Talk Easy with Sam FragosoEvery Second Counts with Actor Jon Bernthal (‘The Bear’)
Over the long holiday weekend, we’re returning to our conversation with actor Jon Bernthal! To begin, we discuss his performance on HBO’s We Own This City (6:00), policing and gun culture in America (9:15), growing up grappling with toxic masculinity (14:47), his pivot to acting in college (23:30), and the powerful history of theater in Moscow (27:25).
On the back-half, he reflects on his first year in Los Angeles (32:45), the night that changed his life (37:44), and the magic behind the making of Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street (45:05). To close, Jon shares his hopes for the future (51:00) and how, as a father, he’s processed these tragic weeks in America (52:58).
Pushkin. This is talk easy. I'm standing forgo soo. Welcome to the show today over the long holiday weekend, we're returning to our conversation with actor John Berenthal. You've likely seen him in shows like The Walking Dead, We Own This City, and of course, most recently season two of The Bear. Although Bernenthal is only in one episode this season, his character looms large, a kind of specter, presiding over this group of Chicago chefs that are trying desperately to start anew. If you've not seen The Bear, you can stream all episodes exclusively on Hulu post succession. It's probably my favorite show on television, and because of that, we will be doing a couple Bear themed episodes later this summer. But until then, this talk with Burenthal, when I look back on everything we put out in twenty twenty two, is a real highlight. And I should note that it's book ended by a dialogue around gun violence. At the time, we were just a week out from the horrific shooting that took place in Uvalde, Texas. And while it was a conversation firmly rooted in the moment, when I was re listening to it this week, it could have just as easily been about America in twenty twenty three. If you've not heard our episode from this year with Congressman Maxwell Frost about these very issues, I would encourage you to check that one out. The other reason I wanted to replay this over the holiday weekend, beyond the timeliness and how great John is and the bear is, because there's something fundamentally American about Brenthal's story. It's one of redemption, failure, tragedy, triumph and everything in between. More than just about any guest in recent memory, he's incredibly, sometimes painfully honest about his journey and all the detours he took before arriving at the place he is today. And so with that, I hope you enjoy this talk with John. If you haven't checked out our latest episodes with actor Michael Shannon, activist Gina Rossero, comedian Sarah Silverman, and actor Oscar Isaac, you can do so wherever you are listening to this right now, as always, sharing the show with the friend, reviewing the program on your platform of choice, posting on social media, all of it really does help us continue doing the work we do here each and every week. So I just want to thank you in advance for the support for listening and showing up as you do. I hope you enjoy the long holiday weekend and I will see you back here next Sunday with a new episode. Until then, this is John Bernenthal, John Berenthal. How are you pleasure to meet you.
It's really cool to meet you too.
How are you feeling.
I feel good, I feel good. I'm excited.
This new show of yours, from David Simon, who made of Course the Wire, is called We Own This. It's set in a pre and post Freddie Gray Baltimore, around the police Department's Gun Task Force, which, as you know, was notorious for its widespread corruption. You've often said that you fundamentally believe in pursuing things that scare you. What about Sergeant Wayne Jenkins, the ring leader of this unseemly police force? What about that scared you? What about him scared you?
Oh Man, so much. One of the many reasons that I was super excited to do this and why I really went after this, and I know it might sound trp, but I would have run through walls to do this was these are just issues that are super near and dear to my heart and their issues. I've, for better or worse, had a lot of experience with what are those issues? Issues of race, issues of policing, issues of police corruption. I feel like right now in this country, you know, exploring these issues and the major kind of issues of the day in a super agenda driven, polarized way. I feel like so much of the discourse today completely lacks nuance. I feel like there's so much flag waving, and I feel like the only way to really talk about these issues, which is getting harder and harder, is to dive into the wound of the issue and to explore the nuance and the complications and the complexities. And look, and I knew that with David Simon, George Pelicanos and what they did with the Wire, and just who they are and how they've done all their work is like, that's what they do. It's this weird kind of genre of journalism entertainment. And what scared me the most is that on the page and in a climate that's so unbelievably anti cop and coming out of Hollywood, which is so anti law enforcement right now, and which law enforcement is being the scrutiny in which law enforcement is held right now is that I think the highest point of any apex it's ever been held at the way that the guy was written, the way that the guy's portrayed by Justin Fenton in his book, and the way that he's basically talked about on the streets of Baltimore's he's just a monster. And the thing that David Simon said to me, you know when we talked about doing this, can't just make him a monster. Got to figure out a way to make it more than that. And what I found out quickly about Wayne through my research was beyond anything else. Man. He was super devoted to his kids and that everyone, to a person Cops that he worked with. Cop said he got to know really well whose lives and careers were completely derailed because of their proximity and their friendship with Wayne. Every person said about Wayne that he was a devoted dad and to me, engaging in behavior that had the potentiality to keep you from your kids that you love more than anything in the world. And for me, there's nothing more important to me in the world than my wife and my kids. The crux of that conflict was something that scared the shit out of me.
As you run towards this thing. We're talking around the two year anniversary of George Floyd's passing on the heels of these tragic shootings in Buffalo and Texas, and as you mentioned, you've spent a lot of time with police officers, army vets men, and women in the line of duty. How have these experiences informed how you're thinking both about policing in America in this moment, but also this gun culture that we do seem to celebrate.
Without a doubt, the relationships that I've been able to make in my career technical advisors, you know, cops, gang members, prisoners, soldiers, tennis coaches, whatever that is, I'm enormously grateful, and the relationships that I've made are sacred. I think for me, as far as your question about policing, these issues are super complicated, and I feel like, unfortunately, there's so much pressure out there to stake a flag, wave it with everything you've got and say I'm on this side, or this is an anti police piece, or this is a pro police piece, or whatever you want to do. I just know that it's like part of the problem. And whenever I get the opportunity to talk to people who have actually been in the valley and who have actually had boots on the ground and have actually walked the walk. What I find is what comes with experience is this unbelievable amount of empathy. The folks that are really like rubbing shoulders, the folks that are really living it in a day to day level, they can look on the other side and they can find things that they really respect and value in folks. I talk to cops all the time who talk about gang members that they really respect. They talk about qualities and gang members that they say, you know, this guy's a good guy. They also talk about, you know, real evil, They talk about things that they absolutely deplore. But they also talk about cops. They talk about guys on their own side that they really have no respect for. They talk about police brutality and how cowardly that is. And I think the same is true for a lot of the folks that I talk to in the criminal world. You know, they talk about cops that they really respect. And if these folks can sit down with each other and again have empathy for each other and you realize that they're so much more alike than different, why are we letting these conversations being led by people that live so far apart from each other, have no access to each other. And I really feel like the pundits and the experts and the celebrities and the politicians are the ones that are leading the conversations, and I just feel like I want to hear from the folks that actually live it. And I know that as far as my acting work is concerned, I gain the most insight from the folks that have really lived it. And that's not to devalue what these other folks do. It's tremendously important. It's the most collaborative art out there, and everyone has real, real value. But for me, as far as information, as far as what informs my performance, it's the folks that have actually lived it. They've actually experienced things.
It's funny something happened the moment you started to answer that question. I saw you, sort of in the wind up of the answer, have this this trepidation about how to articulate how you feel in a way that you think will be palatable.
This stuff is super sensitive, and we're making a show like people on all sides of this thing have lost their lives, they've lost their careers, they've lost their freedom, their rights have been violated, Like it's really sacred and it's really sensitive. And I think the trepidation that you see in me and the hesitancy, and why I don't want to sort of misspeak on this is that I really, really genuinely have real empathy and real love for the people on all sides of this thing, and I really don't want to alienate anyone. The only thing that I know doesn't work and the only thing that I really want to alienate is the absolute, steadfast rigidity in saying those guys are the bad guys. I think that that's cowardice. And I think, again, we're making a show about police corruption in the height of the anti police movement. Can you talk about my podcast? One of the biggest things that sort of fueled it and ignited it for me was, you know, in the wake of George Floyd, you know, I when that sort of came up and the movement and the uprising, you know, I went out there and I protested. I also saw on TV I saw people throwing bottles of police officers, and yes, they were like mass they were in riot gear whatever that was. But each one of those people is a human being. That each one of those people is somebody's mom or dad, brother, sister, son or daughter, And like that really fucking affected me. Trust me, man, Like I understand anger, Like I understand rage, and I understand what. You know, watching what happened to George Floyd, you know what that brought up in me. But it was important to me to not say all police are bad. I would say that about any group. And so every time that I went out and protested, I also would stop by Newton Division. I would go, you know, say hello to my friends down there, and I would show some support down there as well. That was really important to me. So if I'm trepidacious about this, and if I'm hesitating, I don't think that anybody deserves to be flippant about this. We're talking about, you know, real shit. And the one thing I'm enormously proud of about we Own the City is I can say with my head held high that there was a real genuine effort to tell the truth with that show and to respect the truth. And that's the only way to do a story like that. That's the way I want to do it, and I really do think we did.
You mentioned a few times how you know, anger and aggression. You're born in DC, but grow up in a place called cabin John, Maryland. Your father was a corporate attorney who you said liked animals more than people. You're in the middle of three children. Your mother, in contrast, love people. She works as a social worker.
Yep, that's right.
You had this rather tranquil upbringing in a suburban home, which you seem to immediately rebel against the moment you could walk, you said in GQ in twenty sixteen, one of my first memories is of a kid picking on my little brother. My brother was in diapers, and I remember punching this kid in the face and realizing, Okay, this is what I'm supposed to do. It was my job to be the tough guy, the troublemaker. Why was that your job?
Oh man? I think I genuinely believe that like every person, and especially I think every boy has his own sort of relationship with violence. And I think that for many in this country, the relationship sort of starts and finishes, and maybe this is a healthy thing in the sort of first stage where they're just always scared of it. It's always something that just like scares them. They have no facility with it, they have no real experience in it. It's always something they want to avoid at all costs. And I think that there's real potential good and bad from having that kind of relationship with it. I think some people go a little bit further with it. It either scares them so much or intrigues them so much, or it causes them so much shame that they want to break through it in some way and they want to start experiencing it for themselves. And it's a beautiful book called Towny by Andre Debou the third, which I think is like the best examination I think of a sort of masculinity and fatherhood and man's relationship with violence. But you know what he talks about, it is like a membrane. It's about it's a memoir, and it's about being this kid who's sort of picked on and he's faced with the kind of all this kind of violence in his life, and he's constantly afraid of it. And then all of a sudden, he sort of like pokes through this membrane and he finally starts to fight back. But then after a while he trains and trains and trains, and he becomes the perpetrator himself, and he becomes the monster until then he pokes through that membrane, realizes that, and then he eventually becomes an artist. He figures out a way to sort of utilize and transfer the fire of his rage and the fire of his anger and that violence into art and into positivity. And look me, you said it. I had every opportunity as a kid. I always had a nose for trouble since I was little. I always wanted to be with the craziest kids, the roughest kids. I always wanted to be in the craziest corners of the city. I always was super attracted to it, and I think because it scared the shit out of me. You know, my mom, who was a social worker here, she always talked about this thing called identifying with the aggressor. You know, like when I was a little boy, I was fascinated by Charles Manson. You know, for me, there was no such thing as the idea of this, like crazy hippie you killed people and painted with their blood was such a foreign thing growing up in DC. It was like so foreign that I was just fascinated with it. And well, so.
You you were interested in Charles Manson. I grew up, you know, fascinated Michael Jordan. And there you go to teach their own.
Teach their own, teach their own. Well you're Chicago, you know. But I was fascinated with Michael Jordan too. But I think that there's something about that fear again that I, for better or for worse, I really ran towards and and and I think that there's a big relationship with violence. I mean, I remember the first time that I got mugged as a kid. There was this unbelievable amount of shame, even though it was a man that mugged me. I was a kid, and I remember calling my dad and I just I had so much shame. I felt so violated. And you know, I think one of the reasons why I've been so frustrated and angry about our justice system, and why I've been able to find so much kind of commonality and really love for a lot of people who have been incarcerated and who's who are working on their own sort of rehabilitation, and folks that have really explored with, you know, real violence and criminality. Just by the grace of God, just by sheer luck of me being born into the family that I was born into. I got into real problems, you know, with a law and it's something that I'm so far away from now. But had I been born into a different family, that would have been it for me. And I was faced with that situation so many times in my life. And I see so many people that just made stupid mistakes, just acted out of fear, just acted out of shame, just acted out of showing off for their friends, just acted out of a stupid mistake. And the process that they had to go through to get themselves out of it is so deeply and unbelievably unfair. And I have so much genuine respect and reverence for folks who have gone into too that process, understanding how unfair it is, and then still being able to bring themselves out the other side. And I want to celebrate that. I want to shed a light on that. I think it's kind of all the same thing, running towards the.
Fear, even at Sidwell Friends, the high school you go to, which is this kind of famous Quaker school that Chelsea Clinton I think went to a few years under you. You gravitated towards these dangerous people, as you said, you have this quote I always wanted to explore the most dangerous nooks and crannies of my city and see how far I could get away with things. When you have brothers who are super high achieving, I think I pushed the boundaries because I wanted to see what they still love me if I did this. Do you think part of that violent streak was about love?
Sure? And I think beyond my brothers know it was funny. I was talking to a guy last night, unbelievable guy, and I know him through a friend of mine that grew up in DC that we used to always rival high schools. We used to get in fist fights all the time. And you know, we saw each other sort of for the first time in a long time last night, and you know, he says something to me. He said, you know, man, we grew up in sort of like the height of toxic masculinity of just when things were just so. I never thought about it that way, but I do think that there was a thing. I love these guys. I loved my friends so much, and I think this is something that happens to young men all over the world. I think in a lot of cases, the only way to sort of show your love for each other is to get each other's backs. And whether that's street fights or whether that's something more, whether that's playing football, whatever it is, there's something real there. You know, when I was in Baltimore, you know, going out and ride alongs every day with these cops and especially the sort of more aggressive unit cops. And because I remember, I would talk to friends of mine about what would happen, you know, going out every night in Baltimore, in the Southwest or in the Eastern and and you talk about these stories and it's like you can't talk about it with folks that weren't there. You get off of a you know, eight, nine, ten hour shift and all you want to do is be at the bar with those guys, and there's such love because they're putting themselves in this situation every single day where they're legitimately getting each other's back. I mean, that's what good relationships are built on. They're built on loyalty. And so you have this way of testing it, which is like, honestly, a very toxic way because look, it led to me getting in a ton of trouble and in a lot of ways, Look, it caused a lot of trauma for me and a lot of damage for me. But I also I wouldn't change it for the world.
But that quote about your brothers is a question of will they still love me. It's a test of their love if you act a certain way. Sure, I guess I'm curious. Why did you want to test that?
Man?
You know, this is the first time you've moved uncomfortably in your chair.
Oh yeah, well it's also these tight ass pants for But yeah, maybe, I mean, I think because the thing I just thought of that potentially made me uncomfortables. I just thought of my own son, my oldest I see a lot of myself and him. I see him test all the time.
Do Yeah.
And I think that the number one quality that I admire and love and need with people that I get extremely close with is do we have the ability to connect and reason with each other? And this little boy, since he was the youngest age, we could connect in reason with each other in the most palpitable, cogent, and honest way. But then at the same time, there are times where he is it is impossible for us to connect, like the chasm between us anger or emotion. Something comes in and it's just like dude, it's like where are you men? And then I have another son. He's so much like my brother, perfect grades, perfect athlete. And I look at my oldest and I see him constantly testing.
You know.
My mom is just like, dude, you're going through it, you know what I mean? Like that you know there is justice now it's your turn. Yeah, But like I see it, it's like, do you love me? Do you know? Let's test it. I think it's superhuman.
Talking about that anger and trauma that you experienced growing up. For the longest time, the only way that you knew how to channel it were through acts of violence until I believe nineteen ninety five, when you graduate high school and attend Skidmore College and Upstate New York. There you were playing catcher on the baseball team. It's my understanding that the saving grace was this mistake you made in signing up for what you believed to be was a class called Intro to Theater. What happened.
I was there to play baseball, I was there to party. I was there to basically be an asshole. And I was on probation when I went there, and it was like a big thing to even just be in the state of New York and my whole freshman year, twice a week I had to go to anger counseling and court appointed classes with other people who had been convicted of stuff. So, yeah, I wanted to take the Intro to Theater class, which was supposed to be a couple hundred people in the theater. I thought I could just be kind of fucked up and watch movies like everyone else. It was sort of like a just get rid of your art requirement, but me sort of being the asshole I was, I mistakenly signed up for Intro to Acting, which was a very serious ten person acting class with a woman named Alma Becker who ended up really saving my life. And it really is a testament to the power of teaching and the power of what happens when an adult really takes belief in a.
Kid before she believed in you. There was this first assignment where she asked students to bring a prized possession you know that meant a lot to them and tell the class why it meant something to them. Do you remember what you brought in?
Yeah? Of course, yeah. I mean everybody had to bring in an assignment and sort of share this super important possession with the rest of the class. We were all sitting on the floor of the studio, which I thought was so ridiculous because there was perfectly good chairs there, but you know, as a theater class, and I'd never been around theater people before, and people were sharing these possessions and just emoting in the most open I'd never really seen anything like it before. One young woman brought her Blue Traveler CD that her boyfriend had given her. She's crying her eyes out. One brought like, I think a pipe of their grandfather's. I just couldn't believe how seriously they were taking and I forgot to bring anything in. And it was so embarrassing because we were sitting in that damn circle and I'm looking at the clock and I'm listening to these things, and I know eventually this fucking thing is gonna come to me. And I got nothing, man, I got nothing. And like, even in my full ass holary of the day to be like, yeah, I forgot. After these people are just sharing everything, it just wouldn't have worked. And it came to me and I grabbed my catcher's glove and I just kind of like launched into this story about how my mom had bought me this glove, like on her deathbed, and I just like lost myself in the story and my Mom's alive and well in DC and still alive, and the story just took me to a place that I'd never gone before, and I got super detailed. I talked about, you know, having to catch with my brother and talking about mom, and it was like I saw it, and I was crying my eyes out, and everyone in the room was crying their eyes out, and nothing like that had ever happened to me before. But what's crazy is that moment, which I ended up for years having so much shame about, was just lying. You know, Alma at that point was literally and is, you know, besides my mom and my wife, the most important woman in my life, without a doubt, And I had so much shame about what I did. But that moment in that room, launching into this bullshit lie, was actually the exact kind of acting that I love doing, that I want to do that I try to get into that pocket of where you're going on pure imagination, letting your emotion flow. And even though it was all bullshit and all lie and it was shrouded in shame, it was totally fucking honest. At the same time, it was that moment changed my life.
Not only did it change your life, but it moved almost so much that she had faith in you as an actor to then later encourage you, as you said, to go to Moscow and study at the Moscow Arn't Theater. She helped you apply in nineteen ninety nine, at age twenty three, a decade after the fall of Communism, you moved there. How would you describe the culture of that program?
Look, to be a teacher in Moscow, to be an acting teacher is the absolute highest honor you can get as an actor, the highest honor. So in America where so many go to teach acting because their careers didn't work out, and so that fosters I think in a lot of cases, and this is definitely not across the board, but I think there's a lot of acting teachers in this country that are trying to validate their own careers or lack thereof. There's a lot of ego involved, there's a lot of grand standing, there's a lot of coddling, there's a lot of like, let's make this a safe place. It's not like that there. It's very very hard to get in and it's very very hard to stay in. Your head is constantly on the chopping block in a way that you know, both collegiate and you know, some professional sports that I engage in didn't even come close to. And it really fit with me, and I think above all else, these teachers there, I just respected the shit out of them. And my three main acting teachers. They came up in Communism when public gatherings were outlawed, where theater was the only place where the public could gather and they had to gather in state sanctioned theater. So the Moscow Art Theater was a state sanctioned theater. Artists were executed, artists were jailed. That's the theater that I came up with my three main teachers. They did a play called Hinzano in abandoned buildings in subway tunnels. They did it at the risk of imprisonment. Every time they put on that play. Had they been caught, they would have been sent to jail. Anyone who came to see that play would have been sent to jail for going to watch that play. But they did it once a month in see locations around the city. They still did it while I was there, they were still performing that play ten years after communism. Now they're hugely decorated teachers and stars in their own right. Those are the guys that I was learning from.
There's this muscularity in Russian theater, and yet a lot of Russians believe that acting is actually a feminine profession, absolutely which requires the male actor to get in touch with their feminine side. What do you make of that, juxtapansicion.
It's the crux of what's wrong with masculinity in this country. If you don't know you're feminine, if you don't realize the balance between that, you're not a man.
As you can see by looking at me, I never fought it.
It's be beautiful, you know. I think you know for me, the term that masculiney has been so bastardized and so fucked with in this country, and it's so born out of I think, fear and again, shame and again. I totally believe in discipline. I believe in being able to stand up for yourself. I believe in being able to handle yourself. But I believe equally in your ability to have empathy for people, to be kind to people, to be open to always aspire to be as humble as you possibly can, To crave opportunities where you don't know, to crave opportunities where you're the weakest person in the room, where you know the least in the room. To always look for people that you can learn from. To understand that in every single person, man, woman, child, or animal, you have something to learn from them, You have something to gain from them. Not to think you have all the answers. And I think what you're talking about that they say it's a feminine profession. It's funny that there's a saying in Russia, men look in the mirror to see what's right. Women look in the mirror to see what's wrong. And you look at men and women in the mirrors. And I hate gross generalizations, but that shit is true. My wife was a decades long. I see you traum urse. My brother is a surgeon. They'll tell you a million times. It's the young guy who comes in full of tattoos and muscles, who in the operating room is screaming his ass off, crying, begging for mercy. And it's the older woman that comes in that has strength unlike anything you've ever seen before. And I just for some reason, we like don't associate that in our country. We think it's about being a man, and like, I don't know, I think you know, once I got much more into martial arts and especially boxing, and got to spend real time among real fighters and got into fighting myself, you know, in a real way, not in a bullshit, shamefilled, jokey street fight way. But you know, actually, you know, getting in the ring with real fighters and understood honor and humility. It's always the guys that lead with kindness and that are gracious. Those are the guys that you got to look out for, you know. The ones that talk tough are not that.
We'll be right back after a quick break. When you leave Moscow and come back to America, on that first night back home, you meet Aaron Right, who would later become your wife. You mentioned that she was a trauma nurse. Her job carried the two of you forward when you were having a hard time finding work.
In every way, emotionally, economically, every way still does.
Thank you, Eron. I'll thank her for you.
Thanks ro appreciate it. Love you, babe. She'll never listen.
She doesn't listen to anything I do, and doesn't hopefully this one. It's when you return to America. You go to Harvard's Institute of Theater training while also spending time in New York City, CouchSurfing, sometimes selling pot, driving a roofless jeep every morning at five am. It's crazy to open. I'll just sh at Actors Equity in Midtown. You make it through this period, But I want to go to two thousand and six when your brother Tom bought you a ticket to go to Los Angeles. What was that first year?
Like, you know, acting for me had been a very pure but also very sort of charmed thing for me. I had no real access or exposure to anybody who was a professional actor. I had no ambitions to be a TV or a film actor. I wanted to do theater for the rest of my life. And you know, once I had started at Skidmore, then all the way up through Russia, and then all the way through the Art in Boston, all signs were like pointing that this was going to really work out. It was the first time in my life I was getting approval. You know, I played some sports, but not that well, you know Division three baseball, Like I had never really done anything that made people say holy shit in.
The way where adults gave you attention and a positive.
Positive way, I could get tons of it in a negative way, and I was always holy shit. In that way. I could make other people be like, Oh, that guy's crazy. That guy will do shit and no one else would do. But now I was channeling that in a really really positive way, and it was really working. It sounds crazy, but I gained a connection to something much higher than me a spirituality or I start praying a lot. I had a connection with something much bigger, and I really felt like, shit, man, you're on this earth to sort of do this.
So when you came to La, you believed this is gonna work out.
It's gonna work out, It's gonna work out. And it was just an unbelievably like rude awakening. How So, I'd always heard about sort of the rejection and how hard it was to kind of like make it as an actor, but I'd never experienced anything like it. I really believe that I was good. I really believe that I could tap into things that a lot of folks couldn't. I believe that I was special. That's dangerous, but it's also fuel you have to believe that. You know, when you're coming up, you have to latch onto any bit of as somebody saying hey, you're good, or believing yourself, or a feeling that you have on stage where you know you're actually reaching somebody or you're gripping an audience. You know, those moments are sacred and they're fuel to keep going. But my moments over the years that I got out of school, they're farther and fewer between. It just wasn't happening. Was rejection after rejection after rejection, and I was really acting out.
What did that acting out look like?
Oh? Man, I was all over the place. I mean it culminated in two thousand and nine, you know, getting in serious trouble once again, and that was sort of like, you know, finally my rock bottom, which, honestly, man, like, if you know, I was getting into kind of real trouble from nineteen ninety four to two thousand and nine, I mean, dude, that literally is the definition of privilege that I could get into that much trouble for that many years and not suffer really really serious consequences.
The night of July third, two thousand and nine, you're in Venice. You're walking in your dog, boss, and as you walk your dog, this man who's hosting a kind of house party, I think, on his porch, calls the dog over and says, this is my dog. You grab the dog back. He says, why did you take my dog?
Then? What happens before that happened? Strangely, there was something going on with me that night. There was an energy that I had that was not right.
What do you mean by that?
I remember walking down in Venice that night already, and there was just something swirling about. Normally, when you talk about like sort of major events in your life, you kind of remember it after the major event happens. For me, it started way before. There was something going on. It might sound hokey, it might sound like bullshit, but it's the truth. When I went to this street corner for some reason, I laid eyes on that guy, and you know, you say that, it's like, okay, so was this premeditated? Like was it? You know, It's like I'm saying that now I laid eye on that guy. There's something about that guy that I just saw and he was, you know, one hundred and fifty feet away from me. Then there was an older couple playing the digrado, some people in their sixties, and that guy as if it was like a movie. You know. I happened to see the people playing the digrado, and that one guy walked over to the woman in the couple, picked up the digrade and put it in his crotch as if she was like playing his crotch. And her husband was completely humiliated, couldn't do anything, and they packed up their stuff and they walked away. Right at that moment is when he looked at my dog and said, oh my god, and called my dog over. So that's when that happened. And then you know, the guys after he said that's my dog, they started to follow me, and yeah, I felt a hand on my back, and you know, I turned around and I hit him, and then it was just kind of on. You know, his friends started rushing. I put my back against a tree and just was sort of fighting them off at the best that I could. But that guy, he ended up getting knocked out standing up and then he fell down and hit his head on the pavement. The police came and it was terrible. When they took me to jail. He you know, it's still not woken up.
So you're sitting on a bench in the Pacific Division station. I have you handcuffed. You have to pee really badly. What's going through your head?
It was a conversation with whatever's up there. It was clear from my heart to whatever's up there, and I just begged for help. I begged to help me get through this. I said, look, I know what I did here, and I know how terrible this is, and I know that if you can just wake this guy up, if you can just get me out of this, I'm one hundred percent done. I am done with the insanity. I'm done with not being completely devoted to my girlfriend who's not my wife. I'm done not being completely devoted to my work. I'm done with all the bullshit, with all the pretending, with all the wildness, with a violence, with drinking. I'm walking away from that guy. And I didn't know what that meant. I didn't know what it entailed, but I knew that I could do it. But I also, before I had that conversation, I had a conversation with something else that was also as clear as day, that said, look, if he doesn't wake up, I got to go the other way. Now and I got to let all that go. I gotta let the Sidwell go, and the mom and dad go, and the aspirations of being an actor go, and whatever's going on with Aaron go, and the hopes of ever having a family go, and this sacred thing that I found called acting. It's done, and I am going to be the darkest version of myself. And it was clear as day that I knew that that is what needed to happen, if I had to go into that system, and I knew it. But please don't make me go that way. Please help me from that, I promise you. And it was just clear, and literally right at that moment, they came over to me, the cops to the whole time, say he's not waking up. Man, you know this is gonna be bad. They came over and said, he just woke up. A year later, July third, twenty ten, I was in Georgia doing the Walking Dead. Hadn't touched any alcohol in a year, and I wrote a letter to that guy that I hit, and I told him that I knew that night it wasn't him that I was attacking.
It was me, you said once in an interview, that was me that I knocked out. That was the old version of May. I'd seen a brashness, a disrespect in him that I'd seen in myself, and I was done with that guy who emerges on the other side of that.
I mean, that's what's so scary for anyone. And I tell people that all the time. The hardest thing about change is you don't know where you're going. The first step that you got to take in any kind of behavioral changes, you got to see that there's a problem and you got to be done with it. You know, they talk about in Moscow the four stages of behavioral development, right, and the first step is always unconscious on competence. You're walking around, you're living your life. You don't know it, but you're fucking up. And every day you're fucking up. And even if it's just like you're sitting with bad posture, you don't realize it. You just sit with bad posture every day. And then the next step, the most vital step for change, is conscious uncompetence. So realize, holy shit, I sit the wrong fucking way. I'm behaving the wrong way. This is not good for me. I have a problem, huge vital You'll never change. Without that step, the next step is conscious competence. You know, if I really think about it and I really put effort into it, I can sit with my backstraight, I can stop engaging in these kinds of behaviors. I can start living right. If I really think and I really work, and I really get the tools, and I dedicate my life to changing, I can do it. And ultimately you get to a place of unconscious competence where you don't have to thinking about it anymore. You're just that guy, And shame on me that it took me that long. But truth is, when it happens, it happens, and fuck man, you're so blessed if you can see it, if you can feel it, and then you act on it, and you have to. You have to. The scary thing is is that when you change, you're ripping out a whole part of yourself and you don't know what goes in there. So you got to start filling it with other things. You got to start filling it with art, with love, with reading, with what you know what, positive things that you can fill in that whole. But I didn't know how to be the not wild guy, the guy that went out all night, the guy that you know was ready to do whatever at the drop of the hat. I didn't know how to be that guy, but I knew I wouldn't do that, so I had to start filling it with other things. And it happened remarkably fast. You know, the Walking Dead came, and you know the Walking Dead to this day. You know, in a lot of ways, was really the best job I ever had for so many reasons. I needed that job when it happened. I needed to be around those people, to be a part of that family, to be around young artists who were raising kids, who were committed to their husbands and wives. And then it was such a blessing to get killed off that show and to be able to walk away from that and to be able to have that foundation. And then once again there's change. What do I do now I finally get on a show, it finally hits, and then they kill the shit out of me. What do I do? And that fear thing? I mean, I think that's really where it kind of started in a really positive way. Your career isn't over. This is an amazing opportunity. You got to fall in love in this business within not knowing but it sucks as an actor. Right, you don't know when your your next job is going to be. You don't know when the phone's going to ring. But also your phone could ring any second, that next job could be out there. It's a wonderful, wonderful blessing of a ride if you look at it that way.
So you fill this hole with work, with marriage, three kids, a lot of dogs, some anger management, some therapy. Eventually you do get a call from the director that I think was an early inspiration to you and Martin SCORSESEI there's a scene in Wolf of Wall Street. I think it's a scene that probably changed the course of your career in many ways. And I thought, if you're open to it, we can watch it together. Oh cool man, this is John Bernhaal as Brad and Wolf of Wall Street.
You can sell anything.
Give me this fucking pen, right, you can sell anything.
Sell that some of that pen.
Finishing first?
I need today Brad's done, boom, sell me that pen. Watch go on, let me show this pen. That's my boy right there? This credit anything? Don't you do me a favorite? An your name down a napkin for I don't have a pen exactly supplying the man like that saying is creating urgency.
We getting to want to buy the stands, and it's something that they.
Need, you know what I mean, that's the thing all nuns are lesbians talking about.
They can't keep it, dude, so they're gonna start.
Give me four times. I mean, look, man, I there's so much to that, you know that I see, I think above and beyond anything else. It's like scurse, as he says, a symphony. Everyone there is so free. Everyone there is feels like they're one hundred feet tall, and everyone there is urged and compel to surprise each other. It made me trust my ability to kind of rework and bring my own ideas in because the whole idea of the Ketchup Bottle was just an idea that I had. And unlike so many jobs and so many projects where actors are made to feel like you got to sort of pitch and lawyer for your ideas, it's not like that with Marty. Just come in and do it. And he surrounded yourself with such a talented crew and cast and background actors that you have this environment where you can just do things and people will just react to them. That's one level, I just knew that I wanted to play the annoyance of that scene and listening to these motherfuckers, And I could physicalize it by just saying to the woman who played the waitress that day, who by the way, was a Broadway actress, you know, like that's who's doing background work. I say, hey, just do me a favorite, bring me my cheeseburger last. So I'm already pissed off. I don't have my cheeseburger. I gotta listen to these fucking people. I said to the proper, I just need an empty bottle of ketchup. So now I'm listening to these fucking assholes. I don't have a cheeseburger. They got a cheeseburger, but where's my fucking ketchup? So the whole scene, I'm asking for the catch. Nobody knows I'm gonna do that. I don't need to tell anybody I'm gonna do that.
Scur says, he doesn't know you're gonna do tell's no, No, you don't need to tell him.
He's watching everything. And then on the way to work that day, Leo was walking to set, and on the conversation that he had with his security guard for the day was hey, man, I had a job interview with a real Wolf of Wall Street with a real Jordan Belford. Oh yeah, yeah. What he did is he handed me a pen said sell me that pen. Leo told us that right before we started shooting the scene, he told us that story, and in that take he just happened to bring out the pen and said, sell me this pet. So it was all improvised, all live fully working together. And then when I threw the ketchup bottle on the ground, everybody just reacted to it. And then without any que the background actress is playing, the waitress runs over with the new bottle of ketchup. It was every day, every scene, every take, and I felt with mart I just never felt. You know, he is He's the mountaintop. He is my favorite director. He's the best of all time. His movies are my favorite. And he saw me. He saw every little thing that I did, every little idea, and his ability to make things so easy and flow so naturally, and to capture the electricity of spontaneity while also preserving how sacred and special you know, those moments between action and cut are my theory on it is anyone in art, and I think in business, I think in pretty much anything. Anyone who tries to control you, tries to hamper you, tries to manipulate you, who tries to hinder you. There's no more of a telltale sign of mediocrity than that you'll never get beyond mediocre. It might kind of work, but it will never be great. But the greats, the great athletes, the great musicians, the great directors, the great performers, the great business people, I really believe, are people who can inspire, who can in the great people, and then who can let them fly and urge them to fly. And literally, the meter on how happy I am on a set is directly proportional to how free the set is and how inspired the set is. And that's not just with actors, it's with every crew member. Every single person knows that their opinion and their art and their process and their work is valued. It's encouraged to just slaughterize, obliterate hierarchy on sets. It is the downfall. And the second you go on and you have actors acting like they're more important, or director acting like he's King Dick. Second, you see that, to me, I know this shit ain't gonna work. There's leadership, and there's people say hey, come with me, follow me, watch this. But the great leaders also give that up and say, okay, now I'm following you. What's up? And it changed the way of work and really made me fall in love with screen acting in a way that I thought I would never it would never happen, not in the way that I love theater acting.
This is really remarkable because you come of age watching Robert de Niro in Scorsese films, expressing and articulating and anger and rage that you only understood in violence in physical combat. And you saw this actor in De Niro that captured that energy, that rage and used it for art. Thirty five years later, you find yourself in a Scorsese film. Once you've reached that pinnacle, how do your dreams change?
Wow? I mean, I know. I have this tattoo in my wrist with Almah's name, and it's the symbol of the Moscow Art Theater. It's the symbol of a seagull, and the seagull is a very famous Chekov plane. It was the first play of the Moscow Art Theater. That's why this seagul is their symbol, and what the Seagul represents to me is the play The Seagul is about all these artists, the health or lack thereof, of the relationships they have with their dreams. And you've got successful writers, aspiring writers, successful actors aspiring actors. They're all in love with the wrong people, and it's all this just sort of like crazy comedy tragedy that ultimately ends in the lead character committing suicide. And you know he's in love with this woman, Nina that he calls her Siegull, And what he does is he shoots a segull out of the sky and gives it to her and to me, the whole point of that play is that the only way you can have a healthy relationship with your dream is if it's flying in front of you and you're chasing it. It's never about attaining it. You've got to be able to follow it no matter which way it goes. There's no such thing as having a pet Siegel. You can't touch a segul, you can't attain it. The only way you can attain it is if you kill it, but then it's dead. So the healthy relationship is it's flying and you're following it. That's how I live my life. I've found days on set since then that we're just as fulfilling. But I'm looking for more, you know. I'm hungry to challenge myself deeper. I'm hungry to scare myself more, and I'm really hungry to create my own stuff. I'm just as hungry as I was, you know, as you say in two thousand and six when I was crying into my pillow, saying this is never going to happen, But I think it's in a much healthier way. There's an excitement behind it. I'm enormously lucky and enormously blessed.
As you move forward, you've renegotiated that relationship to chasing your dreams, to guilt and shame about the past. I keep thinking about your three kids. You're talking about them in the beginning, and you and I are talking on this week that is hard to even give language to it. What's happened in Texas. And I'm sure as a father you've gone back and thought, how do I protect my kids? What do I say? And I guess as we leave, what do you say to your kids? To move forward?
Every morning that I dropped my kids off at school. I always say this same thing, be bold, be brave, be beautiful, and be kind. Say to them every day, you know we failed, man like we failed. You know we failed. We've failed. We failed this earth, and we failed these kids. And there's every generation feels like things are spiraling out of control. Things move faster and faster and faster. My hope is that somehow, through art, through connectivity, and through the universality that comes with how connected we are now, that somehow kindness can spread and that somehow the quadranting off, the isolation that is like gripping all of us right now is somehow delivered into the zeitgeist. And I know this is very weird, but like as uncool, it's not cool to just be staring at your phone all day. You gotta go out and connect. You gotta go out and seek relationships and find empathy. I think the kids, you know, they got to see the world, They got to see other cultures. I just came back from Columbia. It seems like there's a lot less tension on the streets. There's a lot less posturing, there's a lot less worrying about how everybody else is doing what they believe, and there's a lot more folks trying to connect.
I think you're right. But that thing you mentioned about how we failed this moment, that failure seems to weigh on you.
Oh yeah, fuck it, dude. You know for me, I don't know if you have children, man, but like something happens, it's like you don't. I don't matter anymore, man, Like it doesn't. It doesn't matter, you know, Like I exist for them, like I do. I give anything up. I give my life up in a heartbeat for them, and I know the ANSWER's got to come from them. And it's crazy to be in this country and to know that you're providing a life for your kids, you're you're leaving them in a place that's worse than what you had. So I think we got to prepare them. And I think that like that means in all ways, I don't shield my kids from stuff. My parenting style, for better or for worse, is to try to be with them through everything, to be by their side, sometimes in front of them, sometimes behind them, sometimes by their side, but to say, hey, look, this is what this is. This is daddy's perspective on this, this is how I've handled it. These are the mistakes I've made in this. You're gonna have to make your own choices. This is what I think you should do. You're gonna have to figure this out. But fucking be brave and be bold, and be beautiful and be kind like be kind.
You mentioned kindness and empathy throughout this. I'm torn between wanting to believe that those qualities can spread and then feeling rather hopeless about that.
Why do you feel hopeless about them?
One thing that shook me is that in mid March of twenty twenty the world comes to a halt. We go through this pandemic throughout twenty twenty into early twenty twenty one, there is a large cultural conversation about empathy, connectivity. On the other side of this, being more decent to each other, being more grateful for the time we have with one another. All these big ideas that seemed positive and hopeful, But if I survey the last six to eight months, I think a lot of that was all talk. So that's where I don't know if our words, in this case, your words, which I think I do believe in my core, that do move me that I want to have faith in. Sometimes I think will they just remain as words, and I hope they don't.
Look man, for better or for worse. In this conversation, what we decided to kind of focus on a lot was my history with fucking up, making bad decisions. Even though I had every opportunity in the world not to, I kept fucking up. I kept being violent, I kept betraying people. I kept hurting people. I kept violating my family, violateating my own says, getting breaks, getting out of shit, kept going, kept going, kept going, kept going, kept going, kept going. And believe me, man, every single time I got sent to the principal's office, every single time my dad picked me up from a police station or jail, every single time I did something wrong, believe me, Man, I said, I'm done. I'm done. I'll never do it again. Words empty? Words? Were they empty? Maybe? Did I believe them then for that moment, that little fragment. Maybe, But just like anything else, it's a scale. And look, it's a scary fucking idea. But I think, man, you know this isn't going to be the last one. In all these ways, but you better believe like I believe that humanity. At the end, there will be a point where we say we can't, we can't take it anymore. Who knows when that moment's going to be. But I believe it is inherent in humanity that there is a rock bottom. I just I've seen it with so many people. I've seen it with so many situations. There is a rock bottom.
You've seen it in yourself.
I've seen it with myself period it Hopefully it's not about being too late for us. It's about the next generation, the generation after that, and and it's understanding that we got a responsibility to something that's way bigger than ourselves. And you can't make those kinds of changes. You can't change anybody, but you can change yourself like you can you can.
Well, then I guess I have to thank you for being living proof, no boy, that some change can happen, that one can transform. And I hope you're right, John Bernhal, pleasure to me, you pleasures all mine. Man, Thank you, And that's our show. If you enjoyed today's episode, be sure to leave us five stars on Spotify, Apple, wherever you do your listening. I want to give a special thanks to Chase Lanner and the team at Narrative pr Of course, I'd like to thank our guests today, John Berenthal. You can watch them in the new season of The Bear, streaming exclusively on Hulu. To learn more about him and his work, visit our show notes at talk easypod dot com for more conversations with other great actors. I'd recommend our talks with Bob odenkirk Oscar Isaac Matthew McConaughey, Michelle Williams, and Pedro Pascal. To hear those and more Pushkin Podcasts listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you like to listen. You can also follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram at talk Easypod. If you want to purchase one of our mugs they Come and Cream or Navy, you can do so at talk easypod dot com slash shop. As always, Talk Easy is produced by Caroline Reebok. Our executive producer is Jenni sa Bravo. Our assistant producer is Caitlin Dryden. Our research and production assistant is Paulina Suarez. Today's talk was edited by Clarice Gavara with assistants from Caitlin Dryden, and mixed by Andrew Vastola. Our assistant editor is c J. Mitchell. Her music is by Dylan Peck. Our illustrations are by Shoshanoy. Photographs today are by Emma Meade. Video and graphics by Ian Chang, Derek Gaberzak, Ian Joe and Ethan Seneca. I also want to thank our team at Pushkin Industries, Justin Richmond, Julia Barton, John Schnars, Kerrie Brody, David Glover, Heather Fane, Eric Sandler, Jornu McMillan, Isabella Navarrees, Tara Machado, Maya Knigg, Jason Gambrell, Justine Lang, Lee, Talmulad, Malcolm Gladwell and Jacob Weisberg. I'm San Fragoso. Thank you for listening to Talk Easy. I'll see you back here next week with a new episode. Until then, enjoy the long holiday weekend, stay safe, and so on.
