Pic from Mutant X Lives
Excerpts from Starlog 6/02: Victor Webster Interview, on Pink Hearts V.W.M.X., page 2 and page 4 *Property of the former Pink Hearts website
Electronic Cool
With martial arts moves and special powers, Victor Webster electrifies the screen on Mutant X.
by Peter Bloch-Hansen
It's a cold winter morning in Toronto, but inside and empty brick warehouse near the frozen waterfront, it's surprisingly and comfortably warm. A theatrical light, three feet in diameter floods the dusty space with harsh, silver-white radiance. Off by himself, tall, slender, and in his character's trademark black, Victor Webster goes through a series of stretches in preparation to battle his mortal enemies, the faceless agents of the GSA. The actor has been here since 6:30 am and now he's ready to begin another day of shooting on Mutant X.
"They want us to come in even earlier for fight rehearsal," Webster grins, "I came in yesterday and worked for an hour, but I don't like training the day we're shooting it. I look at fight scenes like spaghetti sauce: they're much better the next day. You look at them, and overnight you think about them and do the moves in your head, and the next day you come in and refresh your memory. Then you go."
Webster's calm and relaxed, clearly looking forward to the physically demanding day ahead of him. "I've studied a plethora of martial arts since I was nine," he states. "I started with judo, moved into karate, wrestled in schoool, did movie Western-style boxing, all kinds of stuff. I have a black belt in tae kwon do and I've taught martial arts for about five years. I pick things up really quickly. I would stay in a martial art for about two years, learn as much as I could, and then move on.
"Today, I'm fighting with three or four people and doing some wirework. I don't do crazy stuff like Shalimar [Victoria Pratt]. My wirework just enhances stuff that you can do as a normal, athletic person: instead of jumping four feet in the air, they make me jump six. But that's going to change. You're going to see my character get more end stuff to do. He finds new ways to fight and, well, let's just leave it at that.
Mutant Action
Nine months of acrobatic fighting and wielding electric bolts as the mutant action hero Brennan Mulwary have brought Victor closer to his character. "Brennan is very much like me," he says, "He understands fighting. The way that I speak and the way that they write him are very similar. The sarcasm that he spouts off all the time is definitely me--with different intentions--which is cool because I just eplore myself and have fun with it.
"Brennan never knew about all the other new mutants who were out there in trouble," he explains. "He only knew about his own mutation, and maybe a couple of other people like that. To see the grand scale of this thing--the GSA's threat to society--Brennan had to find a greater good, rather than just trying to backing himself and stealing things to make himself richer. Brenann has now been exposed to people in need of his abilities who don't have the street sense, the strength or the power--the ability to fight back. The writers have shown a much more creative, caring side [to Brennan]. He now listens to spreading himself out to help people rather than being such a loner. Still, he's always going to have some of that [loner] mentality, but he has found a team, a family unit that he was missing. That is comforting and nurturing to him, and it gives him the chance to build up structure and have fun and aid people.
"Brennan has a specific place on the team," Webster adds. "He knows that he's going to kick some butt, and he knows hat he can take out four GSA agents at a time. He has a street sense. He's good at the bars, and good at getting the word out on the street or ground level. He has his finger in the dark, sleazy side. He's not like that himself, but he knows where to go and who to talk to because when you steal stuff, you've gotta have people to sell it to. So he has all these connections. And Brennan's always sent out when it's time to kick ass, bcause he enjoys it so much. He's aso capable of doing it.
"Everything that Brenann does has to involve fun. He loves adventure, so he always wants to participate. It's not just kicking some guy's butt or punching them; he has gotta do something flashy, something cool. He finds interesting ways to live. There's a way of sarcasm and verbally hustling other people--even little one-liners to the GSA. Everything is done with a fun attitude. It's cool."
Mulwary's fondness for the female sex hasn't changed, but now he has other obligations that keep his nightlife busy. "Brennan likes women. He likes to check them out and he likes to flirt, but that's all it comes down to, now that he has found a purpose," Webster states. "Before, when he was killing time, he probably went out and grabbed a few drinks and--you know.
"I had a love story in "Deadly Desire," where I'm actually in bed with a woman. When you have major romances like that [in real life], you just completely throw everything away. You're not thinking about anything except what the other person is thinking and feeling. Nobody sees what you're doing. But on a set, you have 30 people standing around watching you. So when you're [filming a scene] with a woman in bed, the way that you would normally speak, the things that you would normally do, don't necessarily sound so good on camera. You have to be conscious of everything, to worry about the sheet coming down too far, to make sure that you're doing everything on cue. It's not a turn-on at all because there's just so many things to think about. It's really kind of damaging more than anything else. When I'm fighting, I'm used to being in a ring at a gym in front of hundreds of people, but being intimate--sharing that soft, sensitive side of yourself that most men don't like to reveal--is a little unnerving."
The first year's shooting now almost behind him, Webster's min preoccupation is with the possibilities of the upcoming season, "Things are changing on the series," he spies. "They're getting darker, and I think in the action sequences, instead of just fighting, we're going to be challenged more, take more hits, more impacts. We're aiming for a different target audience."
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