Lilli Keeve
Actor Ted Sutherland is best known for his work as young Nick Goode in Fear Street: 1978 (2021) and Fear Street: 1666 (2021). Sutherland has also appeared in such television shows as The Hunting Party and The Walking Dead: World Beyond. In our conversation, we talked about his foray into acting, how he came on board in the role of Elijah in the feature film, Urchins, written and directed by Adam Rioux, and how he prepared his accent by people watching at a Walmart in a small Florida town.
The transcription below has been edited for space and clarity.
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Hi, Ted. Thanks for talking with me today. How are you?
I’m doing well—thanks for talking to me.
Yeah, of course. So we’ll just start with: how did you get into acting, and was it always a passion of yours?
I kind of fell into it, so no, it wasn’t always a passion, but it became one very quickly. My mom always wanted me to take an instrument growing up, and the only thing we had was my sister’s flute. I didn’t really want to play that, so she said, “Then you have to sing,” and so I took singing lessons. This is very convoluted. I took singing lessons, and eventually, after a while, the local singing teacher was like, “You should do theater.” I was like, “No,” and then after months of that, I was like, “All right, I’ll try it,” and then it just blossomed into something I really enjoyed. So, I was doing it since I was like 13.
That’s so cool. How you kind of fell into that, and it was in a way unexpected too. So let’s dive into Urchins. How did you even come on board for the project, and what was it like working with a first-time writer-director?
I was brought on like five days before they started shooting, because another actor had dropped out, as you know, that happens occasionally, and so I kind of got a crash course on the whole thing. It just kind of made it a more interesting experience, insofar as you kind of just had to go with it. Adam was very open to that, which was exciting, because he was willing to be malleable with the material and what we were shooting…which was very helpful for me as someone who had only five days.
That’s awesome. So there was a super small crew, and shooting on location in Florida, in the humidity, in the elements. What was that experience like? By the way, your accent was amazing. Elijah’s such a grounded character and very multifaceted.
It was a very skeleton crew; everybody was pulling their weight at times four, you know, it’s very, very impressive. Being in Florida is kind of a trip; you’re kind of working around the rain, which comes intermittently, and so you’ll get all, you know, set to shoot a scene in the whole film’s outdoors, which I think, or a lot of it, which I think would have been adjusted maybe on the second go, so we’d get all like set up for these scenes, and then we’d have to wait 20 minutes for this huge, you know, thunderstorm to pass through, and then we’d go back to the scene, so that was fun. So you’re kind of working against the elements in a way, which was fun. And as far as the accent is concerned…I don’t know, I don’t know how much Adam would want me to say, but about a day before he went: “I think you should, you should do an accent.” I was like, “What?” He said, “Yeah, you should probably do something. I was like, “Okay, we’ll pull that together.” But we were, we spent some time, you know, a few of us, and we went around this small town in Florida, an old town… So we’d go into Walmart, or whatever, and we’d watch people, and eventually we settled on these two people, my co-star and me. That’s what we have to try to do without doing too much or being caricatures.
Yeah, absolutely. Well, it felt very authentic and true-to-life. Did you want to talk a little bit more about your journey with Elijah?
When you’ve got like a clipped schedule like that, as I had, a lot more of it comes from you personally.
When I was talking with Adam, he mentioned how these are characters like Jack, Izzy, and Elijah, who probably won’t leave that town because of circumstances, maybe like a lack of resources, in Elijah’s case, being dealt a bad hand. If Elijah ever did leave, what would you envision him doing, as not necessarily a career, but if he got outside of that life, what would he do?
He’d probably be a representative for the House of Congress.
(Laughs) No, he would not.
Maybe he’ll write for Film Obsessive. What did you think of the movie?
I loved the movie. I am such a big fan of coming of age films, so I really resonated with the project. The cinematography was just so beautiful and naturalistic, and the acting…everything was just really beautiful to witness. I’m excited for more people to see it on the big screen.
Me too. I hope they do. When it all works out in any capacity as a miracle. Even if the movie’s terrible, you go, “Wow, that even happened.”
Yeah, absolutely.
That’s cool. We should have started here. Do you make movies?
I don’t, but my dad’s a filmmaker, so I’ve worked on some indie shorts, but aside from writing, I’m figuring out what else I’m interested in. There are so many little niches and paths in the industry….but right now I’m doing the writing, the interviewing, I’m working on a feature film as a PA, and living this amazing life of being surrounded by creatives and people who love what they do. That is what I’m after…surrounding yourself with people who get it.
