From Dark Matter to Haunted Hotel and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Jimmi Simpson continues to demonstrate his incredible range as an actor. During our conversation on The Buzz, he opened up about finding humanity in unconventional characters and revealed an unexpected injury that affected his performance on Dark Matter.
I think it’s safe to say we’re in the season of Jimmi Simpson! Whether he’s playing Ryan Holder in Dark Matter, Abaddon in Haunted Hotel, or occasionally returning as the unforgettable Liam McPoyle in It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Jimmi has developed a remarkable ability to bring some of television’s most unusual characters to life.
When he joined me on The Buzz, I wanted to explore what makes these characters so fascinating. Of course, we had to begin with Dark Matter, especially after Ryan found himself confronting the possibility that his scientific discoveries had inadvertently contributed to thousands of deaths across alternate realities.
If there’s one character who seemingly cannot catch a break, it’s Ryan Holder.
Jimmi agreed, pointing out the irony of Ryan’s circumstances. While his intelligence helped create the technology behind the box, Ryan wasn’t necessarily the person pushing its possibilities to their extremes. Nevertheless, he continues to experience some of its most devastating consequences.
As we discussed Ryan’s journey, I decided to take the alternate-reality concept in a slightly different direction.
Instead of asking Jimmi whether he’d want to encounter another version of himself, I suggested something I would personally love to see: an alternate universe featuring several of his television characters together. Imagine Ryan Holder, Liam McPoyle, Abaddon, and his character from The Walking Dead: Dead City sharing the same scene!
Jimmi loved the idea, and the conversation opened the door to something even more interesting: his approach to portraying characters who aren’t always easy to understand.
Jimmi acknowledged that he’s played his fair share of dark and quirky characters over the years. In fact, he joked that even his mother doesn’t quite understand why he gravitates toward such unusual roles.
“I’m a deeply heart forward person,” he explained.
For Jimmi, playing a villain isn’t simply about portraying someone who enjoys doing terrible things. Instead, he searches for the emotional motivations behind their decisions. Sometimes those characters lack self-awareness. Sometimes they believe they’re doing the right thing. And sometimes their actions, however misguided, come from a place of love.
He explained that he tries to bring humanity to every character he portrays, even those whose actions might suggest they have very little of it.
While discussing the physical demands of playing Ryan Holder, Jimmi shared a behind-the-scenes story I genuinely had no idea about.
During production in Chicago, he found himself with approximately six hours of free time and decided to take a bicycle ride around the city. Unfortunately, the weather had other plans.
Rain began falling almost immediately, and while attempting to make it back, Jimmi lost control of his bicycle at an intersection. He slid into a curb and suffered a serious leg fracture.
As he put it, he “cracked the leg in half.”
The injury required him to wear a cast, but filming still had to continue. Jimmi explained that he had already established a limp for Ryan following a bone marrow procedure in the storyline. When it came time to film a sequence involving Ryan running toward the box, he was still recovering from his real-life injury.
He even recalled hoping that his actual injury affected the same leg as the limp he’d previously established for the character.
What makes the story particularly fascinating is how Jimmi viewed the experience. Despite the physical difficulty, he believed the injury may have added another layer of authenticity to Ryan’s desperation during the scene.
I couldn’t let Jimmi leave without discussing Haunted Hotel, particularly the popularity of his character Abaddon.
With the second season available on Netflix, fans have embraced the character in ways that extend beyond the screen, including dressing up as Abaddon.
Jimmi told me he’d been looking at fan costumes on Instagram and enjoying the creativity surrounding the character.
What he finds especially amusing is the freedom Abaddon represents: a child-sized character with the mind of a demon who can essentially do whatever he wants.
Watch or listen to my full conversation with Jimmi Simpson on The Buzz – BuzzWorthy Radio, and catch Dark Matter on Apple TV and Haunted Hotel on Netflix.
