Trust us, Steven Seagal is a world class monster. On episode 26, Robert is joined by the Internet's Seanbaby about Seagal's aikido, alleged human trafficking and unconscionable blues music.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
M Hey everybody, I'm Robert Evans and this is once again Behind the Bastards, the show where we tell you everything you don't know about the very worst people in all of history. And with me today in this special San Francisco City by the Bay episode of Behind the Bastards is Sean Riley, also known as Sean Baby. It's a pleasure to be here. I had to check up on your last name because I've only ever known you with Sean Baby. It is Riley. Yeah, Sean Patrick Riley got because you know, my dad, it was his turn to name the kids and he really wanted an Irish name, so he said triple the Irish. Sean Riley is very Irish and adding a Patrick in there just too much, exceptionally, so it's too much. Well, we are talking about the opposite of an Irish person today, Steven Seagal, we have cans of wine. Is not normal, not normal normally, I'm sober other than the natural high durritos gives me. I'm gonna be your first drunken Irish guest. Drunken Irish. Yeah, we did a really drunk one at Unite the Right too, But anyway, we're just gonna dive right in here to our story about Steven Seagal. God, I can't wait now. If you all remember Steven Seagal kind of mediocre, bordering on decent sometimes action starts of such films as Under Siege on Deadly Ground. Yeah, what on Deadly Ground is not so great? No? No, no, no, understieges all right, we're talking hard to kill, Yeah, hard to kill above the law, above the law. Hard Target was a Jean Claude May Name movie, which was better than all these. You don't we should talk about Jean Claude Van Name for three hours. Well, the thing about Steven Seagal, I suspect a lot of people listening to this might be surprised that Steven Seagal has been picked as a subject for this, And I want to ensure everyone up front. He's a monster. And that's part of what's so important to talk about in a day, because honestly, you can kind of tell from his movies like There seemed to be made by a very insecure man. I know if you watched a lot of his films, but he has never taken a shot. Steven Seagal movies are just him, like just walking through his enemies. Oh yeah, yeah, no he's not. It's not like a Bruce Willis thing where he's gonna be shot and choked and eat up. And he's just I'm the toughest guy that's ever been. And even when he made The Glimmerman and like Keenan every Wayne's had all these funny lines, He's like, you know what, I should these funny lines too, and so like there's two funny man. There's no straight guy in that movie except Steven Seagal, you know, has no comic timing and he sort of sucks, but like again, walks through everybody and you have a you have a knife, Steven Seagal has nothing. You're so dead, Like ten seconds into that fight, you're dead. Oh yeah, he's gonna break your arms to the knife goes back towards you, and then he's gonna stab you with your own knife. That's the kind of action here on dam He'd get stabbed like seventy five times and make a heroic come back. That's a story. Yeah, yeah, that's an arc. There's no arcs and Steven Seagal movies. The arc is just Steven Seagal is a badass. There are people opposed to him and then they're dead. Yeah. Um so. Stephen Frederick Seagal, or well, Stephen Frederick Siegel is the original pronunciation of his name, so we'll get to that in a second. Was born on April tenth, nine two. On his personal website Steven Seagal dot com, he describes his early life vast lee. A son of a math teacher and a medical technician, Stephen's humble childhood was underscored by a fascination with the martial arts and the blues. Some would say that this is a strange combination, but ask any martial arts expert or blues legend and they will both tell you that it is the spirit that reaches deep and within your soul that drives the artistry. I learned on an ancient mountaintop. It's actually freaky how accurate that is to what he claims about his training in the blues. Um, I like every stupid thing I make up. You're like, oh, yeah, that's actually no. You can't think this is dumber than it is, and then it gets really sinister. So that's the Steven seagaltail. So, according to the Guardian, Stephen began studying a keto when he was seven years old, and soon thereafter Quote professed to his parents that he was not of this cosmic realm. I learned from credit class that space. Yeah, uh, it's possible. This was because young Stephen Segal was actually the reincarnation of a seventeenth century Buddhist lama. Again more and that later. Probably the best source I've been able to find on Siegel's early life was a November article in People magazine, written at the height of his popularity. The author actually got to interview his mom, Pat and get some presumably accurate information about the stars early life. The article notes that while Siegel claimed that quote a lot of my youth was spent in Brooklyn, his mom says that he was born in Lansing, Michigan, and lived near Detroit until the family moved to Fullerton, California, when he was five. Here's a quote from that article. Although Segal likes to paint himself as an urban street kid whom the Fullerton youths saw as some kind of crazy gangster, Pat says her son was frail and suffered from asthma. He was a party kid back then, she says, but he really thrived after the move from Michigan. So good for him. Yeah, no, moving moving to Fullerton was great. Yeah, the weird thing to lie about, Yeah, what wanting people to think that you were a gangster at five? I just I wouldn't have bought it anyway. But like, go and ask his mom, and his mom sells him out immediately. He doesn't even say, like, Mom, I told every want to come from the karate streets. You gotta you gotta come before me. She's like, I'm not doing that, sweetheart. People magazine calls, I'm telling them the truth. You are fat and asthmetic and you're not from space. You know. Uh, you know that kid in like elementary school who always has all these like bold lies about his uncle who is a Navy seal or whatever like that. Steven Seagal is that, but never growing up or learning anything like That's a great way to describe him. Um So, Steven's mom says that he spent most of his youth playing rock music rather than the blues, but confirms that he was obsessed with aketo from an early age. So that does seem to be true. Well, it's a perfect sport for a seven year old. Some shade on Aketo will not be the last. She says, quote, he worked with this nice old Japanese man at a dojo and garden grove. He where it's Stephen to go to Japan. We don't know when Stephen first went to Japan because he is a viitual liar, but in sundry interviews he's claimed to a first gun there at various years, from between nineteen sixty three to nineteen seventy three, so somewhere in that period. Fullerton College enrollment records note that he was enrolled there from nineteen seventy too of any one, which suggests he would have been at least nineteen before leaving. This is meaningful because one of Steven's claims to fame is that he studied under Morahi Uyashiba, the founder of akito. Since Mr Uyashiba died in nineteen sixty nine, it's likely that Steven's lying about that too ridiculous. Yes, it won't stop being that so Segel moved back to California nineteen seventy four, where he met Miyaku Fujitani, a second degree black belt and daughter of an Akito master from Osaka, Japan. They met in l a at a dojo where she worked, and Stephen pursued her quote aggressively, Um no, no, it will be creepy later. At this point, he was really good looking in his youth, like he has legitimately swollen like a handsome guy like in his early twenties, and she was charmed by it. She says he somehow lost all that by the time he made his first movie. Oh yeah, he went downhill from like ag eight teen on. It has been a steady slide, to be honest, I think he might have peaked at five. So Miako eventually went home to Osaka and even went with her. So he went back to Japan a second time. They got married there. According to Robert Strickland, a former ci A consultant who knew Segal in Japan, Segal claimed to have married Miako and moved there in order to quote avoid the draft. Marrying a Japanese national would make him less likely to be sent back to the United States. So he doesn't talk about that so much anymore now that he's Steven Seagal law man. But yeah, that's that's apparently why I moved to Japan in the first place, to avoid the draft. Yeah, to this day. Segal claims that he was the first and at the time only white man to open a dojo in Japan. If true, that would be impressive. Spy Magazine says that that's bullshit. However, Spy magazine magazine calling your bullshit, I bet that's some serious bullshit. I really like every article of Spy I read, because they had a great one about Paul mana fort like this one. They spent six months studying Steven Seagal and like talking to people who knew him as a kid and really getting into his back story. It's a fun journey into the youth of Steven Seagal. Yeah, mazin Spy Magazine baby quote. In fact, the dojo, which was founded by Fujitani's father and noted Akito black Belt, was owned by his mother in law and managed by his wife, herself a black belt. Seagal has also boasted of his courage and battling criminals. Sometimes they are bugs of the Yakuza, the Japanese mafia. Other times they are mere garden variety criminals. I jumped right in front of their faces, Sigal told movie Line. I was a tenacious motherfucker man, and I was fearless Miako. His ex wife says Segal was not exactly telling the truth about fighting the Yakusa man quote, it is a lie. He once chased a few drunks away from the dojo, but was never involved with the yakuza. So it could have been yukuza. You don't know, You don't know. Man could have been drunk yakuza. Another major Segal claimed to fame is that he was the first Westerner to receive a black belt in Akito. His ex wife doesn't challenge this exactly, but she did tell Spy quote, the only reason Stephen was awarded the black belt was because the judge, who was famous for his laziness, fell asleep during Steven's presentation. Judge just gave him the black belt. It's like, where am I? Who is this guy? You know what? Here's a black belt. Normally only give these two nine year olds of the way. But you seem like a good guy, like a yah because of fighting good guy. This is a ridiculous story. It's really ridiculous, like such dubious honors to lie about the first black belt. Okay, dude, that is a black belt is one of those phrases that's like a shortcut to me, just cutting, closing my ears to somebody like, Okay, you're bragging about being a black belt, unless the question is can you teach me taekwondo, in which case absolutely drop your credentials. Why not? Yeah? So Steven spent a sizeable chunk of the late seventies teaching martial arts in Japan, and according to him, this is when he first attracted the attention of the CIA. Here's how Steven put it in the nineteen interview with the l A Times. These guys were my students. They saw my abilities both with martial arts and with the language. You can say that I became an advisor to several CIA agents in the field. Through my friends in the CIA, I met many powerful people and did special works and special favorites, special favorites like the largest Kumfu trophy and all of Minnesota. Even claims that during this Lansing Michigan there too. Stephen claims that during this period he did security work for Archbishop Desmond too too of South Africa. The shot of Iran and Egyptian President and War Sadat. I'm gonna guess one of those, probably probably not, probably not. I don't buy it. And wat I mean clearly his security team wasn't great because he got assassinated. So maybe Segal was maybe tried a keto against the sniper. It's not working. Oh sorry, and more that was that was unfair. Um for a time, it was hard to refut to confirmed Steven's claims of badassory. His ex wife Miako did admit that he would regularly go away for long chunks of time during their ten years together, saying my children don't have any memory of him as a father god, so he must be in Nina. The first thing to appears the illusion of Steven Seagal, actual action hero turned movie action hero was that wonderful article ann of Dishonor by John Connolly. Now, like I said, this article was the result of a six month investigation, and it was the first place to point out that Steven Seagal's last name would originally pronounced Siegel, not Segal. Are you going to guess how that came about? I'm gonna say I definitely had to do with Ninja's He had to have been defending some kind of a dojo. No, this is actually the only believable story he's ever told. He apparently went to a Chegal exhibit at a museum and liked the pronunciation. Never would have guessed that. I believe that's true. No one would lie about that. Uh So, when Segal came back from Japan in nineteen eighty, he opened two dojo's, one of them in Taos, New Mexico, and one of them in Los Angeles. Houses an odd choice, kind of a small town to open an aikido dojo, and familiar must be a great akido town. It's a beautiful town. I didn't notice any Aikido going on there, so I think it failed to take on. Miako says that her then husband told her that he wanted to go to the US to either get rich in Hollywood or by running restaurants, which he doesn't seem to have ever done. Uh She supported him in his dreams, though, and spent years saving up money and living like a popper to fund his trip back in his attempts to start a business. So that's sweet. I'm gonna guess he does right by her. Let's read the next paragraph. Before he left her, he told her quote, I will always do the right thing. I will never betray here you. Then he took her savings, went to America and married another woman, Adrian LaRussa, in nineteen four. Shortly thereafter, he met another woman, actress Kelly LeBrock. According to Joe Hiams, then Warner Brothers VP of Publicity, Segal saw LeBrock in the film Woman in Red and said she is my destiny. So Hiam's and Segal wound up having dinner with Jerry Pam, Lebron's former agent, and during dinner, Segal asked Pam what the best way to get publicity was. Pam told him it was to be seen in the company of famous people. So Segal asked him if he could help him meet Kelly LeBrock. Pam told Segal that Colley was currently in Japan. So Steven Seagal, who was still married to Miako and illegally married to a second woman, flew to his first wife's home country to try to pick up a third woman because she was famous, which is that's how all the great story start. It's almost a work of art as far as being a shitty person as it's like the being a garbage husband version of the Mona Lisa, like if you were in a writer's room and you're like, Okay, we gotta have this piece of ship do some stuff to like let the viewers know he's a piece of ship. You'd be like, nude, pump the brakes on all this. This is way too much, and it is way too much, And yet that does seem to be what happened. So he did meet Kelly Lebron in Japan, and within two weeks they were lovers. Within a year, she was pregnant. By this time, Adrian Larissa had decided to file for an annulment, so that's good. Shell granted her an ennulment. She didn't seek any financial support, and in an interview later stated that, in fact, quote, I gave him money for months afterwards, just to get him out of my life. I can't say very much because I'm afraid of Steven and his friends. We'll talk about who Stephen and his friends here. But yeah, yeah, it's sad for this girl, like a lot of women, for Kelly Lebron. I mean, there's not a whole lot of shame in that. Like that's got to be most women's fears. Yeah, But like I just he'll pay the guy money. Yeah, and he's also got another wife, yeah, yeah, I bet you didn't even get those karate trophies. No, no, no, I guess not. Mia could divorced Segal. Right around this time, he and Lebron headed back to Hollywood and her Beverly Hills mansion. Now he wasn't a movie star at this point. He was just sort of living with a movie star as part of his quest to get famous. His house Do Joe failed in the late nineteen eighties, leaving him desperate for cash. In the words of Robert Strickland, according to Strickland, Stephen arranged for a mercenary he knew to steal Lebrox Porsche Carrera for the insurance money. Mercenary, A mercenary he knows a lot of mercenaries. In interviews at the time, Segal claimed to be actively searching for the monster who had stolen his wife's car. Christ It's pretty remarkable, right, just keeps going. I went in this hating Steven Seagal. Now I'm like, now, okay, coming around, Now you're coming around. This really wiped the stain of hard to kill out. Money problems were common with pre movies. Stephen Segal. Multiple sources who knew him for years alleged to Spy that he seemed to have mysterious backers who would regularly help him out of his pickles and presumably helped him start his dojos in the first place. Two of his friends were called a time when he left for around a week and returned with a new car and quote a stack of hundred dollar bills six inches high. Yeah, I bet hey someone for money. Well that is what he claimed. Segal bragg that he had gotten the money for pulling off a hit for the mob, like he confessed to murder to his friends. Know his friends later told Spy magazine spoiler alert about Segal, none of his friends stay his friends, maybe because he's a giant piece of ship that might have an effect whether or not he actually carried out a hit for the mob. Seagal spent years telling lies like this in order to craft an aura of danger. Spy reported in nine that Seagal packs of forty five in his belt, not just loaded, but cocked and chambered. Some might think this tough, others merely creetanus, since he's just as likely to choose himself in the testicles as to drop an attacker. Now, in fairness to Seagal cocked in, chambered, or been locked as a common way to carry a single action called nineteen eleven, which sounds like the gun he was carrying. In more fairness and in more accuracy, if you carry a cocked and loaded pistol of any kind in a belt without a holster, you are asking to get yourself shot in the c Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's dumb. It's a dumb thing to do. I'm wearing one right now, and I mean I got shot in the pick four times, five times. You lose track after a few, you know, but you save a lot of money on birth control. That's a great point. Male birth control is here, and it is called dangerously carrying a loaded handgun in your pants. So Stephen's supposed history as a badass was not invented out of whole cloth. Throughout his life, he's had numerous friendships with former CIA operatives, mercenaries, and soldiers. Spy suggests that this is because he basically just steals these people's stories and relates them during interviews to seem like a badass quote. On one occasion, one of Segal's students, a former Green Beret, was talking about his time in Lao. Later, Segal told the same story to another group, only now he had become the protagonist. Unfortunately, the Green Beret was in this group. Makita remembers the soldier saying, hey, Eddie, that's my story. Yeah, and that man died after three quick chops of a kido. Speaking of a keto, you know what flips and throws hunger. This is this is this is a derrito's blood. But it actually is time for us to have a normal ad break. So imagine that I made a comment that tied a keto into whatever ads come up next. We're back and we're talking about Steven Seagal. I'm going to read another quote from his website. Al Right, it gets into how he describes the start of his film career. Most of us know Stephen for his roles as an action hero, with an acting career that was launched at his Los Angeles do jo in the late eighties, where he taught martial arts to the likes of Sean Connery, James Coburn, and the famed talent agent Michael Ovitt's fun fact, he broke Sean Connery's wrist yea when they were sparring. Not too bad. Well, I mean, yeah, I guess. I mean it's a sign of clumsiness. You probably shouldn't break a student's wrist. Yeah, but I mean, at least didn't shoot his dick off. He didn't shoot Sean Connery's dick off, which I'm sure a lot of people are grateful for Stephen Sigal aready, this is a better day than most. Uh quote. It was Mr Ovits who paved the way for Stephen to co write and star in his first and hugely successful action film, Above the Law in y. It's a good movie. It's a good movie. It's a good movie. The story for how he came to be in it is a little bit more complicated than Steven Seagal's website gives, and involves a lot more of the mob, of course it does. Would you have guessed before this that Steven Seagal's career was bankrolled at the start by the mafia? Yes? Or the y I guess, yeah, the Japanese mafia, whatever, No, the American mafia. No good has ever led Steven Seagald doing anything. No, I would. I would say that's a problem, unfair. So let's let's hear about how we got into above the law. We're talking about the law. We're talking above the law. Yes, we're we're definitely talking about to the bank, the blood bank. Wait, is that a real line form movie? Fantastic? Okay, it is almost certainly true that Michael Ovit's arranged for Sigal to meet with a group of Warner Brothers executives to show off his akito skills. He was apparently quite impressive. Warner Brothers president Terry Simmel recalled, with just a toss of his hand, Stephen would send the other guy flying. It was pretty astounding. Mark Mikeeda participated in this demonstration. He ran a dojo in Los Angeles and basically agreed to be tossed around with the help of his friend. He said, and later in an interview quote, I still can't believe those guys at Warners didn't know it was rehearsed demonstration. It shouldn't have fooled anybody. Segal could not toss me or anyone else in the air unless we were in on it. Yeah, if I can interrupt here for a second. Sure, if you watch an keto demonstration, it usually is one dude in the center of like a crowd, and they run at him one at a time and he'll like do a little thing with their wrist and they'll go flying into a front flip. It's clearly bullshit. Yeah, and we've now had you know, three decades of m m A in our country and many more in Brazil and Japan, and no one has ever gone in there as a nikto expert. And he said, like this is me. I'm gonna aketo a guy and they come in and he flips them all around. It just simp doesn't work. There's no record of akdo working on someone who doesn't want akdo to work on them. Yeah, but what way I've heard it described? And you know, in case our listeners don't know who you are, you you have a lot of experience in this world. I wrote a few UFC games, you know, A big fan of sport, trained in a jiu jitsu, and I, you know, I like I like this stuff a lot. I think about this stuff a lot, and like everyone else, when UFC first came, I kept expecting some magic tai chi guy to come down out of the mountains, or an akdo guy to come out, or a jeet kundo guy to to lock everybody's hands up and beat them with compass, and it just it never happens. Like these traditional martial arts have sort of been proven bullshit. They're great ways to stay fit and have fun with your That doesn't explain the size of Steven Seago. I'm not even shared that's true. I think it's a good place to like leave a kid for an hour. Anyway. My point is stories of akdo devastating yakas and members. It's unlikely. Yeah, And if you grab a guy by the rest and he does a front flip, he probably didn't mind doing that front flip so much. He's helping you out. It was a consensual flip, right, yeah, as opposed to the non consensual flips, which I think are more useful in a fight. I'm not an expert, I would say, so, okay, all this, uh, you know, Steven Seagal is a big, fraudulent sort of exhibition where he tossed around his friend was enough to convince the WB executives to drop fifty dollars on a screen test, which shows you what money means in Hollywood. The screen set test was apparently an absolute disaster. Seagal had no charisma, talked like whispering ghosts. Like that sounds like him. Yeah, that sounds like Steven Seagal. That's how you would describe him in like, yeah, whispering ghost. I have no charisma. My head stores one triangle. He does have a weird Ovit's appeared to really love Stephen though, because he continued to vouch for this kid that he just met. So Warner Brothers was like, this kid's no good. We're not going to put him in a movie. We already wasted fifth granded on it. So ovit's his last job before starting to work with Seagal is he had done like the casting for Lethal Weapon, which obviously giganticit, so they wanted him back for Lethal Weapon to clearly he's good at casting, and he agreed not to take a pay bump, which you're guaranteed for a job like that, a sizeable paid bump if you're working in the sequel. He agreed to work for what he'd gotten paid to make the first one if they would give Steven Seagal a job. Um, So, Michael ovit's really fucking believed in Steven Seagal, or at least that's one possibility here. Um, it's possible that Ovit's just saw something in Steven Seagal. It's also possible that Seagal's career was bankrolled by the Mafia from day one, and that Ovits was maybe bribed. Uh. I don't know. I've never heard any allegations that Ovits was bribed. Maybe he just loved him. But there are credible allegations that Steven Seagal started his career in the mafia. People do get like a sort of a cult like love for their martial arts instructor. Like if you're going cold as an adult, especially and like start taking like karate classes, you'd be like, oh my god, my karate. Start taking levitate, don't even know with one finger he can knock you out, And like that's just sort of becomes he's just staying at the strip mall because he's too enlightened to work somewhere better. Right, So this guy might have just thought that Steven Seagal truly was magic. Then that is entirely possible. I'm glad you you brought that up, because I wouldn't have thought about that. Um, we do know that in nineteen nineties, Steven Seagalf formed Steamroller entertainment with a guy named Julius Nasso. Now, Nasso's main business was providing pharmaceuticals to merchant boats. But he've broken off pharmaceuticals to merchant boat. He's so drugs um though. Julius got into filmmaking, UH, and he claimed to spy that he had been introduced to Segal via Tony Danza. Danza denied this. Danza knew who Nassas was and basically said, he's no fucking friend of mine. Don't don't talk to me about that guy. So Segal told people that Nassa and he were related, although neither he or Nasso ever gave any detail as to how Stephen's mother denied any relation between them, whatever the truth, Julius uncle, also named Julius Nasso, owned a concrete come in New York. In nine revealed that Nassa's concrete firm had participated in a bid rigging scheme with Anthony Salerno, the original Fat Tony that's where the name comes from on the Simpson's Tony Salerno. UH. Several employees testified against him. Nasso, the younger in Seagal were good friends for about a decade. Nasa was the best man at Seagal's second wedding. He was also the co owner of Seagal's five hundred and sixty thousand dollars Staten Island home. It's worth noting that several other mob guys connected to the Gambino family wound up having roles in Seagal's early films. Quote from That's By article. One of the technical advisors on the set of Under Siege was Robert Booth Nichols, who has been identified in federal wire taps as associating with the Gambiano crime family. A retired Navy captain named Joseph John who was a technical adviser in the same movie responsible for securing the use of the U S s Missouri, described Segal and Nichols as asshole buddies, which I think means butt buddies and not both assholes who are friends. But I can't tell. Yeah, I've never heard the term. It doesn't mean they have sex with each other. It might, I don't know. I don't know this guy, Martine, he's can get all out together. Uh so. Another performer in a Segal film, Jerry Cri is the stepson of a mafia capo, Robert Zimbardi, who reportedly got Segal to give his stepson apart and out for justice. Segal hired Cri, who has ambitions to be a movie star, to play a bookmaker and a key scene, Segal beats up a number of bad guys in the bar, the one vronman who never takes a punch of Cri, No way. Segal was going to take a swing at Bobby Zam's kid. Spy was told that is suspicious that you're a bad guy at Steven Seagal scene and you didn't get punched in the face. Involved, Yeah, yeah, Yeah. Even weirder than all this is the fact that during the nine deposition for a civil assault case, which I could not find more detail about, but I don't think he was the one being charged, but he was deposed in the civil assault case, Segal, under oath claimed not to know how much money he had, what he actually owned, or what he was paid per movie. His attorney explained that Segal did not have an individual contract with Warner Brothers. Instead, Warner Brothers had a contract with Sigal and his friend Nasso. At times, some of the money paid to Seagal went directly to Nasso, so that is a little weird. That's a little weird. But your movie deal is with another guy who has mob ties and he gets some of your money, and no one seems to know quiet why his agent. No, no, they owned a production company together, his asshole, but it was his asshole buddy. Yeah. So in the early nine nineties, Julius Naso started walking around to l A with a card saying he was a Warner Brothers producer. So it seems like Warner Brothers might have given him some title on some but it's also like they refused to talk about this at all, so who knows what happened. Spy interviewed him and he claimed that he would be handling foreign distribution for the movie I think for under Siege movie. Yeah, great movie. The interviewers that Spy thought this was odd since w B at the time had the largest foreign distribution system of any Hollywood studio. Warner Brothers refused to comment, so Naso explained, because of my experience in the drug business, I had contacts all over the world, which is why he was the right man to help sell this movie overseas. Yeah. Boy, those high sailors man, they were really like understiege. Hey, I've always said if you can get say Hiler side, you can sell movies overseas, especially about Navy chef that kicks ass Okay so at. At the time in this is about all that spy new. But in the decades since nine, a lot more information has come out. It turns out that Nasa was an associate of the Gambino crime family, and he loaned Segal at least half a million dollars of their money. Segal claims it was for taxes. When segaland Nasso had a falling out around two thousand, Segal was forced into a meeting with several mobsters where they demanded a hundred and fifty thousand dollars per movie he'd made. So here's a quote from a two thousand to New York Times article on the matter. Steven Seagal, the action film star cited as a mafia extortion target, has told investigators that after he stopped working with his long time producer, he was ordered into a car in Brooklyn last year and shuttled to a Landmark restaurant where he was threatened by mobsters. According to officials and lawyers involved in the case, he was so intimidated, He recounted that he agreed to turn over seven hundred thousand, although investigators are still trying to trace the money. Do you know what I would do if I was in a car with all those mobsters and I knew, akdo fucking akdo everybody in the car? Just you can't throw someone in a car. No, I can't think. I think it worked really well in those closed quarters. They try to punch and you like slap slap. Movies have taught me that just liquid human all over the just bloody pieces of money. Well, my favorite out of the water, like twenty minutes later. That's how long I hold my breath. I was sucking there out of their dead lungs that whole time. You should direct to Steven Seagal. My favorite thing about this is that some of these guys who were doing the meeting were tapped, and so the FBI listened into them laughing about intimidating Steven Seagal. And the thing they thought was funniest is that he had a gun but was too scared to do anything. Like they're just laughing at him. They just think it's hilarious. Has said he was the thing about Steven Seagal, is you really get the idea he like buys into his own bullshit and after something like that, like he's got to rethink like three decades worth of that bullshit he's living under, Like, am I really a pussy? I'm going to correct you there. I don't think Steven Seagal has ever refought anything. Like they're lucky I didn't do my key to pull my gun. Takes a real badass to get out of a situation like that with only seven d dollars in spending. No one expects me to be my pants for eight streight minutes. Oh so, Steven Seagal in court claimed that these guys were basically just his business partners and then the mob extorted him. It sure seems like what really happened is that the Gambino crime family, through Nasso, invested in Segal in the hopes that they could cash in on a long and successful action movie career, which the joke was a little bit on there got him a little too late there. Whatever the truth behind his start, Seagal became the hottest new action hero on the block and was on his way to becoming a massive start. Gary Goldman, an ex mercenary was one of the badasses Seagal liked to surround himself with For a while, they were working on a script together, and Seagal had Goldman vouched for him in interviews. In one interview with The l A Times, Goldman claimed that Segal had gone with him quote on several missions and that he has a high level of skill that you don't just pick up reading fantasy magazines. I don't think anyone would question escape abilities. A lot of mercenaries they take dudes who just read fantasy magazines with them and they're like, damn it, another one of these fantasy magazines. Guys. I really should have learned not to bring random people on my mercenary missions. We've been getting magic spells on this mission. No, this is a real life he is not a fantasy magazine. Well, my only expertise is fantasy magazines. I've cut out these little lightning bolt things. We gotta get that Stephen Seagal guy back. He knows what he's doing. Well, Okay, so full full disclosure. About a year after this point, Segal and Goldman had a falling out and Segal backed out of their plan to write a movie. So Goldman wrote a letter to the same journalist at the l A Times he'd lied to a year earlier and recanted. He said, quote, the plain truth of the matter is that Segal wasn't as a gutlass coward who was trying to convert the heroic deeds of those brave men into a personal history for himself. Yeah. Among other other things, Goldman's letter claimed that in nineteen eighty eight, he and Segal had gone treasure hunting near Barbados with Randy Whitner. While they were all hanging out on a boat, Seagal bragg repeatedly about his time as a Navy seal, which do I even need to say that he was never absolutely not. At one point, Stephen and Goldman had to wait into the water to deliver equipment to a Zodiac boat, which is like a real badass cool thing that like a real cool person might have been able to handle. Steven Seagal was not. Here's how Goldman said it went. Quote the surf was unbelievable, really tough. He started screaming and panicking and was sure he was going to die and all that crap. Goldman claims that Randy Wintner had to pulse Segal up by his hair while well, Goldman quote pushed his ass onto the boat with my shoulder. Well, the one thing I know about Navy seals is when you get him like in rough water, they just freaked. Oh yeah, no. Their training is to panic and water is rough. That's what makes beautiful Corona Beach. But it's it's like lovely and you can watch the planes land, but there's the sound of all those Navy seals. Just me just panishes, and I like, you're doing good work. Panic a little harder, you'll be the best. You really want to lose your mind at this young recruit, Steven Siegel. We're gonna we're gonna send you to the desert, so we want you scared of the sea. I love that they have special circumstances just to say, oh, you're a Navy sea Well, here's the water. And he just fucks it up so badly. It doesn't even in there. Because later it became clear that Segal could not read a compass or a map, both things the Navy seals sort of stress, kind of important. In his letter to The l A Times, Goldman said Segal quote would surely die of starvation. If he was given a compass and a map that led to a restaurant five miles away. That's that's some good, like badass way to cause someone. Yeah, that's that's some solid mercenary ragging. Yeah. Goldman smack talking prompted Segal to take action. He called up his friend Robert Strickland, the former contract employee with the CIA, and had him meet on the set of a movie he was filming, I think on Deadly Ground as the sat Inness Trail. As they sat in his trailer, Seagal handed Strickland to dossier he'd had compiled on Goldman and then showed him a briefcase with fifty dollars in it. According to Strickland, he said this, I'd like you to do me a favor. I'd like you to kill Gary Goldman. Now. I should note Mr Seagal was thirty eight years old at this point and in the prime of his career. Robert Strickland was a sixty eight year old retiree who was a good foot shorter than him. Strickland claims his first response was you're crazy, to which Seagal responded, if you won't do it, get someone who will pay him. What you want and keep the rest. This would not be the last time Steven Seagal tried to pay to have somebody hurt. Well, what you want is a long paper trail when you when you want to assassinate someone, you want to outsource it and then have them outsource it. That way, it's easier to get away with when lots of people know about it. The more documentation you have for your crimes absolutely better. No, I think most criminals would agree with that. In the Summer of writer named Alan Rickman, not the actor that kind of messed me out for a second to wrote an article about Seagal for Gentleman's Quarterly. It was not complimentary. Segal flew an intelligence analyst to his Staten Island home to help him dig up dirt on the writer. Quote from Spy, Segal tells the consultant that Rickman is gay, a fag. In the actor's words, he once Rickman set up with a homosexual quote to get pictures of Rickman going down on the man. When the security consultant refused, Segal asked what it would cost to have a hypothetical man whacked. When the consultant replied whacked dead, Segal said, of course, you people do that all the time. What if what if you were Rickman masking I suck your dick? Here? Is that gonna work? My favorite part about this is that, like in an television interview, he lied about the other man's height and he called him a pansy, even though Rickman was an army captain who was also taller than Steven Seagal. Stephen, He's just step He might be genetically incapable of telling the truth. It's it's really hard to say, Bob Strickland, that former c A contractor seems to have been one of the people who put up with Seagal's bullshit for the longest amount of time. Sa actually paid Strickland fifty thousand dollars of a two hundred and fifty thousand dollar deal for his life story. Strickland thought this meant that Segal was going to make a movie about him, but it actually just meant that Segal wanted the right to lie about his own life and tell stories from Strickland's life when he was interviewed. So one night, Strickland was watching the Arsenio Hall Show and saw Steven Seagal telling a story from Strickland's own life. That's an amazing interview too, by the way. Yeah, yeah, he gets all dark for he's like, I think he's talking about Kelly Lebron and how like she was misbehaving, and he's like, my house, my rules. It's a real window in the darkness that is inside that man. Well, if I was not a hack and a fraud, I would have seen that one. I was too busy reading about Steven Seagal. So Strickland got really angry when he heard his own stories being told by Steven Seagal. So yeah, he uh called Stephen a bunch of times, left a bunch of angry messages, and Steven's response was essentially to threaten Strickland, which prompted the former ce A contractor to file a sworn affidavit in the Burbank Superior Court. Quote on December, Steven Seagal said to me in my attorney's press, if anybody from the CIA fox with me, they will be hurt. He claimed he was backed by very powerful people, more powerful than the CIA ship in their pains. No, yeah, yeah, I mean he's he's one of those non swimming Navy seals, which he knows are the deadliest kind. And if you want to hear something that's even better than a Navy seal who can't swim. Sponsors, it's an ad break. Yeah, it's a sponsors and we're back. We're talking about Steven Seagal, who has just ruined what probably the longest friendship he ever had with a former CIA man by lying and stealing his life, becoming an experienced vampire national television. That's embarrassing. Yeah, it's a really shameful thing to do. So. In the affidavit Strickland filed, he claimed that a mutual friend of he in Segal, had quote called me from New York and advised me to watch my ass. He stated that my safety could be in jeopardy because Steven Seagal is backed by powerful people who have vested interest in preserving his image and reputation. Which might have been true at that point and entirely honest, like he you may not have been lying about that. Seagal quickly followed the success of Nine Above the Law, which was his first film, with three more action hits, Hard to Kill, Mark for Death, and for Justice. Yeah. Yeah, his career peaqud in nine with Undersiege or with Undersiege. I may have sucked that up, but he was a pretty big star in when he was invited to host an episode of Saturday Night Live. Not not the greatest success in the history of that show. In a way, it might be. In a way it might be. It depends on how much enjoyment you get out of this next anecdote. So in the book Life from New York, which is a history of the show, several cast members chimed in about the week Stephen Seagal was the host. Tim Meadows, the biggest problem with Steven Seagal was that he would complain about jokes that he didn't get. So it was like, you can't explain something to somebody in German if they don't speak German. He just wasn't funny, and he was very critical of the cast and the writing staff. He didn't realize that you can't tell somebody they're stupid on Wednesday and expect them to continue writing for you on Saturday. So people like of him intentionally bad ship because they hated him. I think so. I think that that's part of the explanation. David Spade said, quote he didn't want to go along with what the plan was that week, and as a result, I think that was the first week that I heard talk about replacing the host and just doing a cast show. Yeah. And then Julius Sweeney, when we pitched our ideas for Sigal at our Monday meeting, he gave us some of his own sketch ideas, and some of his sketch ideas were so heinous, so hilariously awful, it was like we were on candid camera. He had this idea that he's a therapist and he wanted Victoria Jackson to be his patient who's just been raped. And the therapist says, you're going to have to come to me twice a week for like three years, because he said that's how therapists fucking are. They're just trying to get your money. And then he says that the psychiatrist tries to have sex with her. That's Stephen Seagal's idea of comedy. That's so weird. It will not be weird later in this story it will actually make total sense about I've been a comedy writer for many, many years now, and I am seriously racking my brain how to get to a place of comedy from such a dark premise. No, there's no punchline anywhere in that description, and I don't think there was a punchline in the show. I can't even if you had nine hours to build the context for this, I don't think you can make that like funny funny. No, And I do think it's important to note that nightmare. I suspect that four Seagal the punchline was the psychiatrist tries to rape his patient. I think that was his idea. That was the joke. You ready for this. It's a salt, it's a horrible the sexual self victim. Oh see, you know, it's like poetry. It dies back to the beginning. Oh god, he would have said that. He wouldn't compared to absolutely would have compared it to poetry. And then he fucking cried a chop through the table, vanished in a puff of flower cloud. In two thousand fourteen, when guest Nicholas Cage expressed a worry to Lauren Michael's that he would be quote the worst host ever, Lauren Michael's reportedly said, no, that would be Steven Seagal. He's one of the only people ever banned from being on Saturday Night Live ever ever. Ever ever again. They did that joke on Sarah Live, remember Lord Michael's coming out and saying like, no, no, no, the worst was sal but there was something real about it. Yeah, no, I mean it sounds like he was terrible. There's another story. I think it was Rob Schneider who saw Steven Seagal like walked up to him and said, I just finished reading the best screenplay in my life. And Schneider was like, oh, yeah, who wrote it? And he was like me and it was not a joke. Oh my god, Steven Seagal, what a dream set up for that answer, though, because like if if you said, oh, I made the best screenplay, most people are like, oh, what's it about? But he asked who the writer was, to perfectly set up Steven Seagal to say, men, that should be the team. Schneider, Oh my god, Oh my god. I would throw my own money into the production of that film. Yeah, especially if all of the bad guys are Segal and Snyder. I love it. Like some sort of a time loop made it so every person in that universe was segalange Nier. Yeah, I'm not saying there in map it's like really that, it's really that you commit to the premise. Yeah, Hollywood, of the phone, this is an inspiring idea. That idea of the sex assault victim and the therapist. That's a dead end. That's a dead end. Don't pursue that. But but Schneider and Seagal, that's at least a skit. Let's do another podcast after this. We'll save it for that. But the storyboard, the whole thing. Yeah, okay, So you remember, like, actually, way less than twenty minutes ago, when I said that him wanting to make the joke be entirely about sexual assault would make sense very soon. Yeah, it's about to make sense. Yeah. So the early nineties were a time of great professional success for Steven Seagal, and they were also when he began his career as a sexual predator. I mean, maybe he began it earlier, but we certainly know about assaults dating back to the early nineties. The signs were already present as earliest nineteen nine, when Robert Strickland watched Seagal harassed one of his personal assistants. She was brushing her teeth in his trailer when, according to Strickland, Seagal told her that she needed to get over there. Immediately when she came out, still brushing her teeth, he said, Gee, Ranne, you look like that when I come in your mouth some more Steven Seagal humor there. That is the absence of a romantic relationship before that. No, Strickland, the former CIA guy, who I'm going to guess was a pretty coarse fellow, thought this was gross. I think yea profoundly gross. Yeah. So. Earlier this year, Julianna Margoulas of the Good Wife was a guest on the Katie CorX podcast. They talked about the me Too movement, and Margoulas recalled an unsettling encounter with Seagal in the early nineteen nineties. He was a big action star at that point and she was still quite new when a casting director told her that Stephen wanted to do a scene with her in his room. Quote. I walked in and I sat down, and I jumped right back up because there was something very uncomfortable and hard in the couch. He laughed and said, oh, sorry, that must have been my gun, Margoulies recalled. He lifted up the cushion and he took out his gun. When Margoolies grew noticeably nervous, Segal explained that he casually packed to protect himself from quote all the crazies that are out there. Yeah, if your guns in the couch, you're the crazy verse. I think he might be right. Yeah, that's not where the gun goes, not in the couch. What so next, if you've got company coming over, why you leave your gun in the couch? He wanted her to find it. Yeah, he wanted her to find What kind of a person thinks like this will turn the girl on almost dying. I don't think turning her on was his goal. Maybe it was was he trying to like terrify her. Maybe the thing that he did next in this interaction was tell her that he was a healer, and then he wanted to read her palms, So maybe he was trying. Yeah, quote he told me I had really weak kidneys at that point, to be honestness and New York girl, I kind of started laughing inside. So shortly thereafter, Ma Gooli said she squirmed out of the room, but then realized that she hadn't received the cab fair she had been promised, so she went back and asked for it. She got the cash as well as the part and out for Justice, although she demanded she never be alone with Seagal on set, so not to diminish it. But this is a rather tame story to compare to the stories of many of the other women's who have reported their interactions with Stevenson. Would be real pretty if you had better kidneys. Steven Seagal is Out for Kidneys. In nineteen John Connelly, the author of that spy article, wrote another article about Segal, this time for Penthouse and It. He alleged that four female staffers had resigned from the production of his film Out for Justice in protest of his constant sexual harassment and quote a sexual attack on one of them. They claimed Segal tried to undress them during casting interviews. Once stated, when I was finally able to get him to stop, he told me I had the part. So that does seem to be Stevens modus opera and I Another woman claimed Segal would constantly brush past women in his office and touch them. His former housekeeper, La bum Garner, claimed Segal sexually attacked her while she was working at his house. She did plead guilty to stealing from him later. Maybe I mean I could also see steven crimes. Yeah, a little more minor. In fact, stealing from a rich guy barely qualifies, barely qualifies as a crime. Connolly talked to six women in total who accused Seagal of harassment. They would not be the last. He stated at the end of his article that the code of silence around seagal' suggish behavior is starting to crack. Shatter would be a more apt term. In n Jenny McCarthy talked to Movieline about her audition for the classic film Under Siege two, a sequel to Seagal's biggest hit, in one of the first real clear signs that his career was already passed. It's a fun fact he outruns an explosion in that movie, which is impossible because Steven Seagal, actually he runs like a fat woman waking up in a bathtub covered in snakes. That's a good description of Steven Seagal running. And I've I've written a lot of Steven Seagal runs like jokes in my career, and I think that might be the most evocative he is. You owe yourself to look up Steven Seagal running on YouTube, because he has never managed to run like a normal person. He like tucks his elbows in and he kind of has like limp wrists and he keeps the elbows tucked in tight and he just sort of wiggles through the air and it's like a scurry. Yeah, but they're just like in these movies. And you look at Tom Cruise, he just got beautiful form because until he spent it out run and then Steven Seagal, it's like a hamster getting electrified. Well, and it's one of those things you talk to people. I've talked to someone who does firearms training for movies, Like his job is helping movie stars like learn how to use weapons and like do shooting against like like choreographed gunfights and stuff. And he says, and you can find this in other articles, like Tom Cruise is really good with a gun. With all the physical stuff he's done, he's really good at everything. Nobody says that about Steven Seagal. Nobody praises his ability to do stunts. So in Jenny McCarthy talked to movie Line Yeah about her audition for the classic film Understage two and which Steven Seagal at runs an explosion. Um, here's what she said happened. I was wearing this very baggy dress, which I always wear to auditions with my hair pulled back. I'm listening to Seagal go on and on about how he found his soul in Asia and was one with himself or whatever, and I said, well, I'm ready to read. He said, stand up. You have to be kind of sexy in the movie and in that dress. I can't tell. I stand up and he goes take off your dress. I said what, and he said there's nudity. I said, no, there's not, or I wouldn't be here right now. He said again, there's nudity, and I said, notable fully closed woman. Well, she said, the pages are right in front of me, and there's no She's right to make this objection. I'm getting to it. He goes take off your dress. I just started crying and said, rent my Playboy video, you asshole, And yeah, fair enough funny on single that I always thought like that hot girl's way funnier than the hot I would like you McCarthy a lot if it wasn't for advocating child or not get vaccination. She's got a lot of bad and she's certainly in the right here. Think that she has more wit than you'd expect. No, she's. That's a funny, funny thing to say. Yeah, No, she's. She's got a great response. Her recollection of the events is really good. When the Daily Beast question segall spokesman about this, he said, the claim was completely false, and I should note several times so we don't get sued. Steven Seagald denies any history any of the many many many, many, many, many, many many many. The Washington Post says, there are too many allegations of assault and harassment to count, too many to count, the Washington Post, and they have great they have whole people who Yeah. So there's no nice segue here. It's it's about to get really dark, so buckle up the delicious flavor of no. This is not the time for that um. When Steven Seagal was filming one of his most popular movies, on Deadly Ground, he met an eighteen year old extra named Regina Simmons. He invited her to a rat party at his house. When she showed up, no one else was there. Yeah. Regular listeners will remember this as the same basic strategy used by Bill Cosby on several occasions. Tell him there's a party. It seems to be a pretty common Hollywood creep strategy. Yeah. Regina says he told her everyone else had already left, and then he took her into his bedroom. Quote. He closed the door and approached me from behind. He started kissing my neck and taking off my clothes. I was in shock. I was completely caught off guard. Segal was more than twice my size and twice my age. I was not sexually active, nor had I ever been naked in front of a man before I froze. She alleges that Segald and raped her. She says, there was nothing consensual about this. I couldn't move, and I felt as if I was watching my body from above. I felt tears coming down my face. Yeah. When Segal was done, he asked her if she needed any money, and then allowed her to leave. He called her the next day. I don't know what actually is going It is a good question what is going on in Steven Seagal's head, because I seriously think he probably doesn't think of himself. He kept calling this this woman. I don't think he thinks of himself as it rapist. Yeah, I I don't know. I like not that that mitigates it at all, because he seems to be a monster, but I think that is part of his psychology in this Now. This story came out in March of last year after several women, among them Portia de Larossi from Arrested development alleged Steven Seagal being a creepy sexual harasser. There was a whole press conference when Regina came out and another woman was there to support her, Faviola Datis. She auditioned for a part and as if yet unproduced vanity project with Steven Seagal about Genghis Khan, which Segal was supposed to write, direct and star in. He was, Oh my god, that's amazing. Yeah, it's a dark story. So I don't want to get lost in this, but that may be the only unproduced vanity project I do kind of want to say. Um Data said her initial meetings with Segal took place in public and didn't give her any cause for concern. The two bonded over shared interest like Buddhism and martial arts, she said, and quote soon developed a friendly relationship via text and phone calls. At one point, Segal invited Datas for a private audition. She said. He explained to me that he would like to evaluate my figure and see if I would be suitable for the role. His assistant told me to arrive wearing a bikini or a broad and panties under my clothing, as this is quite standard in the modeling industry. I agreed to do so. Now Datas noticed some strange things right off the bat. For one Segal, it asked her to meet in the evening at a hotel that he had booked. Quote. I was taken up to Seagal's room by his assistant, who repeated to me multiple times in the elevator, Steven's word is as good as gold. I thought this was a bit strange, but I did not comment. When she arrived, only Stephen and his bodyguard were in the room. The assistant who had led her there immediately left. Stephen asked me to take off my clothes, which I did, although I was nervous considering there were no other individuals present, and do a cat walk through the room for him. I did so, and Stephen approached me and said that he would like to act out a romantic scene to get a sense of our chemistry. Davis told him that she was uncomfortable with this and said, no, that's when she alleges Segal reached under her bikini top and groped her while fondling her vagina with his other hands. She yelled that the audition was over. Steven sat there calmly as if nothing had happened, and while I was noticeably upset and terrified by the experience, Steven's security guards stood blocking the doorway and only moved when Steven motioned for him to do so. I left feeling horrified and totally violated. Steven Seagal there, His lawyer denies both of these allegations. It was so gross. But then to have like a security guard there too, Yeah, that that lot the creepiest thing. You're gonna stand here and watch, I think it will really help her, like feel more at ease if there's a weird dude watching. What if there's a giant guy standing in the back of the room, Well, I like groper, Like I'm gonna move fast, so like I just want you to stand there and be weird. Which it's one of those things there's always in these stories of Hollywood sexual predators, so many people complicit. You know, the assistant has to know what's playing on. This is not Steven Seagal in his prime, when someone might think, yeah, maybe a young actress wants to meet this handsome guy, Like this is someone knowing something creepy's going to go on. But this is my paycheck, so I'm just gonna soldier on. There's other jobs you can take where people don't rape. Yeah, you know what I mean? Yes, Uh. I have never worked at a place where someone's just trying some rape out near me. Yeah yeah, yeah you work here, right, so like you're cool with this rape, you understand this is just how kings works. Well, I sure need this job. I'll just block the door in case anyone tries to make a run for it. This is a really bad time for an ad segue tremendously disastrously. Kinkoes is not a supporter of the podcast, so I really don't care what you do to them. How you feeling about Steven Seagal, it's a little little roast, Like these intimate details of like this type of interaction is what's like it's easy to say, like, oh, this guy, he's a he's an attempted rapist, that guy, but then when you like learn these little details, it's so gross that some woman had to explain that this is exactly what happened. I should say we're back, but I think we've been back since the start of this conversation. Uh, it's it's remarkable to me. I guess one of the things I can never stop thinking about because I like watching old movies is like you look at like Humphrey bogartan screen and you like, did you assault somebody? Bogie? Probably right, yeah, probably, yeah. I don't know. I've never heard anything about that, but you just see how many of these guys did something fucked up. Even Bowie has some dark stuff in his background, and it's like not like this, nothing like this, but like some stuff that's questionable anyway. It's a bummer, And there is something about like celebrity that I think Jack's your game up. Yeah. It's one of the things that confused about this to me is I've read a lot of allegations from various because we're not going to cover every allegation spinning at Steven Seagal again. As The Washington Post said, there are too many to count. Um, there are a number of allegations where he will do creepy stuff, He will grope someone clearly against their will, but they will say no, that they don't want sex, and he will let them leave, which makes me think in his head, Steven Seagal, I don't I don't know, like A yeah, I don't want to mitigate it, but I'm certain he doesn't think of himself as a rapist, which again I believe the women in this case, because, for one thing, there are too many allegations to count, which is usually the first sign that it's true. Like so, yeah, back in March is when those two latest allegations, including one of straight up rap we're filed against Steven Seagal, not the first time allegations have been made, but the first time in the meat Too era. For sure, there were allegations against Steven Seagal starting back in the nineties and the early two thousands, and then right after me two kicked up, people started talking about them again, and of course these two women came forward in March. But in January Stephen Seagal decided that he wanted to get ahead of these sexual assault rumors and really deal with the problem in a proactive manner. Can you guess what media outlet he chose to talk to. I bet it was Yeah, yeah, yeah, Steven Seagal showed up on info Wars in January of two thousand and eighteen. He told Alex Jones that the many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many women who had made claims against him were paid liars. Someone has deep pockets. Quote. This isn't just about me, because hundreds of people in Hollywood have been attacked and hundreds of people have been, in my opinion, falsely accused. My opinion is that sixty of these people are completely innocent, and that includes me. In most of these cases, the accusations are years old. They're not providing evidence or proof of witnesses. They're just throwing it out, and all of a sudden, somebody's life is ruined. Yeah, when people say it's a witch hunt, it's worse than any other witch hunt in America's ever seen. This is ruining our country. This is worse than the time we burned people to death, worst in the time we burned witches. He's the real victim here, he is the real victim. And I'm never not excited by how many times terrible people's lives intersect Alex Jones. And of course, of course they wound up talking to each other. How could they have not? How could the world have allowed that? I always wonder like when say, you buy your own bullshit, like and you meet someone like Alex Jones who's also full of shit, Like, do they completely believe all of the other guys bullshit? Does that like start to create like this bullshit spiral where like they start just like I'm gonna just stay some crazy Steven believes it may just be a matter of like Alex Jones knows that Steven Seagals talk about his time as the Navy seal that didn't I can talk about like all the badest stuff I've done and like the globalst trying to kill me and stuff. Yeah, and so like if Alex Jones is being like I used to win fights against men when I was a child, like Stevenson allowed to be like I know you're full of shit? Or is he like I can't pretend like I know you're full of ship because that would admit that I understand the limits of this absurdity. It's mutually assured destruction is applied to lies, shameless lies. It is remarkable. So Steven Seagal's career peaked around nineteen nineteen four. By the year two thousand, he'd had a string of flops and was no longer considered in the same tier of action star as Bruce Willis, if that was ever a fair thing to say, you know, he was. He was like of a Jean Claude Van Dam contemporary, but his films were like, didn't have as much joy or fun and uh, they weren't his like, um adventurous, I guess yeah. And when you've seen to Stephen Seagal, mo, you've seen all every Stephen Seagal movie. It was one of those things when when John Clyde Van Dam came back and did j c v D a couple of years ago, everyone was like, oh, yeah, you know, I'd like to watch John Claude vandam I'm sure nobody feels that way about Stevens. Nothing level about Steven Seagal. What John clad is a movie star? Yeah, And the early two thousands began the start of a long, sharp decline for Steven Seagal, from movie theater releases to direct to video releases to eventually direct to digital productions, which is kind of where he is now. And if you've seen a recent Steven Seagal movie. It's a heavy set, elderly man pulling guns out of people's hands and trying not to move to rutch. Just a bunch of catwalks in Eastern European really dark lighting. Yeah, um so Yeah. The early two thousands definitely marked the end of Steven Seagal's career as a serious action movie star, but they also marked the start of something else, something we're going to get into in Part two of this podcast, Steven Seagal's twin careers as a blues musician cop. Well, I should say three careers because in addition to being a blues musician and a cop, he's an alleged human trafficker. So all that and more in Part two. Yeah, Sean, do you have any plug doubles that you would like to plug? I'm easy to find on Twitter search for Sean Baby. Uh. I still write jokes at Cracked. Uh. Play calculords on your mobile devices. Yes, Play calculates on your mobile devices and you will get some of Sean Baby's signature humor, great jokes, great way to teach math, and listeners should know. Sean Baby essentially invented comedy on the Internet and was it might legally be true? Yeah, what was one of like the three or four people. That is a big part of why I got into this industry. So I didn't tell you that until now because I wanted us to have emotional resonance unlike a Steven Seagal movie. I wanted to prove we could do it better. What a perfect button on a perfect episode. Uh. You can find me on Twitter at I right, Okay, you can find us on Instagram and on Twitter this podcast at at Bastards pot and you can find us online along with some really sad pictures of Steven Seagal, Behind the Pastords dot com and all of the many sources for this episode if you've been wondering what would it be like if I spent sixteen hours reading about Steven Seagal's life and times ordinary day for me. So we will be back on Thursday talking about way more Steven Seagal and really getting into his intersections with like three other people we've done podcasts on because he is just the worst person and intersects with all the other worst people. But until then, I'm Robert Evans. This is Behind the Bastards, and I love about h