DCN was able to sit down for a roundtable interview with Matt Ryan regarding his return to the role of John Constantine for DC’s Legends of Tomorrow and the new show for CW Seed Constantine: City of Demons.
This past WonderCon in Anaheim, CA, DCN had access to the press room for the new animated series featuring the Hellblazer, John Constantine titled Constantine: City of Demons. The show consists of a series of animated shorts available now on the CW Seed website you can access here.
When actor Matt Ryan sat down at our roundtable, alongside other press outlets, he had just gotten back from vacationing from Thailand but was eager to speak about his return to the role of John Constantine (Hellblazer) in different mediums.
The actor spoke about how he jumped at the chance to play Constantine again when he was approached by David S. Goyer to do the voice of Hellblazer for the animated feature. Ryan commented on how he really enjoys how character driven the story is with a special nod to how gory the animated show is. When asked about the difficulty of returning to the role after being on and off television so recently, Ryan had this to say:
“It’s great to be able to pick up the character up again. The most difficult kind of point of entry to coming back to him was doing Legends because I had thought it was done and I just finished doing a play in London and then going straight from that to Legends.”
Ryan when on to state that doing the play had placed him in a different frame of mind so he had to go back and watch the old episodes of the NBC Constantine show and consult his own notes as an actor in order to get in the proper place to play the role. For example, Ryan points out how his character walked when he was on the NBC show and said to himself, “What are you doing with that walk? I mean he struts man!”
Another one of the ways Ryan would prepare to play the role was to continually return to the comics and specific story arcs. He cited specific stories as very influential to his preparation: Hellblazer: Dangerous Habits, Hellblazer: Family Man, the first issues of Hellblazer for Vertigo and of course, the current Rebirth run of the Hellblazer comic.
For Ryan, when asked about what is really important about the character, he says that John Constantine’s wit, humor and nonchalant attitude towards things is what really sets him apart from others and will readily admit that the writers play a key role in his portrayal. He says, “All the writers across the board they really kind of get his cadence….those one liners where he flicks his middle finger at the devil and just say piss off”. To Ryan, that really embodies the character of John Constantine.
As for the future, Ryan really doesn’t know what the future holds for Constantine. As of now, he will be on DC’s Legends of Tomorrow but isn’t sure if Constantine will live on in either animated or live action form. When asked if he would love to take part in an adaptation of Dangerous Habits, Ryan said, “Fuck yeah. Pardon my language”.
Ever the gentleman Mr. Matt Ryan. Watch Constantine: City of Demons now on CW Seed.
Image courtesy of IGN
