Wes Ramsey (Peter, GH) stars in the suspense thriller Perception, available now on Amazon and VOD. “We filmed it two years ago in my hometown of Louisville, KY,” reports the actor. “We were shooting throughout the month of July and wrapped at the very beginning of August.” In the film, “I play a real estate developer named Daniel. He has a chance encounter with a small-time psychic who has a little boutique shop and almost by accident, they end up in a situation where he has a reading done. In the reading, there is a connection with someone from his past and that sets in motion a series of relationships that evolve throughout the movie that sort of presents itself in a way that reminds us all of the depths with how far you’re willing to go for someone you’ve lost, how far are you will to go for someone you’ve loved, how far will you go to reconnect with someone that you don’t have in your life anymore. It sets in motion this turn of events with these characters, and then from there things begin to spiral. It becomes pretty intense.”
“Intense” describes his experience of seeing the film for the first time. “The first time I watched, I was back in my hometown months after we finished the movie. I was visiting my parents, I was back in my bedroom that I grew up in and I was watching it on my laptop. It’s the first time in my life I ever watched one of my performances alone, it’s the first time that I’ve ever scared myself with my own work before, and it’s the first time that I ever brought myself to tears. All three of those things took place at the same time. It was right in the same bedroom that I began my childhood dreams of being an actor. It was really incredibly moving and overwhelming to go home full-circle to create this and to actually see it in that way for that first time.” He is excited for other people to experience it for themselves. “I’m thrilled! I’m so proud of this movie. I’m very pleased with my performance in it, the writing, the producing and the directing. It’s very rare that I’m scared — you know, intimidated — before we even start, but it’s a sign that it’s a really great script. I keep thinking, ‘The potential is there, and if we just realize the potential of what’s on the page here, we may have something special in our hands.’ I felt that way with my first movie Latter Days when I was 25 and I felt that way about this script. I also feel in a way that I’ve sort of spent my life believing that I always had this character, this performance, this role in me. I was waiting hoping one day I could prove that to myself and share it with the world. When this opportunity came along I felt like I understood that the planets were aligning in that way. I’m incredibly proud of this and I do feel like it’s the role that I’ve waited my whole life to play. It’s a performance that I will be proud of for all the rest of my entire career and for the rest of my life.”
A few months after production wrapped on Perception, Ramsey started work at GH. “I had no idea when I was making this movie that I was going to be back under contract on a daytime show and be joining Laura [Wright, Carly, his girlfriend],” he notes. “We were together and she came to visit me during the filming of the movie, but I had no idea that was about to happen right after we filmed. I was in a place in my life where I very much was desperately hungry to work and feeling creatively starved. I had a lot in me that I felt I wanted to let out and this was the perfect vehicle to do that. Once I had completed doing it, I felt like I didn’t know whether or not I would ever need to do anything like that ever again because it took so much from me. I remember feeling so wrapped up in the experience of playing the character. Laura can vouch that when she came to visit me, where my head was emotionally and afterwards when I wrapped and went back home to L.A. to be with her, it took me a couple of weeks to really let go what I had gone through. At one of the screenings in New York recently, there were some people afterwards that described watching it almost as if I was in a fugue state, which means I don’t have a memory of what was happening to me or what was going on while I was actually going through the process of doing it. It was certainly the most I’ve ever channeled a hero of mine such as Daniel Day-Lewis to submerge myself so deeply in something that I crossed over to places I believed I was capable of but had not yet ever been given the opportunity to go that far on-screen.”
To watch Perception via Amazon, click here https://www.amazon.com/Perception-Wes-Ramsey/dp/B07VSVLRT3, and for more on Ramsey, visit his newly launched website, www.wesramsey.com.
