For Elle Fanning to prepare to play Michelle Clark, there were hours of tape to watch. That was not the case for Colton Ryan, who was cast as Conrad “Coco” Roy III in Hulu’s upcoming drama “The Girl From Plainville.” With limited content of the late teen, who died by suicide in 2014, Ryan took a different approach.
First, he read the scripts for the show and instantly connected to Roy — so much that he tells Variety he didn’t merely “want” to do the role, he had a “profound need” to take it.
“I didn’t realize until after we wrapped how essentially important it would be to me, not just as an artist, but as Colton. When I first started researching, they sent us a whole Dropbox, the research and the court documents and timelines,” he says. “But I immediately went to the pictures, and the first picture I saw was one from Coco’s graduation day. That’s when I put two and two together that we graduated high school the same year. Something about that photo, I just started bawling my eyes out because I have that same photo. It’s the same quality iPhone camera. It’s the same, sort of, Facebook filter, and he’s flanked by both his sisters. I have the same photo of me. I just felt it in my bones. I knew what that was like to be that age. And obviously, it’s two different roads, two different paths, but that’s what broke my heart about it. The more and more I got to know him, I just feel really connected.”
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The series explores the relationship between the two teenagers leading up to Coco’s 2014 death, as well as the court case that followed. In 2017, Carter was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter. She was released from prison in January 2020, after serving 11 months of her 15-month sentence.
Playing Coco in “The Girl From Plainville” is the second role that Ryan has landed in which he portrays a character who has died by suicide, previously appearing as Connor Murphy in the Broadway production and movie adaptation of “Dear Evan Hansen.” That coincidence is not lost on the actor nor his family.
“I think you can already imagine what that phone call to my mother was like. She sort of like, ‘Should I know something? Do I need to be worried?’ And I asked myself that same question. It’s just an introspective thing you start thinking, like, what is it about me that I bring to this dark place?” he recalls, noting that he’s gone through a lot of loss in his personal life. “I lost people a lot when I was really young, and I sort of feel like an armchair expert on that. I feel very useful.”
While a role like this may be heavy for some, it didn’t take a mental toll on Ryan. Instead, it was “affirming” and surprisingly happy.
“The whole thing was so joyful in my mind, because I got to know this boy and there’s so many wonderful things about him. I don’t know if you’re into the cosmic sort of stuff, but I felt like he was around. He was definitely around,” he tells Variety. “Some days, it’s just really technical things — like, you actually have to ‘play dead,’ and just lay there for four hours of production. Sit still, cut. I actually had these really eerie moments where I felt like I had to deal with my own mortality. It didn’t feel heavy. It felt like such a gift, like something he was giving me all the time. Like, ‘Hey, you’re here. You’re alive. You’re breathing.'”
In between takes, Ryan was upbeat — so much so he was singing show tunes. “I pissed off everybody all the time,” he jokes. “It was heavy, everyone was crying. I’d be like, ‘All right, well, no more of that. Let’s sing!'”
During production, the cast worked with the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and social workers. While Carter’s family has not spoken out, Ryan was able to speak to a member of the Roy family when preparing, the experience of which he prefers to keep private. However, what was even more helpful for him was traveling to Fairhaven, Massachusetts, the town that Roy lived and died in.
“I live in New York City, so I was it was a three-hour drive. I went there to get a sense of, environmentally, how this has resonated with people. It was really interesting,” he says.
He also visited the Kmart parking lot where Roy died.
“It felt really like sort of symbolic,” Ryan says. “It’s dark but the Kmart that is featured so much, it’s gone. Kmart’s are gone. There is a finish to it. There’s a Tractor Supply Store now. I sat there and tried to open myself up.”
Ryan learned a lot about the teen while in Roy’s home town, which for him, was the most important part.
“This boy has been seen by a lot of people, but, like, 80 or 90% of his life, of who he was is not known. I really wanted to just know what the other parts of the days looked like — the times with his mom and sisters, the guys in the boat talking about how he’s funny, imaginative, whip smart, sarcastic. He sent memes back and forth to his mother. Things that are just full of joy, full of lightness. I wanted to know what that really looked like. That was my mission — to remind people that as complicated as it was, he was a boy first and foremost, and he lived a life.”
The first three episodes of “The Girl From Plainville” drop on Hulu Tuesday, March 29.