Interview: Star Trek's Karl Urban

AtomicTV: We talk with Karl Urban about playing his favourite Star Trek character - Dr Leonard 'Bones' McCoy.

When Star Trek premiered at the Sydney Opera House earlier last month, we were there - and what an experience it was. But we were also there the next day to chat to the film's stars - we've already posted our interview with Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto, and now it's Karl Urban's turn.

Karl's pretty much a household name if you watch the right kind of cinema or TV. Arguably best known for his role as a Russian assassin in the second Bourne film, he's also played Eomer in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, had a stint in the still-popular Xena: Warrior Princess television show and even showed up in the Doom film alongside The Rock.

And he's also just a really nice guy, and a pleasure to talk to.

Stay tuned next week for the last of our video interviews, with John 'Sulu' Cho.

Want to check out the first Australian review of Final Fantasy XIII? We got in this month's Atomic!

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11 Comments

Thoughts on this article? Add a comment below.

Shikimaru May 13, 2009 11:04 AM	Love your work David, you look sexier in each one ;)
Invicta May 13, 2009 3:07 PM	Loving these interviews. Keep up the good work!
d3c4y May 13, 2009 4:16 PM	You seem much less nervous this time! And Karl certainly does seem like a nice guy. Awesome job. I think thanks are in order to Chaos_Lady, who did a great job editing both of these interviews!
hectorbustnuts May 13, 2009 6:07 PM	Groovy. Bones was always my favourite character and he played him smashingly.
0s1r1s May 13, 2009 9:44 PM	I can't get any of them to play without constantly freezing as they try and load the next section. I've got plenty of bandwidth so I don't understand why this is happening. Tried in Firefox and IE7 - both the same. Couldn't you have just uploaded them to YouTube?
Sir Mean Mr. Mustard May 13, 2009 11:10 PM	Sound needs to change to mono.. its kinda annoying hearing only in my right ear... gw tho :)
Hawkeye May 14, 2009 8:02 AM	0s1r1s: Hmm. Most people seem to be able to stream the film fine. WE used to do all of our videos on YouTube, but I much rather we keep an exclusive video exclusive :) Sorry it's not an ideal solution for you - works fine for me at home and at work. Mustard: I didn't spot that, but you're not the first to mention it. I'll have a chat to Chaos about it :)
SceptreCore May 19, 2009 6:45 PM	I didn't like the movie myself. It focused more on theatrics, then science fiction. I mean come on, engineering looked like the filmed it in the real USS Enterprise (WWII aircraft carrier)It looked crap. As did below decks. The warp core was a series of cylinders that looked countermeasures from submarines. Then there is the Romulan mining vessel. How impractical to have a mining vessel that had heaps of arms flailing about like some octopus on ecstasy. And internally it had winding walkways all over the place.... (with no guard rails). Oh how grim the future looks in the eyes of Alex Kurtzman, Roberto Orci and J.J. Abrams. Next time those three should think of something besides star trek to ruin when they next have a stoner session. Although I will say that Karl Urban and Zachary Quinto did awesome jobs playing their characters. Sorry I have ranted, I didn't know where else to do it.
Hawkeye May 20, 2009 9:57 AM	Yeah, I was skeptical about those large engineering spaces, too, until I found out that this ship is about the same size as the Enterprise D. Suddenly that makes a bit more sense, I still argue that wide open spaces on a starship are asking for MASSIVE issues during hull breaches.
SceptreCore May 21, 2009 11:10 AM	Not to mention Dave those poor Romulans having near death experiences when getting to close to the edge. I think interplanetary mining must be difficult enough without having to worry about plummeting to your death if you lose your balance on the walkways. And no way is that thing (new enterprise)the same size as a galaxy class starship, the one that is the mother of all starships. Without doubt they should have included someone who knows something about star trek and it's history. i.e. Rick Berman. I still seriously maintain that Star Trek has been tarnished.... or perhaps perverted is a better word.
Hawkeye May 21, 2009 12:11 PM	Well, by definition, this is a perversion - a change from the natural course of things :) As to the Romulan vessel... we know that the Vulcan/Romulan physiology is in many ways superior to humans. Perhaps their superior balance and strength means they don't need rails hemming them in? It's a reach, but I love reaching. I can justify with the best of them! And the size thing? Check this out: http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/gizmodo/2009/05/enterprise-vs-bsg2.jpg It's an official Bad Robot illo, apparently. And when you think that Archer's Enterprise NX-01 was nearly the size of the standard timeline's Constitution class vessel, you can see that the perverted timeline's ship should be bigger again. Starfleet, in any universe, it seems, like to build bigger ships with every generation!

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Issue: 111 | April, 2010

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