“It’s not easy”: Why Kurt Russell refused to reprise Jack O’Neill for a TV show
Sequels have been the lifeblood of the industry for decades, and that’s as true for actors as it is for studios. The latter can continue making money from a proven and popular franchise, and the former has a lucrative role they can return to multiple times. Kurt Russell isn’t averse to playing the same character more than once, but it turns out there is a line he wasn’t willing to cross.
Relative to how long he’s been working in Hollywood, Russell hasn’t done a lot of sequels. Since making his feature debut by kicking Elvis Presley in the shins in 1963’s It Happened at the World’s Fair, there are only four parts the actor has ever reprised, and half of those came after he turned 60.
Walt Disney’s protege and sounding board headlined the Mouse House’s Dexter Riley trilogy between 1969 and 1975 when he anchored family-friendly favourites The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes, Now You See Him, Now You Don’t, The Strongest Man in the World, which would be his only flirtation with franchise fare for the next 20 years.
John Carpenter’s Escape from LA saw him reprise the iconic Snake Plissken, which would again lead to a two-decade sequel sabbatical. However, since 2015, Russell has appeared in three Fast & Furious flicks as the mysterious Mr Nobody and played Santa Claus twice in Netflix’s The Christmas Chronicles series, and he also broke bad as the villainous Ego in James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2.
It’s not a huge amount of sequels for a career that’s spanned more than six decades, but Russell had the chance to take his talents to the small screen in the mid-1990s when plans were made to spin Roland Emmerich’s Stargate off into a TV show. It was – and still is – his highest-grossing picture as a leading man and top-billed star, which still wasn’t enough to twist his harm.
“I did three television series; they’re hard work,” he told Dark Horizons. “They are very frustrating in many different ways. They’re a great place to go work and make money as an actor. I say that not frivolously. It’s not easy to make a living as an actor. People hear me say that, and they look at that; they put it into a zone of, ‘He just works for money’. Yeah, I do. What do you do? Do you do this for free? Would you do this for free? Five years of listening to this shit for free?”
Essentially, Russell was offered the chance to bring his version of Jack O’Neill to the project that would eventually be branded as Stargate SG-1, but he had no interest tying himself down to a television contract that would have drastically restricted his opportunities to work – and earn money – elsewhere.
Without him, it still became a sprawling universe that ran for ten seasons, spawned another two spinoffs, and countless other tie-ins, including a web series, comic books, and video games, with Russell’s disinterest working out very well for Richard Dean Anderson, who inherited the mantle of O’Neill.
