Heroes in Business - Mark Pellegrino Actor in Lost, Supernatural, Dexter, working with The Guardian Project

Episode Date: May 19, 2021

The Guardian Project... Mark Pellegrino Actor who has appeared in Lost, Supernatural, Dexter and is working with The Guardian Project is interviewed by David Cogan founder of Eliances and host of the Eliances Heroes Show. Broadcast on am and fm network channels, internet radio and online syndication. Twitter @GuardianProj   

Up in the sky, look, it's captivating, it's energizing, it's Eliance's Heroes. Eliance's is the destination for entrepreneurs, investors, CEOs, inventors, leaders, celebrities, and startups, where our heroes in business align. Now, here's your host flying in,id cogan founder of alliances that's right and what it again an incredible morning it's been we recently had the chairman of nbc studios so thank you again and i really appreciate the feedback when i had the founder of e-entertainment on so you know where to go the only place where entrepreneurs align e-l-i-a-n-c-ement on. So you know where to go. The only place where entrepreneurs align, E-L-I-A-N-C-E-S.com. There'll be a link there too for you to check out past episodes.

Well, I'm super excited again about our next hero today, Mark Pellegrino. He's an actor. He's been in Lost, Supernatural, Dexter, and many others. He is working with the Guardian Project. He can be reached on Twitter at Guardian P-R-O-J. All right, Mark, with all of these various roles, I mean, you've just had a ton of roles and I mean, like really amazing stuff. I gotta just jump right in because this is what our listeners and viewers want to know. Is there one in particular that you maybe identify most with well you know i think if if the roles turn out right that means you've identified something in each character with yourself um i think my favorite one to play though was on the closer i went for a stint on the closers final season. I played a defense attorney by the name of Gavin Q Baker, the third. And he was,

he was a combination of Carson Cressley meets Tim gun. And I just had such fun playing that part. And, and so for, for me, that character moved me the most and was the most interesting to play. But hey, you know, I'm down with Lucifer. I think I can understand a lot of Lucifer's problems. Oh, yeah, absolutely. That's great. And you've had a lot of dramatic moments in Supernatural.

What was maybe one of your favorite scenes in that? You know, my favorite Lucifer, you know, because Lucifer had lots of sort of metamorphosis over the course of the show. My favorite version of him was the apocalyptic Lucifer in season five. And that was supposed to be the one and only Lucifer.

Lucifer was supposed to enter season five, supernatural, end the world. And that was the end of the show. But the fans protested and protested for 15 years and the season just kept going and the show kept going. But that Lucifer was a great combination of just a touch of dry humor, but a big bad. He was celestial in stature. He was royal and had a big vision about what he wanted to do, as opposed to the impish Lucifer later on down the line that was more like a clown. And Mark, I want to know too, is how do you get, because again, you've played all so many roles in that. How do you actually though get into the frame of mind of this is my role right now at this very moment? Well, it's not as mystic as it may seem.

You just find the hook in the part for you, the thing that you identify with that makes it human. identify with that makes it human. You don't think about, in the case of Lucifer, for example, the celestial archetypal aspect of the part at all. You think about, well, this is actually a story about family and about sons who have been abandoned by fathers and about what sons do about that. And so I bring it down to my level, make it a human struggle, and let the audience do all the work with respect to the bells and whistles. Great, great. And again, we've got Mark Pellegrino. He's an actor. He's been in Lost, Supernatural, Dexter, and many others.

He can be reached and working with The Guardian Project. Twitter handle is at GuardianPROJ. And we also, too, have your partner. We're going to go ahead and bring your partner also, too, up on here, too. So welcome, welcome, welcome. And again, you can reach at GuardianProject.info. So we've got Andrew here, too. How did you get involved in regards to The Guardian Project?

Andrew here too. How did you get involved in regards to the Guardian project? It started with about three successive waves of bullying that was actually more than just people calling me names and yelling insults at me. They were actually developing false narratives, trying to viralize those narratives, and then attaching my employers and actor friends and media influencers onto it in an attempt to get me fired from all of my jobs. And this happened on several occasions. And the last occasion, a community of fans sort of circled the wagons around me, and they started countering all of the assertions because they had saved up all of my conversations. They had archived everything. So they knew that the accusations and narratives that were being started against me were not true. And so this community really affected me. They really moved me. And I saw that, wow, I'm lucky. I'm fortunate that I have a group

of people who can circle the wagons around me. There's so many people out there who get the same kind of treatment who are ruined by these narratives who don't have this kind of support system so i wanted to try to bring that support system to people who were in the similar similar found themselves in a similar state as me so so talk then what so the purpose of the guardian project what is that So talk then, so the purpose of the Guardian Project, what is that? The Guardian Project is a project that sort of exists on several tiers. And right now we're working on the awareness tier. And the way we're doing that is we're going to create a documentary about this phenomenon,

the history of it, highlighting some victims of it, and use that documentary as a means of pitching a television show, sort of like Catfish to a television network, so that we could bring a heightened awareness every week, if we can, by highlighting victims of this kind of internet, I think, relational violence, and perpetrators. And in some cases, we'll hope, you know, to rehabilitate the perpetrator. In others, we hope to bring some form of justice by bringing together, you know, psychological professionals, legal professionals, and other resources to help the victim, you know,

reconstitute their life or whatever's been lost from the social media violence. So that's the first level of it. And then the next levels of it, we're hoping to cobble together enough people from these various organizations to pressure social media companies to have more objective standards of speech. I think their standards now are algorithms. They're sort of informed by, I think, some social justice type theories, and so certain words trigger them, and this often ends up redounding against

certain types of people who are not really violent and are not really committing the relational violence. And so they need objective standards of language. What constitutes free speech and what isn't free speech? And to me, that objective standard is fraud, libel, slander, and or violence, or the suggestion of of violence or the incitement of violence. That might mean they have to de-platform, you know, the Republic of North Korea and the Ayatollah Khomeini and the Chinese Communist Party. But, you know, I think they're losing the confidence of millions upon millions of American

users of social media who see themselves locked out of a conversation that they shouldn't be locked out of. So that's another goal as well. That's a lofty goal. Yeah. And how do you control something, right, that is so massive and in, right, and in so many different countries, right? Everybody's got access pretty much now, it seems, to the internet. And it's still all of these years later, right, Mark? It's still almost the free for all. It is. I don't mind that. I like that. And I don't want the government to come in and start telling the social media companies what people can or can't say. I respect the right of property. I mean, social media companies

do have a right to kick people off their platforms whom they don't agree with, just like I have the right to kick someone out of my house who's doing something I don't like. But if they're going to advertise themselves as free speech platforms where people can actually exchange ideas and they are, they are, I don't want to say amoral, but not making choices determining which ideas they prefer, there should be an objective standard. And the only objective standards that I can think of are force and fraud. Anything else should be a go. And what things, as the Guardian Project continues to grow and gets noticed and will through this interview of us again, we're talking with Mark Pellegrino.

He's an actor. He's been in Lost, Supernatural, Dexter, and many others. He is working with the Guardian Project. He can be reached on Twitter at GuardianPROJ. at Guardian P-R-O-J. What kind of advice, Mark, can you give our listeners and viewers now of things that they can do to perhaps, is it possible to avoid being a target like you were, that they may not have such a wide influence like you have others standing behind them to help? Yeah, one, I think relational violence is very different from the violence you find in the playground, where you were bullied as a kid. There, if you fought back, you stood the chance of intimidating the bully enough so that they didn't bother you.

With the relational violence of social media, any attempt to defend yourself usually encourages more attacks. So my, and I have academic friends who say the opposite, go and fight whenever you can. And I think there is a time in bully culture where you have to stand up to these people, but for the most part, back off, leave it alone, step off social media for a few days, they'll find another target.

That's what they do. But you can enlist the help of various guardians. It is a sort of ad hoc community right now where people are joining up and attempting to protect people online. And you can get in with a group like this and anywhere near you or in your feed. And those people can work towards protecting you if you need it. And certainly emailing us at the places that you suggested and telling us your issues would be a great thing, too, because that might be the topic of an article or something that we can do publicly to expose, you know, what's going on out there. something that we can do publicly to expose, you know, what's going on out there. And Mark, you know, we've got a lot of parents that also listen and they want their children to be successful, make their mark, certainly like you have and you continue to do, both in the acting profession and now with the Guardian Project. What are some maybe secrets or some things you could share with them? Being that, you know, many children want to grow up,

they want to be famous, they want to be known, right? It's this big thing that they want to be out there, but there's also things that could happen, and that's why the Guardian Project is there. But what type of advice can you give to them to share with their children? Well, first of all, I think they should tell their kids that fame happens when you do something well, and to work on doing something well and to let fame be in the background. Don't let that be the object of your desire. Let it be a consequence of doing something well. But more importantly, I think I would be, look, I know kids would complain if they didn't have social media in their house at all times, but're a parent you're you're providing a structure for your child and and that structure in in many respects has to include unplugging turning off

getting away from these toxic social atmospheres the children more than anything are more subject to this relational violence because they don't have the context that adults have and even adults are ravaged by this stuff psychologically, and they can still see further in the future than a kid whose only world is what their friends are telling them it is right now. I mean, so if I were a parent, I'd say, nope, no social media when you're home. You can only use the computer to do research for your homework, and that's it. Other than that, when you're home, you're home.

That used to be, I think, a welcome break for children who were bullied on the playground. They could at least go home. And they could get a 10 hour rest from whoever was bothering them at school, but now it's in their face 24 hours a day and they're compulsively turning to it and obsessed with it. Take it away. Absolutely. Well, Mark, I'm inviting you over to my house to tell my children that. I'll do it. I'm a big guy. I'm a little scary,

so they might listen to me. Mark Pellegrino, actor, lost, supernatural Dexterxter working with the Guardian Project can be reached on Twitter at GuardianPROG. This has been David Kogan with eLiances.