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The second episode of Halo’s live-action web series premiered today, and we had a chance to talk to Daniel Cudmore, the actor behind Master Chief’s mask. You won’t see Cudmore’s face in Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn, but if you did, you may recognize him from the X-Men films where he played Colossus, or the Twilight series where he plays Felix. We asked Cudmore about taking on the role of a beloved video game character, and whether or not Master Chief flashes a thumbs-up when he gets a solid head-shot.
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Would you consider yourself a gamer?
I am and I’m not. I enjoy playing games and then I’ll have a bit of an ADD moment and I can’t sit around for too long, but I think it also depends on the game too. The funny thing is, I think I was bought Halo 3 by my girlfriend at the time, who is my wife now, she bought it to kind of impress me and I think that’s the only game that I played front to back. There might have been some other ones, but I think that was the one.
Do have other favorite games other than Halo 3?
I do remember when I was in college when the very first PlayStation and Call of Duty came out. I remember everyone went away for Thanksgiving and I was one of the only guys stuck in the dorm, and I think I played Call of Duty 8 hours straight every day – it was ridiculous. I’m a pretty good fan of Assassin’s Creed. I enjoy that game too.
So you’re playing Master Chief in the Forward unto Dawn series, were you nervous about playing a character that has such a strong legacy in the world of video games?
Yeah it’s always daunting, especially that kind of character who is the staple of the series throughout most of the games. It’s funny, I was talking to people about how you become him. Each player becomes him. Everybody has their own interpretation of who the character is, but I just did a lot of research and bounced as many questions as I could off of all the guys at Microsoft and 343. I just read a lot of fiction and I just thought, "I’m going to go with what I think it is and I’m not going to stray too far from what they created and just add a little bit of myself to it and hopefully everyone likes it."
In the games Master Chief is a little bit of a blank slate for the sake of the player. He is a badass but he doesn’t exude a lot of personality. In the show were there opportunities to add more humanity to Master Chief? How much were you able to accomplish working behind a mask?
Well that’s also a tough part of it, you’re really going to see more humanity though someone’s facial features in their eyes and various other places, so when you can’t see his face it makes it hard. There are definitely moments where there is a little bit more humanity in certain aspects, but at the same time he’s really trying to just helps these kids get out of here alive and there is not a ton of opportunity to really kind of interact as much as you would like to as an actor or a character, but it’s really not who Master Chief is.
Can you tell us a little bit about the casting process? How did you win the role of Master Chief?
It really was through various people that I worked with in the past. I worked with some of the producers and the stunt coordinator; I have more of a stunt actor background. I started with acting and I fell more into stunts and was given the opportunity to do that, so it kind of spun that way and I just met with the director and we hit it off, and then I met with all the guys at Legacy who designed the costume and it just kind of went from there. There was never necessarily an audition process, because you’re not seeing my face and things like that. There is the acting aspect that I had to do as the character for the other actors, but a lot of is body acting it’s a lot of movement and things of this nature.
Where you doing his voice too? Or was that sort of a Darth Vader situation?
I had to act out all of the scenes with all of the actors, but I believe they hired someone else to do the voice.
You did all of your own stunts?
Yeah, everything action-wise, and it’s funny because I did everything that was asked of the character too. Yeah, it was a lot of fun.
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Read on to find out if tea-bagging made it into the series' final cut.
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