Veteran actor Saul Rubinek has been a working actor for nearly his entire life, and not in the romantic, “waited tables for years” sense. He started acting at six and a half, was in front of an audience by seven, and began landing professional work in radio in Ottawa shortly after. Since then, he’s had exactly one straight job. The rest of his life has been spent doing the thing so many actors chase: working consistently, across decades, in theater, television, and film.
In his latest project, the Peacock thriller series The Copenhagen Test, Rubinek stars alongside Simu Liu in what he describes it as an intricately plotted ride that refuses to “talk down” to its audience. He also states that the quality of the show is matched by the culture on set, due in large part to its collaborative atmosphere and Liu’s leadership as the lead actor.
In this interview, which has been edited for length and clarity, Rubinek breaks down his three-question approach to the characters he plays, and his time on The Copenhagen Test. We also touch on his acclaimed one-man show, Playing Shylock, and his new book, All in the Telling, both of which explore identity, family, humor, and the stories we tell.
For the full video interview on YouTube, Rubinek goes even further off the beaten path. He recounts the only straight job he ever had, working at a department store in London at 18, along with stories about busking in England, an unforgettable night involving Keith Richards. He also reads the opening passage from All in the Telling. It’s a looser, funnier, more personal extension of the conversation, and a good snapshot of how unpredictable a life in the arts can really be.
Before diving into The Copenhagen Test, Rubinek shares the three-question framework he uses to approach every character he plays.
Saul Rubinek: The more I act, the more I realize a truth about characters, you know? I’ve been doing this for such a long time.
I feel like this is cliche, but whatever you think of as your best quality is probably also your worst quality.
There’s 3 things I think about always for every character I play: One is, what do I think my best quality is? So, I’m thinking as the character, what do I think my best quality is? What do I think other people think is my best quality?
What do I think is my worst quality? What do they think is my worst quality?
And then, what secret am I not going to tell the camera? What am I gonna not ever show, anywhere, at any point?
Because we all have it. And those 3 things are important.
I’ve seen a lot of press on your new series, The Copenhagen Test. It looks great.
Saul Rubinek: Listen, this Copenhagen Test is probably one of the most interesting series I’ve ever done, which is saying a lot, since I’ve, you know, been in a lot of series.
First of all, Simu Liu, I felt kind of an ownership. I’ll tell you why, because Simu, who’s become quite a major star, one of the first things he ever did was ‘Bartender number 2’ on an episode of Warehouse 13.
Do you remember him?
Saul Rubinek: No, I wasn’t in that scene. I don’t know if I would have remember him or not, but he was just starting out. This was probably about 16 years ago, something like that. And then, he did Kim’s Convenience, one of the most successful situation comedies in the history of Canadian television.
And it’s kind of where he learned his craft, he told me, because he was doing this week after week for years, and you kind of learn your craft, don’t you? I think it was done in front of a live audience, and so he’s learning a tremendous amount. In fact, he’s going to have his Broadway debut soon.
He’s a very kind and supportive person. One of the key things about being a leading actor, which I’ve done a few times in my life, is that you’re not there to be supported by everybody else, unless you’re an idiot. Your job as a leading actor, or as a leader of any kind, I think, is to support everyone else. Your job is to be the hub, and a hub is there to support the spokes, not the other way around. The spokes
aren’t there to support the hub. The hub is there to make the wheel go around. It’s a good metaphor, because your job is difficult because you’re there to figure out how to support everybody else. And create a collaborative atmosphere where people feel that they can be vulnerable enough and safe enough to fall flat on their faces.
Because without the ability to fail publicly, as an artist, especially as an actor, dancer, any collaborative group effort, unless you are comfortable enough to feel safe enough to fail in front of people, you can’t succeed past a certain level of very ordinary competence. And Simu is one of those people that has learned, or he has it innately, to be that supportive to everyone around him. Which, believe me, I wouldn’t be saying, I would just be saying nothing.
Not just him, but the creator of the show, Thomas Brandon, and his co-showrunner, Jennifer Yale were very similar, in that they created an atmosphere of ‘try things, take chances. You’re on safe ground.’
I’ll give you an example. Clint Eastwood, who directed me in Unforgiven. He created an atmosphere where whatever he had in his head, he wasn’t really going to tell you and sometimes he didn’t know what it was, or if he did, I don’t know if he told anybody. He let it happen.
What happens when you do that is you risk failure. If you don’t want to risk failure, you’ll get, if you’re lucky, you’ll get what you’ve already got planned, you’re not gonna get more than what you got planned. It’s impossible.
And on Copenhagen Test, it’s such an intricately plotted thrilling ride that it doesn’t talk down to the audience. It’s going to make you sit forward instead of back. You think you know what’s going on because you’ve seen espionage shows before, but then the ground will be taken out from under you. And then once you know what you think is going on, it’ll be taken out from under you again.
When you got offered the role, did they give you a couple of scripts to read first, or do they give you the character and his arc?
Saul Rubinek: Every time is different. I happened to be in Toronto, because I was doing this one-man show called Playing Shylock, which your audience can look up. It was a world premiere in Toronto, in October and when I arrived, I went to the studio where this was being filmed, and it felt like old home week, because it was the same place that I’d worked on Warehouse 13 for 5 years.
And I went into a room to meet Thomas Brandon, and the director, Jet Wilkinson, Jennifer Yale was there and I said, “Look, I want to just make sure we’re on the same page.” It wasn’t an audition, but I said, “I’d like to do a scene or two.” Which kind of surprised them.
So, Thomas said, “well, is it okay if I read with you?” I said, “sure.” They said, “get Saul a script.” I said, “that’s okay, I don’t need a script.” And they said, “you don’t need a script? How do you know what scene you want to do?” I said, “we could do any of my scenes.” “You know them?” I said, “did I not mention I’m serious about this?”
I came into the meeting prepared, because I really liked the script, and I wanted to make sure we were on the same page about how I wanted to portray the character. I just wanted to make sure, if I wasn’t doing it the way they wanted to do it, they may have ideas that were a lot better than mine, you know? Or they would have ideas that I didn’t like. I didn’t know. But I sure liked the material. And that’s what happened.
I want to ask you about Playing Shylock.
Saul Rubinek: It’s a play whose premise is very simple: a production of Merchant of Venice is canceled but it wasn’t supposed to be.
So, the audience comes in being told that the second half of Merchant of Venice is about to begin. And this music starts and then I come out dressed like, you know, a Hasidic Jew from Williamsburg with side curls, and black hat, and black coat.
And I basically look up to the stage management booth, and I say, “cut… stop the music,” and I tell the audience there’s not going to be a second half and I explain that during intermission, I found out that an embargoed press release from the theater got released a day early by accident. And we’re all reading that the whole run of Merchant Venice is about to be canceled, and this is our last show.
And I say, “listen, I’m sorry, I refuse to do the second act. I said, fuck that. I’m not doing it. I’m gonna go out and tell the audience what just happened.”
And I read the press release, which basically says that, unfortunately, in this time of rising antisemitism, we don’t believe that this play is appropriately safe for all segments of our community, and I dispute it.
I’m playing the actor who plays this character, Shylock. And I talk about the history of the play, and my own history, and I eventually tell the audience that since my father was an actor in Yiddish theater in Poland, and Hitler stopped him, and he always wanted to play Shylock, and he never got the chance. I’m basically playing him as if my father is playing him with the same Eastern European accent, and in a very traditional Jewish garb.
They believe that me playing him as a Jew and playing him, this Jewish is going to incite hatred, and they’ve obviously put pressure on the theater.
So, the play is not about cancel culture, it’s about… the truth is, it’s about my own community preventing me from honoring my father. It’s about art, and it’s about the role of artists, it’s about the history of the play. I even dispute that it’s written by a guy from Stratford. My character disputes that. And it’s very funny.
So that’s Playing Shylock.
You also have a new book out.
It’s called All in the Telling and it’s based on lies that I told my parents, lies my parents told me, all of which are hilarious in hindsight.
It’s really about my relationship with my parents, very difficult relationship, about me marrying somebody not Jewish, and being with a non-Jewish woman, and their reaction to it is kind of biblical and how I ended up in Poland with them.
It’s very funny. I mean, it’s also horrific stories, and they’re very poignant, emotional stories. But mostly it’s a book for anybody who has parents, so if you don’t have parents, don’t buy the book.
In this clip below, Rubinek reads an excerpt from All in the Telling.
