While doing his press rounds for The Hunger Games: Catching Fire actor Alan Ritchson of course talked about Micheal Bay's Ninja Turtles reboot. He tell The Backlot about the comic book source material and also hints at Raph being the angry hot-head of the group that we all know and love. He doesn't however mention if this incarnation of Raph will have his classic Brooklyn accent:
You can see Alan Ritchson in The Hunger Games: Catching Fire thats out now and see him in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles next summer!
TBL: What about with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles?
AR: I actually didn’t read any of the comic books– and I really hope I don’t offend anyone saying that– but for me, I think we all know who Raphael is. He’s known as the angry hothead of the group. He is quick tempered and is quick to act. He is less thoughtful of people’s feelings and emotions and consequences. That’s something I can relate to as a person. I am very quick to act, like, ‘okay, decision’s made, let’s go for it.’
So I can relate to him in that sense, but I think just zoning in on who that guy is and then understanding the back story… how these guys were formed in the context of our story and where they came from, and the feelings of abandonment or betrayal. All those very real human feelings are something that are contained within that world, and I think we did a good job of creating a setting and a foundation for that.
So I had everything that I needed to create that character there. So I didn’t actually rely so heavily on somebody else’s perspective of Raphael twenty years ago, which to be honest like many of the cartoons like, this dude is smiling a lot. You know, they all look the same and there is so a much greater level of like, individual personality in this new reboot, you know that we haven’t seen before. So there wasn’t a lot for me to relate to, but I don’t know if people will understand where I am coming from, maybe until they see it, I don’t know.
I think as far as Ninja Turtles, I played a comic book hero [Aquaman] before, so I had some experience with trying to bring a character like that to life. It’s challenging because a comic book can span decades and there is an infinite number of authors to go to. The source material changes and these characters’ identities change. We still see it every day, like Superman is gay now in comic book nine hundred and eighty one, it’s like ‘okay well, that’s different then than the guy that started out in number one.’
