Look Groo’s Talking by Abbie Bernstein
Canadian actor Mark Lutz has proved popular as Cordelia’s cute knight-in-shining armour, the Groosalugg. Mark reveals what it’s been like playing the hunky hero and getting to make out with Cordy…

Pity the poor Groosalugg.
    Ridiculed in his native demon dimension Pylea for looking too human, he tries to redeem himself by becoming a champion and falls for visitor (and princess) Cordelia, but she soon returns to her own world. When Groo eventually follows, Cordy finds a way to become intimate with Groo without losing her visions (okay, you can stop pitying the Groosalugg for a minute), However, Groo leaves when he realises that his princess’ heart really belongs to Angel.
    Like his character, Mark Lutz is a newcomer to Los Angeles, Born in Montreal, Canada, and growing up there and in Toronto, Mark says he knew from a young age that he wanted to be a professional actor, though for a while, sports came first. “I swam for a lot of years, so I didn’t really pursue acting until I took the swimming as far as I could.”
    Mark had guest shots in US TV series filming in Canada, including La Femme Nikita, Earth: Final Conflict and Doc, along with a variety of US TV movies, and was a regular on a Canadian TV series about hockey players, Power Play. Despite the steady work, Mark decided to move to LA because of the greater acting opportunities there. He was in town for about two months before he got his first US job – the Angel episode ‘Through the Looking Glass’. “Tim Minear is an awesome writer,” Mark says of the show’s scribe. “I really connected with the Groosalugg character right away and saw the comedy and the irony that inhabits him.”
    Groo is the most unusual character Mark has played so far: “There are not too many universes that as as unique as the Whedon universe,” he laughs.
    It hasn’t been the most physically comfortable gig, Mark acknowledges. In Pylea, the Groosalugg had long hair, and where Mark’s eyes are blue, Groo’s are darkly inhuman. “Groosalugg wore a wig and contact lenses. Sometimes I don’t feel the contacts at all, sometimes I feel like I’m at the bottom of a swimming pool and can’t even see what I’m looking at. The wig was great. Everyone thought it was my real hair. I took the wig off at night, I’d say ‘Goodnight,’ and they’d be like, ‘Okay, goodnight – who was that guy?”
    The wig left when Groo got an Angel-style makeover, about the time the character began to develop sarcasm. “I’d get the script for the next episode and go, ‘Wow, they’re giving me a few more funny lines!’ So that really brought a smile to me.
    Mark admits that some of the dialogue has been a little challenging: “Some of the sentences they write for me are just not quite like how normal people talk and included words that you’d never utter in a million years, except that you’re on Angel. In the episode ‘Couplet,’ I was supposed to say, “It resembles the Bleaucha.” I said it once and Tim Minear said,’ ;’I want you to say it like, ‘Bluch!’ The next take I did, I said it, and everyone burst out laughing. For the rest of the takes, no one could keep a straight face. I was talking to Alexis Denisof – he gets all the lines like that, the 18-syllable words and things you’ve never heard of, and you have to say it like you’re talking about making a cup of coffee.”
    As Pylea’s best fighter, the Groosalugg gets a lot of action scenes. “I’d done a little bit of sword-fighting in some of my acting training,” the actor reveals. “When I first got the character, I asked to borrow one of the prop swords and played with it – it wasn’t too long ’til I got the sword moves. The moves are choreographed meticulously by the sunt coordinator.

    “I think the most fun I’ve had was the first fight with Angel, where I get to kick his ass all over Pylea, Mark says when asked about his favourite fight scene. “It took a while to map it all out with the stunt coordinators. It was pouring with rain the night we shot it. We were cold and wet and jumping around. It was great!”
    What’s the toughest thing Mark’s had to do as the Groosalugg? “Necking with Charisma Carpenter was so hard and terrible,” he laughs. “It was too demanding. My life is so rough!” Turning more serious, he observes, “Since the first day I got on set, we’ve had a great chemistry together and we often look at each other and go, ‘Wow, there’s something really cool going on here.’ It sounds like such an actor’s cliche, ‘lost in the moment,’ but a lot of times when I’m doing scenes with Charisma, you sort of forget where you are and the lines come out of the ether. Those are my favourite scenes on the show!
    One scene that was fairly tricky came in ‘Couplet,’ when the characters are trapped underground by a tree-like monster. “They secured a fake tree root to my chest,” Mark recalls. “I had a harness on with it, and someone was standing off-camera, shaking it. It was an amazing set. The actor playing the tree demon went in behind the set and had to kneel in this uncomfortable, awkward position, and then they had to glue his face into this tree and he was in there for hours. He did a commendable job of being in that awkward position for as long as he was.”
    Mark can’t say whether the Groosalugg will return to Angel – unlike some other characters, he at least ended the season on dry land – but wither way, the actor believes he’ll always be identified with Groo to some extent. “Some things are indelible. Buffy and Angel have the fan base behind them – they’ll never let you forget it.”
    Anything else he’d like to add? “Keep watching Angel!”