CSI actor to take his work to Singapore?
Those who watch US drama series Crime Scene Investigation (CSI) may recall an Asian technical expert in the series.
He is none other than Archie Kao, who plays Archie Johnson, an audio/visual surveillance expert in forensics drama CSI. The 41-year-old actor is also best known to have played Kai Chen, or the Blue Galaxy Ranger in Power Rangers Lost Galaxy.
Yahoo! Singapore speaks to the affable American-Chinese actor, who was in Singapore to attend the week-long Screen Singapore event.
You're a computer expert in CSI. How close is the technology you use true to real life?
It wouldn't be fair to say that they haven't taken creative liberties all the time. Of course they have, in the interest of time but the show is well-formed by proper procedure. The procedures are sped up as we only have 44 minutes per episode.
There are actually real-life CSIs that write the scripts, so the things that we have available to us in the lab actually what most labs in the world would have.
What is the best thing about working on CSI?
There's a lot of privileges, being associated with the show as it's got such a wide-reaching influence. We (the cast) have become like a second family, and we've even been on vacations together.
During the course of time there, we got to work with some great actors who I grew up watching, and now all of a sudden I'm hanging out with them on set.
From your years of experience working on the show, what would you say is the best way to avoid getting caught by CSIs?
Pour bleach, a lot of it. It destroys everything.
News came out recently that Laurence Fishburne is leaving the show. How big a blow is this for the franchise?
Even last season, CSI was the number one show in the world. I think CSI is actually bigger than all of us now, and this was after William Petersen had left the show.
Obviously to get Laurence was a huge coup, with Morpheus doing his thing, but there's a whole bunch of fantastic actors out there, and we'll look forward to seeing who's next.
Any chance of William Petersen returning?
I guess he would be the person to ask. I haven't heard anything about that other than the fact that the cast would love to have him, and personally I think we all miss him very much.
On a scale of 1 to 10, how accurate is the Hollywood scene depicted on Entourage?
My agent actually thinks it's tremendously accurate on a lot of respects. We also recognise that it's actually embellished for comic's sake.
I think they dress up a lot of characters to be over the top, but the dynamics are pretty spot on.
You were voted one of People's Magazine's top bachelors in 2006. Honestly, how much does sex appeal matter for actors?
I'm very compounded to say that I think you can't deny that it is a very essential component of this business that we work in, because it is a visual medium, so we rely on the actors to further the story to make people want to watch.
As an actor of Asian descent in the US entertainment scene, did you find that there were certain odds against you?
Yeah, but I don't think you can spend the majority of the time thinking about the things that are going to be against you.
I do remember that when I first started, my uncle said, "Do you think that Jean-Claude Van Damme asked the world if they needed a French-speaking karate guy?"
But you know it is true, he carved out his own niche and I think that in a macro perspective, I think we're going to see a lot of things happening soon.
Where the archetype of the Asian hero in Western media hasn't been depicted very commonly, I think we're going to be seeing quite a bit of that in the future. I'm excited to be involved with this time as we're moving forward.
What are your plans for the future?
We are exploring further career options in Singapore right now and throughout Asia.
One thing that we're shaping up right now is a romantic comedy, so I will look forward to talking about it more when that time comes along.
