Alex Zahara Chats Role in ‘Final Destination: Bloodlines’ and Shares of Own Near-Death Experiences

(Photos courtesy of Alex Zahara)

Written by Colleen Bement, Editor

Catch up with Alex Zahara.

Known for his many roles on “Stargate: SG1,” Principal Hartman in “School Spirits,” “The Man in a High Castle,” “Hell on Wheels,” Kevin Costner’s “Open Range,” and was in the 100th episode of “The Outer Limits” as the real-life Commandant of Auschwitz based on the survivor Leo Egan’s life. Alex has also voiced many animated characters, including Red Skull in “Marvel’s Lego Adventures,” Vic Hoskins in “Marvel’s Jurassic World,” Lyle Dylandy & Lockon Stratos in “Gundam 00,” “The Girl Who Leapt Through Time” as Kousuke Tsuda, Nana, and over thirty other anime shows. The list goes just goes on and on.

What that long list of credits doesn’t say about Alex is what a kind, hilarious, and amazing person he is. Not only does he have the best stories from the filming of “Final Destination: Bloodlines,” he has plenty to share about time on other sets. He even has his own Final Destination-type tales. Get to know Alex and check out our spoiler-free review of the film.

 

Colleen Bement: Of course, we have to start out with your latest film: “Final Destination: Bloodlines.” It opened over the weekend and it couldn’t be any more popular! The trailer alone is the 2nd most viewed horror trailer of all time with over 178 million views in just 2 days. You play the role of Uncle Howard Campbell. Your character is very important. Tell us about him.

Alex Zahara: Uncle Howard! He and his sister, Darlene, played by Rya Kihlstedt, she and I had a rough upbringing. Mom was pretty kooky because she was obsessed with death, so it was a challenge. We got split up and taken away from her–the foster care system, ETC. When he started having a family of his own, he really wanted to make great memories and bond the family together. If you look at the house that he and my wife, played by April Telek, we had a trampoline, a barn, a BBQ pit. It’s all about bringing the family together. This whole is really trying to reunite his family, and that’s his role in the movie. He’s the backbone of the family spirit, and he’s trying to keep everybody together. It’s a tough road of hope because there’s a lot going on in that family.

CB: Yeah, that backyard looks dangerous!

AZ: You see my foot comes down on that piece of glass in the trailer? True story: That same foot in that same exact spot when I was four years old, I stepped on a 2 X 4 with a nail through it and put it right through my foot.

CB: The same foot?

AZ: The same foot. The same spot. When they were putting the fake glass on there they said hey, you’ve got a little scar here already and I said, yes I do!

CB: Oh no, that had Tetanus written all over it already.

AZ: Oh totally. I did it again. I was renovating my house about four years ago. I was taking out a piece of fencing around my deck, and I thought it was going to be harder than it was,. But it was really rotted. I gave it a big push and WOOOO, I fell over and stepped right on a nail. Tetanus shot later. The same foot too. Right in the same foot about a half inch in.

CB: That foot is cursed!

AZ: I’m so accident prone. Ask me later about my Final Destination moment.

CB: What was your experience on the set like?

AZ: But back to the cast. Working on set was great. Adam and Zach are tremendous to work with, Craig Perry and Sheila Taylor (producers) are awesome. The cast was great. We had about two or three days of rehearsal, which is so rare these days. You never get rehearsal time for movies and TV shows anymore. We rehearsed. We improv’d. They let us do our own thing. Here’s the script, now throw the script away and let’s see what happens. They incorporated everything they learned from the rehearsal and improv. That also formed out characters more because we went through all these scenarios together, right? Everybody was so inclusive and worked really hard together. There’s a scene in the movie between Stefi (Kaitlyn’s character). She and I have a scene and at one point during one of the takes, the producer, Sheila, said Alex, I just wanted to come up and hug you ‘cause you had be in tears. Well that’s good. I did my job. 

They didn’t treat it like a horror movie like oh, who’s going to die next. It’s all about family. That’s the term bloodlines. It’s all about keeping the family together and the sanctity in the family. Treating people with respect and love and kindness. That’s why this movie’s great because it’s not just deaths out of the gate. There’s a lot of character development. Of course people die  in the scene in the beginning set in the 60s, but, when you get into modern times, it’s about 45 minutes to an hour before anyone you really know dies. Because there’s been all this character development, you really care about these people. You care that the family’s in jeopardy. You care that mothers and fathers and kids are die. 

CB: That’s painful. That makes it so much more scary.

AZ: Exactly. Which is maybe why it took 110 million worldwide on the weekend. I think Zach and Adam worked three to four years on this. They’re like two halves of the same brain. They combined to get the right words. The right direction. The guidance. The cast and crew are amazing. The special effects team at Masters FX. Zach and Adam were so good, they let people do their work.

This movie for me is actually quite personal because it really does reflect a lot of my personal life. I came from a fairly dysfunctional family in a lot of ways, and that’s what this family is. It’s a functionally dysfunctional family, like many of ours are. I was living my life there. I have strained relations with my full blood sister, and I have a half blood sister, and my full blood sister don’t really see eye to eye at all. It’s like I was talking to my real sister. There was a transference of my soul. Was it acting? Well yeah, but I was able to draw upon the realities of my real life, which made the emotions be right on the surface.

CB: Are you an uncle in real life?

AZ: I am an uncle in real life. I’m Uncle Alex to about 25 of my friend’s kids. It’s so funny that I’m Uncle Howard because I’m Uncle Alex to Daniel, Hailey, Will, Earl, Nick, Jake, Annika, Shawn, Brandon, Kristin, Kaylee, the list goes on. I played Santa Claus for them. Everything!

CB: Is it true that you have died on camera over 40 times–even more than Sean Bean? I’m still not over that “Game of Thrones” scene! How does that make you feel (laughs)? 

AZ: That’s the one thing that hasn’t happened to me. I’ve not been beheaded. There ya go. Literally, Sean and I, at lunch time we’d do a read-through, and I’m a really good cold reader. I get asked to read a lot. Suffice to say, Sean and I met and I told him I had him beat. He had died 23 times,  and that point, I had died about 35 or 38 times, and he said get outta here! The Final Destination death was my 40th death. I have been shot. Stabbed. Hung by Henry Winkler in “Dead Man’s Gun.” I nuked myself and my men in “Stargate,” and everything imaginable. I was a little demon servant in a show called “The Immortal” and someone ate me. There ya go. And I was born on Halloween, and the night I was born, the old McDonald Hotel burned to the ground.

CB: Can we chat “Stargate”? That franchise is probably one of my favorites. I understand that you have played 9 different characters. 

AZ: If you really get into it and get picky, I’ve played thousands of characters and here’s why. I played a super Jaffa warrior, but they CGI’d me and replicated me thousands of times to make an army, with help from my buddy Dan Payne. And in the episode ‘Beast of Burden,’ it was me and three other guys, and we were the main Unas characters–Patrick Currie,  Wycliff Hartwig, he’s 6’7” and we played these monster lizard guys, and they would costume us up and put a weapon in our hands and we’d go RRRRG, and we’d back and get another weapon, and we’d go WOOGAA, WOOGAA and go back and they replicated us to make an army of about 10,000 or more. In the ‘Beast of Burden” episode I played seven or eight characters, actually. I was an Unas in the field working. I was an Unas carrying water, loading the wagon, I was an Unas in the slave trade, I was the bloodhound Unas, I played my main character, and I played the female waitress Unas.

CB: I’ve got to go back and watch that episode.

AZ: Mike Shanks and I went to university together. He was a year ahead of me. When my character gives him the beer that he orders he says thank you, and ‘cause we’re slaves, nobody ever thanks us, so I stopped and looked at him and gave him a little (blows kiss). I improved it and Martin Wood was like ah, beauty. Do that again! 

CB: I also loved you in that episode ‘1969’ because I’m a hippie at heart.

AZ: Ah, thanks. That was a great episode, because real quick, that dealt with the Vietnam War and my character kept saying I don’t want to go to war,  and I said to the director, Charlie, I don’t think that his character doesn’t want to go to war, it’s that he doesn’t want to kill anybody. I asked if I could change that line and he said do it! That was the whole thing. They took the subject matter seriously, so it was not all just fun and games. It dealt with some heavy stuff, man.

CB: Here’s a more generic-type question. Are you more of a horror fan or a sci-fi fan? What was the first movie that you remember falling in love with?

AZ: I’m more of a sci-fi fan, big time. I’m a classic horror fan like the old “Mummy,” Bela Lugosi’s Dracula, Lon Chaney’s Wolfman, Peter Cushing of course, and Christopher Lee. But the modern horror, not so much. I’m a sensitive lad. My wife would call me a delicate flower because we’d watch “All Creatures Great and Small” on PBS and I cry like a baby. Little lambs are being born and I’m crying. So watching people get incarcerated NOT normally my number one thing, but if they’re paying me to be in the movie, I’ll watch it.

CB: To be honest my favorite horror movie is “The Birds.” Hitchcock ruined me.

AZ: Crows are flying right now as you say that. These black crows are flying and landing outside my window and staring at me! Back sci-fi, my favorite sci-fi’s of all time are “Alien,” “Aliens,” anything by James Cameron. I did “Dark Angel” years ago that he created and I did the two story-arc that he wrote so I have worked for James Cameron, and he’s unbelievable. He doesn’t know the meaning of the word no. And sci-fi with a story and thriller sci-fi or quirky weirdness. I want to see “Mickey 17.” I haven’t seen that yet. sci -fi that makes you think like “Contact.” “Arrival.” 

CB: Switching gears, we just have to talk about “The Man in a High Castle.” I’d have to say that it is one of the most brilliant shows I’ve ever seen. What was that experience like?

AZ: Great. I mean, everybody in it was awesome. All the people I worked with like Rufus Sewell was amazing. Chelah Horsdal plays his wife, she’s a friend of mine. She’s incredible. We did “Marley & Me: The Puppy Years” together. She’s just amazing. Everybody cast in that was just amazing. The producers, right from the top down, were just incredible. I was doing another movie before that and I had a huge beard from “Liar, Liar Vampire,” this kid’s show,  and of course I was supposed to look like a Nazi. When I auditioned, I slicked it all down, and I had done the 100th episode of “The Outer Limits” episode ‘Tribunal’ and I played the real-life commandant of Auschwitz and they had video footage of me playing a full-blown Nazi there. But when I sent this stuff in, there’s eight producers on the show, and my video had eight watches all from them, and I got the role.

CB: Let’s get back to that Final Destination moment of yours. Tell me about it.

AZ:  People think I’m making this up, but I’m not. I’m a pretty sensitive man and maybe that’s a vibe in the universe, but I’ve had a couple two or three occasions in my life when I’ve had a little glimpse of myself–just this image in my head. One time I had this image in my head of a buddy and I upside down in my car with white all around and sure as heck, we went on a road trip, we were tired, he didn’t pull over and he fell asleep, we left the road and there was snow all around us and we hit the ditch and snow was flying around us but we didn’t roll, but we walked back up the embankment there we missed a culvert my less than a foot and we would have rolled. That’s one, but recently my wife and I went on a road trip to Alberta to visit family in British Columbia, as we filled up with gas, I had a brief glimpse in my head of the two of us upside down in my car, and our puppy, Cooper, little black Dachshund hanging from his little harness in the back, swinging. I didn’t say anything. About six or eight hours later, we were in a major traffic accident where three or four vehicle were totaled, including an RV that tried to turn left across a highway. There was no chance, it was struck by two other trucks. One of the other vehicles hit it, a Ford Bronco, spun up in the air and shot past us and I just did a little eek with my hand and it just missed up. It just kissed our rear quarter panel. Three scratches was all we got. But when we came to a stop, over the embankment on my wife’s side, we had about a foot grace where we would have rolled down a 25 foot embankment. 

CB: Who are you?! Wow. 

AZ:  I know. See, people think I make that stuff up and I’m not making that up. Why would I make that up?

CB: I can see why you got the role of Uncle Campbell.

AZ: It’s art reflecting life reflecting art.

CB: Final question: Do you have any projects in the works that you’re allowed to tell us about?

AZ: I have a recurring role in a series called “School Spirits” I play Principal Hartman. Principal Hartman. Uncle Howard. I’ve got the “H” roles lined up. Did that for two years. There are two seasons available that you can watch, and the third season is suppose to start any time this summer and hopefully Principal Hartman will be back. It stars Peyton List and Milo Manheim, among others. Also, “Stargate” was like a family. Everybody clicked and it went for like 10 years. “Supernatural” too. I hope this goes forever, because everybody in it is really nice. Peyton is so sweet and so nice. Everybody’s awesome. 

CB: I need to help with that and start watching. I can’t thank you enough for taking time out of your busy schedule to chat with me. Best of luck with “Final Destination: Bloodlines.” Not that you need it. It’s already a big hit. 

Check out our spoiler-free review and the trailer of “Final Destination: Bloodlines.”

Stay in touch with Alex on Instagram

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