The co-star Kurt Russell needed to force onto set: “That’s why they pay you a million dollars”
Kurt Russell is the very definition of a working actor. Over the years, he has always admitted that he doesn’t see acting as an art form, instead looking at it like a job. This doesn’t mean he doesn’t think there is craft at play in performing, but it does mean he’s no tortured artiste – he just shows up, does the work, and moves on to the next thing. Perhaps this is why he had no time for a co-star in a beloved sci-fi blockbuster, refusing to leave his trailer because he disliked the material, though. This didn’t sit well with Russell – so he ejected him post haste.
Russell’s involvement in the 1994 sci-fi blockbuster Stargate didn’t exactly go according to plan initially. You see, Russell thought the script producer Dean Devlin sent him was, to put it mildly, not very good, so he turned down the role of Special Ops Colonel Jack O’Neil several times. Eventually, though, Devlin realised Russell had been given the wrong script draft, so when he furnished him with the final shooting script, he claimed Russell said, “Oh, this isn’t so bad.” Of course, it also helped that Devlin offered Russell $7million to play the part – the most he’d ever been paid until then.
Russell’s co-lead in the film was James Spader, these days best known as Raymond ‘Red’ Reddington in the long-running NBC spy thriller The Blacklist. At the time, though, Spader was struggling to make good on the promise he shown in 1989’s Sex, Lies, and Videotape. Movies like True Colours, Storyville, and The Music of Chance all flamed out in the early ’90s, with only a supporting role in 1993’s Wolf proving successful for the star.
Unfortunately, even though he was in desperate need of a hit, Spader also didn’t think much of the Stargate script. However, he claimed to view acting similarly to Russell, telling The Globe and Mail, “The script was just awful, and that sort of intrigued me. Acting, for me, is a passion, but it’s also a job, and I’ve always approached it as such. I have a certain manual-labourist view of acting. There’s no shame in taking a film because you need some fucking money.”
While Spader reportedly didn’t get paid as much as Russell for the movie, he did make at least a cool million. However, according to Devlin in a Variety oral history of the film, Spader’s claims of being a total professional who viewed acting as a job must not have applied to one particular day on set. “There was one day where he wouldn’t come out of his trailer until we rewrote the scenes,” Devlin admitted.
When word of Spader’s refusal to play ball got to Russell, though, he didn’t take kindly to him being a diva. “Kurt Russell got very upset with him,” Devlin chuckled. “He burst into his trailer and said, ‘What are you doing?'” Spader looked at Russell and begged him, “Come on, admit it. The dialogue is horrible,” to which Russell gave a response that lived long in Devlin’s memory. “Of course, it’s horrible!” Russell exclaimed. “That’s why they pay you a million dollars. If it was brilliant, you’d do it for free!”
This admonishment from the man who played Snake freakin’ Plissken was enough to get Spader back on set, and Devlin revealed that the two stars soon became more accustomed to Stargate’s particular old-school, slightly tongue-in-cheek sci-fi vibe. “Once they started to understand the tone, they started to really get it,” Devlin revealed. “When the movie was finished, both actors were really pleased with it.” Then, with a grin, he concluded, “I think it just took them a while to get where we were going with it.”
