American Thought Leaders - How Hollywood Alienated Middle America—And What’s Next | Nick Searcy

Episode Date: August 22, 2025

How has Hollywood changed in the last several decades, and why are film productions leaving Los Angeles and increasingly going abroad? Where is the industry headed, and what role should Trump’s “special ambassadors” to Hollywood play?“Hollywood spent probably the last 15 or 20 years basically telling half of its audience that they don’t want them to watch, that they hate them, that they’re deplorables,” says actor and filmmaker Nick Searcy. “They’ve driven half the audience away.”Searcy played James Baker in the Reagan biopic last year and is perhaps best known for his role as Art Mullen in the crime drama “Justified.” He’s also the director of “Gosnell: The Trial of America’s Biggest Serial Killer,” a film about an abortion doctor who was convicted for the murder of three babies.A few months ago, Searcy released his memoir, “Justify This: A Career Without Compromise.”Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Hollywood spent probably the last 15 or 20 years basically telling half of its audience that they don't want them to watch, that they hate them, that they're deplorables. People just go to the movies to be entertained. They don't go to be lectured about how terrible they are because of who they support politically. In this episode, I'm sitting down with actor and director Nick Searcy. Best known for his role as Art Mullen in the TV series, Justified. He played Ronald Reagan's Chief of Staff James Baker in the Reagan Biopold. released last year. They have quotas in terms of the racial makeup of a movie.

He's also the director of Gossnell, the trial of America's biggest serial killer. Everybody was afraid to distribute the film. They had one distributor who said, I really like the film. I think it's very good, but I can't be the one to release this because it would ruin me.

This is American Thought Leaders, and I'm Yanya Kellick. Nick Searcy, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders. No, thank you. Thanks. Nice to be here. Recently, President Trump announced a 100% tariff on films made outside of the United States. What do you make of this?

I think it's kind of about time. I mean, it's funny. I've been trying to get this movie made that I wrote with a friend of mine about the Texas border that we've been trying to get done for probably six years now. Finally found a company that wanted to make it. And they said, yeah, we'd like to make it, but we want to share it. make it, but we want to shoot it in Thailand. I'm like, you want to shoot Thailand for Texas? And they go, look, 50% cheaper there. You can make the movie for literally half the budget.

So every job I've done in the last few years has been Canada. It's been Dominican Republic. It's been overseas England. So it's, it's something's got to be done. We've got to get American productions shooting back in America. But isn't it because of America? American productions are overpriced. That absolutely is, yeah. Well, some of it's labor costs. It's sort of the union. They don't want to shoot a movie set in Texas there because of union rules because they say

they can go to Thailand and pay everybody, I don't know, 50 cents a day or whatever they pay people over there. So it's definitely America has to find a way to compete in order to bring production back. Well, and to be fair, there's also significant, you know, tax credits and subsidies and things like that. When you do go, you know, having made some films in Canada, I'm well aware of that. I don't know how it works in the U.S. Well, you see the industry has left California, and it sort of moves around to whichever

state has the best incentive. So it was Georgia for a while. Then for a little while it's Kentucky, Oklahoma, Texas now just passed a big tax incentive. Louisiana for a while, North Carolina, when I first started. They had a big tax incentive. Everything shot there. So California is basically given the business away. Nothing shoots there anymore, you know,

except for maybe the occasional sitcom. You know, talking about films that, you know, Trump imposing a tariff on foreign-made films, that's because of the runaway production. I did a mini-series called The Perfect Couple, shot by Netflix. We shot on Cape Cod, three and a half, four months, in 2003.

And the writer's strike put a pause in it. We had about two weeks left of shooting, and the rider strike happened, and they had to suspend the production for two months. And I got a call that said, you know, we're going to shoot the last two weeks in England. I said, in England, he said, yeah, it's cheaper. I go, I literally have one line left.

I stick my head in the door, and I say, hey, we caught the guy. That's all I have left to do. They're going to fly me to England for that, and they did. They flew everybody to England for two weeks to shoot at Shepardon Studios in London because it was cheaper to finish the film over there than it was to bring everybody back to Cape Cod.

That's the kind of thing that we're combating. And the people that suffer in that instance are not necessarily the producers of that show. It's the crew. the people who were working on that film in Massachusetts. They didn't travel the crew over there. You know, it's a totally new crew and maybe they took the DP and, you know, a couple other people, but, you know, that's it. Is it just that it's so inflated here or that they make it so unreasonably cheap over there? I mean, or is it the combination of both? I think it's both.

I mean, I think that, you know, transportation costs, gas fuel costs, and union labor costs is probably the main driver of it. It's just cheaper to pay a crew there. It's cheaper to travel all the actors to a foreign country and pay the crew what the crew gets there than it is to shoot in America and pay the American wages. I think that's most of it. And then also there are tax incentives. You know, definitely in Canada, the tax incentives are probably a bigger part of why you shoot in Canada than the labor costs.

Because labor is probably not that much different in Canada, but the taxes are. So, yeah, I was looking at a talk you gave about five years ago. And, you know, you basically said that we, meaning, let's say, more conservative-leaning actors, entertainment industry people, you know, need to really get into the game of entertainment. We've got to build a new Hollywood. You were saying that we have an opening right now to do so. What is it about Hollywood that makes that need something that's essential in your mind? Well, Hollywood spent probably the last 15 or 20 years basically telling half of its audience that they don't want them

to watch, that they hate them, that they're deplorables. You know, if you don't support Obama, you know, if you're not for these rights, the, you know, transgender rights, these different rights groups, if you're not part of that, then we're going to demonize you and we're going to make programming that makes fun of you, that ridicules you. And so that's what's been happening. They've driven half the audience away. And so when you have a film that does appeal to that audience, people turn out, people go to the theater. Or when you have a film that just doesn't attack that audience, like Top Gun Maverick, you know, something like that, they turn out.

It's interesting just that you mention that film because I, it was very stark. When I watched that film, I thought to myself, hmm, I think that film would work for just about everyone. That's unusual. And I think that Tom Cruise is smart in that way, and, you know, people have been calling him the last great movie star. I think that's why. You know, he stays away from politics, although he's not afraid to make a movie.

that's blatantly patriotic. He's just not gonna say that, he's just gonna show it to you. Or a movie that's just based on action, like his Mission Impossible movies. I mean, as long as you keep that stuff out of it, either way, people just go to the movies to be entertained. They don't go to be lectured about how terrible they are

because of who they support politically. And so that's what Hollywood's been doing for 25, 30 years, and people are sick of it, and half the country's just turned them off. And so that's what I mean by, there's an opportunity there. People to make movies that are not necessarily conservative movies, but movies that just aren't ramming a woke philosophy down your throat. How is it that you kind of survived in Hollywood?

I mean, you've been, you've played all sorts of different roles. You've been a director. You've been a producer, actor, you know, sitcoms, movies. What was your evolution in thinking? I don't know that I did evolve that much. You know, I was in New York for seven years in my 20s, sort of doing stage and not really getting anywhere in the film business. I didn't really get started until I was in my 30s. We had moved back to North Carolina, my wife and I, to have our baby.

We didn't want to have the baby in New York City. And the movie business was down in North Carolina, and I started doing smaller parts. And I sort of built my career up in North Carolina, acting in Georgia and things, and fried green to make. Fried Green Tomatoes was the movie that kind of put me on the map enough that I could move to L.A. So by the time I moved to Los Angeles, I was already in my 30s. I had a child. I was kind of a grown-up, and my belief system was already pretty set. It didn't change me much.

When I first went to Hollywood, I didn't know I was supposed to keep my mouth shut about what I thought. By the time I realized that it was too late, and I figured, well, everybody knows. By now, I'm just going to have to go with it. But you were, you know, successful, I think, by any standard. Yeah, I mean, I've been very fortunate. Everything I got, I kind of scratched and clawed and auditioned for and won, you know, because I didn't know anybody. I was just a kid from North Carolina.

I didn't even know any professional actors. I've been fortunate to be part of some really great movies. And the joke I tell is that, you know, people with good taste obviously think I'm good. That's why I don't do very many bad movies. Well, so what's your, what is the memorable one or a few, what's the favorite? Did you have a favorite role? Well, I mean, Fried Green Tomatoes is memorable because it was the first movie role I had where I had more than one scene.

It was actually a fairly substantial part. But, I mean, I've been very blessed. From the Earth to the Moon, the miniseries, HBO miniseries about the astronauts, got to work with so many great people. I was in all the episodes. Hank produced it. Castaway with Tom Hanks was big for me. Nell, the movie with Jody Foster and Liam Neeson, and then of course Justified was sort of like a nice capper, nice little six-year series to hang my hat on towards the end of the career.

You were saying that, you know, it's hard to go anywhere for you in Kentucky, right? I'm very famous in Kentucky, yeah. Yeah. Everywhere I go, they go, are you You aren't mulling. You know, so it's kind of fun. What you said about, you know, clawing your way, I think, you know, most actors or actresses would say this is, that's just the business. What's your likelihood of being successful in Hollywood

compared to how many people show up? It's very low. Very low, yeah. And so, but somehow, and you said your belief system was said, but what I'm saying is it feels, this feels to me like it goes against, you know, kind of your thesis here, right? that you can't make it as someone who has a more conservative viewpoint. Well, I do think Hollywood's changed, though.

I mean, I've been there. I was there for 30 years. So when I went there, it was, what, Clinton was president, you know? It wasn't so divided. It wasn't so galvanized, you know. And so you could have discussions with people back then. I remember having a discussion with fairly civil discussions with Democrats. that's on set, you know, making some jokes about Clinton or whatever, you know, and it wasn't,

it was fairly good nature. But after Bush, when Bush got in in the Iraq War and then Obama right after, that's when it really got to be like, okay, if you're not one of us, you're a bigot, you're a racist, you're a terrible human being, and that sort of thing. So it kind of evolved to the point where, you know, I think it was more dangerous to come out as a conservative, if I'd come out as a conservative while Bush was president, then it probably would have been more difficult. But my trajectory was already set in terms of my acting career, you know, before it really got so polarized. I see. And then you already had enough

people who knew what you could do who kind of maybe liked you. Yeah, and knew me personally. At that point, Hollywood was really run by, you know, profit. And so agents and managers wanted to work with me, you know that kind of thing but now now it's not run by that anymore it's run by hate so if they hate you you're not going to work this is something that's very very interesting there is these you know huge awards ceremonies a variety of the oscars being kind of i suppose the supposed to be the pinnacle but when you see the oscars you don't necessarily know a lot of the films i mean i definitely wasn't like that when i was younger these were you know block busters and And there's something that's shifted, like you're saying, that that's for sure.

Yeah, when we were going up, you know, in the 70s, everybody knew every movie. Everybody watched the Oscars like it was the Super Bowl. And you're going, oh, wow, is Five Easy Pieces going to win? Is the Godfather, the apartment? You know, all these movies that everybody knew, French Connection. And now they nominate 10 films. They're barely in theaters. They're in theaters for a week to qualify.

and then they're on Netflix or something. So it's just a totally different way of doing the award ceremonies that has nothing to do with quality or the popularity of the film or how well the film is received. It has more to do with, you know, does the content fit our political ideology?

And do we want to reward a film that doesn't fit our political ideology? How is it possible to make films that aren't popular. Isn't that how it works? I mean, isn't that where the money comes from? Well, yes, you would think. But I think Hollywood has some deep pockets.

And the way films get made now, it's not so much dependent on the box office now as it used to be, because now they're made by streaming services. So everything's kind of spread out. You're paying your $15 a month to a streaming service so they can make a bunch of things that you don't want to see, but they'll make that one thing that you do. That's what I think has happened, is that, you know, films are just not so

dependent on straight people buying tickets. I remember, like, you was Netflix or HBO would go out and just buy, you know, and produce, like, a massive miniseries or series or a movie because, and they pick the actors, presumably from their data. These are the actors that people like. These are the themes that people like, and they would construct film around that. But I suppose that could be leveraged in a different way, that same approach, right? Instead of going for the gold, you could be going for some sort of ideological.

And now they literally, you know, they have quotas in terms of, you know, the racial makeup of a movie. I think I heard that Reagan was not eligible to be considered for the Oscars because the cast was too white. Well, it's a historical piece. I mean, you know, what are you going to do non-traditional casting about a slice of history? It doesn't make any sense. And so that's why Hollywood is falling apart. And, I mean, I know I just left Hollywood four years ago.

I left Burbank, and I just know so many people there that are just like there's no work. Editors, you know, camera people. They're all moving away because there's nothing for them to do. Tell me about making Reagan. Well, that was, you know, I knew the producers, and they'd asked me to be part of it. And it took a long time because we shot it in the middle of COVID. And so there were all these crazy restrictions that they had to go by.

Sagan imposed all this stuff. And it was such a huge cast that it became almost comical. I mean, we weren't allowed to write in a van together to the set, because we might kill each other with COVID or something. So we all had to have our own rental cars. We all had to drive ourselves. Each actor had his own golf cart. So when there's 10 of us in a scene in a boardroom, you know, sit around the table,

where there's 10 golf carts bringing us all. I mean, it was kind of silly. I guess the producers couldn't help it. They had to do it to get the movie made. But for example, there was one scene where we're supposed to be the 1976. 1976 Republican National Convention. We're all crammed into this little room. They're shooting it tight.

They want to make it look like we're on the floor of the convention. And so they bring the actors that have lines. They bring us all to this set, and all the background actors have masks on. They're in costume, but they have their masks on. And we're, you know, we're principal actors don't have their masks on because I guess we're superhuman beings and, you know, impervious to the disease or something. We get there and the first AD says, okay, everybody, when you hear rolling, everybody take your mask off and put it in your pocket. Make sure you tuck it in so that those little strings don't hang out.

And then we'll play the scene. And then as soon as it's over, just put your mask on back as quickly as you can. And I said, yeah, everybody, because when we're cameras are rolling, it's 1976, and the virus didn't exist back then. So if you act really well, you'll survive. But if you suck, you might get COVID. So everybody be on your best behavior. So it was a little silly. But it was a great movie, I think.

It's a great thing to be a part of. Got to play James Baker, which was fun. I had a nice wig. The joke was it was an honor to play James Baker. It's the first time I've ever played a swamp creature. What did it take to prepare for that role of James Baker? Well, I watched a lot of film on him. I read his book.

and just sort of got a, tried to get a sense of the man, how he operated, how he was able to go from being a Gerald Ford supporter in 1976 to becoming somebody that Reagan trusted enough to make him chief of staff and then later on Secretary of State. I mean, he was obviously a political animal who could play the game. That's how I tried to play him. I sort of tried to stick to this idea that he was a political animal who could navigate through whatever waters were put in front of him.

Tell me about, of course, John Voight is in the film. I've been thinking about this, the special ambassadors that President Trump has assigned to Hollywood. We haven't heard much about them since they were assigned. Do you know if they're, it's John Voigt, Sylvester Stallone, Mel Gibson, of course. Do you know if they're doing anything? Well, I think John Void is the one who, I heard this, that he was sort of came up with the tariff on foreign films,

tariff on film shot overseas. That's what I heard. I don't know if that's true or not. You know, it's a funny thing about the conservative side of filmmaking, conservative side of Hollywood. What happens is you get people like John Voigt, Sylvester, Sloan, Mel Gibson, who have such big stars that doesn't matter. Right? Their conservatism is not going to affect them.

Maybe it'll affect them with certain people. But they're never going to be hurting for work. There's always going to be people that want to have them in their movie just because they're great actors and they bring a huge body of work to the table. For some of the rest of us, you know, like me and some of the lesser actors, you know, what happens to us is that the left side of Hollywood, they get a whiff of that we're conservative and they go, and they go, well, we're not going to work with those guys.

We don't want to put them in our movie. And what happens on the other side is the conservative filmmakers, when they get money to make a movie, they go, we're not going to be like the other side. We're not going to exclude people because of their ideology. So we're going to hire people from the left side, too, just to show how magnanimous we are. So the people that get screwed are the guys like me,

you know, the conservative actors that aren't huge stars that, you know, have come out. We're the ones who the leftists won't hire us, and now the conservatives won't hire us that often because they want to appear magnanimous. So the ambassadors to Hollywood, I think it's a very interesting and kind of funny idea, but they've kind of made it. There's not a big movement on the conservative side to help out conservatives that are lower down on the ladder. What could they do? Well, people with that kind of power, I mean, with that kind of star power, they could form a studio. They, you know, it's been done in the past, you know, United artists, you know, that kind of thing. They could have enough money and power that they could pull together a studio because that's what's needed.

You know, that's why Netflix and Amazon is able to turn out so many films. They have pooled their resources so that they're making the kinds of films that support what they believe in. We don't do that. Conservatives are afraid of investing in films because basically it's a bad investment. You know, chances are you're going to lose your money.

So what we have to do if we really want to compete is create a system where we have, we're able to make 10 films and maybe one of them makes enough money to float the other nine. That's what they do. So I wish that they would use their star power and their influence to build something like that, but I don't think they will. It's not how the conservative mind works. You know, we're all individuals.

We all want to do what's best for us, and we don't necessarily think collectively like the left does. So you have been advocating for the building of this, you know, more conservative or right-leaning Hollywood for a while. I mean, I watched that talk you gave about five years ago at Hillsdale College. So I guess it's not going well, right? Is that the... Well, I think it's going well on an individual basis. You have some films that are breaking through here and there. You know, you have Sound of Freedom, which made a fortune.

And you have studios that are coming up. You have, you know, the Daily Wire said they were going to get into entertainment, although I think that's kind of been a failed experiment up to this point. have Angel Studios. And they have a very interesting different business model, right, that they came up with the chosen. Right. And Angel Studios, it's kind of a misnomer. They're not really a studio. They're more of a business. They're more of a distribution company. But you can go to Angel Studios with an idea and they will pass that idea along to their

investors. And if their investors vote that that's something that they should throw money at, they do. So that's a good start. I mean, it's definitely. heading in the right direction. I just don't think that we're there yet. You know, it's still too hard. Every conservative filmmaker that I know is in the same boat that I am. We're out there trying to get somebody to invest in our one project, our single project. I have a project called Where I'm Bound, Labor of Love for me. It's a movie about gospel quartet music in the 1960s. Really great story, great script. You know, we've had a great response to it. But it's hard. to get conservatives to invest in a movie because they've been burned before.

A lot of conservative investors have lost their money. And that's because it's not a situation where you're investing in a, in a, like a spate of films, you know, so that it can be spread out over if this one doesn't do that well, maybe this one does. If you're investing in one movie at a time, it's, you know, it's riskier. And so I think that's what we're up against. We need something like a Sony or a Warner Brothers on the conservative side. You know, something just occurred to me.

You know, you made the film Gosnell, of course. You directed it. Incredible film, I mean, that I, I mean, heart-wrenching. Difficult, difficult film, very difficult film. When we were talking earlier, you were mentioning it, there's some reason why the distribution of this film isn't very good. Maybe it's because it's so difficult. But I wonder if this, you know, angel model of pay it forward might actually work for this film, right?

It started with The Chosen, it was a brilliant idea, right? If people who are, you know, presumably Christian want to share the story of Jesus, which probably a lot of them do, they can pay for others to see it and it seems to work really well for them, right? And they tried with other films, it worked for some other productions as well. Maybe it would work for this production. Actually, tell me a little bit about this film for the benefit of those who haven't heard it, about Gosnell and where it's at right now. Well, Gosnell was crowdfunded.

You know, that's the thing about Gosnell. It wasn't investors. They just gave the money to Ann and Phelam to make the movie. And so we made it for that amount. I had sort of lobbied, why don't we just, like, get some investors too, and then we'll have a little bigger budget, and we can make a better movie, but they didn't like that idea. I think they raised 2.3 million, and then they spent whatever they spent on the script

and whatever. So we made the movie for less than $2 million. And finally got distribution. It took us two years to get distribution. Everybody was afraid to distribute the film. They had one distributor of kind of a big Hollywood distributor say, I really like the film, I think it's very good, but I can't be the one. to release this because it would ruin me. Tell it for those that aren't familiar with the story, maybe just give us a quick synopsis. Gosnell was the true story about Kermit Gosnell, a doctor in Philadelphia who ran a woman's clinic that was really an abortion mill and where he did a lot of illegal abortions, not

only after the approved limits, but literally killing babies after they were born. And this was discovered by a detective who was investigating the clinic for like narcotic fraud. It became a big national story that, you know, the national media ignored. And that's why Ann and Phelam wanted to make the movie. A movie was as much about what Kermit Gosnell did as it was about how the media tried to suppress it because it didn't support their abortion agenda. So that's what the movie was about and we tried to make a really strict kind of just the facts ma'am kind of courtroom drama I didn't want it to be preachy I didn't want you know I

remember when I first read the script the thing that attracted me to it was this one scene where Gossnell's attorney who I wound up playing is cross-examining a legitimate abortion doctor and he makes her tell us all the steps that happen in an abortion and I remember reading that going, I did not know that's what it was. You know, you hear about abortion and you have some sort of idea about it, but you don't know exactly what they do. And that's why I wanted to make the movie. It was really that scene.

I just said, okay, if we're going to talk about abortion, you can have whatever opinion you want to about it, but let's focus on what it really is. This is what it is. Support it or don't support it. It's up to you. Yeah, it's a very powerful, very powerful scene. I remember it, it's very memorable. So how about going to Angel with this film?

Well, yeah, I'm not really a producer on it, so it's not up to me to do that. You know, that's kind of up to Anne and Phelham. I would love to see the film get out there. I mean, that's the biggest problem with it. A film like Gosnell, you want to put it in a place where somebody can just happen upon it, rather than have it be always something that like, only people that are already on your side see it. My dream would be for it to just be on Amazon

and somebody would be going along and saying, huh, what's this? I'll just watch this, you know? And that's what we never got. It was sold as a right-wing conservative movie, and we never got a chance to let the other side see it. And so basically what happens in those instances is that, it's,

Same thing with the faith-based film. Hollywood develops these faith-based film divisions. And by calling them faith-based films, they send a message to everybody, this is just for those Christians. You don't have to watch this. We're making some money off. There's Christian rubs, so don't worry about this movie.

So that's kind of what happened with Gazznell, conservatives only. So you wrote a book recently, Justify This. It's about having a career without compromise. Really? You never had to compromise? I put on a dress a couple of times in a couple of movies. I guess that's a compromise. I mean, you know, career without compromise

just means that I never really backed down on what I thought politically. I mean, I wasn't afraid to say what I thought. And that, you know, I wound up doing things that, you know, most Hollywood actors wouldn't do. I'm the biggest Hollywood star that's ever guest hosted for Rush Limbaugh. For example.

How did that happen? Rush was a fan of Justified. And so I had been listening to Rush for 25 years and, you know, he was just a part of my life, you know, daily part of my life. And so one morning I woke up and that morning I hadn't really gotten up early enough. We were living in Los Angeles and I hadn't gotten up early enough to hear the show. And my phone started blowing up and all my friends are calling me going, Rush Limbaugh just mentioned you by name on the show. on the show. And I was like, really? And so he had said something to the effect of, you know,

justified to one of his favorite shows. And last night, one of his favorite characters played by Nick Searcy. He said, I love that character. It's good to see him back on the show. Well, by that point, I had sort of made a Twitter friend out of David Limbaugh. And so I wrote to David and said, do you think he'd like to have me on the show? And next thing I knew, Bo Snerdly, his call screener, James Golden, he called me and said, do you want to come on on Wednesday? So then I was interviewed by Rush on the show for about 12 minutes, which I used to tell everybody that was like a minute longer than he interviewed Dick Cheney, by the way.

And we just were friends after that. You know, Rush and I were, if he saw me in something, he'd write me and I'd email him and blah, blah, blah. I was on a couple other times, and one day I sort of joked with Bose Nerdley. I said, you guys should let me guest host once, and he said, let me work on that. So that's how it came about. Just for me to be some kid from North Carolina who I was pursuing my acting career when I discovered Rush Limbaugh on the radio, and I'm like, who is this guy? And I listened to him for 25 years, and then to wind up guest hosting for him once. It was better than an Oscar.

It was a great thing for me. You know, so Rush Lumbah wasn't someone I was aware of for most of my life. And, you know, I've heard this kind of story that you just gave from multiple people where he transformed. I mean, famously Andrew Breitbart. And so he had this very profound impact on, you know, the culture, I guess. Mm-hmm. Right? Yeah.

Well, he was the first one that I ever heard, actually, who was funny. who was making fun of Democrats, making fun of the government, making fun of the left, and you just didn't hear that. And he was actually funny. I mean, that's the thing that really set Rush apart was the humor.

And nobody before or since has really been able to compete with that. I mean, you have Sean Hannity, he's great, he does his thing. Clay Travis and Buck Sexton, they're very good, but nobody is as funny as Rush was. And that was really the thing

that set him apart. His humor and the way he connected with the audience because of that. I think everybody in the audience thought of Rush is just, he's my friend. I listen to him every day. He's my friend. Well, you mentioned that guest hosting for Rush Limbaugh didn't impact your career, but you made a couple of films, or at least I have film in a miniseries about January 6th and related events that did impact things. sure so tell me about that well i was there on january 6th i went there and uh what happened was when i saw what they showed on the news about all the violence i didn't see any of that and i just was like that's weird i didn't see any of that they made it look like that's the only thing that

happened and so i decided with my my friend chris burgaard we decided to explore that somebody came up and said do you want to make a documentary about january six and we said yes. But anyway, what happened to me, the reason I know that it impacted me personally was like after I went to Washington on January 6th, the Saturday after that, I get a call from my then agent on a Saturday night,

and he was kind of frantic. He was like, I just got to ask you one question, Nick. Did you go in the building? I go, what are you talking about? He said, did you go in the building on January 6th? I got the sense. he was like literally ready to fire me or dismiss me or whatever. I said, no, what are you talking about?

I didn't go near the building. I didn't know anybody went in the building. He said, there's a casting director here that's been passing around a picture of you, saying that this is a picture of Nick Searcy inside the Capitol building, and nobody should ever hire him again because he's an insurrectionist. And I said, show me the picture, and he sent it to me, and I said, that's obviously not me. The guy's got a mask on. I don't wear a mask, you know that.

And so I said, who's doing this? And the casting director that was doing this was somebody I'd known for 30 years. It's a friend of mine. Had my number, had my email address. She could have just asked me. So I'm pretty sure that it had some sort of an impact because if she's really sending it around to everybody,

I'm sure that a few of those casting directors would never never hire me again. So we made these two documentaries and, you know, as the kind of government oppression of the January 6ers and the lies about those people began to pile up, I began to wonder

why I hadn't been prosecuted myself because most of the people that I knew that were being arrested, the people that we interviewed, they didn't do anything any different than I did. They just went there and walked around, outside the Capitol and they were being treated like terrorists and called domestic terrorists and white supremacists and all this garbage so that's when I decided we've got to keep going and we've got to keep trying to get to the

truth about this so capital punishment was released on November of 2021 and released a mini series called the War on Truth in on January 6 of this year and both of them show who these people are that they the government has been, that the Joe Biden administration demonized as domestic terrorists, and they weren't. They simply weren't. You know, the President Trump pardoned a whole lot of people. Thank God. I mean, they deserve to be pardoned, and frankly, they deserve more than that. These people have had their lives destroyed. They deserve to be made whole. And it really shouldn't even be the taxpayers that pay the price. It should be the people that lied about them. It should

be Liz Cheney and Adam Kinsinger and the January 6th committee that had evidence fabricated fabricated things about these people. It should be the insular D.C. Circuit judges and that whole District of Columbia judicial system that completely lied about these people, that prosecuted them for crimes that they did not commit, that, it mischaracterized everything they did, and they did it for political reasons. And these people not only the ones that went to jail, but the people that had their reputations destroyed in their neighborhood, they lost their businesses, lost their ability to even gain employment.

I mean, these people have really been persecuted wrongly, and I hope that some restitution is made to them because they deserve it. Well, there were a few people that broke the law. Yeah, but we don't know. There were also a lot of people who broke the law that have never been prosecuted, and we don't know why. I mean, there's a lot of people that, you know, it's already been proven that there were at least 26 FBI informants in that crowd.

And yes, not everybody who was there was innocent, but I would venture to say that at least 95% the people who were persecuted. For example, there's a friend of mine, Jay Johnstone, an actor from California. He was in the crowd in front of the tunnel, and he's a big tall guy, and at one point, a police shield was being passed through the crowd, and so it came to Jay, and Jay took it like this and didn't know what to do with it and passed it back along. They charged him with assault with a deadly weapon against an officer because he touched a police shield, and they tried to put him in jail for years because of that. And, you know, this kind of thing is, when you contrast what happened that day with what happened during the whole Summer of Love thing with the Antifa riots and the BLM riots, no comparison. And I've done interviews with probably at least 60 of the people that were targeted by the government for January 6th. And in all of their stories, I put myself in their position, and I think the only reason I'm not exactly where this person is is because of where I was geographically on that day.

If I had been in this person's position, I hope I would have behaved the way they did. Because there's so much about that that needs to come out that all the documentaries that HBO and the mainstream media has made about them have suppressed the fact that. that the police were the aggressors that day. They fired into the middle of a peaceful crowd intentionally provoking them. And I could go on and on, but I'll stop right there. But that, I mean, there is a lot to come out about that day. That's what the work on truth is all about.

And I think the facts are going to continue to unfold. Have friends of yours criticized the films? Most of the time they ignore them. I mean, that's the thing. And when I made Gossinel, I sent it to a few of my friends that were basically on the left, and they just don't comment. They don't watch it. I had to fire my agent after I released capital punishment.

You know, I called my agent and said, you know, I sent over the film, what did you think? And he said, I'm not watching that. I said, you're my agent. You're not going to watch the film I made? He goes, no, that's propaganda. That was an insurrection. full stop i'm not watching any of it i said well i guess you don't want to be my agent then because you can't really represent me or i don't trust you to represent me if you think i'm an

insurrectionist you know you're probably working against me and so we ended up parting ways you know because of that so yeah that's what happens with the leftists they can't take in any information that might disrupt their worldview because their self-image is so wrapped up in it Their sense of superiority, you know, it comes from them believing that they are morally superior to people who disagree with them. And if you try to present them with something that might change their mind, they just can't take it in. They won't look at it.

So I wanted something interesting in your life. You know, you have an adopted son named Omar, and there's quite a, you know, it's quite an adventure for you to bring him into your family. I just wanted to get for you to tell me about that. Well, we had been trying to have another child. We had our first daughter, Chloe, was born, and she was about 11, and Leslie and I had been sort of taking some measures

to have another child, and it wasn't really working, and at one point she said, why do you want another child? I said, well, I guess I, I guess part of it is that I want, but I've had the experience of raising a girl. I'd like to sort of have the experience of being father to a boy. She said, well, there's no guarantee that if we got pregnant,

that it'd be a boy, so why don't we just go adopt one? That's kind of the, you know, initial conversation. And then my daughter was really, she wanted a brother, she kept bringing home little bookmarks from school about how every child needs a home, call the foster care system. So we decided that we would adopt, and we decided to go through the foster care system. Because we wanted to, you know, we looked in all the foreign adoptions and that sort of thing,

and Leslie and I just decided we'd like to just try to give a home to somebody who needs one. So just tell me about the process of this. Well, we got qualified to be foster care parents, and when you do that, they just, as soon as you meet the qualifications, they start sending you options. We got a call about Omar. My wife had wanted a child that was about six years old because her rationale was he'll go to school most of the day. But when we met Omar, Omar was 15 months old.

He'd been with this foster family for about a year. And that foster family was leaving the state and he couldn't go with them. His parental rights were not yet terminated. And so when we went to meet this family and I first laid eyes on Omar, it was like a thunderbolt. It just felt like that's my son.

It was like the most direct contact from the divine that I've ever felt. I just felt like this is meant to be. That's my son. And so he came to live with us and he was with us for four years and still technically a foster child. We couldn't get them to turn.

the rights and I had been going to all the hearings even though I didn't have any legal standing I would go to the hearings as a foster parent and just get up and I was allowed to make a statement and I would say he's been with us for this many months he calls us mom and dad he's you know he's not a puppy you can't just move him somewhere and put down a bowl of food I mean he is emotionally connected to us and we'd like to we want to make it clear that we want him to be a permanent part of our family and so the birth parents were there in the, you know, whenever I would stand up and speak, the mother

was there, the father was there. So in that way, we kind of got to know each other a little bit. They would hear me speak. I would hear them speak. And so finally, I got a job in California. This all happened in North Carolina. I got a job in California. We were going to move the whole family. And so we had to get Omar eligible for us to adopt him, or else we'd have to give him that. And so I went to each of the parents. And I said, look, if you wait for the state to terminate his rights, you'll never see him again. But if you let me adopt him, I will stay in touch with you. I got the mother to agree. And then I thought, that's it, right? And I said, no, you've got to get the father. And I go, where's the father? And he's in jail. We don't know

where he is. So a couple months later, they found him. I went to talk to him, like, through the glass and everything. And he was very resistant. at first. But after we talked, the crazy thing is his father and I are still in close contact. Omar's 25 years old now. And his father and I are now, we've been pen pals. I think he's getting out of prison in about two years. But it's funny. You don't know going in, but in fact, when we adopted Omar, we kind of, we became part of his whole family. And so his brothers, his sisters, we know them all, and they've come to visit. And we just kind of like, you know, adopted an entire other family.

And it's been a wonderful experience. And any concerns about, you know, him getting out of prison? I don't know what he was in for. Yeah. You could be, you know, you can imagine scenarios where, or maybe I've seen too many movies. Well, you know, it's an interesting setup for a movie. Yeah, I've often thought of that. But I have been in contact with him enough to know.

Like, for example, when I first saw him, when I first saw my son's birth father, he was probably 18 years old, 19 maybe. And Omar was two at that point. So he had fathered the child when he was a child. And the minute I laid eyes on him, I just thought he looked so much like Omar. and my Omar, and he, I wanted to adopt him too. I mean, he just looked like, I could tell by looking at him that this is a guy, if he had had a good upbringing, if he'd had a father, that he probably wouldn't be where he was.

And he's told me that over the years, you know, that his role models were guys who drove nice cars into the projects, and he thought, I want to have money like those guys. And he didn't have anybody there to tell him that's not the right thing to do. And so I think I know him well enough. I'm not afraid of that. I certainly, I'm, you know, I'll be careful, but he's a, I think at his heart, he's a good guy. And he's definitely paid a price for what he's done.

And he thanks me all the time. He writes me and thanks me, thank you for taking care of Omar and getting him out of this mess, you know. So your favorite actor, who is it? My favorite actor was Gene Hackman. He was the one that I looked up to and wanted to be like. I wanted to be him. And so I got to do one movie with him. I did runaway jury with Gene Hackman.

I got to work with him for a couple of weeks. And it was very emotional for me. At the end of it, I got to thank him and tell him that. And he was very gracious. And I believe it was his last film. He retired very shortly after that. But when we first started working together, he was my hero. And I was afraid to even talk to him.

I was just so intimidated and so nervous that finally after about three days, he started talking to me just to break the eyes. So just a lovely man, very well prepared, just of joy to be with every day. He was so much fun. Yeah, I recently watched the conversation. the movie theater I was playing, which wife and I went on a lark. Unbelievable, unbelievable film.

He's such a great actor. He really is. Everything. Everything. There's a little-known movie called Twice in a Lifetime that I always recommend everybody that Gene Hackman plays this man who leaves his wife for Anne Margaret,

or a character played by Anne Margaret, who wouldn't do that. But it really is a really interesting look at that situation and his performance in it is just it's really heartbreaking you know and and it's just it's he elevated everything that he ever did he his performance always elevated the film i was going to ask about favorite film next is that it no my favorite film is a very kind of obscure film called Wise Blood, John Houston film 1974 based on a Flannery O'Connor novella, Wise Blood, stars Brad Doriff, Harry Dean Stanton, Ned Beatty, and it was shot in Macon,

and most of the other characters in it are real people from Macon, Georgia. And it's just a fascinating. It's a very faithful adaptation of the Flannery O'Connor story. What's in a nutshell? What's the story? He's a Vietnam vet returning back to his small town home in Georgia, and he's vigorously rejecting this idea that Jesus Christ is his Savior. That is the thing he's resisting. And it's just a really interesting character study of this man.

He starts preaching on the street against Jesus Christ, And then as the story develops, you see him grappling with that idea. And it's, Plenary O'Connor is just such an interesting writer. And the fact that Houston made the movie so faithfully to her work, it's really just one of my favorite films. And I think it was shot for like $500,000. It wasn't a very expensive movie. But it's just so well made and so well acted. And I just love it.

I could watch it over and over. You know, given these various realities we've discussed today about what it's like to be, you know, right of center in Hollywood trying to make it, what would you say to young, budding actors and actresses that may be in that ilk? Well, people are always asking me, you know, my son or daughter wants to be an actor. How do they do it? And the way that I came up doesn't exist anymore. When I was growing up, it's like you go to New York, you get in a play, somebody sees you in the play, you get an agent, and then you start doing movies.

Well, that's gone. Now it's all about Instagram and YouTube followers and this kind of thing. And it's like, now I tell people, if your son or daughter wants to be an actor, tell them to make their own content. That's the way forward now, because the technology has been democratized to the point that anybody can make a movie now. You can make one with your iPhone. So it's all about content. The Hollywood gatekeepers are not in control anymore. You don't have to suck up to them.

You can make your own movies now. And that's what you should do, and you should do it fearlessly, and you should not worry about whether, your political viewpoint doesn't fit with Hollywood's because they're irrelevant anymore. And they're going to become more and more irrelevant over the next few years. So I don't think anybody needs to worry about that anymore. That's my take on it. What if you want to learn, what if you want to be, you know, learn this trade craft of acting? Yeah.

You're a character actor. You know, it's not simple. No, it's not. I also tell people do as much, do as many plays as you can. I know where they're harder to find these days, but learning on the stage is the best way to learn because you have immediate feedback from the audience, you know what works and what doesn't, and you can carry that forward into film. You know how to play to an audience.

That's the best way to learn. Learning by doing is the best way to learn. I've always thought acting schools were overrated. Maybe that's because I got thrown out of one. But I think that you learn more by doing it, figuring out what doesn't work, you know, trying and failing, that sort of thing. And that's why I say the best way to learn is to just make your own films, make your own content.

So, you know, you mentioned that your, uh, project about, you know, your gospel music project, just as we finish up, maybe just tell me about that and, uh, and, um, well, I see it. Yeah, my partner that I wrote it with, his father was a gospel piano player. And a lot of my uncles are preachers and some of them traveling evangelists that are all musical. I had first cousins who were sang in gospel quartet movies. So when he told me his father's story, his father basically entered the gospel music world in the 60s for about two years and then got disillusioned with it. and quit and became a minister. I said, well, that's kind of an interesting story.

Let's explore that. So that's what it's about. It's a coming-of-age story for a hot shot young piano player who leads his high school sweetheart to go on the road with a gospel quartet group, and then he finds out what life on the road is really like and what the music business is really like, and he has to make a choice. He has to choose between fame or following

the following his faith. So the last chapter in your book is titled gratitude. What are you grateful for? I've been very blessed in my life. Blessed with great parents and a mother who said to me, you can do whatever you want to do no matter what it is, as long as you set your mind to it. And when I decided I wanted to be a professional actor,

something that nobody in our family had ever been and we didn't know anybody who was. My mother said, well, I didn't mean that. I didn't mean, you know, choose the hardest possible thing. But I'm very grateful that she gave me that courage and that, you know, I met a wonderful woman and Leslie who wanted to be an actress too and so who understood what it would take.

I remember we were both sort of struggling actors in New York. We had been married and Leslie turned up pregnant. and she was working as a word processor at the time, or day job, and the boss said, well, is Nick going to get a job now that you're pregnant? And Leslie said, no, he's an actor. He's not going to get a job. It's like that's a very rare thing to have that sort of understanding

and I've been fortunate to have found her and then to just be able to make a living as an actor. It's just a miracle. My last agent that I really revered and loved was a guy named Joe Rice, who passed away a few years ago. And he always said, anytime an actor gets a job in Hollywood, it's a miracle. And I always remember that. And so I've had a lot of miracles happen to me. And just to be able to have done it for as long as I have and to be married to a beautiful woman

that meant that I never got a divorce, so I didn't have to split it with anybody. So, yeah, I'm grateful to that, for all that. I'm grateful to God. And for Omar and Chloe, my daughter, and all the things that have come into my life. I'm just, I've been very fortunate. All right.

Final thought is to be finished? Hollywood has given up its place as the gatekeeper for entertainment. and that there's a wide open, big wide avenue for us to drive down. And we've got to figure out a way, hopefully with the ambassadors that Trump has appointed, we've got to figure out a way to drive down that highway and start making content that people really like because there's not enough of that right now. Well, Nick Searcy, it's such a pleasure to have had you on. Thanks for having me on. It's great to be here.

Thank you all for joining Nick Searcy. me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I'm your host, Janja Kealek.