 
 The life of an actor can be a rewarding -- and humbling -- experience. In many cases, you must go where the work is in order to make ends meet. And you never know for sure whether or not any given character you play will strike the right chord with your audience. For Ryan Robbins, however, this is not the case. Within just a few short years, Robbins has made a name for himself as a Vancouver-based character actor that you can rely on. In addition to his time as "Ladon Radim" on Atlantis, Robbins has also juggled recurring stints on both Battlestar Galactica and Stargate alumni Amanda Tapping's latest series, Sanctuary. After a long wait, GateWorld caught up with Robbins this past April. In an interview that has long been overdue, Robbins discusses how he got into acting, his time on all three genre series, his preferences for the type of acting work he chooses, a charity he has just recently become involved with, and much more! This interview runs 45 minutes, and is available in video or audio formats. It's also transcribed below! |
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GateWorld: For GateWorld.net, I am Chad Colvin. I'm joined by David Read and Darren Sumner and we're here today visiting with Mr. Ryan Robbins. Ryan, thank you for taking the time to talk with us today.
Ryan Robbins: My pleasure. [Ryan waves] [Laughter]
GW: In your favorite coffee shop.
RR: In my favorite coffee shop. I'm here all the time.
GW: Where is it? What is it?
RR:It's called Grain City. It's in North Vancouver on the corner of 2nd and Lonsdale. I come here all the time. I love it. It's yummy and people come in and out all the time. You'll hear coffee noises, "Shhh" sounds. But it's yummy. And I bet everybody right now is like, if you haven't had your coffee yet you're like, "Oh God, I really want a coffee right now."
GW: Do they have chai?
RR: M-hmm! Yeah, they have chai and they have really good tea here as well. Someone left the door open. Horrible! It's the only problem, the door is not on a spring here.
GateWorld meets Robbins at his favorite coffee shop for an interview. | |
GW: Tell us a little bit more about how you got started in the business. Was acting the first thing that you wanted to do?
RR: Yeah, you know it's an interesting question. I kind of like this story. I'll make it as quick as I can. When I was 12, we were going to check out the junior high we were going to go to the next year. These kids had done this sketch, this sort of play, and this one kid in particular just blew my mind, I thought he was so good. "Man! I want to do that."
I had all these hopes and dreams and all these things that I wanted to be when I grow up; Firefighter, stuntman or whatever. And I quickly realized that for an actor, I can do all those things. I could be any number of those things. So, that's when I really started focusing on it.
I went to a high school that had a really progressive arts program, and I had a teacher there named Drew Kimp. I would turn every scene into a joke like you do when you're a teenager. It was just really [an] intense acting program that we were meant to take seriously and I just didn't. I just kind of relied on whatever. "Ah, I can perform, It'll be great."
He literally kicked my butt in a scene. He was so angry with me for not being truthful in this scene with my scene partner, that he took over the scene from my scene partner and we actually physically were tearing at each other and ...
GW: Sparring.
RR: ... yelling and screaming but staying within the scene. And it was so amazing, the feeling was so exhilarating and cathartic. I wanted to do this. I wanted to feel like this all the time. And that was sort of the moment.
I scrambled around doing lots of other things. I was a circus performer, I was in a band and all those things. I didn't I know how to really be an actor, particularly in film and television. This wonderful filmmaker was a fan of my band put me in a movie and I kind of just went from there. But I truthfully started quite late. I didn't get my first professional gig until I was about 26.
GW: That's considered late?
RR: Well, I mean for me it was. Considering I wanted to do it when I was 12. Most people that I know even now started at young ages. At least in their teens. And part of me wishes that I had started younger, but part of me is really glad that I didn't because I don't think I could have handled it then. I was a bit crazy.
GW: What was the first professional gig?
RR: My very first paid gig was a TV series called Cold Squad. It was a show shot here in Vancouver and I played a character named Chimp. Yeah, Chimp. That was my first paid gig.
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Ladon and the rest of Kolya's strike team seize Atlantis for the Genii in "The Storm." |
Getting loud in here, it's the lunch rush. "It's a good idea Ryan, let's do the interview in a coffee shop." It was my idea to do an interview in a coffee shop by the way.
GW: You've had quite a few other credits in the Vancouver area. You've had Twilight Zone and several others.
RR: Yeah, lots of stuff. I've been lucky, lots of stuff shooting in the area. Twilight Zone, that was a good one -- Outer Limits, Jeremiah. There's a list of really good ... It's funny. Vancouver seems to be -- its like a hot bed of Sci-Fi here.
GW: Are you personally more drawn to that genre? The stuff itself? Or do you just go where ...
RR: I am bit of a comic book geek, so that's how it started for me. I loved comic books growing up and I still like comic books. I guess the genre is an offshoot of that as far as I'm concerned. I am definitely inspired by ... I've chosen films that have that comic book, fantasy, edge.
I just love acting, man. I like the work regardless. If it's interesting scripts, interesting stories, I'm in. I'm sold. But I do really enjoy this genre. I think I have a bigger understanding of the genre. Maybe that's helpful.
GW: We'll talk about Atlantis and Ladon Radim a little bit. Throughout the series we're never really sure where his loyalties are. He double crossed the Atlantis expedition with Kolya [Robert Davi] and Cowen [Colm Meaney]. Was he ever loyal? Was he just loyal to himself? Or was he doing what he thought was best for the Genii people?
RR: I think the thing with Ladon is that he was loyal to his people. I think that it wasn't about choosing sides. Personally, I never played him like he was trying to mess with anybody else. I always played him like his priority was his people. That he would just always do what was best for his people and whatever happened as an offshoot of that or a consequence ... He wasn't going to worry about that because he felt his people deserved more.
GW: And his sister.
RR: And his sister.
GW: One of the last time we see you on the screen was during the third season, it was in "The Return." I think that's the last time we saw you? It was "The Return, Part 1."
RR: "The Return," yes.
GW: There was kind of an alliance that he's kind of built up with the Atlantis expedition at that point. Do you think that's something he would have upheld? Or do you think that if it suited his own purposes, he would have ended up breaking that again down the road?
RR: I think – In my world, in my opinion – I think that he would have liked the idea of an alliance. I think he understood the potential for an alliance. What he could learn from them. I think that was one thing about Ladon that I always thought was pretty cool. Where Kolya had it all under control and he was better than, I think that with Ladon's thing he wasn't.
"The thing with Ladon is that he was loyal to his people. I think that it wasn't about choosing sides."
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He was willing to learn. He wanted to absorb everything he could that would somehow benefit his people. And I think that he appreciated those guys for what he could learn from them.
You get guys like Ronon, we never really saw the Genii have that kind of presence and then Teyla, the kick ass female. I think those guys had a lot to offer. But just an alliance in general, I think he would have upheld it until it didn't suit him anymore. Until he became bored of it.
GW: What are your feelings about basically the Genii storyline and Ladon, particularly about the whole story kind of being dropped after ...
RR: Oh, what are my feelings about the story being dropped? It's unfortunate. I thought there was a lot of potential there. Personally I thought it was really interesting.
GW: You didn't think it ran its course?
RR: I didn't think it ran its course at all. I mean Kolya came back from the dead like three times. [Laughter] Obviously it hadn't run its course. But maybe Ladon had. Maybe Ladon wasn't enough of a threat.
I thought he was really interesting. I just think that when it came down towards the end. They had developed all these potential enemies and I think they needed to sort of focus on one. I think the most threatening was probably the Wraith so that's the avenue they tried to go with.
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