We Interview: Ed Quinn, star of action movie Shadow Force

Ed Quinn - actor, musician, model - is in his office, ready for our Zoom interview. The first question comes not from me but from him: “Is this being recorded to be broadcast? Only because I want to make sure it wouldn’t get copyright struck due to the surfing in the background.” Throughout the entirety of our time together, the calming waves and vacation vibes of a televised surfing competition is playing, in full view, on the big TV screen behind Quinn. I think that gave me more insight into who Ed Quinn is than any question I could’ve asked him. He’s laid back and easygoing, maintaining the surfer energy even though he says he’s too old to catch any waves these days.

Currently, Quinn stars alongside Kerry Washington and Omar Sy as Parker in Shadow Force, an action film in theatres now, about two formerly married spies working to escape the aggression of their former employers.

So I wanted to start at the beginning of your career. You started with modeling, you did music, you were involved in rugby, and - of course - acting. If you could go back and choose just one of those things, do you think you'd stick with acting or would you pursue one of your other talents?

I actually went to Cal [University of California, Berkeley] to play football, and I got kinda lost because I got hurt. I've always wished I was built to play football, and I loved it, but I never really gave it a shot. So who knows where that would have gone if I had stayed with it? Chances are I wouldn't have made it out of college because it's almost impossible to.

If you ask me honestly, I think I'm a better guitarist than I am an actor. I started playing when I was 12, so it's organic. My band had a lot of heat, and we almost got signed. The band imploded because bands are hard; most bands implode. Then I saved the record deal, and then that imploded. The business is not a meritocracy. It's not like a normal career where you can work up.

I was studying acting starting in '93, when I joined the Screen Actors Guild. I was doing commercials, but I didn't really start acting until around 2000. I don't think I had put in my ten thousand hours until I got off Eureka [the SyFy network show Ed starred in for 3 seasons]. Then it all had just finally synthesized for me. It took me a long time to get up to speed to where I am. It's about work. People wanna talk about natural talent - no. You gotta spend lots of time doing it. You gotta love it. It's not practice. It's because it's a passion, and it's what you'd rather do than anything else.

My whole career, I’ve just sort of been going where the flashing green lights were. I always thought I wanted to be a lawyer; I think I just wanted to be a lawyer on TV. So then I have a flashing green light saying you should probably try [acting]. You're booking Ford [commercials] and Volvo [commercials] and Nabisco [commercials] and all these companies are hiring. You'd be the face of their company in these little sixty second commercials. That means - and I’m being very clinical here - that you look pretty good on TV. So if you can string some lines together, you can learn how to act.

I've just been pretty good at a bunch of things. When one thing starts to get a little shaky, I jump on to the next pursuit, which, thank goodness, knock on wood, I’m able to have a nice long, very fortunate career in.

Of all the paths you could’ve gone down, one you didn’t mention was a career in history, which you have a Bachelor’s Degree in. What made you so interested in history?

You know, there's those quaint little bumper stickers, “learn from the past to predict the future”. You can open a history book and go into worlds that are just terrifying. And I tend to like scarier history. Not macabre, but we tend to read about World War II and it's always about Germany and the Nazis and the blitzkriegs and the siege of Stalingrad, the fall of Leningrad. It's just that the war in that area was so unbelievably terrifying. And I remember being on a vacation and reading about the nine hundred day siege. And I said, what am I doing? Why am I reading? This is worse than a Stephen King novel. But it fascinated me. Because the world's a fascinating place, and you can just get lost in the library for the rest of your life and never stop learning and never stop going on journeys.

Is there any historical figure you would like to play at some point in your career? Or would you rather stay away from that considering how terrifying history can be?

No, I would love that. I wish it was that easy. My father [Arthur Quinn] wrote a book called The Rivals, about when California was about to be ratified right before the Civil War. It was gonna swing the senate and whether California was a free state or a slave state. And so two senators came out, one from the South, one from the North, and they ended up in a duel, and one killed the other. I would love to get that script off the ground because it’s fascinating.

I always hoped that there would be a Stevie Ray Vaughan biopic, and they would have open auditions. I'm getting a little old now, it's unfortunate. But I'd wanna get it. And then when I got it, a bunch of dudes from Austin would come and kick open my door and grab me by the ear and drag me back to Texas and lock me in a house and go, you're not gonna screw this up, dude. You're gonna do Stevie, you're gonna honor Stevie’s legacy, or we're gonna bury you in the backyard. Lots of pressure.

I'm writing a movie right now about my band years, and I'm on my sixth rewrite. The script's coming together great, and it'd be a great movie for me to direct.

Since you’re a screenwriter, I have to ask: what is the best script of all time?

I think Apocalypse Now is one of the greatest movies ever made. The Godfather is pretty amazing. They just had a series, The Offer, about the writing of The Godfather and how hard it was to get that. So there was never just this perfect script.

But I think Jaws is the best movie ever made. As a surfer, this movie really scared the crap out of me when it first came out. It was the first summer blockbuster; it created the blockbuster for better or worse. It was Spielberg at his rock star youngest. They had a horrible production because the shark kept sinking to the bottom of the sea, so they had to focus on the script. A lot of the actors couldn't stand each other, and that comes through beautifully in the script. Remember, you make a movie three times: when you write it, when you shoot it, and when you edit it. But if you took Jaws in its final final cut and then printed out that script, it’s just perfect.

What’s your favorite surfing venue or locale?

I would say for me, it's a place called Grajagan; it's known as G-land. It's on the Southeast Tip Of Java. It's considered either the best or second best wave in the world. When I first paddled out [in 1994], I felt like I was sitting on the edge of the Earth. If I was a flat earther - I'm not a flat earther - but if I was a flat earther, I would feel like that's it. I just felt like I was on the edge of the earth. It's magical. The wind, it's terrifying. Back then, there were tigers and snakes. Now everything's gotten crowded and commercial, and everybody goes surfing. But back when I was there, it was such an adventure to get there. We almost died getting there. And, unfortunately, nothing will ever touch it in 1994. To go get it again, I would need a time machine.

Let's talk about Shadow Force. Tell me something new or challenging about your role in the film.

Well, I have a great little role. Super excited about it. It's really fun to do a studio movie. There’s a big family theme to this movie. It's an old school actioner. I think people will really, really enjoy the movie. To tell you the truth, I was shooting a music video in the desert, and [director Joe] Carnahan called me and said, “hey, man - you wanna come do this movie in Colombia?” I didn't read the script. I just said, yeah. For sure. It was awesome; it was an incredible trip. One of the best parts about what I do for a living is all the travel. I've gotten to travel all over the world and work all over the world - It's completely different. You can go to Eastern Europe or South Africa or India on vacation - or you can go and shoot a movie. And I just love going and shooting a movie, or working on a TV series. It's incredible. I had an absolute blast. Super excited for the movie coming out.

Do you have any fun stories from set?

There's a gun that I shoot that would get white hot, and I was shooting these giant 30 round mags, and it would start to burn me. I'd be trying to play with the gun and they're shooting squibs at me and the squibs are dripping down - they're lighting my shirt on fire. I came out of there and I had burns - you’d think I was playing with fireworks or something.

The best part about the whole shoot was one set that was a bunch of cartel islands; these little tiny rocks out in the Caribbean that they built these mansions on. When the cartel guys went to jail and the Colombian cartel fell, the governments received the houses and sold them off. So we're shooting in this crazy house sitting on a rock in the middle of the ocean. It was so pretty. And we blew that house to pieces. We shot a six day gunfight in that house.

So you play a nice good guy [Randy] in Two Broke Girls and a real bad guy [President Hunter Franklin] in The Oval.

Misunderstood.

I'll give him that. Which do you prefer? Do you like a good guy or do you like to play the bad guy?

Two Broke Girls is one of my favorite jobs ever because its comedy is so much fun. Shooting it live in front of a live studio audience; there's so much pressure. I love rehearsing all week because you're just trying to make each other laugh and trying to work on the jokes. And then show night is just like game night.

The way we shoot The Oval is so crazy. It almost has the same energy as a sitcom, because we move real fast, and it's a huge production. In the first week of shooting, Tyler [Perry] came in with this idea of what to do. He wasn't quite sure. he would have me do something, and it would be kinda funny or kinda loopy and out of control. And then he would have me do it a little more down the middle. But then when I would get serious, I'd hit the serious notes heavy. And he goes, “wait a minute”. What he didn't realize was that I was using his most famous character, Madea, as a template. Madea is loony and funny and over the top, but there's heart there. There's a message there.

I wanted Hunter Franklin to be kinda funny. You never know what he's gonna say. Says crazy, crazy shit all the time. But he does love his son, and he does love his daughter, and he does love [First Lady] Victoria. And he kinda wants to be a good president. He just feels trapped. I don't wanna give away the next season, but he’s started to come into his own in a really great way. So I would say both roles are similar in that there's some real depth to them.