Friday, July 12, 2002

SANDRA HESS TALKS NICK FURY

By Rob Allstetter/The Comics Continuum

SURREY, British Columbia -- Sandra Hess went from hero to villain -- and loved every minute of it.

Hess hopped right from playing Sonya Blade in Mortal Kombat: Annihilation right into another genre film, Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., for her next role. She played Viper, the evil leader of HYDRA in the 1998 made-for-television movie, based on the Marvel Comics character and scheduled to make its SciFi Channel premiere on Saturday at 9 p.m. (ET/PT).

"Playing villains is the most fun part about a movie because you have a certain amount of freedom and you have a license to be vicious and mean," Hess says. "You try not to be that way in real life, so when you get license to do that in a movie, it's so much fun. You can find so many different ways about going about it, it's great."

After the strenuous Mortal Kombat shoot, it didn't take long for Hess -- whose credits also include Beastmaster 3, Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman and Pensacola: Wings of Gold -- to find her next gig as Viper, aka Andrea Von Strucker.

"My mother tongue is German, so when I heard about the part being a German woman, I was interested," Hess says. "And then I heard David Hasselhoff -- whom I worked with before on Baywatch Nights -- was Nick Fury, and then that it was the same casting people that cast me in Mortal Kombat, I just said, 'This is too good to be true.'"

It turned out to be even better when Hess learned that her buddy, Lisa Rinna from Melrose Place, was playing Val, Fury's love interest. It marks the first time the two have worked together.

"It's very funny. We've been friends for about four years or so. Lisa and I used to vacation together," Hess says. "She wanted my part at first, she told me, but I didn't know that until afterward."

Viper's cause is revenge on Nick Fury for killing her father, Baron Von Strucker. She's also out to unleash the Death's Head Virus in her quest to create another Reich. She poisons Fury, who has less than 24 hours to thwart her plans and find an antidote to save his own life.

Another part of the fun for Hess were Viper's outfits, including a big red ring that she bought herself and added to the character.

"My outfits are unbelievable," she says. "They're very extravagant ... big Elizabethan collars, very tight corsets and see-through chiffon. Everything is very glamorous and very extravagant and skin-tight.

"My hair-do is up, with all these wild hair pieces coming out of it. It's very vampish. I have black fingernails usually and one that is red, with the big red ring. And I talk with my finger and I point it all the time."

Family ties play an important role in Viper's motivation and actions.

"She doesn't like her brother because Mother always preferred the brother," she says. "There's a certain rivalry going on. She adored her father. She would do anything for her father. But her brother is just a means to an end."

Hess says the movie should please long-time Fury fans.

"I think David Hasselhoff is Nick Fury coming off the page," she says. "He looks just like him. It's incredible. And the whole story is very faithful to the comics. The script was really good. It's hard to bring something that alive and not make it superficial. They were able to capture the relationships, between Fury and Val, and Fury and Dugan and so on. They made it a little deeper than, 'Let's have fun and shoot people.' "