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© (c) 2007 Joe Fabisch
Mark Ryan
INTERVIEW:
Exclusive: MARK RYAN IS MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE- PART 2
The actor that voiced Bumblebee in TRANSFORMERS talks about how much more dialogue the character originally had
By JOE FABISCH, Contributing Writer
Published 10/16/2007
Mark Ryan voices Bumblebee in the hit feature TRANSFORMERS (which hits DVD today) and he played the outlaw Nasir in the cult TV series ROBIN OF SHERWOOD. Ryan’s background encompasses such varied accomplishments as originating the role of Magaldi in the original London West End production of EVITA (he went on to take over the role of Che), serving as sword master on Antoine Fuqua’s KING ARTHUR film and doing a stint with the British military.
In part two of iF MAGAZINE’s exclusive interview with Mark Ryan, he continues to talk about working on the TRANSFORMERS set, voicing Bumblebee in the final film, and his overall career.
iF MAGAZINE: Who did you primarily work with in the human cast?
MARK RYAN: Shia, mainly. Shia is probably one of the most inventive actors. I’ve met Robin Williams a couple of times when touring with Eric Idle [Ryan was part of the stage cast of ERIC IDLE EXPLOITS MONTY PYTHON], and you hear stories about Robin’s ad-libbing and his energy on set. I can only imagine that Robin is like Shia on set. Shia never stops. His energy is on all the time. He’s very intelligent, he ad-libs a lot, keeps it very spontaneous, and it was a bit of a challenge, because I never knew quite when he was going to stop, and in fact, I don’t think he ever said the same line twice the same way, but it keeps everybody focused, it keeps everybody on their toes. I had specific Transformer lines to say, so I didn’t want to ad-lib those lines, because I’m there to support [the actors], not to step on their toes. I’m just there to feed them the lines – they’re the money.
iF: What was John Turturro like?
RYAN: I’ve been a fan of John Turturro’s since TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A., which was one of the first films I’d seen when I first started coming out here [to Los Angeles] a long time ago. I thought TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A. was a great piece of filmmaking. I just said to him I respected his style. And in this, he’s extremely funny. The scene where the car gets its roof ripped off and he’s sitting down there is fantastic.
iF: And then there was some question about which character, if any, you would voice in the final film.
RYAN: Well, I wasn’t expecting to voice anybody. The bottom line was, no one was more surprised than me. [For the on-set voices], they originally wanted a British actor with theatre experience, which I have. So I guess there must have been something about that that Michael wanted, a specific tone and a specific type of delivery for people to bounce their lines off. There was talk of me perhaps voicing Ironhide in the film. I actually got booked to do Ironside and Hoist for the [TRANSFORMERS] videogame. Then there was a big shuffling around of who was doing what voice, so after I didn’t get Ironhide in the film [Robert Foxworth does the voice], I was like, ‘Okay, well, these things happen in show biz, I’ll take it on the chin.’ And so when my agent called about them using the Bumblebee lines, I actually said, ‘I don’t actually remember doing the Bumblebee lines,’ which is absolutely true.
iF: So how did you react to Bumblebee not speaking for most of the movie then?
RYAN: In the post-production phase, I got called in by Michael Bay just to voice some stuff [on the temporary soundtrack] so they could edit scenes together and start linking all of that action stuff together, so those sessions were actually great fun. Michael would send everybody out of the room and sometimes he would operate the recorder himself. He’d go, ‘Right, say it like this and try that.’ He would sometimes give me lines. Sometimes he wouldn’t. He would just say, ‘Say this line,’ or ‘Say that line.’ He would literally just throw things in and I’d do the line. He’d say, ‘Okay, don’t say that, say “He’s leaking lubricants on my forepaw”,’ and you could throw in stuff and he’d say, ‘But do it in that other voice, that funny voice that you do.’ During one of those sessions, I can’t remember whether it was even typed up or not, he actually may have hand-written it out and handed it to me in long-hand, he said, ‘Say this,’ and that’s when I did these [Bumblebee] lines about ‘the boy.’ Now, knowing that Bumblebee didn’t speak in the script, I went, ‘Oh, well, if they are going to add this in the script, it must have some kind of emotional weight.’ So I had to think about it, and I said it with a certain conviction, because I figured that that would be the point of using it in the film, if it was going to be used. But I had no idea it was going to be used, it was just something in the back of my head. And then, as you do, once you’re finished on that phase of a job, you pack up your tent and you go to work on something else. So I was very happy I’d been involved with the project, I’d enjoyed it, it had been a new experience for me – probably quite a lot of people, even ILM, I would think – and I was grateful for what I’d done and that was it. Then my agent got this call from DreamWorks saying, ‘We want to use the Bumblebee lines.’ And I said to Brian, ‘Bumblebee doesn’t speak.’ Eventually, Rob Yamamoto, the post-production supervisor, called me up at home and played it to me down the phone. ‘That’s you, right?’ And I went, ‘Yeah, that is me. I remember doing the lines. I didn’t remember what they were for.’
iF: So you didn’t go in and re-record it, they just used what you’d done during the temp track for the editing sessions?
RYAN: Yeah.
iF: When you did the voices for the videogame, did they show you any images from the game?
RYAN: No. I don’t think they were ready at that point to show that material to anyone, but because I’d been doing Ironhide a lot and knew the character so well, it was easy to just get into it and voice it. They have literally pages of lines and words and you make lots of noises, like ‘Oofs’ and ‘Ahhs’ and grunts and growls, as well as, ‘Stand still, Decepticon, I’m going to kill you’ – that kind of thing. You obviously don’t have the visuals to do it to, you’re just doing lines.
iF: What would you say have been the high points of your professional life so far?
RYAN: EVITA will always be a high point. Four years in the West End, [working with director] Harold Prince – I know it’s going to sound silly, but I was glad to get something like that under my belt at such an early age. I was incredibly lucky to be given that opportunity to be in that show. I will always be grateful for that. It really was an amazing education, being directed by the King of Broadway. And then obviously ROBIN OF SHERWOOD was three years of my life, which is still three years of the most fun I’ve ever had with my clothes on, or a black leather costume on anyway, and the show still is very dear to my heart, and I still remain friends with [fellow cast members] Clive [Mantle] and Ray [Winstone, star of the upcoming BEOWULF] and Jason [Connery] – it’s still a milestone in our lives. It was great to be a part of that, to create a character. That was the great thing about the show – not only because the show was great fun to be in, but also to be given the chance by Richard Carpenter the writer to basically create a character who didn’t exist either in the legend or in the show and play it for three years, and see it evolve and develop as an icon [there have been Arabic characters in virtually every version of Robin Hood since ROBIN OF SHERWOOD]. That, again, just lucky – right place at the right time.
iF: And your ROBIN OF SHERWOOD character Nasir has something in common with Bumblebee – he’s mistaken for a villain, doesn’t talk much, you weren’t supposed to be a regular …
RYAN: Very much so, and [TRANSFORMERS] mirrors that [ROBIN] experience in many ways, because Nasir was originally called Edmund the Archer, and I was hired for the show by [first season director] Ian Sharp. He said, ‘Look, there’s not that much dialogue in this. You’re not going to get to say very much, but it’s an action part, it’s a ‘presence’ part and I want you to play it.’ So I thought about it, and went, ‘A character who doesn’t speak …’ I’d played a lead in the West End and I’d just played a support lead for Ian in WHO DARES WINS opposite Judy Davis and Richard Widmark. I thought, ‘You know what? Travel hopefully [be optimistic].’ The character was called Edmund the Archer, and on the first day of filming, Ian came up to me and said, ‘Okay, it’s not Edmund the Archer any more – you’re now going to be Nasir the Saracen, and you’re going to have a two-handed swordfight.’ And I said, ‘How long have I got [to learn the fight]?’ He said, ‘About half an hour.’ So that’s how that came about. With this [TRANSFORMERS] situation, again, I’d got into playing these parts with no expectation they’d remain in the film. And during the course of the filming, Bumblebee didn’t speak. So there’s lots of mirrors in it. At the end of the [first] episode of ROBIN OF SHERWOOD, I was supposed to get killed off, shot in the back by all the Merry Men. [Instead, Nasir proves himself, joins the band and spends three seasons as a Saracen outlaw in England.] And in this one, guess what? Bumblebee comes back and speaks, which surprised everybody, including me. And it seems that Bumblebee will survive this one and go on to Number Two.
CHECK BACK HERE SOON FOR THE FINAL PART OF THIS EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW
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