April 7, 2025 • 53 mins
It's the Jack Wagner sit-down we've been waiting for!
Our favorite 'Melrose Place' leading man is putting away his normally private persona and spilling some Dr. Peter Burns beans!
Who was the cast member who convinced him to do the show? What rookie mistake did he make on the set that got him in trouble? And, what came between him and Laura Leighton during a certain scene?
Plus, why his 80s music career almost never happened!
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Still the Place with Laura Layton, Courtney Thorn Smith.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
And daphnews Aniga an iHeartRadio podcast.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Hi, guys, we're so excited today Jack Wagner.
Speaker 3 (00:20):
Excited Jack Wagner, So welcome.
Speaker 4 (00:23):
To Still the Place. We're so excited to hear of you.
Speaker 5 (00:27):
I think to see you guys. I don't know if
you had video of it, clearly you may not. But
just the greeting I got out front was like that.
Speaker 6 (00:36):
That never happened at work. Girls. Okay, we're matured.
Speaker 7 (00:39):
As we got older, we realized what we have.
Speaker 8 (00:42):
Yeah, we realized thirty five years later.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
You've been waiting thirty five years for that greeting. Yeah, yeah,
but it happened to be chat.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
What was it back in the day and the makeup
don't talk to me? Yeah, yeah, it's right.
Speaker 6 (01:00):
Hey, Laura, you want to talk to this. I don't
want to run yet. Run them out there.
Speaker 5 (01:06):
You guys were really great and uh listen, it was
always I think we had a lot of uh the
attitude seemed to be really positive, even the makeup trailers, right,
I think people were beat.
Speaker 6 (01:16):
Up, yeah, because we did a lot of work.
Speaker 5 (01:18):
But I think overall it was kind of a fun group.
I always remember it that way.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
I think that there was so much drama on the camera,
Like I would just read these and going like what
that I was spending time like preparing getting these mental
and emotional states that I was just relieved to see
like a normal person at the at the you know,
getting lunch or something.
Speaker 6 (01:37):
Hi, guys, Jack, Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 7 (01:39):
Joy very upset was upset.
Speaker 8 (01:42):
It's been the consensus too.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
I mean we've had other guests in and we've talked
about it all the time, like we were just a
happy group of people, like we liked our jobs, we
liked pre each other, and that was just exceptional. And
the fact that thirty five years later we're so excited
to see everybody again, and.
Speaker 5 (01:59):
I want to just to hear point daff and I
think that that was We all really treated the material
that way, really seriously, right, whatever emotional state, however crazy
it was, whatever it was, we were all real pros,
I thought, yeah, and did our best to make it
exciting and believable and sexy and funny or whatever it was. Yeah, yeah,
(02:19):
And I think that was consistent throughout the cast, don't
you well.
Speaker 7 (02:23):
You know, I jumped ahead. We don't ahead. You came
in season three, episode six.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
OK, not that you needed to know that, but we
figured that out, and you came on like the freaking
soap icon that you are. You just did so much
with your eyes and that hair, but I mean your
eyes were so you came in with this power. I'm
head of the hospital, your chief is chief of staff,
(02:49):
and you just like put whoever came in in their place.
Michael and h and Marcia for sure, but you were
just I was like, Wow, this guy has done this before.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
It's so true and it's hard to own a set
because you're I mean, you were coming.
Speaker 5 (03:02):
Now.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
Did you know when you started that you were going
to be on for so long? Was it an ARC
or were you hired full time right away?
Speaker 5 (03:08):
To my memory, I think I was hired full time
and I knew I'd be a part of the cast.
And my goal, to your point, was to make an impact, right.
I really wanted to be this alpha male, you know,
no matter what it was, so that mission accomplishment totally.
Speaker 8 (03:25):
Did you audition?
Speaker 7 (03:26):
Did you?
Speaker 6 (03:28):
Well?
Speaker 5 (03:28):
You know, last week we spoke and I thought about
it and I was doing a guest spot on a
Canadian TV show in Montreal, okay, And my agent called
and said, I'm sending you a script from melrose Place
and I was like soaped out. I'm like, no chance,
I'm not doing it. It feels like a soap. And
they said, well, it's a hot show and you'd be
(03:49):
working opposite Heather.
Speaker 6 (03:50):
Locklare and so I'm like, okay, all right, well, all right,
all right.
Speaker 5 (03:54):
So I took this script and flew across you know,
a long flight from Montreal and changed everything he wrote,
We did this that, and did you guys audition in
Aaron's officer and Spelling's office. Okay, So you know the office, right,
And for those who don't, it's this big, kind of white,
shag carpeted big office, right, and it has a seating
(04:15):
almost like bench like along the walls. Huge, huge, huge, right,
So it's almost sort of like a Broadway audition with
just cafeteria tables. You walk in and it's just a
line of people and executives, and you know, it's nerve wracking.
Speaker 6 (04:30):
And I went.
Speaker 5 (04:31):
In and read with the casting director and this did
this whole improvisational, completely offscript, you know, got right in
her grill, grabbed your face, you know, with her hair,
did everything right, just went for it and got the part.
Speaker 6 (04:47):
Wow. Okay.
Speaker 5 (04:48):
So my first day on set was this scene and
I started doing what I.
Speaker 6 (04:53):
Did in the audition.
Speaker 7 (04:54):
Oh my god.
Speaker 5 (04:56):
Yeah, you're all laughing because you know what happened, right,
and I think that director. The director was like, uh, yeah,
cut Jack, you need to call Darren Starr.
Speaker 6 (05:07):
He's waiting to talk to you.
Speaker 5 (05:09):
And I'm like, oh, okay, hey Darren, Hey Jack, what's
going on?
Speaker 6 (05:13):
I said, I don't know.
Speaker 5 (05:14):
I'm just kind of doing that idea, just doing it
the way I did in the audition. He goes, yeah,
we do the lines that are written here.
Speaker 6 (05:19):
Yeah, okay.
Speaker 5 (05:22):
It was like, okay, well that was my first experience
with that.
Speaker 7 (05:29):
We do the lines, we do the.
Speaker 6 (05:31):
Lines is written. But that's how I got the.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
Point because we were season three and they had had
so many people like winging in getting little maybe a
little lazy, I don't know. I had an experience because
we had fax machines back then where I had edited
a scene as a good little girl that I am,
and I faxed it to Derek to see ahead of
time because I wasn't gonna like, you know, and he
facts back Daphne. We don't make a habit good edits,
but don't make a habit of editing the things.
Speaker 7 (05:54):
We don't do that here.
Speaker 5 (05:56):
Yeah, okay, I was the new kid on the block.
Well that's that my train.
Speaker 7 (06:00):
You did a lot with your eyes. I think you
put all that in your eyes and you're staring.
Speaker 4 (06:04):
Yeah, we've been watching the episodes again.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
I think it was such a good acting exercise, though,
because I can see myself struggling to make lines work,
like taking pauses in weird places to add the whatever
the weird end of.
Speaker 4 (06:15):
The sentence was. You could see like it really was.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
It really built that muscle, like we could make it work, anything.
Speaker 4 (06:21):
Work because you had no choice. That's right, It wasn't
going to change.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
It.
Speaker 5 (06:24):
Really is an acting exercise. I don't think people understand that.
But when materials, we'll call it thin.
Speaker 7 (06:30):
Right, if it's thin or over the top.
Speaker 5 (06:33):
Or over the top, whatever it is, how are we
going to make this believable?
Speaker 6 (06:38):
That's really the exercise. So I totally agree.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
Now, Jack was a different because you'd come from other soaps.
You were such a star on General Hospital, So was
this a different kind of soap?
Speaker 7 (06:49):
Nighttime soap?
Speaker 5 (06:50):
Or was it massive to go to nighttime television from
daytime because I was really pigeonholed, you know, from General
Hospital and having a number one record and never really
being taken seriously as a musical artist, et cetera. Right,
and I'm like a thespian, Okay, I'm like from drama
school and classic theater and Stella Adler and here my
first real big break was on a soap opera.
Speaker 6 (07:12):
Okay, So this was.
Speaker 5 (07:15):
Huge for me to score a nighttime series, whether it
be soap esque or whatever.
Speaker 6 (07:20):
You know, it was a big jump.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
And soon if we'll talk about the schedule being challenging,
but you were like, this is nothing compared to a
daytime soap, right, yeah.
Speaker 5 (07:28):
Pay seriously, girls like I. When you're on a front
burner storyline on a soap opera, you can have fifty
sixty pages of dialogue. Sometimes you'd have to do two
episodes in one. And now they've condensed soap operas into
doing four to five episodes a day, you know, the
ones that have survived, right, But back then, you know,
(07:48):
it was really Uh, if you're on a front burner storyline,
you could have fifty sixty pages a dialogue, which I
had quite a few times.
Speaker 7 (07:56):
I mean Maro's we shot about eight pages a day total.
What's been people, So it.
Speaker 5 (08:01):
Was piece of cake, yeah for you different, Yeah, but
it was still I prefer I like to move fast.
I like to I call it power running. I love
the run lines. I love to get the staging and
then run lines and listen to the actor's voice. And
you know, because we all have a bit of a
preconceived notion, right when you rehearse a scene at home
and you're going over it, But when you hear the
(08:22):
other actor's voice and their intonation and stage it, it
takes on a different it's a different scene completely sometimes.
Speaker 6 (08:30):
So you know, that's always the best.
Speaker 5 (08:33):
Challenge for me is to be now that I'm older,
more organic and available in rehearsal, especially in rehearsal because
even on the show I'm on now when calls the Heart,
I'm the only actor who's always in makeup, always in
wardrobe for rehearsal.
Speaker 6 (08:47):
It's just how I like it.
Speaker 5 (08:49):
I just like to always be ready and sort of
just to be available for what's going to happen.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
You know, you're talking about how your Laura and Michael
stuff was like a separate show.
Speaker 7 (09:04):
Like that office was like a separate comedy in there.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
Right, And we had a little comedy when you doctor
said that different we could go there and you guys
just had a ball.
Speaker 3 (09:13):
Yeah, they were doing other stuff, like stuff was blowing
up and set all the time, and we were like,
this is really funny.
Speaker 6 (09:20):
We had our un comedy shop, didn't we.
Speaker 9 (09:23):
Up with your little crazy little matching outfit taking messages
and like do you remember there was like some sort
I would put them on a pencil and I don't know,
it's just just prop fun.
Speaker 6 (09:33):
We were like fun. Yeah, we were great at it,
were you well? I mean I was always.
Speaker 5 (09:39):
Trying to pull an apple in here or there, like
what what's what's with the apple?
Speaker 6 (09:43):
What's he doing? You know, we don't need an apple.
Speaker 7 (09:45):
We don't need you might need an apple.
Speaker 8 (09:48):
We should try that.
Speaker 7 (09:49):
We actually might.
Speaker 5 (09:50):
Yeah, so we I think we had a little comedy
company there, right.
Speaker 7 (09:54):
It was fantastic.
Speaker 6 (09:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
I was there saying where's the apple? Where's the apple
was in this? It was in your right it was
in your left hand.
Speaker 8 (10:01):
There is that? Okay?
Speaker 2 (10:03):
Then it always fun when someone comes up with a
prop and then like but then we don't really know
how to use it.
Speaker 7 (10:08):
It was so organic in the moment.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
They're like, well, you better repeat it four more times
and make it seymore.
Speaker 8 (10:14):
Make it a sh dick.
Speaker 6 (10:15):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (10:16):
Okay, So I have to add I haven't told this story,
but I think, asking you if you remember it, is
this is the perfect time to tell the story. There
was a time, and it was while we were shooting
all those scenes in that doctor's office, and it was
comedy and fun whatever. I decided it was time to
straighten my teeth, and so I got braces.
Speaker 8 (10:34):
Do you remember this.
Speaker 7 (10:36):
Talk about.
Speaker 3 (10:39):
I got them on the inside of And then we
went to have a scene together and poor Jack could
not look me in the eye. Right now, I want
to hear this from your you tell the story.
Speaker 5 (10:53):
I think I think I remember one take, just stopping
and going, can anybody understand her?
Speaker 6 (10:59):
It sounds like you because I don't. I don't really
know what she said. Okay, so you know I had
to get you right away.
Speaker 8 (11:08):
You were so great because you were you were like.
Speaker 3 (11:11):
Really sympathetic to my plight, and like Jack, I can't talk,
hang on, she's stribbling out of her mind.
Speaker 5 (11:19):
Laura could I clean you up just real quick, because.
Speaker 8 (11:22):
Help me, help me.
Speaker 3 (11:23):
You're like, just cover I was so badly and you're like,
what is wrong with you?
Speaker 6 (11:33):
Yeah?
Speaker 8 (11:34):
Fun day that your messages.
Speaker 3 (11:40):
But I will never think of that time without thinking
of it through your eyes, because it was your face
that I was seeing the whole truth.
Speaker 7 (11:48):
I was like, oh, this is mae.
Speaker 8 (11:53):
I did have them taken off.
Speaker 3 (11:54):
I think that night, like I came back to work
the next day and they had been ripped off.
Speaker 5 (11:58):
It always one day if she yeah, of listening and
spittling all over the Jack.
Speaker 3 (12:05):
Was Jack was the perfect scene partner to have for
that experience, giving.
Speaker 7 (12:09):
Me ideas for oh my god, if we ever do
it again. I yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
Do you have a storyline that you remember, like as
being either really traumatic or really fun when that sticks
out in your mind?
Speaker 6 (12:32):
Yes?
Speaker 5 (12:33):
I think it was when Marcia was in the insane
asylum Kimberly, you know, and that was, uh, yeah, it was.
It was great because we really worked well together in
terms of the thespian part of it. She was so
committed to being insane, and therefore I was so committed
to and it was physical, you know, like throwing things
(12:55):
and really in a chamber and I remember specifically that storyline.
I felt like it was a really strong acting exercise
because we wanted to make it believable, right. And I
can't remember exactly how the storyline went, but you know
he was there to help her, right, So there was
a compassionate part as well as her having to convince
(13:17):
she was crazy.
Speaker 6 (13:18):
And you just don't get to do You.
Speaker 5 (13:19):
Get thrown in the pool, you get slapped, you know
those things. But this was more of a state of
being and she was great. Yeah, I think Marcia was
really able to go someplace that she maybe hadn't.
Speaker 6 (13:34):
Gone on the show. And so that remember that that
was for.
Speaker 5 (13:37):
Me just really working with another actor on another level
than we usually had bed scenes or this or that.
Speaker 6 (13:44):
This reminded me of, yes, that's really good day.
Speaker 7 (13:48):
There were committed.
Speaker 5 (13:50):
I saw that that's what it was and how to
make it believable, right, and it just was really yeah,
you commit, you commit, and we ran the lines a
lot and were able to tweak things. I'm going to
ask you guys this because you brought up who you've
had on the show, right, So if whoever it was
that was an executive producer that happened to write that
show and then direct it. I always found that if
(14:13):
I wanted something change, I would have to call. And
it's always tough with a phone call because they don't
really feel the performance because you.
Speaker 6 (14:21):
Try to act it out or whatever.
Speaker 5 (14:23):
But if they're on set and you have an idea
and you can show that, it was like, oh I
love that, Yeah, let's do that. So I've found anytime
that the executive whoever wrote it was also a producer
and directing, it was so much easier to collaborate totally.
Speaker 7 (14:39):
You guys, did you totally?
Speaker 3 (14:41):
Like so many of the producer and writers, they were
not on the set and it was a phone call,
and so he said, like for him like that, it
was easier for him to be on the set and
to be witnessing what was going on, and so he
felt a little bit more connected.
Speaker 5 (14:57):
To Lake just getting a phone call from an act
that didn't like this or something, because that's not really
what it was. It was about this isn't working right,
and I think this can work this it might be better.
Speaker 7 (15:08):
Do you remember so much? Express if you can show them,
do you remember any.
Speaker 6 (15:12):
Specific because everything everything, the.
Speaker 7 (15:15):
Crazy part we're talking.
Speaker 5 (15:16):
About or no, this was this was really you know, Daphney,
more just about just just normal structural scene work. I
think that something could be funnier, right Laura, you know Courtney,
or something could be a little bit sexier if we
did this or said it this way, or maybe didn't
use words right, really cut some of the dialogue and
just let the moment play. It could be much more
(15:38):
sexier sometimes and maybe a bit stronger. But that you
couldn't always translate over a phone call.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
Well, no, the problem was before you were there. In
the very beginning, we were so far away. We're in
Santa Clarita, they were in Midwis. They were in mid Willshre. Yeah,
so that's about an hour drive away. So we would
change things in the beginning and the meaning by accident.
So that's what happened. We ruined it was our fault. Sorry,
so sorry, we the first one's ruined it for everybody else.
Speaker 4 (16:07):
So that's what happened.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
They just felt too far away and it's too bad,
Like it would have been great to have a producer
on set. We had Chip, but a writing producer on set.
Speaker 6 (16:15):
Right, Yeah, yes, you're right, but they just couldn't.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
I mean, I remember writing quest that I had. I
would ask Chip and then they he would make a
call and they'd come back and they'd say, yeah, that's cool.
But you know, to the writer's credit, writing has rhythm
to it and it has you know, meaning, and it's
nothing worse than like an actor coming and going I'm
going to make this better and they're not making it better,
I'm making it easier.
Speaker 7 (16:33):
I'm not saying that what you did, mister Jack, but
I think.
Speaker 6 (16:36):
You make a good point.
Speaker 5 (16:37):
Yeah, their job is yeah, and we don't really can't.
That's why the call is about collaboration. Yes, like help
me understand and then that would be it. Sometimes I
would better understand where they're coming. So I've always been
a big fan of that type of open collaboration with
an executive producer or a writing team or a head writer.
Speaker 3 (16:58):
Do you feel like it got more collabor or more
open to that conversation over time, Like the longer the
show went on, the more did they start to trust. Like,
the three of us were not there in season six
and seven, so we don't have a sense of like
how that felt.
Speaker 6 (17:12):
But.
Speaker 3 (17:14):
In your you were there from three to seven, and
so did you find that over time, it became a
little bit more like trusting. Like you mentioned that on
When Calls the Heart, there's just a level of trust
and you can have that collaboration.
Speaker 8 (17:23):
Did that ever happen?
Speaker 5 (17:24):
Yeah, No, it happened because I think they started to understand,
you know that I wasn't coming from a place of ego.
You know, I'm coming from a place of how to
raise the bar. And when they directed, like who were
our executives that directed? It was Chip and Chuck Pratt
and who else?
Speaker 7 (17:43):
Frank never directed Frank South.
Speaker 6 (17:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (17:45):
Yeah, So I think once that experience happened, they knew
that this was coming from a place of like collaboration, right,
So it was much easier as it went on because
you know, they wanted the show to go longer, and
I think they trusted me. It wasn't I wasn't coming
from a place of trying to be controlling. My ego
is coming from you know, this is a little clumsy,
(18:07):
it's not working.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
How did it feel in six and seven? Did it
feel different? Feels like a different show to us because
we weren't there. You feel different when you were there
because there were only a few people who stayed.
Speaker 5 (18:19):
Yeah, I mean, it always felt okay with me as
long as Heather was there because I think she was
the DNA of the show in terms of right and
nothing to take away from you guys at all, but
you know, I think that for this is for me.
If she was there, I always had a comrade in arms,
someone who was funny on set, you know, and someone
I had a history with. My character had a history
(18:40):
with them show. I think once they started bringing on
new women for my character, I think nothing against them,
but like Lisa Rena.
Speaker 7 (18:49):
And Jamie Luner.
Speaker 5 (18:52):
Jamie, that's right, Jamie came on, and so that's all fine.
I think you have to bring you know, new characters on, etc.
But I think it lost. I think it lost some
of its audience when you guys weren't there. I really do,
because you're trying to bring on new people that audiences
will root for.
Speaker 7 (19:10):
And not only us, but they're behind the scenes.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
People left. Darren had gone, you know, some other people left.
They must have brought in other writers. I'm just wondering
if there was a change in tone and in writing
as well. It felt like, you know, maybe it was
a little more and more over the top, more crazy,
more Yeah.
Speaker 5 (19:27):
I think it got a little crazier, yeah, and a
little more far fetched a bit if you want to
call it that.
Speaker 6 (19:31):
You know, but that was part of the show's beauty
as well. Yes, you know, that's what made the show
work for sure.
Speaker 5 (19:37):
I think when you start to bring on new characters
and you're a bit far fetched, it's more difficult for
an audience to engage and to connect to the believability
of it.
Speaker 6 (19:45):
And I think it also.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
Happened also to connect to the characters. Like if you
have the characters you're with from the beginning, and then
like you can come in Heather, people can come in
and then there's room. But when everybody's new, it's hard
to figure out where your point is. Obviously they can
still connect to you when Heather and Thomas, but I
think it's hard to meet that many new characters.
Speaker 6 (20:04):
I think you're right. I think that's what happened.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
Did you know anyone on our stet, Melrose before you
came on this show?
Speaker 7 (20:11):
Do you remember you didn't know Heather already?
Speaker 6 (20:14):
No? No, no, I didn't know anybody anything, but I
do know ye to see you. I knew Chuck Pratt.
Speaker 5 (20:23):
Chuck Pratt is the one who had me called in
two auditions from general very good.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
Yeah, he was fun to talk to you because he
comes from the soapback soapbackground. He was talking about when
the show took a turn, and that was also the
exact word thing, because he said, you don't know where
we've put a word that will come up six episodes
down the line, like it was. They had to storyboard
it so carefully, So that was part of it too,
But it was fun to hear him talk about he
was the one who had that understanding of how to
(20:50):
make that work when they realized it couldn't be eight
kids trying to make it because nobody watched it when
it was eight.
Speaker 6 (20:55):
Kids trying to make Yes.
Speaker 5 (20:57):
Yeah, yeah, I think to Chuck's credit, you know, and
also what we've talked about about, you know, making a
scene better, We don't really know what a writer or
writing staff's intention is by putting something in there that's
going to pay off, you know, later on in the season.
So that's you know, they have to protect, you know,
their storyboards, and it's not.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
Only words, it's characteristics sometimes, so like they'll have in
this script, you know, Joe is you know, meekly blah
blah blah, and I'm like.
Speaker 7 (21:25):
I don't want to play Meg, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (21:27):
But there's a reason because some other devil and then
she rises up against him finally, and it's more satisfying,
who knows. But that also was frustrating where they are,
you know, it's not just the words that they are
thinking ahead with. But he said he did this really well.
Did you work with him on you did on General Hospital?
Speaker 6 (21:47):
I think so?
Speaker 7 (21:48):
He said to us, he put us through the soap
opera mill. Do you remember that? Oh, we put you
guys through the mill, you know, like just cranked it.
We cranked you guys through.
Speaker 3 (21:57):
Yeah, well, I think yeah, he was referring to storey
lions and jumping through. But then also that we had
thirty two episodes a season is almost like a soap schedule,
I mean, but in a different like long.
Speaker 8 (22:11):
Haul, right, I mean, you're doing okay?
Speaker 5 (22:13):
You have?
Speaker 3 (22:14):
You did for perspective, you did one hundred and thirty
nine episodes of Melrose Place in five years, in five
over five seasons of General Hospital.
Speaker 8 (22:25):
You did six.
Speaker 3 (22:26):
Hundred and fifty four episodes just for perspective, you know.
Speaker 5 (22:31):
Somebody else said said a couple of years back that
I've done over fifteen hundred to two thousand hours of television.
Speaker 6 (22:38):
Yeah, I don't know if that's true.
Speaker 3 (22:40):
Well, because then on The Gold and the Beautiful you
did thirteen hundred and thirty four.
Speaker 6 (22:48):
Business, it's true. That's nice.
Speaker 3 (22:50):
So you're shooting multiple episodes in a day to get
to that number, and we think, wow, we had this
long running series.
Speaker 7 (22:57):
You had like five of them, Jack, that's amazing.
Speaker 8 (23:00):
Three long running shows.
Speaker 3 (23:02):
When Calls the Heart for thirteen seasons going on thirteen
and Melrose, it's just like a drop in the bucket.
Speaker 7 (23:08):
For you and.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
A pro am golf career, Like, what's going on? Where
do you get it from?
Speaker 5 (23:15):
So I'm trying if you'll just it's just like, I
don't know. I guess I was working with a guy,
Daniel Listening was the original mounting on one Calls the Heart, okay,
and he's Australian, so he always kind of struggled with
the accent, and especially if I brought some props in,
you know, he couldn't incorporate props. And he said, you know, my,
(23:36):
this guy's done over twenty five hundred.
Speaker 6 (23:38):
Episodes of television.
Speaker 5 (23:39):
I can't and I'm like and I was like, just
laughed it off and I'm going and so these statistics
are a little mind blowing to.
Speaker 6 (23:49):
Me, I guess.
Speaker 5 (23:49):
And it's it's an adjustment from a daytime show, which
most people, I don't know if they know, is three
to four to five cameras and a nighttime show which
is one camera. So that was the big adjustment for
melrose Place to me getting used to that different shooting schedule,
you know, turning it, turning a scene around and turning
around and shooting film nighttime TV.
Speaker 6 (24:11):
So it was a great educator.
Speaker 5 (24:13):
Yeah, so we edit as we go, so it was
like live scene work.
Speaker 6 (24:17):
So it was a great educator for me.
Speaker 5 (24:19):
You know, it was a growing, growing ground for me
to you know, do nighttime television.
Speaker 3 (24:26):
And but the whole your whole acting career came after
a music career.
Speaker 8 (24:32):
Like that, right am?
Speaker 3 (24:33):
I correct, Like that was sort of your first you
were pursuing music.
Speaker 6 (24:37):
No, it's the opposite, was an actor.
Speaker 8 (24:39):
Tell us all about that?
Speaker 5 (24:41):
Well, I, you know, I'm from Missouri and I started
playing the guitar with some buddies and you know, partying
a bit and learning Neil Young and Seals and Crofts
and Elton John and all those things. And uh, I
started doing theater in high school. So I wound up.
You know, I was an athlete as well. So it
turns out, long story short, I go down to University
(25:03):
of Arizona to try out for the golf team and
I had never played structural golf team and there were
sixty guys and I made the golf team. I finished second,
and they didn't give me a scholarship. So I had
done community college and a drama school in Missouri, by
my hometown. So I go over to the on the
golf team, but not a scholarship. So I go over
(25:26):
to the head of the department at the University of Earth.
I meet him and I tell him my story. He says, well,
prepare a song, dance in a monologue. Okay, So I do,
and I get a full ride in drama to the
University of Arizona. So I launch into My first thing
is I'm on the costume department of the Barretts of
Wimple Street. This English classic, right, So I start in
(25:47):
the costume department and I wound up starting getting the
leads in the plays. And that's really where I went
from golf to acting.
Speaker 4 (25:55):
And so on the golf course.
Speaker 5 (26:01):
He's on the golf So you know, the summer of graduation,
one of the one of the actors was a tour
guy at Universal Studios and said, you know, here's how
you get. So I went and applied at spring break
and I graduated and went immediately to La lived in
my car and was a tour guy. Just went to
(26:21):
became a tour guide at Universal.
Speaker 2 (26:23):
Okay, it wasn't Jim Ward by the by chance was it?
Speaker 7 (26:27):
Okay?
Speaker 2 (26:27):
I lived with a we had a roommate of we
had a house full of five roommates.
Speaker 7 (26:32):
I start when I was at U C l A and.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
Jim Ward, who was the voice of what was that
show with the night the car that spoke with night
writer and he did the tour to make you know
the rent.
Speaker 7 (26:44):
So I was just wondering. But a lot of people,
I think very few of tour.
Speaker 5 (26:48):
Got a great job because you're performing on the tram.
I would do voices and characters and so that's that
was my first real job in town. And I got
a roommate, so I wound up having a normal life. Anyway,
the first audition I went on, I got this agent
through somebody, and I got the part. It was called
A New Day and Eden on on TV, the first
(27:10):
cable network, and it shot on Gower Lot and it
had actually partial nudity and it was a soap opera okay,
not for men, but it was just risk a and
it shot in the studio next to General Hospital. So
here's like Rick Springfield and John Stamos and Tony Gary
all trying to come over to our studio to like
look in the thing. It got canceled, okay, but that
(27:32):
was my first job, my first audition, and I got
an agent and from that I got a different agent,
and so literally there was a man hunt about a
year later for the character Frisco Jones. So I go
in this audition and it's my fifth screen test. This
is getting back to music. I'm sorry, it's a long story,
but I guess that's why I'm.
Speaker 6 (27:51):
Here, right.
Speaker 5 (27:52):
So they call ABC calls and said do you buy
chance play the guitars sing? And I said, well yeah,
so I bring my guitar in. I do this Kenny
Loggins tune this.
Speaker 6 (28:04):
Wait a little while to welcome what your have to.
Speaker 5 (28:08):
So I'm just knocking this tune out I put my
guitar down, I do the scene work, I get the part.
Speaker 6 (28:14):
Okay.
Speaker 5 (28:15):
Now, I'm working at a clothing store in Sunset, and
I got the call while I'm working there. And it
turns out I wound up having them buy the wardrobe
from this store, and they wound up branching out and
having quite a few stories. But that's where I was
when I got the call. So I have to go
in the recording studio and record some songs, which I've
never done. I've done musical theater, et cetera. And I
(28:37):
have to sing on John Stamos's band, Blackie in the
Riff Raff.
Speaker 6 (28:40):
Okay, so I haven't even started work yet.
Speaker 5 (28:45):
So the woman who was just in charge of ABC
Daytime Music was from Mercury Records, and she was at
the recording session.
Speaker 6 (28:54):
She introduced herself.
Speaker 5 (28:55):
So I knocked these songs out, sing them, and she goes,
would you have yema men?
Speaker 6 (29:00):
And I said yeah. She goes, would you be interested
in a record deal?
Speaker 7 (29:02):
Oh my, oh my god, this.
Speaker 4 (29:05):
Is eight nineteen weeks all this stuff happened.
Speaker 6 (29:08):
Oh oh yeah, within a week.
Speaker 8 (29:11):
The park you were no longer living in your car.
Speaker 5 (29:16):
And she says, would you be interested in a record deal,
And I'm like.
Speaker 6 (29:19):
Yeah, sure, why not?
Speaker 5 (29:21):
And so two nights later I had dinner with Quincy
Jones and Herbie Hancock, and I signed with Quincy and
Quest Records his label, and he assigned Glenn Ballard and
Cliff Magnus to the Jack Wagner project.
Speaker 6 (29:34):
You know.
Speaker 5 (29:35):
And there I am meeting James Ingram and Patty Austin
and you know, Quincy's people on Quincy's label, and my
first record was All I Need that they wrote now
they wrote it for you, they wrote it for me, No,
Glenn Ballard and Cliff Magnus and David Pack and so
all of a sudden it was on the show, you know,
it was on they released it to and I started
(29:56):
to do it on the show, and they released it
to radio stations, and they called and they said the
head of the label, not Quincy Colton.
Speaker 6 (30:02):
Said the record's dead. And I'm like, are you talking
like I am so?
Speaker 5 (30:08):
And by the way, I'm very ambitious anyway, in terms
of where I was in my life at the time.
You know, I'm doing theater, I'm doing all kinds of
little small stages. I'm studying at cell Adler I got
this part on General Hospital and I'm like dead, and
all of a sudden, radio station in Oxnard, Why one
hundred played it, and then it's Cis Tutation in Miami
Plate and it starts to snowball around the country and
(30:32):
teenage girls started requesting all I.
Speaker 6 (30:35):
Need because I was seeing it on.
Speaker 5 (30:39):
And in three or four weeks, it was a number
one record behind yeah, behind Like a Virgin. It was
the number number two on the pop charts for three weeks,
behind Like a Virgin Madonna's song, and it was number
one on the AC charts.
Speaker 6 (30:51):
And that's how it happened.
Speaker 7 (30:52):
Wow, amazing. So they want to kill it before it even.
Speaker 5 (30:56):
Yeah, yeah, that's kind of what the radio business was like,
the record business if it didn't hit right away. And
then it was the fans of General Hospital that really
were calling.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
And it must have brought more young viewers to General Hospital,
Oh huge.
Speaker 5 (31:07):
Yeah, because Rick Spinfield just had Jesse's girl, he had
left the show. Luke and Laura had just happened, so
and Johnny Staymos was leaving the show. So I was
kind of taking over, you know, for these these storylines
and these iconic you know, characters and actors that were leaving.
So you know, that's where I moved into General Hospital.
Speaker 7 (31:27):
And you did it for five years the first time,
right or something, and then I.
Speaker 5 (31:30):
Did it for about four years, three or four years
till eighty seven. I did a national tour of West
Side Story. Oh the eighty eight I did a national
tour of Greece playing Danny Zuko. So I went back
to my theater roots. Yeah, back to gh for eighty
nine to ninety and then kind of uh, yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:47):
It was a different time for soaps that people now
probably don't know. But General Hospital was so hot, and
it was like it jumped from soap opera magazines to
regular magazines. Everybody was watching, and you had these music
stars watching. As a teenage go at the time, I
listened to that maybe a thousand times.
Speaker 4 (32:03):
Hear you're talking about I'm like, oh my god, I'm
seventeen again.
Speaker 7 (32:06):
I was listening right on the way. I gotta hear
his song.
Speaker 4 (32:10):
Do you remember?
Speaker 6 (32:13):
That's awesome?
Speaker 8 (32:17):
Are you doing any music now? Are you? Are you
do you song? Do you write songs?
Speaker 7 (32:20):
Do you play?
Speaker 8 (32:21):
You just played?
Speaker 6 (32:22):
No? Not right now.
Speaker 5 (32:24):
I was so plugged into music when I was doing
the franchise of movies with Josie Bassett Channel.
Speaker 7 (32:30):
Were you doing music for the show for the series.
Speaker 6 (32:33):
For the movies, Yeah, I was.
Speaker 5 (32:34):
Basically I rewrote my story as uh, I just told
you as a you know, a guy who did music
in college and this was his college sweetheart and I
wrote songs together, et cetera. In any way that relationship ended,
but he had a musical career and hit records and
here he is owning a wedding lodge and so she
comes up to do her wedding there they see each
(32:55):
other and had to drop the platter moment, and so
that's what created franchise. So I wrote and played a
lot of music.
Speaker 4 (33:03):
Did you bring the story to them?
Speaker 5 (33:05):
Yes, I mean it was kind of the executive producer
of When Calls the Heart said listen, if you sell this,
I'll make you executive producer, you know, and blah blah blah,
And so I kind of rewrote it and readjusted it
and sold it. Like we're talking to the heads of
Hallmark who were in Vancouver for a dinner, and I
walked in and said, that story exactly to this, the music,
(33:26):
they love each other. This he goes off on tour.
Speaker 6 (33:28):
They split.
Speaker 5 (33:29):
Twenty five years later, they see each other drop the
platter moment and they went, you're in development, so.
Speaker 1 (33:37):
You're clearly great at story and dialogue.
Speaker 4 (33:40):
Do you write?
Speaker 5 (33:41):
Not really, No, it's more about just I would say
my forte is actually having seen work and then being
able to feel and know if something needs to be
adjusted or funnier, and and what we talked about earlier
about changing things, et cetera. I really learned to incorporate writer,
you know, like, can you help me? That's my first word,
(34:03):
that's the first thing out of my mouth. Can you
help me with this? Because I want to understand you
know what you want here because I'm not clear, And
then I'll completely moving into wanting to get.
Speaker 6 (34:14):
It my way right.
Speaker 5 (34:16):
That's good, Okay, lessons out there for people.
Speaker 7 (34:20):
It works better than what the hell are you trying
to say?
Speaker 6 (34:22):
Yeah, this is all.
Speaker 3 (34:26):
Yeah, maybe take some notes by the way, to take
note we ever wants to take notes of Jack.
Speaker 5 (34:33):
And on another note, in selling that movie idea. I
don't know about you, guys, but I just have found
that this business is really about relationships. I mean, sometimes
you you can do audition cold auditions and get parts.
But once you maybe establish yourself or have a career,
it's really about how you pitch an idea and yourself
(34:54):
and how.
Speaker 6 (34:55):
You humanize it.
Speaker 5 (34:56):
That's what I found, because when you humanize something and
kind of tell the story truthfully, I think it resonates.
Speaker 1 (35:03):
It doesn't also, Matt for the young actors out there,
it also matters how you act on the set, like
people know you, they go Jack is great, He's collaborative,
he's funny, he brings joy to the sets.
Speaker 7 (35:12):
Here early in wardrobe and knows his line cards.
Speaker 1 (35:15):
You know what you're doing. You were so much fun
to have on set.
Speaker 7 (35:18):
Why you know we're talking like we're lying. You don't
know the real you we're talking about.
Speaker 1 (35:23):
And I said this to you and our lovely the
Melrose minute. But you used to because Heather was such
a huge star, and you used.
Speaker 4 (35:27):
To say Helen is Helen here?
Speaker 1 (35:29):
You always pretend you didn't know her name, which killed
me every single time. And then do you remember when
they brought you like you asked for a touch up
or a mirror before a scene and Loana Jeffers brought
out a full length mirror.
Speaker 4 (35:40):
It was decorated. You remember that, like they were teasing.
Speaker 1 (35:43):
You've actually but you'reone generally teases, but you can take teasing,
which is so important, right, Like you just love to laugh,
Like let's keep the banter going both ways.
Speaker 4 (35:53):
Yeah, so much fun to.
Speaker 1 (35:54):
Have in a fourteen hour day. Somebody who's determined to
have fun.
Speaker 5 (35:58):
Well, thanks, I mean I I always tried to have
a pocket mirror.
Speaker 6 (36:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (36:05):
Yeah, you have to be a bit self deprecating, right,
you know. I think I heard Grant Shows say once
in an interview. He says, Yep, when you're working with Jack,
you just got to remember it's about the hair.
Speaker 6 (36:19):
Don't mess with is it.
Speaker 7 (36:21):
You know, your hair and opening scene.
Speaker 4 (36:23):
In your opening scene, it was slipped back.
Speaker 1 (36:26):
It was like hair enough for three men, which is
very unfair, and it slipped back in this really dashing way.
Speaker 4 (36:32):
Was it dashing?
Speaker 7 (36:33):
Well, it's so Jack, like no one could read, you know.
Then they cut to Thomas and you're.
Speaker 2 (36:37):
Like, oh boy, hair an effort.
Speaker 6 (36:42):
Look at me.
Speaker 5 (36:43):
I'm still keeping the floppy top going double process.
Speaker 6 (36:49):
I'm keeping it.
Speaker 2 (36:50):
It was amazing in the suit and you just had
these lines like I'm the boss here, you know, I
moved in, I'm chief of staff.
Speaker 7 (36:57):
I'll be making changes. And I loved it. You know why,
because we've been watching since episode.
Speaker 8 (37:02):
One see for the podcast, you had to start getting.
Speaker 6 (37:06):
What's like you guys, it's weird.
Speaker 2 (37:08):
Well, it's very weird in many reasons. We're cringey on
our own, like what was I thinking? But but for me,
Thomas makes me so, I'm sorry, Michael Mancini.
Speaker 7 (37:19):
We find that we blend doing this.
Speaker 2 (37:21):
Courtney especially really is irritated with the whole Amanda Billy
thing at this point thirty years.
Speaker 1 (37:26):
You know, like Heather keeps kissing Andrew like it's Amanda kissing.
Speaker 6 (37:32):
Interest was great, so we were.
Speaker 4 (37:34):
Also Andrew and I were dating in real life. So
I'm having this thing.
Speaker 1 (37:38):
I'm defending Allison, also defending like, get your hands off
my man, also off Alison's man.
Speaker 6 (37:42):
It's a lot.
Speaker 7 (37:43):
You didn't start a lot.
Speaker 2 (37:45):
You didn't start dating Heather till years after you went
even though you were like this on characters, really.
Speaker 6 (37:51):
Really close, really funny friends. Yeah, but what took you
so long? Dude? You're married?
Speaker 7 (37:57):
That's sorry.
Speaker 5 (37:59):
We say that supp for Melrose know that you were
dating him.
Speaker 6 (38:03):
Oh that's so funny. And then you wound up with Doug.
Speaker 3 (38:05):
Well, I married Doug, but I had dated Grant, like
Grant going on, Yeah, yeah, stated Grant.
Speaker 6 (38:11):
Did you date Grant?
Speaker 4 (38:12):
I did not know.
Speaker 8 (38:13):
I think just I did. Yeah, we did for a
while and then you know, Doug and I've been married.
Speaker 1 (38:19):
For twenty seven amazing, I know. And you met their
son Jack outside. Isn't that the sweet? I think they
named him after you.
Speaker 4 (38:26):
I don't know if that's uncomfortable for you, now do
for me, thank you.
Speaker 8 (38:33):
They'll call you uncle Joe.
Speaker 6 (38:42):
Doug high and was like, Doug.
Speaker 7 (38:43):
I will, I will.
Speaker 8 (38:45):
And he reminded me of something.
Speaker 3 (38:47):
I think you you sang at a rap party or
a Christmas party?
Speaker 8 (38:52):
Did you sing jailhouse rock? And you performed at one
of our parties? Do you guys remember that?
Speaker 7 (38:58):
Do you remember that?
Speaker 8 (38:59):
Do you remember it was season three or you don't
remember it?
Speaker 6 (39:02):
No?
Speaker 5 (39:02):
Maybe it was by hotel or something like that. I
think it was hard, just kind of whip out a
little elviss.
Speaker 6 (39:06):
Every now and then.
Speaker 8 (39:07):
Yeah, that's amazing.
Speaker 3 (39:08):
That's so fun though, Like maybe it was just a
spontaneous moment, like there was a stage, there was a mic,
and you can handle it and you.
Speaker 8 (39:14):
Just did it.
Speaker 2 (39:15):
Yeah, you're a rock star, okay with that, Yeah, that
sounds it.
Speaker 4 (39:19):
You have more experience at the time than we did.
Speaker 1 (39:21):
But one of the things to talk about a lot
is that we wish you could have appreciated it more
in the moment, like we were. It was so overwhelming.
There was press on weekends, you remember, there was so much.
It was so intense that I wish I could have realized, oh, like,
this is incredible. I just thought, well, I guess this
is my life now. I didn't really get it then.
I wish i'd appreciate it more, did you? Because you've
been working so long, could you really appreciate how special
it was?
Speaker 5 (39:42):
I think that's really normal, Courtney, to think now you
didn't appreciate it then, And I don't know if I
agree with that. I just think, you know, you're young.
We're all we were younger, right, We were entrenched in
the show, in our lives and in the populace already.
It was high demand, especially for you guys. I mean,
(40:04):
you guys were doing Rolling Stone, you were doing you know,
you guys were really really in demand, and everybody was
doing movies of the week on our off time. So
I don't know, if it's so much that we didn't
appreciate it, and I won't speak for you, but that
I didn't appreciate it. I just think there was an
ambition and a sort of that was our life, right,
(40:26):
This was how we lived. This was the peace of life,
and we had to be ambitious and busy and on
top of it.
Speaker 6 (40:33):
And I think we were all on top of it.
Speaker 5 (40:35):
And to say we didn't appreciate it, or I didn't
appreciate it, or maybe you didn't appreciate it.
Speaker 6 (40:40):
I don't know if that's true.
Speaker 5 (40:42):
I just think at our ages, this is just who
we were, right, And maybe we were just weren't just
as evolved as we are now in terms of self
awareness and maturity and appreciation and compassion. I think that
comes with age. Ye.
Speaker 2 (40:56):
One thing that I had was when I finally was
living my dream because I always wanted to act, the
only thing I've ever wanted to do. And I remember, like,
you know, you have the nice car and you're driving
to work and you're you know, and I remember.
Speaker 7 (41:09):
These thoughts are going.
Speaker 2 (41:10):
It's very different longing for the dream and being in
the dream. You're working twelve hours and like you said,
things are coming at you and you still have insecurity
and you're still there's still stuff going on.
Speaker 7 (41:23):
It's very different being in it.
Speaker 2 (41:24):
It is, you know, so it's it's I think it's
in hindsight that you really get to go, oh, I
appreciate both, you know, But in the moment, it was
you're still like going.
Speaker 7 (41:33):
When's it get you know, And I.
Speaker 2 (41:35):
Was like, oh, the red carpets, even the red carpets,
everyone going, well, you're on red carpet.
Speaker 7 (41:39):
But it was like so stressful, stressful.
Speaker 8 (41:43):
I think it's going to be versus what it yeah, feels.
Speaker 1 (41:45):
Like yeah, yeah, that's a good point too about the hours.
Because you're there so much, you kind of can't get perspective.
Like I remember I had to have an assistant because
if a pipe burst in my house, I wasn't there.
You're gone from five thirty am to eight pm. You
can't do your real life.
Speaker 4 (42:02):
So maybe that's right.
Speaker 1 (42:02):
You don't have the perspective because you don't have another life.
And then on weekends we had photo shoots, and then
of course in the beginning I was dating Andrews.
Speaker 7 (42:08):
It was really all.
Speaker 4 (42:10):
All the time.
Speaker 1 (42:11):
So that's a good point because it's so overwhelming. That
experience was so overwhelming that maybe you can't see it
from the outside.
Speaker 6 (42:18):
I think it's perspectively. I think you make a great point.
Speaker 2 (42:22):
We're the way that we can look back at your career.
It just seems like you've done and then you've filled
it in with even more highlights and working and your creativity.
Speaker 7 (42:31):
But when you were.
Speaker 2 (42:32):
Actually doing it, were there times that you were, you know,
afraid the phone wouldn't ring, or were there big breaks
that were stressful for you?
Speaker 5 (42:41):
Or has it always been anytime there's a two ninety two,
I was out of work, two thousand and two, I
was out of work. Twenty twelve, I was out of work.
Speaker 6 (42:50):
That's how I look at it, right.
Speaker 4 (42:51):
The three whole years you've been out of the.
Speaker 5 (42:55):
Devastating I can't imagine, and reflecting back on that, but
like if I'm reflecting back myself, when I've looked back,
it's like, Wow.
Speaker 6 (43:03):
What's with these twos?
Speaker 5 (43:05):
Because I've bet gratefully, you know, kind of been working
primarily on these shows you've you mentioned earlier, right, and
I've but you know, I've never and it's okay, I've
never like I have never auditioned for a pilot. I've
never had a pilot, And I know all you guys
have had pilots and pilots, and it's like, I gratefully
(43:26):
have always been they've been ensemble casts, but I've always been,
you know, working, and I've never done a pilot, right.
Speaker 6 (43:34):
How many pilots have you guys gone? Like a bunch? Right?
Speaker 5 (43:37):
And so yeah, but so I I but years two
is anything with the two in it?
Speaker 7 (43:43):
Okay? Interesting?
Speaker 6 (43:44):
Usually been not twenty twenty two, I was on.
Speaker 1 (43:47):
So then are you cast into existing shows? For the
most part, they're already going and then they bring you in? Yeah,
of course missing Jack Wagner and then.
Speaker 5 (43:56):
I guess so they just sort of moved me in
there and that that's been the pattern.
Speaker 2 (44:01):
And I know that golf through all this has been
still a love of yours. I remember talking to you
about Pebble Beach and where to goes. I was going
up to a golf course with a boyfriend and I
was like, where do we go?
Speaker 7 (44:11):
And your I think your name's on that wall at
Pebble Beach. Probably it is.
Speaker 6 (44:15):
So I'm just wondering very hard to get that.
Speaker 7 (44:18):
What is it like it's like your mistress to this career.
Speaker 5 (44:22):
I you know, I quit playing golf. And the producer
of General Hospital remember the movie Tutsie, So that's based
on Gloria Monty, who was you know, changed General Hospital
from going off the air in seventy nine to getting
Luke and Laura and turned that around to the number
one show.
Speaker 6 (44:38):
And she cast me.
Speaker 5 (44:39):
And before that screen test I told you about earlier,
she brought me into a room and improv with me
for about fifteen minutes.
Speaker 6 (44:45):
So she's old.
Speaker 5 (44:46):
School group theater, right, That's where she comes from. So
gratefully I was ready for that, you know, because I
had studied improv et cetera. And I get cast and.
Speaker 6 (44:59):
She's like, oh, I hear you play golf.
Speaker 5 (45:02):
And I'm like that's how she kind of talked very
you know, she's very theatrical.
Speaker 6 (45:05):
And I said, yeah, Glory, I do I you know.
Speaker 5 (45:07):
This is I'm going to have Bobby to take you
out to bell I think you should play Bellout country Club.
And so I go with her husband and he brings
a couple of guys along and run's this gambling kind
of like kind of character and I hit it off
with him great, and I wind up joining Bellair country Club. Okay,
And so that's when my golf started. And James Garner
(45:28):
was you know, I've got to know Jimmy really well
and a lot of you know, I mean, I played golf,
tons of golf with like Sean Connery and Nicholson and guys. Right,
so I know so many iconic guys through golf. I
don't even think they know I act or ever did,
but I was. You know, I was club championship at
bell Air for seven times. And so anyway, James Garner says,
(45:49):
you should take my partner and play Pebble Beach. So
I went up at John Cook and played in the
at and t Pebble Beach a couple of years and
I won it in nineteen ninety one. Yeah, and so
I had long hair and a ear ring, and you
know it was not looking like a golfer, but it
was just when I was returning to dot.
Speaker 7 (46:08):
You have your own charity golf.
Speaker 6 (46:11):
I did it.
Speaker 5 (46:12):
Was the ambassador of the Lukema Inphoma Society for years
and event for lukemia lymphoma.
Speaker 7 (46:18):
Did Grant participate in that?
Speaker 6 (46:20):
I think Grant might have a couple of times.
Speaker 5 (46:22):
You know, guys like Peshi and Jerry West and Tim
Allen and guys I know through golf showed up, and
you know, I had my own tournament for that was
my platform. You know, there's a community in Los Angeles,
a golf community that's sort of just unspoken, like I
plan Anthony Anderson's and George Lopez's and you know, SAG tournament.
(46:43):
You know, you know, it's just kind of like our
little bubble, you know, Laura at the doctor's office. That's
kind of the golf community, the celebrity golf community in
Los Angeles, athletes.
Speaker 7 (46:53):
Or whatever kind of Are you still doing that?
Speaker 6 (46:55):
Oh yeah, I plan all those events.
Speaker 2 (46:58):
Did you have to do anything with your back or
I know that people have probably.
Speaker 6 (47:03):
My body is killing me.
Speaker 2 (47:04):
Yeah, the body parts a little bit, you know in
the course.
Speaker 6 (47:10):
Yeah, I still walk, but I condition like every day.
Speaker 5 (47:13):
You know, I'm in the gym and I've started cold
plunging and I do a ton of cardios. So I
really pay attention to my body and they're still right.
As a leading man ladies on, so I got to
keep it up.
Speaker 2 (47:27):
Listen on that leading man judge on, Yeah, a leading
man judge, aren't you a judge?
Speaker 7 (47:34):
On that Judge now and it's coming back. It just
got picked up.
Speaker 5 (47:37):
We heard all the hardies out there, so please listen
to Still the Place, Still the Place, because I'll encourage
the hearties to tune in.
Speaker 4 (47:47):
Please do I still want to be a party? I
told you that I think you are.
Speaker 8 (47:51):
I think which is?
Speaker 7 (47:52):
I think you are?
Speaker 1 (47:56):
I want thee I think you were doting teenager showing
on the they were showing people getting the gift bags ready,
and I was like, I want to be in that.
I want to be in the pre production that. Yes,
they want to organize it.
Speaker 6 (48:07):
You know what I did this.
Speaker 4 (48:08):
Year the gift bags.
Speaker 6 (48:11):
They brought Melissa Gilbert on.
Speaker 5 (48:15):
Gilbert brought off my characters to have a backstory with
the Mounties how we trained. So she did a couple
episodes and she's coming back next year.
Speaker 6 (48:27):
I so it was really really great.
Speaker 2 (48:30):
Her Instagram isn't she like living in upstate New York
and you know, and she's now.
Speaker 5 (48:35):
A Hearty and she's doing some theater. But she was
terrific and we hit it off and uh, yeah, she's
going to come back to the show.
Speaker 7 (48:43):
So did you ever think of going to New York
as an actor? Because you were so immersed in your
studies doing it in New York.
Speaker 6 (48:50):
I appreciate you asking that. Yeah I did.
Speaker 5 (48:52):
I was committed to that, and the head of the
drama department who gave me the scholarship said, go to
l a.
Speaker 6 (49:00):
Smart long in LA.
Speaker 5 (49:03):
Sure that's a TV fan. But you know what I
did right after Melrose is so I went right to
Broadway and played Jacqueline Hide.
Speaker 6 (49:10):
So I was on Broadway my dream, you know.
Speaker 5 (49:12):
So you know, I had a few shows to choose
from because of the Melrose heat, and so I chose
Jacqueline Hyde. But no, I really faced that, Daphne, thanks
for asking that.
Speaker 6 (49:21):
I went to LA.
Speaker 7 (49:22):
Well, you know what, jack because your your longevity is
really astounding.
Speaker 2 (49:26):
I mean I knew that before, but I'm like, oh,
Jackie's always been around, and we did a couple of
TV movies after Melrose, and but when I was really
looking into it, you know, it takes to have that
kind of longevity, Like it doesn't surprise me. Your theater
background and all the studies that you continue insteadle out
Adler and you did that at Arizona and you went
to New York and.
Speaker 7 (49:45):
You're doing stuff in between the national tour.
Speaker 2 (49:47):
You know, I don't think people know that, Like they
kind of get used to labeling us, like you're either
a theater actor or a TV actor or a movie star,
and it's like sometimes you're just this actor that that study,
and you don't know how it's going to go right,
you don't know where the path is.
Speaker 6 (50:03):
Going to teach correct correct.
Speaker 5 (50:04):
Yeah, But as I said before, going to the Nighttime
with Melrose, it was a whole new training ground for
me for film because I just sort of knew the
stage and those four cameras on a soap stage, right,
So that was huge.
Speaker 6 (50:16):
But I want to tell you a quick story.
Speaker 5 (50:18):
I love all of the Like we've talked about music
and records and you know, being a teen idol in
the eighties, et cetera. Dudes, dudes recognized me from golf
and one thing I did, okay, that was a guest star.
I went an audition for Ray Donovan about seven eight
years ago, okay, And so you know, an audition sometimes
(50:41):
they recognize you or they don't know who you are
at all, right, And I faced that my whole career,
and so I go on audition for Ray Donovan. It's
just me and the casting director, and they called and said,
does he really just wanted to do like does he.
Speaker 6 (50:54):
Want this whole arc? Maybe? So they knew me.
Speaker 5 (50:56):
I was excited, right, and I'm like, going, no, I
just kind of I love this show whatever. So I
came on as a pat say Jack okay, and like
the Vana White was played by Cheryl Cheryl.
Speaker 6 (51:12):
Okay, she was my Vana White.
Speaker 5 (51:14):
And so it turns out that I have this thing
and the producer on the show was Tom Cruise ex
wife White with the what's her name Katie Holmes, So
it's Katie Holmes me and leave shreiver in these scenes.
So I tucked my my my clayex in. I'm at
the makeup thing, right, and she comes up and leaves there,
and she producer says, and he says something, I said,
(51:36):
who's this guy?
Speaker 6 (51:38):
Right? I said who? She can't and and and Vana.
Speaker 5 (51:41):
White wants to come on, Cheryl wants to come on
and take my spot, and we have this whole thing
and he's supposed to punch me. And we're with the
director who's who's working on House of Cards at the time.
Speaker 6 (51:51):
So I'm in and he goes, I can't punch him.
Speaker 5 (51:55):
If I punch Pat, say Jack, he's going to mean
to bruise him and all that, and you can't punch
a pat, say Jack, And I go, yeah, what are
we gonna do? So we do this double bitch slap. Okay,
So I'm like, what do you mean you get go sweat?
Speaker 6 (52:07):
And I'm like, who are you thinking? And I'm like.
Speaker 5 (52:12):
And so all kinds of men at bell are all
these guys watch that. They all know me from that
episode and nothing from the Hallmark Channel, nothing from anything else.
Speaker 6 (52:23):
So that's how dudes know me?
Speaker 7 (52:29):
Or was that?
Speaker 6 (52:31):
No, it wasn't written.
Speaker 5 (52:32):
No, kind of We kind of took a hit a
punch and just kind of came up with it and
it was really I love it.
Speaker 8 (52:38):
Her has something for everyone.
Speaker 6 (52:42):
One thing that men kind of came up.
Speaker 5 (52:44):
Dude, I sell you and Ray Donovan man got bitch slapped.
Speaker 4 (52:49):
Thanks Jackie's been such a joy to have you.
Speaker 6 (52:53):
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (52:55):
For coming out, Thanks for interrupting your golf games.
Speaker 5 (52:59):
Yeah, this has been really nice to see you guys
and catch up like this.
Speaker 6 (53:03):
It's direct.
Speaker 4 (53:04):
Thank you fun.
Speaker 6 (53:05):
Thanks for having memory.
Speaker 4 (53:06):
Pretty good, very good, you thought, he warned us. In
the beginning. He said, I'm not going to remember anything.
Speaker 1 (53:11):
Well, then look at those stories.
Speaker 3 (53:16):
I'm sure there's something you didn't get a chance to tell.
So we would love to have you back another time.
Speaker 6 (53:20):
Sometimes, yes, that'd be awesome. Thank you. You guys were
terrific and so good to see you so good.
Speaker 8 (53:25):
Thanks for having me so much.
Still the Place with Laura Layton, Courtney Thorn Smith.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
And daphnews Aniga an iHeartRadio podcast.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Hi, guys, we're so excited today Jack Wagner.
Speaker 3 (00:20):
Excited Jack Wagner, So welcome.
Speaker 4 (00:23):
To Still the Place. We're so excited to hear of you.
Speaker 5 (00:27):
I think to see you guys. I don't know if
you had video of it, clearly you may not. But
just the greeting I got out front was like that.
Speaker 6 (00:36):
That never happened at work. Girls. Okay, we're matured.
Speaker 7 (00:39):
As we got older, we realized what we have.
Speaker 8 (00:42):
Yeah, we realized thirty five years later.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
You've been waiting thirty five years for that greeting. Yeah, yeah,
but it happened to be chat.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
What was it back in the day and the makeup
don't talk to me? Yeah, yeah, it's right.
Speaker 6 (01:00):
Hey, Laura, you want to talk to this. I don't
want to run yet. Run them out there.
Speaker 5 (01:06):
You guys were really great and uh listen, it was
always I think we had a lot of uh the
attitude seemed to be really positive, even the makeup trailers, right,
I think people were beat.
Speaker 6 (01:16):
Up, yeah, because we did a lot of work.
Speaker 5 (01:18):
But I think overall it was kind of a fun group.
I always remember it that way.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
I think that there was so much drama on the camera,
Like I would just read these and going like what
that I was spending time like preparing getting these mental
and emotional states that I was just relieved to see
like a normal person at the at the you know,
getting lunch or something.
Speaker 6 (01:37):
Hi, guys, Jack, Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 7 (01:39):
Joy very upset was upset.
Speaker 8 (01:42):
It's been the consensus too.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
I mean we've had other guests in and we've talked
about it all the time, like we were just a
happy group of people, like we liked our jobs, we
liked pre each other, and that was just exceptional. And
the fact that thirty five years later we're so excited
to see everybody again, and.
Speaker 5 (01:59):
I want to just to hear point daff and I
think that that was We all really treated the material
that way, really seriously, right, whatever emotional state, however crazy
it was, whatever it was, we were all real pros,
I thought, yeah, and did our best to make it
exciting and believable and sexy and funny or whatever it was. Yeah, yeah,
(02:19):
And I think that was consistent throughout the cast, don't
you well.
Speaker 7 (02:23):
You know, I jumped ahead. We don't ahead. You came
in season three, episode six.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
OK, not that you needed to know that, but we
figured that out, and you came on like the freaking
soap icon that you are. You just did so much
with your eyes and that hair, but I mean your
eyes were so you came in with this power. I'm
head of the hospital, your chief is chief of staff,
(02:49):
and you just like put whoever came in in their place.
Michael and h and Marcia for sure, but you were
just I was like, Wow, this guy has done this before.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
It's so true and it's hard to own a set
because you're I mean, you were coming.
Speaker 5 (03:02):
Now.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
Did you know when you started that you were going
to be on for so long? Was it an ARC
or were you hired full time right away?
Speaker 5 (03:08):
To my memory, I think I was hired full time
and I knew I'd be a part of the cast.
And my goal, to your point, was to make an impact, right.
I really wanted to be this alpha male, you know,
no matter what it was, so that mission accomplishment totally.
Speaker 8 (03:25):
Did you audition?
Speaker 7 (03:26):
Did you?
Speaker 6 (03:28):
Well?
Speaker 5 (03:28):
You know, last week we spoke and I thought about
it and I was doing a guest spot on a
Canadian TV show in Montreal, okay, And my agent called
and said, I'm sending you a script from melrose Place
and I was like soaped out. I'm like, no chance,
I'm not doing it. It feels like a soap. And
they said, well, it's a hot show and you'd be
(03:49):
working opposite Heather.
Speaker 6 (03:50):
Locklare and so I'm like, okay, all right, well, all right,
all right.
Speaker 5 (03:54):
So I took this script and flew across you know,
a long flight from Montreal and changed everything he wrote,
We did this that, and did you guys audition in
Aaron's officer and Spelling's office. Okay, So you know the office, right,
And for those who don't, it's this big, kind of white,
shag carpeted big office, right, and it has a seating
(04:15):
almost like bench like along the walls. Huge, huge, huge, right,
So it's almost sort of like a Broadway audition with
just cafeteria tables. You walk in and it's just a
line of people and executives, and you know, it's nerve wracking.
Speaker 6 (04:30):
And I went.
Speaker 5 (04:31):
In and read with the casting director and this did
this whole improvisational, completely offscript, you know, got right in
her grill, grabbed your face, you know, with her hair,
did everything right, just went for it and got the part.
Speaker 6 (04:47):
Wow. Okay.
Speaker 5 (04:48):
So my first day on set was this scene and
I started doing what I.
Speaker 6 (04:53):
Did in the audition.
Speaker 7 (04:54):
Oh my god.
Speaker 5 (04:56):
Yeah, you're all laughing because you know what happened, right,
and I think that director. The director was like, uh, yeah,
cut Jack, you need to call Darren Starr.
Speaker 6 (05:07):
He's waiting to talk to you.
Speaker 5 (05:09):
And I'm like, oh, okay, hey Darren, Hey Jack, what's
going on?
Speaker 6 (05:13):
I said, I don't know.
Speaker 5 (05:14):
I'm just kind of doing that idea, just doing it
the way I did in the audition. He goes, yeah,
we do the lines that are written here.
Speaker 6 (05:19):
Yeah, okay.
Speaker 5 (05:22):
It was like, okay, well that was my first experience
with that.
Speaker 7 (05:29):
We do the lines, we do the.
Speaker 6 (05:31):
Lines is written. But that's how I got the.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
Point because we were season three and they had had
so many people like winging in getting little maybe a
little lazy, I don't know. I had an experience because
we had fax machines back then where I had edited
a scene as a good little girl that I am,
and I faxed it to Derek to see ahead of
time because I wasn't gonna like, you know, and he
facts back Daphne. We don't make a habit good edits,
but don't make a habit of editing the things.
Speaker 7 (05:54):
We don't do that here.
Speaker 5 (05:56):
Yeah, okay, I was the new kid on the block.
Well that's that my train.
Speaker 7 (06:00):
You did a lot with your eyes. I think you
put all that in your eyes and you're staring.
Speaker 4 (06:04):
Yeah, we've been watching the episodes again.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
I think it was such a good acting exercise, though,
because I can see myself struggling to make lines work,
like taking pauses in weird places to add the whatever
the weird end of.
Speaker 4 (06:15):
The sentence was. You could see like it really was.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
It really built that muscle, like we could make it work, anything.
Speaker 4 (06:21):
Work because you had no choice. That's right, It wasn't
going to change.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
It.
Speaker 5 (06:24):
Really is an acting exercise. I don't think people understand that.
But when materials, we'll call it thin.
Speaker 7 (06:30):
Right, if it's thin or over the top.
Speaker 5 (06:33):
Or over the top, whatever it is, how are we
going to make this believable?
Speaker 6 (06:38):
That's really the exercise. So I totally agree.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
Now, Jack was a different because you'd come from other soaps.
You were such a star on General Hospital, So was
this a different kind of soap?
Speaker 7 (06:49):
Nighttime soap?
Speaker 5 (06:50):
Or was it massive to go to nighttime television from
daytime because I was really pigeonholed, you know, from General
Hospital and having a number one record and never really
being taken seriously as a musical artist, et cetera. Right,
and I'm like a thespian, Okay, I'm like from drama
school and classic theater and Stella Adler and here my
first real big break was on a soap opera.
Speaker 6 (07:12):
Okay, So this was.
Speaker 5 (07:15):
Huge for me to score a nighttime series, whether it
be soap esque or whatever.
Speaker 6 (07:20):
You know, it was a big jump.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
And soon if we'll talk about the schedule being challenging,
but you were like, this is nothing compared to a
daytime soap, right, yeah.
Speaker 5 (07:28):
Pay seriously, girls like I. When you're on a front
burner storyline on a soap opera, you can have fifty
sixty pages of dialogue. Sometimes you'd have to do two
episodes in one. And now they've condensed soap operas into
doing four to five episodes a day, you know, the
ones that have survived, right, But back then, you know,
(07:48):
it was really Uh, if you're on a front burner storyline,
you could have fifty sixty pages a dialogue, which I
had quite a few times.
Speaker 7 (07:56):
I mean Maro's we shot about eight pages a day total.
What's been people, So it.
Speaker 5 (08:01):
Was piece of cake, yeah for you different, Yeah, but
it was still I prefer I like to move fast.
I like to I call it power running. I love
the run lines. I love to get the staging and
then run lines and listen to the actor's voice. And
you know, because we all have a bit of a
preconceived notion, right when you rehearse a scene at home
and you're going over it, But when you hear the
(08:22):
other actor's voice and their intonation and stage it, it
takes on a different it's a different scene completely sometimes.
Speaker 6 (08:30):
So you know, that's always the best.
Speaker 5 (08:33):
Challenge for me is to be now that I'm older,
more organic and available in rehearsal, especially in rehearsal because
even on the show I'm on now when calls the Heart,
I'm the only actor who's always in makeup, always in
wardrobe for rehearsal.
Speaker 6 (08:47):
It's just how I like it.
Speaker 5 (08:49):
I just like to always be ready and sort of
just to be available for what's going to happen.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
You know, you're talking about how your Laura and Michael
stuff was like a separate show.
Speaker 7 (09:04):
Like that office was like a separate comedy in there.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
Right, And we had a little comedy when you doctor
said that different we could go there and you guys
just had a ball.
Speaker 3 (09:13):
Yeah, they were doing other stuff, like stuff was blowing
up and set all the time, and we were like,
this is really funny.
Speaker 6 (09:20):
We had our un comedy shop, didn't we.
Speaker 9 (09:23):
Up with your little crazy little matching outfit taking messages
and like do you remember there was like some sort
I would put them on a pencil and I don't know,
it's just just prop fun.
Speaker 6 (09:33):
We were like fun. Yeah, we were great at it,
were you well? I mean I was always.
Speaker 5 (09:39):
Trying to pull an apple in here or there, like
what what's what's with the apple?
Speaker 6 (09:43):
What's he doing? You know, we don't need an apple.
Speaker 7 (09:45):
We don't need you might need an apple.
Speaker 8 (09:48):
We should try that.
Speaker 7 (09:49):
We actually might.
Speaker 5 (09:50):
Yeah, so we I think we had a little comedy
company there, right.
Speaker 7 (09:54):
It was fantastic.
Speaker 6 (09:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
I was there saying where's the apple? Where's the apple
was in this? It was in your right it was
in your left hand.
Speaker 8 (10:01):
There is that? Okay?
Speaker 2 (10:03):
Then it always fun when someone comes up with a
prop and then like but then we don't really know
how to use it.
Speaker 7 (10:08):
It was so organic in the moment.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
They're like, well, you better repeat it four more times
and make it seymore.
Speaker 8 (10:14):
Make it a sh dick.
Speaker 6 (10:15):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (10:16):
Okay, So I have to add I haven't told this story,
but I think, asking you if you remember it, is
this is the perfect time to tell the story. There
was a time, and it was while we were shooting
all those scenes in that doctor's office, and it was
comedy and fun whatever. I decided it was time to
straighten my teeth, and so I got braces.
Speaker 8 (10:34):
Do you remember this.
Speaker 7 (10:36):
Talk about.
Speaker 3 (10:39):
I got them on the inside of And then we
went to have a scene together and poor Jack could
not look me in the eye. Right now, I want
to hear this from your you tell the story.
Speaker 5 (10:53):
I think I think I remember one take, just stopping
and going, can anybody understand her?
Speaker 6 (10:59):
It sounds like you because I don't. I don't really
know what she said. Okay, so you know I had
to get you right away.
Speaker 8 (11:08):
You were so great because you were you were like.
Speaker 3 (11:11):
Really sympathetic to my plight, and like Jack, I can't talk,
hang on, she's stribbling out of her mind.
Speaker 5 (11:19):
Laura could I clean you up just real quick, because.
Speaker 8 (11:22):
Help me, help me.
Speaker 3 (11:23):
You're like, just cover I was so badly and you're like,
what is wrong with you?
Speaker 6 (11:33):
Yeah?
Speaker 8 (11:34):
Fun day that your messages.
Speaker 3 (11:40):
But I will never think of that time without thinking
of it through your eyes, because it was your face
that I was seeing the whole truth.
Speaker 7 (11:48):
I was like, oh, this is mae.
Speaker 8 (11:53):
I did have them taken off.
Speaker 3 (11:54):
I think that night, like I came back to work
the next day and they had been ripped off.
Speaker 5 (11:58):
It always one day if she yeah, of listening and
spittling all over the Jack.
Speaker 3 (12:05):
Was Jack was the perfect scene partner to have for
that experience, giving.
Speaker 7 (12:09):
Me ideas for oh my god, if we ever do
it again. I yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
Do you have a storyline that you remember, like as
being either really traumatic or really fun when that sticks
out in your mind?
Speaker 6 (12:32):
Yes?
Speaker 5 (12:33):
I think it was when Marcia was in the insane
asylum Kimberly, you know, and that was, uh, yeah, it was.
It was great because we really worked well together in
terms of the thespian part of it. She was so
committed to being insane, and therefore I was so committed
to and it was physical, you know, like throwing things
(12:55):
and really in a chamber and I remember specifically that storyline.
I felt like it was a really strong acting exercise
because we wanted to make it believable, right. And I
can't remember exactly how the storyline went, but you know
he was there to help her, right, So there was
a compassionate part as well as her having to convince
(13:17):
she was crazy.
Speaker 6 (13:18):
And you just don't get to do You.
Speaker 5 (13:19):
Get thrown in the pool, you get slapped, you know
those things. But this was more of a state of
being and she was great. Yeah, I think Marcia was
really able to go someplace that she maybe hadn't.
Speaker 6 (13:34):
Gone on the show. And so that remember that that
was for.
Speaker 5 (13:37):
Me just really working with another actor on another level
than we usually had bed scenes or this or that.
Speaker 6 (13:44):
This reminded me of, yes, that's really good day.
Speaker 7 (13:48):
There were committed.
Speaker 5 (13:50):
I saw that that's what it was and how to
make it believable, right, and it just was really yeah,
you commit, you commit, and we ran the lines a
lot and were able to tweak things. I'm going to
ask you guys this because you brought up who you've
had on the show, right, So if whoever it was
that was an executive producer that happened to write that
show and then direct it. I always found that if
(14:13):
I wanted something change, I would have to call. And
it's always tough with a phone call because they don't
really feel the performance because you.
Speaker 6 (14:21):
Try to act it out or whatever.
Speaker 5 (14:23):
But if they're on set and you have an idea
and you can show that, it was like, oh I
love that, Yeah, let's do that. So I've found anytime
that the executive whoever wrote it was also a producer
and directing, it was so much easier to collaborate totally.
Speaker 7 (14:39):
You guys, did you totally?
Speaker 3 (14:41):
Like so many of the producer and writers, they were
not on the set and it was a phone call,
and so he said, like for him like that, it
was easier for him to be on the set and
to be witnessing what was going on, and so he
felt a little bit more connected.
Speaker 5 (14:57):
To Lake just getting a phone call from an act
that didn't like this or something, because that's not really
what it was. It was about this isn't working right,
and I think this can work this it might be better.
Speaker 7 (15:08):
Do you remember so much? Express if you can show them,
do you remember any.
Speaker 6 (15:12):
Specific because everything everything, the.
Speaker 7 (15:15):
Crazy part we're talking.
Speaker 5 (15:16):
About or no, this was this was really you know, Daphney,
more just about just just normal structural scene work. I
think that something could be funnier, right Laura, you know Courtney,
or something could be a little bit sexier if we
did this or said it this way, or maybe didn't
use words right, really cut some of the dialogue and
just let the moment play. It could be much more
(15:38):
sexier sometimes and maybe a bit stronger. But that you
couldn't always translate over a phone call.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
Well, no, the problem was before you were there. In
the very beginning, we were so far away. We're in
Santa Clarita, they were in Midwis. They were in mid Willshre. Yeah,
so that's about an hour drive away. So we would
change things in the beginning and the meaning by accident.
So that's what happened. We ruined it was our fault. Sorry,
so sorry, we the first one's ruined it for everybody else.
Speaker 4 (16:07):
So that's what happened.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
They just felt too far away and it's too bad,
Like it would have been great to have a producer
on set. We had Chip, but a writing producer on set.
Speaker 6 (16:15):
Right, Yeah, yes, you're right, but they just couldn't.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
I mean, I remember writing quest that I had. I
would ask Chip and then they he would make a
call and they'd come back and they'd say, yeah, that's cool.
But you know, to the writer's credit, writing has rhythm
to it and it has you know, meaning, and it's
nothing worse than like an actor coming and going I'm
going to make this better and they're not making it better,
I'm making it easier.
Speaker 7 (16:33):
I'm not saying that what you did, mister Jack, but
I think.
Speaker 6 (16:36):
You make a good point.
Speaker 5 (16:37):
Yeah, their job is yeah, and we don't really can't.
That's why the call is about collaboration. Yes, like help
me understand and then that would be it. Sometimes I
would better understand where they're coming. So I've always been
a big fan of that type of open collaboration with
an executive producer or a writing team or a head writer.
Speaker 3 (16:58):
Do you feel like it got more collabor or more
open to that conversation over time, Like the longer the
show went on, the more did they start to trust. Like,
the three of us were not there in season six
and seven, so we don't have a sense of like
how that felt.
Speaker 6 (17:12):
But.
Speaker 3 (17:14):
In your you were there from three to seven, and
so did you find that over time, it became a
little bit more like trusting. Like you mentioned that on
When Calls the Heart, there's just a level of trust
and you can have that collaboration.
Speaker 8 (17:23):
Did that ever happen?
Speaker 5 (17:24):
Yeah, No, it happened because I think they started to understand,
you know that I wasn't coming from a place of ego.
You know, I'm coming from a place of how to
raise the bar. And when they directed, like who were
our executives that directed? It was Chip and Chuck Pratt
and who else?
Speaker 7 (17:43):
Frank never directed Frank South.
Speaker 6 (17:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (17:45):
Yeah, So I think once that experience happened, they knew
that this was coming from a place of like collaboration, right,
So it was much easier as it went on because
you know, they wanted the show to go longer, and
I think they trusted me. It wasn't I wasn't coming
from a place of trying to be controlling. My ego
is coming from you know, this is a little clumsy,
(18:07):
it's not working.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
How did it feel in six and seven? Did it
feel different? Feels like a different show to us because
we weren't there. You feel different when you were there
because there were only a few people who stayed.
Speaker 5 (18:19):
Yeah, I mean, it always felt okay with me as
long as Heather was there because I think she was
the DNA of the show in terms of right and
nothing to take away from you guys at all, but
you know, I think that for this is for me.
If she was there, I always had a comrade in arms,
someone who was funny on set, you know, and someone
I had a history with. My character had a history
(18:40):
with them show. I think once they started bringing on
new women for my character, I think nothing against them,
but like Lisa Rena.
Speaker 7 (18:49):
And Jamie Luner.
Speaker 5 (18:52):
Jamie, that's right, Jamie came on, and so that's all fine.
I think you have to bring you know, new characters on, etc.
But I think it lost. I think it lost some
of its audience when you guys weren't there. I really do,
because you're trying to bring on new people that audiences
will root for.
Speaker 7 (19:10):
And not only us, but they're behind the scenes.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
People left. Darren had gone, you know, some other people left.
They must have brought in other writers. I'm just wondering
if there was a change in tone and in writing
as well. It felt like, you know, maybe it was
a little more and more over the top, more crazy,
more Yeah.
Speaker 5 (19:27):
I think it got a little crazier, yeah, and a
little more far fetched a bit if you want to
call it that.
Speaker 6 (19:31):
You know, but that was part of the show's beauty
as well. Yes, you know, that's what made the show
work for sure.
Speaker 5 (19:37):
I think when you start to bring on new characters
and you're a bit far fetched, it's more difficult for
an audience to engage and to connect to the believability
of it.
Speaker 6 (19:45):
And I think it also.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
Happened also to connect to the characters. Like if you
have the characters you're with from the beginning, and then
like you can come in Heather, people can come in
and then there's room. But when everybody's new, it's hard
to figure out where your point is. Obviously they can
still connect to you when Heather and Thomas, but I
think it's hard to meet that many new characters.
Speaker 6 (20:04):
I think you're right. I think that's what happened.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
Did you know anyone on our stet, Melrose before you
came on this show?
Speaker 7 (20:11):
Do you remember you didn't know Heather already?
Speaker 6 (20:14):
No? No, no, I didn't know anybody anything, but I
do know ye to see you. I knew Chuck Pratt.
Speaker 5 (20:23):
Chuck Pratt is the one who had me called in
two auditions from general very good.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
Yeah, he was fun to talk to you because he
comes from the soapback soapbackground. He was talking about when
the show took a turn, and that was also the
exact word thing, because he said, you don't know where
we've put a word that will come up six episodes
down the line, like it was. They had to storyboard
it so carefully, So that was part of it too,
But it was fun to hear him talk about he
was the one who had that understanding of how to
(20:50):
make that work when they realized it couldn't be eight
kids trying to make it because nobody watched it when
it was eight.
Speaker 6 (20:55):
Kids trying to make Yes.
Speaker 5 (20:57):
Yeah, yeah, I think to Chuck's credit, you know, and
also what we've talked about about, you know, making a
scene better, We don't really know what a writer or
writing staff's intention is by putting something in there that's
going to pay off, you know, later on in the season.
So that's you know, they have to protect, you know,
their storyboards, and it's not.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
Only words, it's characteristics sometimes, so like they'll have in
this script, you know, Joe is you know, meekly blah
blah blah, and I'm like.
Speaker 7 (21:25):
I don't want to play Meg, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (21:27):
But there's a reason because some other devil and then
she rises up against him finally, and it's more satisfying,
who knows. But that also was frustrating where they are,
you know, it's not just the words that they are
thinking ahead with. But he said he did this really well.
Did you work with him on you did on General Hospital?
Speaker 6 (21:47):
I think so?
Speaker 7 (21:48):
He said to us, he put us through the soap
opera mill. Do you remember that? Oh, we put you
guys through the mill, you know, like just cranked it.
We cranked you guys through.
Speaker 3 (21:57):
Yeah, well, I think yeah, he was referring to storey
lions and jumping through. But then also that we had
thirty two episodes a season is almost like a soap schedule,
I mean, but in a different like long.
Speaker 8 (22:11):
Haul, right, I mean, you're doing okay?
Speaker 5 (22:13):
You have?
Speaker 3 (22:14):
You did for perspective, you did one hundred and thirty
nine episodes of Melrose Place in five years, in five
over five seasons of General Hospital.
Speaker 8 (22:25):
You did six.
Speaker 3 (22:26):
Hundred and fifty four episodes just for perspective, you know.
Speaker 5 (22:31):
Somebody else said said a couple of years back that
I've done over fifteen hundred to two thousand hours of television.
Speaker 6 (22:38):
Yeah, I don't know if that's true.
Speaker 3 (22:40):
Well, because then on The Gold and the Beautiful you
did thirteen hundred and thirty four.
Speaker 6 (22:48):
Business, it's true. That's nice.
Speaker 3 (22:50):
So you're shooting multiple episodes in a day to get
to that number, and we think, wow, we had this
long running series.
Speaker 7 (22:57):
You had like five of them, Jack, that's amazing.
Speaker 8 (23:00):
Three long running shows.
Speaker 3 (23:02):
When Calls the Heart for thirteen seasons going on thirteen
and Melrose, it's just like a drop in the bucket.
Speaker 7 (23:08):
For you and.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
A pro am golf career, Like, what's going on? Where
do you get it from?
Speaker 5 (23:15):
So I'm trying if you'll just it's just like, I
don't know. I guess I was working with a guy,
Daniel Listening was the original mounting on one Calls the Heart, okay,
and he's Australian, so he always kind of struggled with
the accent, and especially if I brought some props in,
you know, he couldn't incorporate props. And he said, you know, my,
(23:36):
this guy's done over twenty five hundred.
Speaker 6 (23:38):
Episodes of television.
Speaker 5 (23:39):
I can't and I'm like and I was like, just
laughed it off and I'm going and so these statistics
are a little mind blowing to.
Speaker 6 (23:49):
Me, I guess.
Speaker 5 (23:49):
And it's it's an adjustment from a daytime show, which
most people, I don't know if they know, is three
to four to five cameras and a nighttime show which
is one camera. So that was the big adjustment for
melrose Place to me getting used to that different shooting schedule,
you know, turning it, turning a scene around and turning
around and shooting film nighttime TV.
Speaker 6 (24:11):
So it was a great educator.
Speaker 5 (24:13):
Yeah, so we edit as we go, so it was
like live scene work.
Speaker 6 (24:17):
So it was a great educator for me.
Speaker 5 (24:19):
You know, it was a growing, growing ground for me
to you know, do nighttime television.
Speaker 3 (24:26):
And but the whole your whole acting career came after
a music career.
Speaker 8 (24:32):
Like that, right am?
Speaker 3 (24:33):
I correct, Like that was sort of your first you
were pursuing music.
Speaker 6 (24:37):
No, it's the opposite, was an actor.
Speaker 8 (24:39):
Tell us all about that?
Speaker 5 (24:41):
Well, I, you know, I'm from Missouri and I started
playing the guitar with some buddies and you know, partying
a bit and learning Neil Young and Seals and Crofts
and Elton John and all those things. And uh, I
started doing theater in high school. So I wound up.
You know, I was an athlete as well. So it
turns out, long story short, I go down to University
(25:03):
of Arizona to try out for the golf team and
I had never played structural golf team and there were
sixty guys and I made the golf team. I finished second,
and they didn't give me a scholarship. So I had
done community college and a drama school in Missouri, by
my hometown. So I go over to the on the
golf team, but not a scholarship. So I go over
(25:26):
to the head of the department at the University of Earth.
I meet him and I tell him my story. He says, well,
prepare a song, dance in a monologue. Okay, So I do,
and I get a full ride in drama to the
University of Arizona. So I launch into My first thing
is I'm on the costume department of the Barretts of
Wimple Street. This English classic, right, So I start in
(25:47):
the costume department and I wound up starting getting the
leads in the plays. And that's really where I went
from golf to acting.
Speaker 4 (25:55):
And so on the golf course.
Speaker 5 (26:01):
He's on the golf So you know, the summer of graduation,
one of the one of the actors was a tour
guy at Universal Studios and said, you know, here's how
you get. So I went and applied at spring break
and I graduated and went immediately to La lived in
my car and was a tour guy. Just went to
(26:21):
became a tour guide at Universal.
Speaker 2 (26:23):
Okay, it wasn't Jim Ward by the by chance was it?
Speaker 7 (26:27):
Okay?
Speaker 2 (26:27):
I lived with a we had a roommate of we
had a house full of five roommates.
Speaker 7 (26:32):
I start when I was at U C l A and.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
Jim Ward, who was the voice of what was that
show with the night the car that spoke with night
writer and he did the tour to make you know
the rent.
Speaker 7 (26:44):
So I was just wondering. But a lot of people,
I think very few of tour.
Speaker 5 (26:48):
Got a great job because you're performing on the tram.
I would do voices and characters and so that's that
was my first real job in town. And I got
a roommate, so I wound up having a normal life. Anyway,
the first audition I went on, I got this agent
through somebody, and I got the part. It was called
A New Day and Eden on on TV, the first
(27:10):
cable network, and it shot on Gower Lot and it
had actually partial nudity and it was a soap opera okay,
not for men, but it was just risk a and
it shot in the studio next to General Hospital. So
here's like Rick Springfield and John Stamos and Tony Gary
all trying to come over to our studio to like
look in the thing. It got canceled, okay, but that
(27:32):
was my first job, my first audition, and I got
an agent and from that I got a different agent,
and so literally there was a man hunt about a
year later for the character Frisco Jones. So I go
in this audition and it's my fifth screen test. This
is getting back to music. I'm sorry, it's a long story,
but I guess that's why I'm.
Speaker 6 (27:51):
Here, right.
Speaker 5 (27:52):
So they call ABC calls and said do you buy
chance play the guitars sing? And I said, well yeah,
so I bring my guitar in. I do this Kenny
Loggins tune this.
Speaker 6 (28:04):
Wait a little while to welcome what your have to.
Speaker 5 (28:08):
So I'm just knocking this tune out I put my
guitar down, I do the scene work, I get the part.
Speaker 6 (28:14):
Okay.
Speaker 5 (28:15):
Now, I'm working at a clothing store in Sunset, and
I got the call while I'm working there. And it
turns out I wound up having them buy the wardrobe
from this store, and they wound up branching out and
having quite a few stories. But that's where I was
when I got the call. So I have to go
in the recording studio and record some songs, which I've
never done. I've done musical theater, et cetera. And I
(28:37):
have to sing on John Stamos's band, Blackie in the
Riff Raff.
Speaker 6 (28:40):
Okay, so I haven't even started work yet.
Speaker 5 (28:45):
So the woman who was just in charge of ABC
Daytime Music was from Mercury Records, and she was at
the recording session.
Speaker 6 (28:54):
She introduced herself.
Speaker 5 (28:55):
So I knocked these songs out, sing them, and she goes,
would you have yema men?
Speaker 6 (29:00):
And I said yeah. She goes, would you be interested
in a record deal?
Speaker 7 (29:02):
Oh my, oh my god, this.
Speaker 4 (29:05):
Is eight nineteen weeks all this stuff happened.
Speaker 6 (29:08):
Oh oh yeah, within a week.
Speaker 8 (29:11):
The park you were no longer living in your car.
Speaker 5 (29:16):
And she says, would you be interested in a record deal,
And I'm like.
Speaker 6 (29:19):
Yeah, sure, why not?
Speaker 5 (29:21):
And so two nights later I had dinner with Quincy
Jones and Herbie Hancock, and I signed with Quincy and
Quest Records his label, and he assigned Glenn Ballard and
Cliff Magnus to the Jack Wagner project.
Speaker 6 (29:34):
You know.
Speaker 5 (29:35):
And there I am meeting James Ingram and Patty Austin
and you know, Quincy's people on Quincy's label, and my
first record was All I Need that they wrote now
they wrote it for you, they wrote it for me, No,
Glenn Ballard and Cliff Magnus and David Pack and so
all of a sudden it was on the show, you know,
it was on they released it to and I started
(29:56):
to do it on the show, and they released it
to radio stations, and they called and they said the
head of the label, not Quincy Colton.
Speaker 6 (30:02):
Said the record's dead. And I'm like, are you talking
like I am so?
Speaker 5 (30:08):
And by the way, I'm very ambitious anyway, in terms
of where I was in my life at the time.
You know, I'm doing theater, I'm doing all kinds of
little small stages. I'm studying at cell Adler I got
this part on General Hospital and I'm like dead, and
all of a sudden, radio station in Oxnard, Why one
hundred played it, and then it's Cis Tutation in Miami
Plate and it starts to snowball around the country and
(30:32):
teenage girls started requesting all I.
Speaker 6 (30:35):
Need because I was seeing it on.
Speaker 5 (30:39):
And in three or four weeks, it was a number
one record behind yeah, behind Like a Virgin. It was
the number number two on the pop charts for three weeks,
behind Like a Virgin Madonna's song, and it was number
one on the AC charts.
Speaker 6 (30:51):
And that's how it happened.
Speaker 7 (30:52):
Wow, amazing. So they want to kill it before it even.
Speaker 5 (30:56):
Yeah, yeah, that's kind of what the radio business was like,
the record business if it didn't hit right away. And
then it was the fans of General Hospital that really
were calling.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
And it must have brought more young viewers to General Hospital,
Oh huge.
Speaker 5 (31:07):
Yeah, because Rick Spinfield just had Jesse's girl, he had
left the show. Luke and Laura had just happened, so
and Johnny Staymos was leaving the show. So I was
kind of taking over, you know, for these these storylines
and these iconic you know, characters and actors that were leaving.
So you know, that's where I moved into General Hospital.
Speaker 7 (31:27):
And you did it for five years the first time,
right or something, and then I.
Speaker 5 (31:30):
Did it for about four years, three or four years
till eighty seven. I did a national tour of West
Side Story. Oh the eighty eight I did a national
tour of Greece playing Danny Zuko. So I went back
to my theater roots. Yeah, back to gh for eighty
nine to ninety and then kind of uh, yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:47):
It was a different time for soaps that people now
probably don't know. But General Hospital was so hot, and
it was like it jumped from soap opera magazines to
regular magazines. Everybody was watching, and you had these music
stars watching. As a teenage go at the time, I
listened to that maybe a thousand times.
Speaker 4 (32:03):
Hear you're talking about I'm like, oh my god, I'm
seventeen again.
Speaker 7 (32:06):
I was listening right on the way. I gotta hear
his song.
Speaker 4 (32:10):
Do you remember?
Speaker 6 (32:13):
That's awesome?
Speaker 8 (32:17):
Are you doing any music now? Are you? Are you
do you song? Do you write songs?
Speaker 7 (32:20):
Do you play?
Speaker 8 (32:21):
You just played?
Speaker 6 (32:22):
No? Not right now.
Speaker 5 (32:24):
I was so plugged into music when I was doing
the franchise of movies with Josie Bassett Channel.
Speaker 7 (32:30):
Were you doing music for the show for the series.
Speaker 6 (32:33):
For the movies, Yeah, I was.
Speaker 5 (32:34):
Basically I rewrote my story as uh, I just told
you as a you know, a guy who did music
in college and this was his college sweetheart and I
wrote songs together, et cetera. In any way that relationship ended,
but he had a musical career and hit records and
here he is owning a wedding lodge and so she
comes up to do her wedding there they see each
(32:55):
other and had to drop the platter moment, and so
that's what created franchise. So I wrote and played a
lot of music.
Speaker 4 (33:03):
Did you bring the story to them?
Speaker 5 (33:05):
Yes, I mean it was kind of the executive producer
of When Calls the Heart said listen, if you sell this,
I'll make you executive producer, you know, and blah blah blah,
And so I kind of rewrote it and readjusted it
and sold it. Like we're talking to the heads of
Hallmark who were in Vancouver for a dinner, and I
walked in and said, that story exactly to this, the music,
(33:26):
they love each other. This he goes off on tour.
Speaker 6 (33:28):
They split.
Speaker 5 (33:29):
Twenty five years later, they see each other drop the
platter moment and they went, you're in development, so.
Speaker 1 (33:37):
You're clearly great at story and dialogue.
Speaker 4 (33:40):
Do you write?
Speaker 5 (33:41):
Not really, No, it's more about just I would say
my forte is actually having seen work and then being
able to feel and know if something needs to be
adjusted or funnier, and and what we talked about earlier
about changing things, et cetera. I really learned to incorporate writer,
you know, like, can you help me? That's my first word,
(34:03):
that's the first thing out of my mouth. Can you
help me with this? Because I want to understand you
know what you want here because I'm not clear, And
then I'll completely moving into wanting to get.
Speaker 6 (34:14):
It my way right.
Speaker 5 (34:16):
That's good, Okay, lessons out there for people.
Speaker 7 (34:20):
It works better than what the hell are you trying
to say?
Speaker 6 (34:22):
Yeah, this is all.
Speaker 3 (34:26):
Yeah, maybe take some notes by the way, to take
note we ever wants to take notes of Jack.
Speaker 5 (34:33):
And on another note, in selling that movie idea. I
don't know about you, guys, but I just have found
that this business is really about relationships. I mean, sometimes
you you can do audition cold auditions and get parts.
But once you maybe establish yourself or have a career,
it's really about how you pitch an idea and yourself
(34:54):
and how.
Speaker 6 (34:55):
You humanize it.
Speaker 5 (34:56):
That's what I found, because when you humanize something and
kind of tell the story truthfully, I think it resonates.
Speaker 1 (35:03):
It doesn't also, Matt for the young actors out there,
it also matters how you act on the set, like
people know you, they go Jack is great, He's collaborative,
he's funny, he brings joy to the sets.
Speaker 7 (35:12):
Here early in wardrobe and knows his line cards.
Speaker 1 (35:15):
You know what you're doing. You were so much fun
to have on set.
Speaker 7 (35:18):
Why you know we're talking like we're lying. You don't
know the real you we're talking about.
Speaker 1 (35:23):
And I said this to you and our lovely the
Melrose minute. But you used to because Heather was such
a huge star, and you used.
Speaker 4 (35:27):
To say Helen is Helen here?
Speaker 1 (35:29):
You always pretend you didn't know her name, which killed
me every single time. And then do you remember when
they brought you like you asked for a touch up
or a mirror before a scene and Loana Jeffers brought
out a full length mirror.
Speaker 4 (35:40):
It was decorated. You remember that, like they were teasing.
Speaker 1 (35:43):
You've actually but you'reone generally teases, but you can take teasing,
which is so important, right, Like you just love to laugh,
Like let's keep the banter going both ways.
Speaker 4 (35:53):
Yeah, so much fun to.
Speaker 1 (35:54):
Have in a fourteen hour day. Somebody who's determined to
have fun.
Speaker 5 (35:58):
Well, thanks, I mean I I always tried to have
a pocket mirror.
Speaker 6 (36:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (36:05):
Yeah, you have to be a bit self deprecating, right,
you know. I think I heard Grant Shows say once
in an interview. He says, Yep, when you're working with Jack,
you just got to remember it's about the hair.
Speaker 6 (36:19):
Don't mess with is it.
Speaker 7 (36:21):
You know, your hair and opening scene.
Speaker 4 (36:23):
In your opening scene, it was slipped back.
Speaker 1 (36:26):
It was like hair enough for three men, which is
very unfair, and it slipped back in this really dashing way.
Speaker 4 (36:32):
Was it dashing?
Speaker 7 (36:33):
Well, it's so Jack, like no one could read, you know.
Then they cut to Thomas and you're.
Speaker 2 (36:37):
Like, oh boy, hair an effort.
Speaker 6 (36:42):
Look at me.
Speaker 5 (36:43):
I'm still keeping the floppy top going double process.
Speaker 6 (36:49):
I'm keeping it.
Speaker 2 (36:50):
It was amazing in the suit and you just had
these lines like I'm the boss here, you know, I
moved in, I'm chief of staff.
Speaker 7 (36:57):
I'll be making changes. And I loved it. You know why,
because we've been watching since episode.
Speaker 8 (37:02):
One see for the podcast, you had to start getting.
Speaker 6 (37:06):
What's like you guys, it's weird.
Speaker 2 (37:08):
Well, it's very weird in many reasons. We're cringey on
our own, like what was I thinking? But but for me,
Thomas makes me so, I'm sorry, Michael Mancini.
Speaker 7 (37:19):
We find that we blend doing this.
Speaker 2 (37:21):
Courtney especially really is irritated with the whole Amanda Billy
thing at this point thirty years.
Speaker 1 (37:26):
You know, like Heather keeps kissing Andrew like it's Amanda kissing.
Speaker 6 (37:32):
Interest was great, so we were.
Speaker 4 (37:34):
Also Andrew and I were dating in real life. So
I'm having this thing.
Speaker 1 (37:38):
I'm defending Allison, also defending like, get your hands off
my man, also off Alison's man.
Speaker 6 (37:42):
It's a lot.
Speaker 7 (37:43):
You didn't start a lot.
Speaker 2 (37:45):
You didn't start dating Heather till years after you went
even though you were like this on characters, really.
Speaker 6 (37:51):
Really close, really funny friends. Yeah, but what took you
so long? Dude? You're married?
Speaker 7 (37:57):
That's sorry.
Speaker 5 (37:59):
We say that supp for Melrose know that you were
dating him.
Speaker 6 (38:03):
Oh that's so funny. And then you wound up with Doug.
Speaker 3 (38:05):
Well, I married Doug, but I had dated Grant, like
Grant going on, Yeah, yeah, stated Grant.
Speaker 6 (38:11):
Did you date Grant?
Speaker 4 (38:12):
I did not know.
Speaker 8 (38:13):
I think just I did. Yeah, we did for a
while and then you know, Doug and I've been married.
Speaker 1 (38:19):
For twenty seven amazing, I know. And you met their
son Jack outside. Isn't that the sweet? I think they
named him after you.
Speaker 4 (38:26):
I don't know if that's uncomfortable for you, now do
for me, thank you.
Speaker 8 (38:33):
They'll call you uncle Joe.
Speaker 6 (38:42):
Doug high and was like, Doug.
Speaker 7 (38:43):
I will, I will.
Speaker 8 (38:45):
And he reminded me of something.
Speaker 3 (38:47):
I think you you sang at a rap party or
a Christmas party?
Speaker 8 (38:52):
Did you sing jailhouse rock? And you performed at one
of our parties? Do you guys remember that?
Speaker 7 (38:58):
Do you remember that?
Speaker 8 (38:59):
Do you remember it was season three or you don't
remember it?
Speaker 6 (39:02):
No?
Speaker 5 (39:02):
Maybe it was by hotel or something like that. I
think it was hard, just kind of whip out a
little elviss.
Speaker 6 (39:06):
Every now and then.
Speaker 8 (39:07):
Yeah, that's amazing.
Speaker 3 (39:08):
That's so fun though, Like maybe it was just a
spontaneous moment, like there was a stage, there was a mic,
and you can handle it and you.
Speaker 8 (39:14):
Just did it.
Speaker 2 (39:15):
Yeah, you're a rock star, okay with that, Yeah, that
sounds it.
Speaker 4 (39:19):
You have more experience at the time than we did.
Speaker 1 (39:21):
But one of the things to talk about a lot
is that we wish you could have appreciated it more
in the moment, like we were. It was so overwhelming.
There was press on weekends, you remember, there was so much.
It was so intense that I wish I could have realized, oh, like,
this is incredible. I just thought, well, I guess this
is my life now. I didn't really get it then.
I wish i'd appreciate it more, did you? Because you've
been working so long, could you really appreciate how special
it was?
Speaker 5 (39:42):
I think that's really normal, Courtney, to think now you
didn't appreciate it then, And I don't know if I
agree with that. I just think, you know, you're young.
We're all we were younger, right, We were entrenched in
the show, in our lives and in the populace already.
It was high demand, especially for you guys. I mean,
(40:04):
you guys were doing Rolling Stone, you were doing you know,
you guys were really really in demand, and everybody was
doing movies of the week on our off time. So
I don't know, if it's so much that we didn't
appreciate it, and I won't speak for you, but that
I didn't appreciate it. I just think there was an
ambition and a sort of that was our life, right,
(40:26):
This was how we lived. This was the peace of life,
and we had to be ambitious and busy and on
top of it.
Speaker 6 (40:33):
And I think we were all on top of it.
Speaker 5 (40:35):
And to say we didn't appreciate it, or I didn't
appreciate it, or maybe you didn't appreciate it.
Speaker 6 (40:40):
I don't know if that's true.
Speaker 5 (40:42):
I just think at our ages, this is just who
we were, right, And maybe we were just weren't just
as evolved as we are now in terms of self
awareness and maturity and appreciation and compassion. I think that
comes with age. Ye.
Speaker 2 (40:56):
One thing that I had was when I finally was
living my dream because I always wanted to act, the
only thing I've ever wanted to do. And I remember, like,
you know, you have the nice car and you're driving
to work and you're you know, and I remember.
Speaker 7 (41:09):
These thoughts are going.
Speaker 2 (41:10):
It's very different longing for the dream and being in
the dream. You're working twelve hours and like you said,
things are coming at you and you still have insecurity
and you're still there's still stuff going on.
Speaker 7 (41:23):
It's very different being in it.
Speaker 2 (41:24):
It is, you know, so it's it's I think it's
in hindsight that you really get to go, oh, I
appreciate both, you know, But in the moment, it was
you're still like going.
Speaker 7 (41:33):
When's it get you know, And I.
Speaker 2 (41:35):
Was like, oh, the red carpets, even the red carpets,
everyone going, well, you're on red carpet.
Speaker 7 (41:39):
But it was like so stressful, stressful.
Speaker 8 (41:43):
I think it's going to be versus what it yeah, feels.
Speaker 1 (41:45):
Like yeah, yeah, that's a good point too about the hours.
Because you're there so much, you kind of can't get perspective.
Like I remember I had to have an assistant because
if a pipe burst in my house, I wasn't there.
You're gone from five thirty am to eight pm. You
can't do your real life.
Speaker 4 (42:02):
So maybe that's right.
Speaker 1 (42:02):
You don't have the perspective because you don't have another life.
And then on weekends we had photo shoots, and then
of course in the beginning I was dating Andrews.
Speaker 7 (42:08):
It was really all.
Speaker 4 (42:10):
All the time.
Speaker 1 (42:11):
So that's a good point because it's so overwhelming. That
experience was so overwhelming that maybe you can't see it
from the outside.
Speaker 6 (42:18):
I think it's perspectively. I think you make a great point.
Speaker 2 (42:22):
We're the way that we can look back at your career.
It just seems like you've done and then you've filled
it in with even more highlights and working and your creativity.
Speaker 7 (42:31):
But when you were.
Speaker 2 (42:32):
Actually doing it, were there times that you were, you know,
afraid the phone wouldn't ring, or were there big breaks
that were stressful for you?
Speaker 5 (42:41):
Or has it always been anytime there's a two ninety two,
I was out of work, two thousand and two, I
was out of work. Twenty twelve, I was out of work.
Speaker 6 (42:50):
That's how I look at it, right.
Speaker 4 (42:51):
The three whole years you've been out of the.
Speaker 5 (42:55):
Devastating I can't imagine, and reflecting back on that, but
like if I'm reflecting back myself, when I've looked back,
it's like, Wow.
Speaker 6 (43:03):
What's with these twos?
Speaker 5 (43:05):
Because I've bet gratefully, you know, kind of been working
primarily on these shows you've you mentioned earlier, right, and
I've but you know, I've never and it's okay, I've
never like I have never auditioned for a pilot. I've
never had a pilot, And I know all you guys
have had pilots and pilots, and it's like, I gratefully
(43:26):
have always been they've been ensemble casts, but I've always been,
you know, working, and I've never done a pilot, right.
Speaker 6 (43:34):
How many pilots have you guys gone? Like a bunch? Right?
Speaker 5 (43:37):
And so yeah, but so I I but years two
is anything with the two in it?
Speaker 7 (43:43):
Okay? Interesting?
Speaker 6 (43:44):
Usually been not twenty twenty two, I was on.
Speaker 1 (43:47):
So then are you cast into existing shows? For the
most part, they're already going and then they bring you in? Yeah,
of course missing Jack Wagner and then.
Speaker 5 (43:56):
I guess so they just sort of moved me in
there and that that's been the pattern.
Speaker 2 (44:01):
And I know that golf through all this has been
still a love of yours. I remember talking to you
about Pebble Beach and where to goes. I was going
up to a golf course with a boyfriend and I
was like, where do we go?
Speaker 7 (44:11):
And your I think your name's on that wall at
Pebble Beach. Probably it is.
Speaker 6 (44:15):
So I'm just wondering very hard to get that.
Speaker 7 (44:18):
What is it like it's like your mistress to this career.
Speaker 5 (44:22):
I you know, I quit playing golf. And the producer
of General Hospital remember the movie Tutsie, So that's based
on Gloria Monty, who was you know, changed General Hospital
from going off the air in seventy nine to getting
Luke and Laura and turned that around to the number
one show.
Speaker 6 (44:38):
And she cast me.
Speaker 5 (44:39):
And before that screen test I told you about earlier,
she brought me into a room and improv with me
for about fifteen minutes.
Speaker 6 (44:45):
So she's old.
Speaker 5 (44:46):
School group theater, right, That's where she comes from. So
gratefully I was ready for that, you know, because I
had studied improv et cetera. And I get cast and.
Speaker 6 (44:59):
She's like, oh, I hear you play golf.
Speaker 5 (45:02):
And I'm like that's how she kind of talked very
you know, she's very theatrical.
Speaker 6 (45:05):
And I said, yeah, Glory, I do I you know.
Speaker 5 (45:07):
This is I'm going to have Bobby to take you
out to bell I think you should play Bellout country Club.
And so I go with her husband and he brings
a couple of guys along and run's this gambling kind
of like kind of character and I hit it off
with him great, and I wind up joining Bellair country Club. Okay,
And so that's when my golf started. And James Garner
(45:28):
was you know, I've got to know Jimmy really well
and a lot of you know, I mean, I played golf,
tons of golf with like Sean Connery and Nicholson and guys. Right,
so I know so many iconic guys through golf. I
don't even think they know I act or ever did,
but I was. You know, I was club championship at
bell Air for seven times. And so anyway, James Garner says,
(45:49):
you should take my partner and play Pebble Beach. So
I went up at John Cook and played in the
at and t Pebble Beach a couple of years and
I won it in nineteen ninety one. Yeah, and so
I had long hair and a ear ring, and you
know it was not looking like a golfer, but it
was just when I was returning to dot.
Speaker 7 (46:08):
You have your own charity golf.
Speaker 6 (46:11):
I did it.
Speaker 5 (46:12):
Was the ambassador of the Lukema Inphoma Society for years
and event for lukemia lymphoma.
Speaker 7 (46:18):
Did Grant participate in that?
Speaker 6 (46:20):
I think Grant might have a couple of times.
Speaker 5 (46:22):
You know, guys like Peshi and Jerry West and Tim
Allen and guys I know through golf showed up, and
you know, I had my own tournament for that was
my platform. You know, there's a community in Los Angeles,
a golf community that's sort of just unspoken, like I
plan Anthony Anderson's and George Lopez's and you know, SAG tournament.
(46:43):
You know, you know, it's just kind of like our
little bubble, you know, Laura at the doctor's office. That's
kind of the golf community, the celebrity golf community in
Los Angeles, athletes.
Speaker 7 (46:53):
Or whatever kind of Are you still doing that?
Speaker 6 (46:55):
Oh yeah, I plan all those events.
Speaker 2 (46:58):
Did you have to do anything with your back or
I know that people have probably.
Speaker 6 (47:03):
My body is killing me.
Speaker 2 (47:04):
Yeah, the body parts a little bit, you know in
the course.
Speaker 6 (47:10):
Yeah, I still walk, but I condition like every day.
Speaker 5 (47:13):
You know, I'm in the gym and I've started cold
plunging and I do a ton of cardios. So I
really pay attention to my body and they're still right.
As a leading man ladies on, so I got to
keep it up.
Speaker 2 (47:27):
Listen on that leading man judge on, Yeah, a leading
man judge, aren't you a judge?
Speaker 7 (47:34):
On that Judge now and it's coming back. It just
got picked up.
Speaker 5 (47:37):
We heard all the hardies out there, so please listen
to Still the Place, Still the Place, because I'll encourage
the hearties to tune in.
Speaker 4 (47:47):
Please do I still want to be a party? I
told you that I think you are.
Speaker 8 (47:51):
I think which is?
Speaker 7 (47:52):
I think you are?
Speaker 1 (47:56):
I want thee I think you were doting teenager showing
on the they were showing people getting the gift bags ready,
and I was like, I want to be in that.
I want to be in the pre production that. Yes,
they want to organize it.
Speaker 6 (48:07):
You know what I did this.
Speaker 4 (48:08):
Year the gift bags.
Speaker 6 (48:11):
They brought Melissa Gilbert on.
Speaker 5 (48:15):
Gilbert brought off my characters to have a backstory with
the Mounties how we trained. So she did a couple
episodes and she's coming back next year.
Speaker 6 (48:27):
I so it was really really great.
Speaker 2 (48:30):
Her Instagram isn't she like living in upstate New York
and you know, and she's now.
Speaker 5 (48:35):
A Hearty and she's doing some theater. But she was
terrific and we hit it off and uh, yeah, she's
going to come back to the show.
Speaker 7 (48:43):
So did you ever think of going to New York
as an actor? Because you were so immersed in your
studies doing it in New York.
Speaker 6 (48:50):
I appreciate you asking that. Yeah I did.
Speaker 5 (48:52):
I was committed to that, and the head of the
drama department who gave me the scholarship said, go to
l a.
Speaker 6 (49:00):
Smart long in LA.
Speaker 5 (49:03):
Sure that's a TV fan. But you know what I
did right after Melrose is so I went right to
Broadway and played Jacqueline Hide.
Speaker 6 (49:10):
So I was on Broadway my dream, you know.
Speaker 5 (49:12):
So you know, I had a few shows to choose
from because of the Melrose heat, and so I chose
Jacqueline Hyde. But no, I really faced that, Daphne, thanks
for asking that.
Speaker 6 (49:21):
I went to LA.
Speaker 7 (49:22):
Well, you know what, jack because your your longevity is
really astounding.
Speaker 2 (49:26):
I mean I knew that before, but I'm like, oh,
Jackie's always been around, and we did a couple of
TV movies after Melrose, and but when I was really
looking into it, you know, it takes to have that
kind of longevity, Like it doesn't surprise me. Your theater
background and all the studies that you continue insteadle out
Adler and you did that at Arizona and you went
to New York and.
Speaker 7 (49:45):
You're doing stuff in between the national tour.
Speaker 2 (49:47):
You know, I don't think people know that, Like they
kind of get used to labeling us, like you're either
a theater actor or a TV actor or a movie star,
and it's like sometimes you're just this actor that that study,
and you don't know how it's going to go right,
you don't know where the path is.
Speaker 6 (50:03):
Going to teach correct correct.
Speaker 5 (50:04):
Yeah, But as I said before, going to the Nighttime
with Melrose, it was a whole new training ground for
me for film because I just sort of knew the
stage and those four cameras on a soap stage, right,
So that was huge.
Speaker 6 (50:16):
But I want to tell you a quick story.
Speaker 5 (50:18):
I love all of the Like we've talked about music
and records and you know, being a teen idol in
the eighties, et cetera. Dudes, dudes recognized me from golf
and one thing I did, okay, that was a guest star.
I went an audition for Ray Donovan about seven eight
years ago, okay, And so you know, an audition sometimes
(50:41):
they recognize you or they don't know who you are
at all, right, And I faced that my whole career,
and so I go on audition for Ray Donovan. It's
just me and the casting director, and they called and said,
does he really just wanted to do like does he.
Speaker 6 (50:54):
Want this whole arc? Maybe? So they knew me.
Speaker 5 (50:56):
I was excited, right, and I'm like, going, no, I
just kind of I love this show whatever. So I
came on as a pat say Jack okay, and like
the Vana White was played by Cheryl Cheryl.
Speaker 6 (51:12):
Okay, she was my Vana White.
Speaker 5 (51:14):
And so it turns out that I have this thing
and the producer on the show was Tom Cruise ex
wife White with the what's her name Katie Holmes, So
it's Katie Holmes me and leave shreiver in these scenes.
So I tucked my my my clayex in. I'm at
the makeup thing, right, and she comes up and leaves there,
and she producer says, and he says something, I said,
(51:36):
who's this guy?
Speaker 6 (51:38):
Right? I said who? She can't and and and Vana.
Speaker 5 (51:41):
White wants to come on, Cheryl wants to come on
and take my spot, and we have this whole thing
and he's supposed to punch me. And we're with the
director who's who's working on House of Cards at the time.
Speaker 6 (51:51):
So I'm in and he goes, I can't punch him.
Speaker 5 (51:55):
If I punch Pat, say Jack, he's going to mean
to bruise him and all that, and you can't punch
a pat, say Jack, And I go, yeah, what are
we gonna do? So we do this double bitch slap. Okay,
So I'm like, what do you mean you get go sweat?
Speaker 6 (52:07):
And I'm like, who are you thinking? And I'm like.
Speaker 5 (52:12):
And so all kinds of men at bell are all
these guys watch that. They all know me from that
episode and nothing from the Hallmark Channel, nothing from anything else.
Speaker 6 (52:23):
So that's how dudes know me?
Speaker 7 (52:29):
Or was that?
Speaker 6 (52:31):
No, it wasn't written.
Speaker 5 (52:32):
No, kind of We kind of took a hit a
punch and just kind of came up with it and
it was really I love it.
Speaker 8 (52:38):
Her has something for everyone.
Speaker 6 (52:42):
One thing that men kind of came up.
Speaker 5 (52:44):
Dude, I sell you and Ray Donovan man got bitch slapped.
Speaker 4 (52:49):
Thanks Jackie's been such a joy to have you.
Speaker 6 (52:53):
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (52:55):
For coming out, Thanks for interrupting your golf games.
Speaker 5 (52:59):
Yeah, this has been really nice to see you guys
and catch up like this.
Speaker 6 (53:03):
It's direct.
Speaker 4 (53:04):
Thank you fun.
Speaker 6 (53:05):
Thanks for having memory.
Speaker 4 (53:06):
Pretty good, very good, you thought, he warned us. In
the beginning. He said, I'm not going to remember anything.
Speaker 1 (53:11):
Well, then look at those stories.
Speaker 3 (53:16):
I'm sure there's something you didn't get a chance to tell.
So we would love to have you back another time.
Speaker 6 (53:20):
Sometimes, yes, that'd be awesome. Thank you. You guys were
terrific and so good to see you so good.
Speaker 8 (53:25):
Thanks for having me so much.
Hosts And Creators
Laura Leighton
Daphne Zuniga
Courtney Thorne-Smith
Popular Podcasts
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.
40s and Free Agents: NFL Draft Season
Daniel Jeremiah of Move the Sticks and Gregg Rosenthal of NFL Daily join forces to break down every team's needs this offseason.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.