Exclusive Interview: Alan Ritchson, Eric Falconer And Chris “Romanski” Romano Talk Blue Mountain State

WGTC: So I know television and movies are just methods of storytelling, but are the crazier elements of Blue Mountain State coming from experience, either personal or second-hand?

Romanski: Things we heard about? Uh, more like experienced. [Laughs] Let’s just say the line “First one done!” from the pilot, well, that came from a friend of mine, and let’s just say his name was…Womanski? Yeah – a lot of these things came from our own personal experiences, and stuff that we read online. Some of this stuff is stories our friends had. The craziest things, where people are like, “How did you guys come up with that?” – for example, the girl with no arms? Real story. Came from Eric’s hometown.

Eric Falconer: We had our little bar in Massachusetts, and this girl would hang out. She was cool as shit, she was great, and just happened to have no arms. We’d hang out, and she was an amazing person. I loved that as a character, so she was incorporated into the series.

Also, in the pilot, the chocolate cookie race – I never had to do it, but it basically came from my want to play high school football. I was in eighth grade, and wanted to try out, but heard all of these horrible hazing stories. The one that stuck out most was the Oreo cookie race. All the freshmen would have to race that way, and then eat the cookie out of their asses. I was so petrified, and right before I tried out, there was a huge hazing scandal at my school where a kid was hung from a tree and hit with broomsticks, I think? There was a lot of crazy stuff going on, and the town came down really hard on the football team. When I got there, a couple months later, there was zero hazing. I never had to go through any of it, but I still remember that feeling of being 13 years old, and thinking, “I want to play football, but I’m scared as Hell!”

WGTC: I have to ask – was the cookie race actually filmed, or just Hollywood magic?

Alan Ritchson: What’s funny is that I still remember Brian Robbins, who directed the pilot. We were shooting that scene, and I’m like, “Where are the cookies?” He’s like, “Guys, you don’t really have to run with cookies up your ass.” I’m like, “No! That’s going to change the way you move entirely!”

Romanski: Everyone had their own running style, basically.

Alan Ritchson: He’s like, “You don’t have to do this!” and we’re like, “Nope, we’re putting them way up there.”

Romanski: Well, actually, YOU said that. [To Alan] WE didn’t put them WAY up there. Let’s just say we lost about a half a row of cookies in Thad…

Alan Ritchson: You know the feeling you get when you eat a bunch of Oreos, and you get that slick trans-fatty feeling on the roof of your mouth? I was wiping that feeling for about a week. But that scene changed everything!

Eric Falconer: I almost threw up on set. I was with Brian, saying, “Why are you putting cookies up your ass for real? No one’s going to see it, you don’t have to!” I talked to each actor, separately, and they said the same thing – “I need to know how to run.”

Alan Ritchson: I mean, that pales in comparison to eating actual goat balls. You guys made me eat goat balls against my will!

Romanski: We did some amazing things. I got an opportunity to zip-line naked, while jerking off. My parents were there for that scene. It was a dream. To zip-line across a football field naked is insane!

Eric Falconer: I actually have cellphone footage from directly under the zip-line, and it’s horrifying. You never want to see it.

WGTC: So this leads into my next question perfectly…

Romanski: Where can you get that link? [Laughs]

WGTC: Well, I was going to ask that after the recorder was off, so let’s go ahead and recap your most memorable day of filming on the set of Blue Mountain State. What was your highlight reel moment?

Romanski: We’ve been answering a lot of these questions – like we just did an AMA yesterday, and each time, a new thing pops up. Right now, it’s coming through the mud in the episode “Drunk Tank.” That was so fucking fun. They built this platform, we brought in rain – we did this iconic thing.

Alan Ritchson: We were really pushing ourselves through that much mud.

Romanski: It was so much fun, and it was even FREEZING that day. Every character got to do it, and like the cookie, everyone came through in a different way. Compared to everyone else, I’m so small and frail – them pulling me up through mud just looked absolutely insane.

Alan Ritchson: One scene that never made it into the show – I actually haven’t thought of this in years – but one scene during “Vision Quest,” when we come back to reality at the end, we realize Thad’s been in this crazy hallucination, and he’s destroyed the Goat House. Well, basically, they turned the cameras on and were like, “Just destroy the Goat House,” and I DE-STROYED the entire place. That was one of the funnest moments to shoot. It never made the episode, though…

Eric Falconer: Yeah, we just cut to Thad sitting in the mess. But for me, I’ll say this – there were a lot of crazy scenes that were fun to shoot. We got to do so much stuff on Spike. But the first day of shooting for Blue Mountain State: The Rise Of Thadland, there are two scenes that stand out. One involves Sammy and a goat, and there’s another that involves Thad in the “Lube Room.” That first day of filming, shooting those two scenes, that, to me, topped shooting the series. In the show, we shot every day, and we’d try to top ourselves – but this was the first day on the film. We’re with a whole new crew, some actors hadn’t seen each other in years, and the first thing we shoot are a bestiality scene, then a “Lube Room” scene.