Up-and-Comer of the Month: Ryan Simpkins Poised for Breakout Summer Between “The House,” “Brigsby Bear”
0Ryan Simpkins has been acting for more than a decade, having worked with acclaimed directors such as Sam Mendes, Tom Ford and Francis Ford Coppola. At 19 years old, the former child star is all grown up now, not to mention front-and-center in THE HOUSE, the New Line comedy in which she plays the daughter of Will Ferrell and Amy Poehler.
Ryan and her brother, actor Ty Simpkins, practically grew up together on various film sets, with roles as Colin Farrell and Lake Bell’s children in Pride and Glory, and Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet’s children in Revolutionary Road. If you don’t remember Ty from Iron Man 3, you probably remember him as the boy from Insidious, who was also on all the film’s posters.
Prior to The House, Ryan had never been so prominently featured in a major studio marketing campaign, but it seems to be a good fit for the up-and-coming actress. As the entry point to the film’s outlandish plot, her character plays an important role, and it’s WB’s hope that teens will show up during opening weekend because they identify with Simpkins’ college-bound character.
Following a mid-day workout at a nearby gym, Simpkins grabbed an ice cold bottled water with the Tracking Board at the Bourgeois Pig in Los Feliz, where she discussed her breakout summer between The House and her upcoming turn as Kyle Mooney’s sister in Brigsby Bear. Enjoy!
Tell me about the audition process for The House and how you managed to land this role.
The House was a pretty standard audition process. I actually remember it super vividly, because I get stressed out in auditions if I hear the person before me saying the lines in the room. So I usually hide in the bathroom beforehand and practice the lines in there. But while hiding in the bathroom, I heard the person before me so clearly. I heard their exact read on it, and everybody in the room was laughing at every little thing they were doing, and it started stressing me out, because I was going for a totally different vibe. But I was like, “don’t change anything, just go in there and do your own thing,” and I did, and I guess they liked it. We just got along really well in the room. I had two auditions, and my last one was really the table read, which was nerve-wracking because everybody else was there and already had their parts. There was just a lot of improv involved and stuff.
Andrew Jay Cohen has written a few studio comedies, but this is really his feature directorial debut. What was it like working with him, and how was his approach different from past directors you’ve worked with?
I really liked how Andrew went about it. What was nice about him was, a lot of directors you work with get very stressed, and in their heads, and they can… not take the fun out of it, because you know, it is work and that’s understandable… but they can get sort of stressed out. And I’m sure Andrew was at times too, but he’s very level-headed and very into collaboration as well, because he’s also a writer. And in a comedy, you’re coming up with jokes left and right, so he was often giving us a lot to play with. But if we ever wanted to offer something new to the table, he was totally down to hear it and listen to us. We’d go on for 10-15 minutes a take, just going off-script. It was wild.
How do you typically prepare for a role, particularly one like this where improv comes with the territory?
The second I read the script, I guess I’m reading it from the perspective of my character and I just try to empathize with them on every level of it. Sometimes it can be difficult if the character is a different age than you, or going through different stuff, but for Alex it was pretty easy. She’s a teenage girl graduating high school, and I was a teenage girl going into senior year when we shot this. For this, it was definitely interesting, because of how much improv was involved. I’ve been trained in improv and have been doing it since I was 11 years old, so I knew the basics of it, but I also knew I was going in with the pros. So I found myself on the weekends just trying to do warm-ups and watching a lot of Whose Line Is It Anyway?
Are you in college now?
Yes, I go to UC-Berkeley and just finished my first year. Right now I’m studying history, which I’ve always liked and enjoyed and been good at, but I’m also really interested in gender studies. I think I’m probably going to minor in that, or at least have a historical focus on gender. I also really like English… and Film! There’s a lot that I want to study. But I’m taking next semester off to get more work done, just because I missed work so much.
Back in my day, we found out about college decisions via snail mail, but in The House, you learn via email. How close did the scene in which you find out you were accepted to college mirror your own real-life acceptance to UC-Berkeley?
It was really weird. I was filming The House during my college application process, which was very stressful because you’re working a full-time job and trying to get through AP classes, and you’re also applying to college, which is your future. So because I was so busy, my college apps weren’t the best and I didn’t get into a lot of the schools I wanted to. Berkeley was easily my top choice, and I sort of forgot about it because I was like, “it’s so difficult, I’m not going to get in.”
And it was on my birthday when I heard back from Berkeley. I just read the first line, “we’re sorry to inform you,” and I was like, I didn’t get in, so I deleted the email and forgot about it. Then a few months later I got another email from Berkeley saying “hey, would you like to opt-in to our wait list? You still have the option and we haven’t heard back from you.” And I was like, “wait, what? I got wait-listed?” I guess you’re able to submit another essay and more grades, so on a whim I submitted a poem I wrote, still not expecting to get in, and then I basically forgot I had opted-in to the waitlist. Then a month or so later, I got an email from my top choice saying “congratulations, you’re in,” and it was like the screaming in The House trailer. And yes, my parents immediately ordered Berkeley stuff online.
Did your parents give you a speech about boys like the awkward one Will Ferrell gives you when he drops you off at school?
My parents trust me. I’ve always been smarter about that stuff than other things.
You’re not of legal age to gamble yet, but what movie would your first trip to Las Vegas most closely resemble?
Have you ever seen Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas? That is one of my favorite movies. I don’t know about all the hard drugs they do, but I’d love to follow their footsteps minus the insane hallucinations.
If you could choose to have Will as your real Dad or Amy as your real Mom, which would you choose?
Oh my god, you’re making me choose? It’s hard! Will is like a real-life dad. He’s the sweetest man in the world. I think he’s coaching his son’s baseball team right now, which is adorable. He gave me a lot of college tips. Amy is the girl you want to watch TV with. And if someone said something that was slut-shaming or in the slightest way negative about women, she would say, that’s not right for these reasons, and I want to tell a different joke, and then she’d make one up not the spot. But Will, he was just like, automatically my Dad on set.
You’re on the cover of Successful Lady magazine in this film. If you could be on the cover of any magazine in real life, what would you choose and why?
That’s a really good question. I don’t know. I loved being on the cover of that. I didn’t know that was a joke in the movie. I guess they improvised that, because when I saw that in the trailer, I laughed so hard. I wanna be on the cover of… I think there’s a magazine out called Dazed that’s really cool that covers a lot of creators I really like. That’s a cool magazine. I’d love to try and do technologically-advanced stuff to be on the cover of Wired, but that’s just not going to happen. IGN is a cool magazine too. I also love Entertainment Weekly. I love Entertainment Weekly. I flip through that thing non-stop.
Do you like working with Ty, or is it weird being on set together?
I think the last time we did it was Arcadia in 2012. Being on set is one thing, because it’s fun to have a younger sibling around. Like, even if you have a fake younger sibling, it’s fun to have that bond with somebody and goof around on set. What’s fun about working with Ty is, you already have that bond. We’re talking to each other and pushing each other, which is really fun to play with.
Are there any actresses who you look up to, or whose career you’d like to emulate?
Saoirse Ronan is probably my favorite actress. She’s pretty young, but ever since Hanna, I’ve thought she’s who I want to be. I really respect Lord and Miller, who did the Jump Street movies and The LEGO Movie. I’d always dreamed of working with them and I just got to last summer. I did a movie called Brigsby Bear and they produced it, and that was a dream. I think they’re hilarious. Seth Rogen is one of the funniest men alive and I would die to work with Seth Rogen. I think he’s the best.
Speaking of Brigsby Bear, can you tell us who you play in that film and what it’s about? How you were cast in that one?
I play Kyle Mooney’s sister. This is actually a hard question, because it’s the weirdest movie. It’s basically about this guy James, who for certain reasons is socially inept, and he’s obsessed with this weird children’s TV show. He’s such a big fan of it that when the show is no more, he goes off and tries to make his own movie. I’m trying not to give too much away. So I play his sister, and she’s very artsy. She sort of has a bad attitude most of the time, and she’s not too warm to Kyle at first, though she gets into it. She was actually really fun, because so many teenage girl characters you play, or at least audition for, are the bubbly airheads who don’t have much going on besides texting boys, but that character had a lot more going on under the surface.
Brisgby was weird because I had auditioned once and thought I had a terrible audition, and I didn’t hear back for months because they had originally gone with somebody else. And I loved the script, which was like, the coolest script I’d ever read, but I had to sort of let it go because I guess I didn’t get it. Then a month or two later, I heard back and was told “you’re flying to Utah in four days to go film Brigsby Bear.” I was like, what’s going on?
I know you’re a big Star Wars fan, so was it a trip to work with Mark Hamill?
First of all, I had no idea Mark Hamill was in it, and when I saw he was on the film’s IMDb page, I think I cried. I just lost it. It was another dream, to be in a movie with your childhood hero Luke Skywalker. I got to meet him for the first time at Sundance, and he actually made me cry in the movie when I was watching it. He gave a great performance. I tried to compliment him after the premiere and he cut me off and started complimenting me, and that was the wildest, just seeing one of your heroes be so humble.
Do you feel like the film industry doesn’t treat women fairly?
Oh yeah, most definitely. I wrote some of my college essays about this. I think the film industry right now is making progressive steps, but it’s not all there. It’s a very white, male-centric industry, and a place where people come from backgrounds with money. I really want to break through that and tell stories about women — real women, going through real struggles. Stories that have more than two female characters, or where the girl is more than just the love interest.
As a young actress in Hollywood, tell me about the role social media plays in your life.
Social media stresses me out, because I just want to talk about Chris Pine and Star Wars. That’s all I want to tweet about, and I have a lot of followers who aren’t interested. But at the same time, it’s like, well it’s my Twitter account. I use it a lot, but sometimes I’ll get so sucked into it. It’s mindless. There’s just constant stuff to look at.
What’s been the biggest pinch-me moment for you so far?
One thing that was really funny… I was talking about how much I want to work with Seth Rogen earlier. Well, a few years ago, for whatever reason, because I’m tweeting everything all the time, I tweeted “I love u @SethRogen” — no punctuation, no caps or anything. And he responded “thank you,” and then he followed me on Twitter.
And meeting Mark Hamill was pretty wild, because he was giving me a compliment and I was like, this man knows who I am. Which is insane, because it’s Luke Skywalker! My phone case is Star Wars, and I asked him for a photo after and he was like “of course, one nice photo for my close personal friend Ryan.” And then he pulled me into a hug. and that picture is on the internet, and you can see my face just exploding — because I was like, “oh my god, it’s Luke Skywalker!”
So what’s next for you?
I’m trying to get work done. I’m taking time off school. I’m attached to this project Ladyworld, which is about a bunch of teenage girls doing crazy things that you usually don’t see teenage girls do. It has a female director and I really want to get it off the ground, but we’re having trouble finding financing because it’s a movie about teenage girls.
That takes place in the middle of an earthquake, right?
Yup. It’s like Lord of the Flies, but now, and with girls. I love that project. I also just did an episode of my friend’s show, The Night Shift, that should be coming out in a few months. And I’m still auditioning while working on writing some stuff for myself.
Jeff Sneider | Editor in Chief