Best known for his role as Dave Brass on the HBO series Oz, Blake Robbins’ other television credits include a recurring role on Joss Whedon’s Firefly, guest appearances on Medium, Cold Case, Crossing Jordan, Law & Order, Third Watch, 10-8: Officers on Duty, Strong Medicine, and Charmed, among others. Blake has appeared in over sixty theatrical productions. On Broadway, he appeared in Arthur Miller’s The Man Who Had All the Luck, Tina Howe’s Disorderly Conduct and The Elevator by Rinne Groff. He has also worked at the Atlantic Theatre, EST, New York Stage & Film, Naked Angels, the Huntington Theatre, and the Evidence Room.
Blake’s films include Love Comes to the Executioner, Going Under, Alice, Blackout, Never Surrender, Gun Control, About the Cello, and An Actor Prepares. He has also appeared in a number of commercials, including Maxwell House, Colgate Total, Lowe’s Home Improvement, Saturn, Connecticut Lottery, Ameritech, Ford Motors, and Giant Eagle Supermarkets.
He is a graduate of the American Academy of Dramatic Arts where he was selected for the Academy Company. He studied with Ron Van Lieu, Earle Gister, and Peter Francis James at the Actors’ Center as well as studying with Terry Schreiber, New York Stage & Film, and Naked Angels. More information about Blake is available at https://imdb.com/name/nm1083077.
The moment that I knew that I wanted to be an actor was in Boston, after I got out of college. My parents, for my birthday, took me to see Les Misérables and I was so blown away when I walked out of the theatre. I think, at that point, I had already started taking some classes; I had done theatre in junior college. I was now a graduate of college and had decided I wanted to be an actor. I saw that performance in June and that was the moment I knew that’s what I would be for the rest of my life. It was a good show. I was blown away. I couldn’t even get up for intermission. I’ve since seen it about four or five times and I love the story and the show, but it was so pure when I saw it. It was the first tour and it had a magical element that these people were just doing their thing. These people were doing the show from their heart and it was beautiful, powerful.
What was your first paid gig?
An episode of Law & Order is what I consider “first,” although I did do a six-week summer stock show when I got out of the American Academy for a hundred and fifty bucks a week in Courtland, New York, of AR Gurney’s The Dining Room. I had just gotten out of the American Academy’s two-year program and then did the third year, which is the company year where you do productions. The whole angle becomes about introducing you to the community and to the industry. Where else are you going to get a chance to do five plays, fully-produced, right in a row? You wouldn’t that soon out of school, even if you hit it big.
I got that summer stock job sort of right out of school, and then from there it was seven years before someone said, “Oh! Blake,” for a role. I went to one of those NETC cattle calls and literally over the course of the weekend they saw five hundred actors do monologues. I got hired out of that for The Dining Room, so it didn’t feel like I went into the casting room for the specific role and got cast. So, I consider Law & Order as my first paid gig because it was more the result of the pursuit of a job.
With Law & Order, I was in an acting class that I’d pursued because I knew that that theatre company had a lot of young actors and that if I did that class I’d meet a lot of their actors. It was a celebrity-driven company, but with talented, aggressive people who just wanted to impact their careers. Here are these television actors just wanting to do theatre for themselves. I got into that class through word-of-mouth from a friend. The guy who ran that class—Jace Alexander—is just one of those great people in the industry that if he has something for you, he’ll call you. He put myself and another classmate together to do this scene in Law & Order to play German tourists. It was a one-day guest spot. What I had to do was be trained, be able to immediately pick up a German dialect, work on the scene with her, go in there and win the job. But I got the job because I put myself into a class where I knew people worked and people would get to know my work.
I didn’t have an agent, and I think it’s really important for young actors to know that you can work in this business without an agent. I feel like not having an agent stops many people. It becomes their pursuit. Instead of pursuing jobs or theatre companies or apprenticeships or places to go do readings, they start to pursue mailings and chasing down their friends’ agents. I really feel that you’ll have the right agent in the right time if you pursue the people you like and the work you love. I went eight or nine years without an agent and had a career by the time I had my first agent. I found solace in learning that a lot of actors had the same situation. I think there’s an advantage to going a while without an agent because you learn how to survive in this business on your own. Even when you do have an agent, you have all these tools in place to pursue the business. I’ve had an agent for four or five years and I’ve brought them more work than they’ve ever brought me. That’s just the way it is. The agent will do the submissions and negotiate the contracts.
What do you consider your first break?
I think the “first break” has to be the thing that changes the industry’s perception of you as an artist. You know when that happens. In my case, I was the perfect person for the job that no one else could get and I happened to be there at the perfect time. This was the twelfth hour. They had seen hundreds of actors and were in desperate need of an actor to play this guy who could convince everyone that he could possibly have played professional basketball—and I played basketball in college at a high level—and that was when Tom Fontana decided to put me on Oz. That was my first break. I was in a play, playing a professional basketball player at the time that I convinced them to see me.
In my situation, no one knew me from anything and they were just trying to cast this role. It happened to be a storyline that was in the last three episodes of that season. The storyline was that I get involved in this prison basketball game and they cut my Achilles’ tendon so that the prisoners don’t lose the game to the prison guards.
It kind of all converged that summer. I started to realize that the only way I was going to be happy was if I started putting priority on the things that made me happy outside of the industry. I started planning a trip with my wife and we focused on ourselves, our lives, our marriage. Karen got pregnant that summer. We were going to have our first baby and then this opportunity for Oz came up. I operated outside of the box. I didn’t have representation, but I asked this producer of this play if I could get into this audition, how would she recommend I go about it. She started advising me, giving me ideas, and then she said, “Wait a second. I know those casting people from my days as an agent. I’ll call over there and, if they’re still seeing people, I think I could get them to see you.” And she did.
I got a call from the casting director saying they wanted me to audition on a Thursday. On Monday, they had me come to the set to a basketball court to see me play at the level they needed. Interestingly enough, I didn’t hit any shots at the callback because the rims weren’t at the right height, the ball was this, that, the other thing, it takes a while to warm up to play ball, whatever. But, the producer who wrote the storyline for the show was a basketball player and he knew from looking at me that I was a ball player and that was the most important thing. The writer-producer-source of power in the show was Tom Fontana. He was the one that saw my taped audition and said, “That’s the guy,” for whatever reason. Tom had already decided—which I found out later at the cast party at the end of the season—from watching the tape that I was the guy.
My last scene was me being back in the prison system with the obvious injury and them saying, “What’s going to happen to you?” So, it was guaranteed to be a three-episode arc, but I could’ve disappeared because that final scene—if they decided never to use it in the last episode—it could’ve been that Dave Brass got cut, he went to the hospital, and we never see or hear from him again. I started to hear rumors from some people I knew. I saw Terry Kinney—who I worked a lot with—at a screening of a film and he said, “Oh, I talked to Tom. Did you know he’s bringing you back?” And I didn’t. I got these weird phone calls from casting for a while. “What are you doing next spring? Are you going to be available? Would you be available?” I was twisting in the wind. All I could do was go back to the classes I was taking, the things I was doing up to that point. I had no idea what the future held. All I knew was that I had done three episodes.
I know that was my first break because no casting situation since then has been the same as it was before. Some go better, some go worse, but the people I’m dealing with now deal with me as if they may really need me sometime soon. Whether I nail that particular audition or not, on some level, they deal with me as an entity that’s of value. I don’t carry myself the same as I did before because I know what it takes to get good, big jobs. I know it came out of a freedom of being that I had. Even though sometimes I’ll slip out of that, in a certain sense I still have that. I know that I’m going to get the jobs I’m supposed to get.
What do you wish someone had told you at the beginning of your career?
I wish I had known that I should pursue my life—and my happiness within my life—as aggressively as I was trying to get acting work. I was always pushing the envelope of, “How do I get better? How do I get more people to know who I am? How do I move forward as an actor?” I wish that I had known that more probably would’ve come to me if I was pursuing my own happiness and my own life as aggressively as I was pursuing those connections and auditions and classes and things. I really think that I could’ve let more happen than make more happen.
There’s so much you can’t control, but you can control how good you are—and you know it. If I could put my finger on my talent, I know when I’m full of crap and when I’m good. I don’t need anyone else’s opinion to tell me that. So, I’ve been able to always get better. I feel like, if you’re better all the time, people will eventually know it and the roles will come. People will look for you, people will remember you. Some people are ready to work in their teens, some people are ready to work in their twenties, some people are ready to work in their thirties, and so on. It’s just the way it is. And you won’t know it until it happens.
I’m a much better actor now that I have kids because who I am at my core is someone that needed to be a dad. I feel like I own what I do and own who I am more now that I know who I am—which is, predominantly, a father and a husband. I never would’ve known that. I didn’t anticipate that that’s how it was going to be. It just turned out that way. Like a lot of young actors, I always thought I was ready, all the time, for years before anything ever happened in my career. I assumed that I was going to get every job and that I was right for everything and that people were just not giving me a chance. The industry was just conspiring against me. I felt that. I felt that all the time. “They don’t know! They don’t know me! If they would only give me a chance. If they gave me that job.” But in hindsight, I didn’t know. I don’t pass judgment on that being right, wrong, good, or bad. It’s just how it happened.
I also wish I had been told at the beginning of my career, “You can and you will work without representation. You’ve just got to figure out how.” Also, if it’s not fun, you’re doing it wrong. It won’t always be fun, but on some level, the work, the auditions, the life—if that’s not fun, you’re doing it wrong.
What is your favorite thing about being an actor?
I love the possibility of it. I love the possibility of every audition. I love the possibility that every day is going to be different than the day before. I love the possibility of the people I’ll meet along the way. I love the possibility of the people I’ll get to research and play along the way. I love the freedom I’ve had. I truly love that it’s worked out that I’ve gotten to spend a lot of time with my wife and kids. I don’t think that guys that work a seventy-hour job get to do that. That doesn’t happen for every actor. I’ve lucked out that way. A lot of actors have their career success and it takes them away from their family. I’ve just been lucky that in my beginning, my breaks were working on shows that shot close to where I was, working at theatres that were close to where I was, so I got to come and go to my family.
What made you choose Los Angeles?
We all knew we needed to do this. The industry informed me that it was time to be in LA as opposed to being in New York. My wife is always up for anything. I highly recommend that people marry people that could support their choice to do this with their lives. By marrying people that don’t support your choice, you’re sort of acknowledging that you are not really behind your choice to do this in your life. I do think you can have whatever you want in your life and make it work. There are people who will support you doing what you want to do. I thought for a long time, as an actor, that I couldn’t have a relationship like the one I have with Karen. I thought it was an either/or equation. I went a long time not thinking that existed. I found that I’ve gotten my career out of my relationship with her and out of having kids. I married someone that was always going to support me being who I needed to be. A lot of actors think they have to choose. I would say they’re wrong and that they’re living a very narrow life and therefore acting in a very narrow way. You can have it all. There will be compromises along the way but you can create the life you want.
Do you ever feel like giving up?
From the moment that I saw Les Misérables, I knew I was born to be an actor. It doesn’t mean that I haven’t at times had doubts along the way, doubts about my own ability to make it happen, but I can’t say that I’ve ever known that I was going to leave it, even for half an hour. I know I’m supposed to be a storyteller. That to me opens the possibility of being a producer or director or writer. Telling great human being stories is what interests me. It’s how I operate as an actor. I see myself as a part of the whole. A lot of actors succeed by just being able to focus on the task at hand. I had a great acting teacher—one of the best—Ron Van Lieu. He’s now the master teacher at Yale and he was, for many years, the master teacher at NYU. I came across him at the Actors Center. That was the only place he taught outside of those masters programs. I went in there and I auditioned for them and I didn’t get into his class right away. I took other classes and I kept angling for his class and eventually got into his class. I’ve now taken four or five and I’ve met some of my most favorite actor-peers who I know are going to be names for years to come there.
He helped me find that I was the type of actor that was going to have an overview as well as be in the moment. I had to marry that as I worked and not judge that I must not be in the moment if I can see the whole as I do it. I remember for a lot of years, it didn’t kind of work for me. I was trying to turn off this part of my brain or deny its reality because I could see the whole while I was doing the work. I had acting teachers that would try to beat that out of me. Ron taught me how to run on both rails at the same time and not to judge that. He did teach me to play the moments instead of my ideas that I had about the moments, so I did have to make a flip. It’s great to have a whole bunch of ideas, but then it’s time to act. And acting doesn’t happen in a set of ideas you bring to it. All my ideas are what I have to bring, too. As long as I don’t play them in the moments, if I don’t judge them, some of them stick. Some of them don’t. They make me an inventive, problem-solving type of actor who sees the bigger picture and can therefore fit into the whole. It opens up a whole bunch of possibilities about who I am as an actor now. It was a liability that has since become who I am.
How did you get your first agent?
I got out of the American Academy in ’92 or ’93 and did the third-year conservatory program. Part of that year is also a showcase. We did a bunch of scenes: my very first scene night. It doesn’t work for me. I went many, many, many years without an agent. I was in New York seven or eight years without an agent. After I got on Oz without an agent, I learned the lesson of, “Don’t be afraid to ask people to help you because it’s the only way people can help you.” Be prepared that they can respond in whatever way they’re going to respond and that doesn’t mean anything either.
Because of my type, when I went to inform the world that I was now a working actor to be taken seriously, they still didn’t see that. The agents that I did meet—and I was able to get some meetings—didn’t know how I fit on Oz. To explain the part wasn’t enough. Agents needed to see it to believe it. They need to know you’re “money.” An agent’s job is to make money and the easiest way for them to do that is if you’re already making somebody money somewhere. They’ll take you then. Or, if you bring them money and they say, “Oh! I’ll take a cut of that.” Or, they come to see you in a show or a play or a showcase and absolutely know that that’s “money” and no one else knows, but they have to be visionary for that to happen.
I got some meetings after the three episodes of Oz and a lot of people looked at me as an oddity. One agent at Don Buchwald said, “You’ve had an amazing career without representation. I have a lot of clients that don’t have the credits you have. You’re a rarity. You’re in your mid-thirties and you’re having your first break now.” I am an oddity and that’s why agents passed on me. They didn’t get it. When Oz started airing and I got invited back for the second season, then I got a few more meetings. I went into EWCR and I met Renee Panichelli. She and I just connected on a human level. I got her. She got me. She understood that I was an actor’s actor, someone that was always getting better, someone that had made a lot of stuff happen for himself. She just liked me. She liked me as a dad, she liked me as a person, she liked me as an actor. They asked me to do a monologue, which I took as a good thing. It earned them a lot of respect from me because they wanted to get to know me more as an actor, not just what they could see on Oz or from my theatre credits. I know my monologue blew them away, but to seal the deal I went to Tom Fontana and asked him to write a recommendation. I could’ve done that at any time along the way because I had known that he was willing to help me. But instead of pissing that opportunity away on all these other people that had passed on me, that had seen me, I waited for the one that I connected to and where I thought, “I’ll be home with these people. They’ll get on the phone every day and say, ‘If you haven’t seen Blake Robbins, you’re crazy.'” I was with EWCR until last year.
Who are your favorite actors?
I’ve always loved Kevin Kline. He’s so adventurous, and bold, and surprising, and can do it all. I love watching actors who surprise me. I’d rather be drawn into a performance than to have a performance pushed at me. I love vulnerability in performance. John Travolta has amazing vulnerability and generosity and you can tell, whether he’s playing good guys or bad guys, that as a human being, he’s generous. He’s generous with the other actors.
How do you choose the material you work on?
I wish I could attribute it to someone, but some veteran actor said, “There are three things you base taking a job on and you can prioritize however you choose. It’s the script, the people, and the money.” Since I haven’t worked for very much money along the way, that’s always come third for me. I also fundamentally believe that if you do things you’re passionate about, the money will follow. For me, always, “script” is 1A and “people” is 1B. When I’ve used that, I’ve done some projects that maybe business people—agents and managers—would’ve asked me not to, but they’ve always turned into wonderful experiences. People have got to get to know you, and for them to know you, you’ve got to know yourself. And part of knowing yourself is what you do have passion about and what you don’t have passion about. Trust that you’re going to get the jobs, but don’t do anything that you can’t have some passion about. Along the line, I’ve realized that when things happen for me is when I truly believe I’m doing something of value, something that I have a voice about, something that I have passion about. I seek that out. Value your time on Earth and value the time of those around you.
What do you do when nothing is happening in your career?
I would tell any young actor that you don’t have to do everything today or tomorrow, but you should always take a step. And any time you find that nothing’s happening, there is a step you can take. Whether it’s send out one headshot to someone you’re really passionate about getting to know, volunteer to work on something you know is going to teach you about the industry, go to a reading series, or get in a class, one step in any one of those moments when you feel like, “What’s going on here? Nothing’s happening,” moves the ball forward. It always leads to another step and eventually it leads to a journey.
This interview was conducted on September 16, 2004, and it originally appeared in Acting Qs: Conversations with Working Actors by Bonnie Gillespie and Blake Robbins, available at Amazon.