Exclusive Interview: Ryan Jinn Talks Reginald the Vampire, Hooray for Hazel, and More

Ryan Jinn is an emerging storyteller who is quickly making a name for himself in the industry. He’s landed coveted roles in critically-acclaimed projects including Van Helsing, Kim’s Convenience, and more. This fall, he stars opposite Jacob Batalon in Syfy’s Reginald the Vampire.

Imagine a world populated by beautiful, fit, and vain vampires. Reginald Andres (Jacob Batalon) tumbles headlong into it as an unlikely hero who will have to navigate every kind of obstacle—the girl he loves but can’t be with, a bully manager at work, and the vampire chieftain who wants him dead. Fortunately, Reginald discovers he has a few unrecognized powers of his own. In the series, Ryan shines as Mike, an ally/mentor to Reginald, who is also coming to terms with what he’s done and who he is.

Pop Culturalist was lucky enough to speak with Ryan about Reginald the Vampire, his new web series Hooray for Hazel, and more!

PC: You’ve had such an interesting journey from medicine to the arts. How did you discover that passion and what led to that pivot?
Ryan: Honestly, it was a pretty classic Asian upbringing story where it wasn’t explicitly stated that I couldn’t be an actor or artist but it wasn’t on one of those unspoken lists of acceptable careers, shall we say. When I got back from university, I wasn’t married to any sort of career path at that point. It allowed me the opportunity to ask myself the question: What did I want to do as a kid? It came back to acting.

PC: Who or what has had the biggest influence on your career?
Ryan: In terms of the greatest influence up until this point, I’ve had the pleasure of working with so many fantastic actors. But in terms of day-to-day influences on who I am as a person and as an actor, it has to be my acting friends that I’ve made along the way. Having come to acting a little bit later in life than most people, I definitely found that once I started to act and went to class and surrounded myself with those people, those relationships became really important in helping to push me. Life as an actor isn’t very easy, so having people around that you can not only rely on but who can relate to what you’re going through has more of a profound impact than any one day that I would ever have on set with anybody.

PC: As you made that pivot from medicine to the arts, was there a moment when you knew you made the right decision?
Ryan: It’s funny because I used to say all the time that I wasn’t very artistic. I wasn’t an artist because I was very science-based. I also played sports. That was a big part of my life. Art, not necessarily so much. But my grandfather was artistic. My mom’s dad was an artist. I always felt a kinship with him, and I didn’t really know why. Because like I was saying before, I didn’t feel I was artistic or anything like that. But then as I started to get into acting, it became clear to me that I was yearning for a creative outlet of some sort that I clearly hadn’t been utilizing in my life up until that point.

I remember there was one night before I was doing this play where there were a whole bunch of rewrites. We had rehearsal the next day. I said to myself, “You know what? I’m going to work on getting off-book for tomorrow. I’m going to stay up as late as I need to.” So I was up until maybe 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning, learning these lines, and it hit me that I am no stranger to staying up till the middle of the night working away, especially in med school. But I remember having a moment at about 3:00 in the morning when I was energized and excited and really enjoying what I was doing. When I think about those times when I was pouring over medical textbooks at 2:00, 3:00 in the morning, I remember struggling and having a hard time because I wasn’t doing what I wanted to be doing. That’s when it hit me: maybe this is the life that I’m supposed to live, and this is something that I can do with excitement as opposed to the dread that I had when I was preparing for a class or exam.

PC: You’ve always been a champion of creating your own content. How have your experiences behind the scenes impacted the way you now approach your work on screen and vice versa?
Ryan: When you first get started in your acting career, you’re not getting fed these meaty scenes that you get in class where you go, “This is why I’m an actor. This is why I tell stories. I want to be passionate about it.” Early on, it’s, “Mr. Johnson, your 3:00 is here to see you.” In order to balance out career advancement at those levels with creative fulfillment, I made some things that I wanted to make and that nobody was handing to us. That’s how I started writing.

Then I started to get into directing. Acting is a very creative outlet, but in terms of the overall influence you have on the story as a whole, you’re playing a part of an ensemble. Whereas through directing, you’ve got your hands touching everything and the artistic impact that you have on the story is much greater. I found that really satisfies that part of my creative brain.

I’ve always said that it’s great for actors to be able to go and do things behind the camera. It gives you a different perspective of our job and the different areas that come into play. Because similar to medicine, acting is a multidisciplinary experience with a lot of different people and a lot of different areas of expertise coming together to make something really special. Working behind the camera makes you a better actor. It makes you easier to direct. It gives you a wider perspective of what you’re doing. Honestly, it takes the importance off of the actor a little bit because the way that actors are treated in the industry can get to people’s heads sometimes. But it keeps the perspective that you’re part of a whole, which is really important for actors.

PC: Tell us about Reginald the Vampire, your character, and what drew you to this project.
Ryan: It’s a fun show with a lot of humor and heart. As an actor, I gravitate towards things that run the gamut of emotions. I love comedy. I love drama. But if I can get both at once, that’s even better. Reginald the Vampire was an audition like any other. The more that I progressed in the process, the more I was like, “Maybe I’m going to do this thing.” When you get an audition about vampires, there’s a moment where you go, “Okay, great. We’ve seen this before.” When Reginald came into play, especially after reading the Fat Vampire books, it became clear that it wasn’t going to be like a lot of the vampire shows that we’ve seen before.

In this day and age, we’re tired of that. We’ve been there, done that. What really drew me to Reginald the Vampire and the world that it inhabited was how it taps into the human elements of being a vampire. I feel like that is what makes these vampire stories universal, which is why people latch onto them, to begin with. But with Reginald specifically, he’s not your typical vampire. You hear it all the time, and there’s a reason why we harp on it when talking about this show. Because there’s an idea of what a vampire is in pop culture, and we wanted to turn it on its head. It’s an ensemble cast with a great group led by Jacob. The characters speak for themselves. After watching some of the episodes, you latch onto these characters. I only knew one of the actors going into this show, but now they’re some of my great friends. They’re lovely people, and I think that’s what makes this show so special.

PC: When you’re adapting a character that has lived in a different medium, what’s one thing that you wanted to make sure was translated from the page to the screen? What’s something new you brought to him?
Ryan: This is a very interesting circumstance because the pivot away from the books happens fairly early on. Now there are a lot of common elements between books and the series, but it didn’t feel like we had to stick to what was on the page because right off the bat things changed. His job is different. His name is different. A lot of things take a left turn from the books early on. That alleviated the pressure of needing to be exactly what was represented on the page in the books. But it also opened up a lot of fun areas of exploration. There are a lot of different characters that don’t exist in the books that are such colorful characters in the series now. We are treated to even more personalities because of that diversion from the books.

PC: Mike’s journey throughout the first season is very much about second chances, which feels very paralleled to your own journey in this industry. Did you draw that comparison while filming?
Ryan: It was interesting because as an actor going through classes, you don’t exactly prepare for the day that you’re going to play a vampire that’s far older than you. So it became quite the challenge to figure out what that meant and also in terms of how this specific mythology differs from others we’ve seen. I can’t act like Dracula or Interview with the Vampire or Twilight or any of those. We have our own set of rules. We have our own world. First, we had to figure that out. But then after it became clear that the vampires in our world are elitist, exclusionary, fat phobic, and all these things, Mike didn’t really feel like he fit in with that. I have a lot of scenes with Reginald where we’re bonding and getting to know each other. I’m mentoring him a bit. It became clear very quickly for me that Mike wasn’t going to be like the other vampires for reasons that you’ll find out later on. But it was a really cool opportunity for me to play the human elements of being a vampire rather than the vampire elements where they’re bloodthirsty. I found it very interesting.

PC: Your job as an actor and storyteller is to provoke emotions from audiences, which you and Mike definitely do throughout this series. Is there a particular scene or episode that you’re excited for audiences to see as it unfolds?
Ryan: Excited is one word for it. Nervous is another. [laughs] As actors, we know, “I’ve got that one scene in this one episode coming up, but I haven’t seen it, so I don’t know if it’s going to be good.” So, nervous/excited. There are a lot of moments like you said. Mike’s arc over the course of the season has to do a lot with redemption. There are a lot of moments that could go either way. I think I have a lot of excitement for Mike specifically about how everybody is going to feel about who he is, what he’s done, and who he wants to be.

PC: When we spoke with Jacob a few weeks back, he talked about how this role is a huge step for the Asian community. I’d love to hear a bit about your experience in this industry. Why do you think it’s taken us so long to get to this place? When did you start noticing that shift?
Ryan: I started acting in 2015. That was right around the time when I feel the conversations were starting to happen. Early on, I heard a lot of “You’re trendy or popular right now.” I was able to get an agent easily because they didn’t have an Asian guy on their roster. What I saw was that the industry was trying to be diverse. But it started to feel a bit like quota-filling. It was like, “We have five White people or non-BIPOC people in this scene. We need to throw something else in.” They were looking for an Asian, Black, or Hispanic to fill that. That’s how it started. It evolved into what felt a bit like an overcorrection, and I think we might still be in that phase a little bit.

But the goal is it to be normalized and for it not to be a thing. I love it when we’re telling Asian-specific stories, and that needs to continue, but what I really enjoy about our show is that there are three and a half of us if we include Thailey [Roberge]. Between Jacob, Christin [Park], Thailey, and myself, that’s four Asian actors on the screen. While we touch on little elements of our culture in the story, it isn’t the whole point. I think that’s a huge step in normalizing Asian faces on screen. We don’t have to be the Asian actor or character. It’s just how we look, and we’re normal people. Because I’m Canadian-American, (I grew up in North America) I don’t necessarily feel the most attached to some of those stories.

I think we need to represent all the different versions of that. My friend Christin Park and I have talked a lot about hoping to one day work together. The idea of two Koreans being on the same show in the same scene in a big production seemed so far-fetched. For us to be able to do that is a huge moment.

PC: In addition to this series, you also have a new web series, which you’ve co-produced, co-directed, and co-starred in. Can you tell us a little bit about that and what audiences can expect?
Ryan: This year has been pretty crazy. The web series is called Hooray for Hazel. We started production right before I found out that I booked Reginald. I was brought in as an actor and producer to try to help make it happen. Over the course of trying to find directors, my co-director Christina Crivici and I decided to do it together. I’d been directing some things up until that point, so we decided to jump in. While shooting Reginald, I was doing pre-production for this, directing, acting, all that stuff. We shot it about two or three weeks after we wrapped Reginald. This is something that we’re hoping to pitch to networks moving forward and get made into a series. It’s about Hazel who works at a law office and is navigating the world of her crazy family and work environment, which I think we can all relate to. It’s a comedy. It has a lot of heart.

To keep up with Ryan, follow him on Instagram. Watch Reginald the Vampire on Syfy every Wednesday at 10/9c.

Photo Credit: Samantha Chan