A Q-and-A with Ryan Robbins

At the Toronto FanExpo Space booth, Doug Mann talks to actor Ryan Robbins about his current role as a werewolf and his past life in the circus.

I talked to Ryan Robbins, who plays computer and technical whiz Henry Foss on the gothic monster mash/scifi drama Sanctuary, on the last day of the FanExpo at the Space booth. Ryan has a lengthy acting resume, most of it involving productions in and around Vancouver: he plays "Rand" in the current steampunk drama Riese, and has also appeared on Battlestar Galatica, Smallville, The Outer Limits, The Twilight Zone (2003 version), jPod and Dark Angel. Ryan was clad in proletarian plaid, exhibiting a bawdy sense of humour during the Q&A panel session with David Blue and Space hosts Ajay Fry, Teddy Wilson and Natasha Eloi. Yet when I sat down for a more serious one-on-one, he came across both as an actor who has given his craft some real thought and as an intense long time genre fan.

RR: I’m Ryan Robbins, and I play Henry Foss on Sanctuary, and I play a character called Rand on a series called Riese.

DM: I’ve got a bevy of questions, I’ll try to keep it short. You were born in Victoria, did you grow up there?

RR: I did. I grew up in Victoria, I left there when I was about 17 or 18, then traveled the world for a while, became a circus performer, did some crazy stuff.

DM: Oh really? What circus did you work for?

RR: I started in Australia in a place called Soul Brothers Circus.

DM: Obvious question, how did circus life affect your acting? Histrionics?

RR: (Laughs) Yeah, well, I wanted to be an actor ever since I was about 12. I hadn’t gone to theatre school and done all that stuff, I went to an arts-orientated high school, and I just needed to change, something different, so I went to Australia by myself, ended up broke in the circus, and I learned my work ethic. I had good figures in my life to teach me a good work ethic, but I had to work really hard at a really young age there.

DM: I’m curious, did anyone you went to high school or grew up with in Victoria go into show biz?

RR: There were a lot of people who were going to and a few did. My friend Kamani Ray Smith is a really prominent stunt coordinator in Vancouver now.

DM: Here’s some tough ones. I’m a lifetime scifi fan, and I remember watching it in the 90s. One thing that really struck me as curious, is how many shows began to get produced in Vancouver, and BC in general. The two that stand out are The X-Files and, I don’t know if you know this, the first two seasons of Sliders were produced there…

RR: Yeah, they were.

DM: And I noticed on your IMDB credit list you’ve got a lot of scifi/fantasy genre shows. So, other than the dollar, which is the obvious answer, the cheap dollar, why Vancouver, why the nineties? Or even the post-90s?

RR: I think that there’s a great aesthetic [there]. It can double for a lot of places, there’s so many places to go, there’s sand dunes there for one thing. There’s all these places you can go in and around Vancouver that are these beautiful, seemingly exotic places… a rain forest. And I think once Hollywood started to realize the great talent pool that comes out of Vancouver – there’s some really fantastic actors there – and the crews are fantastic, some of the hardest working, coolest crews are in Vancouver. So I think that was helpful as well.

DM: A related question, could you do Sanctuary in a hot, arid atmosphere like California, Los Angeles? Or would you lose something? I know a lot of it’s done virtually…

RR: I think we could… I think Sanctuary could be done in a lot of places, because of its nature, being on green screen, but it’s a proudly Canadian show. The crew’s Canadian, the cast’s Canadian, and we’re really proud of that fact. And it’s a big family there, and we’re based out of Vancouver for a reason – there’s a really good community there. And we tap into that community for Sanctuary.

DM: When you sell the show, you sell it to the Syfy network in the States…

RR: It goes to the Syfy network in the US, Space in Canada, and then it’s in 183 countries across the world.

DM: And when you sell it to the Americans, do you have to sort of forget to mention that it’s so heavily Canadian in the cast and crew?

RR: Well, the subject matter’s global, so they’re not really concerned… we don’t have to set it in Canada, it’s a global setting. We have that luxury…

DM: I’ve noticed there’s some sneaks in it, where you look at a map of North America, and the little green cursor happens to hit on Vancouver.

RR: (Laughs) Yeah, it does. New City, where the sanctuary is, on a map is ridiculously close to Vancouver.

DM: A side question, Martin Wood does a lot of your direction, and I noticed one episode, I can’t remember the name of it, I wish I could… in the second season, he did a lot a split screen in it, and it had a sort of schizophrenic effect. Do you remember the episode?

RR: We started to do that tiling effect, like comic book tiles, throughout season two, and it carried over to season three.

DM: Did he tell you guys on set that this was the way it was going to be done?

RR: I didn’t know, I didn’t get the memo… he may have told people, but I may just not have paid attention. I like it, because I am a comic book fan and I get the reason behind tiling. I think it’s a really interesting way to tell a story. To move a story along.

DM: The one thing that struck me… do you ever watch Brian De Palma’s films? He uses split-screen all the time. Like Carrie, for instance.

RR: Yeah, he does use split-screen.

DM: So was that in the background of what Martin used in…

RR: I’m not sure why. I think also 24 used tiling a bit… I just think it’s a great [effect]. We do it a little differently; ours definitely looks more like a comic book panel. I just think it’s a great way to facilitate the story telling, to move the story along. You only have only a certain amount of time to tell the story. Sometimes you need to move the plot along, but you don’t want to do a big expository monologue to fill in the fans, so you can use tiling to get everybody up to speed quickly.

DM: A quick question, I happened to watch an old episode you were in of The Twilight Zone, the third one. I think you were a coffee barista or something. When you do an episode of a show like that, you’re probably not on set for more than a few days I would guess?

RR: Yeah.

DM: Do you even remember what the show was about?

RR: I do remember that, but I remember that show because I had such a great time. I worked with Linda Cardellini and an amazing rap artist named Method Man from the Wu Tang Clan…

DM: Yes, he was the psychic, right?

RR: … and he was such a cool dude. I wondered what it would be like to work with this guy. He had such an amazing work ethic. And Linda Cardellini, she’s such a cool, cool lady. And we had a blast on that show. So I do happen to remember that episode really well just because it was such a great experience.

DM: Because in the Shatner panel downstairs the typical question came up, “what was your favourite episode of Star Trek?”, and he couldn’t remember the names, or at least he pretended he couldn’t. So is that just him goofing? Do actors usually remember…

RR: Sometimes it’s hard to remember the name of an episode, because you shoot so many of them, you remember what the episode was about, and you remember a lot of facts about the episode, but the names elude you, because we don’t say the names when we were shooting.

DM: A little bit of a tough question, you play a sort of werewolf character… did you know right away that you were playing a werewolf?

RR: When we were shooting the web series we talked about an idea for Henry that he may or may not be. And then we started shooting season one – I like my characters to have secrets – so I always played Henry as though he had a dark secret anyway because I think it’s a cool way to play it. I think behaviour’s really important for characters when you’re acting, and back story, so I had Henry with a dark secret. It’s really easy to make that transition. I always hoped that he was a werewolf. I was really happy…

DM: Sanctuary is very much about supernatural monsters, creepiness, gothic background and so forth. It’s very much at odds with something like Stargate Universe, which is a very serious – not that you’re not serious – science fiction show that tries to avoid magic… Why do you think, in the last few years, there’s such a massive popularity of shows and films like Twilight with supernatural creatures?

RR: Well, I think it goes back to things like X-Men for example. I use that as an example a lot because comic books are a huge influence on me. When you look at mutants, I think mutants…

DM: Do you see mutants as supernatural or natural?

RR: …I think they’re natural in the sense that… X-Men, as an example, was a lot more socially and politically relevant than a lot of people gave it credit for. A lot of comic books were. It’s speaking to the outsider. It’s speaking to those of us who thought we were [excluded]. Sometimes you feel like you don’t belong with this clique or that clique, you feel like an outsider. And then when you find your group and your people and the outsiders come together, it’s about underdogs, about misunderstood people.

DM: In the Claremont/Byrne era, the 80s basically, you read those…

RR: Yeah yeah!

DM: …favourite character, and why?

RR: Well see, it’s a tough question, because my favourite X-Men character hands down is Nightcrawler. We were both circus performers. But I love his duality... He represents the underdog better than anybody. I love that he opposes everything that you would think he is when you see him. He’s a blue demon, he looks like a demon, he’s basically hell spawn, but he’s got this great faith in something other.

DM: Favourite villain and why? Magneto?

RR: Hmmm… Magneto’s my favourite villain in one aspect because he’s hard to hate, he’s easy to root for. He’s got the same cause [mutant freedom] from a different approach. But I’ve always liked goofy ones like Toad, and Juggernaut because he was funny (laughs). But I think Magneto would be the obvious one, because he’s so complex.

DM: One more… if I were going through a time machine, and I told you Sanctuary lasted ten years, would that be a good thing or a bad thing?

RR: That’d be great. I’d be super happy for that.

DM: Twenty years?

RR: If it’s possible – even ten years, how can Henry be a goofy techno-geek when he’s 85 years old? I’d love for that show to go, I love that show, it’s the best job I’ve ever had.

DM: OK, thanks a lot.