While playing the role of Steve McGarrett's beefy, stoic investigator, the actor formerly known as Kono didn't get much respect. Memorizing lines for the long-running "Hawaii Five-0" series was hardly a problem for Zulu. How many ways can you say, "Yes, boss," which was about all Kono said during the first three years of production.
Now, a movie based on "Hawaii Five-0" is in the works and Zulu feels that not only is he being ignored, but so are the other supporting cast members such as James McArthur, Kam Fong, Harry Endo, Herman Wedemeyer and Doug Mossman.
After two strokes and two heart attacks, Zulu isn't so beefy anymore. But he's just as stoic. Having learned through the newspapers that yet another "Hawaii Five-0" movie is planned, he says he'll believe it when he sees it. Attempts to make such a movie began almost as soon as the last "Five-0" episode was shot.
"It's been a long-going, valiant effort," Zulu said. "A producer gets up to the line and says, 'I want to do this.' Five years later, another steps up and takes a swing at it. Who is it now? Who is stepping into the batter's cage?"
That would be George Litto, a Hollywood producer involved in the original series. Unlike other pretenders, Litto seems to be doing more than stepping up to the plate. He's swinging hard with a possible $70 million budget and plans to start shooting early next year.
If that is true, Zulu says, Litto could have created a little local goodwill by at least discussing the project with some of the original cast.
"Being local guys, we could provide input," he said. "I feel, the way to get on the good side is to get the original cast, put us in a production meeting and hear how we feel it should be done."
That hasn't happened and it doesn't surprise Zulu. After all, he remembers the battles he fought on the television series, trying to make Kono more than just a large, brown piece of background whom television writers, he says, often mistakenly described as the "guest villain."
THEN there was the time they finally wrote a plot around his character. It was called "Kono's Revenge." But it was more like "Jack Lord's Revenge," Zulu recalls.
"Jack didn't know I was given one of the original scripts," Zulu said.
Zulu noticed that the script began to change dramatically throughout successive production meetings.
"My lines were shrinking, Jack's were growing," he said.
In the end, the story was still about Kono getting kidnapped, but it wasn't the acting showpiece Zulu had first seen.
Was he bitter? Well, the last scene involved Kono handcuffed inside a box stuck under a pier in Heeia. Since there weren't many beefy, stoic stunt men back then, Zulu found himself hanging under the pier himself.
"There was no safety valve, man," Zulu recalls. "I told some guys, if that line slips and I die, drown that bastard over there and shoot that son of a bitch."
He presumably was pointing at the crew members who set up the stunt and not the script's writers.
It has been a tough few years for Zulu, coming back from his strokes. He has recovered most of his mobility, with only a little paralysis in his left arm and leg.
Physically, he knows he could meet the challenge of appearing in the movie. But he's not waiting by the phone.
(He said he hopes the producers will pick either Moe Keale, Robert Kekaula or Ray Bumatai to continue the Kono legacy).
In the meantime, he will sit stoically in the stands, waiting to see if the latest producer to step up to the plate hits a home run or strikes out.
