Persona Video Magazine Interview text
(Female Voiceover )Look who’s back! It’s the original caped crusader himself. Zorro! The legendary masked hero has returned. The Family Channel has brought a brand new Zorro to cable television, still fighting for the rights of peasants in old California with only a whip and a sword just as he did when the classic tales started nearly a century ago.
(Female Voiceover ) Do you know what Zorro means in Spanish?
(Text on screen: What does Zorro mean in Spanish?)
(Text on screen: Fox)
(Female Voiceover) That’s right. Zorro was the Fox.
(Female Voiceover )Created in 1919 by pulp magazine writer Johnston McCulley, Zorro quickly captured the public’s imagination. Less than a year later, Zorro made his first screen appearance in the silent classic, “The Mark of Zorro,” starring a dynamic Douglas Fairbanks. Many popular adaptations followed including a 1940 sound remake of the Fairbanks classic. This time starring the less athletic but handsome Tyrone Power. The popularity of Zorro reached perhaps an all time high in 1957 when Walt Disney brought the story to television with Guy Williams wearing the famous mask. Since then the story of Zorro has been kept alive by various projects including the 1981 campy comedy, “Zorro the Gay Blade,” starring George Hamilton. After a brief return to prime-time television in 1982 with Disney’s “Zorro and Son,” little was seen of Zorro in the eighties.
(Clips from Family Channel “Zorro” are shown while she speaks.)
Zorro: “You must stay on top of things, Sergeant.”
(Female Voiceover) But now the nineties are here and so is Zorro!
Victoria: “Sergeant Mendoza, help!”
Man: “Will they catch him?
Victoria: “Catch him, Señor? He is Zorro.”
(Female Voiceover) Do you know the only person who knows Zorro true identity?
(Text on screen: Who is the only person who knows Zorro’s true identity?)
(Text on screen: Don Diego’s manservant Bernardo.)
(Female Voiceover) Don Diego’s ever-faithful mute manservant, Bernardo, of course.
(Another clip is shown)
Zorro: Oh, don’t go yet, amigos. What kind of men are you, taking advantage of women and unarmed strangers? Hm?
(Female Voiceover) Canadian born actor, Duncan Regehr, dons the mask this time on the new Family Channel’s new weekly version of Zorro.
Zorro: Never draw a sword unless you’re prepared to use it.
(Female Voiceover) The suave thirty-six year old actor is best known for his portrayal of another famous swashbuckler, Errol Flynn, in the TV mini-series, “My Wicked, Wicked Ways.” Thanks in part to the sword play in that role, Duncan has no problem fencing Zorro-style.
Duncan Regehr: It’s something I’ve had to do in a number of films now and I’ve been fortunate enough in this project to get Peter Diamond who’s a wonderful choreographer who recently did Princess Bride, all the fights from Princess Bride and he’s fabulous. Absolutely fabulous, so hopefully with the little library he keeps in his brain, we can pull out little sequences and use them for Zorro.
(Female Voiceover )But can Duncan ride like Zorro?
Duncan Regehr: Yeah, I used to raise cutting horses, um, which wasn’t a good idea, only because I get really involved with animals. If I own them, I get a little emotionally attached to them. And they die and get sick and that sort of thing, which is no reason not to have animals. It’s just that, with horses, it was too much for me. But yeah, sure, I can ride a horse.
(Female Voiceover) Do you know the name of Zorro’s horse?
(Text on screen: What’s the name of Zorro’s horse?)
(Female Voiceover) That’s right. It’s Tornado.
(Text on screen: Tornado.)
(Female Voiceover) It’s been more than seventy years since Zorro rode out of the West and into his first big screen appearance, but Duncan Regehr carries on the hero’s unmistakable looks and athleticism with his portrayal of Don Diego and Zorro plus a little bit more.
Duncan Regehr: Well, for me, I think I’m going to make a little bit of a difference there than what has been traditionally known about them. Um, Don Diego to me is…is really a put-on character too. In other words, who is the real person behind Don Diego and Zorro? Only his assistant knows the truth.
(Another clip is shown)
Diego: You were right, Felipe. Those two thieves won’t be bothering anyone for a while. Felipe, you didn’t happen to touch this experiment?
Duncan Regehr: Don Diego is the creation for everyone including even his own father, a rather retiring gentle man, who is also very bookish. By that I mean he’s also a renaissance man. He’s interested in music and art and a lot of things but nothing particularly physical. Zorro on the other hand is the flash character. He’s the bandito, you know, and the swordsman. And with that character – he’s truly a character, a guy you never really get close to and he’s twinkling all the time. He has a lot of fun. Even in the worst fight, he’s having a good time.
(Note: The theme used in the background was the one with the male voice heard in one of the early episodes.)