Mike Myers names the most undervalued role of his career: “I think it’s my favourite”
Since he’s basically semi-retired at this point, it seems incredibly unlikely that Mike Myers will create or play any characters who’ll be able to knock any of the four faces from the Mount Rushmore of his career.
That quartet is obviously Wayne Campbell, Austin Powers, Dr Evil, and Shrek, with the actor and comedian still achieving more than most performers can ever dream of by leaving four sizeable imprints on pop culture that have endured for decades, and will continue to endure for at least a little while longer.
He could technically play Shrek forever, since it only requires him to stand in a recording booth and bellow lines in a Scottish brogue, and he brought Wayne’s World back for a string of commercials a few years back, leaving cinema’s most shagedelic secret agent as the one he hasn’t reprised in the longest time.
That might still happen, but nostalgia-baiting sequels are a tricky thing to pull off at the best of times, and does anyone really want to see a 60-something Myers wearing the wig, false teeth, and hairy chest to try and recapture his former glories? Some folks undoubtedly do, but it could also be an unmitigated disaster.
The Saturday Night Live alum isn’t just a four-trick pony, though, and his years as a fixture of the weekend sketch staple are proof enough, looking at the vast array of characters he played. There’s also Fat Bastard, So I Married an Axe Murderer’s Mackenzie clan, The Love Guru’s Maurice Pitka, Dr Seuss’ Cat in the Hat, and that time he fronted a reboot of The Gong Show in disguise without telling anyone it was him.
None of them came close to puncturing the zeitgeist in the same vein as his most memorable parts, although Fat Bastard does have his moments, but he didn’t call any of them the most unsung role he’d ever played. Maybe he’s giving it that distinction because hardly anyone watched it, with The Pentaverate bombing on Netflix.
One of the easiest ways to guarantee a hit on a streaming service is to present subscribers with a big-name star and a high concept. And yet, Myers’ conspiratorial comedy thriller didn’t even trouble the top ten most-watched list in the United States, and was forgotten about almost as soon as it arrived.
“I did a character called Lord Lordington, who’s the head of the Pentaverate, this secret organisation, and I think it’s my favourite character,” he told Too Fab. “It’s sort of everything, growing up in an English household, there’s a certain English wisdom that we’re proud of, that we broke the German codes, time zones, figuring out latitude, all those Englishy things, and this character embodied all of that.”
He also buried himself in makeup to play Ken Scarborough, Anthony Lansdowne, Rex Smith, Bruce Baldwin, Mishu Ivanov, Shep Gordon, and Jason Eccleston in the show, and nobody remembers any of them because nobody gave a shit about The Pentaverate. Still, Myers would love it if they did. “I wish people would go, ‘Hey, Lord Lordington!” he admitted, but they don’t, and they won’t.
