|
Victoria Ahearn, THE CANADIAN PRESS TORONTO - As a child in the 1980s, Sydney Tamiia Poitier says she loved watching the iconic TV series "Knight Rider," starring a curly-haired David Hasselhoff as a strapping detective who busted crime with KITT, the sleek talking car.
| | 
The cast of Knight Rider (left to right) Paul Campbell as Billy Morgan, Sydney Tamiia Poitier as Carrie Ruvai, Smith Cho as Zoe Chae, Justin Bruening as Mike Tracer, Deanna Russo as Sarah Graiman, Yancey Arias as Alex Torres and Bruce Davison as Charles Graiman are shown in a handout photo. THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO-NBC-Mitchell Haaseth |
So when the actress nabbed a role in the "Knight Rider" series remake that's set to debut on Wednesday on E in Canada and NBC in the U.S., she was excited to share the news with her father - 81-year-old big-screen legend Sidney Poitier. His response, though, was rather muted. "He didn't even know what it was when I told him," Poitier, 34, said with a laugh in a recent phone interview from her Los Angeles home. "When I'm like, 'Dad, I'm doing Knight Rider,' he's like, 'Oh, that's good.' I'm like, 'You know that series in the '80s with David Hasselhoff?' He's like, 'No, I don't.' "He knows who David (Hasselhoff) is, of course, but he didn't watch the series. But he did watch the pilot episode and he really enjoyed it." The pilot Poitier refers to is the made-for-TV "Knight Rider" movie that aired to huge numbers but largely negative reviews on NBC in February. The new TV series has the same characters as the pilot - including Justin Bruening in the lead role of Mike Traceur, estranged son of Michael Knight - but differs greatly in tone, said Poitier, who plays FBI agent Carrie Ruvai. "It's kind of like starting over with a new show," said the actress, who grew up in Los Angeles and has appeared in numerous TV shows and several films. As per Screen Actor's Guild requirements, she uses her middle name professionally because of the similarity to her father's name. Vancouver-born actor Paul Campbell, who plays tech expert Billy Morgan on the show, says producers have added more action since the pilot aired. "I think just in general they wanted ... the bigger, better, faster idea, and they wanted a little bit of comic relief which is kind of what I was brought in to do," said Campbell, who played Billy Keikeya on the first two seasons of the sci-fi hit "Battlestar Galactica." Actor Val Kilmer provides the voice of KITT, which stands for Knight Industries Three Thousand, on the revamped series. Poitier has had a chance to sit in the high-tech car and Campbell, an experienced drag racer, is itching to drive it. "I would love to get behind the wheel of that thing and just let it fly," Campbell, 29, said this week over the line from Cabazon, Calif., in between filming scenes for episode nine at a casino. Network officials have ordered a total of 13 episodes for this season and Campbell is hoping Hasselhoff, who had a brief cameo in the pilot, will eventually be incorporated into the series. "I'll ask him to run in slow motion for me," joked Campbell, referring to the intro of the 1990s lifeguard drama "Baywatch." Campbell is also hoping fans of the first "Knight Rider" series will be open to something new. "I love the fact that there are so many fans of the original show," he said. "The problem is when people start expecting to see the original show again. I think anybody that sets out to try and remake something is pretty much doomed to fail because it'll never be what it was and that's certainly not our intention ... so it's a man and a car trying to save the world but that's about as far as the similarities go."
|
