Hercules managed to spare enough time away from bashing Hera’s monsters to attend the “Hangin’ with Hanging with Hercules” panel at Wizard World Comic Con in Raleigh, NC. Eager fans packed the room, proving that “Hercules” and “Andromeda” still entertain and evoke fond memories still. Many of the fans grew up watching the show as kids and then as young adults thanked Sorbo for inspiring them. “I enjoyed watching ‘Hercules’ as a young sapling,” one young man said, to which an amused Sorbo replied, “You are a true warrior.” One young woman explained that “Hercules” introduced her to Greek mythology, which she now teaches.
Over the course of the Sorbo-fan dialogue, the actor related some fond memories from his career and revealed some fascinating details. When explaining the positive nature of most of the Hercules cast, he described how he met his wife:
“Most of the time they always brought down another beautiful woman for me every two weeks to work with so as a dating service it was great for me. I was single the first five years on the show. That’s actually how I met my wife. And she said, ‘I don’t date actors,’ was the first thing that came out of her mouth. . . .She also said, ‘I don’t date guys with long hair, either!’ So now I think I’m pretty good looking with my long hair.”
He also related how Peter Jackson recruited most of the Hercules crew to work on “The Lord of the Rings”:
“I don’t know if a lot of you guys know, but Peter Jackson used to come on the set and see how we were doing because he was, you know, prepping ten years getting ready to do ‘The Lord of the Rings’ and he probably took 80% of my crew during our last season, our seventh season. They ended up working ‘The Lord of the Rings’ and half of those guys went on to win Academy awards, like the Weta group did all our creatures, Ngila Dickson won for all the costumes she did on my show as well as Xena, so it worked out pretty cool casting people on both sides of the camp. It was pretty cool.”
Yet the set of Hercules was not without peril. Sorbo took a blow to the head from a real sword while filming an action scene. He attributes the injury to three strokes he had before getting back to full health, a journey that he describes in more detail in his book, “True Strength.”
Sorbo proclaimed himself as a fantasy and science fiction nerd and enjoys watching “The Walking Dead” and “Sons of Anarchy.” He enjoyed reading mythology before working on the show “Hercules” and happened to play his favorite Greek hero.
Asked if he would ever run for political office, he gave an emphatic “NO!” Sorbo is active in making a positive influence in the world, from tackling human trafficking in his upcoming film “Caged” to his youth development program, A World Fit for Kids. Child obesity and high school drop-out rates concern him and he is determined to combat the “purposeful dumbing down of our kids.”
He also discussed faith-based filmmaking and the current popularity of films based on the Bible. Sorbo believed that “the writing’s getting better” for faith-based films. He remembered that Hollywood filmmakers wouldn’t touch his recent movies “God’s Not Dead,” but now have regrets now that the film’s financial success confirmed the market demand for Christian entertainment. When discussing the comparatively poor box office performance of the movie “Exodus,” Sorbo quipped, “Maybe they shouldn’t hire an atheist director [for a Bible movie].”
With quite a few films coming up over the next two years, Kevin Sorbo is definitely keeping busy. Yet over the years he still has a soft spot for “Hercules.” “I miss it,” he said, “it was a big chapter of my life.”
You can read Kevin Sorbo’s exclusive interview with Legendarium Media at WizardWorld here.
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