We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Kyle Rankin. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Kyle below.
Kyle, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today The first dollar you earn is always exciting – it’s like the start of a new chapter and so we’d love to hear about the first time you sold or generated revenue from your creative work?
Growing up in Jackson, Mississippi did not offer very many acting opportunities outside of community theatre. Being a student athlete all my life also did not grant me much free time to pursue the stage either. If that weren’t enough, my high school did not offer a theater program. So, acting was a scarcity and honestly looked at as “pointless” for most of my young life. However, in the back of my head I always knew it’s where I wanted to end up. Thankfully, my mother, Tammy, was and still is my biggest supporter. In July of 2013, she found me an audition in town for a commercial for The University of Mississippi Medical Center. I had made a great impression with the casting director Sharon Ward, and she hired me as one of the actors. Thrilled to even have the opportunity, I had my mother drive me to Oxford, MS for the shoot day. We spent a total of 12 hours there traveling from location to location, and waiting around as you often do in this industry. I made friends with the two other kids in the commercial and had an absolute blast… Only for the commercial to air and the only part of me you could see was my left foot passing a window! That’s show biz. I had honestly not even thought about getting paid for it, I was happy to have just been there. However, a few weeks later a bit of mail came to our house with my name on it. I was interested cause I didn’t ever receive mail, but I opened it anyway to find a check for $150 made out to me. I was in awe. Little did I know, this would be the first of many more to come in a career that had just begun.
Kyle, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
Well, for starters, my name is Kyle Reid Rankin. I love giraffes, the color orange, and the number 24. I grew up in Jackson, Mississippi. I have an older brother, Ryne, and two younger sisters , Layne and Camryn. ( We all have “Y”s in our name), and I have a cat named Theodore whom I consider my son. I lived in Mississippi for 21 years. I played soccer for two years at Pearl River Community College. After a few years of working while living with my Aunt Tara in Biloxi, MS, I moved to Nashville, Tennessee with my brother in 2018. We chose Nashville because of a trip we took to Paducah, Kentucky to see the 2017 Total Solar Eclipse. The eclipse was such an eye-opening experience. We stayed in Nashville for one night and caught an open mic at Third Coast Comedy Club. At the time I was pursuing stand-up comedy as a potential career, even though I didn’t consider myself funny in that regard. After that trip, I knew that Nashville was where I wanted to call home.
I still knew I wanted to act, and I was unrepresented. I began working on Broadway at Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville (R.I.P) doing open mic stand-up at Third Coast on Monday nights, and sending self tapes on Backstage to try and book any acting gig I could. It was scratching the performing itch I had. However, what I was missing was a sense of community. I did a quick search online for an acting class and found The 4th Wall Acting Studios. I came to audit one class and I was immediately hooked. I knew it was where I needed to be. Joining in 2019 was the best decision I’ve ever made apart from the actual move to Nashville. It was there that I met almost all of the people who inspire me and push me each and every day to further my career and advance my craft.
Since then, I have been represented by one of the top talent agencies in the Southeast. I signed with Melinda Eisnaugle at The Avenue Agency in 2019. Melinda has been an amazing agent and representative. I have been fortunate enough to book some fairly impressive gigs through the Avenue. I booked my first ever audition through The Avenue almost 2 weeks after signing. It was a docu-drama series called The Burden of Proof directed by Cynthia Hill (Currently available on HBO/MAX). I recently booked a film starring a few A-list actors set to release in 2025 that I’m excited about but currently am under NDA . I have also booked a handful of music videos which are abundant in Nashville. But my most shining moment was becoming the Brand Voice of Bojangles. In 2020 I did my first ever voice over audition in my closet for fast food joint famous for their chicken biscuits . A few months later I was booked as the voice for all Bojangles commercials. I am still currently the voice of Bojangles to this day and it is definitely what I am known for.
Acting has always been a main focus of mine, but I have dabbled in the role as a director. I have produced and directed a lovely short film called The Stars in New Mexico. It is my second directorial and I made the film with a great team of my two very good friends Taylor Dupuis, who also wrote the film, and Nicholas Griffy, who starred in my first directorial. Together we are TNK Productions. The Stars in New Mexico is currently in its film festival phase. I hope to continue making movies with my friends for the remainder of my career.
In the past few years I have taken on another form of the TV/ Film industry. In 2021 I began training stunts with Jeron Bray whom I also met through The 4th Wall. I was in class with him briefly and knew him as a strong actor. Then I reached out to him when I found out he was a stunt performer/ coordinator. I had always had an interest in stunts since I was a kid watching The Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers. Originally, I wanted to just get some training under my belt to add to my resume. Jeron kindly took me under his wing and threw me into a few projects almost immediately. He made me an official team member of the Action Design Services (ADS) Stunt Team. Stunts has quickly become a passion of mine and is what I spend a majority of my time focusing on. I plan on continuing and furthering my career as a member of ADS as we constantly grow and become a prominent force in the stunt world.
If there is one thing that I can take away from all my training and teachings: Make your own opportunities, and more opportunities will come.
For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?
As an artist, I am constantly pushing myself to go further and further. In the acting world, we develop new ways to portray truth in the characters we embody. It’s not an easy task. We’ll go through phases of growth where we achieve new milestones and have breakthroughs, then we’ll hit these plateaus where we can’t seem to get much traction and we get those thoughts and feelings of “Am I good enough?”, “Am I working hard enough?”, “Do I even deserve this?” Those can be detrimental questions to ask yourself. When I was a kid it was my understanding that you had to move out to New York or Hollywood to be successful in the film world, and I thought I didn’t have what it took to “make it”, so why even try? I’m very well sure that those are thoughts that every single artist has had at some point or another in their careers. We are often our own worst critics because of those kinds of thoughts. However, the most rewarding aspect of artistry are the moments when we can quiet the voice in our heads that tell us we aren’t good enough, and step into a space where we feel fearless and powerful. It is one of the most sought-after feelings when we finally satisfy our own judgements.
Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?
A few years ago, I was bartending in one of the nicest restaurants in downtown Nashville. I had been working there for some time. When customers would come up to my bar and start up conversations with me, they’d usually ask me about my life and what else I did when I wasn’t making cocktails. I had gotten into a bad habit of downplaying my career. I would say things like ” I’m just a bartender, but I’m also doing the acting thing.” or ” I mainly bartend, but I’m kind of an actor too.” I would use soft wording like that to avoid them asking me if they’d seen me in anything, obliging me to clarify further that I was very early on in my career. It became embarrassing at times to constantly be telling people you’re just starting out, and there was always this stigma that if I wasn’t an actor in something this random person had seen, then I must not actually be an actor. These kinds of interactions are confidence killers, and I’d always try and make the few things I had done seem much bigger than I needed to try and get some sort of validation from this person. It was like this for years. It had gotten to the point where I decided to stop mentioning being an actor, and I was just going to wait until I booked some impressive gig to tell anyone who asked that I was an actor. So, I would just tell people what I thought was the truth, that I was just a bartender.
I know this happens to countless artists all over the world. It can be scary sometimes to put yourself out there when you haven’t “Made it” yet. But, my acting coach told me that I needed to change my point of view on how I handled those types of situations. He said that if I am an actor and I wish to pursue it, I have to believe it more than anyone else on this Earth. That all starts with actualizing it by saying it confidently and consistently. If I believe that the current state of my career is in-fact a part of being an actor, then I need to say that. So, I changed my strategy. When someone would ask me what I did, I’d tell them the truth, “I am an actor.” It needs no further explanation. I am an actor because I spend my time acting, not because someone can recognize me from a film they’ve seen. The same way that I am a stuntman because I train every week to progress my skills in stunts.
It was this change of mindset that immediately affected the trajectory of my career. I gained way more confidence in my craft, I felt more sure of who I was as an artist, and I realized that the only validation I needed, was my own.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.stuntnashville.com
- Instagram: @kylerankin_
Image Credits
Juliet Wolf, Penumbra Entertainment, Markay Media, The 4th Wall Acting Studio,