The New Spartacus Would Rather Play Video Games

We're just a day away now from the unleashing – nay, the unsheathing! – of Spartacus: Vengeance on Starz. As you all know, the titular role of Spartacus had to be recast after star Andy Whitfield dropped out of the series due to his battle with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. A disease that ultimately, and tragically, claimed his life last September. Having gotten Andy's personal blessing to continue the series without him, EP and creator Steven S. DeKnight led a global casting call to find the new Spartacus. Liam McIntyre, Andy's fellow Australian, won the part after a rather extensive auditioning process; described by DeKnight as the search for an actor who exudes a "sense of pain and compassion."

Watch the Spartacus: Vengeance Premiere Now!
IGN had a chance to speak with Liam McIntyre about his new role, giant billboards with his face on them, awkward nude scenes, painful boot camps and why he'll always, no matter what happens with the series, be a gamer.

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IGN TV: I follow you on Twitter (@Liam_J_McIntyre) and a while back you posted a pic of a giant billboard of the show, with you in it, and you seemed to be a bit shocked. How are you dealing with things?

Liam McIntyre: I'm really good at dealing with things on the outside so inside me I have no idea what's truly happening. So when people ask me "Are you ready for this?" I'm just like "Sure." When stuff comes up I can usually deal with it or when things go out of control you just switch to a mode where you can step back and go "All right. I'm fine with this, no matter what's happening." So there's part of that in me. But also, who has their giant face in Times Square? That's ridiculous. [laughs] It's mental. I was in a movie theater when I saw it, looking to see what movies were playing. It's not real life. It's a crazy world. But, yeah. I'm fine with it. I'm dealing with it. But I really don't get it. It's a double-edge sword. It's so crazy that it's almost okay.

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IGN: It's common knowledge that you didn't quite look the part when you were auditioning, having lost a ton of weight for another role. What was it like getting into Spartacus shape? I assume you had to eat a lot.

McIntyre: Yeah, the eating part sounds good on the surface. It's really just a ton of chicken. But I'm a life-long video gamer so being a gym rat is something that's quite new to me. Weirdly enough though, the best thing to happen to me, in hindsight, was losing all that weight for that other role. I mean when I started auditioning for Spartacus, I looked horrible. But the discipline of getting down to that low weight, to look that horrible, helped me then go to a gym and do what I had to do for Spartacus. And say, "I just have to do what needs to be done." And I'm a stubborn person by nature so I just said "This is happening. We're doing this." I know it all comes naturally to a lot of people on Spartacus and they're like, "It's really hard but I'm so excited when Boot Camp comes around," and I'm still stuck in the it's really really painful stage.

But it is really cool because it's one of the rare things in life where you can work extremely hard and see a tangible result. So that's nice as an actor, where you spend most of your life thinking "Am I doing a good job?" Because you never really know for sure. It's nice to have something in life where you can say, "Okay, I've lifted that a hundred times and I look this much better." It's good to have some certainty.

IGN: It must feel good that you landed this role on something other than your physicality, since you didn't really look the part.

McIntyre: I was lucky in that respect, yeah. Early on, in my mind, I looked so not right for the role that I just put out of my mind the possibility of ever getting the role. Not at all. I just thought it would be a fun thing to go out for. It's an experience. I get to tell my friends that I auditioned for Spartacus. But it kept going. But the whole time I never had that added pressure of thinking that I'd ever actually get the role. I just thought, "You know, I worked hard with my acting coach and now I get to try it all out." I went out for lots of things before, but this one was huge. Especially when I went in for the second audition and got to do it all again.

IGN: Had you seen the show already when you auditioned for it?

McIntyre: Yeah. My best friend told me that I had to watch the show and I resisted a little bit at first, but he finally sat me down and made me watch it. And from that first scene where you see Andy in the arena in those chains, trying to make sense of the world he's now in, I was hooked. I thought, "I don't care what story you tell me now, I'm in." It was one of those rare shows where you wanted to watch all the episodes in one sitting. "Let's see them all right now! I don't care, just give them to me!" It's a great show and it's also unimaginably sad that I have this role. Because I loved Andy and his performance on the show.

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More from Liam McIntyre, including what video games he's currently playing, on page 2...