Exclusive: Lance Henriksen Talks STUNG, HARBINGER DOWN & Looks Back at MILLENNIUM

This Friday, a brand new creature feature called Stung arrives in theaters and on VOD. The film co-stars the iconic Lance Henriksen as Mayor Caruthers, one of the unfortunate party-goers at a shindig that gets attacked by mutated killer wasps who leave shredded corpses in their wake. Daily Dead recently chatted with Henriksen about the new horror comedy from director Benni Diaz as well as his involvement in several other upcoming projects, including Harbinger Down, and whether or not he’d be up for more Millennium if all goes well with the upcoming revival of Chris Carter’s other popular series, The X-Files.

This movie is a ton of fun—I grew up on a lot of creature features, mostly due to Elvira and her show, and I thought Stung was a great blend of old-school creature campiness with this sort of new-school twist to it.

Lance Henriksen: You know, when I finally saw it, I was absolutely blown away. I know what we did and when you finally see the fruition of everything, it was great. I mean, all these guys that were on the crew, along with the director and the producer, went to film school together and this was their first thing, basically their idea was, “Let’s all go make a movie together.”

And so, when you see how advanced what they were actually doing during production has come out in the end, this is exactly the way they wanted to do it. Bennie even said, "When I watch an audience see this movie, it's exactly what I wanted. I make movies for an audience to enjoy, not necessarily just for critics."

But they made every bit of it work and I'm telling you, this guy Benni is a talent. I've been around a few talented people in my time and I think this movie's going to be a hit. I really do—once the kids get a load of everything we cooked up.

Did you and Benni work together to flesh out your character at all, or was it mostly in the script?

Lance Henriksen: We would work on lines and stuff—with Benni and with the writer Adam Aresty, who is a wonderful writer. But it was because this story felt so alive to all of us, we were all excited to be a part of the project and have some fun with the material. Every scene we did, everybody was excited, and it was like, how could I not want a situation like that? How could I not want to be a part of that? I loved playing that alcoholic mayor [laughs].

I was going to say, you've done hundreds and hundreds of roles throughout your career and you've been in everything. But yet, this felt so different than anything we've seen you as before.

Lance Henriksen: That's what I do. I'm looking for roles where I can play something different. And I don't mean different just to be different. It has to have something special to it. My sense of humor is based on the only way to get back at any injustice in your life is through your art and that fuels me like rocket fuel. Because whether I'm playing a cowboy, or an astronaut, or an alcoholic mayor, or whatever, I want to always challenge myself in different ways. I mean, I've got three movies coming out that are completely different.

In Harbinger Down, I play the captain of a crabbing vessel and then I also did this film called Monday at 11:01 AM where I play a facilitator for people going into the next world. That's all I'll tell you about it, because I don’t want to say too much—it’s really great. Then, I also have a movie that I did with Japanese director Mamoru Oshii that I'm starring in called Garm Wars: The Last Druid, which was an unbelievable experience.

And so, there are all kinds of stuff that I've been working on, and I'm still thriving. I love it. It's a little bit like I know how to play the violin, or I can play an instrument, second nature, because I've put in the work. I'm not bragging, I'm just very fortunate to stay as busy as I do [laughs]. I am worried about the day when it comes where they say he's too old, he's not relative, and he’s not current. You know what I mean? I'm a very lucky man. I hit a note that somebody liked, so that was it.

Let’s talk about Harbinger Down for a second, just because I adore those guys over there and I’m really excited to see how it came out.

Lance Henriksen: I've known Alec [Gillis] and Tom [Woodruff Jr.] for 25 years or even maybe 30 years now, and so I’ve worked on a lot of movies with them, everything from Aliens to even Alien vs. Predator, they were there for it all. I've known these guys and this was their first venture taking responsibility for making a film, so to be a part of that was an honor. But it took a while—it all takes a while. Look at Stung—this has been something they worked on for a few years now, too. That just seems to be the pace when you’re trying to do your own thing independently.

One last thing I wanted to discuss with you is regarding Millennium. We’re now in this revival age of television series and Chris Carter is now busy bringing back The X-Files, which is great. Are you hoping that if everything goes well there, that maybe you’d get a phone call about Millennium, since I think Frank’s story is still definitely worth revisiting?

Lance Henriksen: I would love to see that. Sure, I would. I'd love to revisit it, because having perfect 20/20 hindsight, I look back on it, and think that 50 percent of those shows were really great television where the other half was really good television. And I really do believe that if we had gone on another year or two, that show would've really found itself in the long run.

The problem with Millennium was that they changed producers every year during that show, and it would have a different energy. The last season, here I am looking at one of my best friends in the whole world, and then I’m shooting them. It didn’t really fit my character—those giant departures that were taken in that last season. So, it needed to find itself even more than it did or was allowed to.

But I loved doing that show. It was hard, hard, hard work, but it was worth doing. And yes, I would love to revisit Frank because I think he’s still got a few tricks up his sleeve [laughs].