He looks like everybody’s favorite bad boy but Skeet Ulrich is really a pussycat at heart... then again, you’ve seen the state of your living room when Topcat isn’t pleased!
By Moonah Ellison
Photography by the Riker Brothers
I still remember seeing Scream for the first time in college. I first thought it was going to be a lame rip-off slasher flick, you know, like one that made the 80s famous in the horror genre. But the 1996 throwback slasher-horror flick by Wes Craven was reinvented for a new generation, and boy was it fun, a good ‘ol fashioned SCARE. The plot twist at the end (spoiler, but is it really 24 years later?) revealing the super-attractive boyfriend being the murderous villain, killing classmates for revenge. The so-called villain in question, Billy Loomis, aka actor Skeet Ulrich, wore mopped hair falling into his face, a coy smile-turned-sinister grin, comparisons of Johnny Depp were immediate. Bring us forward 24 years and Ulrich’s career is finally (finally…sigh) taking bloom.
I happen to catch up with Ulrich in Vancouver while he films the last few episodes of season four of Riverdale due to COVID, the CW show loosely-based on the Archie comic book series. Earlier in the year it was announced Ulrich would be leaving the show (tons of internet rumors abound on what made him leave), where he has starred as Forsythe Pendleton Jones II, the father of Jughead Jones, since 2017. Riverdale is currently in production on season five. Ulrich may have the opportunity to come back to do a couple more episodes “since the world has changed and everything just in terms of telling the story” but nothing is certain.
It’s been a long and strange journey for Ulrich, having just completed the longest stretch as part of one creative team in his acting career. The name, Skeet, strange story but one that stuck: a baseball coach when he was 10 liked to give nicknames “and skeeters are mosquitoes and I was small and I was fast and I played in the middle of the outfield and he said I was small and fast like a skeeter and everybody started calling me it including my family,” laughs Ulrich. “By the time I was 19 i had to pick what name to put on a Playbill in New york City for plays and it didn’t even cross my mind. Everybody called me Skeet. That was my name so…”
Ulrich is 50 now. In acting terms, a journey-man, if there ever was one. He first popped up in Weekend at Bernie’s (1989) and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990). After joining the Atlantic Theater Company, director Stacy Cochran took notice and helped him receive his first notable role on screen in Boys (1996) with Winona Ryder and then appeared in The Craft (1996) opposite Neve Campbell, his Scream co-star that same year. There were other roles—As Good as It Gets (1997), The Newton Boys (1998), the CBS post-apocalyptic drama Jericho, CSI: NY, Law & Order: LA, the 2017 Lifetime film I Am Elizabeth Smart based on the 2002 abduction and captivity of Elizabeth Smart.
Fast forward: 2020. The world has been turned upside down. A raging pandemic in the US, economic owes here and abroad, racial tension, and a presidential election for the ages. It’s all about focus because there’s a lot going on and Ulrich knows it’s tough on every American. “I think just like anybody’s experience it’s altered day-by-day, week-by-week and certainly as we drag on, month-by-month. They feel like seven different events, Covid and the social climate, there’s a lot going on.”
But that didn’t stop Ulrich from making his voice heard. He is the father of 19-year-old twins, eager to join the fight. This year has brought on a lot of unwanted strife and misery and anger. He felt the need to take it to the streets. “We were protesting with everybody else,” said Ulrich. “My daughter especially, we left before things would get crazy and we had very specific things to be wary of but I think anybody with a heart is outraged. I have two very socially aware 19 year olds and they enlightened me in a lot of stuff and vice versa.
“I’ve been a single parent most of their life and I’ve been waiting for this generation ever since they were in elementary school,” insists Ulrich. “I could feel a shift. I know we live in a liberal bubble in Los Angeles and New York and regardless of politics or anything else I sensed an altruism that was starting to seed.”
Ulrich is on to better things. Between seasons three and four of Riverdale he left the last day of filming and went straight to New Mexico to work with Tom Hanks on a new post-apocalyptic film called BIOS, set for release in April 2021. From there he went to work on the Antoine Fuqua crime series #FREERAYSHAWN on Quibi with Laurence Fishburne, Stephen James and Jasmine Cephas Jones—all three were nominated for Emmys.
“For the first ten years of my career, I only did films. I had done plays but I started in film and did not start doing TV until my kids were little… I did plays training at NYU; we did three plays a year in our classes in various degrees,” said Ulrich.
What you might not know about Ulrich is that he’s ever the craftsman. When his children were in preschool in West Hollywood in the mid-aughts, they didn’t have much space for their artwork. “I was watching these kids line up at this small plastic easel. One kid could paint at once and so I built them this redwood easel for outside with drawers, paint storage and brushes and everything and paper rolls at the top and four kids could paint at the same time.”
For now—and when I say now I mean during this Covid era—Ulrich is content at staying home. Tinkering, fixing, generally, reflecting. He has a cabinet shop in his garage and because of the way it’s set, the cabinets he built 15 years ago when he moved in there has accumulated water over time so he’s had to redo a lot of the shop. He’s been working on his property since Covid began. “Our backyard is a pretty steep hill and I spent a lot of money on it, and had a terrace built. There will be herb gardens and berries and root trees and patios and it’s been seven months of construction, loads of soil.”
It’s a passion outside of acting. “I never want to leave home. I like to be social and go make films but I love being home…hopefully we can beat this pandemic quickly and for all of us a return to normalcy.”