liam neeson

The A-Team Meets Van der Merwe

Jun 12, 2010 by Ted Botha Leave a Comment

In the ’80s, the TV series lots of people hated to love and others loved to hate was that oddity called The A-Team. Remember George Peppard playing the colonel with the stogie, and The Face, and the jewel-encrusted Mr. T? And then, of course, there was everyone’s foil, Murdock.

Well, as with all TV series that generate a following, Hollywood had to make a movie out of the series. And it’s just been released. The new A-Team stars Liam Neeson, Bradley Cooper (the latest movie heartthrob plays, of course, The Face), and Sharlto Copley as Murdock. Yes, that would be the Copley who starred as Wikus van der Merwe in District 9.

Copley at a Premiere

Copley joins a very elite group of actors who have gone from total unknowndom to a major Hollywood movie. Let’s see if he plays an American in a caper movie as well as he played a bumbling hero in a kind of South African one. Welcome back, Van der Merwe!

Ted was born in New York and grew up in Japan, South Africa, and Washington, D.C. He has written for numerous publications, including The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, Condé Nast Traveler, and Outside. His books include Apartheid in my Rucksack, a personal account of discovering Africa as a white African; Mongo, Adventures in Trash, where he follows the people in New York City who collect what others consider garbage; and, with Jenni Baxter, The Expat Confessions, about South Africans abroad. His latest book, a nonfiction thriller about a forensic sculptor titled The Girl with the Crooked Nose, comes out in January 2012. His novel, The Animal Lover, is on Kindle. He is a swimmer and a runner, and has done his share of triathlons as well as long-distance swims in South Africa and New York’s Hudson River.