By Mike McCarthy
Patrick Sabongui has been around the entertainment world for all of the 21st century and you may not have known it, but you have seen him movies and television shows going back to Timeline and 300. Sabongui has been a director, producer, actor and a prolific stuntman for the past 15 years and isn’t slowing down. You can now see him on the hit series The Flash, and a new show that is launching on Crackle on November 19th, The Art of More, starring alongside Dennis Quaid and Kate Bosworth. You can binge watch all ten episodes of The Art of More starting on the 19th on the Crackle website or on the app on your Roku, Chromecast and video game console. Sabongui is extremely passionate about all phases of production but we definitely need to catch him up on the video game world, as you will see below. He also has two great movies coming out, of course Warcraft, which is based on the World of Warcraft video game. He is also starring in a WWE Studios film, Interrogation alongside Adam Copeland aka Edge.
Wingman Magazine: Before we get started, I did read that the last video game you mastered was Tecmo Bowl. Now I know you are busy with your career, but no Madden since then?
Patrick Sabongui: Yes, that game was the real deal. You see that’s what happens. It was this huge video game upgrade after that and everybody has constantly got bigger, faster, fancier and honestly I just couldn’t keep up. I would go over to friend’s places to play and the guys would just tear me up. I just kind of never kept up man, I never really got into it. I’m kind of getting back into the games now because I’ve got a son who is video game age and he is huge into Fifa 15 and all those games. So I’m coming back around but yeah, I had to stop working in the gaming world for a while.
Wingman Magazine: Your schooling was in theatrical acting and you just came off stage of your show, Disgraced, which was about Islamophobia in North America. The reviews of the show have been fantastic. Did any of this hit home for you personally while reading the play?
Patrick Sabongui: Yeah, that’s correct, a Canadian premier here at the Arts Club in Vancouver. Yeah, a lot actually. The play deals very directly with the Islamophobia but it’s a commentary on our prejudices and on racism and in the subtle ways in which those things manifest themselves and how a lot of it was based on perception. How people feel, regardless of what your actual beliefs are. If you look like a Middle Eastern man in this post 9/11 world you are gonna draw some extra attention that you wouldn’t have 20 years ago. So yeah, I have been a victim of that racism and that discrimination. Racial profiling happens across all international borders. There is a line in the play that says, “you know, the next terrorist attack is probably gonna come from some guy who more or less looks like me.” And, that’s something that I have said in my own personal life, truthfully. It’s that we have often heard about racial profiling but the perspective is still there. And so I have experienced those things personally so it’s good to dig into a script that is making commentary on that or explore those ideas a little bit further in a dramatic sense.
Wingman Magazine: You have worked with some of the biggest directors on the planet ( Zack Snyder, Spielberg, Donner, Whedon) As a director yourself, what does seeing these men work peak your interest the most?
Patrick Sabongui: It’s their ability to have complete faith in their artistic vision. I think that’s what we admire most about all great artists is that they have this irreverence for established norms. They have this ability to say, this is what it has to be and we are gonna do everything we can to honor that vision, whether other people are challenging them. And they can challenge every step of the creative process, right? From the design to actors wanting to add their creativity to the characters, all the greats have this way of including those that have ideas but still sticking to their creative vision, regardless of how many times they are challenged creatively. And I think that’s hard as a director because you want to collaborate and you want to honor everybody’s input, but art can’t be made by a committee. Effective art has to stick true to someone’s vision and those influential directors have a way of doing that, imposing their creative vision.
Wingman Magazine: When will we be seeing Captain Singh again on The Flash? He was only in the premiere episode of season 2.
Patrick Sabongui: Yeah, he’s still there man. He is still a big part of the CCPD and he’ll pop up because he has his role to play. I was away shooting Art Of More and a couple other projects so we are doing our best to juggle and not to say that my availability is skewing the storyline over there but it’s kind of been tricky juggling the projects and being available for everybody. But Singh is definitely still around.
Wingman Magazine: When you were cast as Capt. Singh, had you read any of The Flash comics before shooting? I know your character wasn’t a huge part of the universe but just as a reference tool?
Patrick Sabongui: Yeah, back in my Tecmo Bowl days, I was more of a comic book fan. I had gotten into the Flash and some other series, but got away from it for a while. When the talk of the show came around and I was up for the part of Captain Singh, it was a great motivator for me to kind of go back and get caught up. I read everything including the New 52 and all of the Geoff Johns stuff. I was gunning for this one hard. I didn’t remember Captain Singh from my original foray into it but looking into it quickly it was very cool to see how big it was in the theory and influencing storyline. It was a significant character, it broke a lot of barriers and it was a huge stride in terms of diversity in representation and I’m all about that. As an actor I think it is really important for me personally to promote diversity in representation in terms of TV and having the opportunity to do that with The Flash is a gift.
Wingman Magazine: The Art of More…your newest project comes to Crackle on November 19th. Tell us about your character Hassan and about the show as well.
Patrick Sabongui: I think what’s incredible about this show is that it exposes a little bit of light into the shady dealings behind high end art galleries in New York. It’s a world that we haven’t peered into very often, and that’s novel just in itself. What I love is that the story line goes far beyond New York city, far beyond the art collector world and we really get a look into the world of forgeries and smugglers and thieves and the underbelly of that whole world. I play Hassan Al Afshar, who is from Iraq and shows up in New York with a bunch of antiquities and ancient artifacts that he has got to move. He hooks up with Graham Connor, the main character, who used to be an Iraqi soldier and that’s when Graham gets involved in the smuggling ring and I am a blast from his past.
Wingman Magazine: How was it working with Dennis Quaid, Kate Bosworth and the rest of the cast of The Art of More?
Patrick Sabongui: It was an incredible experience. It’s not every day that you get to work on material of this quality, they really put alot into this story. It’s really smart and gritty and it really gets into the psychology of the characters. As an actor that’s what you wanna show up to work and do, you wanna be inspired by the material. So just by virtue of the material it was an incredible experience. And then you put it in the hands of this cast; Cary Elwes, Kate Bosworth, Dennis Quaid and Christian Cooke and everybody is so inspired and so into it. Everybody is excited about getting into the story and digging in. It’s a pretty high octane show. It’s a lot of tension, a lot of twists, a lot of plotting and everybody is really engaged in figuring out these characters and experiencing them on set. When we get into it, we get into it and I think that shows in the final product.
Wingman Magazine: Act, direct, produce, stunts…you really are a jack of all trades. Which for you has been the most rewarding? And which one do you enjoy doing the most?
Patrick Sabongui: I wouldn’t really do any of them if I didn’t enjoy them. I have been lucky enough to make a career out of doing the things that I love to do. I think it changes, like the seasons. Like anybody, there are times when you need a little more of this in your life, sometimes you need a little more of that, sometimes you need to dig into an idea intellectually and you have this visual inspiration that you wanna work on and you do that for a while. Maybe that’s when I’ll director or put a movie together or help somebody to get their movie and I’ll produce. Sometime you just feel the need to get out there and play superhero or play cops and robbers. It’s fun and I like doing stunts and playing an actual role is like being 14 year old kid again. Sometimes I need more of that in my life, so I think it swings back and forth between them and I enjoy them all in all way.
Wingman Magazine: As an avid mountain climber, what are the top three mountains on your bucket list?
Patrick Sabongui: Kilimanjaro is on there and not because it’s the most technical and difficult to climb but because of the fact that the glaciers on Kilimanjaro are melting. With whatever is happening in the environment and global warming, those glaciers are receding and in a few years there will be no glacier left on Kilimanjaro. It will just be a big pile of rock and dirt, so that is at the top of my list. McKinley, which is the highest peak in North America out in Alaska, that would be a big one. And if I ever got my technical proficiency back, then maybe K2.
Wingman Magazine: What is the biggest stunt you have done so far?
Patrick Sabongui: I think there are lots of mechanical stunts and big spectacular things and those are usually considered the biggest, hardest stunts. I think my favorite stuff is the battle scenes, big swords and sandal things like Immortals or 300. That was just a life changing experience for a million reasons but one of them is the technical proficiency and efficiency that created those fights. And that was over two and a half to three months, training and choreographing, fighting, improvisational fighting when the cameras are rolling. It has got to be some of my favorite experiences altogether. In terms of fighting, I think the overlap for me between acting and stunts, like I was saying, fighting stuff is some of my favorite stuff to do. I have this other movie coming out with WWE studio starring myself and Adam Copeland, remember ‘The Edge’? Yeah, he came out for an episode of The Flash too. We just finished working on a movie for WWE called Interrogation and I mean, he is the Edge. I’ve got this background in fighting and stunts, and we go toe to toe a couple of times in that movie and that for me is some of the funnest stuff. I get to be the actor and the creative person that I am in the story and then jump into the fight and put on my elbow and knee pads and dig into it with the Edge. We have these huge epic fight scenes together.
Wingman Magazine: What other projects do you have coming up? I did read that you are in the upcoming Warcraft film, which should be pretty epic.
Patrick Sabongui: Yeah, I am really looking forward to Warcraft. Working on that was incredible. Like I mentioned before; Interrogation for WWE studios with Adam Copeland. Still working on The Flash and keeping busy. Those are the ones in the pipeline right now and I am working on some more.