Lost Girl’s Rick Howland: There Are Many More Pages to Trick’s Story

In the next feature from our visit to the set of Lost Girl back in the spring, we sit down with Rick Howland to discuss Trick’s role in the series and speculate on what’s coming up for him in the final season.

When this journey began five seasons ago, did you imagine that Lost Girl would have a this long life and that the Fae world would grow as it has?

When we were first shooting, I think I was talking with Jay (Firestone), and I had read that he did Relic Hunter that had gone for five years, and he said that [Lost Girl] would go for five years. As an actor, you kind of learn to just wait until that actually happens. I love that idea, I want that, but I’m not going to put all of my eggs in that basket. But he’s got the touch. If he says it’s going, it’s going, and he did that with Relic Hunter as well. I was happy to be a part of that and it excited me that the passion was coming from the top, which is a really great thing.

Trick has been a fascinating character from the beginning, and a bit of the mystery surrounding him has been revealed each season. I’m guessing there is still so much more that we haven’t learned about him yet.

There’s so much in his backstory. The guy’s been alive for like 2000 years. There are a lot of pages to his thick book — Trick’s a War and Peace, not a Reader’s Digest.

That’s a great analogy.

I certainly feel that at the end of Season 4, there was so much more information known by everybody else by that point that he has a new place to come from.

I got a sense in the fourth season that not everyone trusted Trick, which I thought was interesting.

Yeah, his secrecy was really starting to show to everyone else. What exactly is he hiding? And we saw a lot of the darker stuff with the decisions that Trick had to make — power decisions like what he did with Rainer. It’s like two boys in a schoolyard having a fight, but it’s on this epic level when you get that powerful.

Whenever Trick has needed to tap into his power or revisit something that he’s tried burying in the past, to me it really looked like he approached those situations with some hesitation and perhaps didn’t want to take that route.

Just look around the world right now and how power corrupts people when they get into those positions. Trick’s been there, he’s done that, and maybe he’s a little bit afraid of going back there and he doesn’t necessarily want to.

Trick and Bo were at odds in Season 4 and didn’t see eye to eye on many things. Will their closer relationship return in Season 5, or will we continue to see some of that tension that has come with Bo becoming more independent in her abilities?

I think she is more independent. It’s not like he’s taught her everything in these past four seasons, but she’s got herself more under her belt. I think he’s going to take more of a back seat approach, but I certainly hope there is more of that closeness because our scenes together are so touching sometimes, and your heart warms. It happens in the scene with us as actors, and it translates well to the audience. I really hope that there are. I can’t imagine that there won’t be. First of all, it’s in our blood, it’s who we are, and we’re related. Blood is thicker than water. No matter what Bo does, she’ll always be Trick’s granddaughter.

Trick was also very protective of Kenzi last season, which was a great touch. With some new characters entering the picture this season, will Trick form that kind of relationship with any of them, as a protector, or a mentor?

I don’t know any of that right now, but I’d like to hope so. That’s one of those layers of Trick, that he’s a grandfatherly character. He’s like the mother always asking if you’ve had enough yet and if she can feed you some more, and what else can I do to help. In fact, Trick just overhears stuff and goes to his lair to look up how he can help in a situation. I think it was back in Season 3 where Trick was kind of behind in the plot. He was like, “I’ve got the information,” and everyone else was like, “We’re already past that point.” He’s always trying to be whatever he can be to help without having to step all the way back in again.

Trick and Vex had those great scenes in Season 4, and what I thought was really great was Trick trying to show Vex that there is good in him.

Yes, it was, “You actually come from a good place. You think you’re just scum and have this low opinion of yourself, but you’re not.” I think that was a beautiful thing. I really liked being able to play that scene with [Paul Amos] because I got to play Trick a little more verbose and a little more excitable. I liked that fact that the director could have come in and said, “Maybe you should play it more staid like Trick always is,” but they let me play it this other way, arms stretched out as I told this story. When you get a story like that to tell as an actor, you want to make it big and bright and visual for the audience to see. I was saying in a panel the other day that when I have a story like that, I like to see the story in my head, and then I play that picture in my head. There is a technical part of that for sure so you get it all right, but it’s about that story and painting that picture. I hope that there’s more of that. There’s a very nice duality to it all.

Those scenes felt so real. Both of these characters stepped back a bit, let their guards down and became two guys drinking and sharing war stories.

I think that’s also Trick’s style of manipulation, to get somebody else to drop their boundaries to hear what he has to say. Trick went to Vex’s level with it, having a drink and talking about it.

Watch Rick in Season 5 of Lost Girl, starting this Sunday at 9pm ET/PT only on Showcase!

Photo Courtesy of Showcase