Goodbye Tchéky Karyo

We have terrible news to share today: veteran actor Tchéky Karyo passed away on Friday from cancer at age 72. Karyo was an extremely talented veteran Turkish and French actor who was known for crossing between roles in French cinema and Hollywood. Americans will know him in La Femme Nikita, Goldeneye and The Patriot to name only a few, and space fans in particular will remember his appearance as Georges Méliès in the grand finale of From the Earth to the Moon. Our own Wing Commander movie club recently spotted him in 1492: Conquest of Paradise and immediately declared him to be the only bright spot of the film! I myself knew him for The Bear and Eric Rohmer's Full Moon in Paris well before he ever graced our franchise with his talents. We want to send our strongest condolences to his family, friends, fans and everyone else that loved him. You can read a more complete account of his passing and career at Le Monde.

But of course he is beloved by the Wing Commander community for one role in particular: Commodore James "Paladin" Taggart in the 1999 film. Karyo's Paladin, a grizzled veteran of two wars who starts the movie seemingly as a grizzled privateer with divided loyalties but who is revealed to be a secret agent working against the Kilrathi. He is a mentor to Freddie Prinze Jr.'s Blair and the man that holds the secret to the movie's Pilgrim backstory. He becomes a divisive presence on the Tiger Claw, butting heads with the racist Commander Gerald but ultimately earning the loyalty of the crew and taking command. He might not have been one of the top billed twenty-something flying heroes but he was the glue that held the entire movie together, both the narrative and, thanks to his vast acting talent, the production itself. Heck, he's even the one that saves the day at the end rescuing Angel! He speaks about the role on the movie's EPK:

Even the movie's loudest detractors, who complained endlessly that his Paladin was no true Scotsman¹, couldn't begin to question his talent. Part of Chris Roberts' vision for the movie was that he would use experienced European actors for the veteran space sailors that would contrast with the young American stars playing the wet-behind-the-ears replacement pilot leads. He believed strongly that using highly experienced actors for these roles would bring the project a level of humanity above what would be expected from a lower budget science fiction film. In Jamie Russell's 2012 book, Generation XBox: How Video Games Invaded Hollywood, producer Todd Moyer talks about how Karyo and these other actors helped sell the movie in Europe where distribution partners didn't know Prinze or Lillard: "Moyer added Saffron Burrows and David Suchet for the UK, Jürgen Prochnow for Germany and Tchéky Karyo for France. 'You would never do that on a big studio movie. It was all about trying to get a bigger number from those territories,' he says." That's an interesting part of the decision but it's removing a fair amount of the passion that went into the casting. In fact, Chris Roberts was so keen on getting Karyo specifically for the role that he was was offered significantly more than any of the rest of the cast, the young American heroes included.

Karyo didn't do a great deal of press for the film but SFX magazine interviewed him for an August 1999 article embarrassingly titled Game Boys. You can see he has a wonderful grasp on the character that he says is a cross between Captain Nemo and Admiral Nelson:

Alongside the young bucks who fight and die in the war with the Kilrathi are the older cadré of seasoned warriors; beside actors like David Suchet (Executive Decision, Poirot) as the Tiger Claws commander Captain Sansky and genre veteran David Warner, who takes on Malcolm McDowell's role of Admiral Tolwyn from the games, are two of Europe's hardest - working film stars, Tcheky Karyo and Jürgen Prochnow. "I think that in a story like this, there is more at stake for the imagination," says Karyo. "We have to deal with the unknown, navigate quasars and singularities, jump black holes... we have to discover realms beyond what we know." The actor plays Paladin, a character originally envisaged as a Sean Connery -type, later played by Sliders' John Rhys Davis in the games, the hardened loner and mentor figure to the troubled young Blair. Having previously played out action roles in contemporary movies like La Femme Nikita, GoldenEye and Bad Boys, the unreal world of Wing Commander is something of a new frontier for him. "The difference (comes from) the designers who merge these very futuristic costumes and sets with the looks of the ships. But there's also this human side, a desire to bring humanity to the stars because this is not just an action movie, not just a sci -fi movie it's both, but it has a human implication and a connection between its characters."

While at first Paladin appears to be an outsider, the veteran pilot soon reveals a hidden side to his personality as the action unfolds. "That (duality) is basically his essence. He's like Captain Nemo, like Admiral Nelson who was always sent on the very shady, difficult missions. People don't like him, and he's bold but also very alone. It's nice to be a little schizophrenic at times, to play a character on two levels." Karyo mentions the relationship between his character and that of Freddie Prince. "He's important in teaching Blair about his heritage as a half Pilgrim. Through Paladin, the young pilot discovers his innate Pilgrim gift, an instinctive ability to navigate the dangerous gravity wells of a black hole jump- point." The actor adds a little of his own take on the human condition to his portrayal of the tough space warrior. "It's becoming more real every day to think of us flying up there in space; without wanting to sound mystical, if we are here now, we could be there in the future." Karyo, a man with a lineage that encompasses Turkish, Greek and Spanish goes on to describe the Wing Commander shoot as a melting pot of international talent. "For me, this is like being at home!"

Karyo also spoke very highly of Roberts' directorial skills. The movie's production notes proudly included this comment:

Tcheky Karyo (Paladin) is best known for his roles in the feature films Addicted to Love and Nikita (La Femme Nikita) and is an accomplished actor with a long list of films to his credit. Working with directors like Griffin Dunne (Addicted) and Luc Besson (Nikita) gave him different approaches to filmmaking, but Chris Roberts' Wing Commander was a unique experience, according to Karyo.

Like the rest of his castmates, Karyo has great respect for his director. "Chris is very aware of every technical aspect—he knows this field very well. Therefore, it allows him to focus on everything else: the actors' performances and the story. He is very ambitious and has a drive that leads him to achieve whatever he sets his mind to. As members of the cast, we wanted to contribute to his goal of giving this story humanity—and not just limit ourselves to making an action or science fiction film."

The Paladin role as shot was considerably more complex than what is present in the final cut. As filmed, we learn early on that Paladin isn't just an old spacehand, he was aboard the TCS Iason when it first discovered the Kilrathi. He is, in essence, the representative of the entire setting of the film and the conduit for all of the knowledge the audience will eventually receive about the Pilgrims and Kilrathi that form the backstory. Here's a cut scene where he tells Blair about the Iason and the meaning of his Kilrathi tattoo:

You can still experience this version of the movie by reading the novelization which is based on the script as shot. Fans of deep lore will also enjoy that the Confederation Handbook includes a great backstory for Paladin that is largely focused on the Iason story:

To share some of Karyo's wonderful work on Wing Commander, AD has provided four never-before-scene versions of his scenes that use material from the longer cut of the film shown to test audiences.

Touched By God

Torpedo, Ejection, and Rescue

Barring a Miracle, We have Failed

Broadside

We would also be remiss if we didn't mention another way Wing Commander gave Karyo some immortality: it was his first (and to the best of our knowledge only) film to result in a 3.5" Star Wars-scale action figure!

We hope you've enjoyed these memories of M. Karyo's work on Wing Commander. I would like to close with a couple of stories of my own that are ever so tangentially connected to his character. I think the funny little stories we add to our own history is ultimately the real value of fandom. I never got to meet Tchéky Karyo but I have some cherished stories of my own because of the character that he gave life to.

Back in 1999 when the movie's release was fast approaching, Digital Anvil launched its official website, wcmovie.com, which opened with a captain's log entry "written" by Paladin complete with letterhead and a headshot of Tchéky Karyo. But hardcore Wing Commander fans were immediately frustrated by a typo: the date was inverted, saying the movie was set in 2564 and not 2654. Knowing that would be repeated elsewhere, I convinced a friend whose identity I will take to the grave to give me the login for Digital Anvil's FTP. I snuck in and changed the file and, being a complete dork, added a graphic: Paladin's signature from the Confederation Handbook which I knew also featured a letter written by the character. Frustratingly, their webmaster saw the change and reverted it later that day. And after a few rounds of changing it myself I was locked out of the system. So I did what any other dumb teenage nerd would do: I registered a fake Chris Roberts e-mail address and sent the webmaster a note telling him to fix the date and to add the signature. And it worked!

We saw above that Paladin had a Kilrathi tattoo in the original cut of the Wing Commander movie, something that was branded on him after he was captured when the Iason was destroyed. He says he keeps it to remember that the Kilrathi (and not humans or Pilgrims) are the real enemy. It's barely visible under the collar of his sweater in the finished cut so for many years no one knew exactly what it was supposed to look like (though you could tell it seemed to match the Kilrathi typography used elsewhere in the film). For years I thought it would be amazing to have a Wing Commander tattoo… but I knew that obscure but so-important-to-the-lore one would be the one to get. When I was working on Star Citizen, it finally occurred to me to reach out to the set photographer for the movie to see if he'd caught a photo of it. And he immediately wrote back that he had! He shared a picture of Karyo with the tattoo visible and I went right out and had it done. (He also invited me to come to Luxembourg and see his racing motorcycles; people can be just so nice.) It felt like such a good way to honor the source material and also the community that has been so important to me all these years… with the time and effort it took to discover the thing adding this magic layer to it all.

I've already seen a lot of fans taking to social media and Discord to mourn Tchéky Karyo and I am right there with all of you. His take on Paladin was transformative to me, he really added something new to the character while still fitting right into the general idea of who he was and his role in the ur-story. One thing he inspired me to start years ago was writing a fictional biography of Paladin; the texture he adds to Paladin just made the concept of using the character to tell the story of the entire 27th century make sense to me. I've fiddled with versions of the project back and forth forever and even took a dive into turning it into a CIC article earlier this year… so my resolution here is to return to and finish that for everyone. I hope you'll all take your own moment to think about his work and what it has meant to you and where it has helped take you over the years. We're all connected to such an interesting degree. Please feel free to share your stories on the forums.

(Oh yeah, one more thing: fuck cancer.)

¹ - The Paladin character originated in the first Wing Commander game in essentially the same role of Blair's mentor. But in this original incarnation, Paladin was defined by his thick Scottish brogue (though he was intended to be from a space station). Karyo's Paladin is, like Karyo, French, to the point of his adding touches like his "merde" during the Broadsword torpedo attack. In fact, by the time the movie was made the Wing Commander IV novelization had long established that Paladin's accept was fake: "Paladin appeared to have lost his accent. He'd always suspected Taggart's thick, Scottish brogue had been a put-on. A spy with a burr just didn't fit Blair's image of a secret agent."