By BRIAN STEINBERG
David Hasselhoff is eager to be welcomed on American shores.
The actor has found much success overseas over the years, most recently executive producing and starring in the British stage musical Last Night A DJ Saved My Life, which ran through February. But now he wants to come home.
“I’ve been over there too long,” said the man best known in the US, perhaps, for his turns on the TV series Baywatch and Knight Rider.
“I’m happy to go where the sun is shining or the snow is falling, but I’ve had it with the rain over in Britain,” he said in an interview, after taking part in a session for the new Baywatch movie slated to debut in 2017.
Hasselhoff could be primed for an American revival, of sorts. The six-episode first season of his British “mockumentary” series Hoff The Record is slated to debut on a cable network on March 31. The series stars the man recognised by many as Mitch Buchannon moving overseas to get his career back on track, while navigating some surreal obstacles.
Hasseloff takes it all in stride, but believes US audiences will enjoy the new series. Cable network AXS “plays mostly music, and all of a sudden, here’s something that is a quirky comedy, but the comedy is kind of rock and roll,” he says, exuding the confidence of, say, a Michael Knight at the end of an hour of Knight Rider when the plot has been resolved and he and KITT, the super car, emerge victorious.
“We will see what happens,” he said of the new programme. “I’m hopeful it works, because if it doesn’t work, I’m going to be down at Variety working in marketing,” he joked.
Hasselhoff has other projects to juggle. He recently was part of a promotion of NBCUniversal’s Cozi TV digital-cable offering that featured Hoff-A-Minute news reports on his comings and goings as part of a marathon of Knight Rider episodes. His daughter, Taylor-Ann Hasselhoff, anchored the segments.
The actor has a role in Sharknado 4, the latest monster spoof from NBCU’s Syfy cable network. And, of course, there’s the new iteration of Baywatch. Hasselhoff praised Dwayne Johnson, who has taken over the role of Mitch Buchannon in the remake. “He’s a hell of a nice guy,” he said.
Would Hasselhoff want to lead another Baywatch crew? “I feel like I’ve moved on to other things,” Hasselhoff said.
He hopes one of those things will be a new Knight Rider project. The idea has for several years been rumoured to be gestating at the Weinstein Company, and Hasselhoff wishes executives there would pick his brain.
“I see it as more of a continuation of the TV series, and they can add new characters or whatever, but they should basically keep the same feeling of the show. There are so many people out there that will absolutely freak out and love it,” he explained.
“It would be Michael Knight kind of coming out of retirement with his son and having adventures around the world, and doing a Fast And Furious with the Knight Rider car. How cool does that sound? How cool could it be?”
If audiences agree, Hasselhoff would certainly ride again. “I’d love to turn Knight Rider into a real franchise,” he added. – Reuters
