Ryan Guzman is one of the new faces on the Step Up cast list as th fourth movie Step Up 4: Miami Heat is released on DVD & Blu-Ray
- This is your first movie, and you're the new guy here in every respect.
New to dancing, new to acting, new to everything!
- How has it been?
Amazing. I've loved every part of the experience.
- You played baseball and did martial arts back in Texas. How did those athletic activities help you with the physicality needed for this role?
It actually works out perfectly because martial arts make your body aware of how you react to certain things, so the dancing was more of a mental exertion for me.
You have to be really into the music, the beat and the rhythm. After you realise that everybody around you is not judging you, but want to help you, it becomes fun. It made dancing a lot easier.
- Which martial arts did you specialise in?
I had a couple. I got my black belt in tae kwon do when I was 10 years old, but I also studied muay thai, boxing, kick boxing, jujitsu and wrestling.
- So nobody messed with you at school then?
To be honest, I used to back down from fights. I was so scared of confrontation when I was growing up. Then there came a point in college where I was tired of being afraid.
I wanted to tackle my fear, and what better way than to throw myself into the Octagon (Ultimate Fighting Champion Boxing Ring) with a professional fighter?
I decided to train hard and go to the Octagon, where I won my very first fight. After the first win, I got addicted and fell in love with fighting.
- Where was the Octagon located? Was this at a general arena or a specific place?
There are different leagues, and I fought under the league called Rebel Fighter in San Jose, California. The Octagon travelled around. There were different venues, and different places - you could be at an outdoor park or at a big hotel.
The fans get so excited while you're fighting. To hear "Ryan! Ryan! Ryan!" while you're in the ring is like being in your own Rocky movie. It's fun.
- Tell me a little bit about your character, Sean.
Sean plays the leader of The Mob, which is a crew that does flash mobs all around Miami for a YouTube contest. By winning this YouTube contest, they get a certain amount of money, which is supposed to launch their mob into superstardom.
Sean’s world changes when he meets Emily (Kathryn Mc Cormick) and finds out that her father, who ironically, is his boss, is going to destroy his neighbourhood and build a new hotel on it.
Emily wants to rebel against her dad, so she persuades Sean to protest against him through flash mobs. That gives The Mob an incentive for dancing. It also gives our dancing a purpose and gives meaning to what we're saying.
- So he's a blue-collar character then?
I think he's a born leader. His mom and dad left him and he was raised by his sister, so he was forced to grow up quickly, to put his problems aside and to focus on what his family and friends, meaning his mob.
- This idea invokes the first movie, which dealt with the same kind of issues between the characters in the school and dealing with their loyalties outside of school.
That's what I love about this movie. I feel like Step Up Revolution is the super movie from the Step Up franchise.
It took what everybody loved from Step Up one and all the dancing that you got to see in Step Up two and three and combined them and made this monster of a movie: Step Up Revolution.
- I live in New York but have yet to see a flash mob. Have you seen a dance mob?
On YouTube. I did research into exactly what it was. I didn't really know about flash mobs until before the movie.
I had to research them, and from what I saw flash mobs are cool but often they're carried out by non-professional dancers, which means they’re fun too.
- When you get into a role like this, you have to immerse yourself in the culture of the character. How much did you have to learn about your character's life beforehand?
It's a whole different world. I had to change a lot of things. The dance world is its own world and entity, and I had no idea what I was walking into. The best thing about it is that everybody who worked with me was very open and loving.
The whole mob was good at teaching me rather than leaving me to learn on my own because I’m the lead character. Everybody came together so well. I can't say anything bad about it. I fell in love with the dancing world, and it made becoming Sean so easy.
- In terms of recent dance crazes, I've heard about ‘crumping’. What other kinds of dance styles did you learn about while making this film that other people might not know about?
I learned so much. I didn't realize that one of the guys in the movie is actually the inventor of crump. To see the things he can do is ridiculous - I have no idea how you do some of these things with your body!
You have to have years and years of discipline. We also did moves called ‘finger tutting’, ‘hand tutting’ and ‘flexing’. I worked with a guy called 'Marvelous', who co-created flexing, which is a very fluid movement where your body almost feels like liquid, but then your body starts popping at the same time. It's in the movie.
I can't even describe it, you will have to see it but it’s unbelievable. We did every kind of dance in this movie - contemporary, salsa and hip-hop.
We also have parcour guys. After seeing Casino Royale (2006), I wanted to do parcour so much. I'd be on the set and they'd be shooting a scene with parcour, and there would be guys hopping off three-story buildings and doing back flips and surviving to tell the tale. How do you get into parcour?
There's no failing - you can't just jump off a three-story building and say, "Oh that didn't work, let's try it again."
- Who was the guy who invented crumping?
"Tight Eyez" (Ceasare "Tight Eyez" Willis) - I call him the god of crump. If you've ever looked at his videos, you'll realize exactly how good he is and what he can do.
- Your co-star Kathryn McCormick is a professional dancer. What was it like working with her on this film? What was your chemistry like, and what did she teach you?
We became best, best friends. We went through so much together. I think we grew so close because it was all new to us. Acting was more new for her, but the dancing was very new to me. It made us join together for one effort.
She was the best teacher and I couldn't have learned from anybody better. Switching from hip-hop to contemporary was probably the hardest thing, but she made it so easy for me.
- Contemporary is a wide-ranging term now. You have more specific terms like salsa and ballroom, and then you have contemporary.
Travis Wall was one of the main choreographers for the contemporary pieces, and he is like the god of contemporary. He's on So You Think You Can Dance - anything you can think of which is contemporary, he's probably in it.
He made a dance number for us, and we showed it to the cast and crew before we ended up shooting it. We had about 100 people watching us, and when we were done and looked around, we saw everybody crying.
I didn't know that dance was that emotional because when you're doing it you're just thinking about being in the moment. People were coming up to me sobbing and smiling at the same time. It's cool how much dance can move somebody.
- You've done modelling before. Didn't you do something for Calvin Klein?
That's actually a rumour. There's a bunch of rumours out there. One says I was born in San Francisco, when I was actually born in Texas.
Then there's another that I was a model for Calvin Klein because I did a shoot for a friend and I wore Calvin Klein underwear!
- The movie Zoolander (2001) tore the lid off of the modelling world in the way that This Is Spinal Tap (1984) exposed the shenanigans of rock bands. What are some funny modelling stories that you have, and what are some common misconceptions about models?
If you say Zoolander to a model, he can quote you every single line - it is a hilarious movie. When I first moved out to LA, I was actually living in a one bedroom apartment with five guys and money to my name.
That pretty much sums up life for a beauty model. Zoolander got it right with the five models living together, but obviously they're not that dumb. I mean, some of them are, but the ones I was living with were very, very smart. They were very intellectual, read good books and were studying for Master degrees.
- What was it like working with Scott Speer, the director of Step Up Revolution? How did he shape your performances?
Scott is amazing. I couldn't ask for a better director for my first movie because he was so helpful with guiding us as to what he wanted to portray in his movie. I think he brought out the best in me, Kathryn and Misha [Gabriel], who plays my best friend Eddie.
There were so many people trying to help us to become the best we could possibly be for this movie, and it shows. I saw it last week, and you can definitely tell that everybody came together for this. It was amazing.
- Did Jamal Sims return as a choreographer on this Step Up instalment?
We had five choreographers. We had Jamal Sims, Dondraico Johnson, Chuck Maldonado, Chris Scott and Travis Wall.
When I say there are all kinds of styles of dancing that definitely shows in all these choreographers because we had to have them for all of these different types of dances.
- Did the 3-D affect the choreography?
It gave it a little extra something. We saw it in 3-D last week, and the things that we were doing in the movie look so much better in 3-D. Some of them you have to see in 3-D to actually appreciate, others you could see in 2-D and still be in awe.
- Are there any other projects coming up for you?
I'm in talks with some production companies right now for upcoming movies. I can't tell you any names or titles, but this is not the last you're going to see of me!
Step Up 4: Miami Heat is released 3rd December.
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