Matt Ryan on Bringing John Constantine to the Screen

The Arrowverse may be ending and ‘DC’s Legends of Tomorrow’ may be over, but the love for the franchise and its characters continues. One such character is Matt Ryan’s John Constantine. After headlining his own show, the character was absorbed into the popular DC Comics franchise. Ryan attended the Toronto Comicon and shared his love for the occult detective.

The End of NBC’s ‘Constantine’

‘Constantine’ was originally an NBC show, and it lasted only one season. Ryan did not expect such a short run but explained how it all went down.

“On network television, generally what happens is when a show gets picked up to go to series, you do 13 episodes. And then the network, once the series airs, they'll decide whether they pick up what they call ‘the back nine’ to make it a full season. Now, so we were shooting, about… Episode nine or 10, I can't really remember, but I got a call from the producer saying look, “It's not so good news, but it's not so bad. NBC are not picking up the show for the back nine but they're also not canceling the show. Because they want to see if they want to pick it up for the season after.” And I was like “Okay, well, is that good?” You know, it's not terrible because there's still a chance that the show can get picked up. So, let's see. So, the good thing about that was, you know, it's a lot of hours working on a television show. You play the lead role and especially in the first season of ‘Constantine’ it was very heavy. You’re working 14 hours a day, which I loved, but when it came to the end, Episode 13, I was like, “Oh, okay, actually, that’s a nice amount of episodes to do.”

But the constant uncertainty about the status of the show left the cast in limbo. Ryan explained that he was stuck in his contract, which meant he couldn’t take on other projects in case the show was picked up for another season—apparently, he received some lucrative offers which he had to turn down. After filming wrapped, he took a break and did a play on Broadway, so there was a ‘silver lining’. In the end though, ‘Constantine’ was canceled.

A New Life for John Constantine

There was a time when a canceled show meant bidding farewell to the characters forever, but that hasn’t been the case for many DC Comics characters. John Constantine lost his own series, but he was revived in the Arrowverse. Ryan stated that that was the beauty of the character—he can fit in anywhere.

“John Constantine is a peculiar fellow. At every part of the journey, I always thought it was over. You know, after 13 episodes, I was like, “Okay, move on.”

And then Ryan got a call asking if he’d like to reprise the role on one episode of ‘Arrow.’ “The funny thing about that episode of ‘Arrow’ is I was just about to start my rehearsals for a play in New York. And they were like, “Hey, can we do an episode?” I was like, great. And it was exactly in the same time slot as I was doing rehearsals. And I was like, “I can't.” So, in all fairness to them, they changed their schedule around. So, they shot Episode Five instead of Episode Four; disrupted everything. Poor Stephen Amell [the star of ‘Arrow’].’

“There was the question of like, “do you want a wig for this because it's one episode and I was like “no.” I’ll go blonde. And then I flew back to New York, died my hair back to this [dark] color, and started rehearsing.

“And the funny thing is like, I thought that was it then. And then I got a call to do one of the animated movies. So, I was like, ‘Okay’. So, like, he keeps on coming back. And then after that, I thought it was done. And then I was doing another play in London. And I got a call saying “Would you like to do an episode of “Legends of Tomorrow’ as John Constantine?” And I was like, “Sure.” And then I did an episode and then they were like, “Would you like to do a season?” And then we had a big conversation about like, you know, it's a very different style of show. And I was a little concerned about the style and bringing John into that world and kind of, you know, not sticking to the DNA of the character. So, we had a great chat about that. And they reassured me.

“And the way that I always saw that was, it's a little bit like John pops up in a lot of other comics, you know, and those comics might be different style and different tones. So, for me, it was like John's popping up in a different comic, which just so happens to be ‘Legends of Tomorrow.’ And that's the way I justified it and it actually made sense to the character and how he kind of spreads himself across the DC Universe and the character and the comic books.

Ryan explained that after his first season on ‘DC’s Legends of Tomorrow’ was done, he was asked to do another, and then another, before he finally bid goodbye to Constantine. What started as a one-off episode turned into three seasons of immense character growth. “The one thing I've learned with John is ‘never say never.’”

Bringing John Constantine to Life

It was obvious from the panel that Matt Ryan is a fan of DC Comics, especially John Constantine. He has read all 300 issues of the ‘Hellblazer’ comics. He started reading them when he first got the role, but couldn’t get through them all before the filming of ‘Constantine’ began. He would, however, finish 14 hours of filming each day and try and read for a couple of hours, but he eventually stopped as it was tiring him out. When the future of the show and Ryan’s chance to continue playing the character was uncertain, he gave up reading the series—he confessed he was too heartbroken to step into the world. But now that he’s portrayed the character across multiple shows and animated films, Ryan has been able to catch up with the lore.

Ryan was invested in getting the character right, so he poured over the character’s on-page physicality to bring those eccentricities to the screen. In fact, Ryan explained that he’d carry a comic book with him on set, so if he ever got stuck wondering how Constantine would behave, he’d pull out the comic and find him.

But, since Constantine is quite a gruff and aloof person, Ryan found that being on the free and fun set of ‘DC’s Legends of Tomorrow’ was a bit harder for him. Ryan explained that he had to “hold myself back from kind of letting rip.”

What mattered was maintaining who Constantine is at his core, so it was important that across ‘Constantine’ and ‘DC’s Legends of Tomorrow’, “the themes with John keep on repeating themselves and you find this with great characters and a great story, the theme keeps on repeating itself.”

“As soon as you see John having a little bit of happiness in his life, you know something's gonna go wrong. And that's what we wanted to do with that last season where I play Constantine on ‘Legends’, make him happy, and then rip it all away from him because that's the thematic journey of John, and that's kind of universal across all the comics.”

Ryan doesn’t believe he’ll fit into the new regime of DC television, but he’s all right with that. He’s looking forward to enjoying everything that’s coming up just like the rest of us—as a fan.