David Cassidy on the Web
Ryan Cassidy Talks about his Family and Career
Ruby and the Rockits Unites the 4Four Cassidy Brothers
July 29, 2009
By Francine Brokaw
Ryan Cassidy tried his hand at acting, like the rest of his famous family, however he discovered his true passion is for set dressing.
"I'm what they call the lead man, set dresser, which is that I oversee it being done," the youngest Cassidy brother explains. "The decorator and I work hand in hand. And that's kind of how it works."
What does a set dresser do?
"We go out, there's a variety of vendors and rental houses and prop houses that we use and we get what's appropriate for that set. And we try to get it decorated, -we call it dressing-dressed in for the actors to use so the actors know basically where they're going. So, that's what we do. And depending on what the script calls for, it will depend on if it's a pizza parlor, if it's a beauty salon, that set will apply to that episode and then that set comes down and the new set goes up. That's what we do."
Acting, Singing, and Dressing Sets
Ryan is a soft-spoken man who, by way of his family and his past, knows all the ins and outs of show business. "I didn't know what I wanted to do for a long time. Well, I did, at one point I wanted to be an actor and then I wanted to be a cop, like a police detective. I never thought that we would all be doing something together though."
Ryan is an actor and singer, but he explains how he ended up becoming a set dresser. "I had always liked decorating, if you will. And being a straight male that I am, I had a hard time explaining that to people," he says with a wry smile. "But, I always liked decorating and I had to figure out some way to earn a living outside of being an actor because I wasn't working enough and I was getting very frustrated with the process of what actors go through, which is so much rejection. I would get down to the wire on jobs and then somebody else would get it, [or] be called back four or five times for the same audition. I got a job on a movie and then they lost their financing. So I was in a direction of, like, this isn't going anywhere for me. I didn't want to be the guy walking down the street saying, 'Well, I'm an actor but I'm not really working.' And I wasn't making a lot of money. Not that it's about the money, but I had to find something that I felt was more concrete, that also was creative. So when I bought my house in the early nineties I was working for Jim Henson productions. And my brother Shaun would always come over and see [that] my house would always look different every time he'd come in. And he said, 'You know, you may be in the wrong line of work.'" So it was his brother who brought up the new direction for Ryan and he is happy with the path he has taken.
Ryan Cassidy Has Dressed Some Famous Sets
"My favorite is to do period stuff because I think I love history, I love trying to find the right kind of chair for that, you know 1930's bar, or whatever. I love doing that kind of stuff. I also love antiques and I love history." Ryan has been the set dresser on a number of shows. "I had a really great experience working on E.R."
Not only has Ryan dressed some of the most famous TV sets, he has also worked in films. "I did this movie called Semi-Pro with Will Ferrell. You know, movies are so different than television because the scheduling is different. They're spread out in a much longer time frame to get them done. Movies can take four to six months to make, or even a year. So the sets are huge and they take sometimes weeks to dress. So I worked on that movie and that was actually exciting because it was different locations. I like going to different places -places that you would never go to in your life unless you were working on a movie. Something like a hole in the wall place in downtown L.A. that bums hang out at. And suddenly you're dressing it for a film."
The Cassidy Brothers Working Together
So what took the Cassidy brothers so long to work together? "That's a good question. I think Shaun had this figured out, what the right vehicle, you know, would be. And I think with the help of the network (ABC Family), the network actually had the idea of putting a show together where there was music and where both brothers, it would be like two brothers in it, or all of us, so, he thought of the story, pitched it, and he thought it would be important for me to be working on it based on the fact that it would be a family channel and family show." Ryan grins when asked if he might be seen on camera one of these days. "Well, you never know. We'll see how far the show goes."
Ruby and the Rockits airs Tuesdays on ABC Family.
