make up the military stronghold of the Goa'uld, and they select candidates to become hosts for the Goa'uld. But they are slaves nonetheless. My character is dissatisfied with the Jaffa life. He realizes that they are, in fact, not gods--just a parasitic life form that thrives on the lives of others. So, I take it upon myself to influence a change. And in my first contact with the humans from the SG-1 team, I realize I might have an ally that actually has the strength, the wherewithal and the weaponry to be of some [use against] the Goa'uld."
In the series' two-hour premiere, Children of the Gods, Teal'c escapes his enslavers and joins the Stargate SG-1 team. Why does he choose that moment to leave his people? "In the scenes where they were selecting a female host for the Goa'uld symbiote [a snakelike creature that guarantees the host perfect health, once implanted], the larva chose not to go into the host I selected, and she was killed. Any other hosts who weren't selected for the process were also killed. I've been going through this process much longer than what the audience sees. That's my back story: I've long been dissatisfied with the means by which they procure these hosts, and the devastation resulting in the lands from which they get them."
For Judge, Stargate's first season had been about his character "finding his way in this new world, where he fits in, places where his input is needed and where it isn't." Judge points out that Teal'c has more complex reasons for being than simply functioning as extra muscle for the SG-1 team. "Not only do I serve as a guide to some of the planets the SG-1 team explores, but you also learn that I have a wife and child that I left behind. Part of my character's storyline is to go back and make peace with the situation. I don't want my son to become a Jaffa. Once you have this symbiote implanted in you, as I do, your immune system is, from that point on, dependent upon the symbiote for your health. When I left, he had yet to be implanted with his first symbiote. So, I want to go back and make sure that he never becomes a Jaffa. My super-objective, in the long run, is to free all Jaffa from the enslavement of the Goa'uld. That supersedes everything."
The Goa'uld larva living inside Teal'c is intended to be carried to maturity--its removal would result in his eventual death. "It's a mutual kind of symbiosis," Judge offers, "I nourish it, and it nourishes me. It allows me to go many days without sleep, without food. It heals any injuries I might have. But in turn, it feeds off my system. I breathe for it. I eat for it. I nourish it. I carry it for seven years; at that point it's mature enough to leave my body and exist on its own in another host. It can also, after that time, be strong enough to control the host it inhabits."
In one of Judge's favorite episodes, Bloodlines, Teal'c returns to his home planet and is reunited with his wife and son. But their joyful reunion is short-lived. "They had been outcasts from their village, but my wife had gotten back into favor with the local priest," he explains. "My son was going to undergo this implantation ceremony, where he was going to get his first symbiote. Unbeknownst to me, she agreed to it because he had scarlet fever and was dying, so he need the symbiote to live. I mistakenly thought it was my wife's selfishness in wanting to get back into the upper levels of this society. I stop the ceremony and end up giving him my symbiote, and Daniel and Carter go to the temple and steal another one, which I'm implanted with." In another episode, Teal'c undergoes an experiment to see if he can survive without his symbiote. "We found that I could not. They're working on some artificial means to give me an immune system, but up to this point, I am forced to keep the symbiote."
Like Star Trek: The Next Generation's Worf, Teal'c is portrayed as a rigid, unemotional soldier who could definitely stand to lighten up a bit. Judge chuckles at the comparison, adding, "It's not that I'm not emotional, it's that I'm so emotional that if I let everything boiling inside of me play on the surface, I would be out of control, and that might prevent me from reaching my super-objective. Also, if there's a situation that other people find life-threatening. I don't consider it life-threatening, because I know that my symbiote protects me. Much of my role is playing against what I would traditionally play as an actor. What my gut instinct tells me to play in a given scene. I tend to play the opposite."
"It's sometimes hard for me to play scenes where I find things funny but can't laugh, because I have to play that there's something the character needs that he's not getting," Judge continues. "Anything else is kind of lost on me until I can get back to my wife and son, until I can free my people. There are episodes later on where I actually smile, and I do show some emotion. My first smile this year was not exactly successful, but it was an attempt at smiling nonetheless."
Regarding the show's slavery angle, the African-American actor admits he was "kind of worried" about possible flak from critics and friends for taking a role as a slave on a TV series, until he saw that his character would quickly emerge as a leader. "I saw [the slavery angle] right off when I read the script, and that's why I was attracted to the character. He was going to have the chance to rebel and free his people from their oppressors. That, to me, directly parallels the horrible American legacy of slavery, even all the way up to the 60's and the [Civil Rights] movement, where things start to change and an aggressive leader emerges at the movement's forefront. That's very much how I see Teal'c. Most people see him as very heroic and very noble."
For the most part, the actor says filming in Canada has been "great," even though the first week caused him serious trepidation. "When we arrived in Vancouver, shooting was...difficult. The first week, it was torrential downpours every day. It tested your patience at times. Then, the weather got nice. I'm in Army getup for most of the episodes, but there are a few where I go back into my serpent guard outfit, which unfortunately happened at the hottest time of the year. 'Cumbersome' is a good word to describe how it felt to be in that costume all day."
As Judge relates his feelings about his fellow cast members, he realizes he sounds a bit effusive. "Michael Shanks is like my younger brother. We get along fabulously, and we spend a lot of time together, even off set. Amanda Tapping is like my sister. It sounds almost too rosy, I know, but we get along that well. At the screen test, the three of us talked almost the whole time, while everyone else was preparing ot sulking, whatever actors do. We had such a natural camaraderie. It's almost as if it was predestined [that we would be working together]."
The mere mention of series headliner Anderson elicits a hearty laugh from Judge. "Rick is like our crotchety uncle. He can add levity to absolutely any situation. In the MacGyver I did with Rick years ago, I played a high school student, a cocky football player who thought the classroom was just a place to go while the football field was being cleaned. MacGyver taught me a lesson about fulcrums and levers, and I was that much wiser in the end. Our makeup artist Dan Newman, brought a tape of the episode to the set, and everyone got a good laugh over how much younger we both looked. If anything, Rick has gotten more amiable since then. He's a pleasure to be around."
Judge realized that his five-year contract with Stargate SG-1 (with a 14-week hiatus between mid-November and early March that allows him to pursue other career opportunities) meant he would have to move his family to Vancouver from L.A. All are adjusting well, he says. When asked what kinds of considerations he had before signing on the dotted line, he names only one: "I have three kids, so basically I'm thinking, 'Hey, their college education is paid for!'"
In a more serious vein, Judge's hopes for Stargate SG-1 center partly around his character. "I hope Teal'c continues to grow, and that more is learned about the whole mythology of the Jaffa and Goa'uld and where they fit into the universe. We have a chance to explore not only our universe, but anywhere in the galaxy, and all the life forms we could ever imagine. There's an endless oasis of ideas that could be harvasted. And to have this vehicle to do it, and to have a long-term commitment so that you don't have to be constantly looking over your shoulder to see if the network is coming at you with an ax to cut your show...what an enviable position to be in."
"Already, we're Showtime's highest-rated show. We've been picked up for [syndication beginning this fall]. We've done a helluva job of carrying on the legacy of the StarGate movie. So, we've got out fan base," says Christopher Judge. "As long as we can keep the level of out shows up, and stay true to our fans and never take their intellect for granted, we have a chance to have a really long run."
