Kavan Smith Gets Random

Last week I spoke to Stargate Atlantis’ Kavan Smith. After we talked business, he took on my favorite random questions.

What’s something that you’ve held onto since you were a kid?

Kavan: First response: my youthful enthusiasm. My wife would say that I never grew up, I don’t take much seriously and I’m still a brat. So I hung onto to that childhood enthusiasm somehow. But as far as material items go, nothing. I’m not that way at all, I don’t have anything. I keep everything that my son has, every first item, his first pair of shoes, the first shirt, kept his birth certificate. Everything that we have, my wife even kept the pregnancy test. We have everything in a box that we’re going to give to him when he’s thirty or something. But for myself I’m just not sentimental or nostalgic that way really.

What’s something you have done that there is no way you’re ever going to do that again?

Kavan: I’m past the age of doing nudity. Like in your face sort of sexy stuff. I did a thing years ago when I used to do an X-rated version of Outer Limits and I did this thing with Alyssa Milano and it ended up being reasonably tame what they kept, but we shot an X-rated version for the network at the time.  So we did this make-out scene in a bedroom and they wanted her to be naked because apparently that sold tickets and she wouldn’t do it unless I was naked and didn’t want to do it so I asked for an exorbitant amount of money and they agreed to it, so I had to do the nudity anyway which was really stupid. But then we had to do it in front of a green screen on a pedestal and I found that kind of embarrassing in front of the whole crew. Basically the way they did green screen back then was that you had to watch it out of the corner of your eye on the monitor to match what you’d done in the master, it was very awkward.

Just standing on a pedestal in the middle of nothing and then they said, okay, finished and I went off and sat in the trailer in my bathrobe kinda embarrassed and she did it on her own. And I thought, I’m done, got away easy and just as she was finishing, ‘Kavan you’re next.’

So I had to go up on a pedestal in front of a green screen, pretty new, at the beginning of my career, and had to stand there without my clothes on, in front of about 25-30 people, have pretend sex with somebody that wasn’t there, climax with somebody that wasn’t there and then as my character was climaxing, I had to pretend that her character ate my character through her stomach. And I pretty much decided that, that’s just not for me anymore, I’m just beyond that now. So I really frown on any of the nudity stuff.

Captain Kirk or Captain Jack Sparrow?

Kavan: Sparrow. Without any question, all the way. Kirk, nice and campy. Sparrow, hysterical, just hysterical. Being around the guy, Sparrow. Playing him in a show, Sparrow. Which one inspires me more, Sparrow. I mean pretty much everything about it, definitely, huge Johnny Depp fan, too, so in all cases, Sparrow!

Image by nookiez