Merriman plays his part in ‘The Jurassic Games’
Ryan Merriman took inspiration from a certain carefully coiffed and obviously ubiquitous TV personality when he was preparing for one of his most recent film roles.
“When I read the script, I play a twisted Ryan Seacrest basically. Michelle De Long, a local casting director— and one of my first acting coaches and still a very, very good friend — she sent me the script, actually. She said, ‘Read this and let me know what you think.’ And I was hooked,” Merriman said.
“I think once you get over that like ‘I need to be this or that,’ as an actor it’s more fun to just (go with) what really opens your eyes and would be fun for you.”
The Choctaw native, 35, plays the unscrupulous host of a controversial television show in “The Jurassic Games,” an Oklahoma-made action movie that premiered last month at OKC’s deadCenter Film Festival and earned worldwide buzz leading up to its release Tuesday on Blu-ray and DVD.
While he may not be as omnipresent as his fellow Ryan, Seacrest, Merriman has been a busy working actor for 25 years. Since making his TV debut at age 10, his career has ranged from beloved early 2000s Disney Channel Original Movies and big-screen horror sequels to a loveto-hate-him role on the popular TV series “Pretty Little Liars” to a challenging turn in the 2013 Jackie Robinson biopic “42.”
For his long and broad career, Merriman was named one of the deadCenter Film Festival’s 2018 Oklahoma Film Icon
Award winners, honored as an Oklahoman whose success in the entertainment industry has drawn positive attention toward his home state.
“It’s a humbling, humbling title for sure. I’ve been doing it for a long time. … But an icon, I think I still got some work to earn that one. But I feel honored,” Merriman said in an interview at the NewsOK studios during deadCenter. “I’ve been blessed — very blessed — to start at a young age and continue to work.”
Home-state ‘Games’
After growing up watching Merriman in the Disney telefilms “Smart House” (1999), “The Luck of the Irish” (2001) and “A Ring of Endless Light” (2002), Oklahoma City screenwriter/ director Ryan Bellgardt said he was a bit star-struck when he the actor accepted a key role in his “Jurassic Games.”
“I was pretty nervous to pick
him up from the airport . ... We were going to have a pretty big commitment on this, and this was a story I wrote. I just didn’t know how he was going to react or how he was going to be,” Bellgardt recalled.
“When he stepped out … of the gate to the airport, I was standing there, he came up to me and just like gave me this big hug and said, ‘Man, I am so excited for this movie.’”
Bellgardt’s third film, “The Jurassic Games,” mashes up multiple Hollywood hits — “Jurassic Park,” “The Hunger Games” and “The Matrix” — as death row prisoners compete for a chance for freedom in a controversial game show. They just have to survive a VR gauntlet of velociraptors, T-rexes and, of course, their murderous fellow inmates.
The movie was shot on location in the Sooner State with an all-Oklahoma crew. Bellgardt said Merriman didn’t act like the independent film was beneath him, even literally getting down in the dirt at one point to play his part.
“I said, ‘Hey, Ryan, would you
do one more take for me, where you get your suit all dirty, lay in the sand, put sand in your face and spit it out? He kind of hesitated for just the slightest second, and then he looked at me and he was like, ‘Yeah, man, let’s do it.’ And he did it,” Bellgardt recalled.
“He was just awesome. The guy is really talented and very gracious.”
When location shooting at Robbers Cave meant an overnight stay, Bellgardt said the actor brought along his wife and dog and cooked up onion burgers for the whole cast and crew.
“I do love to cook, and it was a fun crew,” Merriman said with a grin. “I think if you’ve been in the business long enough, you kind of figure out that every movie is like a camp, and we’re all in the same boat together. So, we all got along great. We had about 20 pounds of hamburger meat or something like that, and I said, ‘I got it. Give me some onions and a flat-top.’”
Calling card
The self-described “country boy from Choctaw” received his Oklahoma Film Icon Award
at a packed premiere for “The Jurassic Games,” which received the deadCenter Special Jury Narrative Feature Award just a few days before its video-ondemand release. He also was featured at a special panel during the festival.
Merriman credited his Oklahoma upbringing with helping him avoid common pitfalls that sometimes trip up child actors.
“I played football in high school and junior high. I played baseball. I still have the same best friends from sixth grade. We still talk every day, and when I’m home, most of us eat lunch every day,” he said.
“It was just my job, you know. I mean, some people sell cars, some people build cabinets, and I do movies. I guess my family and my friends really did obviously keep me grounded — I hope.”
Two years ago, he relocated from Los Angeles back to his home state with his wife, Kristen, a move that made him even more eager to take on a film like “The Jurassic Games,” which was shot in scenic spots like the Gloss Mountain and Little Sahara state parks, with additional photography
at Bellgardt’s Boiling Point Media studio in Oklahoma City.
“It’s about doing what you want to do, what’s fun, but it’s also about creating more of an industry here in Oklahoma, too,” Merriman said.
“It’s a really good calling card for filmmaking … the fact that we shot all that in Oklahoma. People are always like, ‘What? Wait, there’s sand dunes?’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, there’s sand dunes, there’s swamps, there’s mountains, there’s prairies, there’s city, there’s caves.’”
From his Oklahoma home base, he is continuing to act frequently, with his upcoming releases, including a Western called “East of Yuma,” an indie drama titled “Sunny Daze” and a kind of “Paranormal Activity”type project he had recently signed on for and couldn’t talk much about yet.
“It’s a hard world emotionally for a lot of people. You get 100 no’s before you get a yes,” Merriman said of acting during his deadCenter panel.
“But the ceiling on the awesomeness of stories and places is limitless.”