Legends of the Old West - BONUS: A Martinez Interview

Episode Date: July 22, 2018

A Martinez is the actor behind the complex villain, "Jacob Nighthorse," in the Nexflix series "Longmire." We talked about the evolution of his character from a very small, limited role to the chief antagonist of the show. And we start with a guilty pleasure surprise: his role on the short lived "Magnificent Seven" TV show of the late 1990s. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Fortnite created to give players of all ages, including kids and families, a safe digital space to play in. Download Fortnite on consoles, PC, cloud services, or Android and play Lego Fortnite for free. Rated ESRB E10+. I'm not sure how many of you watched or remember the TV show The Magnificent Seven.

It was only on for two seasons in the late 90s, but this is where I remember first seeing A. Martinez. He was in one episode in the second season, but he had a memorable part. I'm sure many more of you recognize him as Jacob Nighthorse from the hit show Longmire. I thought he was fantastic in that role, and we dive into several aspects of his character in the upcoming interview, as well as going back to talk a little bit about The Magnificent Seven. It was a guilty pleasure. I had to do it. I hope you like it. He was a great sport when I met him at the Western Writers of America convention. And if you're watching Queen of the South right now on USA,

then you're seeing him in his current role. Here's Emmy Award winning actor A. Martinez. first things first a martinez mr jacob nighthorse himself thank you very much for coming to the show appreciate you doing the interview oh my pleasure i'm really glad to be here so like i kind of said before we turn on the microphones i wanted to go back in time a little bit and talk about something fun because as I started this podcast several months ago, I pulled out some of the DVDs of Westerns that I loved and just started re-watching them to kind of have fun and get into the mindset in the world. And one of those was the Magnificent Seven TV show that I have on DVD. I'm probably one of, there's probably six of us that have the DVDs. And I saw you in one of the episodes in

season two and I'd forgotten that you were in that. And when I brought him out again and rewatched him for, I don't know how many years it's been, I saw all kinds of people that I'd forgotten were in that show. Oh, yeah. So I just wanted to throw it out there just for the fun of it. Were there any, what are some nuggets you might have remembered about that one episode in

that series and getting that thing going? Because I liked it. It's a guilty pleasure. I loved it. So many great actors in that show. Oh, for sure. Ron Prohm was in there i think it was cast by um uh i want to say uh was that guy who's in mr robot the christian slater i think his mom cast it oh

really yeah you know so she's like kind of a mystical figure to a lot of actors because, I mean, you know, she's a great casting director and she has a son who's a huge actor. And whenever you get a chance to be involved with something that she does, you jump at it. And, you know, I just loved it. And of course the character's name was Martinez. It was Rafael Martinez. Right. So I was really stoked with it. And I remember they suggested that to kind of spice him up a little bit, it would be cool if he had a soul patch, right? Right. And it was on the day.

So I thought, well, I'm not going to be growing a soul patch today, so I guess we're going to put one on. And that was the first time I think I ever actually wore facial hair in a performance. And since then it's sort of become like a go-to thing for me and a lot of people actually. But I loved it. I loved it. There were such great actors, such great esprit de corps and a guy that was a teacher on the big fencing scene, the sword scene, that was the climactic guy,

was a guy that I'd done a play with years and years ago, Anthony DeLongas. And he was just getting started, just getting his bones in that game. And we worked together, and it was really nice to reconnect with him all the years down the road and see that his career had really bloomed. So you guys were in a play together,

and then he was like almost a fencing stunt coordinator type position on that show. Right. Very versatile guy, it sounds like. Very versatile guy. And he's become one of the go-to guys in L.A. for that kind of thing. Perfect.

Well, thank you for indulging that little random tidbit there that obviously has nothing to do with Longmire, but I just happened to see it. And after I watched that series, I kind of just rolled right back into watching the whole series of Longmire on Netflix thankfully it was picked up after after the little fiasco with A&E and it's still alive on on Netflix for all of us to keep enjoying so that's fantastic so I to dive into

your character of Jacob Nighthorse a little bit I think the chief thing I I really liked about both his character and your performance in his character was the complexity of the character Yeah, I loved the fact that there was the kind of dark side in the light side But the light side that you didn't play it as if it was almost a schizophrenic character Like he had even when he was doing things that were obviously good things You still played it with this kind of this stoic resolute sense of Jacob Nighthorse So it didn't look like there were these two polar opposite figures inhabiting the same character.

So first I wanted to compliment you on that because I thought it was incredible. Oh, I appreciate it. And then how did you develop that? Did it start with some things that were on the page? Was the complexity of the character there right from the beginning? Or did you kind of learn it as it went along and you infused it with things that you found as you kept playing that character over and over? Well, a couple things. The first thing is literally when I read the audition scene,

I was so impressed with the rhythm of the writing. There's a sense of poetry in the way that the writers approached him. I mean, he's conscious of alliteration. You know, he uses words poetically. And the rhythm sort of led you into thinking, okay, this is someone who likes the sound of his own voice. So it sort of starts to speak to a level of, I don't want to call him a narcissist necessarily,

but he's certainly someone who has a high opinion of his presence in the world. He feels very confident in that regard. So I love that about him. And the way he came, he was really introduced in episode two in a scene that got cut. That was the audition scene where he played pool with Walt and the Red Pony and ran the table and Walt said, what do you want? What do you really want at the end of it? And he said, Wyoming. So I thought, okay, well, this is beautiful. That scene got me the job, loved it,

but they ended up cutting it and I could sort of tell that the scene was likely to go away because the episode was coming in long and the scene was three minutes it didn't refer to the plot I'm thinking this is a scene that could die and sure enough it died so my introduction became the fifth episode the dog soldier episode where we actually see Jacob intervening on behalf of these children who are being sucked into the foster care system at a rate that reflects the fact that more money is made for these kids at risk and on the reservations than Anglo kids. So you kind of go, oh, well, he's got hair up his ass about this. I mean, this matters to him. him and it ended that episode ended so brilliantly with a combination of Walt confronting the villain the villainess and saying yeah it's true that I can't

prove in court your word is gonna stand up better than these Indians but when the dog soldier comes for you I'll be a 20-minute car ride away and I'll get here as soon as I can and he he slowed down, and Rob Taylor started slowing down, and he was referring to his own kind of walkabout moments. And you saw this arrogant, nasty woman give in to her fear. It was just so brilliant. And they're playing that song, Sail, with the massive rhythmic smashing drum. And then they go up in the sky

and come back down to Jacob smashing the stake in the ground and observing the protocols of the dog soldiers, the ritualized honoring of these Cheyenne warriors who staked themselves to the ground in the rear guard at the end of a battle to give the Klan a chance to get away while they fought to the death, literally staked to the ground. So, okay, what's that about is the question.

And instantly you start thinking about what those people meant in the history of the grand drama of genocide against the indigenous. And history, in my estimation, has been profoundly kind to the dog soldiers. These guys said to the elders among their own people, these treaties are useless. These treaties are worth nothing. They will never be observed. And the elders persisted in pursuing the treaties. The animosity between those two factions got so bad that the dog soldiers, the dog soldier clan was cut out of the tribe and sent away, was literally banished,

as a result of which, when the cholera came, they survived because they weren't around. But history has been very kind to them. I mean, their observations were particularly true. So I thought, okay, so Jacob, he's observing that in the present tense. So what does that say about him? It says that he's a soldier fighting a war that was joined before he existed. So to me, a person who's willing to observe, to honor men like that is immediately in my value system worthy of respect. So I found a tremendous amount of respect for him, all his rudeness aside, his arrogance, his sense of his own strength, all of that stuff.

I mean, I just think that he's a soldier, and I just respected him profoundly from the get-go. Fantastic. Yeah. Can you also take the listeners behind the scenes a little bit as far as playing a character like that over several seasons, and how do you see the character evolve? What's it like to be that person and then watch yourself as your character change and grow over seasons,

and then how do you as an actor deal with that how what's the process of working through that character after six years I believe or six seasons of it yeah like how how does that work I you know for those of us who never I have terrible stage fright I'm never going to be an actor how does how does that work I put myself on camera a little bit but trust me it's not my default position yeah so how does that work well there's a there was a tremendous sense of nourishment going in both directions the first thing that happened was that the show was a hit boom right out of the box right and in my career uh usually what what you're talking about with a new series is there's a certain number you need to hit to gain traction. And in my history, usually the things I'm involved with have sort of landed a little below that number,

and then the struggle is joined, will we survive? Right. And I think due to the fact that Katie Sackhoff and Lou Diamond Phillips had such robust followings and the fact that social media had already like gotten a toehold you know they brought people with them and suddenly the number that we needed to hit was doubled basically and you go oh this is actually people like this right so that was the first thing wow this has landed that was like a incredibly um giddy energizing idea and then because of that episode the dog soldier Greer Shepard who was running the show called me at home actually and said okay just so you know uh it was likely your

character wasn't going to go too much beyond the first season, if at all, because we thought he was going to be holding the dark bag and just be disposable and needed to be punished. But something happened in this Dog Soldier episode, and we're seriously considering having him not go away. And I leapt off the phone. I jumped off the phone as quick as I could because I didn't want her to know how desperately important that was to me I wanted to keep a little of my you know dignity in my professional yeah yeah yeah what you know whatever you think but I mean that so

okay that could happen and then uh the show found its legs. The show got better. And the audience starts to talk. And you actually start to understand that your presence in the industry, in my case, is undergoing a change that's important. And people started saying repeatedly nice things to me. And my confidence grew. I saw that across the board with everyone in the cast. Wow.

Everyone, and I saw it among the writers, everyone's confidence grew, as you would expect, when people approve and are very vocal about it. Yeah they definitely were not shy. So all in and so suddenly you know you think well wow okay I guess I guess I am doing okay and it makes you a little bit braver and it starts to cascade and everyone basically I was feeling so much the strength of feeding off of the approval we were getting. And, of course, the company was vetted. I've been hearing about Greer Shepard assembling groups of people to do shows that are so sorted out emotionally.

And you think, that's an odd thing to hear about someone in L.A. Years before I ever got a job with her. And sure enough, you look at the Longmire group, down to the people serving food on the set. People were sorted out. Robert Taylor is as non-diva, a star of a show, as you could dream of. You certainly get that feeling when you watch it. You get the feeling.

So there's just this group of people that are totally devoted to each other's backs, and there's no sense of anybody trying to, like, spoil it or, like, pull my light out of your light. Sure. It just was a perfect storm of good aspects that allowed everyone to flourish on a level that, I think for most of us, it was the best work of our careers. So that atmosphere clearly allowed you to take more chances or continue with that character and push it a little further as you obviously then became the primary rival for Walt Longmire you two guys butted heads in just about every scene right right that was in there so

well just just to ask it plainly what was the best part about playing Jacob and and maybe as a kind of a part b how fun were those rivalry scenes when you would get to go up against Walt and particularly when you were right he certainly falsely accuses you several, so you got to come out on the winning end of that and kind of shove it back in his face a little bit. Yeah, I want to give Lou Diamond Phillips some props. On so many levels, he helped me. I showed up in town in that first scene where I had to run the table on Walt.

I'm thinking, boy, I need to brush up on my billiards. And he goes, hey, man, I know the pool hall. Come with me. And he took me into town to this place, and we played pool all night, and he fended off the adoring fans and stuff. He goes, hey, man, I know the pool hall. Come with me. And he took me into town to this place, and we played pool all night. And he fended off the adoring fans and stuff. And, you know, helped me kind of, you know, get my thing.

He said, this is the cool gym to go to. This is the restaurant you need to hit. You know, he showed me the ropes. He'd only been there, like, I guess he'd just been there for the pilot. But basically, he, like, got me set up. pilot but he but basically he like got me set up and then Craig asked him to read the introduction to one of his books about probably three or four years ago in town and Craig was on a tour for his book and Lou had agreed to read the the introduction of the book and I was doing a scene with Lou in Jacob's house that that day and he said why don't you come to the book signing? And, you know, we'll sign books afterwards and meet the fans and stuff. And I said, okay,

well, would that be cool? He goes, yeah, you should do it for sure. So I have to work a scene after Lou does. So by the time I get off work, I drive into town and he's on the stage, you know, holding forth with great elegance and he works me into the narrative within 10 seconds of me in the room he's like said and the actor who plays jacob ninehorse just walked in the back of the room and he goes back and people all turn and look and oh they're so happy to see me great afternoon meeting the fans signing the books just feeling like sort of part of the inner circle and then he says to Craig so we should take a after dinner tonight right so yeah let's so Craig takes me out to this really cool restaurant and suddenly I'm thinking oh I hear that Rob just got called and and Cassidy and Adam and so they may be coming too because it's right now it's just Lou and me and uh and Craig and Judy and so so all of a sudden uh Rob

shows up and I had imagined Rob is probably to sit at the head of the table. So I'm going to sit next to that seat. So if I get a chance now, I can actually talk to Rob. Right. On the set, there's so rarely time. Sure. So he comes in, orders a beer. I ordered the same beer as him.

When he gets another one, I get another one. I'm trying to keep up. And we got to sit there for two hours and talk about what we're going through and our history as actors and literally break onto a new level of friendship between us. And suddenly on camera, between Jacob and Walt, there's the possibility of them, just a little bit of a smile going on. It's like, I know you know I know, but I know you know I know. It's just this wonderful thing that opened up between us,

because just having the time to actually let our hair down together off screen, which Lou Diamond Phillips facilitated. Fantastic. And then since then, we've become really, really good friends. And as the friendship has grown the word grew and but i'll just say at the beginning in the in the dog soldier episode episode five i'm in his office jacobson walt's office haranguing him that these were white kids you'd be moving heaven and earth but these these Indians you know the the your government is like punishing us profiting off of our misery at the beginning and Jacob is typically rude and Walt is like you

know keeping it our at our arm's length and then suddenly there's a moment where you where Walt decides to actually entertain the possibility that Night Horse is telling the truth. And something literally changed in his eyes. I mean, I'm 18 inches from the guy's face. And I saw a different texture come into his eyes. Literally, like a different level of moisture in his eyes. And I'm thinking, oh, that's how good this guy is. That's how good he is. It's interesting how an off-screen friendship

can help color the scenes, even when you're primarily rivals. Yes. I think that's how good he is. It's interesting how an off-screen friendship can help color the scenes, even when you're primarily rivals. Yes. I think that's a really interesting concept. Yeah, it was wonderful. And I think we both came to agree that at some point in time, they would have to recognize, even though they never said it, they would have to recognize the similarities in their basic approach to things. Yeah, in their core, they really have more in common than they have differences. Absolutely. Basically, they obviously go about things in a different way,

but there is a core there that's very similar to those two guys. And I loved, I took such pleasure in having the fans go from going, saying, oh, I hate your character. What a great bad guy you are and stuff. And I thought, well, yeah. And I would direct a lot of people. You know, spend 10 minutes. Go to Wikipedia.

Punch in dog soldiers. Just spend 10 minutes. And, you know, you can sort of see people go, oh, okay, well, yeah, okay. And the thing was that when they would start to say, yeah, but he just cheats, he lies, he does, he breaks the law. I said, okay, let's look at Walt breaking into his girlfriend's office, who's a doctor, and stealing the medical records out of her filing cabinet

and faking his own unconsciousness. I mean, how many doors did he knock down without having a warrant? Don't tell me that they aren't both doing whatever they can to get to what they perceive to be the worthy goal. Yeah, and that's kind of where we're going with the complexity of it earlier, that Jacob might not necessarily take what people might consider to be the right path or the good path, for lack of a better description, but his intentions are generally good. I sincerely believe that he sincerely wants to help his people. So he might go about it in ways that people don't necessarily like,

but if you look close enough, you can see the underlying credibility within Jacob and the good intentions in there. I thought that was the good part of the complexity, that you could show both sides of that in the same person without making one side super obvious. You're not signaling big flashing lights on it when you're doing something good. I think it's great that you can put both of those together. And to give them credit, because at the end of the day, it's about the writing.

I literally started to become, it was very clear to me, okay, this episode we've inflected him in a way that makes you think okay he's he's actually someone of a good heart he's his motives are pure and literally the very next time we'd see him the inflection would be reverted and you'd see them go oh look at what an he's being you know he's like you know look how could he talk right and you know and look at this thing behind the scenes this looks like he's the guy pulling this string. Yeah. He's probably what I originally thought he was.

And then the next week they would inflect it back into, yeah, but look, he seems like he really. Yes. There's definitely a possibility where he doesn't know what's going on back there. Yeah. He could be innocent. Yeah. They were brilliant. It just, I mean, they literally, it was like an He could be innocent. Yeah, exactly. They were brilliant. It just, I mean, they literally,

it was like an oscillation. Yeah, that's great. It keeps fans enticed. It keeps them watching for sure. So I'll just, we'll wrap up with two more quick ones. So you've kind of touched on this as we've been talking, but how have you seen, or what was it like from the inside

to watch the popularity of the show grow, even though it started at a very high point, to watch it grow and to see how it resonated with fans. What's that like for an actor who's in it and living and breathing it every day on the set, putting those hours into production, then to see the reaction? Well, it's wonderful. And I mean, there really is a sense of community around the show that's got teeth. I mean, it's got texture. I have friends now in my life because of the show that I otherwise would never have met. A lot of them I met online, but because Longmire Days

allows people to gather in the flesh, I mean, literally friends, you know, friends that matter to me. So that's been incredible. And, of course, the people can rightfully take credit for having saved the show. It's one of those magical stories where the audience was so ardent that their wishes generated a profound sense of mission on behalf of the producers to go pitch it.

And Netflix was aware because Netflix was showing the reruns from A&E right so Netflix knew what was going on and you know stepped up yeah and then that opened it up to become much more like a cinematic and yeah you know and then they went they wanted to take it out to the reserve so that was a magical part of it and I think um you know it's just one of the elements like this in our culture. But I went out to Standing Rock, and the show means so much to so many indigenous people. It's not just the only thing that does in modern entertainment, but it has an honored place among indigenous people because of the way that you have like these it's

not just the there's the Indian there's like four or five characters who are distinctly operating in lives that are that seem grounded in reality and they each have distinct goals and are doing going about going about their jobs and decent in different ways and reflecting on on the humanity of a multitude of indigenous characters. Those are just the ones that appear regularly and have all these guest actors coming in and telling stories. So it meant so much to so many people that have been so long underrepresented in the storytelling in the country.

And that, there's not much in my life that has meant more to me than that. That sounds like an incredible experience. Yeah. For sure. Craig mentioned very briefly that when he's gone up to the reservation, the Northern Cheyenne Reservation, there are now people who claim they are the basis for characters in the books. It's so popular that there are obviously friends of his up there

who he's worked in little character traits into characters in the books but now it's populated the rest of the population up there where there are some people say oh yeah I'm the basis for that character and they're really not but yeah you can trade on that yeah it's a fun thing yeah it's great so I think that that's a great level of popularity there so the last thing I want to wrap up with is what do you have coming up next where can the fans the legions of fans are out there of longmire find you in your next uh i i i'm i'm doing an arc on queen of the south in fact the season three debuted last night uh the 21st of june um and i'm uh i'm in episode four and then i'm in a couple more before the season's over and it's a really And it's a really different experience.

I'm playing, I don't want to give too much away, but I'm playing, I mean, if we want to find a bad guy, this is a bad guy. And he's such a bad guy that I only could agree to play him if I could be assured that he would be he would get his just desserts okay and he does but that's a wonderful show Alice Braga the the great actor who's the lead of that is a extraordinary talent and that's a real special show Queen of the South it's on USA I was gonna say yeah USA okay yeah

and the first two seasons are streaming on all the usual platforms. Right, yeah, that's one of the great inventions of television nowadays, that if you happen to miss it on TV and you don't have a DVR or something like that, pretty soon they're going to land on one of those streaming platforms. It's true. You can eat it up real quick. I mean, it's so magical.

I mean, I was, Zomna Klarnan, who plays Matthias in Longmire, was Hansi Dent in Fargo on The Sun. Incredible. And he's been in season two of Westworld. Right, right. And I'm two episodes away from encountering his episode eight,

which has been reviewed by the New York Times as like possibly, well certainly the best episode of that show ever. When you think about that, where they actually took that actor and that character and all the implications of that and decided to spend the entire episode focusing on him. And he delivered by all accounts gloriously. I'm not up to it yet either, but I have seen kind of the same headlines. I started seeing things on social media, and I thought, oh, God, I've got to stay away. I know, I know.

But there's something there. I wouldn't allow myself to get too deep into it, but I saw little enticements right there that something is coming that I definitely need to pay attention to. Right, when you start hearing you start reading like literally Dozens of people consecutive saying humbah have broke them down into tears something in the okay. That's okay be something to watch I got to lock myself away for that one, too. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's gonna be different. Yeah Yeah, and again, you know is on you know a tremendous challenge and tremendous man a tremendous man who who basically?

challenge and tremendous man a tremendous man who who basically found started finding something on another level in himself doing long where I think right like just like I did well you guys did really turn out to have kind of an all-star cast there in crew that the show is obviously written like I said before resonated with fans and will continue to do so it's clearly the impact of it in the legacy is not going away anytime soon. So we all thank you very much for the show and for the impact and the fun that we've had watching it. And I thank you for being on this show. My pleasure.

Appreciate it. Thanks for listening. Now, as always, if you like the show, please give it a rating and a review on iTunes. Those things help make the show more visible to new listeners as they're browsing through all the different podcasts out there. You can find us on the web at oldwestpodcast.com and on our Facebook page, Legends of the Old West Podcast.

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