Bionic Woman

It’s no secret that we are huge Kevin Rankin fans around these parts.  As regular Bionic Woman fans know, Rankin plays Nathan on BW and usually delivers the best lines of the episode.  Rankin also pulls double duty and plays Herc on NBC’s high school drama Friday Night Lights. Needless to say, Rankin is a busy man, shuttling between Vancouver, where BW is shot, and Austin, TX, where FNL is shot.

The Houston Chronicle caught up with the actor to talk about his busy life.

The mailbox at actor Kevin Rankin’s Los Angeles apartment isn’t overflowing in his absence. His girlfriend, whom he says he sees too little of, has been picking up the mail.

“She’ll love to hear that’s her job,” he says, laughing.

But Rankin hasn’t spent much time at his home. He’s typically on the set of Bionic Woman in Vancouver, British Columbia, between three and seven days before he jets to Austin for several days making Friday Night Lights. Rankin, who was born in Louisiana and grew up in Magnolia, most likely can be found on set or at an airport.

“If I’m home,” he says, “it’s rarely more than three days.”

But the two roles have proved a big breakthrough for Rankin. On FNL, he’s Herc, a wheelchair-bound hellion who befriends one of the show’s principals. On Bionic, he’s Nathan, a tech geek who aids the show’s titular character while getting to provide some snippets of funny.

Several times in a fairly short conversation, Rankin talks about living out his dream. He seems enamored of both shows, though he clearly prefers one set.

FNL is shot in the Austin area “with the bands, food and all the things I miss about Houston,” he says. “I had no idea; I had to leave to find out how good I had it. That’s not to knock Vancouver cuisine, but last time I visited Houston I ate out every night.”

Rankin, 31, says there are “a bunch of Rankins in West Texas,” but he didn’t move to that region until his father took an oil job in 1987.

He graduated from Magnolia High School in 1994. There he played football. “I was a linebacker,” he says. “They wouldn’t really let me on offense. I tended to run toward people as opposed to away.”

…

In addition to glowing about FNL, Rankin also springs to the defense of Bionic, which hasn’t received much love from critics. He points out that early episodes were reshot and also created by committee, but “the more recent episodes were done with one director, one cook.

“It’s very much getting its feet.”

Let’s hope talk of the demise of BW is just rumor and we get more of Rankin.

There are clips of Rankin as Nathan after the jump.