Peter Kelamis: Actor – Writer – Comedian
Peter worked with Louis on Stargate Universe and Motive. Read an exclusive interview with Peter below.
Follow Peter on Twitter at @PeterKelamis and on Instagram at @RealPeterKelamis.
Peter’s official website is at http://www.peterkelamis.com/
Peter has a very successful voiceover career. Learn more about Peter’s voice-acting projects here! Here’s Peter doing some of his many voiceover recordings:
One of Peter’s projects was voicing Yoda in The Lego Star Wars series. Click on the screencap to go to the series website and watch! Note: it’s very cute AND very funny!!
AN INTERVIEW WITH PETER KELAMIS
Bea reports from Dragon*Con:
This year I only attended Dragon*Con for one day – Saturday – and my main goal was to catch Peter Kelamis for an interview for Ferreira Fest. Many thanks to sacredclay who provided me with the secret passphrase so Peter would know who I was: “Let’s party like it’s 1999!” When I arrived at Peter’s autograph table and in true spy fashion whispered the passphrase his face lit up and I got a big hug! Besides their sense of humor, their love for their dogs and hockey, Peter and Louis also share a propensity for giving fabulous hugs. Professional grade, folks!
We set some tentative times when we could do the interview, in between Peter’s photo shoot and the Stargate Multiverse panel, or possibly afterwards. Peter was the only Stargate Universe cast member on the panel, and he was great: lots of funny stories but also some serious and insightful comments, about how SGU never shied away from the difficult topics, and he specifically mentioned Young’s euthanasia of Riley. There is a fine line that con panelists walk, between being overly funny and pontificating about their art, both of which can ruin a panel quickly. Peter knew when to share a laugh and when to answer a question with honesty and sincerity. I for one appreciated his balance, as well as his way of praising his fellow cast members for their accomplishments. He was very complimentary of Louis’ work in particular.
When I met up with Peter again he was about to lose his voice – he’d had trouble during the panel already but by our appointed time he was barely able to talk. So I gave him my contact info and he promised to call and we’d simply do a phone interview when his voice had returned.
Usually when you make arrangements for a follow up with celebrities it stays that way – just an arrangement. Not so with Peter! He emailed me a few weeks later and we agreed on a mutually available time to make a call. It was changed last minute to a SKYPE session, so I was frantically rewiring, but we started with only a minor delay. The connection was not very good at first, as you can hear in the sound clip, so about halfway through we hung up and re-dialed, and this time it all worked perfectly.
Casey was standing by to whip up a transcript with the speed of light – thank you SO much for this amazing feat! Here’s another perfect example of how Ferreira Fest would never be able to do what it does without its many volunteers!
And so we present to you an interview with Louis’ friend and colleague (and occasional dog sitter) Peter Kelamis.
Listen to the sound clip here:
FF – All right! Well why don’t we start with something simple – who is Peter Kelamis? And tell us a little bit maybe about the early Jurassic period of your life. And this would be a great place to make a cheap plug for your online comedian’s website and your standup routine.
PK – Right, right! Well, I am Peter Kelamis. I’m an actor, a comedian, voiceover guy, producer, do, I guess, a bunch of things related to the entertainment industry but probably most primarily known at least to fans that would probably read this, as portraying Adam Brody in Stargate Universe.
And I was born in Australia. My family moved when I was very young. I grew up in Vancouver. And that’s where I started pursuing acting, more specifically standup comedy originally. And I started doing standup through my days at university, The University of British Columbia, and then moved on to Punchlines Comedy Club, which is a now defunct comedy club in Vancouver where I kind of got my stage legs and experience and my whole exposure to the world of standup comedy. And that led into acting roles and voiceover roles and eventually the role in Stargate. And I still do standup, not as much traveling as I used to, but I recently just did my own standup comedy special, and it’s downloadable for only $5!
FF – (laugh)
PK – To describe it… If it’s, if you go dollar per laugh, you’re way ahead. It’s like 50 cents a laugh, at least.
FF – What a bargain!
PK – What a bargain! So it’s a 40 minute stand up special, it’s available at a website called thestandupcomedians.com. You’d follow the link to me. It’s 5 bucks and they’re not going to try to put any kind of adware or anything secret to sell you or bother you afterwards. It’s just, if you’re bored one night, you wanna download some laughs, it’s 5 bucks and they won’t bother you again.
FF – Fantastic! And I’m more than happy to put a hotlink in there and maybe embed the little clip, that’s on there, I’m more than happy to do that.
PK – That’d be great.
FF – Okay, all right, next question. I understand from your bio that your background is Greek, do you speak Greek or any other languages?
PK – I do speak Greek. And my mother, who is actually staying with us right now, she responds to me in Greek, I respond to her in English, and it’s kind of – me and my sister grew up speaking half Greek, half English, through the house, and it still has stuck with me so. I’m actually glad, you know, you don’t think about it when you’re younger, but that you know, you’re taught a language without really having to think about it.
FF – Right.
PK – And it is always great to have another language. I mean, if it’s forced upon you, it’s hellish to learn, but…
FF – Right.
PK – From what I understand, somebody trying to learn Greek who’s never spoken it before, it’s a pretty difficult language to pick up.
FF – It’s very, very difficult. Yeah.
PK – So I do, yeah, I do speak Greek. And we had to learn French, growing up, in the school system in Canada. So, my limited French right now is with our coffee house guy half a block away and he’s Parisian French, so I play my French up every time I go get my coffee in the morning.
FF – Well, there you go. And you know what, as long as you can ask where the bathrooms are and you can say “Not tonight, I have a headache,” you’re usually fine.
PK – Exactly. And I think I got those ones covered.
FF – So we’ve heard that you do comedy, you do acting, and you also do quite a bit of voiceovers. Is there any other artistic venue beyond that? And we’re going to talk about voiceovers in just a second. Beyond that, is there any other artistic venue that you pursue, such as maybe painting, photography, something that sort of complements your artistic endeavors there?
PK – Um, no, I think the stuff that I listed in the beginning kind of covers it – the acting, the standup I still love, I was involved in improv for quite some time, which actually, probably the highlight of that was improvising with Robin Williams a couple of times on stage.
FF – Uh huh.
PK – He dropped by in Vancouver when he was filming, it was Jumanji at the time. I was part of an improv group at Punchlines and then he surprised us a few times so I got to improvise on stage with him which was pretty amazing.
FF – Well, how fantastic is that? I bet that was a lot of fun.
PK – Yes. It was a lot of fun.
FF – Yeah. Now, you’ve also done voiceovers for video games? And how is that different from doing a voiceover for like a series or a commercial? Because video games, voiceovers for video games, I mean that’s a fairly, it’s a niche market?
PK – Yeah.
FF – And, uh, not a lot of people know about it. Do you want to expand on that a little?
PK – Sure, sure. It is a huge market. And it’s certainly come to light a little bit more, I’d say in the last few years. I was just at a convention, a ComicCon-like convention in Texas and one of the actors there had done the, not the voice, but the motion capture for Call of Duty…
FF – Oh!
PK – And everybody knew exactly who he was, and it’s neat because the character in the game looks exactly like him. Because you know they put the motion sensors on his actual face, so his face is essentially electronically duplicated to the game. Doing voiceovers for the game is – when you get the job you kind of go into a room and your list of small lines are kind of itemized, so you could have any number of pages of lines, and it’ll be like “Get away from the door! Get away from the door! Get away from the door!” And you do it a few times until you get it right and they get the cadence and explain what the situation is, so it’s a fairly… and alone, you know and as far as voiceover stuff goes, and performances, whereas on a cartoon series, you get a… castmembers are usually in the room with you and you can interact with humans, you know…
FF – Right.
PK – So, one person will do a line, they’ll react just like they would in a regular scene on film. So you have a lot more fun doing (cartoons) and it’s a lot looser. And less kind of regimented than a video game recording.
FF – Right, right, right, right. So it’s a very different experience. Because, one, you’re mostly by yourself. And then you can interact with other people. When you…..
PK – Exactly. Yeah.
FF – Well, that’s fantastic. See, I didn’t know that, either, how do you do voiceovers for video games. I’ve seen other voiceovers happening but that’s a very specific thing there.
PK – Right. Yeah.
FF – Right. I have a question here that, you did a bunch of guest appearances, like I remember you of course from SG1 and Dead Like Me, which I remember peeing my pants the first time I watched that scene with you as the coroner, that was hilarious, and I love that show.
PK – (chuckles)
FF – I still miss it. That was such a fantastic show. But anyways, you did, you were in Space Race in SG1 and you had a lot of stuff stuck to your face. The prosthetics and all that, how… do you remember how that helped or hindered your performance as this particular character?
PK – Yeah! There’s a backstory to that. I got an audition for the role and I got the role and, actually I believe I’d done, yeah, I’d done a previous episode of SG1, and typically, you don’t repeat actors on a series, they usually like to have at least a season or two go by before they use the same actor. They don’t want to have repeat faces.
FF – Right. Exactly.
PK – Um, so, it was implied that this role was going to require some prosthetic stuff, my, you know, identity would kind of be masked behind that. So, I got the role, and then the night before I was supposed to film, I was playing a no contact softball league game with a friend, for a friend of mine. I was helping him out, he was short on players. So he claims.
FF – Uh-oh!
PK – And one gal was on second base, I was playing shortstop. And she ran, intentionally, for first base and broke my nose and it ended up on the other side of my face, and just, geyser blood.
FF – Oh my god!
PK – So I had to get raced to Emergency, and they eventually had to push it back in, crack it back in.
FF – Oh my!
PK – And put a metal brace on it. And they gave me, cocaine for that, which was shocking.
FF – Oh my goodness.
PK – And that’s what the doctor actually said, he took this long matchstick like thing and he started, you know, put it up my nose and he goes, well, you’re an actor, you’ve probably had this before, and I’m like “Huh? What?” and he goes “Cocaine.” I’m “What?”
FF – Oh my god.
PK – So, I hadn’t had it before, or since, I haven’t. That’s kind of what they give to numb the nose, I guess the medical version of it. And, so I’m all wired up, cracked my face back in, I’m on painkillers, and then I tried to locate the producer for the show. So, I made a few phone calls and numbers and it’s around midnight at this point. And I left messages for my agent, saying this is what’s going on. So I just show up the next morning, they were kind of warned when I showed up the next morning, early, with a metal brace on my nose and the producer came into the makeup trailer and took a look at me and went “I remember when I broke my nose.” They were all very light and accepting about it.
FF – Yeah.
PK – They were great about it. I mean, John Smith, and all of them gave me a hard time and were kind of joking about it. There were so many lines in the script, it was too late to get another actor to do it. So it just came down to, they looked to the makeup person and said “Have you ever seen this race of aliens before?” and he went like “Uh, no”, “Okay they’re going to have a big nose.” So they sculpted the prosthetics over the metal brace, so if you ever watch the episode again I got a huge schnozz because underneath it there was an entire metal brace holding my nose together.
FF – Oh my goodness. I’ve always wondered about the big nose but I thought that was a character choice. That’s hilarious!
PK – No! We had to do it, so, and the other actor was actually a very good friend of mine, Colin Murdock, who’s very, very funny.
FF – Yeah.
PK – It was like we were using ESP, kind of fortune hunters, um, so we had a little fun with it, but yeah, strange circumstances.
FF – That’s hilarious! See, I had no idea that you had actually a broken nose at the time. I mean that was kind of fortunate that they could mask it, because otherwise, there’d probably be a whole lot of backstory for that.
PK – Well, yeah, I mean if it were just a straight role that didn’t require makeup at all, and it was just a human being type character, it would have been pretty dicey to work around.
FF – That’s amazing. I mean, talk about serendipity there. Wow! All right, let’s move on to SGU – Stargate Universe – and talk a little bit about that. And my first question to you for that is: what attracted you to the role of Brody when you first read for it? And you first tried out for the role? What did you find attractive about it? If anything?
PK – I mean, I think as an actor, or a working actor trying to work, often times, unless you’ve reached a certain level of notoriety and fame, I don’t think you have any choice of what is offered to you to audition for, so, much like any other audition, I was given a chance to audition for a new series. Now, hearing it was a Stargate series was exciting to me because I had enjoyed the entire franchise, and more specifically the movie, I loved it. So I was excited to go in for that. But they had given me, I guess all the people that auditioned for kind of the main scientist roles, the same sides, the same script to work on.
FF – Right.
PK – For that audition, so they haven’t decided how many scientists are we going to have, or who are they going to be. So when I read it, the description of the character said, “And the door opens and scientist number one, or whoever was the part we were reading for, comes in, a very Eeyore-like body.” Ugh! I don’t want to read for this, I’m not gonna read for the Eeyore guy… but it turned out that it was just a generic script. And I got an audition near the end of December, and January 4th my agent said I got a callback for Brody, and I’m like, what show is that?
FF – Oh god, yeah.
PK – He said, remember the Stargate thing? And I said, oh yeah. Yeah. So I did get a callback and before even, I think, I don’t even know if I’d made it home, my agent got a call saying, yeah, I got the part. So it was very, very cool.
FF – You got to play the Eeyore character. So, well, that may have actually played into how you created Adam Brody, knowing that he was based on an Eeyore character?
PK – He wasn’t. It was actually another character in the series. It was a different scientist altogether. In fact they had written the initial side that was kind of given to all of us.
FF – Can you talk a little bit about what was challenging about working on SGU, you know, starting out with a character at first that essentially had no name or background story and was there anybody that you based Brody on? Like who was your inspiration for creating that character?
PK – Um, well, I don’t think there was any specific inspiration. It was a matter of reading the description of the character and just taking an interpretation of how that character would naturally react to the surroundings and the things going on around him – going through the Stargate, being on a ship, not knowing where they are, struggling for air and food and all those basic human fears, being thrust into that. It’s just you… I think as an actor you need to react naturally to that scenario as if it was actually happening and that’s all I tried to do. There’s been a lot of people that have had this question many times, that in my previous episode of SG1, not the Space Race episode, the other one, Smoke and Mirrors I believe it was.
FF – Right. Yes, yes.
PK – My character at the time was involved in some shifty stuff, he’d stolen a mimic device, and my very last scene was Don Davis’ character saying, instead of going to jail on Earth, and for my own safety, they could send me offworld. So, a number of people have asked me whether it was the same character, and I’ve often thought about that myself and looking back at it, it very well could have been.
FF – That’s interesting. Yeah. Yeah, I remember that scene, too, when you get all intimidated by Teal’c and all that good stuff.
PK – Right, right.
FF – So, Brody was really somebody who evolved with you? As you went through the series?
PF – Absolutely, and, you know the writers… the entire first season there were the nine, I guess you’d call primary cast members, and then there was three or four kind of secondary cast members, and we never knew how long we were going to last in the series.
FF – Right.
PF – We didn’t have contracts for the year, or anything like that. We would literally go to script and the second they’d hand us scripts, I remember me and Patrick Gilmore just flipping through to the last page to see if we were still alive. You know?
FF – Yeah.
PK – ‘Cause we really didn’t know.
FF – Right, right, right. Now…
PK – Much like the characters on the ship, we didn’t know as actors whether we were going to survive. So, you know, the fear part was easy to convey.
FF – Right! That was not acted at all, it was right there.
PK – No.
FF – Now, it’s really quite fun to watch, when you watch Stargate Universe, the dynamic among scientists, especially the dynamic between you and Jennifer Spence and Patrick Gilmore. It was such a treat to watch. Did you know them before you came in to SGU? Did you know them at all?
PK – Oh, no, I did not, I had never met them before which, in a town of Vancouver’s size, as far as the acting community goes, it was almost miraculous that we had not crossed paths before.
FF – Right.
PK – And same with Julia Benson, I didn’t know her either. So, it’s amazing that all the Vancouver actors, most of us, had never met each other, but it was a very quick bonding process and I’m still very very good friends with all of them, specifically with Patrick, we live within blocks of each other. And we hang out and talk and do what friends do kind of thing. But they still remain very close friends.
FF – Oh, that’s fantastic. Did you have at all any say in how your characters would interact in future parts? Did the writers look specifically at your interactions with these two people and say, oh, this is kind of like what we could do with Brody, any of that?
PK – Yeah… um, they never really told us which direction it was going to go but one time, literally, during lunch, it was Joe Mallozzi was behind us, behind me and Patrick, I don’t know how the conversation came up, but Patrick threw, “Well, you know Peter’s one of Canada’s busiest standup comics.” And he (Joe Mallozzi) was like “What?” He (Patrick Gilmore) goes “Yeah, you check out his comedies.”… and they had no idea.
FF – Uh huh.
PK – And really, from that day forward, they started giving me more comedic license with my lines. They started writing stuff specifically for Brody to have the opportunity to turn comedic, and sometimes I would do it without them even wanting me to be comedic, but it was kind of in my nature to skew in that direction.
FF – Right, right.
PK – After that day they started taking advantage of it. And I loved it. The more opportunity they gave me to be silly, and be a jackass and screw things up and reactions and just skewed in that direction, that was just a bonus for me, I loved it.
FF – I heard it, many times, that relationship mentioned as the Laurel and Hardy of SGU, you know?
PK – Yeah, I’ve also heard, you know, the two old guys from The Muppet Show…
FF – Yes, yes.
PK – For examples of how we were described.
FF – Right, right, right. And it was just so nice. I mean, SGU is not exactly known for a lot of levity, and it makes it so much more precious when you have these moments, because nobody can be serious a hundred percent of the time and it was just so nice to have these characters do the silly things, things blow up in your face and the big – do you remember, with the kidney transplant?
PK – Yes.
FF – And the Numa Numa song?
PK – Yes.
FF – Oh my god, I cried, I laughed so hard.
PK – That scene, we just started doing the rehearsal, and all it said was I turn it on, and then that song comes on and I have difficulty turning it off. That’s all it was.
FF – Right.
PK – And then, when they yelled action in the rehearsal, I did what I did and the final thing was, and I drew it out as long as possible and dropped the batteries and, yelled “cut” all I heard this laughter from the back, because they actually, the producers, writers watch the show from Video Village, just, you know…
FF – Right.
PK – A few meters away. And, Carl Binder running up, who had written that episode, just saying, okay, you gotta do what you just did when we roll. And I was like “Okay.”
FF – That’s, that’s…
PK – You know, I kinda went for it and they liked it and that’s one of my favorite moments.
FF – Okay, that was my next question, actually, apart from this scene, which, I’m sure, I already kind of thought that’s probably one of your favorite moments, did you have any other favorite moments in Stargate Universe where you really said, oh yeah, this is, I did good… right there.
PK – Yeah… the episode, I believe it was Epilogue, towards the end of Season two, where they turned us into, essentially, old versions of ourselves.
FF – Right.
PK – We’ve been stranded on a planet and we’re watching Kino footage of us, basically, not in another dimension, but another version of us having lived in the past.
FF – Right.
PK – And they turn me into essentially… the funny part was they showed how all the characters ended up hooking up, and marrying each other and having babies, dadadada, and so and so married so and so, and then there’s Eli going like, “I guess I’m the only one, me and Brody are the only ones that are single.” And then, he hooks up and has the baby with…
FF – With Barnes of course, yeah.
PK – With Barnes, and then the quick flash to me and I’m the old Brody, get-off-my-lawn guy. And, oh, man, I laughed my ass off when I read it, and it was like I can’t wait to do the scene.
FF – I remember, I just got a hold of the conceptual drawings of this whole Novus thing and there was a scene that was cut where you’re actually forging the needle, do you remember that?
PK – Yes, yes.
FF – I was heartbroken when I read that, I was like, oh my god, I would have loved to have seen that scene but I guess it just ran long and they decided to cut it?
PK – Yeah, we were out in the forest, and I think when you’re out in the elements so to speak that things can run a little long, so yeah, they ended up cutting that scene but I remember specifically what you’re referencing.
FF – Yeah, so that would’ve been nice because there were production drawings of the little smelting of it and everything that they had and…
PK – Yeah.
FF – And, ah man what a shame that that didn’t end up in it. It should have been like a two hour episode, really, I mean it was so full, that particular episode, Epilogue.
PK – Yeah, um, that’s probably my favorite entire episode.
FF – Mine too. Mine too. So fantastic.
PK – And Ming Na’s speech at the end of that episode I mean still, kind of, you know…
FF – Yeah, gives me shivers.
PK – Tears in my eyes, it was just so emotional and it wound up things. Even though, at the time we had no idea that the series was not going to continue.
FF – Right.
PK – You know, when she says, I may be paraphrasing, but when she says, you know that the mission was never the destination, it was the journey…
FF – It was the journey there, yeah.
PK – It’s just, not to get too intellectual about it, but it says a lot about just life in general.
FF – Yeah, well, it’s also, I think, to sum up that entire series. It’s really not about the end, the last part, but it’s the five years that everybody was hoping for…
PK – Sure.
FF – … in between. The journey in itself, so to me that was also like the whole philosophy of the show, really.
PK – Yeah.
FF – In a nutshell right there. And it’s so important, that we have that in season two already. That we knew, wait a second, this is not at all about the end result. This is about getting there.
PK – No.
FF – So it was really beautifully done.
PK – Yeah. I agree.
FF – All right, let’s talk a little bit more about, well, you’ve mentioned that you hang out with Louis and Mike Dopud a lot, and you’ve also said that you hang out with Patrick Gilmore, anybody else that you’re still in touch with? From SGU?
PK – Probably not specifically in person, but through Twitter and Facebook.
FF – Right.
PK – and stuff, you know, Jen Spence, Julia; I don’t think Haig (Sutherland) is on Twitter, but he’s…
FF – Yeah, I haven’t seen him yet either.
PK – Yeah, he’s, there’s posts with him and Ivon Bartok again on Twitter, and I see him again occasionally. So there’s a number of them and there’s a number of previous cast members from the other shows that I have known for a very, very long time, like Paul McGillion.
FF – Right.
PK – And Peter Flemming, and a lot of other actors, Gary Jones, all these guys, a lot of these Vancouver guys I know.
FF – Yeah. Well, Vancouver’s, I mean it’s large enough like you said that you can’t know certain people but it’s also small enough that you keep running into the same people over and over once you know them. And after a while, you kind of like, it’s a large family but it’s a family nonetheless. I’ve heard that a lot about the Vancouver… acting troupe there.
PK – It’s funny. Years ago, I had auditioned for Gary Jones’ part as Walter Harriman.
FF – Oh really?
PK – And I lost the part to Gary.
FF – Uh huh.
PK – So, he ended up having, I guess, a ten year run with it, I think it is.
FF – Yep. Can you imagine?
PK – Kind of funny thing to look back on.
FF – Yeah. Well, it’s a small world, in many ways.
PK – Sure.
FF – Now, Louis has often mentioned how you always make him laugh. Do you share a similar sense of humor? I mean, knowing Louis, he can be a pretty wacky guy!
PK – Right!
FF – What happens when you guys hang out? Do you laugh about the same things? Do you find the same things funny?
PK – Yeah, I think so. And I like doing kind of character things, and acting out funny scenarios and funny reactions and things like that. And that, for some reason, he particularly finds that hilarious. So, on the set, we really… as you were saying, the tone of the show, was so serious, but, oh my god did we laugh! Like the contrast between what people saw on screen and the hilarity that happened behind the scenes before they yelled “action!” was unbelievable.
FF – Right. I saw the two skits that you had with the monkey? The Monkey and the Pylon and The Monkey and the Drone?
PK – Right?
FF – And Louis is in, actually in both of them, and he’s laughing his head off both times.
PK – And I used to do that even more, I mean, thing is, Patrick Gilmore captured both of those. And, uh…
FF – Oh, are there other Monkey skits that we just don’t have?
PK – Oh, I would do it all the time.
FF – Oh man!
PK – Sometimes, especially towards the, a long day, towards the end…
FF – Yeah.
PK – I would look for a clearing, and there’d be crewmembers all over, the directors, I wouldn’t really care. I would do a fly by right through the middle of them and, everybody would crack…, Andy Mikita loved it, too. You could actually see him, I think, in the Monkey and the Drone one, he was right there, I think he got a kick out of that one.
FF – Yeah, yeah, I remember Andy laughing his head off there, too, but it was like, so there was a whole series of that, not just the two?
PK – Oh, I did it all the time.
FF – Oh, man, god, I wish there was a camera on you all the time because those are absolutely hilarious, the whole Monkey skits. And you know what the funny thing is – you’ve seen these things on like the National Geographic and stuff but it’s just not funny when you see it there, but when you see a guy do it all of a sudden it becomes absolutely hilarious.
PK – And that’s where that, as Patrick described in the written introduction of the clip on YouTube, yeah, that’s exactly where I saw it years and years ago and it always stuck with me and for some reason I found it hilarious.
FF – Yeah, well, it’s just sort of that “fish out of water” situation. You know, you drop somebody in an unexpected situation and see what they, how they react. And sometimes, even in retrospect, it might be pretty funny which is again, what also happens to Brody because he’s a fish out of water on…
PK – Exactly.
FF – SGU and in retrospect it might be really funny, but I’m sure at the time it wasn’t.
PK – Right.
FF – But, so, when we look at this in context, looking back, it might be pretty hilarious. And that’s kind of nice that you can see the humor in that, it’s not all totally serious.
PK – Sure.
FF – Do you want to share any other fun behind the scenes anecdotes that you have that you had with the cast, particularly with Louis, but also with other people? Where you just had a good time? Uh, other than the Monkey stuff, that you remember?
PK – Any scene that we had in the mess hall usually involved a lot of people and a lot of extras.
FF – Uh huh.
PK – And for some reason, the energy of all of us being together, especially Louis as well, but, we would just get giddy, and we would always get in trouble all the time. They’re like, “Guys, focus!” ‘cause we would just, the noise level would build really quickly and we’d be laughing our asses off and when they yelled “action!”, they’re like, it was always some very important scene, that we’re all going to die. And then we’d had, like I say, just before the action, everybody would be cracking up and then, it would, the antithesis of what we were going through as actors, you know our characters, suddenly had to be really serious.
Louis is the best at that, like, he’ll be laughing his ass off, you know, screaming, laughing at the sky and then they yell “action!” and he literally stops and he just goes, (Young Voice) “Rush, what’s going on?”
And a lot of guest actors that we had, guest stars and all that, would get thrown by that initially, they’re like “Oh, okay.” They’d adapt quickly, but Louis could turn it on and off on a dime.
FF – Right. If there were, if you and Louis were doing a comedy skit together, just how much mayhem would that be?
PK – Quite a bit. I remember in Cloverdale, the episode, there’s a behind the scenes thing where I just started doing all these characters and Louis had this mustache…
FF – Right.
PK – And so we started doing different characters that would have come to the wedding like Mafioso guys and Roberto Benigni and…
FF – Right.
PK – We just kept rolling for a while. Basically until we were told to stop.
FF – Right, right. Well, it’s like when you have that kind of liberty to do that in between and also, just the kind of comfort level to be able just to goof around and then jump back in the role, I mean, how much better does it get? Probably not a lot, right?
PK – Yeah. No, it’s pretty awesome.
FF – Now do you have any future projects that you have in the pipeline at this moment that you are able and allowed to discuss?
PK – I mean, I’m currently auditioning for projects both in Vancouver and Los Angeles. Right now I’ve done a series of other animation – character things, one, I don’t know if I’m allowed to say or not but there’s an upcoming DVD, a very popular series, and I just finished recording that, I’m actually going in to do some re-dos in a couple of days.
FF – Okay.
PK – That’s going to be released in video real soon, and then my, the standup special that just came out a little while ago, and a friend of mine had written a feature length comedy that we’re just shopping around right now.
FF – Uh huh. Cool.
PK – Yeah.
FF – So you’ve got a bunch of things happening and you’re in Vancouver mostly to audition for other shows? Is that what you’re doing right now?
PK – Yeah. I audition both in Vancouver and Los Angeles for – I have agencies representing me in both cities. So, it’s a matter of waiting for different projects to come along and see what transpires with them.
FF – Fantastic. All right. Now, here’s the difficult question. I promise you this is the only difficult question in this whole interview. If you had to describe Louis in four words, what would they be? You can think about it a while.
PK – Mmhm. Crazy, insane, funny, reliable.
FF – Okay, that’s excellent! And you know what it covers a lot what other people have said as well, so…
PK – Yeah.
FF – All right, so, at this point, I’m very much at the bottom of my list. Do you have any questions for me or for us that I haven’t covered yet about this interview or the organization or whatever.
PK – Um, no, I don’t think so. I think we’ve covered a number of different things.
FF – Okay, great! All right. Thank you so much for your time, Peter, I really really appreciate it. I hope your voice is fully back and everything.
PK – It is back! It was pretty bad that weekend…
FF – Oh boy!
PK – It is back now and I’m glad we took the extra time to do it now!
Our sincerest thanks to Peter who took time out of a busy day to do this interview!
And thanks to Casey for the speedy and accurate transcript!
Other Interviews:
David Blue has done two Out Of The Blue episodes with Peter Kelamis.
Out Of The Blue: Toon Town
Out Of The Blue: Peter Kelamis
