Rick Howland Interview — Episode 71

Rick Howland gives us some insight into the Blood King, including his relationships with Bo, Kenzi, Dyson, and others, his feelings about the Light and Dark divide, as well as how sneaky he thinks Trick actually is. He also gives great behind the scenes tidbits about his audition process, learning to fight with a bo staff, and more. He also talks a bit about his music career and what's next for him after Lost Girl ends.
The following is a detailed summary rather than an exact transcript of the interview.
How did you come to be involved in Lost Girl? How did you hear about the project? What about Trick attracted you to the role?
I first heard about the show through the regular channels — through my agent — and I got an audition, and I went to the audition. Well, first I got the breakdown and the sides, which are like the lines that you have to say for the audition, and the breakdown is the description of the characters and usually a short synopsis of the plot, of what the show is about. Which, I knew a fair amount about mythology and things like that, but I know a lot more now. Like, I knew what a succubus was before that, and things like that, so it wasn’t completely foreign to me, but I did a little bit of research on it.
My friend, Jordan Prentice, who was in In Bruges and many other big movies and stuff, he and I both went out for Trick, and he even read the breakdown and said, “Wow, this sounds like you.” And I was like, “Cool. That’s what I think, too. So, best of luck to you, but I’m going to do my best to get this.”
What was your audition process like? Do you remember what scenes you auditioned with?
Vaguely. There was a couple of scenes with The Morrigan that didn’t really exist. A lot of shows, when they’re first coming out, the scenes that you get aren’t exactly from any script, because they don’t want them leaked around the world. So you get old drafts or some version of them — but whatever works for the auditioners to get a good vibe from the actors of whether they can play the character, identify with the character, connect to it or whatever.
I think I did a first audition and two callbacks. But, yeah, there were scenes with The Morrigan. It was very similar to the scene in that first episode, where Trick meets up with The Ash and The Morrigan. It’s just after Bo has beat the people she has to fight to decide whether she’s Light or Dark, and then I meet with them in the dark underbelly of the arena and warn them about how they should proceed. But there was a really great scene that was never part of the show, opposite The Morrigan, where Trick really expresses his power to her, as if he was the Blood King. And I think that’s what they wanted, they wanted to see some sort of power position that you could hold your own against someone else. It would have been really fun to play that against Emmanuelle.
But you generally have a reader and Wanda — the producer who organizes the production as it goes — she was in there, Jay Firestone, and John Fawcett, the director of the first episode. I did my audition with them and then I came back. It was with Lisa Parasyn, a casting director in Toronto who’s cast some pretty big stuff, and she’s an amazing person. It might have just been with her and one or two other people at first. They take a look at everybody and then when they’re like “okay, we’ve narrowed it down to a certain group of people,” they bring you in with more people in the room.
I did my auditions, and I flew to South Africa, and I heard that I got the part while I was away. Then came back and shot the first episode in February of 2009. But it’s always been very interesting… A couple of times, Jay Firestone has said to me that he fought for me. The broadcaster had a different idea of who Trick was, and Jay fought for me and he wanted me. He felt I was the best person for the role, and I thank him for that. As I’ve said on many occasions,