If you’re a little older, you might recognize Asian American Ryan Potter from Nickelodeon show Supah Ninjas that aired in 2011. Most recently, he is the actor who currently plays Beast Boy in the DC Universe’s Titans. He is also the actor who voices Hiro Hamada from Big Hero 6, a movie he says that he holds real near to his heart.
(Photo courtesy of the UCR APSP Facebook)
On February 28, UC Riverside was lucky enough to have Ryan Potter come over and talk to the students thanks to the APSB who set up the event. Ryan came in and chose to sit at the end of the stage to talk directly to the audience as he told us that he loved being on college campuses and that he valued education as he came from a family of educators, but he left school to be homeschooled at 13 when he started working on acting.
He told us that he was born in Oregon and that afterwards, his family moved to Japan where he lived for 7 years before coming back to live in the US where he had to learn to adjust to US society.
When asked about when he started acting, he said he had seen a poster asking for an Asian American kid who could do martial arts, but at the time, he wrote it off. He said that he couldn’t imagine the idea of someone like him being on TV, so he left the flier alone until his martial arts teacher chased after him and had him take the flier home. He said that it just happened that his mom went through his martial arts bag to clean it out when she found the flier and asked if he wanted to do it, and after a bit of contemplation, he decided to go to auditions.
And he sucked.
He said he wasn’t even trying to act but after talking to a casting director, he got an acting coach, and a few more auditions later, he was casted to be on Nickelodeon’s Supah Ninjas. He admitted that he wasn’t truly passionate about acting until there was a movement for people of color being recognized in the industry.
(Photo courtesy of Deedee Plata)
Potter told us that that also voicing Hiro Hamada who was biracial felt like progress. As a kid who felt like he didn’t quite fit into one group or another, he said it was reassuring to see that there would be characters like him. But at the same time, he also told the audience that the industry was still in dire need for more Asian creatives from writers, actors, and cinematographers to tell the stories of their culture without the erasure of their background. Nobody will be able to tell their stories as well as they can.
He also shared that his favorite hobbies were martial arts, video games, and sleeping and this favorite part about work is that he can be creative with other people and watching the final product.
Overall, Ryan Potter is super kind and down to Earth, being super attentive during Q & A’s and and answering every question as best as he could.