Luke Goss Is ‘HB II’S’ Dark side 7/2008

Jul 18, 2008

The actor takes sibling rivalry to the extreme in director Guillermo del Toro’s latest film
By CARLOS DELGADO, Contributing Writer
Published 7/16/2008

Surprisingly, Luke Goss is more like his character Prince Nuada, the evil elf intent on summoning the Golden Army and conquering the Earth in HELLBOY II: THE GOLDEN ARM, than people may suspect.

No, the actor isn’t a megalomaniac preparing to take over the world, but just like Prince Nuada, he does have a twin – an identical twin, to be exact. No word, however, if one of them is evil…
But that’s the real world, what we’re here to talk about is the Hellboy universe now, and in this reality, twins come in one of two flavors: the good twin or the evil twin. As mentioned, Goss plays the evil twin in one Prince Nuada opposite the good twin, Princess Nuala, played by Anna Walton. As the film’s antagonist, it is Prince Nuada’s purpose to make life for Hellboy (Ron Perlman), well, hell by threatening to violate the truce between mankind and his people and unleash the Golden Army.
Nuada’s actions, however, aren’t without consequences. As the good twin, Princess Nuala sides with Hellboy in an attempt to stop her brother’s plans. Sibling bickering is normal, but this seems a little extreme.
“Obviously we’ve both been raised as brother and sister by the same father,” explains Goss. “He’s instilled the premise of honor and nobility into our blood. He’s taught us to honor the agreement and the truces made with humankind. The confusion for my particular character is that I believe the truce is being horribly abused and if it carried on it would be at the expense of our people which he’s taught me to protect and give my life for. Also, it would harm someone who’s probably the single most important person in Prince Nuada’s world who is Nuala.
Playing Prince Nuada suddenly seems a lot harder regardless of any real life twin experience Goss may posses.

“But he adores [the Princess] definitely too much,” continues Goss. “There’s definitely an incestuous love for her.”

But besides Nuada’s unique (read: gross) relationship with Nuala, there are several other aspects about the role that Goss had to prepare for. Goss is no stranger to playing the villain. His breakout performance was as Nomak in BLADE II (also for del Toro) and has played several other baddies such as Charlie Richardson in CHARLIE. The action scenes in HELLBOY II, however, required some additional training.
“I actually had a lot of help from the peers on Jackie Chan’s team, a guy called Brad Allan and his team,” says Goss. “Max White who was in 300 gave me training with the sword — so some really cool guys. I had nine weeks of training in total and it was like days and days of accepting that I was going to work looking pretty silly. I have to be honest with you, it was a lot of fun. But it wasn’t until a couple of weeks before we started shooting that I felt like I was actually going to be able to pull this off. Hand to hand combat is one thing, but using weapons is really challenging because it’s technique and there’s no rushing it.”
Ultimately, though, working on HELLBOY II comes down to one thing: meeting del Toro’s lofty standards. Fortunately for Goss, working for del Toro has been positive experience, due in no small part to the respect the director commands seemingly everywhere he goes.
“Anyone that you speak to, I’m sure, is going to be so adoring of him and you don’t get that kind of admiration and love for free,” Goss says with obvious reverence. “He utterly earns that love and respect from his cast and his team. You do want to give him the very best. He is a taskmaster on set and he’s a big, cuddly, crazy man when you talk to him in these situations. He’s simply just one of the smartest men that I’ve ever met in my life. As a filmmaker he’s unrivaled, I think. I still feel unbelievably blessed that he’s endorsed me a couple of times. I know that he can use anyone he wants and so I know when I’m on his sets that, one, I’m lucky to be there and I’ll always try my very best for him.”