The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe - 269: Nick Searcy—Chuck Really Wants Me to be Friends with Nick Searcy

Episode Date: September 20, 2022

For half a dozen years Chuck has been trying to introduce Mike to Peabody Award winning actor, Nick Searcy who is best known for playing Chief Deputy U.S. Marshall Art Mullen on the FX series Justified, one of Mike's favorite shows.  They discuss Nick's career, why he made a movie about 1/6/21, and how he met President Bill Clinton at the White House.   

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With episode number 269, this one is called Chuck really wants me to be friends with Nick Searcy, because you do, don't you? I made it into the title. That's it. We had other titles. I wanted to go with Nick Searcy as justified, but hey, my name's in the title. This is a big day for me. That's 100% truthful. I met Nick Searcy. From the minute I did, I was like, oh, this is Mike's kind of guy. He's a funny guy, an interesting guy, and you're both very talented. Tell people who Nick Searcy is for people who don't know who Nick Searcy is. I mean, I certainly know who he is. I've been a fan of his for many, many years, but there's some people who might not know him. Nick Searcy is a fantastic character actor, been in a million things. I believe he said his first film was Days of Thunder, where he had a scene with Tom Cruise and Robert Duvall. Right.

And his big break, he said, was fried green tomatoes, where he got hired locally in North Carolina. He was in New York. That's where he met his wife. They moved back to North Carolina to raise kids. And he got hired locally for fried green tomatoes. And they bumped him up to a big part. He was like the bad guy in that. Yeah, he was the heavy, Frank.

He also was in three billboards outside of Ebbing, Missouri, I think it is. I think I'm getting that right. The shape of water. He's done a million different things. But, but, but about, I don't know how many years ago, you said to me, Chuck, you ever seen Justified? And I'm like, no. And Nick Searcy gets second billing with Timothy O'Elefant in Justified, which was an FX series

in 2010 to 2016, six seasons. I just finished last night, season six. Was that right? You were so right, dude. I loved it from the Git. This show, I love the show. Maybe this is a little indulgent, but Chuck and Nick run into each other, apropos of nothing. Chuck asks me if I've ever met Nick.

And I say, well, I've never met him, but he's doing amazing work in this thing called Justified. And you said you had never heard of Justified. So you've seen Justified and now I've met Nick. And you're right. I think he's never mind a talented actor. Obviously he is. He's also a producer, a very brave producer who's taking some extraordinary chances in

these divided times in which we live. Full disclosure, Nick is what a lot of people would call a lightning rod. He was at the Capitol on January 6th with about two million other people. He watched what happened. He didn't go there to make a movie, but there was a lot of footage gathered. And when he learned what happened later that day and saw the violence on TV, well, he thought, you know, maybe there's a different sort of story to tell. How he put this movie together, and what he did to get it on, get it out there, and the resistance he's met along the way. I think all of that is interesting.

And I was really curious to know how he was doing in the wake of that and whether or not he regretted doing it. Dude, he broke some eggs with this one for sure. Yeah, he absolutely did. But I think he's, if you'll pardon the pun, justified in his questioning of how things were handled or how things are still being handled today in the way. of those events, but it's worth a look, this movie for sure.

I didn't know we were going to go there, folks. I'm not going to say this is a controversial episode in any way, but we do talk candidly about that event, and a lot of people have very strong feelings on both sides, and some of that comes out as well. I should mention that the horrible acoustics you're experiencing right now are the result of my hotel room here in San Antonio, Texas, where I've been for the last 24 hours.

Chuck, ask me what I did this morning. What'd you do this morning? It's a great question. I talked to 3,000 members of the National Association of Auto Glass Manufacturers to bear witness to their tinting and I think they'd call it a tip-off competition. I had no idea what any of this meant, but they invited me and they were awesome. So I talked to them for a couple of hours, came back to my room, and went through the Mishogosh that nobody wants to hear about.

But it's been like a black cloud over this episode for the last few days with all the technical problems and snafus and getting everything finally set up at it. But it came together for me in Texas with a guy who you insist I should be friends with. It's one of the weirder episodes, but I'm glad you brought it to me. Well, it was like a year and a half in the making because I tossed him out here a year and a half ago and nothing worked. It didn't come together until today, and it almost didn't come together. Actually, this is our second attempt, isn't it? Because we tried at least. Earlier, and it didn't work. And finally, we got the technology running. And by the way, thanks to

the people at the St. Anthony for getting your Wi-Fi up. They made it work. They got the Wi-Fi up and running. Or maybe we should be cursing them, because as you'll soon hear, the conversation we're about to have could very well destroy everyone's career. I hope not. I don't think it'll happen. But if it does, Chuck, at least you can say, you got your name and the title of our last podcast. Episode 269, Chuck really wants me to be friends with Nick Searcy.

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You can switch in as little as 10 minutes at puretalk.com slash row. Pure talk. I mean, what are the odds, guys, seriously? I mean, if you had to put money on it, Chuck, What's the over under on this thing actually working at this point? Oh, it's slim to very slim. Just based upon the history, it took, I don't know how long to get here.

When did I first talk to you about this, Nick? I think it was probably 1998. I believe somewhere around in there. I remember Prince's, you know, well, party legs in 1999 was just, you know, people were gearing up for that. Right, right. Well, the way I remember it, you mentioned that you had, lunch, Chuck, with this guy, Nick Searcy. You said, do you know who he is? I'm like, do I know who he is? I've been watching Justified with extreme prejudice. I've been taping it and watching some episodes

twice. Nick Searcy is Art Mullin. He's in the midst of one of the greatest performances I've ever seen. And you said, Justified. What the hell's justified? I'm like, why don't you ask your friend Nick Searcy? He goes, well, I'm just saying that I think you and Nick would be great friends if you ever got to meet. well, as his friend, you should take a minute and watch the best work the man's ever done, you know, like a friend would do. Yeah, exactly. What took you so long, Chuck? Let me just tell you, I saw the last episode last night.

So honestly, this has all been a ruse, guys, putting off the recording of the podcast just so that I could get through all of those episodes. It's six seasons, by the way, 13 episodes a season. Yeah, I don't want to run through your whole. resume because it's long and glorious and it's full of all kinds of great things. But are we overstating it? Is it fair to say that justified was special in ways that so much of what we all do in this business isn't? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it was very special to me. I knew Graham Yos, the showrunner before. I'd worked with them on from the earth of the moon long time ago back in

1998. And for 15 years, I had been writing him going, I thought we were friends. I thought you liked me. You're doing all this great stuff. And so finally, when Justified came around, he said, okay, I've got to put Nick Searcy in this, so he'll shut up. And so it was kind of like going to work with friends from the beginning. And also they gave us on that show, the writing was really good. But they also gave us a lot of leeway. They would send the writers to the set and let them work with us

in case we had an idea or something that we wanted to add. And so that character for me was based on my father. It was like Art Mullen has the same sense of humor that my dad has. He's the same kind of boss that my dad was. And so for me personally, it was just like it was a love letter to my father. So it's definitely means probably more to me than any other role, although they all met a lot because, you know, I had to get paid. Well, it explains a lot because Chuck and I have had a version of this conversation a lot of different times.

But for the shows that I watch that I truly love and the ones that seem to hit a cord that surprises me, it's always been my belief that it's impossible to script that. I mean, the writing is awfully important. But there's something that happens with certain casts that's just greater than the sum of it parts. You know, I guess maybe it's lightning in a bottle. But when did you think you would sort of Forrest Gump to your way into something that was actually going to leave that kind of impression? on that many people. I don't know if you ever really know that.

I mean, I think in the first season, you know, when you're working things out, there was some tension there because Oliphant and I liked to improvise and we just sort of fooled around and there was some, you know, Oliphant was kind of in that first season. He was kind of angling to become more of a producer, have more to do with the creation of the product. So there was some tension there. But by the end of that first season, when we kind of had gotten our rhythm and we knew we were picked up for the next season. I think it's at that point that we really started going,

that we really started being freer with the material and being more true to our ideas about the characters. And really, it was kind of like we were participants in the creation of the series all the way through. I don't remember exactly what season it was, but I think it was season four, but there was an episode where I just punched Raylan in the face. We were sitting in a bar. Yeah. And he had done something so horrible for like the uptaint. time. And we were sitting there. They had written this whole scene. And Tim Oliphant and I were sitting and talking about it. And he's like, well, I don't know about this scene. What would you do? I said, I think I'd just punch you in the mouth. And he said, that's a great idea. And we went to the

writers and he goes, let's just cut all this dialogue and let Art just hit me in the mouth. And they went for it. It's a really great moment. You know, it's just like everybody loves that moment because it's like he just at the end of his rope, exasperated, and that's, you know, he needed a punch in the mouth. And that was a... But that's the kind of thing. It's like by the time we got into the second, third seasons, and the writers were comfortable with us kind of taking their words

and changing them a little bit. You know, they weren't so precious about it because they saw that what we were doing was good. One more thing. In the first season, when there were a couple of articles written about the great dialogue between race, Palin and Art Mullen, and they quoted some of the dialogue. And in both cases, it was like something that I'd made up that I'd thrown in there.

And I kept going to Graham going, you need to, you know, pay me as a writer too. I'm helping you guys out. We're going to need a bigger boat, right? Totally unscripted. All the good ones are unscripted. Yeah. Maybe not all of them. We've said writers so far like 15 times, and we're barely three minutes into this thing.

But I think it makes sense because, Chuck, I don't know how much Elmore Leonard you've read, but his books are so unique, whether it's, you know, get shorty or, I mean, just go down the list of them. But what was it like, Nick, for the writers to know that they were trying to capture the voice of one of the greatest writers to ever publish fiction? They were very faithful to the material. In fact, in the first two, three seasons, until Elmore Leonard died, he was. actually sending them unpublished materials of the Raylan book that he was working on and some other stuff that he was working on. And they would basically do what, you know, what Graham used to call strip it for parts. They would just go through Elmore's writing and just say, we need this section and we're going to use this storyline and this and that and the other. So they were always

very faithful to Elmore's writing. And they also had, Elmore had 10 lessons for writing or 10 rules for writing well, and they had those up in the writer's room. And I used to, I was just looking for that. I used to have that around here somewhere. Google it, Chuck, right now, you can find it because I think, I mean, I love those rules, Nick. I think the first one was like, never start with the weather. Exactly. You know, nobody cares about the weather. Like really simple cues, too. Like never use any substitute for said. You know, blah, blah, blah. blah, blah, blah, blah, he said. Not he invoked, not he intoned.

He insisted. He insisted, right. And, like, you know, his war on adverbs was so great. And full disclosure, when I read that justified was going to be a thing, I was nervous because I just couldn't believe Hollywood was going to be able to get Leonard right. That wasn't fair. I mean, obviously, there have been some great adaptations before, but you just crushed it, man. It was just so daggone good. but I couldn't believe I was coming home every night, turning on FX,

and watching you guys do some of the best work I'd ever seen on television. Not to suck up, but really it was that significant for me. Thank you. It really was for a lot of people. And still to the day, I mean, I was driving through Oklahoma not long ago. I was going to do a little project up in the northern part of the state, and I get pulled over on I 40. I'm coming across I 40, and I go, I'm not doing it.

Why does he pull me over? So this young police officer comes up to the window, and I go, he said, could I see your license, sir? And I said, yeah. And I had a big full beard at that time. I was in the terror on the prairie look. And I said, what was I doing? He said, well, you're doing 76 and a 70. I'm like, really?

Okay. That's a thing? That's a thing. And he said, and you kind of, you know, you went over the middle line without signaling. I'm going, well, there's nobody there. So, okay. Well, and he says, come on back. Could you step to the back of the vehicle with me?

Okay, I guess he's going to give me a ticket, you know. So I walk back there and I'm sort of, all right, you know, go ahead. Give me your ticket. And he goes, what are you doing in Oklahoma? And I said, I'm working on a project up there. It's a little film project I'm doing. He goes, what do you do in the film? I go, I'm an actor.

And he goes, is there anything that I might have seen you in? And he said, well, I don't know. It depends on what you watch. You know, there was a show on FX called Justified. He said, I watch that show. And he looks at me and he goes, are you chief deputy art Mullen? Yes. And he goes, oh, my God, I got to FaceTime my wife.

You know, he gets his wife on FaceTime. You got to let him go, she says. So, yeah, he let me go. But still, the show is resonating with people. I mean, he just watched it, you know, this year. It's like, it's still, people are still watching it. It's been off the air for seven years. I just finished it last night.

Honestly, I mean, I was all in from the get. Even just the pilot episode, the first scene where they, in Florida, I'm like, oh, man. It's a great first scene, yeah. It's one of the best first scenes in TV. Yeah. And the whole pilot was good. It was like everything was set and the characters are so well developed. Gosh, it was so funny.

You know, the minute I saw Ava, I was like, this says a lot more about me. I'm always going like, why is he? worried about his ex-wife, man. Ava is the shit. Right. You know, and she is troubled, man. She is troubled, but that's another story. Well, enough sucking up.

I don't think we should stop. I think we should keep going. I don't get this that often. I've been married for 36 years. I don't get this at home. Come on. And Leslie is in season five. Two episodes, right?

That's right. I think, yeah. My real wife. Why do you guys know each other? Somebody just please explain why you two are friends. How did this happen? We had mutual friends, right? Yeah, I think I had seen you at events around town and stuff, but our mutual friend, Loy, came to town from Kansas City.

He was wandering the halls of William Morris with his suitcase, and I said, how long are you in town for? And he said, I don't know, like a week or something. I said, well, where are you staying? He goes, I'm not really sure. Maybe at my friend Nick's house, but it might not work out. Right. I think Leslie was pissed off at him or something. Yeah.

It's actually Leslie's house. point of clarification. And so I said, well, I got an extra room. This room actually is where he stayed. And so he stayed. He said, my friend Nick's going to come over. Is that okay? I'm like, sure.

And you showed up with a bottle of wine and you sit down on my couch with a giant Churchill. You put it in your mouth and you go, is it hard if I like this here? Can I smoke this here? And I'm like, no. No, you can't smoke a cigar in my living room. He's like, well, why not? Where can I go? I'm like, well, you got a balcony? I'm like, not a great one. He's like, well, let's go to my house. And we wound up sitting in that room that you're in till like, I don't know, four in the morning or something.

That's right. Drinking wine, singing songs, smoking cigars. It was great. You really walk the line, Nick. I mean, as a gentleman, you asked if you could light it. But you didn't hesitate to pull this thing out and just, I mean, you really put him in a position there. I mean, a lot of dudes would wait, you know, I don't know, an hour a week. He's a single man. I just figured he lived like single men lived, you know. Oh, good. All right.

So you guys become friends. And at that point, Chuck starts saying, you got to meet Nick. And that's when I start saying, you got to watch Justified. And so it's finally all come together into this thing. So why, Chuck? Why do I have to meet Nick? Why do you think Nick and I are going to be friends for what's left of the rest of? of our lives.

I think because you guys both have a sensible sort of blue-collar air about you. You're both very talented people. You have wicked senses of humor, both of you. Yes. And I just know you guys are going to get along. If we were in Nick's, you know, he-man woman haters club above his garage right now, drinking whiskey and spunk and cigar. Yeah. Yeah.

The He-Man Woman Haters Club, really? Isn't that from the Little Rascals? It is. Yes. It started because Leslie and I discovered early on in our marriage that I needed a place that was just mine, that I could hang all the pictures of myself in it and smoke a cigar if I wanted to do and that sort of thing. Because she didn't want those pictures in the house. So we've always had this thing, even no matter where we live, there was always like a room off the garage or something.

And so when my little girl was little, I had. I told her, you know, I wanted her to make me a sign for my room. And she, you know, wanted to say, He Man Woman Haters Club. And she made this sign when she's like four. It was just perfect. It looked exactly like the little rascals. And I put it up on the window. And then she asked Leslie to explain it to her.

And she said, you know, it's from the little rascals. And it means, you know, this is for men only. And women aren't welcome. And my daughter goes, well, Mom, I wouldn't have made it if I'd known it was a joke on you. So it's always been the he-man woman nature. Before we dive in to the differences that up until very recently, I was assured, it exists between men and women. Go back for a second.

Apparently we do have something in common, and it is a little weird, and I'm not really sure it's entirely flattering, but I have a room full of pictures of myself, too. That's where all my, crappy little trophies go, and that's normally where I'm sitting when I do this podcast. You know, I'm here in the middle of Texas at the moment. But why is it okay for men at our point in life? And I assume we're probably, what are you, 62, something like that?

Yeah, something like that. Clu-in. I'm right behind you. Make it okay for the average listener to understand why we would surround ourselves in just one room with all of the trappings of our quasi success. Well, in my case, it's because my wife doesn't want it in any other room, so I have to put it in one room. You know, in a sense, it's like we're mounting heads on the wall,

the things that we killed. We're a hunter-gatherers, you know, and so it's like, I did this. I was hoping to God you would say that. That's exactly what it is. Yeah. Yeah, we're just like hanging it up and going, look, I did that, and look, I did that. and look, I did this, and I killed that thing when I was in whatever.

You know, it's like, they're just trophies. They're just like, I went out in the world and I did something, and now I have this momento. That's it. What if there actually were also reminders? Like, what if, see, along with all this other crap I have in this one room in the house, I also have a drawer full of, like, very old tax returns and bills and invoices that I sent out for jobs and I keep them because I'm afraid I'm going to forget all the stuff I did,

you know, 25, 30 years ago for money because I did a lot of weird things for money and I'm guessing you probably did too. Oh yeah. I don't want to forget. I don't necessarily want to remember, but I just don't want to forget either. I have that same impulse, you know, although Leslie's made me throw a lot of that stuff away, but I do know exactly what you mean because it took me until I was was 31 or 32 before I ever made a living as an actor. So I did a lot of stuff before that, a lot of jobs. A lot of, when I see your show, dirty jobs, I was like, yeah, I've done some of that stuff, you know.

You don't want to lose that because that keeps you grounded. That keeps you reminding you that that's really who you are and where you came from. And it keeps me from not getting all puffed up knowing that I used to have to do legal proofreading for a living, you know. Oh, yeah. Look, for me, it's like, it's QVC. Yeah. When I realized that there were videotapes on YouTube of me selling collectible dolls at 2 o'clock in the morning, I was mortified, you know, because I had not only pushed it out of my mind, I'd gone out of my way for a few years. I just scrubbed it off my resume. It's the thing that never happened. Right. And then all of a sudden, it's like, there you are. Somebody post hundreds of tapes. And so you can't outrun your past. You might as well embrace. price it. What was your QVC? You said you were 32 before things really started to come together?

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American meat delivered. If you could eat a steer, if you could eat a cow, don't take a chance on a foreign ranch. Get good ranchers now. Hey-haw! Oh, yeah, constantly. I mean, all during my 20s, I moved to New York to try to be an actor after college, which I think in retrospect was a mistake. I should have just skipped college and gone straight into trying to act. But I moved to New York and was there for seven years and doing plays off Broadway and doing nothing sometimes.

And, I mean, it was a tough seven years. I met my wife, Leslie and I were in a play together and that's how we met. But there are a lot of times during that period where I was like, the head. with it. This is not working out. I'm not making any money. Nobody thinks I'm any good. I'm just going to go back and be an English professor or something. And so in 1989, when Leslie got pregnant, somehow, we moved back to North Carolina. And we just decided, at that point in 1989, I had decided, okay, I'm going to give this until I'm 33. The reason I had 33 in my head is because Jack Nicholson did Easy Rider when he was 33.

And the other thing I had in my head was Jesus. Jesus only made it to 33. So I figured if I don't get something going before I get older than Jesus, I'm going to give this up, right? And so when we moved back to North Carolina, I got a little agent in North Carolina and just started auditioning for small parts because back then the movies were coming to North Carolina.

So the first little part I got was a Days of Thunder. I did a little part in Days of Thunder, one scene with Robert DeVall and Tom Cruise, you know, crazy. Not bad. And then a few other little things. Yeah, not bad. Not a bad debut at all. I was Highway Patrolman number one, you know. But, you know, I did a bunch of little parts in North Carolina because I was kind of the big fish from New York, New York experience or whatever.

And then I wound up reading for a small part in fried green tomatoes. And the director, John Avnet, he said, out of the blue, he said, I want to read this guy for Frank, which turned out to be the main bad guy. Wound up getting that role. It was a long ordeal. I had to audition for it like seven times. I wound up getting that part. And that kind of gave me enough of a profile that I could get an agent. And we moved out to L.A. right after that.

And I never had to work in a restaurant again after that. That's got to be a culture shock. It was a relatively small town, I'm guessing, in Carolina? Yeah, Calahui, North Carolina, a little bitty town. But it was a university town. There's a university called Western Carolina University there. And so growing up, I did a lot of plays that were at the university. It's kind of how I got into acting.

I did a play at the university when I was in the fifth or sixth grade. What play? It was called Coming Through the Rye by William Soroyan. And it was about people waking up in purgatory, you know, after they'd been killed. And so they were all the age that they were when they died. And so I was like a 12-year-old boy that had been in a car accident. And it was a nice little play. It was really fun.

Comedy? No. Well, there were some laughs in it, but no, it was sort of a dromedy, I guess you'd say. It was kind of sad. Do you still do any stage stuff of late? I just in the last few years I did a play called Billy and Ray at the Laguna Playhouse in Laguna Nigel, which is a great place to do a play. That was 2017. And then in 2019, I did a play at the Geffen Playhouse called The Legend of Georgia McBride, which was a show about an Elvis impersonator who learns how to be a drag queen.

It was a really fun play. It was great. But I did that for, I guess, eight weeks. And I still love the stage. It's always a pleasure when I get to do it. It doesn't come up that often. The joke about doing stage is that you either have to be rich enough that you don't need the money or poor enough that you do. So I'm kind of in the middle.

Well, that sort of begs the next question. I mean, obviously, you're a journeyman as an actor and people who know your career know that. but I don't know how many people know what you've been up to for the last couple of years as you've been producing and you've been, well, you kind of stuck your face in the hornet's nest, Nick. And we can talk as much or as little as you want about this world we're in and this whole period of cancellation and the new levels of risk that anybody with the platform or any kind of public presence is going to have to. confront eventually. I haven't seen anybody do what you've done to the degree that you've done it and still, well, you're still standing. So I guess my first question is talk a little bit about, you know what I mean, whether it's capital punishment, whether it's Gosnell, whether it's these projects have got people, there's critical acclaim on the one hand and there's white hot rage

on the other. And how in the world does a Carolina kid square that? Well, I always talk about how, you know, when I kind of got my career started in North Carolina, there were guys there. We got, you get to know all the people because you're all going to the same auditions and you meet all the other actors or whatever. And there were some guys there that were Democrats and some guys that were Republicans. And it wasn't any big deal. We had conversations and little jabs at each other or whatever. So by the time I got fried green tomatoes and actually moved to Hollywood, I didn't know that I was supposed to keep my mouth shut. I didn't know that I wasn't supposed to tell anybody, you know, because it was like, well, what the hell? We're on different sides. Who cares?

So by the time I figured it out, you know, it was too late and everybody knew. So I figured, well, I'm just got to go forward from here, I guess. At a certain point, I started thinking, okay, what I believe or what I think about things, it's maybe a little bit more important to me now that I'm older and a little more successful and my kids are grown. And I want to talk about the things that I really believe in. So I guess the first big coming out for me was Gossnell. I was approached by the producers and they said,

do you want to direct this? And I said, I read the script and I said, yeah, I want to do this because there's things in it that I believe everybody needs to know. And I sort of went into that project sort of naively thinking, well, you know, this is going to be very even-handed. We're not preaching about anything. We're just taking a true event and we're going to tell it as straightforwardly as possible about what actually happened and let everybody make up their own minds about it. That was my intention going in. And I sort of was taken off guard by the fact that I was trying to be fair and the people looking at it were trying not to be fair.

They were trying to categorize it and basically demonize it and dismiss it. It was a movie about a serial killer, right? It was not, you know, like they wanted to make it about an abortionist. Yeah, it was about a guy who basically killed babies after they were born, which is not really, that's not even abortion. Or didn't used to be. You know, it didn't used to be. It might be now. Words don't always mean what they used to mean, Nick.

Right. That's what I thought going in. We can all agree that this is wrong, right? I mean, you know, this is not, but apparently we can't. After that, it's sort of like, okay, I'm out now and everybody knows it. And I continue to get work from people that I've worked with in the past, and they've known me for a long time, and they know what, that I'm maybe on a different side than they are, but they know me well enough.

And I'm sure there are people in Hollywood that just say, no, not that guy, whenever my name comes up. but, you know, I don't hear about it. They don't call me up and tell me. What about your agent, aside from a gut, just a sense that maybe you're not seeing the parts you were seeing? How much certainty do you have around that? Well, I don't have an agent right now. I have a manager. I have a manager, but speaking to capital punishment, I had an agent for about seven years at a pretty big agency, APA.

And I won't say his name because I don't want to. to publicly humiliate him. But we'd been together for about seven years. And when I made capital punishment and released it, and I was asking, I was talking to my agent right before Christmas, I said, what did you think of the film? And he said, I'm not going to watch it. I said, what? He said, I don't want to watch that. That was an insurrection, and I don't want to see a bunch of propaganda that you've made. And I go, well, it sounds like you don't really want to be my agent, I guess. If you're not even going to watch it, I mean, that's kind of your job.

Yeah, it's kind of your job, isn't it? You know, it was just shocking to me. And I said, well, okay. But that's not untypical in Hollywood. I mean, they just ignore things that might give them a perspective that disagrees with what they think. I said, look, I watch Michael Moore movies. It didn't destroy my brain or anything. You could probably sit through the movie.

Yeah. Well, look, that was my next question, right? Yeah. If Michael Moore can go out and we can quibble about his views, but he made compelling documentaries. Right. People watched. They made money. And that was somehow okay. We weren't so fragile then, it seems, right? I watched capital punishment. First of all, it wasn't super easy to find. Yeah, it's hard to find. It's hard to find. It is hard to find. But just kind of explain to people why you did it. I mean, you were there when it happened.

And if you could, just give me the short strokes because I'm with you. It's going to rankle a lot of people, but there were so many scenes in there. There were so many moments, Nick, where to me, it wasn't about anybody's point of view. It was the evidence demands of verdict. This is footage. That business with Ashley Babbitt, that was extraordinary to watch. You know, you didn't really need to say anything. So if you would, you know, just put some sides on it so people understand exactly what it is and why you did it.

Well, I went to Washington on January 6th. I really kind of, I didn't go there with any big plan. I just sort of went to watch it. I was actually going on my way back to North Carolina to visit my family. And I thought, well, I'll just stop by up there on the way and I'll see what's going on. And my friend Chris was going. And he and I had made a documentary before, the year before, called, America, America, God shed his grace on thee, which was a, it's up on Amazon. If anybody

wants to see it, it's pretty powerful too. But anyway, we didn't go there with the idea of making a film. I just went there just to see it. And I kind of walked around with my iPhone, shot some stuff, made some funny videos. And so did Chris. And he filmed some stuff. And then I left that day without really seeing any of the violence. I happened to be, you know, in the midst of a huge crowd. And I didn't really know that anything had happened. I think it was cold and I went back to my room at about 3.30. And I didn't know any of the violence had happened until I saw it on the news that night. And I was like, wow, that doesn't look like anything that I saw.

They kind of left out all the size of the crowd, how many people that were there. I remember saying to Chris when we got home that night, it's like most of the people there were kind of my age. We're all too old to be out in this cold. You know, it's like... Correct. And so then they started coming. characterizing it as this the most violent thing that ever happened and all this stuff. And so, you know, for a couple of months there, everybody's terrified that went there.

You know, they're starting all these raids and even I was. It's like, and that's another thing that happened to my agent. Like a week after January 6th, I'm in bed on Saturday night in North Carolina. He calls me up at like 9 o'clock on a Saturday night. I'm like, I never hear from you. What's going on? And he said, I just have to ask you one question. Did you go in the building?

I said, no, I didn't go in the building. Why? And he said, well, there's a bunch of casting directors here that claim they have a picture of you, and they've been sending it around to all the other casting directors saying, Nick Searcy is an insurrectionist. Don't ever cast him in anything else. I go, well, who was it? And he told me, and it was an old friend.

It was somebody I'd known for 30 years. I literally just picked up the phone and said, you know, why didn't you just call me? I would have told you, you know, instead of the same. whisper campaign. But anyway, I know this is not the short version, but after a few months went by, and we had this footage, we just sort of, we'd started with this, and we started hearing about people that were being investigated by the FBI. Somebody came to us and said, would you guys be interested in making a movie about what you saw that day and what's happening? And so

that's kind of how it came about. And as we started putting the movie together, the original title of the movie in our heads was called The Trouble with Free Speech because we thought it was a free speech issue that people had the right to go to the Capitol and protest. And then as we talked to more and more people, we've realized that really what the heart of the movie was about, the punishment of the people who went there,

most of whom, the vast majority of whom, 99.5% of whom, never did anything violent or wrong. And they're all being treated the same way. They're all being painted with the same brush. I'll tell you the image and Chuck, you watched it, right? I have, yeah. The first thing that made me go, wait a second, I didn't see that on the news,

was that shot you guys had from the very top where I saw the crowd that I had seen many, many times. It was a good-sized crowd. But then you just keep panning to the right. And all of a sudden, for as far as you, you can see. Yeah. Just a sea of people.

I had never seen that before. And so I thought that was a really wise thing to show just because it sets the stage for some other things that you showed me that I hadn't seen before either and that I was glad to see. It kind of took my breath. It must have been two million people. Yeah, that's the estimates that we had. And I mean, I was there. and it seemed like a lot of people was the biggest crowd I'd ever seen.

But until we found that shot, you know, that was a shot that someone else had given us, that they shot from on top of the scaffolding. And all of the media shots, if you notice, they're always shooting toward the Capitol. They're always showing you the crowd that's right on top of the Capitol. This was looking the other way. And that was the first time I'd seen any shot that looked that way. And when you're in the middle of a crowd like that, you don't have any perspective on how big it is. So, yeah, the first time I saw that shot and when we put it in the movie, I was like, oh, holy shit, I've never seen.

And the media has never shown you that. That's disturbing. They make it seem like it was a few hundred crazy people. And it wasn't. It was two million people. I gasped when I saw it. I did too. I was like, what?

And it just kept going. And I was like, what? Yeah. Now, I mean, to be fair, people on the other side would say, well, you know, look, I mean, are we? saying that those were two million nice people or two million insurrectionists who weren't able to get to the front where they all, I mean, what are people thinking? What are they assuming? That's what worries me? It's like, okay, the evidence demands a verdict, but what do we make of the fact that two million people were there? Who were they, Nick? Well, they were people of all

races and creeds. And like I said before, there were people my age, a lot of them. And most of what was done that day was people waving flags, saying the Pledge of Allegiance, singing hymns together, praying for the country, a awful lot of praying for the country. There were many, many ministers there, some of whom I knew, some of whom I ran into that I had already known. And in that regard, it was a very patriotic crowd that loves this country, the kind of people that pass out pocket constitutions when they walk down the street. You know, it's the, were not armed, crazy, angry people. They were people there. I mean, literally, from what I saw, the experience I had that day, it was like a church supper in so many ways until later in the

day. And when you find out more and more evidence is coming out that when the violent stuff started happening, the instigators of that were not necessarily all those nice, older people singing hymns that I saw earlier in the day. And we have footage in our film of people changing out, putting on their Trump gear over their black clothing. We have footage of people that are known, identified Antifa people, activists who've been arrested before for other incidents that were inside the Capitol that day,

bragging about how they had gotten people to come in. So I don't say this to exonerate everybody that was in Washington on January 6th. But I'd just say this because there is a level to this story that if they were honestly trying to tell you the truth about it, they would confront these facts and investigate them. But instead, what they do is they suppress these facts and they don't want anybody to think about them. And that should give everyone pause. It's like if they don't want you to know this, why don't they? And I think what a lot of people wind up saying is, well, if the next.

effect of your film is to somehow minimize or insomolen the actual breaking and entry that occurred, well, then your slip is showing and your agenda is clear and you're just going to be pushed off to the side. But like I said, never mind your resume, never mind your politics, the images in this thing, the images of, is it the Martinez family being interviewed after the fact, the stories, I mean, the incredible vanishment of due process. Yeah. That seems like something every single person should understand. Two things need to exist at the same time, right?

We ought to be able to look at the individual stories that you tell them this thing, and at the same time, be able to condemn all that deserves condemnation. We just don't seem to be capable of holding two thoughts in our puny little heads anymore. Shameless plug Long before she was Peggy Roe, my mom was Peggy Noble, daughter of Carl and Thelma Noble. It was her father, Carl, who inspired me to pitch a show called Dirty Jobs to the Discovery Channel

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Pick up a bottle at noblespirits.com, k-n-o-b-E-L-S-Pirits.com. Soon may the nobleman come to bring a bottle for everyone. One day when the waitin is done, we'll take a drink and go. And I think that's intentional. You know, I think that they don't want you to think about it that way. They want this idea that everybody who went there was some sort of monster who wants to overthrow democracy, when in fact, a vast majority of people there

are the people that respect democracy the most, the people that care about the Constitution the most. That's not the characterization that they want people to have because, I mean, not to get too political, but as you can see from the last few speeches that President Biden has made, there's a real effort here to categorize people who disagree with the president administration

as ultra-maga, semi-fascist, that sort of thing. Number one, not only is it not true, it is intentionally harmful, and it's intentionally divisive. The thing about my movie is we tried to show what happened to these people, what the government was doing to these people, and we have them tell their stories about what they did that day, and everybody in my movie, with the exception of Simone Gold, didn't enter the building, did not go into the Capitol building.

And Simone Gold did. She walked in. She said the police invited her in. She made a speech and she left right after it. She just got out of prison. I mean, they put her in jail for two months, federal prison for trespassing. So there's something nefarious going on. And it has to do with the aftermath, not necessarily the events of the day. Like you said, some of which need to be condemned in the strongest possible terms. But the aftermath is all out of proportion. The character. characterization of that day is all out of proportion to what it actually was. And that's what we tried to do with capital punishment is just shed a little light on this on what actually happened that day and not how it's being categorized. Here's another visual that struck me. And it's a small thing, except maybe it's not. But the FBI was in someone's garage and they were taking photos of everything, somebody who had been there at the Capitol. And they, found a box full of what felt like, well, like damning evidence. And they opened it up. And it's the Constitution. It's hundreds of pocket constitutions. And they filmed it the way you would film a murder weapon.

And it went into the pile of things that said, okay, all right. Okay. I think we all know what kind of animal we're talking about here, the kind of freak who walks around handing out constitutions. Like, that little thing bugged me as much as he, anything else in the movie because I had an uncle who handed out pocket constitution. I have a pocket constitution. Right.

Like I went to bed one night and I woke up the next day and the constitution was a smoking gun. Right. What is that? Yeah. One guy told us about how they took all his Trump gear and laid it out on the bed and photographed it like it was packets of cocaine or something. Like it was just all this evidence.

And, yeah, I mean, there's a definite effort, and it's been going on for a while, to demonize the founding of the country. I mean, you know, this whole idea that the founders were racist slave owners and the Constitution is flawed because it was written by these flawed people. And all this kind of idea has built up to this point now where they are now making the statement that if you're the kind of nut that goes around thinking the country is great and the Constitution is wonderful, then you are suspect and you need to have your door broken down and have all your possessions photograph because you're a threat to the country. And it's totally upside down and it's deliberate. They're deliberately targeting patriotism, belief in higher power, Christianity. They're targeting these things because there is a faction of the government that thinks these things are signs of a dangerous element.

And it really is hard to understand, except that it's a deliberate tactic. It feels like it. The other thing that gets attacked that I'm sure you've heard people talk about but might not be as inflammatory on its face is the language itself. I'm continually gobsmacked by the number of words that no longer mean what I thought they meant. It's like Wallace Sean, right, in a Princess Bride. It's just like, I don't think that word means what you think it means. Inconfavable. My mom, talk about a stretch, but my mom wrote her third book, 84 years old,

and she's always had a dream of being on the New York Times bestseller list, right? It's her dream. And wouldn't you know it? Her book comes out, and the bestseller list comes out. And there she is. She's on it. She's number 11. And it's great.

I mean, it's a heck of an accomplishment. But I talk to the publisher and I get a hold of this thing called BookScan. And BookScan tells you the actual real number of books that are sold every single week. It's kind of like Nielsen in our business, right? Yeah. My mom sold twice as many books as the number one book that week. she sold more books than every other author on the top 15 of the New York Times bestseller list. Now, am I going to make a documentary about this?

No. Am I going to go on a... She's an insurrectionist. She might be. My mom is out of control. I can be bought. I can make it, you know, if you want me to do it. Don't laugh, man, because the more I think about it, the way.

It's like, I'm not outraged. because she's 11 versus 9 versus 2. I'm outraged because the New York Times doesn't call their list stuff we think you should read or our picks. They call it the bestseller list, which would lead a casual observer to conclude that the number of sales might impact the rank in which the author finds him or herself. But it doesn't. Best sellers don't mean what they thought they meant. Recessions don't mean what we thought they meant. There's some confusion about what a woman is and so forth and so forth and so forth.

So why should we be shocked to learn that a box full of pocket constitutions is clear and present evidence of malfeasance? Right. Yeah, there's a man interviewed in our movie called Evan Sayit, who wrote a book called The Woke Supremacy, which is a very nice little pamphlet-sized book. It's really funny. I mean, it's not a comic book, but it's very interesting and pithy. But he makes the point in there that one of the things they've done is taken words and put a modifier in front of them, like Elmore Leonard told you never to do.

Don't ever do that. But they take a word like justice, you know, which is supposed to mean basically fairness, things coming out the right way. You're getting what you deserve or whatever. And they put the word social in front of it. And so it's social justice means something completely different. different. And even with the word like truth, they put the word your truth. Oh, that's your truth. That's not truth. You know, that's not the truth. There's no such thing as the truth. It's either your truth or my truth. So once you start doing that, it's like they can make things

mean whatever they want it to mean. And they also start throwing around the word fascist, which they obviously don't know what that means, you know, because if they did. Well, I have noticed, Nick, on your, I think it's your Twitter feed where you've taken the liberty of identifying yourself, once again in violation of Elmore Leonard's hard and fast rule, but you are a quasi-fascist. Semite. At least, or I'm told. Semai.

Semai. Semai. Well, that was the word. What's the difference? It's a joke on Joe Biden. Joe Biden used that word. He said that the MAGA movement was all semi-fascist. So up until that point, I had been Nick Searcy insurrectional film and television star.

So when he said that, I changed it to Nick Searcy. semi-fascist film and television star. That's like a promotion. Yeah. You know, you can save quasi for the next year. Right. Right. It started as international film and television star

because I did make a movie in Romania and I did one in Canada and won the Dominican Republic. So those are other nations. So technically I am an international film and television star. But after January 6th, I became an insurrectional film and television star.

A Peabody Award winning actor, is that right? Yeah, well, I tried to fit that. You can't fit that much on the Twitter handle there. It's tough. Yeah. They still limit the characters, I suppose. But I do have my Peabody Award really handy here, you know. Oh, let's have a look at that. Yeah, there it is. In case it's anybody doesn't believe me, there it is. Wow. It's a handy size. Who's that on there? Is that Mr. Peabody? That's George Foster Peabody, the guy who originated the award. There it is. Put his own face on his own award. It's for justified.

And it says Nick Searcy Art Mullen on it. So people are always going, you didn't really win that Peabody Award. That was just for the show. And I go, they wrote my name on it. See? Do you think they'll take it back? They might.

They might come after it. Maybe the FBI is going to come and get it. Oh, my God. Look, we joke, but I mean, seriously, I started by asking, how are you still standing? Right. Because I know a lot of people who have done a lot less, said a lot less, pulled their punches,

and they're still in time out and will probably stay there. So how do you explain the fact that you're still standing? Well, I've talked to so many people over the last year and a half. People in my business and outside of it, there was a lady in Texas that just on June 22nd. of this year, the same thing happened to her as happened to the people in my movie. FBI showed up at her ranch. This is 18, 19 months after January 6th. And the same thing, SWAT teams, the whole thing, treating them like drug dealers.

This stuff is continuing. And every time somebody comes to me and tells me a story like that, I can't help but wonder, why has nobody come after me? Because I've been bragging about the fact that I went there. I made a whole movie about it, and yet they don't joke about it in your movie. Yeah. You joke about the fact that, you know, hey, why didn't you come after me? Yeah, why do they attack these people, these decent people, far more decent people than I am?

I'm just some Hollywood actor, you know. These are hardworking pipe fitters who go to church on Sunday kind of people, and they're coming after these guys. And I don't understand it. I don't know why. and maybe this podcast will get me enough attention so that they'll come after me. But, I mean, I can't explain it. And now they'll come after you too because you talk to me. Yeah, great.

Hey, Chuck, any other bright ideas? Anybody else you want me to meet? Sure. Yeah. There's a guy at the jail in D.C. Great. Another interesting thing that's happened over the last few years, because, you know, Hollywood, we've also been going through all this COVID stuff, this vaccination status thing.

Haven't heard of it. Yeah. Like you can't come on the set if you haven't been vaccinated and people are getting fired and all this stuff. And I've heard from so many actors who have like called me up, people that I worked with over the years, because they know that I've been sort of standing up and I've been sort of outspoken. And they call me up and they say, you know, I never really agreed with you before. But this whole turn of events has really made me look at things a different way. I think the fact that, I mean, that's a roundabout way of saying, I don't know why I have not been punished more for standing up, but I hope that it sends the message that we have to stop being afraid to say what we believe. And I think that that's important because the only way a bully wins is if he

scares you, if he scares you into silence. And so hopefully, if not, if not, nothing else, even if you don't like my movie or don't think my stupid jokes are funny in it, at least just take the message that we have to start being unafraid to talk to each other, to express our differences of opinion to each other in a way and not be afraid to say what we think. Honestly, that's why I wanted to meet you and hear from you and talk to you, because the truth is, you know, we joked about it in the preamble, how difficult it was. It was like the universe is trying to tell me something, seriously. Like a bad microphone.

It's like, look, dude, don't do this. Chuck's wrong about this one. This guy, he's going to drag you down with him, and he's going to hit the ground like a freaking flaming dart. Okay, be careful. But the thing is, man, I live in the middle. Or at least somewhere in the middle. I'm just a guy.

I've had shows on CNN. I've had shows on Facebook. I have a show on Fox Business. I have shows on Discovery, and I run a foundation, and I try and stay in my lane. But my frustration with the last couple of years is the lane shrinks around you. And pretty soon, you can be saying the kinds of things you always used to say. You can stand, for instance, when the Star-Spangled Banner is played. You can put your hand on your heart.

But now that sends a different message. you can have a constitution on your wall, but that sends a different message. And that bothers me. But what bothers me even more, I'm careful. I have people I work with who I care a lot about. And I don't want to blow myself up for their shape. And I have partners, you know. Sure.

And so there's risk in everything. And when I look at what you've done and I look at everything you've just said over the last hour and when I consider what I suspect you're going to do in the coming days we weeks and months. I have to say, I find it courageous and good on you because surely there must have been times when you and your wife looked at each other and just said, what the hell are we doing? Have we gone too far? There's a question buried in all of this. Any regrets? The federal government is not going to close America's skills gap. They have an important role to play for sure, but if we're serious about reinvigorating the skilled trades on a national level,

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Skills, U.S. Skills, USA. No, I don't have any regrets. I mean, yeah, definitely while we were making the movie, while I was talking to these people and hearing these stories of the way they've been treated by the government. There was definitely, there were a lot of times during that process when I was like, maybe we

just shouldn't be doing this. Maybe we should just stop this right now before it's too late. But if I look back on any regrets that I have about it, it's probably more in the area of, did I say enough? Did I do enough? I want to make a sequel because what's happened to the people in my film has been ongoing. You know, they've come up for sentencing. Some of them have gone to jail. Some of them are still waiting.

A man named Coy Griffin, who was in our film. He was just removed from his elected office last week because he was at the Capitol on January 6th. I don't regret making the film. I don't regret standing up. And I appreciate you saying that you consider it to be courage. But at a certain point, I just decided I had to do it. I just had to do it. And I think a lot of that comes from my faith.

And it also comes from the fact that I have been so fortunate in my life as being able to make a living as an actor, which is an impossible thing for a little kid from North Carolina. everybody I told I wanted to be an actor, they thought, yeah, come on, you're going to grow out of that. You know, they thought I was crazy. But I've been so fortunate that at a certain point, I just went, you know, I don't want to spend what little time I have left just sort of doing the safe things and trying to chase money or whatever. You know, I've got enough. I'm fine. My kids are fine.

My family's fine. And I want to do things that I believe in. So then if Art Mullen was an homage to your dad, what would your dad make of all this? Well, I'm going to see him next week, or at the end of the month, not next week, in two weeks. He's about to turn 84. He plays golf every Monday. He had a stroke a few years ago, and his swing looks funny, but he never misses a day. In his quiet way, I know he's proud of it all.

He's not a man given to a lot of effusive praise, let's say. He's never been that. But he is definitely proud of me. And I know that he tells all his friends. He based that character on me, you know. I know what he did. But, you know, my mother and dad, you know, my dad's still an accountant in North Carolina. He still works at 84?

Yeah, he's still doing it. Wow. God bless. They always call me up every once in a while and go, You need to send us another box of DVDs. We sold all those. They're still hawk in my movie. I love it.

I love it. So what is next for you? Is there anything in the hopper? Immediately? Yeah. Well, there's a movie coming out December with Nicholas Cage. I'm in called The Old Way. It's another Western.

And I'm the title role in that. I'm the old guy. Just like you're the Terror on the Prairie. Yeah, I'm Terror on the Prairie, too. Yeah. There's a movie about Ronald Reagan where Dennis Quaid plays Reagan, and I play Secretary of State James Baker, and that's going to come out early next year. Yeah, the joke about that is like, I've played swamp creatures before. I love it.

Have you seen Nick Cage's movie where he plays himself? No, I've been dying to see it. No, I'm going to see it. I saw it on a plane, and it's like one of those times where I was. embarrassed because I couldn't stop laughing out loud. It's funny. There are scenes where he talks, you saw it on a plane too? I saw it on a plane too. Yeah. Oh my God, I really laughed. He's got a wicked sense of humor. Was he fun to work with? I loved the guy. Yeah, we had a great time. Very, very well prepared guy. I mean, he always comes in. I mean, it was a joy to work with him. It really was.

And I told him so at the end. All of my scenes were with him. So, yeah, I really enjoyed meeting him. And we sort of, hey, let's work together again sometime, you know. Well, the other thing that might be coming up is that I'm putting together a deal finally to make another feature film. I'm going to be directing again at the beginning of next year. But I can't say who's going to be in it yet because we're still negotiating. But it's going to be a step up budget-wise from Gisnell. I'll just say that. So not me.

Well, it depends, Mike. Careful, Mike. We might get around to you. I just want to say, before moving on, I saw Gosnell in the theaters. First of all, you're a good filmmaker. But secondly, I know I told you this before, but I promised you I'd tell you on the podcast, you're a really good actor. Oh, well, thanks.

And you were great in Gossinel as well. I mean, justified, I just am so in love with that series. I really am. But Gossnell, you were just terrific, and you play the attorney for Gosnell, right? Yeah, I'm the bad guy. I'm the defense attorney, yeah. You're just so good, so good. Anyway, sorry, Mike, what were you going to say?

I forgot, but you reminded me as something else. one of my favorite scenes in Justify. We might as well land the plane where we took off from. I think it was a slow chase. Yeah. Nick. Yeah.

Your leg was all messed up and some guy had a like a... Yes. Oh, geez, I don't remember, but I think he had like an oxygen tank. Yeah. Yeah. Jesus, man.

You guys, you were chasing him, like throw an airport or something. I remember. That was freaking funny. That's my favorite scene in the whole series. And I think, except for the time when I'm playing Rush Limbaugh on the radio at the stakeout. But the man who directed that episode was John Avnet,

who basically directed Fried Green Tomatoes and was the man who gave me my first big role. So he would always come in and do two episodes a season, and I would always say, are they calling you the man that discovered Nick Searcy yet? And John goes, yeah, but they don't mean it as a compliment. Look what you did, John. Look what you unleashed. John directed that scene, and I remember going to John and I said, you know, can we really elongate this and really make a thing out of it? And he goes, oh, I'm way ahead of you.

So he was like laying track. And he's like, you know, we're going to make this thing look like, you know, the car chasing bullet or something. You know, wasn't that also the season, though? You would really hurt your leg in real life. From what I remember, you're like, let's not run this season, okay? No running. Well, that was before my knee replacements. Both my knees were kind of buckling to the outside.

I think the year after, justified is when I had my first knee replaced, and then I had the other one the next year. So, yeah, I mean, I was having legit knee troubles all through those years. And they made you run. I love it. Well, I did a series called Acting School with Nick Searcy, which was just a YouTube series. There was a whole episode where I go into the writer's room

and I start screaming at them and go, Who wrote that episode where I had to run? You know I don't run? And then I had my bitches with me and they slapped them around. It was fun. Didn't you go to the White House or the cast go to the White House for Justified? Isn't there a story about you meeting Clinton? Yes, yes.

We went in 1998. We went from the Earth to the Moon. Oh, sorry, from the Earth to the Moon, which also was great. Tom Hanks took about six of us. and they showed one episode, 1968, at the White House. I remember Hillary spoke, JFK Jr. spoke, and Tom Hanks spoke. And then they showed the episode, and then there was a reception. And when they flew me and my wife in, I remember taking the Washington Post out of the back of the seat and the limo,

and I opened it up, and it was the day they found Monica Lewinsky's dress. It was the day. It made the papers, and so I turned to listening, I go, Oh, my God. They're going to be in a good mood tonight. Oh, my God. So what happened? You met Bill Clinton that night?

Yeah, I walked in, you know, and Leslie and I were in the back, and so the reception was kind of down the hall. So we were one of the first people into where the president was, and he was there to say hello to everybody. And I was still who I was back then. But I had my thing, you know, I said, I'm going to say, thank you very much for having me, Mr. President. it's an honor to be here.

That's all I was going to say. So I walked to, I said, I guess it's time. I got to go shake hands with the president. So I walked up and I said, thank you for having us here, President Clinton. It's a real honor. And he goes, Nick, you did a great job as Deke. You know, you mostly play bad guys.

But it's good to see you playing somebody good for a change. I understand you just did a movie with my friend, Mary Steenberg. And, you know, she's also from Arkansas. And I'm like going, he knows everything about me. He's a fan of mine. And he's shaking my hand and it had the perfect amount of pressure. And it's like, I walked away from him going, there really is a right-wing conspiracy. He's, that guy's terrific.

That guy is great. And then like about 15 minutes later, I'm like shaking my head going, oh, my God, he hypnotized me. That must be what happened. That's why he's president. That's what they said about him. Everybody said, no matter who met him, they were like, you walk away. feeling like he's on your side and, you know, of the greatest guy in the world. Absolutely. It was like sympathy for the devil. I was like, oh, God. He's a wonderful man.

You know, I forget who said this, but it was an observation on people like that who can change the barometric pressure in a room simply by showing up. Bob Dylan, apparently, had a similar quality. I haven't heard that story, but I've heard half a dozen. different stories about people meeting Bill Clinton. And I have a friend in New York, beautiful woman in the art world, a woman of wealth and taste and discriminating. And I would say right of center. Yeah. But she was helping pick art for the White House.

And she met Bill Clinton. And she said, we were alone for 10 minutes. And I tell you, Mike, I would have done anything he asked me to do. Absolutely. Yeah. Anything. Yeah. I couldn't believe.

I was aware that something in me was crumbling and giving way. Right. But it didn't matter. I was just absolutely enchanted. Yeah. Enchanted. I think we all know what charisma is, but I don't know what that is. Yeah. I don't know what that thing is, but it's out there and some people have it.

Yeah. Well, Bill Clinton definitely had it. We do not. He almost got me. Did almost? No, it didn't turn that way. Story you're sticking with. Nick has a certain blue tuxedo hanging at the back of the closet.

Right. They really take out on special occasions. The semen stained tux. Have you seen my blue tuxedo? Right. You know what? I knew if we talked long enough, we'd come up with a title, but there it is. The semen stained tux.

No. Have you seen my blue tuxedo? Right. I don't even know what that means, but I kind of like it. Honestly, it's between that and he-man-woman haters. Yes, this will be known as the Blue Tuxedo episode from now on. Oh, my God. Nick, anything you want to take back or add, amend, or clarify?

No, I've had a great time, really. It's an honor to be here. I mean, my wife is such a big fan of yours, Mike. Oh, thanks. And really, and Chuck, too. She's really fond of Chuck, which I don't understand. She does like me either, but it's wonderful. I just don't see it.

It's been great. I've always felt, and you just, I was going to mention you did a, you did a song with my friend John Rich, too. Oh, yeah. That I'm very fond of. Santa's got a dirty job. Yeah, I love John. But see, you know, that's another one of those things. It's like, John, you've already associated with John.

He might even be more radioactive than I am. He is. Absolutely. He is out of F's to give, as they say. Yeah, he is. But I'm really glad to be here and thank you for having me. And Chuck, thank you for introducing us. And if there's any justice left, not social justice, but just regular old justice left in this world.

Nick and I are going to get together in Los Angeles. We're going to come by your place. We're going to sit down and we're going to smoke some cigars. That would be awesome. There's even a place indoors where you can smoke them here, not like at Chuck's house. That room is awesome, Mike. We definitely have to go there when you're here.

Done. Don't hang up, brother. We've got to make sure this hot mess uploads so we can each watch what's left of our careers go down in flames. The guilt by association that destroyed them all. Yeah. He had him on his podcast.

I really used to like him. Thank you, my friend. Thank you, Mike. Thanks, Chuck. When you leave a review, which we hope that you'll do, tell us who. you are tell us who you are and before you go won't you leave a stop