Killing time:
Aussie actor Ryan Scott talks about his role as lovelorn hitman-for-hire Ray Shoesmith in SoHo’s new dark comedy-drama Mr Inbetween. Julie Eley reports.
Dream finally comes true for Australian actor.
Contract killers can make great husbands, says the man behind SoHo’s new comedy-drama about one of them.
Ryan Scott dreamed up his idea for Mr Inbetween’s Ray Shoesmith, a hitman juggling his personal and professional life, after reading a book about Richard Kuklinski, the American killer who became known as The Iceman.
“He had a wife, he was married, he had kids. He was a good father, he was a good husband. He didn’t cheat on his wife, provided for his family,” says Scott of the man who was believed to have carried out more than 200 murders.
“People have this perception that because you kill people for a living you’re some kind of rotten person, and you don’t have a moral code, and you’re some kind of psychopath or something.
“I think that’s what drew me to create this show. I thought these guys were just all psychopaths but realised that they weren’t.”
Ray Shoesmith was introduced in The Magician, a film Scott wrote, starred in and directed while he was a film student. Made on a budget of $3000, it was shot over 10 days.
“I had originally started out as a writer and that’s all I wanted to be,” he says.
“I never wanted to be a director, I never wanted to be an actor, never wanted to be an editor but I had to learn how to do these things so that I could make something.”
He later edited The Magician to
a half-hour version for the St Kilda Film Festival where it was seen by stuntman and film producer Nash Edgerton (the brother of actor Joel Edgerton).
They spent more than a decade championing a TV follow-up called Mr Inbetween, but the stumbling block was always putting the unknown Scott in a starring role.
“At one point,” says Scott, “I remember saying to him, ‘Look, dude, it’s OK if I don’t play Ray Shoesmith. If you want to just get it made, let’s just get it made without me and I’ll just write it or whatever.’
“He was like ‘no’. He wanted to do it with me in it. He never gave up.”
But while Edgerton, who made his Hollywood directing debut with Gringo, kept the cause alive, Scott did give up on the project.
He moved to the small Victoria country town of Echuca and took a job as a taxi driver. So when Edgerton called to say that FX wanted to make his comedy-drama, his reaction was mixed.
“It was like, ‘OK well it’s good but generally with good things come bad things too’– you know what I mean.
“I’d had a lot of bad experiences, I guess, in the industry after The Magician. I thought things would go a lot smoother than they did.
“I was going to act in a film in the States and that kind of fell over at the last minute while I was over there. I met a couple of shonky people along the way and I got screwed over a little bit. I don’t want to dwell on that too much, you know, and it just kind of turned me right off.”
But today he couldn’t be happier to be back playing the character he created 15 years ago.
In the role, Scott stars alongside Edgerton’s daughter, Chika Yasumura, whose part as Shoesmith’s anti-swearing offspring is her first acting role.
She was cast in the show almost as a last resort.
“We looked and we tried to find somebody and we couldn’t. All these kids were kind of trained,” says Scott of a process in which they auditioned more than 50 youngsters for the part of Brittany Shoesmith.
“Chika wasn’t a trained actor and that’s what made her so great. She could just be in the moment. And that’s kind of how I do what I do. I don’t really act as such. I don’t know what you’d call it, what I do, but it’s not really acting. I just try to be present. And she is very present. She’s just there in the moment with you.”
And it’s a moment Scott is happy to savour. The Ray Shoesmith he created 15 years ago might be older and wiser but Scott says in many ways he’s like the rest of us.
“I think he’s pretty much motivated by what motivates everybody else,” he says. “We’ve got to have a job, we’ve got to pay the bills. He’s motivated by those same things. He just does a different job that’s all.”
And as for what the future holds for Ray as he juggles murder with romance, Scott says, “I have absolutely no idea.
“I figure that when I sit down to write he’ll tell me where he wants to go.”
“People have this perception that because you kill people for a living you’re some kind of rotten person.”
– Ryan Scott