User:Jauerback/Sandbox/Kevin Rankin (actor)

From set to set Actor Kevin Rankin can't seem to stay home for very long

By ANDREW DANSBY Copyright 2007 Houston Chronicle

The mailbox at actor Kevin Rankin's Los Angeles apartment isn't overflowing in his absence. His girlfriend, whom he says he sees too little of, has been picking up the mail.

"She'll love to hear that's her job," he says, laughing.

But Rankin hasn't spent much time at his home. He's typically on the set of Bionic Woman in Vancouver, British Columbia, between three and seven days before he jets to Austin for several days making Friday Night Lights. Rankin, who was born in Louisiana and grew up in Magnolia, most likely can be found on set or at an airport.

"If I'm home," he says, "it's rarely more than three days."

But the two roles have proved a big breakthrough for Rankin. On FNL, he's Herc, a wheelchair-bound hellion who befriends one of the show's principals. On Bionic, he's Nathan, a tech geek who aids the show's titular character while getting to provide some snippets of funny.

Several times in a fairly short conversation, Rankin talks about living out his dream. He seems enamored of both shows, though he clearly prefers one set.

FNL is shot in the Austin area "with the bands, food and all the things I miss about Houston," he says. "I had no idea; I had to leave to find out how good I had it. That's not to knock Vancouver cuisine, but last time I visited Houston I ate out every night."

Rankin, 31, says there are "a bunch of Rankins in West Texas," but he didn't move to that region until his father took an oil job in 1987.

He graduated from Magnolia High School in 1994. There he played football. "I was a linebacker," he says. "They wouldn't really let me on offense. I tended to run toward people as opposed to away."

Rankin "bounced around between Louisiana and Texas" until 2000, when he moved to L.A.

To hear him tell it, Rankin's path wasn't necessarily an obvious one. As a kid he gravitated toward the likes of Rambo and Commando. "I wasn't sitting around watching The Godfather," he says.

"It's weird, but I've never had any training," he says. "I didn't go to school for this. Even in high school, it was more of a clowning-around time."

Rankin wanted to do drama. He found a few one-episode roles on TV, before he scored a short, yet very funny, arc as a wimpy dorm RA on Judd Apatow's Undeclared. "He took a chance on me," Rankin says. "But he can turn anybody into a comedian."

He had another multi-episode run on Six Feet Under. Spots on CSI and Grey's Anatomy followed.

But the role of Herc on Friday Night Lights was different. Rankin says the character was sketched out but not overly detailed. He knew the creators wanted something inspired or informed by the quad rugby documentary Murderball.

Rankin shaved his head and came up with a mercurial version of Herc. "If I didn't get the part," he says, "I knew they'd still remember me."

He auditioned on a Monday and was teary-eyed that Thursday when he got the part. Though he says "it felt like something big," even then, he didn't anticipate it would be more than a short arc, as his character Herc befriends Jason Street, the quarterback who, in the FNL pilot, must make a tackle and breaks his neck in the process.

"I thought I'd meet him in rehab and snap him out of his funk," Rankin says. "Tell him his life was not over and then disappear.

"But the writers really responded to the chemistry that the characters had together."

Such has been the nature of FNL, which spins its story around its attractive cast of 20-somethings playing high school students. But much of the show's allure is in the trueness it strikes on the periphery. Seemingly fringe players are stitched into the narrative in ways meant to impact it. Rankin's Herc — whose blustery presence seems to mask an unspoken torment — is one such character. Another is Buddy Garrity, a cunning clash of contradictions played to perfection by Lubbock-born actor Brad Leland.

Herc hasn't been around too much in the second season, but — before the writer's strike — Rankin had been in Austin more lately. He returned for a story line that has Herc and Street becoming roommates, which should further tug at the string of the siblinglike love-hate thing they've perfected.

The show shot several episodes before the strike, which NBC likely will run early next year.

In addition to glowing about FNL, Rankin also springs to the defense of Bionic, which hasn't received much love from critics. He points out that early episodes were reshot and also created by committee, but "the more recent episodes were done with one director, one cook.

"It's very much getting its feet."

andrew.dansby@chron.com

By Greg Hernandez, Staff Writer Article Last Updated: 12/25/2007 09:25:21 PM PST

It would be completely understandable if Kevin Rankin woke up in the morning and didn't know where he was or who he was.

The Los Angeles-based actor has found himself juggling regular roles on the NBC dramas "Friday Night Lights" - filmed in Austin, Texas, - and the Vancouver-based "Bionic Woman."

"For 2 1/2 months at the beginning of the season, I wasn't home for more than a day every two weeks," Kevin said recently.

The writers strike has temporarily put a stop to the scheduling madness, with production on both shows halted for now. But the 31-year-old actor will guest-star on the second episode of NBC's "Law & Order," which returns with new episodes in early January.

On "Lights," Kevin stars as quadriplegic "Herc," who meets an injured high school football player in rehab and becomes his mentor.

"I basically show him how to live life all over again and that life is not over," he explained. "Right when I got to Austin, they put me in a wheelchair and sent me to rehab. For a month straight, I was in a wheelchair on and off set, really trying to live the life. It just brought more of the attitude that these guys carry."

"Lights" received some backlash early in its second season with a murder story line that many fans didn't feel was true to the show.

"I think some of the story lines might have been sort of an answer to the networks," Kevin said with typical candor. "It got sexed up a little bit - some say Advertisement jump the shark. There was a murder. But the way that the characters handle these situations is what 'Friday Night Lights' is all about. Initially, when they had marketing, they touted it as a football show. People tuned in and saw that football was really a background character. It's a hard show to market. It's sort of a sweeping soap opera on the Texas landscape."

So with a good role on "Lights," how did Kevin end up on "Bionic" as well?

"At the beginning of the season, they did a lot of retooling. They fired some of the producers and writers. The guy they brought on to fix the show was Jason Katims. He was the show-runner for `Friday Night Lights.' Within a week, he called me up and invited me and offered me the part. He said come up and try and instill some humor, and ground it in reality a little bit. I became Nathan, the bionics guy, I work with computers. I'm going out on missions and learning how to fight."

While "Lights" is on firm footing, the future of "Bionic" is less certain, with ratings suffering a steep decline after a promising start.

"The show was getting its feet under it before the strike happened, but I'm not sure if it's coming back," he admitted. "I just don't think it got a fair shake. I'd love to see it come back."

Kevin's first regular television role came on NBC's short-lived but well-remembered comedy "Undeclared," in which he played the resident adviser in a college dorm. He knew he was a part of something special because the show was created by writer/director Judd Apatow, who is responsible for such movie hits as "Knocked Up" and "The 40-Year-Old Virgin."

"That took me to a different level," he said of "Undeclared."

"Little did I know that a couple of years later, (Apatow) would be the biggest thing in town."