David Hasselhoff can’t help but laugh—a hearty, masculine chortle that sounds very much the way rich mahogany and leather bound books smell. He’s thinking back to that time four years ago when he bumped into Leonardo DiCaprio at the Cannes Film Festival.
Had it not been for “the Hoff,” Hasselhoff reminded the Titanic star at the premiere of Warner Bros’ Great Gatsby remake, DiCaprio’s career would have likely taken a drastically different shape. “He introduced me to his parents,” Hasselhoff recalls. “And I said, ‘I’m responsible for your son being a huge star.’ They said, ‘You are?’ I said, ‘Yes, because I didn’t cast him on Baywatch!’ And we all clicked glasses and started laughing.”
Around 1990, DiCaprio was up for the role of Hobie Buchannon: Hasselhoff’s lifeguard character’s son, on the epochal sun-soaked drama. But the prime-time hunk—who became a star on NBC’s guy-in-a-talking-sports-car series Knight Rider and also served as an executive producer on Baywatch—nixed teenage Leo in favor of 9-year-old Jeremy Jackson. And the rest, of course, is water under the Bay.
“If Leonardo had gotten the role, I don’t think he would have become the Leonardo that he is,” Hasselhoff says. “Because it’s tough when you do a show like Baywatch or Knight Rider, you don’t get the respect of coolness within the industry. You make a lot of money and you get worldwide fame”—he paused for a moment to break into another peal of laughter, this time theatrically high-pitched—“but when it comes to parts, they go, ‘Uh, no, not you.’”
Which goes some way toward explaining the splendidly meta-narrative cultural moment 63-year-old Hasselhoff is having right now. Since the conclusion of Baywatch in 2001, the actor has turned up as different characters in TV movies (Shaka Zulu: The Citadel, Anaconda: The Offspring, 2015’s Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No!), straight-to-video films (Layover, Dancing Ninja) and even a smattering of theatrical movie releases (including a scenery chewing cameo in Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story in 2004). But for the most part, Hasselhoff has played himself—or some heightened, bizarro universe/funhouse mirror projection of his public persona—in project after project.
Which brings us to his grand reemergence this month. In Paramount’s $87 million action-comedy adaptation of Baywatch (out May 25), Dwayne Johnson takes over as Hasselhoff’s character Mitch Buchannon. But (minor spoiler) in a key sequence, the Hoff shows up to dramatically confront him as… Mitch Buchannon. And in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, the number one movie in the world at the moment after taking in $987 gajillion dollars at the box office (well, actually $643 million worldwide), Hasselhoff not only delivers a gloriously demented sci-fi rap on the blockbuster’s electro-pop theme song (the Sneepers’ “Guardians Inferno”), he makes another crucial cameo as… well, let’s just say it’s a stunning third-act a-ha! that already ranks as many a geek’s favorite scene in the movie.
In other words, Hasselhoff’s signature character is, in effect, his own blow-dried reflection—a head-spinning reality certainly not lost on the man who reflexively refers to himself either in the third person or as the Hoff. “It’s moments like these who make me relive who David Hasselhoff really is,” he says.
Exhibit A: It’s No Game, the sci-fi short film that went online last month, reportedly written by an artificial intelligence computer program, starring Hasselhoff. Dressed in a gold paisley tuxedo jacket and Baywatch-issue red swimming trunks, he vibrates with dramatic intensity; it’s a fascinating spectacle to behold.
“This computer, for some reason, I have no idea why, nailed me so accurately that when I came to do the lines, I almost had an emotional breakdown because it was what I was going through,” Hasselhoff says. “I look at the camera for the last three minutes of the film, and just do this monologue: ‘Sometimes I don’t know who the hell I am. Am I the Hoff? Am I David Hasselhoff? Am I a joke of myself? Am I Knight Rider? Am I Mitch? Who the fuck am I?! I’m an actor.’ And that is what’s coming into play in my life.”
Meanwhile, that existential conundrum is cranked up to 11 by Hasselhoff’s other new projects: the dark, meta-narrative comedy Killing Hasselhoff (co-starring Hulk Hogan, John Lovitz and Ken Jeong, centering around a celebrity death pool in which a struggling nightclub owner attempts to cash in by bumping off the Hoff), and the Netflix series Hoff the Record.
Originally airing in the UK in 2015, having claimed an International Emmy for outstanding comedy series last year, the improvised mockumentary provides a particular point of pride for Hasselhoff—intimately plotted around a fictionalized version of him as well as well-publicized personal foibles such as the Hoff’s infamous 2007 “drunk video” where he appears apparently shit-faced, eating a cheeseburger, laying shirtless on the floor while his then-teenage daughter admonishes him: “Tell me that you promise you’re not gonna get alcohol—and you’re gonna stop drinking.”
“Hoff the Record is about taking entertainment and what everyone thinks of me and has been written about me and saying, ‘That’s not what happened. That hurts my feelings!’” he explains. “I was able to address that through humor and say, ‘You know what? That was a private moment. And I may do it again. Tonight! And I may have more hamburgers and more beers.’
“Just different stories that happened to me. And we just exploited them. You’ll love it. I was watching it last night. Thinking, Jesus, this feels so fucking good to finally have an outlet!” Next month, however, the performer will pursue another of his outlets, taking stage at Austria’s Nova Rock Festival—Hasselhoff is a multi-platinum-selling musical superstar across Europe with a particularly fervid fan base among Teutonic people—sharing the bill with fellow superstars Green Day, Blink-182, and Linkin Park. But the Hoff knows the wellspring of his most enduring appeal can be traced back to those lifeguard swim trunks. Even if he didn’t like the Baywatch movie the first time he saw it.
“I came back and said, ‘This is not for me.’ This movie has got the word Baywatch and that’s as close as it comes—that, the slow-mo running and the red jackets,” says Hasselhoff. “But my daughter said, ‘Dad, you gotta get with it. This is what’s funny now. This is what works.’ So I gotta believe her.”
He continues: “I’m going to support it. Without me, Baywatch would have been cancelled. We never thought we would last more than a couple of years but we lasted 245 episodes. And when I went to the set, Zac [Efron] couldn’t have been nicer. He wanted to know what the secret to Baywatch was. He saw me doing push ups—because I knew I had to take a picture with the Rock. I had to look at least a little bit like I used to. It was a positive, fun experience. I want to support it because of the cast and the producers and because it’s Baywatch. It’s part of my legacy. And it would be stupid not to.”
Long ago, it seems, the actor-singer-producer came to an important conclusion: you can’t be a punchline if you’re making the joke. And he’s been laughing all the way to the bank ever since. Hasselhoff says, “If something cool comes of the movie—like a sequel or a TV series—I’m around.”