LOCAL ACTOR
Patrick Roper – Emperor By Je s s i ca Ho l thaus Badour
Y ou might hear him before you see him (thanks to his trademark deep voice), but at a towering six-foot-four, Patrick Roper is easily spotted in a crowd, too. He appears next in a powerful supporting role as Hank Beaumont in the pre- Civil War thriller Emperor with director Mark Amin (released earlier this past spring). Emperor is based on the story of Shields Green, a slave from South Carolina who fought alongside John Brown at the Harpers Ferry Raid. “Not much is known historically about Green, so a lot of legends rose out of it. This film is based on what is known, along with legends that sparked up around him,” Roper explains. “In the beginning of the film, there’s a massive power shift on the plantation Green lives at. As the new overseer, I ultimately play the character who alters the course of Green’s life before he goes off on his grand adventure.” Emperor was shot entirely in Savannah (perfectly realistic for pre-Civil War). While on set, Roper worked with M.C. Gainey, a character actor notorious for playing villains, whom Roper was very excited to meet. “Late one afternoon, we’re both in rocking chairs on the porch of this big mansion and he reaches over and touches my forearm and says, ‘Patrick, I gotta tell ya, I hate watching myself work. I don’t like watching my own movies. But I love to watch other actors, and it’s been an honor and joy to watch you work today’,’” Roper describes. “It had that quality of ‘passing the torch’ from one screen villain to another, which felt so awesome.” Roper spent a huge amount of time researching overseers’ relationships with slaves in the 19 th century. “I took it to heart to get that as right as I could,” he says. “It was a responsibility as far as I was concerned.” Just before Emperor auditions, Roper was diagnosed with Stage 1 Renal Cell Carcinoma. Surgery removed a key-lime-sized-tumor from his kidney a few days before callbacks. “I was lucky it was caught early,” he says (noting he battled cancer at age 19, too). “After surgery, I was in the hospital and got the callback. I still had staples and a drain attached to me, but I walked into my audition, did it, and got it.” The Seattle native has been in Georgia since 2013, becoming a dynamic rising star. Known for playing intense antagonists and strong anti-heroes, he enjoys the challenge of a damaged character. “I tend to play a lot of darker, villainous characters. When I first sat down with Mark
(Arum), he looked at me kind of weirdly and asked, ‘Have you played anything like this before?’ I told him I was recently a homicidal killer with cleavers. He was surprised to find I was such a nice gentleman,” Roper laughs. While each role is different, he notes we all have a darkness within us—actors are just willing to bring it to the surface, in short controlled doses (costumes help). “I’ll stare in the mirror and absorb the image, set it in my head, and I can keep it on idle as needed. I don’t want to sit in character forever,” he says. “I keep it on a low simmer while I’m working and then I can get into when they call ‘action’. I’ll walk away from a tough scene and breathe it out and get ready for the next one.” Roper points out that film opportunities in Georgia have grown with increasing rapidity for actors like himself, who came here looking to get a foot in the door. With its smaller industry environment, Roper says there’s an edge in Atlanta you can’t find in other big film cities. “Thanks to the government and community, every- one got together and figured out what we needed,” Roper says. “We’ve gone from a point where the best a local ac- tor could hope for was a walk-on one-liner, to studios trusting locals with guest-starring roles. No one was more shocked than I was to get as large of a role as this in Em- peror . I’m pushing as hard as I can, to do what I can, as fast as I can.” In addition to his career in acting, he’s led a life that’s anything but ordinary. For example, he ran a very successful business as a kiltmaker (yes, that’s a thing), designing thousands of kilts for people all over the world, tying him back to his red-headed Celtic roots. “It became that gig I did to pay rent and get food, but by the time Braveheart came out, my business increased exponentially,” he says. “Then 16 years after doing that, my hands started hurting and I was tired.” A week later, he boarded a plane and began traveling the world. He’s dogsledded in the Yukon Territory, ridden camels through the Arabian desert, done photo safaris in Southern Africa and India, and gone cage diving with Great White Sharks at Isla Guadalupe—just to name a few adventures. “I’ve always had that personality, I’ve always taken risks and liked to work outside of the box,” he says. “I have a tendency to look at things and, instead of approaching things head on—which is usually when you butt your head—I like to go over or under the wall.”
Patrick Roper
Left: On the set of Emperor , photo by Seth F. Johnson; right: 2019 Savannah Film Alliance Honors Gala’s red carpet
Roper has won Best Actor for several f ilms and is recognized for his recurring role of Ken in the 2019 hit comedy series “Florida Girls” on POP TV. Watch the Emperor movie trailer: youtube/TKG7dnF-dSU and learn more about Roper’s career (and travel adventures) via IMBd, or contact Amanda Abelita with Abelita-Burns PR (www.abelitaburnspr.com). In the wake of the pandemic, Universal Pictures Home Entertainment, the distributor for Emperor, chose to release the f ilm on August 18th on DVD. It is also available for streaming on Amazon Prime, ITunes, VUDU, Fandangonow, Google Play, Microsoft, Verizon Fios, Ixf intiy, and Direct TV Cinema.
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