Speaker 1: Pushkin. Let's talk easy. I'm Samforgo, so welcome to the
Speaker 1: show today. I am joined by actor John Burnthal. For
Speaker 1: the past decade, Burnthal has been making a name for
Speaker 1: himself in films like Wolf of Wall Street, Fury Baby, Driver,
Speaker 1: Ford v. Ferrari, and King Richard. For a while there,
Speaker 1: he seemed destined to become one of those reliably good
Speaker 1: character actors. You know, the type, the ones you instantly
Speaker 1: recognize and think, oh, okay, we're in good hands here.
Speaker 1: But in the past few years, Burnthal has officially made
Speaker 1: the leap to leading man, first with the Punisher series
Speaker 1: playing Frank Castle, and now in twenty twenty two which
Speaker 1: We Own This City created by David Simon and George Pelicanos.
Speaker 1: As you may remember, they produced The Wire in the
Speaker 1: early aughts. Now twenty years later, they've returned to Baltimore,
Speaker 1: this time to focus on the city's notoriously corrupt gun
Speaker 1: task Force. The ring leader of this lawless police squad
Speaker 1: is a man named Sergeant Wayne Jenkins, played by Burnthal.
Speaker 1: Here's a clip from the trailer of We Own This City,
Speaker 1: now available on HBO Max, and we want to run
Speaker 1: a little hypothetical by it so we're on an investigation
Speaker 1: five three time drug dealer, real fucking monster, right we
Speaker 1: you know, we get win on where he's keeping his cash,
Speaker 1: and we actually come upon that cash. It's right there
Speaker 1: in front of us. You just you don't be taking
Speaker 1: What would you think about that? Everything changed when they
Speaker 1: came up with that expression, the war on drugs, where
Speaker 1: the war comes police militarization, the complete gutting of the
Speaker 1: Fourth Amendment. They put me in a unit made up
Speaker 1: of a bunch of the biggest crooks in the Whope,
Speaker 1: goddamn department. There's all this money to be made and
Speaker 1: I'm somehow supposed to be playing by a book with
Speaker 1: these motherfuckers. And the war you need warriors. You have enemies,
Speaker 1: and the war civilians get hurt and nobody does anything.
Speaker 1: The war you count the bodies and then you call
Speaker 1: these victories. The six episode limited series aired its finale
Speaker 1: this week, so if you haven't seen We Own This City,
Speaker 1: you can do so now on HBO Max. In keeping
Speaker 1: with the legacy of the Wire, the show sits at
Speaker 1: the intersection of journalism, advocacy, and drama. Like any Simon show,
Speaker 1: it tackles big ideas. This time around the war on drugs,
Speaker 1: the misinformation crisis, and police corruption. There's an authenticity in
Speaker 1: rigor to the work that I think made Burnthall uniquely
Speaker 1: qualified to star and We Own This City. In each role,
Speaker 1: Burnthall goes the extra mile in his preparation. He's profoundly
Speaker 1: curious in the people he's playing. So curious in fact,
Speaker 1: that he's dedicated part of his life to amplifying the
Speaker 1: voices of those on the street. On his podcast Real
Speaker 1: Ones with John Burnthal, he sits with cops, soldiers, activists,
Speaker 1: gang member and first responders. His aim is to help
Speaker 1: tell the kind of authentic stories we don't hear enough
Speaker 1: of in the news, stories of life on the margins,
Speaker 1: where mistakes are made, crimes are committed, consequences are faced,
Speaker 1: and hard fought redemption is possible. So on today's show,
Speaker 1: John and I talk about We Own This City, his
Speaker 1: bifurcated childhood in the DMV, using his aggression for acting,
Speaker 1: his transformative time in Moscow, the fateful night that changed
Speaker 1: his course, and how as a father he's grappled with
Speaker 1: these last two brutal weeks in America. Here is John Berthel,
Speaker 1: John Burnthal, how are you. Pleasure to meet you. It's
Speaker 1: really cool to meet you too. How you feeling, I
Speaker 1: feel good. I feel good. It's just a I'm excited.
Speaker 1: This new show of yours from David Simon, who made
Speaker 1: Of Course the Wire, is called We Own This City.
Speaker 1: It's set in a pre and post Freddie Gray Baltimore,
Speaker 1: around the police Department's Gun Task Force, which, as you know,
Speaker 1: was notorious for its widespread corruption. You've often said that
Speaker 1: you fundamentally believe in pursuing things that scare you. What
Speaker 1: about Sergeant Wayne Jenkins, the ring leader of this unseemly
Speaker 1: police force? What about that scared you? What about him
Speaker 1: scared you? Oh Man, so much. One of the many
Speaker 1: reasons that I was super excited to do this and
Speaker 1: why I really went after this, and I know it
Speaker 1: might sound tripe, but I would have run through walls
Speaker 1: to do this was these are just issues that are
Speaker 1: super near and dear to my heart, and their issues I've,
Speaker 1: for better or worse, had a lot of experience with
Speaker 1: what are those issues? Issues of race, issues of policing,
Speaker 1: issues of police corruption. I feel like right now in
Speaker 1: this country, you know, we're exploring these issues and the
Speaker 1: major kind of issues of the day in a super
Speaker 1: agenda driven, polarized way. I feel like so much the
Speaker 1: discourse today completely lacks nuance. I feel like there's so
Speaker 1: much flag waving, and I feel like the only way
Speaker 1: to really talk about these issues, which is getting harder
Speaker 1: and harder, is to dive into the wound of the
Speaker 1: issue and to explore the nuance and the complications and
Speaker 1: the complexities. And look, and I knew that with David Simon,
Speaker 1: George Pelecanos and what they do with the Wire and
Speaker 1: just who they are and how they've done all their
Speaker 1: work is like, that's what they do. It's this weird
Speaker 1: kind of genre of journalism entertainment. And what scared me
Speaker 1: the most is that on the page, and in a
Speaker 1: climate that's so unbelievably cop and coming out of Hollywood,
Speaker 1: which is so anti law enforcement right now, and which
Speaker 1: a law enforcement is being the scrutiny in which law
Speaker 1: enforcement is held right now is at I think the
Speaker 1: highest point of any apex it's ever been held. At
Speaker 1: the way that The Guy was written, the way that
Speaker 1: the Guy's portrayed by Justin Fenton in his book, and
Speaker 1: the way that he's basically talked about on the streets
Speaker 1: of baltimorees he's just a monster. And the thing that
Speaker 1: David Simon said to me, you know when we talked
Speaker 1: about doing this, can't just make him a monster. Got
Speaker 1: to figure out a way to make it more than that.
Speaker 1: And what I found out quickly about Wayne through my
Speaker 1: research was beyond anything else. Man, he was super devoted
Speaker 1: to his kids and that everyone, to a person cops
Speaker 1: that he worked with, cop said he got to know
Speaker 1: really well whose lives and careers were completely derailed because
Speaker 1: of their proximity and their friendship with Wayne. Every person
Speaker 1: said about Wayne that he was a devoted dad and
Speaker 1: to me, engaging in behavior that had the potentiality to
Speaker 1: keep you from your kids that you love more than
Speaker 1: anything in the world. And for me, there's nothing more
Speaker 1: important to me in the world than my wife and
Speaker 1: my kids. The crux of that conflict was something that
Speaker 1: scared the shit out of me. As you run towards
Speaker 1: this thing, we're talking around the two year anniversary of
Speaker 1: George Floyd's passing on the heels of these tragic shootings
Speaker 1: and Buffalo and Texas, and as you mentioned, you've spent
Speaker 1: a lot of time with police officers army, vents, men
Speaker 1: and women in the line of duty. How have these
Speaker 1: experiences informed how you're thinking both about policing in America
Speaker 1: in this moment, but also this gun culture that we
Speaker 1: do seem to celebrate without a doubt, the relationships that
Speaker 1: I've been able to make in my career technical advisors, you, cops,
Speaker 1: gang members, prisoners, soldiers, tennis coaches, whatever that is, I'm
Speaker 1: enormously grateful, and the relationships that I've made are sacred.
Speaker 1: I think for me, as far as your question about policing,
Speaker 1: these issues are super complicated, and I feel like, unfortunately
Speaker 1: there's so much pressure out there to stake a flag,
Speaker 1: wave it with everything you've got and say I'm on
Speaker 1: this side, or this is an anti police piece, or
Speaker 1: this is a pro police piece, or whatever whatever you
Speaker 1: want to do. I just know that is like part
Speaker 1: of the problem. And whenever I get the opportunity to
Speaker 1: talk to people who have actually been in the valley
Speaker 1: and who have actually had boots on the ground and
Speaker 1: have actually walked the walk, what I find is what
Speaker 1: comes with experience is this unbelievable amount of empathy. The
Speaker 1: folks that are really like rubbing shoulders, the folks that
Speaker 1: are really living it in a day to day level.
Speaker 1: They can look on the other side and they can
Speaker 1: find things that they really respect and value in folks.
Speaker 1: I talk to cops all the time who talk about
Speaker 1: gang members that they really respect. They talk about qualities
Speaker 1: and gang members that they say, you know, this guy's
Speaker 1: a good guy. They also talk about, you know, real evil.
Speaker 1: They talk about things that they absolutely deploy, But they
Speaker 1: also talk about cops. They talk about guys on their
Speaker 1: own side that they really have no respect for. They
Speaker 1: talk about police brutality and how cowardly that is. And
Speaker 1: I think the same is true for a lot of
Speaker 1: the folks that I talk to in the criminal world.
Speaker 1: You know, they talk about cops that they really respect.
Speaker 1: And if these folks can sit down with each other
Speaker 1: and again have empathy for each other, and you realize
Speaker 1: that there's so much more alike than different, Why are
Speaker 1: we letting these conversations being led by people that live
Speaker 1: so far apart from each other, have no access to
Speaker 1: each other. And I really feel like the pundits and
Speaker 1: the experts and the celebrities and the politicians are the
Speaker 1: ones that are leading the conversations. And I just feel
Speaker 1: like I want to hear from the folks that actually
Speaker 1: live it, and I know that as far as my
Speaker 1: acting work is concerned, I gained the most insight from
Speaker 1: the folks that have really lived it. And that's not
Speaker 1: to devalue what these other folks do. It's tremendously important.
Speaker 1: It's the most collaborative art out there, and everyone has real,
Speaker 1: real value. But for me, as far as information, as
Speaker 1: far as what informs my performance, it's the folks that
Speaker 1: have actually lived it, They've actually experienced things. It's funny
Speaker 1: something happened the moment you started to answer that question.
Speaker 1: I saw you sort of in the wind up of
Speaker 1: the answer, have this trepidation about how to articulate how
Speaker 1: you feel in a way that you think will be palatable.
Speaker 1: This stuff is super sensitive, and we're making a show
Speaker 1: like people on all sides of this thing have lost
Speaker 1: their lives, they've lost their careers, they've lost their freedom,
Speaker 1: their rights have been violated. Like it's really sacred and
Speaker 1: it's really sensitive. And I think the trepidation that you
Speaker 1: see in me and the hesitancy, and why I don't
Speaker 1: want to sort of misspeak on this is that I really,
Speaker 1: really genuinely have real empathy and real love for the
Speaker 1: people on all sides of this thing. And I really
Speaker 1: don't want to alienate anyone. The only thing that I
Speaker 1: know doesn't work and the only thing that I really
Speaker 1: want to alienate is the absolute stead vast rigidity in
Speaker 1: saying those guys are the bad guys. I think that
Speaker 1: that's cowardice. And I think again, we're making a show
Speaker 1: about police corruption in the height of the anti police movement,
Speaker 1: because you talk about my podcasts. One of the biggest
Speaker 1: things that sort of fueled it and ignited it for
Speaker 1: me was, you know, in the wake of George Floyd.
Speaker 1: You know, I when that sort of came up and
Speaker 1: the movement and the uprising, you know, I went out
Speaker 1: there and I protested. I also saw on TV I
Speaker 1: saw people throwing bottles of police officers. And yes they
Speaker 1: were like mass they were in riot gear whatever that was.
Speaker 1: But each one of those people is a human being.
Speaker 1: That each one of those people is somebody's mom or dad, brother, sister,
Speaker 1: son or daughter. And like that really fucking affected me.
Speaker 1: Trust me, man, Like I understand anger, Like I understand rage,
Speaker 1: and I understand what you know, watching what happened to
Speaker 1: George Floyd. You know what that brought up in me.
Speaker 1: But it was important to me to not say all
Speaker 1: police are bad. I would say that out any group.
Speaker 1: And so every time that I went out and protested,
Speaker 1: I also would stop by Newton Division. I would go,
Speaker 1: you know, say hello to my friends down there, and
Speaker 1: I would show some support down there as well. That
Speaker 1: was really important to me. So if I'm trepidacious about this,
Speaker 1: and if I'm hesitant, I don't think that anybody deserves
Speaker 1: to be flippant about this. We're talking about, you know,
Speaker 1: real shit. And the one thing I'm enormously proud of
Speaker 1: about we own the city is I can stay with
Speaker 1: my head held high that there was a real, genuine
Speaker 1: effort to tell the truth with that show and to
Speaker 1: respect the truth. And that's the only way to do
Speaker 1: a story like that. That's the way I want to
Speaker 1: do it, and I really do think we did. You
Speaker 1: mentioned a few times how you know anger and aggression.
Speaker 1: You're born in DC, but grow up in a place
Speaker 1: called Cabin John Maryland. Your father was a corporate attorney
Speaker 1: who you said liked animals more than people. You're the
Speaker 1: middle of three children, Your mother and contract love people
Speaker 1: should work as a social worker. Yep, that's right. You
Speaker 1: had this rather tranquil upbringing in a suburban home which
Speaker 1: you seem to immediately rebel against the moment you could walk.
Speaker 1: You said in GQ in twenty sixteen, one of my
Speaker 1: first memories is of a kid picking on my little brother.
Speaker 1: My brother was in diapers, and I remember punching this
Speaker 1: kid in the face and realizing, Okay, this is what
Speaker 1: I'm supposed to do. It was my job to be
Speaker 1: the tough guy, the troublemaker. Why was that your job?
Speaker 1: Oh man? I think I genuinely believe that like every person,
Speaker 1: and especially I think every boy has his own sort
Speaker 1: of relationship with violence. And I think that for many
Speaker 1: in this country, the relationship sort of starts and finishes,
Speaker 1: and maybe this is a healthy thing in the sort
Speaker 1: of first stage where they're just always scared of it.
Speaker 1: It's always something that just like scares them. They have
Speaker 1: no facility with it, they have no real experience in it.
Speaker 1: It's always something they want to avoid at all costs.
Speaker 1: And I think that there's real potential good and bad
Speaker 1: from having that kind of relationship with it. I think
Speaker 1: some people go a little bit further with it. It
Speaker 1: either scares them so much or intrigues him so much,
Speaker 1: or it causes them so much shame that they want
Speaker 1: to break through it in some way and they want
Speaker 1: to start experiencing it for themselves. And it's a beautiful
Speaker 1: book called Towney by Andre Debou. The third, which I
Speaker 1: think is like the best examination I think of a
Speaker 1: sort of masculinity and fatherhood and man's relationship with violence.
Speaker 1: But you know what he talks about, it's like a membrane.
Speaker 1: It's about it's a memoir, and it's about being this
Speaker 1: kid who's sort of picked on and he's faced with
Speaker 1: the kind of all this kind of violence in his life,
Speaker 1: and he's constantly afraid of it. And then all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, he's sort of like pokes through this membrane
Speaker 1: and he finally starts to fight back. But then after
Speaker 1: a while he trains and trains and trains, and he
Speaker 1: becomes the perpetrator himself, and he becomes the monster until
Speaker 1: then he pokes through that membrane, realizes that, and then
Speaker 1: he eventually becomes an artist. He figures out a way
Speaker 1: to sort of utilize and transfer the fire of his
Speaker 1: rage and the fire of his anger, and that violence
Speaker 1: into art and into positivity and look like you said it,
Speaker 1: I had every opportunity as a kid. I always had
Speaker 1: a nose for trouble since I was little. I always
Speaker 1: wanted to be with the craziest kids, the roughest kids.
Speaker 1: I always wanted to be in the craziest corners of
Speaker 1: the city. I always was super attracted to it, I
Speaker 1: think because it scared the shit out of me. You know,
Speaker 1: my mom, who was a social worker, you know, she
Speaker 1: always talked about this thing called identifying with the aggressor.
Speaker 1: You know, like when I was a little boy, I
Speaker 1: was fascinated by Charles Manson. You know, for me, there
Speaker 1: was no such thing as the idea of this like
Speaker 1: crazy hippie you killed people and painted with their blood.
Speaker 1: Was such a foreign thing growing up in DC. It
Speaker 1: was like so foreign that I was just fascinated with it.
Speaker 1: And well, so you you were interested in Charles Manson.
Speaker 1: I grew up, you know, fascinated Michael Jordan. There you
Speaker 1: go to teach their own tea sero, tea sero, but
Speaker 1: your Chicago, you know. But I was fascinated with Michael
Speaker 1: Jordan too. But I think that there's something about that
Speaker 1: fear again that I, for better or for worse, I
Speaker 1: really ran towards. And I think that there's a big
Speaker 1: relationship with violence. I mean, I remember the first time
Speaker 1: that I got mugged as a kid. There was this
Speaker 1: unbelievable amount of shame, even though it was a man
Speaker 1: that mugged me. I was a kid, and I remember
Speaker 1: calling my dad and I just I had so much shame.
Speaker 1: I felt so violated. And you know, I think one
Speaker 1: of the reasons why I've been so frustrated and angry
Speaker 1: about our justice system, and why I've been able to
Speaker 1: find so much kind of commonality and really love for
Speaker 1: a lot of people who have been incarcerated and who's
Speaker 1: who are working on their own sort of rehabilitation, and
Speaker 1: folks that have really explored with, you know, real violence
Speaker 1: and criminality. Just by the grace of God, just by
Speaker 1: sheer luck and me being born into the family that
Speaker 1: I was born into, I got into real problems, you know,
Speaker 1: with a law and it's something that I'm so far
Speaker 1: away from now. But had I been born into a
Speaker 1: different family, that would have been it for me. And
Speaker 1: I was faced with that situation so many times in
Speaker 1: my life, and I see so many people that just
Speaker 1: made stupid mistakes, just acted out of fear, just acted
Speaker 1: out of shame, just acted out of showing off for
Speaker 1: their friends, just acted out of a stupid mistake. And
Speaker 1: the process that they had to go through to get
Speaker 1: themselves out of it is so deeply and unbelievably unfair.
Speaker 1: And I have so much genuine respect and reverence for
Speaker 1: folks who have gone in to that process, understanding how
Speaker 1: unfair it is, and then still being able to bring
Speaker 1: themselves out the other side. And I want to celebrate that.
Speaker 1: I want to shed a light on that. I think
Speaker 1: it's kind of all the same thing that running towards
Speaker 1: the fear, Even at Sidwell Friends, the high school you
Speaker 1: go to, which is this kind of famous Quaker school
Speaker 1: that Chelsea Clinton I think went to a few years
Speaker 1: under you, You gravitated towards these dangerous people. As you said,
Speaker 1: you have this quote, I always wanted to explore the
Speaker 1: most dangerous nooks and crannies of my city and see
Speaker 1: how far I could get away with things. When you
Speaker 1: have brothers who are super high achieving, I think I
Speaker 1: pushed the boundaries because I want them to see would
Speaker 1: they still love me if I did this? Do you
Speaker 1: think part of that violent streak was about love? Sure?
Speaker 1: And I think beyond my brothers. You know, it was funny.
Speaker 1: I was talking to a guy last night, unbelievable guy,
Speaker 1: and I know him through a friend of mine that
Speaker 1: grew up in DC that we used to always rival
Speaker 1: high schools. We used to getting fistfights all the time.
Speaker 1: And you know, we saw each other sort of for
Speaker 1: the first time in a long time last night, and
Speaker 1: you know, he says something to me. He said, you know, man,
Speaker 1: we grew up in sort of like the height of
Speaker 1: toxic masculinity, of just when things were just so. I
Speaker 1: never thought about it that way, but I do think
Speaker 1: that there was a thing. I love these guys. I
Speaker 1: love my friends so much, and I think this is
Speaker 1: something that happens to young men all over the world.
Speaker 1: I think in a lot of cases, the only way
Speaker 1: to sort of show your love for each other is
Speaker 1: to get each other's backs. And whether that street fights
Speaker 1: or whether that's something more, whether that's playing football, whatever
Speaker 1: it is, there's something real there. You know. When I
Speaker 1: was in Baltimore, you know, going out and ride along
Speaker 1: every with these cops, and especially the sort of more
Speaker 1: aggressive unit cops. And because I remember I would talk
Speaker 1: to friends of mine about what would happen, you know,
Speaker 1: going out every night in Baltimore, in the Southwest or
Speaker 1: in the Eastern and you talk about these stories, and
Speaker 1: it's like you can't talk about it with folks that
Speaker 1: weren't there. You get off of a eight, nine, ten
Speaker 1: hour shift and all you want to do is be
Speaker 1: at the bar with those guys, and there's such love
Speaker 1: because they're putting themselves in a situation every single day
Speaker 1: where they're legitimately getting each other's back. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: what good relationships are built on. They're built on loyalty.
Speaker 1: And so you have this way of testing it, which
Speaker 1: is like, honestly, a very toxic way because look, it
Speaker 1: led to me getting in a ton of trouble and
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways. Look, it caused a lot
Speaker 1: of trauma for me and a lot of damage for me.
Speaker 1: But I also wouldn't change it for the world. But
Speaker 1: that quote about your brothers is a question of will
Speaker 1: they still love me. It's a test of their love
Speaker 1: if you act a certain way. Sure, I guess I'm curious,
Speaker 1: why did you want to test that. Man, you know,
Speaker 1: the first time you've moved uncomfortable in your chair. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: well it's all these tight ass pants for but but yeah, maybe,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think because the thing I just thought
Speaker 1: of that potentially made me uncomfortable. So I just thought
Speaker 1: of my own son, my oldest. I see a lot
Speaker 1: of myself and him. I see him test all the time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think that the number one quality that I
Speaker 1: admire and love and need with people that I get
Speaker 1: extremely close with is do we have the ability to
Speaker 1: connect and reason with each other? And this little boy,
Speaker 1: since he was the youngest age, we could connect and
Speaker 1: reason with each other in the most palpitable, cogent, and
Speaker 1: honest way. But then at the same time, there are
Speaker 1: times where he is it is impossible for us to connect,
Speaker 1: like the chasm between us anger or emotions. Something comes
Speaker 1: in and it's just like, dude, I can It's like
Speaker 1: where are you men? And then I have another son.
Speaker 1: He's so much like my brother, perfect grades, perfect athlete,
Speaker 1: and I look it my oldest and I see him
Speaker 1: constantly testing. You know, my mom is just like, dude,
Speaker 1: you're going through it, you know what I mean? Like
Speaker 1: that you know there is justice. Now it's your turn. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But like I see it, it's like, do you love me?
Speaker 1: Do you know? Let's test it. I think it's superhuman.
Speaker 1: You're talking about that anger and trauma that you experienced
Speaker 1: growing up. For the longest time, the only way that
Speaker 1: you knew how to channel it were through acts of
Speaker 1: violence until I believe nineteen, when you graduate high school
Speaker 1: and attend Skidmore College and Upstate New York. There you
Speaker 1: were playing catcher on the baseball team. It's my understanding
Speaker 1: that the saving grace was this mistake you made in
Speaker 1: signing up for what you believed to be was a
Speaker 1: class called Intro to Theater. What happened. I was there
Speaker 1: to play baseball. I was there at a party. I
Speaker 1: was there to basically be an asshole. And I was
Speaker 1: on probation when I went there, and it was like
Speaker 1: a big thing to even just be in the state
Speaker 1: of New York. In my whole freshman year, twice a
Speaker 1: week I had to go to anger counseling and you know,
Speaker 1: court appointed classes with other people who had been convicted
Speaker 1: of stuff. So, yeah, I wanted to take the Intro
Speaker 1: to Theater class, which was supposed to be a couple
Speaker 1: hundred people in the theater. I thought I could just
Speaker 1: be kind of fucked up and watch movies like everyone else.
Speaker 1: Was sort of like a just get rid of your
Speaker 1: art requirement, but me sort of being the asshole I was.
Speaker 1: I mistakenly signed up for intro to Acting, which was
Speaker 1: a very serious ten person acting class with a woman
Speaker 1: named Alma Becker, who ended up really saving my life.
Speaker 1: And it really is a testament to the power of
Speaker 1: teaching and the power of what happens when an adult
Speaker 1: really takes belief in a kid before she believed in you.
Speaker 1: There was this first assignment where she asked students to
Speaker 1: bring a prized possession you know that meant a lot
Speaker 1: to them, and tell the class why it meant something
Speaker 1: to them. Do you remember what you brought in? Yeah,
Speaker 1: of course, yeah. I mean everybody had to bring in
Speaker 1: an assignment and sort of share this super important possession
Speaker 1: with the rest of the class. We were all sitting
Speaker 1: on the floor of the studio, which I thought was
Speaker 1: so ridiculous because there was perfectly good chairs there, but
Speaker 1: you know, as a theater class, and I'd never been
Speaker 1: around theater people before, and people were sharing these possessions
Speaker 1: and just emoting in the most open I'd never really
Speaker 1: seen anything like it before. One young woman brought her
Speaker 1: Blues Traveler CD that her boyfriend had given her. She's
Speaker 1: crying her eyes out. One brought like, I think a
Speaker 1: pipe of their grandfathers. I just couldn't believe how seriously
Speaker 1: they were taking and I forgot to bring anything in.
Speaker 1: And it was so embarrassing because we were sitting in
Speaker 1: that damn circle and I'm looking at the clock and
Speaker 1: I'm listening to these things, and I know eventually this
Speaker 1: fucking thing is going to come to me. And I
Speaker 1: got nothing, Man, I got nothing. And like, even in
Speaker 1: my full assholery of the day to be like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I forgot After these people are just sharing everything, it
Speaker 1: just wouldn't have worked. And it came to me and
Speaker 1: I grabbed my catcher's glove and I just kind of
Speaker 1: like launched into this story about how my mom had
Speaker 1: bought me this glove like on her deathbed, and I
Speaker 1: just like lost myself in the story. And my mom's
Speaker 1: alive and well in DC and still alive, and the
Speaker 1: story just took me to a place that I had
Speaker 1: never gone before, and I got super detailed. I talked about,
Speaker 1: you know, having a catch with my brother and talking
Speaker 1: about Mom, and it was like I saw it, and
Speaker 1: I was crying my eyes out, and everyone in the
Speaker 1: room was crying their eyes out, and nothing like that
Speaker 1: had ever happened to me before. But what's crazy is
Speaker 1: that moment, which I ended up for years having so
Speaker 1: much shame about, is just lying. You know, Alma at
Speaker 1: that point was literally and is you know, besides my
Speaker 1: mom and my wife, the most important woman in my life,
Speaker 1: without a doubt, And I had so much shame about
Speaker 1: what I did. But that moment in that room, launching
Speaker 1: into this bullshit lie, was actually the exact kind of
Speaker 1: acting that I loved doing. That I want to do that.
Speaker 1: I try to get into that pocket of where you're
Speaker 1: going on pure imagination, letting your emotion flow. And even
Speaker 1: though it was all bullshit and all a lie and
Speaker 1: it was shrouded in shame, it was totally fucking honest.
Speaker 1: At the same time. It's crazy that moment changed my life.
Speaker 1: Not only did it change your life, but it moved
Speaker 1: almost so much that she had faith in you as
Speaker 1: an actor to then later encourage you, as you said,
Speaker 1: to go to Moscow and study at the Moscow Art Theater.
Speaker 1: She helped you apply in nineteen ninety nine, at age
Speaker 1: twenty three, a decade after the fall of communism, you
Speaker 1: move there. How would you describe the culture of that
Speaker 1: program look to be a teacher in Moscow, To be
Speaker 1: an acting teacher is the absolute highest honor you can
Speaker 1: get as an actor, the highest honor. So in America,
Speaker 1: where so many go to teach acting because their careers
Speaker 1: didn't work out, and so that fosters I think in
Speaker 1: a lot of cases, and this is definitely not across
Speaker 1: the board, but I think there's a lot of act
Speaker 1: teachers in this country that are trying to validate their
Speaker 1: own careers are lack thereof there's a lot of ego involved,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of grandstanding, there's a lot of coddling,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of like, let's make this a safe place.
Speaker 1: It's not like that there. It's very very hard to
Speaker 1: get in, it's very very hard to stay in. Your
Speaker 1: head is constantly on the chopping block in a way
Speaker 1: that you know, both collegiate and you know some professional
Speaker 1: sports that I engaged and didn't even come close to,
Speaker 1: and it really fit with me and I think above
Speaker 1: all else, these teachers there, I just respected the shit
Speaker 1: out of them. And my three main acting teachers. They
Speaker 1: came up in Communism when public gatherings were outlawed, where
Speaker 1: theater was the only place where the public could gather,
Speaker 1: and they had to gather in state sanctioned theater. So
Speaker 1: the Moscow Art Theater was a state sanctioned theater. Artists
Speaker 1: were executed, artists were jailed. That's the theater that I
Speaker 1: came up with my three main teachers. They did a
Speaker 1: play called Shinzano in abandon in buildings, in subway tunnels.
Speaker 1: They did it at the risk of imprisonment. Every time
Speaker 1: they put on that play. Have they been caught, they
Speaker 1: would have been sent to jail. Anyone who came to
Speaker 1: see that play would have been sent to jail for
Speaker 1: going to watch that play. But they did it once
Speaker 1: a month in secret locations around the city. They still
Speaker 1: did it while I was there. They were still performing
Speaker 1: that play ten years after Communism. Now they're hugely decorated
Speaker 1: teachers and stars in their own right. Those were the
Speaker 1: guys that I was learning from. There's this muscularity in
Speaker 1: Russian theater, and yet a lot of Russians believe that
Speaker 1: acting is actually a feminine profession, absolutely, which requires the
Speaker 1: male actor to get in touch with their feminine side.
Speaker 1: What do you make of that? Jugas mansions, It's the
Speaker 1: crux of what's wrong with masculinity in this country. If
Speaker 1: you don't know you're feminine, if you don't realize the
Speaker 1: balance between that, you're not a man. As you can
Speaker 1: say by looking at me, I never fought it'd be beautiful,
Speaker 1: you know. I think you know for me, the term
Speaker 1: that masculine has been so bastards and so fucked within
Speaker 1: this country, and it's so born out of I think
Speaker 1: fear and again, shame and again. And I totally believe
Speaker 1: in discipline. I believe in being able to stand up
Speaker 1: for yourself. I believe in being able to handle yourself.
Speaker 1: But I believe equally in your ability to have empathy
Speaker 1: for people, to be kind to people, to be open
Speaker 1: to always aspire to be as humble as you possibly can,
Speaker 1: To crave opportunities where you don't know, to crave opportunities
Speaker 1: where you're the weakest person in the room, where you
Speaker 1: know the least in the room. To always look for
Speaker 1: people that you can learn from to understand that in
Speaker 1: every single person, man, woman, child, or animal, you have
Speaker 1: something to learn from them, You have something to gain
Speaker 1: from them, not to think you have all the answers.
Speaker 1: And I think what you're talking about that they say
Speaker 1: it's a feminine profession. It's funny that there's a saying
Speaker 1: in Russia, men look in the mirror to see what's right.
Speaker 1: Women look in the mirror to see what's wrong. And
Speaker 1: you look at men and women in the mirrors. And
Speaker 1: I hate gross generalizations, but that shit is true. My
Speaker 1: wife was a decades long. I see trauma. My brother
Speaker 1: is a surgeon. They'll tell you a million times. It's
Speaker 1: the young guy who comes in full of tattoos and muscles,
Speaker 1: who in the operating room is screaming his ass off, crying,
Speaker 1: begging for mercy. And it's the older woman that comes
Speaker 1: in that has strength unlike anything you've ever seen before.
Speaker 1: And I just for some reason, we like don't associate
Speaker 1: that in our country. We think it's about being a man,
Speaker 1: and like, I don't know, I think you know. Once
Speaker 1: I got much more into martial arts and especially boxing,
Speaker 1: and got to spend real time among real fighters and
Speaker 1: got into fighting myself you know, in a real way,
Speaker 1: not in like bullshit, shame filled, jokey street fight way,
Speaker 1: but you know, actually, you know, getting in the ring
Speaker 1: with real fighters and understood honor and humility. It's always
Speaker 1: the guys that lead with kindness and that are gracious.
Speaker 1: Those are the guys that you got to look out for,
Speaker 1: you know. The ones that talk tough are not that.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back after a quick break. When you
Speaker 1: leave Moscow and come back to America. On that first
Speaker 1: night back home, you meet Aaron right yeah, who would
Speaker 1: later become your wife. You mentioned that she was a
Speaker 1: trauma nurse. Her job carried the two of you forward
Speaker 1: when you were having a hard time finding work in
Speaker 1: every way, emotionally, economically, every way still does ye, thank you, Aaron.
Speaker 1: I'll thank you for you. Thanks Bro, appreciate love you baby.
Speaker 1: She'll never listen. She doesn't listen to anything I do
Speaker 1: and doesn't work. Hopefully this one it's gonna be. When
Speaker 1: you return to America, you go to Harvard's Institute of
Speaker 1: Theater Training, while also spending time in New York City, CouchSurfing,
Speaker 1: sometimes selling pot, driving a roofless jeep every morning at
Speaker 1: five am to open auditions at Actors Equity in Midtown,
Speaker 1: and you make it through this period. But I want
Speaker 1: to go to two thousand and six when your brother
Speaker 1: Tom bought you a ticket to go to Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: What was that first year? Like, you know, I acting
Speaker 1: for me had been a very pure but also very
Speaker 1: sort of charmed thing for me. I had no real
Speaker 1: access or exposure to anybody who was a professional actor.
Speaker 1: I had no ambitions to be a TV or a
Speaker 1: film actor. I wanted to do theater for the rest
Speaker 1: of my life. And you know, once I had started
Speaker 1: at skidmore Than, all the way up through Russia and
Speaker 1: then all the way through the Art in Boston, all
Speaker 1: signs were like pointing that this was going to really
Speaker 1: work out. It was the first time in my life
Speaker 1: I was getting approval. You know. I played some sports,
Speaker 1: but not that well, you know Division three baseball, Like
Speaker 1: I had never really done anything that made people say
Speaker 1: holy shita, where adults gave you attention in a positive,
Speaker 1: positive way. I could get tons of it in a
Speaker 1: negative way, and I was always holy shit in that way.
Speaker 1: I could make other people be like, Oh, that guy's crazy.
Speaker 1: That guy will do shit no one else would do
Speaker 1: but now I was channeling that in a really really
Speaker 1: positive way and it was really working. It sounds crazy,
Speaker 1: but I gained a connection to something much higher than
Speaker 1: me a spirituality or I started praying a lot. I
Speaker 1: had a connection with something much bigger, and I really
Speaker 1: felt like, shit, man, you're you're on this earth to
Speaker 1: sort of do this. So when you came to LA,
Speaker 1: you believed this is gonna work out. It's gonna work out,
Speaker 1: It's gonna work out, And it was just an unbelievably
Speaker 1: like rude awakening. How So, I had always heard about
Speaker 1: sort of the rejection and how hard it was to
Speaker 1: kind of like make it as an actor, but I
Speaker 1: had never experienced anything like it. I really believe that
Speaker 1: I was good. I really believe that I could tap
Speaker 1: into things that a lot of folks couldn't. I believe
Speaker 1: that I was special. That's dangerous, but it's also fuel.
Speaker 1: You have to believe that. You know, when you're coming up,
Speaker 1: you have to latch onto any bit of somebody saying hey,
Speaker 1: you're good, or believing yourself, or a feeling that you
Speaker 1: have on stage where you know you're actually reaching somebody
Speaker 1: or you're gripping an audience you know, those moments are
Speaker 1: sacred and they're fuel to keep going. But my moments
Speaker 1: over the years that I got out of school, they
Speaker 1: were farther and fewer between. It just wasn't happening. It
Speaker 1: was rejection after rejection after rejection, and I was really
Speaker 1: acting out. What did that acting out look like? Oh? Man,
Speaker 1: I was all over the place. I mean it culminated
Speaker 1: in two thousand and nine, you know, getting in serious
Speaker 1: trouble once again, and that was sort of like, you know,
Speaker 1: finally my rock bottom, which, honestly, man like, if you know,
Speaker 1: I was getting into kind of real trouble from nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety four to two thousand and nine, I mean, dude,
Speaker 1: that literally is the definition of privilege that I could
Speaker 1: get into that much trouble for that many years and
Speaker 1: not suffer really, really serious consequences. The night of July third,
Speaker 1: twenty nine, you're in Venice. You're walking your dog, Boss,
Speaker 1: And as you walk your dog, this man who's hosting
Speaker 1: a kind of house party, I think, on his porch,
Speaker 1: calls the dog over and says, this is my dog.
Speaker 1: You grab the dog back. He says, why did you
Speaker 1: take my dog? Then what happens before that happened. Strangely,
Speaker 1: there was something going on with me that night. There
Speaker 1: was an energy that I had that was not right.
Speaker 1: What do you mean by that? I remember walking down
Speaker 1: in Venice that night already and there was just something
Speaker 1: swirling about. Normally, when you talk about like sort of
Speaker 1: major events in your life, you kind of remember it
Speaker 1: after the major event happens. For me, it started way before.
Speaker 1: There was something going on. It might sound oki, it
Speaker 1: might sound like bullshit, but it's the truth. When I
Speaker 1: went to this street corner for some reason, I laid
Speaker 1: eyes on that guy and you know, you say that,
Speaker 1: it's like, okay, so was this premeditated? Like was it?
Speaker 1: You know, It's like I'm saying that now I laid
Speaker 1: eyes on that guy. There's something about that guy that
Speaker 1: I just saw and he was, you know, one hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty feet away from me. Then there was an
Speaker 1: older couple playing the dijra ado, some people in their sixties,
Speaker 1: and that guy as if it was like a movie.
Speaker 1: You know, I happened to see the people playing the
Speaker 1: dijre ado, and that one guy walked over to the
Speaker 1: woman in the couple, picked up the dijre ado and
Speaker 1: put it in his crotch as if she was like
Speaker 1: playing his crotch, and her husband was completely humiliated, couldn't
Speaker 1: do anything, and they packed up their stuff and they
Speaker 1: walked away. Right at that moment is when he looked
Speaker 1: at my dog and said, oh my god and called
Speaker 1: my dog over. So that's when that happened. And then
Speaker 1: you know, the guys after he said that's my dog,
Speaker 1: they started to follow me, and yeah, I felt a
Speaker 1: hand on my back, and you know, I turned around
Speaker 1: and I hit him, and then it was just kind
Speaker 1: of on. You know, his friends started to rush me.
Speaker 1: I put my back against a tree and just was
Speaker 1: sort of fighting them off at the best that I could.
Speaker 1: But that guy, he ended up getting knocked out, standing
Speaker 1: up and then he fell down and hit his head
Speaker 1: on the pavement. The police came, and it was terrible.
Speaker 1: When they took me to jail. You know, it's still
Speaker 1: not woken up. So you're sitting on a bench in
Speaker 1: the Pacific Division station. They have you handcuffed. You have
Speaker 1: to pee really badly. What's going through your hat? It
Speaker 1: was a conversation with whatever's up there. It was clear
Speaker 1: from my heart to whatever's up there, and I just
Speaker 1: begged for help. I begged to help me get through this.
Speaker 1: I said, look, I know what I did here, and
Speaker 1: I know how terrible this is, and I know that
Speaker 1: if you can just wake this guy up, if you
Speaker 1: can just get me out of this, I'm one hundred
Speaker 1: percent done. I am done with the insanity. I'm done
Speaker 1: with not being completely devoted to my girlfriend who's not
Speaker 1: my wife. I'm done not being completely devoted to my work.
Speaker 1: I'm done with all the bullshit, with all the pretending,
Speaker 1: with all the wildness, with a violence, with drinking. I'm
Speaker 1: walking away from that guy. And I didn't know what
Speaker 1: that meant. I didn't know what it entailed, but I
Speaker 1: knew that I could do it. But I also, before
Speaker 1: I had that conversation, I had a conversation with something
Speaker 1: else that was also as clear as day that said, look,
Speaker 1: if he doesn't wake up, I gotta go the other
Speaker 1: way now, and I gotta let all that go. I
Speaker 1: gotta let the Sidwell go, and the mom and dad go,
Speaker 1: and the aspirations of being an actor go, and whatever's
Speaker 1: going on with Aaron go, and the hopes of ever
Speaker 1: having a family go, and this sacred thing that I
Speaker 1: found called acting. It's done, and I am going to
Speaker 1: be the darkest version of myself. And it was clear
Speaker 1: as day that I knew that that was what needed
Speaker 1: to happen, if I had to go into that system,
Speaker 1: and I knew it. But please don't make me go
Speaker 1: that way. Please help me from that, I promise you.
Speaker 1: And it was just clear and literally right at that
Speaker 1: moment they came over to me, the cops did the
Speaker 1: whole time, say he's not waking up, man, you know
Speaker 1: this is gonna be bad. They came over and said,
Speaker 1: he just woke up, you know. A year later, July third,
Speaker 1: twenty ten, I was in Georgia doing the Walking Dead,
Speaker 1: hadn't touched any alcohol in a year, and I wrote
Speaker 1: a letter to that guy that I hit and I
Speaker 1: told him that I knew that night it wasn't him
Speaker 1: that I was attacking. It was me, you said once
Speaker 1: in an interview, that was me that I knocked out.
Speaker 1: That was the old version of Maya. I'd seen a brashness,
Speaker 1: a disrespect in him that I'd seen in myself. And
Speaker 1: I was done with that guy who emerges on the
Speaker 1: other side of that. I mean, that's what's so scary
Speaker 1: for anyone. And I'd tell people that all the time.
Speaker 1: The hardest thing about change is you don't know where
Speaker 1: you're going. The first step that you got to take
Speaker 1: in any kind of behavioral changes you got to see
Speaker 1: that there's a problem and you got to be done
Speaker 1: with it. They talk about in Moscow the four stages
Speaker 1: of behavioral development, right, and the first step is always
Speaker 1: unconscious on competence. You're walking around, you're living your life.
Speaker 1: You don't know it, but you're fucking up. And every
Speaker 1: day you're fucking up. And even if it's just like
Speaker 1: you're sitting with bad posture, you don't realize that. You
Speaker 1: just sit with bad posture every day. And then the
Speaker 1: next step, the most vital step for change, is conscious
Speaker 1: on competence to realize, holy shit, I sit the wrong
Speaker 1: fucking way, I'm behaving the wrong way. This is not
Speaker 1: good for me. I have a problem, huge vital. You'll
Speaker 1: never change without that step. The next step is conscious competence.
Speaker 1: You know, if I really think about it, and I
Speaker 1: really put effort into it, I can sit with my backstraight,
Speaker 1: I can stop engaging in these kinds of behaviors. I
Speaker 1: can start living right. If I really think and I
Speaker 1: really work and I really get the tools, and I
Speaker 1: dedicate my life to changing. I can do it, and
Speaker 1: ultimately you get to a place of unconscious competence where
Speaker 1: you don't have to think about it anymore. You're just
Speaker 1: that guy. And shame on me that it took me
Speaker 1: that long, but true, this is when it happens. It happens,
Speaker 1: and man, you're so blessed if you can see it,
Speaker 1: if you can feel it, and then you act on it,
Speaker 1: and you have to. You have to. The scary thing
Speaker 1: is is that when you change, you're ripping out a
Speaker 1: whole part of yourself and you don't know what goes
Speaker 1: in there. So you got to start filling it with
Speaker 1: other things. You gotta start filling it with art, with love,
Speaker 1: with reading, with what you know what, positive things that
Speaker 1: you can fill in that whole. But I didn't know
Speaker 1: how to be the not wild guy, the guy that
Speaker 1: went out all night, the guy that you know was
Speaker 1: ready to do whatever at the drop of the hat.
Speaker 1: I didn't know how to be that guy. But I
Speaker 1: knew I wouldn't do that, So I had to start
Speaker 1: filling it with other things. And it happened remarkably fast.
Speaker 1: You know, the walking dead came, and you know, the
Speaker 1: Walking Dead to this day, you know, in a lot
Speaker 1: of ways, was really the best job I ever had
Speaker 1: for so many reasons. I needed that job when it happened.
Speaker 1: I needed to be around those people, to be a
Speaker 1: part of that family, to be around young artists who
Speaker 1: were raising kids, who are committed to their husbands and wives.
Speaker 1: And then it was such a blessing to get killed
Speaker 1: off that show and to be able to walk away
Speaker 1: from that and to be able to have that foundation,
Speaker 1: and then once again there's change. What do I do now?
Speaker 1: I finally get on a show, it finally hits, and
Speaker 1: then they kill the shit out of me? What do
Speaker 1: I do? And that fear thing? I mean, I think
Speaker 1: that's really where it kind of started in a really
Speaker 1: positive way. Your careers aren't over. This is an amazing opportunity.
Speaker 1: You got to fall in love in this business within
Speaker 1: not knowing. But it sucks as an actor, right. You
Speaker 1: don't know when you're your next job is going to be.
Speaker 1: You don't know when the phone's going to ring. But
Speaker 1: also your phone could ring any second, that next job
Speaker 1: could be out there. It's a wonderful, wonderful blessing of
Speaker 1: a ride if you look at it that way. So
Speaker 1: you fill this hole with work, with marriage, three kids,
Speaker 1: a lot of dogs, some anger management, some therapy. Eventually
Speaker 1: you do get a call from the director that I
Speaker 1: think was an early inspiration to you in Martin Scorsese.
Speaker 1: There's a scene in Wolf of Wall Street. I think
Speaker 1: it's a scene that probably changed the course of your
Speaker 1: career in many ways. And I thought, if you're open
Speaker 1: to it, we can watch together. Oh cool man, this
Speaker 1: is John Burnthall as Brad in Wolf of Wall Street.
Speaker 1: You can sell anything. Sell me this fucking pen. Right,
Speaker 1: you can sell anything. Sell that something that pen can
Speaker 1: of finishing. First, I need today, Brad. So mod's done. Boom,
Speaker 1: tell me that pen. Watch go one pen. That's my
Speaker 1: boy right there? This great sell anything? Did you do
Speaker 1: me a favorite? Hoy'd your name down at napkin form.
Speaker 1: I don't have a pen exactly supplying the man much.
Speaker 1: I'm saying, he's creating urgency, getting to want to buy
Speaker 1: the starts. It's something that they need, you know, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. That's a thing. All nuns are lesbians,
Speaker 1: you're talking about. Think about it. They can keep your dude.
Speaker 1: So they're gonna start time, give me four times. I mean, look, man,
Speaker 1: I there's so much to that, you know that I see,
Speaker 1: I think above and beyond anything else. It's like Scores
Speaker 1: as he sets a symphony. Everyone there is so free.
Speaker 1: Everyone there is feels like they're one hundred feet tall,
Speaker 1: and everyone there is urged and compelled to surprise each other.
Speaker 1: It made me trust my ability to kind of rework
Speaker 1: and bring my own ideas in because the whole idea
Speaker 1: of the ketchup bottle was just an idea that I had.
Speaker 1: And unlike so many jobs and so many projects where
Speaker 1: actors are made to feel like you got to sort
Speaker 1: of pitch and lawyer for your ideas, it's not like
Speaker 1: that with Marty. Just come in and do it. And
Speaker 1: he surrounded yourself with such a talented crew and cass
Speaker 1: and background actors that you have this environment where you
Speaker 1: can just do things and people will just react to them.
Speaker 1: That's one level. I just knew that I wanted to
Speaker 1: play the annoyance of that scene and listening to these motherfuckers,
Speaker 1: and I could physicalize it by just saying to the
Speaker 1: woman who played the waitress that day, who, by the way,
Speaker 1: was a Broadway actress, you know, like that's who's doing
Speaker 1: background work. I said, hey, just do me a favorite,
Speaker 1: bring me my cheeseburger. Last, So I'm already pissed off.
Speaker 1: I don't have my cheeseburger. I gotta listen to these
Speaker 1: fucking people. Then I said to the prople, I just
Speaker 1: need an empty bottle to catch him. So now I'm
Speaker 1: listening to these fucking assholes. I don't have a cheeseburger.
Speaker 1: They got a cheesburgh. But where's my fucking ketchup? So
Speaker 1: the whole scene, I'm asking for the catch. Nobody knows
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do that. I don't need to tell anybod
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do that. Of course says it doesn't know
Speaker 1: you're gonna tells No, No, you don't need to tell him.
Speaker 1: He's watching everything. And then on the way to work
Speaker 1: that day, Leo was walking to set and on the
Speaker 1: conversation that he had with the security guard for the
Speaker 1: day was, hey, man, I had a job interview with
Speaker 1: a real Wolf of Wall Street with a real Jordan Belfort.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah. What he did is he handed me
Speaker 1: a pen, said sell me that pen. Leo told us
Speaker 1: that right before we started shooting the scene. He told
Speaker 1: us that story, and in that take he just happened
Speaker 1: to bring out the pen and said, sell me this.
Speaker 1: But so it was all improvised, all live fully working together.
Speaker 1: And then when I threw the ketchup bottle on the ground,
Speaker 1: everybody just reacted to it, and then without any queue,
Speaker 1: the background actress's playing the waitress runs over with the
Speaker 1: new bottle of ketchup. It was every day, every scene,
Speaker 1: every take, and I felt with Marty, I just never felt,
Speaker 1: you know, he is, he's the mountaintop. He's my favorite director,
Speaker 1: he's the best of all time. His movies are my favorite.
Speaker 1: And he saw me, He saw every little thing that
Speaker 1: I did, every little idea, and his ability to make
Speaker 1: things so easy and flow so naturally, and to capture
Speaker 1: the electricity of spontaneity while also preserving how sacred and
Speaker 1: special you know, those moments between action and cut are
Speaker 1: my theory on it is anyone in art, and I
Speaker 1: think in business, I think in pretty much anything. Anyone
Speaker 1: who tries to control you, tries to hamper you, tries
Speaker 1: to manipulate you, who tries to hinder you, there's no
Speaker 1: more of a telltale sign of mediocrity than that, you'll
Speaker 1: never get beyond mediocre. It might kind of work, but
Speaker 1: it will never be great. But the greats, the great athletes,
Speaker 1: the great musicians, the great directors, the great performers, the
Speaker 1: great business people, I really believe, are people who can inspire,
Speaker 1: who can bring in the great people, and then who
Speaker 1: can let them fly and urge them to fly. And literally,
Speaker 1: the meter on how happy I am on a set
Speaker 1: is directly proportional to how free the set is and
Speaker 1: how inspired the set is. And that's not just with actors,
Speaker 1: it's with every crew member. Every single person knows that
Speaker 1: their opinion and their art and their process and their
Speaker 1: work is valued. It's encouraged that just slaughterize, obliterate hierarchy
Speaker 1: on sets. It is the downfall. And the second you
Speaker 1: go on and you have actors acting like they're more
Speaker 1: important or director acting like he's King Dick. Second, you
Speaker 1: see that, to me, I know the shit ain't gonna work.
Speaker 1: There's leadership, and there's people say hey, come with me,
Speaker 1: follow me, watch this. But the great leaders also give
Speaker 1: that up and say, okay, now I'm following you. What's up?
Speaker 1: And it changed the way of work and really made
Speaker 1: me fall in love with screen acting in a way
Speaker 1: that I thought I would never it would never happen,
Speaker 1: not in the way that I that I love theater acting.
Speaker 1: The arc of this is really remarkable because you come
Speaker 1: of age watching Robert de Niro and Scorsese films expressing
Speaker 1: and articulating and anger and rage that you only understood
Speaker 1: in violence in physical combat. And you saw this actor
Speaker 1: in De Niro that captured that energy, that rage and
Speaker 1: used it for art. Thirty five years later, you find
Speaker 1: yourself in a Scorsese film. Once you've reached that pinnacle,
Speaker 1: how do your dreams change? Wow? I mean I you know,
Speaker 1: I have this tattoo and my wrist with Almah's name,
Speaker 1: and it's a symbol of the Moscow Art Theater. It's
Speaker 1: a symbol of a seagull, and the Seagull is a
Speaker 1: very famous play. It was the first play of the
Speaker 1: Moscow Art Theater. That's why the Siegel is their symbol.
Speaker 1: And what the seagul represents to me is the play
Speaker 1: The Seagulls about all these artists, the health or lack
Speaker 1: there of the relationships they have with their dreams. And
Speaker 1: you've got successful writers, aspiring writers, successful actors, aspiring actors.
Speaker 1: They're all in love with the wrong people, and it's
Speaker 1: all this just sort of like crazy comedy tragedy that
Speaker 1: ultimately ends in the lead character committing suicide. And you
Speaker 1: know he's in love with this woman Nina that he
Speaker 1: calls her Siegel, And what he does is he shoots
Speaker 1: a seagull out of the sky and gives it to
Speaker 1: her and to me. The whole point of that play
Speaker 1: is that the only way you can have a healthy
Speaker 1: relationship with your dream is if it's flying in front
Speaker 1: of you and you're chasing it. It's never about attaining it.
Speaker 1: You've got to be able to follow it no matter
Speaker 1: which way it goes. There's no such thing as having
Speaker 1: a pet Siegel. You can't touch a seagull. You can't
Speaker 1: attain it. The only way you can attain it is
Speaker 1: if you kill it, but then it's dead. So the
Speaker 1: healthy relationship flying and you're following it, That's how I
Speaker 1: live my life. I've found days on set since then
Speaker 1: that we're just as fulfilling. But I'm looking for more,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm I'm hungry to challenge myself deeper. I'm
Speaker 1: hungry to scare myself more and I'm really hungry to
Speaker 1: create my own stuff. I'm just as hungry as I was,
Speaker 1: you know, as you say in two thousand and six
Speaker 1: when I was crying into my pillow, saying this is
Speaker 1: never going to happen, But I think it's in a
Speaker 1: much healthier way. There's there's an excitement behind it. I'm
Speaker 1: enormously lucky and enormously blessed. As you move forward, you've
Speaker 1: renegotiated that relationship to chasing your dreams, to guilt and
Speaker 1: shame about the past. I keep thinking about your three kids.
Speaker 1: You're talking about them in the beginning, and you and
Speaker 1: I are talking on this week. That is hard to
Speaker 1: even give language to what's happened in Texas. And I'm
Speaker 1: sure as a father you've gone back and thought, how
Speaker 1: do I protect my kids? What do I say? And
Speaker 1: I guess as we leave, what do you say to
Speaker 1: your kids to move forward? You know, every every morning
Speaker 1: that that I dropped my kids off at school, I
Speaker 1: always say the same thing. Be bold, be brave, be beautiful,
Speaker 1: and be kind. Say to them every day, you know
Speaker 1: we failed, man like we failed. You know we failed.
Speaker 1: We've failed, we failed this earth, and we failed these
Speaker 1: kids and there's every generation feels like things are spiraling
Speaker 1: out of control. Things move faster and faster and faster.
Speaker 1: My hope is that somehow, through art, through connectivity, and
Speaker 1: through the universality that comes with how connected we are now,
Speaker 1: that somehow kindness can spread and that somehow the quadranting
Speaker 1: off the isolation that is like ripping all of us
Speaker 1: right now is somehow delivered into the zeitgeist. And I
Speaker 1: know this is very weird, but like as uncool, it's
Speaker 1: not cool to just be staring at your phone all day.
Speaker 1: You gotta go out and connect. You gotta go out
Speaker 1: and seek relationships and find empathy. I think kids, you know,
Speaker 1: they got to see the world, They got to see
Speaker 1: other cultures. I just came back from Columbia. It seems
Speaker 1: like there's a lot less tension on the streets. There's
Speaker 1: a lot less posturing, there's a lot less worrying about
Speaker 1: how everybody else is doing what they believe, and there's
Speaker 1: a lot more folks trying to connect. I think you're right,
Speaker 1: But that thing you mentioned about how we failed this moment,
Speaker 1: that failure seems to weigh on you. Oh yeah, fuye dude,
Speaker 1: you know, for me, I don't know if you have children, man,
Speaker 1: but like something happens, it's like you don't, I don't
Speaker 1: matter anymore, man, Like it doesn't. It doesn't matter, you know,
Speaker 1: Like I exist for them, like I do. I give
Speaker 1: anything up. I give my life up in a heartbeat
Speaker 1: for them. And I know the ANSWER's got to come
Speaker 1: from them. And it's crazy to be in this country
Speaker 1: and to know that you're providing a life for your kids,
Speaker 1: you're you're leaving them in a place that's worse than
Speaker 1: what you had. So I think we got to prepare them.
Speaker 1: And I think that like that means in always, I
Speaker 1: don't shield my kids from stuff. My like parenting style,
Speaker 1: for better or for worse, is to try to be
Speaker 1: with them through everything, to be by their side, sometimes
Speaker 1: in front of them, sometimes behind them, sometimes by their side,
Speaker 1: but to say, hey, look, this is what this is.
Speaker 1: This is Daddy's perspective on this, this is how I've
Speaker 1: handled it, these are the mistakes I've made in this.
Speaker 1: You're gonna have to make your own choices. This is
Speaker 1: what I think you should do. You're going to have
Speaker 1: to figure this out. But fucking be brave and be
Speaker 1: bold and be beautiful and be kind like be kind.
Speaker 1: You mentioned kindness and empathy throughout this I'm torn between
Speaker 1: wanting to believe that those qualities can spread and then
Speaker 1: feeling rather hopeless about that. Why do you feel hopeless
Speaker 1: about them? One thing that shook me is that in
Speaker 1: mid March of twenty twenty the world comes to a halt.
Speaker 1: We go through this pandemic throughout twenty twenty into early
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one, there is a large cultural conversation about empathy, connectivity.
Speaker 1: On the other side of this, being more decent to
Speaker 1: each other, being more grateful for the time we have
Speaker 1: with one another. All these big ideas that seemed positive
Speaker 1: and hopeful, But if I survey the last six to
Speaker 1: eight months, I think a lot of that was all talk.
Speaker 1: So that's where I don't know if our words, in
Speaker 1: this case, your words, which I think I do believe
Speaker 1: in my core, that do move me that I want
Speaker 1: to have faith in. Sometimes I think, will they just
Speaker 1: remain as words? And I hope they don't look man
Speaker 1: for better or for worse. In this conversation, what we
Speaker 1: decided to kind of focus on lot was my history
Speaker 1: with fucking up making bad decisions, even though I had
Speaker 1: every opportunity in the world not to. I kept fucking up.
Speaker 1: I kept being violent, I kept betraying people, I kept
Speaker 1: hurting people. I kept violating my family, violating my own sets,
Speaker 1: getting breaks, getting out of shit, kept going, kept going,
Speaker 1: kept going, kept going, kept going, kept going. And believe me, man,
Speaker 1: every single time I got sent to the principal's office,
Speaker 1: every single time my dad picked me up from a
Speaker 1: police station or jail, every single time I did something wrong,
Speaker 1: believe me, man, I said, I'm done. I'm done. I'll
Speaker 1: never do it again. Words empty? Words? Were they empty? Maybe?
Speaker 1: Did I believe them then for that moment, that little fragment? Maybe?
Speaker 1: But just like anything else, it's a scale. And look,
Speaker 1: it's a scary fucking idea. But I think, man, you
Speaker 1: know this isn't going to be the last one in
Speaker 1: all these ways, but you better believe like I believe
Speaker 1: that humanity, at the end, there will be a point
Speaker 1: where we say we can't, we can't take it anymore.
Speaker 1: Who knows when that moment's going to be. But I
Speaker 1: believe it is inherent in humanity that there is a
Speaker 1: rock bottom. I just I've seen it with so many people.
Speaker 1: I've seen it with so many situations, there is a
Speaker 1: rock bottom. You've seen it with yourself. I've seen it
Speaker 1: with myself. I've experienced it. Hopefully, it's not about being
Speaker 1: too late for us. It's about the next generation, the
Speaker 1: generation after that, and it's understanding that we got a
Speaker 1: responsibility to something that's way bigger than ourselves. And you
Speaker 1: can't make those kinds of changes. You can't change anybody,
Speaker 1: but you can change yourself like you can you can. Well,
Speaker 1: then I guess I have to thank you for being
Speaker 1: living proof, no boy, that some change can happen, that
Speaker 1: one can transform. And I hope you're right on Bernthall,
Speaker 1: Pleasure to me, Pleasures on all my man. Thank you,
Speaker 1: and that's our show. Special thanks to Chase Lanter, Sloane Kessler,
Speaker 1: narrative PR, HBO Max, and of course John brunt Ball.
Speaker 1: You can watch his new show We Own This City
Speaker 1: on HBO Max. You listen to his podcasts Real Ones
Speaker 1: with John Bernthal wherever you do your listening, and you
Speaker 1: can watch him in Sharpstick, the new film from Lena
Speaker 1: Dunham later this summer. We'll include links to all of
Speaker 1: that and more at Talk easypod dot com. If you
Speaker 1: enjoyed today's talk and recommend others with Bill Hayder, Kate Blanchett,
Speaker 1: Matthew McConaughey, Questlove, Laura Dern, and Tessa Thompson. To hear
Speaker 1: those and more Pushkin Podcasts listen on the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you like to listen. You
Speaker 1: can also follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram at talk Easypod.
Speaker 1: As always, this show would not be possible without our
Speaker 1: incredible team. Talk Easy is produced by Caroline Reebok. Our
Speaker 1: executive producer is Jennic So Bravo. Our associate producer is
Speaker 1: Caitlin Dryden. Today's Talk was edited by Claris Kavara and
Speaker 1: mixed by Andrew Vastola. Music by Dylan Peck, illustrations by
Speaker 1: Christia Chenoy, photographs by Emma Meade, Video and graphics by
Speaker 1: Ian Chang, Derek gaberzak, Ian Jones, Ethan Seneca and Laila Register.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to Patrice Lee, Paulina Suarez, Kaylin Ung and
Speaker 1: shil o'fagan. I'd also like to thank the team at
Speaker 1: Pushkin Industries, Justin Richmond, Julia Barton, John Schnars, Kerry Brodie,
Speaker 1: David Glover Heather Faine, Mila Belle, Eric Sandler, Nicole Morano,
Speaker 1: Maggie Taylor, Morgan Rattner, Maya Kanig, Carly Migliori, Jason Gambrell,
Speaker 1: Malcolm Gladwell, and Jacob Weisberg. I'm Sam Fragoso. Thank you
Speaker 1: for listening to Talk Easy. I'll see you back here
Speaker 1: next Sunday with David Sedaris. Until then, stay safe and
Speaker 1: solo