You guys!! I interviewed Christopher Judge! Also known as Teal’c from the Stargate SG-1 franchise, and the voice behind Kratos in the God of War franchise.
If you read my announcement piece in August, you already know where I stand on this man. I have a Stargate tattoo, and I begged the Comic Con Africa organisers for an interview.
The begging worked.
Meeting Teal’c in person
Comic Con Africa took over the Johannesburg Expo Centre from 24 to 27 September, and somewhere in the middle of it all, I got about five minutes with Judge.
Of course I had to start our interview showing him the Stargate tattoo on my wrist, clearly proof of what a massive fan I am. Then I told him again a few seconds later, because my brain had apparently left the building. He thanked me anyway.
What caught me off guard was just how lovely Christopher Judge is in person. He was considerate and kind from the first second, and he gave every one of my slightly frantic questions a real answer.
Then there’s the voice.
Judge has a naturally deep voice. It’s the same one that made Kratos so recognisable. When he met me, he said it was such a pleasure to meet me and called me “darling” in that voice. The fan in me loved that.
I know how that sounds but that voice is a thing of its own. You spend hours hearing that very specific voice come out of your TV as Kratos goes around making life difficult for the entire Norse pantheon, and then suddenly it’s right in front of you, being lovely to a journalist with a Stargate tattoo.
Doing more with less
My first question was the big one. It’s been almost 30 years since he first brought Teal’c to life, and he’s spent the last decade as Kratos. Those two characters couldn’t be more different, so what did each one teach him about himself as an actor?
“Teal’c taught me that I could do more with less, and that’s kind of the hardest thing to really trust as an actor that you don’t have to do a lot to convey a lot,” Judge said.
He added that he thinks he “grew leaps and bounds as an actor” playing the character.
If you’ve watched SG-1, this makes perfect sense because Teal’c quite literally built an entire personality out of saying very little while looking like he could end you.
Kratos taught him something else.
“Your true emotions are never wrong as long as they’re honest, and if they’re honest, you can’t dictate how people perceive them,” he said. “But they’re honest, so they’ll always ring true.”
I told him I loved that. I still do.
The role he wishes people asked about
Between Stargate and God of War, Judge has spent a long time in sci-fi and gaming. So I asked whether there’s a project or role people never bring up, but he wishes they would.
His answer was Def Jam. Specifically, Def Jam Vendetta and Def Jam: Fight for NY.
“We just had a phenomenal time doing it and there’s so many stories to tell,” he said.
He mentioned there was recently talk about reviving it. Before anyone gets too excited, he followed that up with: “but there’s talk about reviving everything.”
My extremely professional response was “
“Oh that, that one I would do again. Oh heck yeah,” he said.
By rights, I could dismember you
Teal’c’s very formal attempts at Earth humour became one of the things fans love most about him. My personal favourite remains “Undomesticated equines could not remove me.”
So I asked Judge whether there’s a Teal’c line he’s most proud of. One that still makes him laugh today.
His pick: “In my culture, I would be well within my rights to dismember you.”
“I always liked that one, but there were so many,” he said. “The stuff that they would write and then to make them work, you know, that was always fun.”
I confessed that I’ve used the dismember line in real life. It suits a worrying number of situations. He said how perfect an insult it is because what exactly could a person on the other end of that say?
The answer is nothing. Nobody can come back from that burn.
The nose drips joke
Then I did what any reasonable person would do with a few minutes left. I asked Teal’c to tell the nose drips joke.
(Not familiar? Go watch Stargate SG-1. We’ve been over this.)
He admitted, “I’ve forgotten most of the joke,” but started piecing it back together together (with some input from yours truly, ha!). Along the way, he explained how he always thought about Teal’c’s sense of humour.
“I always played Teal’c like he was the funniest man on Chulak and that for whatever reason the humour didn’t translate to Earth, but that didn’t make Teal’c feel like he was any less funny,” Judge said. “He was just gonna keep trying and something was gonna land.”
Kratos on the main stage
My interview wasn’t the only time Judge talked about Kratos at Comic Con Africa. He also took the main stage as part of the event’s programme. Judge said he wanted Kratos’s reactions to feel natural, and that the role was deeply personal to him.
“I’ve waited for this role my entire life,” he said.
He said he “wanted everything to be real”, and added: “whether it was popular or not, I wanted it to be real reactions that Kratos had to certain stimulus.”
“I hope that that came through,” he said.
It did. The 2018 God of War reboot gave Kratos a more restrained and emotionally complex side, and Judge’s performance in God of War Ragnarök won Best Performance at The Game Awards in 2022.
It’s the same idea he gave me about honest emotions always ringing true, just in front of a much bigger audience.
Indeed, in gold
The following day, I went back for my obligatory autograph. Choosing the photo took no time at all. It had to be Teal’c. I love Kratos and God of War, I love all the photos they had of him up there, but really it could only ever be Teal’c.
The photo shows him in full Jaffa mode, gold emblem on his forehead. He signed it to me in gold marker with a heart and a peace sign.
Then he wrote “Indeed!”
That’s Teal’c’s iconic line in his own handwriting, and it now lives on my photo, which is framed and hanging in my office. He signed his name underneath, with “Teal’c” below it for good measure.
I shook his hand and said I look forwarding to interviewing him again at other Cons and events around the world. I have more questions. So many more questions. Consider this me manifesting the shit out of it so the universe takes note.
Indeed!
