For many, their first memory of Casper Van Dien is as Johnny Rico in the classic sci-fi film Starship Troopers. With its combination of satire comedy, intense moments, and huge battle sequences, the film went on to become a global sensation, and rightly so! Outside of this, Casper has also taken on the Headless Horseman in Sleepy Hollow and Christoph Waltz in Alita: Battle Angel. Ahead of his appearance at Liverpool Comic Con, STARBURST catches up with Casper to discuss his acting past, present, and future…
STARBURST: When you look back, what do you remember the most about reading the script for Starship Troopers for the first time? What stood out to you?
Casper Van Dien: That’s a great question, and I have a great answer. When I first read it, I said, “Wow, I remember this book from when I read it as a kid,” and then we had to read it for military school. I read the script, and I go, “I don’t remember this satire, I don’t remember this sense of humour.” How did I understand that when I was a kid, because I loved the book so much. I went back and re-read the book, and I went “Oh, it’s not in the book” that was totally Paul Verhoeven and Edward Neumeier. So I went, “Oh, okay I get it now!” I thought it was brilliant. I loved it, I thought it was surreal, I thought it was incredible, and it was a lot different from the book. Dizzy was a boy in the book, and Rico and Dizzy didn’t have that thing. There were a lot of different things in it. The bugs were different; they had guns and weapons, and then there were the skinnies. So there were a lot of different things. So when I read the script, I went, “Wow! I want to know this mind!” Edward Neumeier, who wrote it, also wrote RoboCop, and he has become one of my best friends, so I’ve got to hang out with him a lot over the years. It’s just been really interesting to see the way he works, and to see his mind, and to understand that. It was great. The funny thing is, when I read it, and we started shooting it, I was like, “Come on guys, this is so on the cusp” Paul would be like “It’s subtle” and I’d be like “It’s so not subtle.” When it came out in America, it went over the heads of a lot of people; I had to go back to Paul and Ed and go, “You were right, it’s subtle” that was kind of hard. When I went over to Clapham Commons, for the premiere in the UK, everywhere in Great Britain, they got it! Because they just plastered the tunnels with war propaganda, with posters saying “It’s war!” It was so brilliant, but that’s because you guys have a really sick, perverse sense of humour, and I appreciated that. Most of the people in America get it now. a lot of younger people will come up to me, and say they read an interview with me that said, “People didn’t get it when it first came out, and I don’t believe you!” I’m like, “Yeah, you’d think” and they’re like “I just don’t believe it, there’s no way that people didn’t understand this. It’s not subtle at all.” I think that’s why it’s had longevity, that sense of humour is one of the reasons why, it’s a film that people keep coming up with different scenarios for why the war started, or who started it. They keep coming up with new things, new ideas about it, and I think it’s always brilliant. It creates great debates for people, both sides of the political party, and ideologies, and for me, that’s always fascinating, because then at least there’s a discussion. I saw Paul Verhoeven last year. He said, “I watched the film again, and it’s a really good film!” and I thought, “Yes, Paul, it really is!”
There are some huge battle sequences within the film; which one was the most rewarding for you to work on, and why?
I think the big drop when we’re all going in, and it starts it all. That was huge. We had so many battle scenes, but that was such a massive one. We had 1400 extras, 30 actors, 30 stunt guys, all of us with live blanks. 1400 extras with rubber guns. Then the big gun is firing off, and there are big explosions going off, the visual effects are going off, and then there’s the CGI that they’re putting on top. Because we had the bottoms of the dropships, but we didn’t have the tops. Those were all CGI’ed in later, and then the big bugs that were CGI’ed in later, but then the explosions that were coming from them, they were part real, and part CGI. It was super intense. I remember looking over, and that day, being out there, it’s at night. Everything was going off. We had 238 crew, and 138 second unit crew. All of these visual effects people. 1400 extras, everybody. I look over, behind the camera and I see the director, Paul Verhoeven, the director of RoboCop, Edward Neumeier, the writer of RoboCop, Jon Davison the producer of RoboCop, Phil Tippett the visual effects genius behind RoboCop, and I look and I went, “Wait a minute, Peter Weller is number one on his call sheet, and I’m number one on mine, so I’m Murphy [From RoboCop]!” I’d buy that for a dollar!
You continued to play Rico in the sequels; how would you say the character has grown/changed since the first movie, and what was that progression like to work on?
It’s been an amazing journey. It’s 28 years later, and we’re still talking about this movie, and we have Cons where we are all going together, more so now than we ever did before. I just did the voice over for two video games last year. One for Starship Troopers: Continuum, which is a 16-person shooter that I stream all the time on Twitch. I play with a lot of different people. I play as Rico, but I play on Twitch as Casper Van Dien. People are like, “I can’t believe you’re playing this game!” I say to them how I wanted this when the movie came out! At the time, I said they needed to make a video game, and they said, “We make movies, not video games!” so I felt a bit like a dork. But now that my kids are all grown, I’ve started to play again, because this game is awesome. I also did the voice over for VR games. Then, there’s Helldivers 2, which is a big popular one that everyone says is a lot like Starship Troopers. Eventually, I’m going to maybe try that game as well, but right now I’m just having so much fun playing the Starship Troopers one. There’s also Terrain Command that I have no involvement with, but I play that. It’s surreal to me. Playing him over the years has been great because of the evolution. First, he joins up for a girl, as we all do stupid things when we are young, to try and impress. Then we realise that he became good at what he was doing, and then he starts caring about his troopers more over the years, even more than The Federation is. He starts to see the humanity in people. I like that he has had that kind of arc, from just being this kid that signs up for whatever reason. He’s not thinking right. Now he’s realising that he is good at what he does, but he also realises that they are just fresh meat for the grinder. He has a sense of humour about that, but he also does care. I like that, and I think there’s been an arc. That’s been shown in Starship Troopers 3: Marauder, into Starship Troopers: Traitor of Mars, and then into the video games! With the video games, even with the way they wrote it, I went and talked to the guy who wrote Extermination, and I said, “Did you work with Edward Neumeier on this, because he would have written all of this?” and he goes, “No, I didn’t!” And I said, “Well, You nailed it!” He said that he takes that as a huge compliment. I said, “Yeah, you should, because he is a brilliant writer, and I’ve read a lot of his scripts.”
Was it a similar creative approach with the games?
As he has progressed, I’ve gotten older. When I was doing Starship Troopers, sometimes Paul would go “Casper! Your voice is too deep. Go drink some coffee. Wake up!” Because he wanted me to be a youthful boy. It’s like “Come on, you apes, you want to live forever!” I always tried to be up in a higher register. Every morning, I sound even worse than I sound right now. When I was young, it wasn’t as bad, but he just wanted me to sound like a boy, because I was playing a boy, and then I became a man. Over the years, I’ve had people yell different quotes from the movie at me, even lines that I never said, and it felt like they became mine. Now that I’ve done the video games, I’ve pretty much said everything everybody else has said in pretty much every other thing, and they’ve all become mine in a way. I feel like that’s for all of us. All of the actors, when I go to these Cons, and we get together, these quotes are theirs too. It’s just part of our film, it’s part of our thing that we’ve done together. We were all a team in that, and we’re still a family all these years later, which is pretty awesome.
Going back, after Starship Troopers, you got involved with Sleepy Hollow! There’s a great sequence where you die fighting the Headless Horseman, how fun was that to work on, and put together?
That was a blast to put together. Kevin Yeager, who did the cast for my leg for Starship Troopers, cast my head for Sleepy Hollow. He was also one of the original writers for it, so the story concept idea was by him as well. They just used the same leg from Starship Troopers that they did in Sleepy Hollow, because instead of getting stabbed by a bug, a knife goes through my leg, and so we used that. That was awesome. Then working with Ray Park [AKA Darth Maul], who is an incredible fighter, the stunt coordination for that was amazing. It was incredible. The horse was incredible. I was working with an amazing horse coordinator called Steve Dent over there. I had an amazing animal that I got to work on. It was the original black beauty from the TV series, named Sam, 18 hands, which is huge. My horse, which was a quarter horse, was 15.3. Her name was also Sam, which is funny. And that was a big horse. It was incredible riding that horse, doing the stunts, fighting. It was incredible to work with Tim Burton, who I idolise and I think is just beyond brilliant. He is just a good man, and I love him to death. I think he is intelligent, funny, and just an icon. He has done so much for the film industry in a way of making other things cool. I think he is amazing.
You got to play Amok in Alita: Battle Angel. Can you tell us about what those sets were like to work on as an actor? It was all motion capture, right?
A lot of it was, but there are some sets in there. I’m also working with Christoph Waltz [Dr Dyson Ido] in that scene, so just to be brought in for one day, that was amazing. That’s because my buddy, Garrett Warren, was the stunt co-ordinator; he was creating a stunt role, and he goes, “Hey, Casper, you should put yourself on tape for this”, and I go, “I’m working on something.” He goes, “I don’t care, just put yourself on tape”, I’m like, “I don’t know.” He says, “Just do this this this.” So I did whatever he told me to do, sent in the tape, and then went off back to work. And then I get a call later, and he says Robert Rodriguez was looking at the tapes, and it was going to be just a stunt role, but Robert said, “Wait a minute, is that Casper Van Dien?”, and he goes, “Well, he has got the role.” So I got it, and then all Robert wanted to talk about while I was on set was Johnny Rico, from Starship Troopers. That’s it. So the whole day, I’m there with Christoph Waltz & Robert Rodriguez, who has got his guitar, and all he wanted to talk about was Starship Troopers. Telling me all of the things that he loved, and what he thought about the film. It was amazing. He was also like, “Amok is a bit like Rico, if he got hooked to drugs in the future.” I was like, “Ha, cool, I like that!” So it could have been that. What an amazing set to be on, what an amazing crew, an amazing director. Robert is so creative, and I can see why he is such a force to deal with in this industry. His studio is massive, and the people around him love him. That’s what I noticed with Paul, and Tim Burton, they know how to have control of their sets. In an amazing way, and they’re very kind.
And is there anything that you wanted to bring to the character of Amok?
I would have loved to have been more involved in the film as a character. For me, it’s the turning point for Christoph Waltz’s character, and it shows why he becomes who he is, because I destroy his daughter. I smash her in a chair. Maybe I’ll have more time in the next one!
What do you remember the most from watching Alita: Battle Angel when it first came out?
What’s amazing is that I went to the premiere, of course. I went with my family and my friends, so we took 50 of us to the theatre, and we all went to see it, and there were 50 other people in the theatre. I had some of my daughters there, and my wife now, a whole bunch of our friends. Everyone’s sitting around. When I smash the daughter, in the film, all my friends were like “Yeah!” They stood up and cheered, and one of my director friends was there; he said, “Two people were like What is wrong with these people?” He said that they were so disturbed, because everyone cheered at that one point! They stayed after, and got a picture with me, but at the time, they didn’t know that I was there. So, it’s kind of surreal!
In 2022, you unleashed the movie Daughter! The movie is really intense, so what was that atmosphere like to work within as an actor?
You know, that was a great crew, and a great cast. I really loved it. Mostly Vietnamese, and mostly women. Our director, Corey Deshon, was dating a lead actress, the daughter. They were a couple, and they put this together. It was amazing to see this, and when I read it, I went “Oh yeah, I think I can do this!” I came up with the beard and the hairdo. I said, “Can I do my hair like this?”, and he goes, “Yes!” Sometimes he would say no to things. We worked together on a lot of things. I was in my house, combing my hair like that, as I came downstairs, my wife and children were like “What are you doing, it’s gross, and disgusting.” They said that I was creeping them out, and I go, “Perfect!” Then I go to the set, and I come back, and I’ll still have that hairdo on. They’re like “Oh my god, I’m so disturbed.” They were always disturbed. So even that set the stage for it. It was interesting to shoot it all in film and be there. The fact that it was based on a short story, of some real things that had happened. People do take control, in a horrific way. It was surreal. I really loved that script, and I wish that more people could have seen it. I hope they do see it, because I think it’s disturbing. I had somebody yesterday saying that they’d saw Daughter, and it was “One of the creepiest and most disturbing things, and it still bugs me when I even think about it with you. I know you’re not anything like that, but it just really bothers me, and if I close my eyes, and I think about it, I’m just disturbed.” And I’m like, “I’m sorry, but I am very happy that you’re saying that to me.” The person said that they knew it was a movie, but they were so creeped out by it. They said I was so disturbing, and I said, “Thank you!”
You’ve got Guns of Redemption coming up! Have you always been a fan of western movies?
My favourite genre of movies is western, and it always has been. The Searchers, I go back to them all the time, even Star Wars is a western to me, a western in space. Starship Troopers is definitely a western. That’s how I see them, and view them. I pretty much watch a western every day, and I love the classics. When I read the script, I said, “This could be such a good movie; this is such a good western.” I’ve made a couple, but this one was the favourite script that I read. And then when we were making it, I was like, “This is really good!” I ride a quarter horse in it, a good-sized quarter horse. It was a Paint, I rode a Bay. I’m a horse person, so I used to have a lot of horses. I get on this one and ask, “What’s the horses name?” They’re like, Paint! I go “Yeah, what’s Paint’s name!?” They go, “Paint!” I go, “Yup, That’s perfect! I love it!” Everything was perfect, like that. It was such a cowboy thing to say. There are different kinds of horses: a Bay, Appaloosa, and Palomino. That’s just the colouring of the horse, and the Paint is, it’s got two different shades of paint on it. That’s why they call it Paint. So it was just so perfect when the cowboy said that to me. I loved it! I got to do all of the horse stunts on that. I loved doing everything, and I had the best time.
Can you tell us about the script and what working with Sean Astin and Jeff Fahey was like?
The script was amazing, and I loved making it. I haven’t seen it yet. I did a press tour yesterday, and everybody that saw it, told me how much they loved it, and that it’s a great western. We have a small theatrical release over here, and it’s going to be on demand over here. I don’t know about the UK. I’m looking forward to seeing it, I’m excited! I loved working with Sean Astin; he plays a preacher in it. My character Luke is looking for redemption. Hence the name, which is perfect for the title. He is looking for redemption for the mistakes that he has made. Trying to see if he can deal with it, and cope with it, as often we do, when we get older, for the mistakes we made in our youth, when we were dumb, and full of testosterone, and just stupid in general. We try to make up for things. So this guy is definitely trying to do that. He is also trying to come to terms with the fact that he was a Confederate, but they lost the war. Now he is trying to deal with the repercussions of the things he did during the war, and then, all hell breaks loose! First, he finds this guy, and this guy tries to help him. He sees potential in it, this preacher, he sees potential, and as he starts to come to terms with it, he is like “I can deal with this” and then all hell breaks loose, and then he keeps trying, and then he gets shot, and then he tries for something else, and then he gets shot, then he gets in trouble. It’s tortuous and I think brilliant. I can’t wait to see it. I’m very excited about this one; it’s one that I’m really looking forward to, and I love the trailer that I’ve seen, but I haven’t seen the movie yet. Some of the guys were telling me that the music was great. Everything turned out great. Jeff Fahey is amazing. I’ve done several things with him, and he is a good friend, and he plays the creepiest bad guy in this. He is from the North. So it’s interesting, because my character is from the South, which is usually the bad guys, and they still were, they were the ones that lost the war, and that’s part of his struggle, but he is a guy trying to be good, and trying to be better. The guy from the North is taking advantage of women, enslaving some of them. That’s kind of like some of the things that did happen. So, even though he is with the good guys, he is one of the bad good guys! It’s a good script. It was intelligent writing, and it was fun to make.
Finally, how excited are you about Liverpool Comic Con? There will be a lot of the Starship Troopers gang there!
Yeah, I love going with my Starship Troopers family. I love hanging out with them, and there are a lot of us going there. So it’s going to be great fun. I’m going to be doing a screening of the movie on Saturday evening, I’ll be there for that. A couple of my moderators on my Twitch channel, where I stream video games, they’re from Liverpool, so two of them are going to be there, which is fun. I have about 5/6 moderators on my channel. So, the people I play video games with are going to be there. I know there will be some guys in Starship Troopers uniform, I know there always are. I love it, and I love that over there, and across the pond, people really get it, and the sense of humour, and they all have a really dark, sick, perverse sense of humour! So, it’s perfect for Starship Troopers, and they get it, and that’s what I love.
Find out more about Liverpool Comic Con
Book Liverpool Comic Con – Starship Troopers screening with Casper tickets!
