Letting Them Talk with Will Harris

This time I'm letting Mark Sheppard talk.

Mark's availability for an interview came up with a press release for his latest film, a horror movie called EVER AFTER, but my reasons for asking him to do the podcast were admittedly tied to the fact that he plays a key role on my wife’s favorite TV series of all time.

Yes, Mark Sheppard plays Crowley on SUPERNATURAL, and given that my wife is part of that show’s substantial f...

This time I'm letting Christopher Plummer talk...because, yes, that's right, it's another stopgap episode, owing to the fact that I have no new episode in queue and I am currently in the process of trying to stockpile some additional episodes for your listening enjoyment.

I suppose there are worse times that I could find myself in this situation than after dropping the 50th episode of the podcast. I had intended to draw attention t...

This time I’m letting Wesley Stace talk.

Wes is a singer-songwriter whose work I’ve enjoyed since the release of his debut LP for Sire Records, Here Comes the Groom. That LP, his first full-length studio album, came out in 1990, so not only have I been a fan for 26 years, I’ve even seen him through the loss of his musical pseudonym, John Wesley Harding, in favor of his birth name.

Wes has consistently remained pro...

This time I’m letting Robin Shorr talk.

I hadn’t actually seen or talked to Robin since the summer of 2013, but despite the fact that 13 years had passed since our previous conversation – which was, in fact, the only conversation we’d ever actually had – you’d never know it from the way she and I were chatting about her life and career.

But there’s a reasonable explanation for that connecti...

This time I’m letting Michael Hampton talk.

Michael has been a professional guitarist since he was in his teens, earning his place in one of the most influential funk bands of all time by being able to reproduce a ridiculously difficult solo when he was 17. By the time he was done, there was no chance that he wasn’t going to be in contention for a spot in the lineup in the musical collective known as Parliament-Funkadel...

This time I’m letting Chris Loggins talk.

Chris is someone I’ve been describing as an outside-the-box guest for this podcast. In realty, though, he isn’t, since he’s squarely within the realm of pop culture. It’s just that the pop culture in question is for a slightly younger demographic than most of the folks who’ve been guests thus far.

Chris is supervising producer for Daniel Tiger’s Nei...

This time I’m letting Josh Joplin talk.

I’ve been enjoying Josh’s music for 25 years now. He’s actually been making music longer than that, but I don’t mind admitting that it wasn’t until the release of his single “Camera One” that I first found myself listening to Josh Joplin and his Group.

Josh actually released his first single in 1989, and while it isn’t available for stream...

This time I’m letting Spencer Garrett talk.

I’ve been watching this guy’s work since he made an appearance in a season four episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation called “The Drumhead.” No, I didn’t know who he was at the time, nor should I have, since he’d really only just gotten started at that point, but in short order he began to appear in everything.

No, but for real: Spencer Garret...

This one's a bit of an experiment, folks: since I knew I wasn't going to have two episodes available for download this week, I decided that I'd venture into the archives and find the audio from an interview that you've hopefully read but certainly have never heard. In this case, it's what I'm guessing is probably the last third of the Random Roles that I did with Alex Rocco for the A.V. Club when he was part of the cast of Starz' M...

Today I’m letting John Ross Bowie talk.

John has a true gift for comedy, but he’s also a gifted actor. Case and point: when he’s playing Barry Kripke, you often want to punch him in the face, but by the end of this podcast, you’ll want to buy him a drink just so that you can keep hanging out with him and having him tell you stories.

John got his start in the theater, but you almost certainly know him best fo...

This time I’m letting Jane Seymour talk.

Jane has been a staple of TV and film since the start of the 1970s. Having gotten her start as an uncredited extra in the 1969 film Oh! What a Lovely War. By the following year, she was actually being credited, and by 1973, she was a Bond girl, so it’s fair to say that she moved up the ranks pretty quickly as an actress…and she’s yet to stop moving or acting.

At the ...

This time, I’m letting Bruce McGill talk.

I’ve talked to Bruce many times in the past, and it’s because he’s always got stories to tell. In fact, he’s got so many stories that I continue to try to talk him into letting me help him write his memoir. To date, it has not happened, but he says that if he does it, the only person he’d collaborate with is me, and by God, Bruce McGill is a man of his wo...

Today I’m letting Bill Lawrence talk.

I first interviewed Bill because of his ties to my area: he’s an alumnus of the College of William & Mary, which provided me with a local angle and an excuse to talk to him for The Virginian-Pilot. Or was the first time for PortFolio Weekly? Either way, I’ve known Bill Lawrence for quite some time at this point, and yet despite that, it somehow always surprises me that he ...

This time I’m letting Jamie Hector talk.

Funny thing is, I actually interviewed Jamie for the AV Club, even if I didn’t entirely remember it at first. In my defense, I’ve done so freaking many Random Roles interviews over the years that the relatively few non-Random Roles interviews I’ve done with actors often slip past me, although I really should’ve remembered the fact that I interviewed Marlo from t...

This time, I’m letting Graham Parker talk.

Graham is a singer-songwriter who’s been plying his trade since the ‘70s, steadily touring and regularly writing, recording, and releasing new music. He tends to get lumped in with such so-called “angry young men” as Elvis Costello and Joe Jackson, but as it happens, he was already out there with his debut album before either of those guys…and thanks to...

This time I’m letting Jon Cryer talk.

I’ve interviewed Jon more than a few times over the course of the past decade or so, and  I’m always pleased to have a chance to talk to him again. That’s mostly because he’s a swell guy and we have a nice chemistry whenever we chat, but if I’m being honest, there’s always that little voice in the back of my head that’s going, “Dude, yo...

This time I’m letting Sally Timms talk.

Sally is a singer-songwriter who – since 1985 – has been a member and one of the lead singers of one of the longest-running bands to emerge during the UK punk explosion, even if it’s been quite a while since one would readily describe their sound as “punk.”

She recorded her first album in 1980 with the help of Pete Shelley of the Buzzcocks – if you&rs...

This time I'm letting Lukas Haas talk.

Lukas was still in single digits when he made his film debut, managed to make it through his teen years without succumbing to any sort of scandal, and is currently in the cast of a series that’s sitting at a 91% rating on Rotten Tomatoes…and that’s on both the Tomato-Meter and the Popcorn-Meter.

Not bad for a guy who – given that he only just turned 50 a couple of mont...

This time I’m letting Kevin Rowland talk.

He's been a recurring figure on the UK charts since the early ‘80s, and on the US charts… Well, okay, he hasn’t exactly made any headway there in quite some time, but even in 2026, the sheer inevitability of “Come on Eileen” has continued to keep the name “Dexys Midnight Runners” a familiar one.

Rowland founded Dexys Midnight Runners in 1978,...