Jason Ralph
Jason Ralph is an actor, born 1986.
Jason Ralph came out of the theatre and has kept a foot in it. He performed in Peter and the Starcatcher both off Broadway and on it, and produced The Woodsman, which is the kind of credit that tells you an actor is interested in how work gets made rather than only in appearing in it.
Television found him in 2015 and handed him two recurring parts in the same year, Mike Vickery in Aquarius and Jake Devereux in Younger, before The Magicians gave him Quentin Coldwater from 2015 to 2019. Quentin is a difficult assignment: depressive, self-absorbed, convinced the world owes him a portal to a better one. Played badly he is insufferable. Ralph played the self-pity as something the character was aware of and ashamed of, and that is what kept the series watchable through its stranger turns.
Since then he has taken smaller and sharper jobs: Mike Carr in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Ian Thompson in A Most Violent Year, Yvonne's Boyfriend in I'm Thinking of Ending Things, Sebastian in Those People, Jason in Looking. It is a filmography assembled out of good directors and modest parts rather than leads, which for an actor coming off a long-running genre series looks like a deliberate choice.
Movies (3)
TV (6)
Where to start with Jason Ralph
The Magicians is the whole case, and it deserves more than one episode: the pilot is uneven and the show needs a season to find its tone, after which it becomes one of the more inventive fantasy series of its decade. Quentin is Ralph's best work by a wide margin.
The rest is a supporting actor's shelf, and the films are worth the detour. I'm Thinking of Ending Things is the most interesting thing he appears in even though the role is minor. A Most Violent Year is the best made. The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel gives him a recurring comic part in a very crowded room, Younger and Aquarius are the two 2015 jobs that led to the lead, and Those People is the early indie for anyone digging.