New interview with Craig Parker (Darken Rahl) from New Zealand’s Sunday Star Times

Television: The legends live on

From Xena to Lord of the Rings, Craig Parker is no stranger to a life of fantasy. He talks to Karen Tay about his new series, Legend of the Seeker.

THE EVIL wizard Darken Rahl paces the shadowy corridors of his gloomy castle. As emperor of the land of D’Hara, Rahl is impressively garbed in blood-red robes although his greasy, shoulder-length black hair could do with a wash and trim.

He is awaiting news from his army of minions, whom he’s sent out to the Westlands to find a pesky seeker he thought had been dead for 20 years when he had all the first-born boy babies in D’Hara murdered to avert an ancient prophecy.

If none of that made sense to you, it will after tonight, when new Disney fantasy series Legend of the Seeker, based on the novels by Terry Goodkind, starts on Prime.

The show is filmed in New Zealand and features a slew of Kiwi actors, including former Shortland Street bad boy Craig Parker, fresh from TV One comedy Diplomatic Immunity. Parker plays Darken Rahl a major character for season one.

The series has done so well in the US that it’s already been picked up for a second season and Disney are being particularly hands-on with its stars.

To arrange an interview with Parker, we had to go through the show’s New Zealand office, who then contacted Disney in America, who directed us back to Disney’s Asia/Pacific office, and we finally got through to Parker on the phone … in Auckland.

Still, he has kept his sense of humour. Speaking with the English accent he has on the series, picked up from several years in the UK, he says it’s great being able to leave the slapstick world of Diplomatic Immunity behind and play a new character.

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