Ricky Mabe Is One of the Beautiful People

On the ABC Family drama Beautiful People, Ricky Mabe plays the sweet teenage Gideon Lustig, who harbored a crush on his pal Sophie and recently locked lips, albeit briefly, with his other gal pal Annabelle. Who's next on his list? TVGuide.com rang up the Canadian actor to get the inside scoop.

TVGuide.com: I'm totally hooked on the show, and your character is such a sweet guy. Is he like you at all?
Ricky Mabe: Not at thing. I'm a terrible, terrible human being! No, we're very, very similar, and I think we're becoming more similar as the episodes go on.

TVGuide.com: That doesn't bode well....
Mabe: I find myself in my regular life doing "Gideon things," and Gideon's doing some Ricky things.

TVGuide.com: I hope your love life isn't as terrible as his seems to be at the moment.
Mabe: It certainly is. It's a roller coaster! [Laughs] It's fine.

TVGuide.com: In a recent episode Gideon and Annabelle finally got together.
Mabe: It's about time!

TVGuide.com: But it didn't exactly go as planned. Is that the end of the romance, or is there more?
Mabe: Uhh so far it's kind of what's going on, yeah. It's the end for now, but we'll see. We never know what happens or where it will go. I have no idea even what the next episode we're filming is going to be. I have no idea whom they want me to be with, or where Gideon will end up. Who knows, maybe he'll end up in some kind of monastery or something. Women aren't his thing, really, but he wants them to be.

TVGuide.com: He seemed so heartbroken when Annabelle said it wasn't working out. I felt very sad for Gideon.
Mabe: It was a sad time. I'm sure a lot of guys have had that happen where when they find out a girl has interest in them and they finally step up to the plate, the girl loses interest.

TVGuide.com: Now there is this other woman, who is his father's girlfriend.
Mabe: She's a much older woman than Gideon. Delightfully saucy. Delightfully saucy indeed.

TVGuide.com: It doesn't seem like it's such a hard gig for you, working on the show.
Mabe: No. I can't believe they're paying me to do this! "OK, walk into work and make out with beautiful women"? That's not so tough. Definitely the best job, and I can't wait to tell people to go and get into acting schools because it definitely is the best job in the world and I'm the luckiest guy to do it.

TVGuide.com: Did you go to acting school?
Mabe: Yeah, I was a child actor. I still play a child actor. [Chuckles] I started as a child actor 12 years ago, 11 years ago, and I went to acting schools for the last 10 years on weekends and as an after-school thing. It's what you do up in Canada if you don't play hockey. It's either one or the other: You're either a famous hockey player or a famous actor or comedian.

TVGuide.com: All I know about Canada is what I learned from Degrassi.
Mabe: Yeah that's all we grew up with, too. After you go play hockey, you come home to the fire burning, watching an episode of Degrassi.

TVGuide.com: Do you have any actual artistic ability, like Gideon does?
Mabe: Yeah. I actually draw wicked stick figures. I used to be a champion hangman player. I've got the worst sense of drawing and painting imaginable. I have a 5-year-old niece who can outdraw me any day of the week!

TVGuide.com: So how hard is it to pretend to do those masterpieces?
Mabe: Not too hard. I always end up finishing a painting or just starting a painting, so you never actually see me do the entire painting, which is kind of nice. I do have a feeling that one day they'll come up to me and go, "We actually want you to paint this." Then I'll go, "Well, give me a couple of years."

TVGuide.com: Yeah, a couple of years to practice that. "Right now let me just color between the lines."
Mabe: Exactly. One day I would actually love to practice and become good at it. I always like to practice what my characters do including making out with women.

TVGuide.com: That sounds like fun to practice.
Mabe: Yes. It's been kind of hard. It's easier to find a canvas and paintbrushes than it is to find women to practice with. [Laughs]

TVGuide.com: So, will we get to see any more of Gideon's troubled relationship with his father?
Mabe: You definitely will. It gets very, very tumultuous with his father very soon. In the next couple of episodes it kind of explodes, and they're going to focus on that more in another season as well.

TVGuide.com: It seems like as the show goes on, the male characters are getting beefier roles. When you signed on, did you think, "Oh, I'm just the guy friend to all these women"?
Mabe: Yeah. It definitely is really neat that they saw more in us and are expanding our characters and not just the girls' characters, because hopefully some guys out there are going to watch the show, too. They tune in because there are beautiful women, but then they find that they can relate to some of the guys on the show.

TVGuide.com: Anything else you're working on right now?
Mabe: No. I've been writing a lot. I do stand-up comedy a lot that's my focus when I'm not acting. I actually love doing stand-up, that's my main goal.

TVGuide.com: It's not nerve-racking for you to get up live?
Mabe: It's extremely nerve-racking! I think that's why I love it so much. You know you're live when you're either making people laugh or not, which is the scarier of the two.

TVGuide.com: Any hecklers yet?
Mabe: Oh yes, many. Especially when I started, it seemed like I had more hecklers, but I have ways to deal with them now.

TVGuide.com: What kind of material do you cover in your stand-up act?
Mabe: Oh, dirty! Very dirty. [Laughs] No, it was at one point, then my parents started to come watch, so I had to change very quickly. It's either about stories about my life growing up I'm the youngest of four, so there's a lot of material there and my family, or also anything I sit in bed and come up with about the news or what's going on in the world. The differences between Canada and America, that kind of thing.

TVGuide.com: There are significant differences.
Mabe: There are more similarities, so it's fun to play on both.

TVGuide.com: I'm totally hooked on the show, but I'm probably too old to be watching.
Mabe: No you're not! It gets delightfully saucy very quickly. There's a lot of hot and heavy things that happen rather quickly in future episodes. There's some great stuff with Sophie and her new love interest. One of my favorite story lines is with the older sister, Karen, and where it will go with the guy she works with.

TVGuide.com: So you actually get to see the rest of the show being put together?
Mabe: I actually sometimes sneak on set and watch them film the other stuff. It's neat I like watching how other actors work and there's a lot of talented people on the show whom I enjoy watching.

TVGuide.com: A lot of the people I talk to are focused only on what they are doing.
Mabe: That's the least thing I'm interested in my character. I kind of like what the other guys are doing and their story lines. But I do love my character. The guy who plays my father is the most amazing actor I've ever worked with. He always plays the bad guy, which he does really well.

TVGuide.com: Well, you know, everyone's got a skill!
Mabe: And mine's not painting! Or hockey. What do I do with my time? I couldn't even tell you.

TVGuide.com: You do stand-up and you're busy acting.
Mabe: Yeah, I guess. Busy acting, yeah.

TVGuide.com: I'm sure it's a lot harder than we think.
Mabe: Yeah, apparently that's what people are telling me, too. I feel like it should be getting hard at some point, but it hasn't yet. I love going to work every day.