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| Articles & Interviews with Shuler | |
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Please note : Links to the original online articles may not remain active for long!! As
the fabled monster created by author Mary Shelley's fictional "Dr.
Frankenstein," Shuler Hensley takes
on the role of a truly iconic character, and brings impressive credentials
to the assignment. The actor won the Tony this year for his
portrayal of tormented farmhand Jud Fry in the Broadway revival of Rodgers
and Hammerstein's "Oklahoma!" He first performed the role in
London, opposite "Van Helsing" star Hugh Jackman. Hensley made
his Broadway debut as Javert in the long-running musical "Les
Miserables" in October 2000. His television appearances include the
recurring role of Bob Arnovitz in the comedy series "Ed" and the
role of celebrated sports commentator Keith Jackson in the TNT movie
"Monday Night Mayhem." His film credits include the romantic
comedy "Someone Like You" and the independent film "The
Bread, My Sweet." From
One Brute to Another The
movie reunites Hensley with his London Oklahoma!
co-star, Hugh Jackman. "It is a complete coincidence that Hugh is
in it," Hensley told Broadway.com. "When I auditioned, I had no
idea that he was in it. At the audition they told me that Hugh Jackman was
going to play Van Helsing. They asked me if I knew him!" Hensley is
set to play The Frankenstein Monster in Van Helsing, which begins a
six-month shoot in mid-January in Prague. "I think there are a lot of
similarities between Frankenstein and Jud," Hensley said. "Both
have been so stereotypically defined in our society -Jud as the villain
and Frankenstein as the monster. You have to add layers to both
characters." "I just love Hugh to death," the actor added.
"It is going to be six months of fun!" 'This
is kind of the younger and more adventurous swashbuckling version
of Van Helsing,' explains Jackman, 'who is, for want of a better word,
a mercenary for the Catholic Church who is out there killing or dealing
with possessed souls of all different shapes and sizes.............So
that's how we meet up and Frankenstein becomes involved because…..
ooh.....I don't know if I'm allowed to tell you that.....!" Though
Universal owns the copyright to Boris Karloff's Frankenstein's creature,
Bela Lugosi's Dracula and Lon Chaney Jr's Wolfman, Sommers promises
entirely new creature concepts. At the recent ShoWest held in Las Vegas,
Sommers said Dracula will look like a gargoylish man-bat and the Wolfman
will literally morph into a grotesque wolf. Frankenstein's monster will
look like a man who has been constructed from different body parts of
corpses that are in various stages of decay! At
ShoWest, held in Las Vegas, Stephen Sommers talked about Van Helsing
showing sketches, discussed his casting choices and gave an
introduction of what to expect. Every Universal movie monster
makes an appearance in this film. The movie starts at Frankenstein's
enormously gothic, colossal castle, with a mob approaching the gates...... "We got a first behind the scenes look at the upcoming monster movie. It may be the biggest monster movie epic ever. They went into extensive scenes of them making and casting the outfits of Frankenstein, the Werewolf and others. We are told by director Stephen Sommers that every monster that has every been used by Universal is featured in this movie, the drawings of the werewolf shedding his human skin look fantastic. We are also told that this is a PG-13 movie with no blood. The heads of Frankenstein are awesome and we are also told by the director that Frank's head comes completely off during the film and he just plops it back on! The shots of the castle are huge. Unbelievably huge. Also discussed by Sommers were the new versions of Count Dracula, the Wolfman and Frankenstein's Monster. Sommers said that Van Helsing begins with the storming of Castle Frankenstein, and by the third act, the hero is at the door of Count Dracula's foreboding home. 'The Classic Universal Monsters look absolutely NOTHING like the ones in the film,' said our source. 'Frank looks a lot more like a slightly biomechanical version of the De Niro Frankenstein." These are exclusive Moviefans reports from Stephen Sommer's ShoWest presentation. (NB the site is German, but some of it is in English!) March 2003. Stephen Sommers is defying convention with his latest flick......with a unique approach to the film's marketing. With secrecy paramount on most major productions, Sommers has bucked the trend by revealing promotional art for the movie's four iconic characters a full 14 months ahead of the movie's May 2004 release....The move is unprecedented and shows the confidence Universal has in Sommer's movie. Says Hugh Jackman - "I think this is one of the biggest movies Universal has ever greenlit.......the world they're creating is so beautiful. I am astounded every day I walk onto a new set.....The costuming is extraordinary, it's running into tens of millions.....You can't believe the scale or the beauty, or how incredible it looks. I am having one of the best times I've ever had. It's a great concept and a very clever story in the way Stephen's tied it all together." Prior to this EMPIRE interview, Hugh had just finished a fight scene with Shuler. "I accidentally grabbed him by the bolts, got electrocuted, and he sent me flying across the room!" From a "First Look Exclusive" in the UK's premier movie magazine EMPIRE, May 2003 issue. Frankenstein's
monster is not just a composite of body parts, but is also much
more of a cyborg than he's usually been portrayed, with large parts of his
body apparently made out of metal segments, frames, hinges and tubes. You
can also see that there is a large hole where his heart should be, and
there also appears to be some sort of fuel tank (clever!) on his right
leg. "I'll tell
you, man, it is huge — the sets, the costumes," Jackman
said. "I just saw a little trailer of it cut together. We showed it
to the whole crew and everyone was so jazzed. It looks amazing." "I wanted to
make a small movie about a guy and a girl on the beach, but then I
thought, wouldn't it be cool if a werewolf was there?"
That quote by Stephen Sommers aptly sets up Van Helsing, which Universal
is already giving the big push for. We got to see a behind the scenes
snippet... I don't know if this piece is out there for the general public
somewhere, but if it's not, the scope of this film is going to blow
people's minds......... As far as Frankenstein's Monster goes, they've
kept some of the traditional look, but it has a cybernetic feel to it as
well. Beyond what you can see in the promo art, he's also got cybernetic
attachments to the sides of his face. The rough make up they displayed
looked great. In "Van
Helsing," Jackman puts up his dukes against several well-known
monsters. "I fight Frankenstein, Wolfman, Dracula and a few other
surprises are thrown in," he promises. "It's a huge movie. Don't
get me wrong, X 2 was a big movie, but Van Helsing, my God. The sets, the
action pieces - it's out of control. It's like I walked into Indiana
Jones." The film is a
loose adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula. Hugh Jackman plays Dr. Van
Helsing, the man who has been Count Dracula's nemesis in countless movies
over the years. But Jackman says this version promises to be different.
"In the original Dracula story, Van Helsing is a 60-year-old Dutch
professor who's been into the occult and ends up being the Dracula hunter.
But this is the 34-year-old version of him at the beginning ... a
kind of mercenary of the Catholic church who is sent to kill any possessed
soul. So his mission is to go to Transylvania and find out what's going on
with Dracula and take him out. But he encounters a lot of monsters along
the way." The cast also includes Kate Beckinsale and Shuler
Hensley who plays Frankenstein's monster. (Yes, Mary Shelley's novel
also sneaks into the plot - that's the kind of movie Van Helsing is!) "Frankenstein
plays a major role because
Dracula needs him to make his offspring live, we were told that Dracula
has a harem of Draculettes that have been trying to give birth to his
children for 300 years but they keep being born dead. Dracula is trying to
find Frankenstein because he was once dead and came to life and Dracula
thinks he holds the key to life (or something like that). Frankenstein is
going to look like a real man-made monster, we're going to be able to see
all his parts - there's a glass plate on his chest so we can see his heart
pumping. We'll be able to see all of the wires hanging from the back of
his head and at one point in the movie his head will be hit and the top of
it will flip off, like there's a hinge at the back."
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The
look of the monsters will be different from the original makeup worn by
Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi and Lon Chaney Jr. "In a certain
sense, we winked to the classic designs" Sommers says. "I knew
that Frankenstein had to have a flat head and wear Doc Martens, for
example. But other than that, I thought we could really play with all
these characters.It'll feel a lot like the original Frankenstein and
Dracula except, obviously, way jacked up," Sommers says of his mostly
Transylvania-set extravaganza. "There's a lot more action and special
effects. It's scary but thrilling, and really romantic."