Born 19 February 1988 in the Philippines but raised in Scarborough, Canada, Mallari was competitive at a national level in Taekwondo, for which he has a third degree black belt. He was twice Junior Canadian National Taekwondo champion. However he gave that up when he was 13. He then took up basketball with the intention of turning professional but injury prevented that. During college he began acting. His most notable role to date has been in the SyFy series Dark Matter based on the comic book series of the same name. Since June 2015, he has starred as Four (a.k.a. Ryo Tetsuda, Ryo Ishida).