TURNING FEAR INTO FASCINATION, KPI SIGNS “SPIDERWOMAN” KRISTIE REDDICK

She’s drop-dead gorgeous and loves furry creatures with lots of legs. She’s got a whimsical personality and a huge determination to convince us that bugs are not SO icky. She’s dedicated to saving insects from death, destruction, and humans. A real-life Spider Woman? She’s Kristie Reddick, self-proclaimed “Bug Girl” and Texas A&M trained entomologist.

Set to pursue acting (with a BFA in theatre), Kristie’s fascination with Africa took her on a college trip to Kenya. One night, she heard a scream coming from the choos (bathrooms). She ran with her net and red-light to investigate (it was a guy who screamed). Kristie watched as a very large, spider-like creature climbed up to her eye level, reared back, opened its jaws and hissed at her. That’s when it happened. This wild thing was speaking to her, and Kristie instantly fell in love.

She ditched her show-biz plans, volunteered in a lab studying wasps in Florida and then took a job teaching inner-city kids in California. Strapped for cash, she bought a lotto ticket, won $250 and drove cross-country to her next adventure: Texas A&M’s graduate program in entomology (where she’s now a lecturer).

Kristie is one of the few people in the world to have studied solifuges (arachnids that are not spiders…) in Africa, and she has discovered five new species so far.

How many teachers do you know who will go into the wilds of Kenya (or Texas) in shorts and a tight tank top, surround themselves with hissing cockroaches, allow beetles to crawl up their arm, and describe hot spider sex?

Kristie, we look forward to working with you!

A half bull, half human monster is trapped in a maze–a place archeologists say may still exist today.[wpvideo rvCDuw5T]

Curvy…beautiful… sexy…. confident…seductive. Words used to describe one person…Bombshell Betty. She is the embodiment of the 50’s pin-up girl, who can pose the hell out of a picture, and seduce any man…well, almost any man, with her moves. And KPI has just signed her to a talent deal.

As an international pin-up model and burlesque dancer, Betty’s toured extensively across the USA, Canada, Europe and Japan. But in 2004, she decided to stay home and teach the tricks of her trade at “Burlesquercise” in San Francisco. Betty runs the studio with her partner/photographer Randy. Thousands have taken her classes; many have become burlesque performers themselves.

So…welcome to Bombshell Betty’s Pin-up Workshops: featuring retro-style makeovers, posing lessons, and a professional photo shoot. Her classes are for both amateurs and established performers–for anyone who wants to add confidence and a little seduction to their everyday life (and a little titillation for the man in their life). After turning San Francisco housewives into sex-kittens, she turned to New York, LA, Boston, D.C., Chicago, Seattle and Orlando to release the inner pin-up model in all. She hosts her workshops in luxury hotel suites and offers cocktails to ease the tension and loosen the suits of high-powered, high-strung women looking for a good time, good moves and goodies to go home with.

Betty designs her own costumes for shows and photo shoots. When she’s not designing, she is creating collages from her pin-up photography. Her artwork has been featured in major San Francisco art galleries.
In 2006 she released a DVD “Intro to Burlesquercise” and her new book “Plain Jane to Pin-up Queen: Pinup Modeling Workshop in a Book” is currently for sale on 5 continents.

As Betty’s friends like to say: “She always has something new up her sleeve…or tucked into her garter.”

So, do you think there’s a TV series in all this? Maybe. It will be fun finding out.

On Monday August 3, KPI’s new series for HISTORY launches at 10PM ET/PT.
CLASH OF THE GODS tackles myths–big gutsy unwieldy myths filled with sex, snakes, sirens, flying dragons and monsters eating people.

First episode is ZEUS–the greatest of the Greek Gods. So how do you cast a god? That was the question we kept asking ourselves. Zeus. All-powerful. Larger than life. Experience with lightning preferred.

We were filming in Ouarzazate – a remote studio town in the Moroccan desert where films such as Kingdom of Heaven, Gladiator and Lawrence of Arabia filmed many of their scenes. You’d think you could find godlike superheros in a setting like that. You’d be wrong.

For days we scoured the town – home to about 80,000 people with droves of tourists passing through. We held casting calls at our hotel, scoured street corners, checked out the only gym in town, which looked more like janitor’s supply closet than a Bally’s. No one had the ZEUS “look”.

We extended our search across the country. Casting photos poured in from Casablanca, Marrakesh, Tangier. Where had all the superheros gone?

In the end, we settled for a mere mortal. We cast Joseph Beddelem, an experienced Moroccan stuntman with credits including The Bourne Identity, The Hills Have Eyes and Alexander as our Zeus.

Moroccan stuntman Joseph Beddelem

Joseph is one strong and rugged dude. He had an air of authority about him and his screen experience suggested he’d be able to carry the role more convincingly than the janitor down the street (who usually has a steady side job thanks to small, poor productions like ours.)

We had our man.

Next…the task of turning him into a god.
(to be continued in our next blog post–)

–Chris Cassel,
Clash of the Gods, Series Director & Writer