Christopher Judge is on a winning streak, after taking home the top performer prizes at The Game Awards in LA (gaming’s equivalent of the Oscars) in December and the best lead performer at the BAFTA Games Awards in London this week. But his success hasn’t been easily won.
Speaking to Sky News on the BAFTA red carpet, the God Of War and Stargate SG-1 star admits: “I grew up looking in the mirror and society told me I was ugly, told me I was too big, too black.”
Image: Kratos. Pic: God Of War
He says the day that changed, was the day he got the role of vengeful demigod Kratos in PlayStation action epic God Of War, the highest-rated PlayStation 4 game for the majority of 2018.
Judge says it’s a role he never expected to get: “I’ll be 60 next year and to get this when I thought my career would be winding down, it’s a dream come true. I waited 35 years for this part and it almost seems unfair that I’m getting gifts because I got a gift of this part.”
A college football player, he moved from sport to showbiz after graduating, winning early roles in shows including The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, 21 Jump Street and MacGyver.
He also starred in Batman movie The Dark Knight Rises and as regular character Teal’c of Chulak in military science fiction TV series Stargate SG-1.
But after 10 years and over 200 episodes, Stargate was cancelled in 2007. Judge found himself once again searching for work. And with the sci-fi and fantasy genres not known for their proliferation of black leading characters, it was an uphill struggle.
But after finding success in God Of War, it’s a struggle Judge is determined to lessen for future generations of black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) performers.
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Image: Judge in Stargate SG-1
Last year, Judge hosted a panel titled Elevating Black Voices in Sci-Fi, speaking to a multi-generational group of African-American creatives about the fight for representation in the genre.
He explains: “Change always happens slower than we want it to, but I think it’s so important to always call it out, to stay the course and to give young people [opportunities]. Like, we’re taking you to the door to finally make these changes. So, hopefully, we have set the stage, if it’s not done in our careers, they can continue the journey through.”
He credits Santa Monica Studio – the video game developers behind the God Of War series – with being part of that change: “I have to say the leader of our studio is an Asian woman [PlayStation dev Yumi Yang]. And we do have producers that are of colour and our diversity as far as women and the LGBTQ+ community… I would like to say is probably unrivalled and we are all so proud of that. But it’s still a meritocracy. We hire the people that deserve to be there.”
Referring to a small but vocal negative fan reaction to the casting of his God Of War Ragnarok co-star Laya DeLeon Hayes, he said: “Our producers… they took a lot of s**t for hiring Laya to play Angrboda [known as the “mother of monsters” in Norse mythology], but they never wavered.
“They never once thought, ‘Well, maybe we should do…’ No, she was the best person for the job and she got it. And that’s who Sony Santa Monica is from top to bottom. And I’m so proud to be a part of that.”
In addition to impressing her colleagues, DeLeon Hayes has swiftly proved her detractors wrong by adding to God Of War’s BAFTA haul, and taking home best performer in a supporting role.
But despite leading the charge for change, Judge admits he’s only recently felt confident enough as a performer to speak out.
“Still in my mind, I waited too long,” he says. “So, I’m paddling upstream, I’m trying to make up for lost ground for all the years that I had success and didn’t say s**t, I was afraid of losing my position.
“But that’s the insidious thing about this ceiling – you live in fear of losing what you’ve achieved. And now that I live without fear, I have no excuse to not be a leading voice in it.”
A family man (Judge has a son, Cameron, who is a Canadian football linebacker in the Canadian Football League), Kratos’s story in the most recent game has deepened from two-dimensional to a touching depiction of fatherhood, as well as being a son.
Image: Norse gods and giant monsters. Pic: Game Of War
Judge says in some ways the role has helped him get more in touch with himself and look past previous traumas to appreciate just how much he has achieved: “The difference with Ragnarok 2018 was more about my kids and from within me. This one was truly my story.
“I grew up looking in the mirror and society told me I was ugly, told me I was too big, too black, too whatever. So, I felt that I didn’t deserve love, which made me incapable of loving others.
“I literally got this job right after the first time I looked in the mirror and said, ‘I love you’. And it’s truly been just blessings ever since.”
So, now he’s at the top of his career, and receiving accolades and awards to prove it, where does he put all his trophies?
It’s a question Judge already thought about: “I’m actually redesigning my office… I’m having a little case made for this incredible run [of award wins],” adding with a smile, “so it will be prominently displayed at all my Zooms now.”
The BAFTA Games Awards is part of the London Games Festival, which runs until Saturday 8 April.
It is “pretty surreal”, Academy Award winner Reese Witherspoon admits, finding herself at the top of The New York Times bestsellers list.
When I meet the actress alongside her co-writer, best-selling author Harlan Coben, overnight the pair have learned that their thriller is now at number one.
He jokes: “I was texting her last night and saying you’ll now have to call yourself number one bestselling novelist, forget about Oscar winner!”
Image: Reese Witherspoon and Harlan Coben told Katie Spencer about their novel Gone Before Goodbye
As one of the most successful authors in the world, Coben has sold over 80 million books to date, while for Witherspoon this is new ground.
Not content with running a hugely successful production company responsible for a string of hits, as well as one of the most successful book clubs in the world, she explains she felt compelled to give writing a try.
“People want you to stay in your lane… as a creative person I think it’s impossible to just choose one kind of life.
“Creativity is infinite and who I was as a creative person when I was 20 is very different from the person I am now at 49.”
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Gone Before Goodbye, a thriller about a talented surgeon who finds herself caught up in a deadly conspiracy, is the result of Witherspoon daring to put her head above the parapet.
Image: Witherspoon says she felt compelled to give writing a try
Coben admits he was “a little wary” at first.
“I don’t co-write novels but when she made the pitch and started talking about it, I was like ‘dang that’s good, we can do something with that’.”
While countless celebrities work with ghostwriters, Coben says: “I said to her from day one ‘it’s only going to be you and me in here… no third person in here, I don’t do that’. So every word you [read] comes from Reese and me.”
Image: Coben has sold over 80 million books to date, while for Witherspoon this is new ground
Witherspoon explains: “He was like ‘if we’re going to do this, it’s going to have to be at a really high level because people going to expect a lot, so our bar was really high.”
“I said to her, in the beginning, novels are like a sausage,” Coben laughs. “You might like the final taste, but you don’t want to see how it was made and Reese got to see the full sausage getting made here.”
When it came to writing, Coben says they “fell into a rhythm right away”, working together in three-hour stints, “back and forth with a yellow legal pad – what about this? What about that?”
Image: Coben says they ‘fell into a rhythm right away’
Witherspoon says it “feels really deeply personal” to have their work now in print.
“Usually, as an actor, I walk into other people’s worlds and it’s already set up… but this was creating the whole world with Harlan and just from beginning to end feels very personal.”
While the story seems an obvious fit for being adapted to the screen, perhaps with a certain blonde actress in the leading role, Coben says that was never their intention.
“The biggest, biggest mistake novelists make when you write a book is to say ‘this would make a really great movie’. A book is a book, a movie is a movie, and we both focused on wanting this to be just a great reading experience.”
Given that their collaboration is already selling in big numbers, will the pair team up again to write a second?
Witherspoon says: “Let’s just see what people think of this one first.”
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Associate professor of neurology Dr Laura Stein told Sky’s US partner NBC News: ” The most well-described risk factors include a predisposition [family history of aneurysm], high blood pressure, cigarette smoking and inflammation.”
She went on to explain that most fatal ruptured aneurysms are in the brain, killing about one in three patients.
“When it’s a blood vessel that’s in the head and it bleeds, there’s a much higher risk of having a very bad problem just because the brain is enclosed in a fixed space,” Dr Stein added.
Low-risk aneurysms are monitored by doctors for growth or abnormalities, and there are a series of potential treatment options for those considered dangerous.
Elsewhere in The Kardashians clip, Kim admitted that her ex-husband Kanye West will be in her life “no matter what” because of the four kids they share together.