SIMON MACCORKINDALE was
the
perfect choice to play the wealthy, cultured
Chase. "I thought the concept for
Manimal was excellent," says
MacCorkindale. "I also appreciated the fact
Chase was a very cerebral individual and that
Glen Larson [series creator and producer] had
decided to make the show very stylish by
having my character be an Englishman who
wore expensive suits and drove around in a
Rolls Royce. All this was quite unusual for
television at that time, so we really were
exploring new ground.
"Back in the early Eighties the only other
English actor on American television was
Pierce Brosnan in Remington Steele.
Then I got Manimal and a year or two
later there was a massive influx of English
actors hired for night-time Soap Operas, but
Pierce and I started that whole trend. So that, of
course, was very much an exciting part of
getting the job on Manimal because I
knew I had
found a foothold in an area that was pretty
much virgin territory for Englishmen.
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| Turning back into a human can have its own problems |
"Prior to Manimal I spent two full
years in California going to auditions and
getting very close but always losing out on
parts because I was English," he continues.
"We were regarded, really, as foreigners when
it came to primetime television, and, in fact.
there was an immortal phrase expressed by
ABC in 1981 when someone challenged them
as to why I kept being passed over for all these
shows. They said that I was not an eight o'clock
actor. That meant at that time of night they
didn't want viewers watching someone who
sounded intellectual or who had an accent that
was alien to their ears and, therefore, hard work
when it came to listening. Fortunately, this type
of prejudice began to fade thanks to
Remington Steele and then
Manimal."
The show's pilot reveals that Jonathan Chase
inherited his unique powers from his
late father, who acquired the knowledge
while exploring a remote jungle. The dashing
young man teaches animal behavioural sciences
at New York University and also serves as a
consultant to the police department on its use of
animals in criminology. However, Chase keeps
secret the fact that he can change into any
animal he desires and, while transformed, helps
authorities track down assorted saboteurs,
arsonists and murderers and bring them to
justice. MacCorkindale easily recalls his early
days working on the programme.
"It was a very enriching time for me as well
as a learning curve," says the actor. "I never
had my own series before and I quickly found
out what it was like to have everything centred
around you and discovered some of the
network nonsense that accompanies it.
Expectations are high when you're making a
pilot and there are pressures coming at you
from all sides as well
as demands constantly being asked of you.
Everybody is already counting on the series to
run at least three years so that it can then go into
syndication and make a fortune for them. So
there's a tense undercurrent going on all the
time.
"The show had been conceived, but, of
course, it hadn't been fully conceived,"
continues MacCorkindale. "There were all kinds
of discussions taking place while we were
filming the pilot as to the direction in which to
take the series. This was a brand new venture
for all of us and everyone was excited to be part
of the creative process. What made this whole
concept work was the character, Jonathan
Chase, but very little of who he was supposed to
be was really on the page. We had to invent this
character as we went along and that was quite
an invigorating process."
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| Taking a break from the make-up process |
In his pursuit of law and order Chase morphs
into a menagerie of animals, including a black
panther and a hawk. The transformation is quite
dramatic and begins with his breathing, which
becomes rapid and heavy. His hands then start
to show ripples and contractions followed by his
nose becoming, for example, a snout or a beak.
He sprouts whiskers and fangs or wings and
talons. From the viewers perspective this all
happens in a matter of seconds, but for
MacCorkindale it was more time-consuming.
"With any television programme, particularly
new ones, you tend to put in incredibly long
hours," he explains. "We were working 14- to
16- hour days on a regular basis and then they'd
pull me in on the weekend to do all the
prosthetics for the animal sequences, so it was a
very tough shoot. At the same time there was
certainly great joy in what we were doing. I
think a lot of that had to do with the fact that we
were working with animals and dreaming up
ways to use them in the show."
Only two people were privy to Chase's secret,
his old army buddy Ty Earle (Glynn Turman in
the pilot: Michael D Roberts there after) and
Detective Brooke McKenzie (Melody
Anderson), both of whom worked with the
professor on cases. McKenzie was also
supposed to be Chase's romantic interest, but
Manimal was taken off the air after
only three months.
"We were canned for several reasons -partly,
I feel, because of internal politics at NEC and
the fact that some network people were not
behind the show from the beginning," says
MacCorkindale. "It was also an issue of
economics. When we were doing
Manimal. Twentieth Century Fox had
a tremendous number of shows going and many
other actors besides myself lost their jobs on the
same weekend. The studio realized that they
were over-extended financially and the fact that
Manimal was the most expensive
series on television at the time didn't help. We
were going over budget at a substantial rate per
episode because of the fact we were shooting
three full units simultaneously. Our main unit
filmed the actors doing the actual story, a
second unit handled the animal sequences, and
the third all the prosthetics. That was pretty
much unheard of in television back then.
"NBC made the further mistake of putting us
up against Dallas on Friday night. I'm not quite
sure how all this happened because in those days
I was far less savvy about the mechanics of the
business, but they actually believed we were an
alternative to Dallas. In fact, we were
much more of a younger-based series and going
out at 9 o'clock on a Friday night was basically
suicide. When they rescheduled the show for
Saturday afternoon the ratings went up radically,
but by then we had already been cancelled."
The
Manimal pilot and its seven
episodes were eventually sold around the world
and, thanks to the advent of cable television, the
show became a cult hit and further boosted
MacCorkindale's popularity worldwide. "The
series has a phenomenal following among black
people, which probably has something to do
with the black panther and
the image it conveys. It's also enormously
popular in such territories as France, Germany,
Italy, Israel and Scandinavia. I can't move in
France without people of all ages spotting me
and that's from a show I did 16 years ago. which
is quite remarkable and also touching."
Born in Cambridgeshire in 1952,
MacCorkindale planned to follow his father into
the air force and train as a pilot, but his eyesight
began to deteriorate when he was 13. He then
considered joining the diplomatic corps and
possibly becoming an ambassador, but became
fascinated with the theatre and decided to be a
stage director.
"I persuaded my family that I didn't want to
go to university but, instead, straight to drama
school so I could get on with trying to find out
whether or not I could make it as a director. My
dad and I made a deal, though, that if I wasn't
happy or sustaining myself by the time I was 25
he would exert parental pressure on me to get a
sensible job," chuckles the actor.
"I went to a very small drama school in
England called Studio 68 and while there I also
learnt a little about acting so I could better
understand actors and, hopefully, be a more
competent director. By accident, I became the
star pupil, or at least one who could walk and
talk at the same time. However, when it came
time to graduate I realized I still didn't know
enough to direct the world's top actors.
"I decided to continue acting as well as
directing until I felt confident enough to say to
a seasoned performer, 'OK, I think this is what
you should do.' So I ended up with an acting
career," he laughs. "Now, whenever I think
about permanently going over to the other side
of the camera another nice part seems to come
along, and that's how it's been throughout my
career."
MacCorkindale toured in regional repertory
theatre before making his West End debut in
Pygmalion, starring Alec McCowen and Diana
Rigg. The actor went on to work extensively in
British television and appeared in, among other
things, I, Claudius and Zeffirelli's
mini-series Jesus of Nazareth. He
also played Joe Kapp, a young astronomer who
teams up with Professor Quatermass (Sir John
Mills) to fight an alien force that is harvesting
Earth's children in the 1979 ITV Science
Fiction series Quatermass.
"One of the interesting things about Joe Kapp
and his family was they were Jewish and I'm
not," says MacCorkindale. "Now, Jewish is not
necessarily something you can
play but it is an attitude. I've always been
fascinated by the Jewish religion because it's a
very strong faith and very binding for a family
which, of course, was a key issue with Joe's story
line. He and his family were extremely close and
when he learns they've all been killed by the
aliens he goes mad. Trying to find this
extraordinary sense of faith that was constantly
driving him proved quite a challenge for me."
Riddle of the Sands, Death on
the Nile, Jaws 3-D and Cabo
Blanco are just a few of the feature films
MacCorkindale has appeared in. He spent 1980
to 1985 in the United States working as an actor
and director in the theatre, while on television he
guest-starred in series including
Dynasty, Hart to Hart.
Matt Houston and The Dukes of
Hazzard and portrayed English aristocrat
David Clement in the acclaimed mini-series
The Manions of America. Besides his
regular role on Manimal,
MacCorkindale played Greg Reardon for two
seasons in Falcon Crest and also
directed several episodes.
MacCorkindale and his wife, actress Susan
George, returned to Britain in 1986 to fulfill his
ambition of creating his own production
company and in 1987 they formed AMY
International. Since then the actor has developed,
produced, directed, written or co-written a
variety of projects. In 1990, he acted as
executive production consultant and also starred
as ex-Scotland Yard inspector Peter Sinclair in
the USA Network cable series
Counterstrike. The show ran for three
years and still receives high ratings in
syndication.
In the summer of 1998 the actor went to
Vancouver to direct an episode of
Nightman. He also guest-starred on the show in
an episode entitled
Manimal in which
he reprised his role of Jonathan Chase. "We were
able to use computer graphics for the animal
transformations rather than make-up and
prosthetics, so we brought
Manimal
up-to-date." enthuses MacCorkindale. "I've been
thinking a great deal lately about reviving the
show and with syndication more popular than
ever the timing seems right. So, who knows,
Manimal might just have a rebirth.
"It amazes me the impact that the series has
had on my life," he muses. "Because of
Manimal I was invited to a children's
hospital in St Louis to meet a young boy who
had cystic fibrosis. He was going to die and
wanted to meet Manimal. I brought him
a bunch of presents and we spent the whole day
together and, eventually. I made him laugh. He
passed away a short while later and I received a
letter from his mother telling me that that day
was the first time he had smiled in two-and-a-
half years. She was there in the room to see it
and will always have that image of him to
remember.
"You don't realize what an enormous
responsibility you have as an actor and how you
can affect people," says MacCorkindale. "Even if
it's just one time and one person in your life it
justifies your entire career."
