What Original 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles' Star Elias Koteas Told Us About Playing Casey Jones Back in 1990
Koteas in 2014 and in the 1990 ‘TMNT’ movie (Photo credit: Photo by Charley Gallay/NBC/NBC via Getty Images, New Line)
Longtime Ninja Turtles fans will be happy to see a certain hockey-masked hero make his triumphant return in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows (in theaters June 3). Played by Arrow’s Stephen Amell in the new film, the role of vigilante sidekick Casey Jones was originated on the big screen by Elias Koteas in the 1990 blockbuster Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Two years ago in August, 2014, when the Casey-less TMNT reboot premiered in theaters, Chicago P.D. star Koteas spoke with Yahoo Movies about his memories of working alongside giant turtle puppets. Check out an abridged version of that interview below.
The summer blockbuster Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles has re-introduced audiences to characters beloved since the 1980s, including the titular fighting reptiles, gutsy reporter April O’Neil, and steel-plated villain Shredder. Missing from the lineup is hockey-masked vigilante Casey Jones, the turtles’ human foil (and April’s love interest) in the original comics, TV series, and ’90s film franchise. At Comic-Con, director Jonathan Liebesman and producer Andrew Form told Screen Rant that they were interested in making Casey, originally played on the big screen by Elias Koteas, a part of the 2016 Ninja Turtles sequel.
Watch a collection of Koteas’ scenes in ‘TMNT:’
Around the same time that Ninja Turtles devotees were swarming Comic-Con, Koteas’s castmates from the NBC procedural Chicago P.D. were taking him to a midnight screening of the 1990 version of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Koteas was 28 years old when he starred as the hockey stick-wielding New Yorker who fights alongside the turtles (played by Jim Henson’s Creature Shop-designed animatronic puppets).
“Most of my [Chicago P.D.] castmates are in their thirties, so they grew up watching it,” Koteas tells Yahoo Movies. “It has nothing to do with me anymore, you know? And I was really just moved by how much joy it brings.”
Koteas, 53, approaches the subject of acting with serious introspection, as befits his alma mater, the Actor’s Studio of New York. So how does a guy like that end up playing scenes with giant rubber turtles? “Quite honestly, my life at that time was in such turmoil. That’s really what I remember,” Koteas admits. “The job was a reprieve from that: going and playing with turtles and pretending I’m this swashbuckling, tree-swinging, rooftop vigilante guy.”
Related: Casey Jones! First Look at the ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2’ Vigilante
When the Canadian-born actor auditioned, he had no familiarity with the Ninja Turtles comics. What he did have was the start of a very promising career, playing standout characters in films like John Hughes’s Some Kind of Wonderful and Francis Ford Coppola’s Tucker: The Man and His Dream. For him, the appeal of Casey Jones was the character’s generous spirit. “With whatever was going on in my life, it just felt like, ‘Ah, this is appropriate. Let me live out a fantasy of protecting the weak,’” says Koteas.
Once he was cast, Koteas went through martial arts training, though he stuck with the basics. (“It wasn’t like I was this high-kicking karate guy, you know what I mean? You work with what you got.”) The tough part of shooting, as it turned out, was working with Henson’s complex animatronic puppets. “You could be doing it 16 times, until they get it technically right. So it was a challenge to just try to remain curious and focused while they got the mechanics correct with the turtles’ heads and all these things,” he recalls. “But it was fun. Sometimes you gotta just say, ‘OK, whatever study I did, I’m going to toss it out and play.’”
With the success of the sensory-assaulting Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles relaunch, the Internet is full of “Where are they now?” pieces about the original film’s cast. But anyone who’s paying attention knows that Koteas has never gone anywhere (though his flowing Casey Jones locks are gone for good). In addition to his current television work — Chicago P.D. and a 2013 stint on The Killing — he’s been a regular presence in movies, with notable roles in The Thin Red Line, Zodiac, and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, among many others. [Editor’s note: Back in 2014, Koteas spoke to us for the release of his indie comedy Jake Squared.]
For the most part, the 1990 blockbuster doesn’t cross his mind — except when fans approach him. "I get stopped in the street and it’s like, ‘Hey, there’s Casey Jones!’ There’s nothing but gracious gratitude, if there is such a term,” says Koteas. “So yeah, Ninja Turtles kind of makes me smile when I think about it. But it seems like such a long time ago…. This is probably the most I’ve ever talked about it.”
Watch Megan Fox talk about playing April O’Neil in the new sequel ‘Out of the Shadows:’
