Zachary Levi on RFK and Tulsi Bringing Him to Trump, Secrets of Hollywood, and How God Saved His Life ο½ Ep. 1010
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 45 minutes
Words per Minute
204.51884
Summary
Trump is taking the lead in the Ukraine crisis, and Putin is having a hard time getting on board. Megynkellek gives us her take on it all, including a new morning update from Sirius XM HQ, and a new weekly morning news update.
Transcript
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We like to walk that fine line between techno thriller
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with Canada Life savings, retirement, and benefits plans.
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or build a workplace people want to be a part of,
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I have to say, when we show you the full set later,
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you'll see a Sirius XM really stepping up its game.
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It got me like the NFL Sunday guest, like desk.
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And this seat will be occupied momentarily by Zach Levi,
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Before we get to that, picking up on our AM update.
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I don't know if you guys listened to the AM update this morning.
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We're going to be offering that now during the weekdays.
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It's just a 15-minute straight news update for folks before they start their day.
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But it was mostly about what's happening with the settlement,
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the resolution of the Russia-Ukraine war and how Trump has really taken the lead.
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Hello, somebody had to and is having direct meetings with Putin.
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And Zelensky of Ukraine is very unhappy and continues to sort of yap about it.
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Now, with all due respect to Mr. Zelensky, this thing was just on and on and on with no progress
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until or hope of resolution until Trump got directly involved,
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till he got elected and stepped in there and actually started to say,
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look, let's be realistic about how this thing is going to land.
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So Zelensky would do well to just be quiet for a while to see what Trump can accomplish.
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And when Trump brings it to him, it will be a proposal and he can react accordingly.
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But instead, he's been yapping the whole week long about there's no deal on Ukraine without Ukraine.
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But realistically, you'll probably do what we tell you to because your war ends without our support.
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So we're kind of doing you the courtesy of allowing you to appear like you are in charge.
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But everyone knows without our money, this thing goes away.
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The Europeans have donated some, have supported some.
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But let's be honest, their coffers are a lot more shallow than ours are.
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And we're the number one player in making this thing go away.
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And Zelensky just keeps dropping these not helpful statements.
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And I think Trump has about had it because he just issued a truth, you know, a truth social.
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And now I can't find them now that we're actually live on the air.
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Trump basically called him a dictator and put him in his place saying, you know, why
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don't you take a seat because we're doing something here and you're not being helpful.
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A modestly successful comedian, Volodymyr Zelensky, talked the United States of America
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into spending $350 billion to go into a war that could not be won, that never had to start,
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but a war that he, without the U.S. and Trump, will never be able to settle.
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The U.S. has spent $200 billion more than Europe and Europe's money is guaranteed, while
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You remember that Trump struck the deal the other day or was starting to that would allow
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for us to have access to Ukraine's natural minerals as, you know, as collateral for our
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You know, Biden was just handing them boatloads of dollars without any promise in return.
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So Trump is saying here that we spent $200 billion, Europe got a guarantee.
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Why didn't sleepy Joe Biden demand equalization and that this war is far more important to
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Obviously, Europe is part of Ukraine and Ukraine's part of Europe and Europe has to worry about
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On top of this, Zelensky admits that half of the money we sent him is missing.
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He admitted that it's gone underreported, but we've got over $100 billion that's just
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And by the way, if you said we don't trust him, he's we think this man should not be entrusted
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You would be called all sorts of names as recently as like six months ago.
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He's admitted that it's gone and no one knows where.
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He says Zelensky refuses to have elections, is very low in Ukrainian polls, and the only
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thing he was good at playing Biden, the only thing he was good at was playing Biden like
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A dictator without elections, Zelensky better move fast or he is not going to have a country
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In the meantime, we are successfully negotiating an end to the war with Russia, something
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I'll admit only Trump and the Trump administration can do.
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And Zelensky probably wants to keep the gravy train growing going.
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I love Ukraine, but Zelensky has done a terrible job.
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His country is shattered and millions have unnecessarily died.
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And let me tell you why this is so bad for Zelensky.
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It's because recently Trump, since he took office, was sounding not neo-Cony.
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Vance and Tucker are much more in the non-interventionalist camp.
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And that's very large within the Republican Party.
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I would say Trump is close to them, but not entirely aligned with them.
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He's still got like a toe over in not neo-con camp, but, you know, he's not afraid to drop
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He's, you know, if the situation calls for it, Trump will be more bellicose, both in his
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And what Zelensky doesn't want to do is saber rattle Trump over to the J.D.
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Vance Tucker side, where Ukraine will get even less than Trump is trying to negotiate for
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Trust me when I tell you they'll do better under Trump in a good mood than they will
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So this is not smart behavior from a guy who has very few chips with which to bargain.
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Trump spoke to what's happening between the U.S., Russia and Ukraine from Mar-a-Laga on
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Tell us a little bit more about the Russia talks, your impression of how they went today
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and if you're perhaps more confident or less confident of a deal after what happened today.
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It's soldiers are being killed by the thousands on a weekly basis.
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They're Russian soldiers and they're Ukrainian soldiers largely, although a lot of Koreans
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They came over to fight and a large portion have been wiped out.
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It should have never happened, would have never happened if I was president.
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He has a different relationship with Vladimir Putin.
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And Putin would have been more, if not afraid of Trump, than respectful, I think, of the power
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that Trump yields as the United States president.
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Trump went on to say, yeah, I can end this war.
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So he really, like, again, Zelensky's playing with fire.
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Because I don't want all these people killed anymore.
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And they're Russian and Ukrainian people, but they're people.
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Doesn't matter where they're from on the whole planet.
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Look, if he strikes a deal with Putin that allows Putin to have some most, it's going to
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probably be most of the territory that they have taken in Ukraine, but also says and also
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says that Ukraine will not be joining NATO, Putin will accept that deal.
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He's going to have to have security to ensure that they will not be attacked again.
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And it seems like the Europeans are prepared to give them some forces.
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We're not going to be the peacekeeper over there.
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I think we've all had it up to here with that kind of role for the United States across the
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And I'm sure there will be some sort of additional financial investment, which Trump will now
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say will be repaid, in essence, by the earth materials, the raw earth materials that we
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can get out of Ukraine, which is very valuable.
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It's a precarious situation, but it's going to be handled.
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And the only thing that could queer the deal is Zelensky shooting his mouth off.
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You may have seen him on some other shows around the cable nets and so on.
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I know him from the Kurt Warner movie in which he was amazing.
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And he did something especially courageous, especially for those in Hollywood this year.
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And that was he came out as an open supporter of Donald Trump and of RFKJ during the primary.
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So first it was RFKJ and then he endorsed Trump.
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Despite the inevitable backlash, everyone knew it would come.
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But there's something interesting happening with him.
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It's like somehow I think we might have found the one Hollywood celebrity who wasn't an open
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Republican, who endorsed Trump and still has a career.
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We discussed the last time why he discussed, why he felt the need to speak out and his support
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of the so-called Trump Avengers team, you know, Tulsi, RFKJ, and so on.
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When he was first on the show back in October, it was episode nine to eight.
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We didn't have time to go through his fascinating life and career.
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But first, here's a quick refresher on Zach on screen.
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I'm the only person I know that knows anything about this Caped Crusader stuff.
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He's got a new movie out in theaters this Friday, and it's called The Unbreakable Boy.
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It is a heartwarming story about the ups and downs of navigating life with an autistic son.
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And you know, they broke out the NFL desk for us.
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So I want to kick it off with your movie because I think this is perfectly on brand for you.
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I think the Kurt Warner thing was perfectly on brand for you.
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But like, this is great because it's a story about love, family, challenges, faith.
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And I think given your newfound huge fans on the right who appreciate not just how you act,
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I mean, listen, my goal is always to just make excellence, you know, like I, from the beginning
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of my career, even as, you know, someone who grew up Christian and was conservative in many
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ways, I would consider myself a libertarian, but I've always had conservative fans and Christian
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And I've always said, I have no intention of being a Christian actor.
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I want to be an actor who also happens to be a Christian or who happens to be whatever
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else those other, you know, kind of, um, uh, indicators are, but with this, with the Unbreakable
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Boy with American Underdog, I went after those films.
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Um, you know, those films resonated with me because they were excellent.
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They were excellently written and the team around them wanted to make them excellently.
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And, and I love this story particularly, um, similar to the Kurt Warner film, American
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And Scott Lorette, who I play the father and husband, he wrote a book, the Unbreakable
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And it was very brave and very vulnerable in showing just how not great of a father and
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Because the, the child has a couple of disabilities or challenges and, um, he's, you know, no chair,
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no parent understands how to handle that naturally.
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And so he's very open about how it wasn't easy.
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And, and more than that, I mean, you know, he and his wife, Teresa, they, they, they,
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It's like, wow, this is not what I was expecting.
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But they were like, we're going to see this through.
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And we'll figure out our relationship as we go.
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Um, simultaneously during all of this, right now, now they're having children and their
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first son, as you pointed out, has multiple things going on that he's struggling with.
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One is osteogenesis imperfecta, which is brittle bones disease that they, and they find out kind
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of early on within the first couple of years, that's crazy and a massive curve ball, not what
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And then a few years later, he's presenting very atypically and they find out he's on the
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Um, I think that all of these things are, um, indicative of, even if those aren't specifically
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the things that we go through or struggle with in our own lives, we're all, we all have
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these expectations of what we think our life is supposed to be, how it's supposed to look,
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Scott was already dealing with his own insecurities and unhealed traumas, not really accepting and
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We feel like, well, clearly I'm screwing up if all of these things, if this is where the
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universe or God is bringing my way, this is my karma.
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And I was really grateful that I got to portray him and really bring it to life in a very authentic
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It's not just rainbows and butterflies and feel good.
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This movie, this movie has lots of that in it and humor and heart, and it's infused with
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faith, but it allows the audience to go into the grittiness and, and, and darkness
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and hardship that the human condition brings about what it, what it means to just be human
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and then tackling marriage and, and parenthood and all of those things.
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So they get a flavor for what we're talking about.
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Hey, Osman, are you sure that's the right hat for your first day?
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I have a lizard named Marty and the killer hat collection.
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They think that it's time, that it's only going to get worse.
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Nope, my brain is right here in my head on Earth.
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This is not what I thought it was going to be like.
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I feel like I'm failing every day, and the harder I try, the worse I do.
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You've given up so much for this family, and you've never stopped fighting for us.
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She is so solid as a human being, and she's so talented.
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I don't remember either, but she was great in that too.
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Very talented, and we were very grateful to have her play Teresa.
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Drew Powell plays my basically best friend in the movie.
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Yeah, very talented, and so uniquely perfect for this role, because you're trying to bring
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a child with autism to life in the most authentic way possible.
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And also, we were casting in the height of the pandemic.
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There were a lot of people that were just like, I'm not, I don't want to leave my home.
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So everyone that ended up playing these roles was someone that was tailor made and fit perfectly.
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I mean, those were the people that were supposed to be in this film with the cast, the crew.
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It was a thing that kind of came out of nowhere as we were preparing to make American Underdog.
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And then we shot that, shot American Underdog, and then we were supposed to, originally the
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movie was supposed to come out three years ago.
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But because it was a small slice of life family film, and because a lot of people were
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still hesitant getting back to theaters, even in, you know, beginning of 2022, Lionsgate,
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and I think wisely said, listen, we don't want this thing to get lost.
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We don't want to get just destroyed by these tentpole movies are the only ones doing well.
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So, I mean, I'm sensing a theme in the projects to which you are attracted.
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I mean, I think anybody would have taken the lead in Shazam.
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Any actor in Hollywood would have killed for that.
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I mean, part of what we loved about it was just how sweet it is, the relationship amongst
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I'm like, it's not like, he's not like a scary superhero.
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But then, like the Kurt Warner, American Underdog, that story is amazing.
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I think I mentioned this to you last time you were on, but my first husband was obsessed
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with the LA Rams and they've moved around anyway.
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But he was obsessed with Kurt Warner and was reading that autobiography or biography.
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I think it was his autobiography on our honeymoon.
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So I got to know all these facts about Kurt Warner.
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And by the end, I was like, I'm reading that book right now.
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You know, who marries a single mother with a child who's challenged and has all sorts of
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No man who's like on his way up in the football world, you would think would say, yeah, this
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He only got to play because the first stringer got hurt and everybody was like, oh, bullshit.
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And sure enough, you want it was just such a great story.
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So I'm just sensing a theme in the stories that you select that they all have heartstrings
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and they have these like classic American stories.
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I mean, I think heart is the most important ingredient in almost any story told, whether
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that's a comedy or a drama or a dramedy, or even if you're watching an action movie or,
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you know, sci fi or whatever, like, are you the audience able to connect to that character?
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The first and most important thing you're connecting through is the humanity in that character,
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I've been very blessed that, you know, a lot of these roles, they come to me, you know,
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up until Shazam, I couldn't be very picky about the jobs that were coming my way.
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And so I have a little more agency in deciding, okay, we'll go this way or we'll go that way.
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But up to Shazam, I could, I had say over the auditions I would go on or not, but those
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jobs are still like, okay, what's, what, what is God going to put in my lap?
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And I will say that, you know, maybe it's because I lead with my heart of my whole life.
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I have, I have a really deep empathy and love for all of humanity.
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And I, and I, and I really mean that it's not just a, you know, a soundbite or whatever.
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I just, I, it's one of the reasons why I felt so compelled to even begin speaking, I guess, you know,
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being more open politically because I felt like not just where I think we needed to go,
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We're, we're not seeing the person across the table as a child of God.
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I want to be able to go and bring people together as best I can.
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And as an actor, when I get to tell stories that are so led heart led that get to tell stories that are infused with hope.
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And, and that are inspiring that, you know, that, that bring people back to understanding themselves and each other more.
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I think that, you know, that's a, those are great opportunities.
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Is it also fun to go and do things that have nothing to do with that, that are just for fun, just for laughs?
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But as an actor, I want to, I mean, to me, like I'm proud of almost everything that I've done in my career.
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But what I'm saying is I am particularly proud of this film in part because I got to play a role that, that really goes through it.
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It's not just one level of being, all right, I'm this guy.
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And not to say that other roles that I've played haven't also had levels and layers, but there's an overall kind of more upbeat, let's say vibe to Chuck that I did on NBC for years or Shazam or Tangled or Harold and the Purple Crayon or whatever.
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You know, I have so much love for all these projects in one way, shape and form.
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But to play this real character, similar with American Underdog, you know, Kurt was much more stoic.
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And so there, there was, um, there wasn't quite the same roller coaster.
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Like, cause Kurt was also just this really like solid dude, as you're talking about, like he wasn't struggling with alcohol.
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He was struggling with his own, like, what am I doing?
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And I, I feel like God called me to be the next Joe Montana, but that's not happening.
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And I'm stocking shelves, but I love this woman and she's got two kids and I love them too.
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And so I'm going to go commit to that and we'll see where God takes me the rest of the way.
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Scott is wrestling with God the entire time, putting on a good face.
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Charming this guy, you know, working, but also just losing himself in a bottle because he's drinking away his problems because that's what so many people struggle with.
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I wish I could enjoy anything as much as my son enjoys everything.
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I just always needed everything to be a certain way.
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I push everything away, everything and everyone I care about.
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And that's him there in a group therapy for alcoholism.
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And I haven't really, I've only seen the movie once.
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When John finished it, we had a screening just like kind of our cast and it was wonderful.
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It was great to finally see what we had made together.
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But I haven't seen a lot of these scenes since then.
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And, you know, and these are things that I have struggled with that I think we all struggle with on some level.
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It's so absolutely integral to the health and well-being of ourselves and those around us to practice gratitude.
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There's so many amazing studies that have been done, by the way, like not just when we practice gratitude, when we see other people, in fact, I think they've shown it's even more powerful if you watch other people be grateful to other people.
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Like if you're just a fly on the wall and you watch some person help an old lady across the street with her groceries, that in and of itself, and you see that old lady grateful to that person, it changes you inside.
00:28:24.640
That's quite a line that he has there that you delivered of, I used to think it made me ambitious.
00:28:35.640
And that, when I read the script and when I was, I mean, that was me.
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That was me tapping into a lot of my own issues with that because obviously we all want to go do well in this world and we want to be ambitious and you want to be successful.
00:28:47.640
There's nothing wrong with any of those things.
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But if you're not looking at what's right in front of you, right in front of you, right in that moment and being present with that and being grateful for that.
00:28:58.640
And because of that, because he was struggling and feeling like he's failing.
00:29:02.640
Well, when you feel like you're failing, it's very difficult to be grateful for what you've got in front of you because you feel like none of it is good.
00:29:08.640
And so they make you, they make you write the lists.
00:29:10.640
Now people like keep a gratitude journal where you must write down three things a day is the ideal that you're grateful for.
00:29:19.640
But I think it's, it's interesting that you, you're feeling emotional as, as you're discussing this because when I read your bio and read up on you in advance of today, you know, the last time we didn't do that.
00:29:28.640
I just thought you were an interesting actor who was getting kind of political and that was interesting, but you, you're interesting.
00:29:35.640
You've had quite a background and I'm now having gotten to know you a little bit better.
00:29:40.640
It's no, it's no mystery at all to me why you've chosen the projects that you've chosen or why you're doing so well with them or why you feel emotional now discussing it because you have had your own lifetime of struggles.
00:29:54.640
And it's probably what drove you into acting at like a, for many reasons.
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And it's what it was, it's what led to your initial frustration in choosing a profession, which is overloaded with rejection.
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And I'm sure there's still some of it now, but the whole journey makes a lot more sense to me.
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I mean, yeah, there's, there's, there's no coincidences, right?
00:30:16.640
And I really do feel though, as a, at a very young age for three or four years old, I knew that I was going to be an actor.
00:30:26.640
It's like the closest thing I can, I can paint as a picture is imagine when we're with God at source in heaven, you know, where, whatever that other place is.
00:30:39.640
Imagine like there's some kind of mission select screen that we're looking at, like an options of what is the life that my soul is going to go live or something.
00:30:48.640
And as a part of that, there's like stipulations, like, okay, you go choose this path.
00:30:53.640
And part of that path is you're going to be an actor and that's going to be a part of the journey that you're going to be on.
00:30:57.640
And that's going to, and I also felt very called from very, very young age to be a leader and to love people and to like affect positive change in this world and build community.
00:31:07.640
Like I felt these things in me, I couldn't articulate them in words that would probably make any sense.
00:31:12.640
Cause I didn't have a vocabulary at that time, but the knowing in knowing in my knowing and my soul and my purpose and my calling, like I felt these things.
00:31:21.640
And so I think that was helped along certainly by being the middle boy between two girls in a house that was full of a lot of trauma and me just trying to find an identity and a voice in all of it.
00:31:32.640
Also very early on, I, knowing people, knowing, like feeling, you know, having a deep empathy for people, feeling them and how they reacted to things.
00:31:42.480
I knew that a smiling, laughing person felt good on the inside.
00:31:47.460
And, you know, like I was tuning into that very young and I was like, Oh, okay, wait a minute.
00:31:50.840
Well, I know how to make people smile and laugh.
00:31:57.560
And I can evoke these responses and making people feel good was like, Oh my God, that's the drug I've been addicted to my whole life.
00:32:04.080
No, I read, this is, I think from your book about, you're talking about how in your, with your mom and the glass of water, can you tell that story about how you just picture a glass of water condensing on the countertop?
00:32:16.220
Yeah. So my mom, God rest her soul, was a really a wonderful, dynamic, beautiful, intelligent, like wickedly intelligent human being who also dealt with tons of unhealed trauma.
00:32:30.560
And that led her down a road that I think brought upon probably like borderline personality with narcissistic tendencies.
00:32:39.140
And that's a very difficult burden for people to handle.
00:32:42.300
I, this might sound strange, but like, I actually have a lot of empathy for narcissists.
00:32:46.380
They're some of the most destructive people in the world, but that's because they're some of the most destroyed people down inside of themselves.
00:32:52.380
But my mom, as a borderline personality, specifically her moods were always what ruled the moment.
00:33:00.640
So if my mom was in a good mood and I did something wrong, I broke a glass, you know, something that was sitting on the counter and I accidentally knocked it over shattered.
00:33:08.460
If she's in a good mood and she's rocking out and she's listening to like Bon Jovi or Journey or, you know, the stuff that she would be in a good mood, she'd be like, oh man.
00:33:20.320
Unfortunately, mom was not in that mood more often than not.
00:33:22.740
And it got worse and worse through her alcoholism and through a lot of other just unhealed trauma.
00:33:26.460
And so you knocked that same glass off of the counter and it is, how dare you, you little shit.
00:33:32.400
You know, like the fangs and the claws and everything would come out because that's what she learned from her mom.
00:33:37.280
And that's what she learned from somebody, her mom or dad or, you know, this generational trauma.
00:33:42.780
You kind of learned, you said that, like, you believed if I could just be better, if I could just be a more perfect boy, then I could please her.
00:33:52.440
I mean, but it wasn't, I don't think it ever felt like if I could be more perfect, it was more just like you start to learn, okay, this is my reality.
00:34:02.640
And my mom and stepdad both had kind of impossible.
00:34:06.580
My dad, my biological father, who's also passed away and I love him, but we didn't really have a lot of a relationship.
00:34:13.660
I grew up with my mom and my stepdad, both of them heavily traumatized people.
00:34:17.500
My stepdad was super traumatized in the ways of having thresholds that were like impossible to hit, like a bar that you could never, never really get to.
00:34:27.300
And so that became this mission of how do I navigate that while simultaneously navigating a target that's constantly moving.
00:34:39.580
Like if both parents had this impossible bar, you know, okay, well, it's just, then it's like perfection, perfection.
00:34:45.420
But with my mom, there would be these moments of really beautiful love and grace with the thing.
00:34:57.480
And you're like, whoa, whoa, the whiplash of it all.
00:34:59.780
So then, you know, as a child, you just start to literally, you know, teach yourself or learn ways to navigate that minefield.
00:35:08.760
Certainly there was the perfectionism on the other side of things.
00:35:11.180
And me, that all kind of became conflated in and of itself.
00:35:17.680
But I will say, none of that, and many people deal with very similar experiences.
00:35:24.560
None of that makes me absolved from my stupid behavior that comes out of my trauma.
00:35:30.480
We are all responsible for healing our trauma and responsible for the actions that come out of that.
00:35:36.120
I think the problem starts getting into where we start throwing blame and shame and guilt on people.
00:35:42.280
Well, I think it's interesting just as an explanation of your life's choices and of how difficult it must have been for you in the earlier, leaner years of being an actor.
00:35:52.960
You know, because, like, that you chose a profession that is also destabilizing, not predictable, full of rejection, and difficult personalities, and probably a fair amount of mental illness, let's be honest.
00:36:09.040
You know how they say you marry the best and worst qualities of your parents?
00:36:12.780
It's like kind of what you did in your job choice.
00:36:15.340
But again, like I said, I don't think anything's wasted on God.
00:36:20.880
You know, our job in all of it is to make sure that we become aware of that, aware of what we need to work on in ourselves, but know that God's still going to use your trauma and redeem that.
00:36:29.320
I learned so much by growing up in my home with my mom and my stepfather.
00:36:35.280
I got tools that people who grow up in really loving homes may never, ever have.
00:36:40.540
You know, so I see the silver lining in that, which is, again, doesn't excuse any of that, but he goes, okay, all right, what was God doing in all of that?
00:36:46.380
Why did I choose to go and have this experience in this household if my mission in life or my calling was to go and be this actor?
00:36:54.600
Well, shocker, all of that led me to better understanding, again, in the midst of a lot of it, before I went through the healing that I did, I got knocked around by Hollywood.
00:37:06.060
Even now, there are things that, you know, can be destructive.
00:37:09.820
But I have worked on myself so much that I can see those who are the traumatizers in my industry and be like, oh, man, they're just lost.
00:37:20.160
But simultaneously, I'm not going to sit around waiting for my industry to become somehow saved.
00:37:24.820
I'm going to go β I've been very actively trying to build an independent movie studio, living community for people in my industry to be able to go create art and content and entertainment that is not being scrambled and infused with nonsense agenda.
00:37:42.720
Just make great entertainment for the masses of all β
00:37:47.040
The way it used to be and also simultaneously, if I'm going to go build a studio to go do that and accomplish that mission, well, let's go build a living community into it all so we can give people better lives because we all deserve that too.
00:38:05.120
Well, that's an interesting pivot point in your life when you moved to Austin because your career was going well.
00:38:14.780
We were just talking with another guest who moved to Austin and loved it.
00:38:21.960
When you got down there, that was sort of your crisis point where you really thought about ending it all despite the fact that you had already starred in TV series, on primetime television.
00:38:31.340
Like many actors, I think you found, it wasn't the holy grail.
00:38:39.320
So you mentioned this last time we were together.
00:38:42.300
But can you just talk about how that hit you and how you then got out of that?
00:38:50.480
Yeah, so I mean, you know, like the bottom line is I was, like most people, doing what a therapist once told me, a lot of hit and run.
00:39:05.500
Meaning, you're not the one doing the hitting, but you are the one doing the running.
00:39:11.160
You get hit with β and trauma, there's a spectrum of trauma, right?
00:39:14.500
So I know people β a lot of people like to throw it around like, oh, I've been traumatized and they're not or whatever.
00:39:19.540
You know, but PTSD in war, PTSD kind of stuff is one end of a spectrum of very intense trauma.
00:39:34.520
There's a now famous clip of J.D. Vance and me in 2017 when I did this long profile on him on NBC.
00:39:45.460
But where we kick off the interview by me ticking down β raised in a house with domestic abuse, check.
00:40:06.040
Like trauma, maybe one of those could be mild for somebody, could be severe for another.
00:40:10.280
But a bunch of them in the same family leads to kind of massive trauma that must be dealt with at some point.
00:40:16.440
And unfortunately, most of us are completely unaware that we're carrying this around.
00:40:27.100
Things are hitting us and we're just like, all right, got to pick myself up and I got to run.
00:40:30.000
I got to keep going because there's not enough time to sit and wallow in this.
00:40:36.300
I mean, whatever these reasons are, you keep moving forward.
00:40:40.460
And I think there's something beautiful about the human condition and that we can persevere and we can do these things.
00:40:46.120
But suffice to say, I was heavily traumatized from childhood through my industry, through my own stupid choices, bad relationships, a very short-lived marriage that was unhealthy, that I was an unhealthy person going into to begin with.
00:41:03.780
Um, my mom had died in 2015 and we were, I hadn't spoken, really had a relationship with her in 13 years at the time she did die.
00:41:12.420
And she died tragically, like alone on a bathroom floor from complications of pneumonia.
00:41:18.580
Like there's all these things that just, and you don't, you don't realize how psychologically damaging they can be or emotionally damaging they can be.
00:41:28.800
Put on that face, be actor guy, go do conventions.
00:41:34.240
You know, I'm just going to keep doing what I do.
00:41:36.120
Completely unaware of just how broken inside that I was and that I did not have much more gas in my tank.
00:41:43.500
And I, with a head full of steam and dreams, after many, many, many years of knowing that I was supposed to go and buy land somewhere like Austin and go build this new Hollywood and save the world and all of the things that I feel like God's put on my heart, that was the driver.
00:41:59.840
That was the last bit of fuel that I had left in me.
00:42:02.180
And it drove me all the way to Austin and I bought my 75 acres and I was like, all right, God, I thought in my hubris, I'm like two years top.
00:42:10.720
So I'm going to build this whole city and all this stuff.
00:42:16.220
And, but also, but also, so I ended up there and everything, I was like, what have I done?
00:42:23.560
I, I, I'm here alone living in an airstream on this land that's 30 minutes outside of Austin.
00:42:32.880
And by the way, and simultaneously I thought, and this was a big factor.
00:42:38.640
I'm also like physically, I got to clean up my body.
00:42:47.500
And I had also had a, uh, an Adderall prescription because I have dealt with ADHD and stuff literally my whole life.
00:42:55.500
I was grateful that my mom never put me on anything when I was a child, because I think it's important to allow a kid to not have to have that type of thing.
00:43:04.020
The problem was that Adderall, I was depending on too much and cigarettes and not realizing that really what was done at the bottom of it, that's a dopaminergic, uh, dependency.
00:43:15.420
Your dopamine system literally has been hijacked and you need to keep getting dopamine in you just to keep moving forward in life.
00:43:22.260
And I thought in my infinite wisdom, I'm going to cut all this out cold turkey.
00:43:30.360
Combining all that unhealed trauma and all that unhappiness and then literally pulling the rug out from my dopamine system and having no dopamine whatsoever.
00:43:38.540
I fell into the darkest, darkest, darkest, deepest hole that I had ever really been in.
00:43:44.740
And, and I, and I was like, God, I don't want to live anymore.
00:43:52.200
I don't know why you've led me here to die in this darkness.
00:43:54.960
And thank God I had the family and friends and support around me that I needed to just prop me up enough to then go to this three weeks of super intensive life-saving therapy, not too far in Connecticut.
00:44:09.720
And, but part of what was life-saving about that wasn't just all of this, let's say clinical information that I was getting with lots of different therapists of different backgrounds and ilk.
00:44:19.980
There was this woman, there were, there were women who worked at this place who were companions.
00:44:27.840
They, this place was set up for, you know, CEOs that were like.
00:44:43.380
And that's part of why when I came out of there.
00:44:49.480
With, which is what my mission is now is trying to democratize at the very least mental, uh, wellness, you know, mental health services and things so that we can get people, if we can get everybody right in their own heart and mind, they start loving themselves, taking care of themselves, taking care of others.
00:45:05.660
No, I had a loved one go into one of these facilities for over a month and it was completely life changing.
00:45:20.560
Nobody can afford that unless they have an extraordinary job.
00:45:27.420
And again, that's why I say, thank God I had done well enough in my career where I could afford something that was so costly.
00:45:33.680
But there was one woman there, um, who of all of these, these house moms and they would rotate through and they would basically like take care of you because you were so despondent.
00:45:43.920
They couldn't depend on you to even drive yourself to your own appointments.
00:45:46.540
So like they would have these women who were wonderful that were, you know, either wives or mothers or both that were semi-retired who had big hearts and that wanted to help these people get through their treatment.
00:45:56.640
And this woman, she prayed for me every day, even though she wasn't even supposed to, like she would pray for me.
00:46:06.120
I mean, in the book, I talk about it in the book, but basically, and I understand, by the way, they've also made amendments to their programming because of this and because of the success of it.
00:46:16.660
And I'm very grateful to those folks at Privy Swiss for having seen the efficacy of it, but you know, what they wanted to make sure was that nobody was getting conflicting or contradicting therapy or advice.
00:46:26.600
And sometimes you can go to a therapist that's giving you non-spiritual, just purely clinical advice, but you might have somebody over here in a spiritual sense being like, well, I don't know about that.
00:46:36.180
You know, let's pray through it or let's do whatever.
00:46:37.780
And unfortunately, I do think a lot of people who are spiritual people, Christian people, they still have this weird, like, I don't know about going to therapy because I, all the answers I need are in the Bible.
00:46:51.140
Having gone through it myself, I definitely don't think that's how that works.
00:46:54.320
No, I've been, I went to therapy for years and I had such a great guy.
00:46:59.320
And he gave me so many useful tools to deal with stress or anything, sadness, conflict.
00:47:11.840
And they're all, and they can be very complimentary and as they should be, your spirituality and your spirit and the spiritual wisdoms that are even found in the Bible that are, that are, I think, you know, very much backed up by even a lot of what we're finding in science and clinical science and whatnot.
00:47:23.480
But so because of that, they didn't want anything contradicting itself.
00:47:26.820
So there was kind of a, you know, a rule like, hey, don't get too personal into these types of ways.
00:47:31.420
But this woman saw my heart, she saw who I was, and she is just one of the most wonderful human beings that I've ever met in my entire life.
00:47:42.460
And, and she prayed for me and she prayed me and loved me back to life.
00:47:46.460
Literally, like there was a day that we were, we were driving to one of my, I just got out of one of my appointments and I was just distraught because I felt like I'm getting nowhere.
00:47:59.400
I still feel like I, you know, what's the point in living?
00:48:02.360
And, and she was praying for me and she said, hey, just, just know that, you know, right now I'm technically, I'm not supposed to do this.
00:48:12.460
So I, if you said anything like, you know, I could potentially lose my job.
00:48:17.320
And, and I said, oh my God, I would never say anything.
00:48:21.040
You're one of the only things that's still keeping me alive.
00:48:27.520
And then we drive for a moment longer and then she turns back to me and she says, but also know that I would gladly lose my job for you.
00:48:36.100
Oh, as a kid who didn't realize that the biggest thing that I was struggling through was not loving myself.
00:48:42.460
And the reason why I wasn't loving myself was because I had never really gotten that from my parents.
00:48:46.580
As much as I know they loved me, they were struggling so deeply that they weren't able to model that or show that to me and my sisters, I think in the way that they needed to.
00:48:54.680
And so the thing that I struggled with the most in my life was that I didn't think I was even worthy of that love.
00:49:00.180
And this complete stranger to love me, like, and legitimately love me.
00:49:05.280
It wasn't like, you know, we all tell people, I tell people all the time, I love you, strangers.
00:49:09.700
And I mean it, I mean it, I mean it in the way that I believe God calls us to love, like as deeply as to love our enemy and pray for our persecutor, things we talked about last time.
00:49:17.600
But this woman, like, she was built to be a mom loving energy in that moment absolutely for me.
00:49:29.660
Like if no other, like, oh my God, like legitimately I consider her to be.
00:49:35.680
And so all of that, you know, that's all that came out of me moving to Austin and all of this stuff.
00:49:41.000
And then the irony or not irony, but the kind of amazing way that God works was I was still in this therapy.
00:49:47.440
I was like a week and a half in or two and a half, two and a half, two and a half weeks into my three week course essentially.
00:49:54.720
And I had told my team and in Hollywood, my agents and managers, I was like, guys, I am not good.
00:49:59.020
I am going off grid for three weeks to a month.
00:50:01.260
Like, you know, so if anything comes around, just we're, we're put, you know, hit and pause.
00:50:13.280
And quickly prior to me going to this place, two months prior, I had been offered the opportunity to audition for the role of Shazam.
00:50:21.280
And I declined it because I was like, they're not going to cast me.
00:50:25.360
I don't know why they're coming after somebody like me.
00:50:31.260
A really low place of self-esteem and not believing in myself or whatever.
00:50:34.380
So now two and a half weeks into therapy, I get this email from my agent or somebody who's like, I don't want to bother you.
00:50:43.280
Very small, like one scene read if you're feeling up to it, but no pressure.
00:50:49.180
So that's a great place to leave this conversation on the back end.
00:50:56.120
We'll take a break more on that story and on Zach right after this.
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00:52:21.360
We like to walk that fine line between techno thriller and romantic comedy.
00:52:44.660
You'd already rejected Shazam only because, not because you were too big for Shazam.
00:52:49.500
Yeah, yeah, because you didn't think you were going to get it.
00:52:52.180
You thought this was kind of like a chain jerk.
00:52:54.460
So now they come to you two and a half weeks into this Connecticut facility.
00:53:02.540
And that day, I just happened to, it was a Wednesday.
00:53:06.080
And I just happened to have had the first breakthrough moment where I could see some light at the end of the tunnel.
00:53:15.700
Like, I'm supposed to be here and doing this healing.
00:53:17.760
But, but I do believe that that was all meant to be.
00:53:21.140
My agent was supposed to send that because I see this and I'm like, I'm starting to feel a little bit better about myself.
00:53:26.760
I'm confident enough to maybe, you know, put myself on tape for this thing.
00:53:31.380
So I give myself a couple more days to just, just to see, like, am I starting to stand back up again?
00:53:48.360
I propped my phone up on the dresser, whatever, with a book, you know?
00:53:53.440
And I did one take and I sent one take of this other role.
00:53:56.720
And hours later, I'm, my phone's blowing up and my agent's like, dude, not only did they love your read, but they also think you might be right for Shazam, which they have not cast yet.
00:54:06.360
And I'm in therapy, finishing up, wrapping up this therapy.
00:54:11.040
And so then I had to explain, like, they were like, you got to get on a plane.
00:54:14.520
I was like, I'm not getting on a plane and coming back to LA.
00:54:16.240
I still have a week of like the follow-up, like homework, like all of this stuff.
00:54:21.120
Like I'd done the bulk of the therapy I needed to do, but there was still.
00:54:26.300
And I was already picking up these tools along the way, but still, it's like, you wanted to have that last week of like saying your goodbyes and getting the last bits.
00:54:33.660
I'm in fact, part of the reason why I'm here is because of that industry.
00:54:39.860
Let me go talk to, let me go talk to Warner Brothers.
00:54:42.280
And he comes back and he says, okay, would you do a camera test?
00:54:48.140
But like, we can do it through basically iPads, through Skype.
00:54:52.220
So from therapy on Monday, then I had a conversation with the director over the weekend.
00:54:57.620
I was like, I can't put myself on tape reading these scenes.
00:55:00.880
I can't do these with my, with my, you know, with my psych, psychiatrist.
00:55:10.120
But again, you want, you know, and I'm like, I don't know.
00:55:11.720
So we decided we're going to do this Skype, you know, video camera test through the iPads.
00:55:18.020
Monday evening rolls around, phones blowing up.
00:55:24.060
If you do come, there's a really good chance that you might get this role.
00:55:26.340
And I went downstairs, it was, it was Monday evening.
00:55:29.340
I went downstairs and there was Beth, Beth in the book.
00:55:34.820
And Beth happened to be working that evening shift.
00:55:36.960
And I go, Beth, I don't know what to do here because I can't tell if this is God.
00:55:44.140
Like this is, this is the fruit of having done the work that I needed to do and God calling
00:56:00.400
And so I go, I go downstairs and I go, I don't know what to do.
00:56:04.760
And we came, we both came out of that prayer and we looked at each other and we're like,
00:56:20.780
And I think that's what we're all looking for all the time.
00:56:22.900
And that's where we know we're on the right path.
00:56:24.700
If you're on, if you're on a path, a path that is surrounding you in peace, that's a
00:56:29.640
real good side that God is like, I'm right there with you, you know, which is not to say
00:56:34.640
that God is not with us when we're not feeling peace.
00:56:36.860
Cause sometimes that's very much the situation that we're in.
00:56:39.200
Sometimes you need to feel unsettled as a cue that you're not on the right path.
00:56:46.620
And so I call my agent and I, and also I went to the, the Heidi who ran the organization.
00:56:52.480
I was like, Hey, I need you to go to all of my therapists of which they were myriad.
00:56:57.580
And I need you to make sure that they all sign off that I'm good enough and healthy enough
00:57:01.220
to go and do this because if any of them says no, then I need to listen to that and
00:57:08.020
And she went to everybody and they all said, you know, check.
00:57:11.900
And so I flew to LA, I camera tested on Wednesday, Thursday was off.
00:57:19.420
And then Friday I got a phone call and I was Shazam.
00:57:27.020
She's like walking across the street absentmindedly in a snowplow almost hits her and kills her.
00:57:31.000
And I go save her as, you know, as grown up Billy Shazam.
00:57:34.840
Another one was the one between me and Freddie that you saw in the clip of me.
00:57:39.500
And then I can't remember what the third one was, but, you know, they were very much the
00:57:45.960
And so set the stage for us since nobody listening, virtually nobody has auditioned to star in
00:57:51.280
a Hollywood movie, much less a superhero movie.
00:57:59.120
You've just come out of therapy from this intensive program.
00:58:02.580
You land, like, is it an intimidating setting or how is it?
00:58:05.120
Well, fortunately with film camera testing and things like that, it's not normally a
00:58:11.980
You've got the director, you've got, you know, whoever's operating the camera, you might have
00:58:20.300
Who's more important in that setting, the director or the casting director?
00:58:23.860
Because, but the casting director, if they're doing their job well, they're bringing in
00:58:27.180
all of these options for the director to see, but at the end of the day, it's the
00:58:30.760
And then obviously the executives getting to watch whatever that camera test is, because
00:58:35.920
So they can go show the executives and get approval there too.
00:58:39.920
Ironically with network television, although it's, I don't know what it is now, but when
00:58:43.240
I was coming up in television, which was the beginning of my career, 98 through, you know,
00:58:47.640
2012, really, that was way more difficult because with network television, in order to get a role
00:58:53.500
on a show or whatever, you got to go through all, you got to go audition for the casting
00:58:57.360
director, then the producers, then you go to the studio executives and they're a, literally
00:59:03.840
There's 20 executives sitting in their arms crossed being like, all right, monkey, make
00:59:09.000
And then if you pass that, you go to the network and the network is all the network
00:59:12.100
executives and some of the studio executives and the producers and the casting directors.
00:59:21.620
I think a lot of times, a lot of it now is done by like people put themselves on tape themselves
00:59:26.160
and they send those, those in, but you know, it was, it was fascinating because there were
00:59:29.620
a lot of people who would just crack under the pressure, great actors that would have
00:59:32.400
been great on set, but they couldn't do that, that cause it's gnarly.
00:59:36.040
And then there were some people that were really good at doing a network test, but you get them
00:59:39.900
onto a set, they don't know how to build a character.
00:59:43.400
They don't have those particular, you know, skillsets.
00:59:49.040
Cause you did have a background in being funny.
00:59:50.840
I mean, in acting in a, you know, listen, I had a lot, a lot of background doing lots.
00:59:57.680
And in theater, you are, you know, things are much bigger and broader and I did musicals
01:00:02.500
and musical comedies and, you know, uh, all kinds of stuff.
01:00:05.860
I have a child playing Ursula in the eighth grade play.
01:00:13.020
I bet that song is in my head nonstop right now.
01:00:17.100
But yeah, so big things are happening in our house too.
01:00:20.120
We haven't put her through quite that level of scrutiny yet.
01:00:24.060
And then how, how soon thereafter they, do they tell you you got it?
01:00:26.700
I mean, it was, so from the time I did the first audition for the other role to the time
01:00:33.500
My whole life changed in one week, not just because of, but very much because of the therapy
01:00:40.160
that I went and did the work I needed to do on myself.
01:00:43.120
Talk about getting an instant return on your investment.
01:00:47.140
Like God is no, God, when you really commit to doing something in your life and now this
01:00:53.800
has happened multiple times over my life, I might be struggling with something, something
01:00:56.640
I'm screwing around with cigarettes, booze, girls, whatever it is.
01:00:59.040
And I'm like, I, these are distracting me from my purpose and my goal.
01:01:03.520
God does not wait for you to prove it to him after.
01:01:07.820
Well, let's see how you, let's see if you hold onto this for six months.
01:01:12.560
So if you, in that moment, be like, I mean this, I'm not going to go pick that up.
01:01:18.900
And so here come those blessings because at the end of the day, I think that God absolutely
01:01:22.700
has tremendous amounts of gifts and blessings that he wants to bestow upon us.
01:01:26.880
It's not that God is like holding it back because, Oh, you know, it God's, I don't believe
01:01:32.040
in this God, the taskmaster, you know, naughty and nice list and whatever all that nonsense
01:01:42.420
Like we would look at our children who are like, give me the bigger toy.
01:01:46.600
And it's like, well, you can't even hold the little toy.
01:01:49.320
So if you show me, you can hold the little toy.
01:01:51.320
And you know, if you, if you can show me, you can pick up that five pound dumbbell, then
01:01:54.600
I'll give you a 10 and then I can give you a 20 and then I can give you a 50.
01:01:57.900
It is like the way we look at our, our children with the most generous lens and very quick to
01:02:03.720
And as soon as our child shows that they're responsible enough to level up to whatever this
01:02:07.620
new cool thing would be driving a car, whatever it is, we want to be able to say, yes.
01:02:13.660
By the way, we're stoked because we see the responsibility growing in them, that they are
01:02:19.380
I think when God looks at us and sees us wanting to mature, God's like, oh, praise.
01:02:24.520
Because look at all of these other things that I wanted to give you, but I've had to, I
01:02:28.440
couldn't because he would, they would crush you.
01:02:30.580
You know, I think that every gift and every blessing comes with power.
01:02:34.580
Literally the money we're given, the resources we're given.
01:02:37.620
The relationships that we're given, the careers that we're given.
01:02:42.620
And if we've learned nothing else from Spider-Man, it's with great power comes great responsibility.
01:02:48.000
If you want those gifts, then you have to be ready for the power that comes with the
01:02:54.980
So now you've got, you've gotten cast and you're going to start shooting.
01:03:07.820
And then this, by the way, I thought my chance of being a superhero were well in the rear
01:03:12.800
I was already nearly 40 years old at that point.
01:03:15.840
And I had gotten to play a, the smaller role in the Thor franchise, but it didn't really
01:03:20.860
I was like, all right, I guess that was, if I got one chip and I was very grateful for
01:03:24.940
Like I got to be in that world, but I was like, I guess that was the chip that I played
01:03:28.980
and I didn't, Hollywood wasn't banking down my door.
01:03:31.500
So yeah, it was crazy for that to all happen as quickly as it did.
01:03:38.620
I mean, it's just been, it seems like you've been on a tear.
01:03:41.800
I mean, listen, it all depends on who you're talking to.
01:03:44.600
Like I have been super blessed that I, yes, I continue to go on a tear and continue to
01:03:48.920
work and be working on projects that I'm, I am very proud of and grateful to be doing
01:03:52.760
the, you know, Shazam as a franchise, the first one did pretty well.
01:03:58.600
So did those, it did all of a sudden the, the magical doors of Hollywood burst open and
01:04:04.980
everyone, you know, I got Spielberg being like, get Zachary Levi on the line.
01:04:07.680
We got an Oscar, an Oscar performance we did in four, like, cause that's what he talks
01:04:13.300
But so, you know, no, those, those phone car calls weren't rolling in, but it's all
01:04:22.900
Like I, but you're a working actor doing great projects on the big screen.
01:04:26.620
Like, like my dreams continue to be fulfilled every single day.
01:04:30.040
Why did Bill Maher think that you'd been canceled when you went on with him in December?
01:04:33.600
Well, I mean, because I jokingly, when I got, I, as you pointed out earlier, I was supporting
01:04:40.620
Bobby Kennedy, then the miracle in Butler and a bullet that would have changed the history
01:04:50.280
And, but because of that, then I think the humility that started to run in, in Donald
01:04:54.220
Trump in a way that I don't know that even existed prior to that and him reaching out
01:04:59.720
And then I go and I'm like, okay, I guess I'm, I'm going to, I'm on the Trump train now,
01:05:03.600
you know, one that I was never on prior, but one that I knew I needed to go beyond because
01:05:07.460
of the state of everything and the team that he was collecting.
01:05:09.720
And so Tulsi had reached out to me and was like, Hey, I'm doing, we're doing this town
01:05:19.800
I, this, uh, a trainer, like a physical, uh, you know, a Pete, like a, you know, trainer
01:05:24.180
at the gym that I knew from a gym here in New York who moved to Austin.
01:05:31.800
So, so we do a workout and we're talking about the state of the world.
01:05:41.340
We're sitting down and we're all having coffee and I'm telling her, I think you're awesome.
01:05:45.540
I love that you have the balls to have been Democrat your entire career, but recognize
01:05:52.100
The, the, the, the values that it once held a lot of values that I even agree with have
01:05:57.160
And you see that those values have transferred over here and you're supporting Trump.
01:06:02.280
And I share all these same concerns and I want to be able to help in all of this, but I'm not
01:06:06.160
sure what to do because I'm in Hollywood and that's a wacky thing.
01:06:11.700
And like a week later, I get a text or a week or two.
01:06:15.520
And Tulsi says, listen, we're on the campaign trail for Trump.
01:06:18.920
We're on the campaign trail supporting Trump, me and Bobby doing town halls.
01:06:23.860
We would love for you to moderate one of those town halls.
01:06:26.420
And I told her, I got to think and pray on this because this is really crossing the Rubicon.
01:06:34.080
I felt peace because I knew that this was more important than saving my career.
01:06:38.900
I think that we too often fall into these, these paradigms, these thought processes of,
01:06:48.120
We need to be wise and we, we want to survive and we want to live and flourish and all those
01:06:51.640
things, but we can't merely make decisions off of, well, I hope nothing bad happens to me.
01:06:57.380
No, I've told the audience before when, um, the Trump team asked me to speak to him for
01:07:02.620
him at his last rally before the vote, um, you know, the night before election day, it
01:07:07.940
is not something a journalist would normally do.
01:07:10.500
You know, that is crossing a line that you just don't normally cross.
01:07:13.000
And even this whole show, my, my transformation into more of a pundit at journalist too, but
01:07:17.940
you know, my daily job is more punditry has been an evolution, but that's, that's a bigger
01:07:23.740
And I really, same as you, I was like, I don't know if I should cross that.
01:07:26.360
You know, it's like, not because of blowback, but just because it's a before and after moment
01:07:31.300
But like you just said, I truly did feel called.
01:07:34.120
Even my husband's like, I don't think you should do it, Meg.
01:07:36.860
He was a Trump supporter, but he's like, you know, you don't, don't want the blowback.
01:07:48.920
I didn't feel ashamed, bad, um, on, on the precipice of waiting, you know, the, the gunfire
01:07:55.760
that would, you know, the rhetorical, um, I felt totally empowered.
01:07:59.840
And like, I was in exactly the right alignment, you know, whereas I was supposed to be, so I
01:08:05.820
But now for me, the blowback would just be mean articles written about me by my fellow
01:08:10.340
people in the press, which I've had millions of for you.
01:08:13.980
Potentially at that point, you have to be thinking it could cost me my career.
01:08:18.840
And I knew that I had a child that was, you know, coming in on the way.
01:08:22.060
And because even then my girlfriend and I knew that we were pregnant and I was like,
01:08:27.200
Like what, what will all this look like down the road?
01:08:32.900
first of all, I've known since I was a kid that I was born and called to be a leader.
01:08:38.820
I've known it like, and, and not like, not in weird romantic ways or anything.
01:08:47.480
And the only way to go and help the world is to love the world.
01:08:51.980
Like nobody hating the world is actually going to make it a better place.
01:08:55.140
They're just going to start cutting out the things that they don't like or whatever,
01:08:58.340
and cutting down the people that they don't like.
01:09:00.100
Like, but I really believe that we have to be able to, to see it as a whole and be like,
01:09:07.160
So I already, already felt that calling on my life.
01:09:09.980
And then when it came to this, I was like, so what am I worried about?
01:09:16.800
Am I worried if I feel like God is calling me to this?
01:09:19.560
And I did, I was like, I think that this is this moment.
01:09:22.360
Cause I was never trying to just like insert myself.
01:09:24.580
I was like, God, if you want me to go and step out in a bigger way, I need you to,
01:09:29.500
And the call literally came from Tulsi Gabbard.
01:09:32.140
And, uh, and more than that, I'm very, I very, very much.
01:09:35.840
And I've been preaching for a long time that I think AI is about to destroy my industry.
01:09:39.420
So I was like, so what am I, what am I worried?
01:09:44.420
And, but I was like, so what am I really afraid of at the end of the day?
01:09:48.420
That I'm somehow going to lose jobs in an industry that I already believe is completely
01:09:52.260
falling apart and that won't even be creating jobs for me in a few years anyway.
01:09:56.520
Like, come on, if I lose all of my acting career and I hope I don't.
01:10:02.080
And that's why Bill, I think was going back to the original question.
01:10:04.900
He, because I jokingly said at the town hall, I said, you know, look, I, I, this could make
01:10:14.940
But it was a joke, but a joke knowing what full well that who knows, who knows what the
01:10:18.980
downstream effects would be, but none of that matters.
01:10:22.480
If the world goes off a cliff, what does it matter?
01:10:25.400
You know, that's why I said on the, on the podcast, when I talked to you before, what
01:10:28.340
is it to gain the world, but lose your soul in the process, lose our ability to have liberty,
01:10:35.800
Like the things that ironically, the people on the other side are all suggesting that Trump
01:10:40.740
is trying to take away, which I'm like, have you, do you understand free speech?
01:10:45.080
I think a lot of people don't understand free speech that it actually protects hate speech
01:10:50.460
I don't want any of that to come out of people's mouths, but in order to hold the concept of
01:10:54.580
free speech, we must protect that it can though.
01:10:57.820
You know, and what the ACL use, you used to fight for, which is I defend, yes, yes, because
01:11:10.000
And so it was like, listen, I'm not even giving up my life for that.
01:11:16.800
But if anything, my career dies, my acting career that I've been blessed enough to do
01:11:20.740
for 25 years, if that's in the cards for me, then okay, God, if I'm walking with God,
01:11:26.380
I think part of the call that you heard and answered was part of a bigger thing that's
01:11:30.860
happening in the country at the same time, which is more and more people feeling that
01:11:34.940
same connection with Trump, with his message, with what he actually stands for and not what
01:11:39.960
the left says he stands for, just a new, the dawn of a new day in America where we're no
01:11:45.320
longer obsessed with identity politics and dividing each other based on things we can't
01:11:50.420
The very foundation of the Civil Rights Act and the 14th Amendment and a lot of things
01:11:54.720
that are foundational to our country's evolution that we've been eschewing for the past decade
01:12:00.940
And Trump got us back to, he said, we're ready.
01:12:04.340
We are ready to go back to our foundational beliefs on not dividing each other like that
01:12:08.520
and having open debates about controversial subjects and listening to a guy like Bobby
01:12:13.040
Kennedy instead of just dismissing him as a kook and listening to Tulsi Gabbard's different
01:12:17.440
views on the Intelligence Committee, even if they're loathed by more Republicans on the
01:12:22.880
panel than they are by the Democrats on the panel.
01:12:28.100
The whole country was just ready for that, you know, let's, you know, like you do with
01:12:33.600
Let's just, let's just, okay, we need a cleanse.
01:12:40.900
It's very indicative of those who are complicit in the corruption when they are shouting for
01:12:52.320
You know, why don't you want to know what's in all of our drugs and food and water and
01:13:06.820
Not to tell us what's good for us and what's right.
01:13:09.500
And, oh, you'll know whatever information you need to know.
01:13:12.980
They seem annoyed that we want to look underneath the hood.
01:13:16.520
And that's why I think a lot of Americans, even people who didn't vote for Trump, his approval
01:13:20.140
ratings are good because they're like, hey, listen, at least the guy's doing what he said
01:13:24.880
And more than that, these were some of the things I was kind of even secretly hoping he
01:13:28.340
was going to do because, damn it, we do deserve to know what's going on.
01:13:33.520
Then I'll know, OK, that's what's in a vaccine.
01:13:41.540
Like, why wouldn't you want to know what you're giving your new baby?
01:13:44.120
And we should be getting into through the Doge of it all.
01:13:47.580
But look, Tulsi, I am so excited for her to be getting into and uncovering all of the
01:13:52.120
secrecy and nonsense and corruption that's been going on in our intelligence agencies.
01:13:56.460
And everything that's going to be downstream of that, everything that Bobby's doing with
01:14:02.340
Doge is also a very important part of how we get to the bottom of this.
01:14:06.880
But I've been trying to tell people and I, you know, I've been getting.
01:14:10.020
I was on Jesse Watters the other night trying to unilaterally talk about how we're losing.
01:14:15.960
And the people coming up to me saying, oh, you just want Trump voters?
01:14:20.980
You're saying people that we have to keep in mind that good people are losing their jobs.
01:14:25.480
And in an appeal, I think, to Trump, you know, even MAGA people are losing their jobs.
01:14:29.840
And then, of course, the left spun that back on you only care about the MAGA people.
01:14:34.560
That's like saying, you know, if sugary drinks were being taken away and I would be like, guys,
01:14:39.160
he doesn't understand he's losing soda, Diet Coke.
01:14:41.060
I actually thought it was kind of cute that you defended yourself and posted like follow
01:14:44.620
up tweets like, no, that's not what I was doing.
01:14:53.780
They don't actually want to hear any explanation.
01:15:00.080
When I'm responding to people, I'm actually not.
01:15:02.500
Like, I'm responding to them, but I'm using it as an opportunity to say something important.
01:15:08.660
It's like because there's other people that might be slightly thinking that, but maybe
01:15:12.160
they're not sure and they're looking for clarification.
01:15:14.620
And if I can go and put that out there, all of a sudden somebody's like, oh, OK, you
01:15:18.640
I was I saw this thing and I was kind of like, what the heck?
01:15:21.600
You have a much higher opinion of the dialogue on Twitter on X than I do.
01:15:28.060
I almost feel the need to apologize when I say something nice on there.
01:15:31.280
I'm just going to I'm going to be nice for a minute.
01:15:34.180
I mean, we got Elon has said he wants it to be nicer.
01:15:37.720
And I think that that's all of us leading by example.
01:15:43.720
But listen, but listen, but that's but that I trust me when I tell you it takes everything
01:15:54.880
We're all on the other side of this little keyboard, anonymous or not anonymous or whatever
01:15:58.640
But still, you're not talking to that person face to face.
01:16:00.680
No one would ever say the things that they say on Twitter face to face with that person.
01:16:05.520
So it's I have to really my ego wants to be like, boy, destroy.
01:16:22.420
This person has been programmed to believe these things.
01:16:26.560
They have been lied to by legacy media for far too long.
01:16:29.100
And I cannot take my frustration and anger out on someone who is, by the way, not being
01:16:40.520
I'll come in with a little wink and rub and speak what is true.
01:16:44.340
And then hopefully that message is not just for them.
01:17:03.280
Well, you must be feeling pretty good about your decision in the wake of the pope.
01:17:06.860
Have you seen that he's weighing in on Trump's immigration policy?
01:17:14.100
But he took a moment to condemn the determination to deport.
01:17:18.440
He seems OK, according to his statement, with those who have committed additional crimes,
01:17:24.180
But he's really upset about us wanting to deport people who are just here illegally.
01:17:30.240
He seems to want us to believe we have some moral obligation to let them stay in the country.
01:17:34.900
This from a man who lives in the Vatican, which is surrounded by a big, big fence.
01:17:40.660
I don't wish for anything terrible to happen to him.
01:17:46.440
This is not what Catholics need right now, which is to have our, you know, the leader of the church
01:17:51.040
scolding the American president for his immigration policy.
01:18:01.540
I mean, I almost had my Presbyterian husband over here.
01:18:06.500
I think it's the rulers on the knuckles that really scared him away.
01:18:11.800
Listen, I think that unfortunately, while there are immense amounts of wonderful Catholics
01:18:24.660
who really do love God and love their neighbor and want to do good in this world and have
01:18:30.320
been very positively affected through their relationship with God, through the religion
01:18:34.680
of Catholicism, I am not a fan of, of organized religion writ large, which is also not to say
01:18:42.020
that I don't see the benefits that came from building civilization, morality, justice, like,
01:18:50.300
And, and, and by the way, even like diehard atheists see this, right?
01:18:54.600
There's a lot of people that, that have come around and recognize, like, I don't believe
01:18:57.500
in any of that stuff, but I see the positive value that it's brought to society, civilization
01:19:12.520
I'm, I'm more concerned with and wondering just how much that role has become influenced
01:19:23.300
Like getting, like getting the Catholic church getting paid to help all these immigrants.
01:19:30.960
It's made me think twice about putting money in the basket on Sundays.
01:19:35.740
But I, but I, but I think there's even unfortunately more, um, more murky waters.
01:19:41.460
Uh, like even when it comes to things like the world economic forum and Davos and all
01:19:48.080
of those people, like the, I don't want to have to think about that crap.
01:19:54.520
I know you don't want to have to think about that, but you should think about that.
01:19:58.260
We all need to be aware of what is happening in the larger political game that's being
01:20:03.120
played on the earth right now, globally being played on the earth.
01:20:06.260
I find it quite disconcerting that the Pope is about to have a symposium summit about like
01:20:15.800
health and human thriving and inviting people like Dr. Anthony Fauci.
01:20:21.800
I think that is very, and people from the world economic forum and all of this stuff.
01:20:26.560
Now people can call me a conspiracy theorist and wow, you're, you know, your tinfoil hat's
01:20:33.200
Like just go do a little research, dig online, follow the money, do all the things you need
01:20:39.440
There is corruption on the highest level, not just in our country, all around the world.
01:20:44.440
And I don't understand why that would even be going on.
01:20:48.820
I don't understand why the Pope would be like, yeah, you're the people of everything that
01:20:53.520
You're the people that should be coming and having this symposium.
01:20:55.560
The Pope's not having any meetings in the short term.
01:21:02.580
I don't want anything bad to happen to him, but he's, he's very elderly and this is a serious
01:21:06.700
I don't know how this is going to go, but you know, to me, it's actually kind of crazy because
01:21:12.980
One of the films nominated is this conclave, which is absolutely sacrilegious.
01:21:19.220
In my opinion, they make the new Pope, spoiler alert, um, intersex, meaning he has a vagina.
01:21:27.620
So now God forbid the Pope dies and we go through a conclave, which is the process by which they
01:21:33.320
Of course, this is like, we're going to be like, could, could we make sure it's a man
01:21:37.600
Could we, and it's going to be an explosive thing for the Catholic church if, if, and when,
01:21:41.460
I mean, when, when it ultimately happens, because there's, there is a battle for the
01:21:49.320
People who are, you know, genuinely committed, look, who have more conservative views and
01:21:56.000
And we have a far left Pope right now, which has led to the consternation of a lot of diehard
01:22:00.560
When it comes to the Latin mass, there's a lot of issues.
01:22:02.780
All right, wait, I want to shift gears because before we leave the RFK discussion and God,
01:22:06.440
by the way, this ties it all together, he did take over at the National Institutes of
01:22:14.040
And he made a comment, which he's made before, but it doesn't get old on how meaningful it
01:22:20.440
was for him and how important Trump has been really in changing Bobby Kennedy's life.
01:22:27.920
For 20 years, I've gotten up every morning on my knees and prayed that God would put me
01:22:35.920
in a position where I can end the childhood chronic disease epidemic in this country.
01:22:40.740
On August 23rd of last year, God sent me President Trump and he gave me, Mr. President, a lot of
01:22:52.280
people told me that I couldn't trust President Trump.
01:22:57.140
And we did a handshake and everything that he told me he was going to do, he has done.
01:23:05.620
And I've told you before, I genuinely believe that you are a pivotal historical figure and
01:23:18.220
I watched it multiple times and I've heard him talk about that before about, you know,
01:23:29.480
I cried when, I mean, I cried, uh, when I was filming in Eastern Europe, Eurasia, when the
01:23:38.780
Like, I think I, I even was, when I was talking to you, I was over there or something like that.
01:23:42.940
And so we were up, you know, hours before the U S was up.
01:23:47.200
And so I was seeing the results, the poll results and stuff like that.
01:23:53.200
Like, like they were able to keep all of the potential, you know, things that polls and
01:24:03.980
And so, and that's what I was saying to the other day to finally, cause, cause that was
01:24:08.220
one step and then it's like, okay, but we still got to get Bobby Tulsi, you know?
01:24:10.940
And so the other day I was on a flight, uh, home and I'm seeing the confirmation and I
01:24:17.980
just started crying on the, on the plane because I really do.
01:24:21.240
Like, I know this man, I know him personally, and I know that he has the integrity that that's
01:24:28.640
the exact, and so does Tulsi to, to go and be a leader that is non-corruptible.
01:24:34.040
There are far too many people, even good people, but it's like, you dangle that just little
01:24:37.760
bit of like, Oh, I could, I mean, I'm going to do good, but I'm also going to, I'm going
01:24:43.000
And then that starts with a little bit and there's a little bit of compromise and then
01:24:45.780
it's a little more compromise and a little more compromise.
01:24:47.760
And next thing you know, they're not doing any of the good.
01:24:49.580
They're just in, you know, enriching themselves with insider trading or whatever it is that
01:24:56.660
And, and I, and he, and I absolutely agree with him, you know, like, I love that even
01:25:02.660
when people saying like, Oh, you better getting in writing and, you know, don't trust that
01:25:10.400
Like, yes, he's bullish and Trumpy and all of the things, things that I don't like.
01:25:15.740
I also understand why people have such a hard time voting for somebody like that because
01:25:20.160
you want, you don't want your leader to, to have certain egotistical aspects about
01:25:25.620
him, put all that down for just a moment and see the things that he is doing.
01:25:35.760
Like not only did the Democrats not want it to happen, but even these rhino Republicans,
01:25:39.860
Mitch McConnell, blah, blah, get that guy out of there as soon as possible.
01:25:45.120
I mean, he's just going to freeze himself out of there anyway, but like it happened.
01:25:49.880
And if that's not God at work to help heal this country in this world, I don't know what
01:25:55.100
And here it's like, even if you are against Trump, if you're against Bobby Kennedy, whatever
01:25:58.440
you believe about him, like listen to what he's saying he's going to do.
01:26:01.980
Listen and ask yourself, wouldn't this be great?
01:26:12.940
We will convene representatives of all viewpoints to study the causes for the drastic rise in
01:26:20.620
Some of the possible factors we will investigate were formerly taboo or insufficiently scrutinized.
01:26:29.200
A childhood vaccine schedule, electromagnetic radiation, glyphosate, other pesticides, ultra
01:26:37.820
processed foods, artificial food allergies, SSRI and other psychiatric drugs, PFAs, PFOAs,
01:26:47.100
microplastics, nothing is going to be off limits.
01:26:58.180
But isn't that what someone in his position should have always been doing?
01:27:01.760
And every one of those regulatory agencies should have always been doing.
01:27:05.880
The FDA should have been on top of all of this instead of just taking handouts from lobbyists.
01:27:08.960
No, they're doing studies on, like, trans fish and COVID vaccines and how many 14th, 15th
01:27:20.500
Who the hell else is talking about EMF and that glyphosate?
01:27:26.520
But they're spraying it all over our wheat, which is why it's in every box of pasta that
01:27:32.340
And you don't even know it's in there, these pesticides that are all over our food.
01:27:36.860
The Republicans represent a lot of farmers, too.
01:27:39.720
But the farmers, too, I'm sure would love to find some way of getting rid of these toxic
01:27:44.540
chemicals so they don't have to swim in them all day.
01:27:46.920
And they can create products that are actually healthy and good for us and taste good.
01:27:50.800
No one's even talking about this other than him.
01:27:53.820
It's a brave new world in the most positive of ways, I hope, I believe.
01:27:59.520
I mean, Lord knows there's still people working in the shadows and the darkness that are trying
01:28:04.740
So I don't think we're out of the woods just yet.
01:28:08.500
Same as they're going to try to derail every step of doge.
01:28:12.500
But we must continue to stay in prayer and petition and believing that something really
01:28:22.220
Make sure that people are not being just lost in this shuffle.
01:28:27.780
And for all people, but I think that these are things that have been long, long, long
01:28:48.860
We need to bring the American public in on a lot of these things that have been secretive.
01:28:53.000
And no, no, no, we can't tell them, like, rip the Band-Aid off.
01:28:57.320
I mean, that has been more out there in the conversation.
01:28:59.760
But it's very bold for the HHS director to say, we actually are going to be looking into
01:29:04.420
It's just, Americans are taking the antidepressants like they're candy.
01:29:07.880
And they don't realize why they're not getting better.
01:29:13.620
And there's no actual public health official being really straight with them on the downsides of
01:29:18.320
these drugs and how there might be alternative ways not to rip on those drugs.
01:29:27.820
And she went to, like, the college counseling place.
01:29:34.160
It's like, for the love of God, maybe just talk to her.
01:29:38.320
Do cognitive behavioral therapy before we just knee-jerk give the drug.
01:29:42.760
But I think that there's even more effective ways of solving for all of this.
01:29:57.880
Why are vaccine and the vaccine schedule pushed on children so hard?
01:30:02.960
Why should there be incentives for doctors to push what should just be healthy and natural and good?
01:30:09.520
You shouldn't have to incentivize a doctor to encourage their patients to do something that's been tested and is safe and effective and everything.
01:30:19.580
So why are you having to pay them X amount of dollars bonus to make sure if they get 95% of their pediatrician gets 95% of the people in their practice and the children all fully vaxxed up?
01:30:30.960
And then you give them hundreds of thousands of dollars in return?
01:30:35.040
So I think that if we actually start to regulate these industries, all of that downstream pushing and stuff, that's all going to kind of start to resolve itself.
01:30:45.660
Moreover, I think when it comes to our farming situation, listen, maybe under FDR, incentivizing farmers, getting out of the Great Depression, there was some good that they were trying to do with all of that.
01:30:57.120
But all that did was led to, it led to like bad capitalism, run amok and people in industrial farming and companies like Monsanto creating glyphosate and atrazine and all of these things that are poisoning us,
01:31:10.980
which is why you can literally eat all the bread you want in Europe and you can't eat any bread in the United States.
01:31:17.160
We don't have to eat our pasta and our bread like this.
01:31:19.220
But what I think, like one of the biggest first things that they can do is if you, instead of incentivizing farmers to do massive monocropping with industrial fertilizer,
01:31:31.820
And we, by the way, we must, because to incentivize farmers to have regenerative organic farms.
01:31:38.260
Ron Johnson was just saying that this is a top priority for him.
01:31:45.920
We only have so many more cycles left because the nutrients have all been sucked out of it through all the industrial fertilizing and the tilling for monocropping.
01:31:56.180
So people that want to solve for all of these things, guys, we can help the environment and help the soil and bring down carbon in the environment.
01:32:03.180
Like all of these things that we just go back to the way we ought to be doing agriculture.
01:32:07.260
And then you don't have to spray it with all the things because there's other, by the way, ways to mitigate pests and whatnot.
01:32:13.680
But also, that shouldn't be in a truck going 1,500 miles to a grocery store that is not local.
01:32:19.940
Grow it and sell it and eat it within a few days.
01:32:23.360
That's the way it's supposed to be done when we get back to more locally sourced.
01:32:26.420
When you're here and it's so cold all the time, it's very hard to find.
01:32:29.780
We do need to import some of our fruit coast to coast.
01:32:33.340
But there's ways to even get around that where it's not coming from so far and still grown in more responsible ways.
01:32:39.620
I will be honest that I have not found a great solution for the fruit and vegetable problem, like getting it fresh.
01:32:52.160
I can't go to the wonderful farmer's market in the middle of February.
01:32:56.080
And even the ones that do, don't have the fruits and the vegetables this time of year.
01:32:59.560
And she was like, you can get your own inside farm.
01:33:05.700
We got to come up with a different solution, something that's workable.
01:33:08.020
Really awesome greenhouses that people can be building up and around various communities.
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There are greenhouses that people have been building on the rooftops of buildings in Brooklyn and in New York.
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You know who does the indoor farming and does it really well?
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It's like, if he didn't have Elon as a brother, this guy would be super world famous.
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I'm Megan Kelly, host of The Megan Kelly Show on Sirius XM.
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It's your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations with the most interesting and
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And in it for the listening audience, you see Zach's character go out on the basketball
01:38:12.340
court with the mascot's head on because his little boy was going to be the mascot but
01:38:16.760
And the boy's got the rest of the tiger outfit on, just the body part.
01:38:19.860
And with all the dad's crazy dancing and fearlessness out on the court, ultimately the
01:38:23.660
little boy comes out and joins him and has fun.
01:38:34.520
I mean, listen, that's why Lionsgate felt confident that this was a good time to release
01:38:38.720
Three years ago when it was supposed to come out, right after American Underdog, it was
01:38:42.320
supposed to come out around Valentine's Day of 2022.
01:38:46.400
But people hadn't really been coming back to the theater that much.
01:38:49.140
And they were like, this is a, this is not that big a movie.
01:38:53.060
And so I think they feel very confidently that people are back in theaters enough.
01:38:56.980
And also I just think the timing of the story is, is, is now like this is, this is the type
01:39:01.440
of story and the type of movie that people are looking for.
01:39:08.260
So you've got this movie hitting and you've got a new baby coming.
01:39:27.000
I, I, I feel, you know, again, like God's timing is good.
01:39:32.460
We, it's, it's, it's us that want to fight it and wrestle with it.
01:39:37.180
And it can't be that, you know, like Scott in, in the Unbreakable Boy, but I'm so grateful
01:39:41.800
that even though I wanted to be a father since I was a kid, like I've all, I've always known
01:39:45.220
it's in my bones, it's in my DNA and I would have rushed it had I met somebody that, you
01:39:51.600
Like, and I wasn't, I was married and, and briefly, very briefly married and divorced
01:39:55.500
and we did not have children and we weren't supposed to have children.
01:39:57.820
And I was supposed to have children at this point in my life after I had done a lot of
01:40:02.820
work on myself so that I could love my child as deeply and as wholly as I could without
01:40:10.300
spilling as much of my own generational trauma onto that child.
01:40:21.520
Like, I know I have a dear friend and she's come on the show and talked about this openly.
01:40:26.360
So I feel like I can repeat it, but her it's, she's an actress too, or not now she's a
01:40:29.840
newswoman, but Melissa Francis, she starred when she was young in Little House on the
01:40:35.320
She was the next generation of Ingalls along with Jason Bateman.
01:40:38.020
Anyway, she wrote in her book, um, one of them, diarist, uh, diary of a stage mother's
01:40:44.580
daughter about how her own mother's mental illness and how she worried, you know, like,
01:40:53.960
You know, we all feel crazy here or there, you know, in once in a while, but it's different
01:40:58.360
when you have a parent who actually does or did have mental illness, then now I'm sure
01:41:02.340
with it, like your next generation, it's yet another thing.
01:41:07.940
Cause you worked through, you're not mentally ill.
01:41:11.720
No, but also I look at mental illness as a, as I kind of maybe said before, it's, it's
01:41:16.460
mental illness is like dental illness is like any illness.
01:41:22.220
Like if you're dealing, if you're waking up and you're just, and you're just like in a
01:41:26.160
funk and you've got some anxiety or some anger or whatever, that's like a little common
01:41:33.340
And you could also need a full blown root canal, mental root canal, which is what I needed,
01:41:37.940
which is why I ended up going to the therapy that I did still melt it mental illness.
01:41:44.500
And so I don't, and I also don't believe that it's something that is ever, that's it.
01:41:51.780
In the same way that we have to brush and floss our teeth every single day, you got
01:41:55.480
to brush and floss your heart and your mind every single day.
01:42:00.060
And if you do that and you do it consistently, well, then you don't end up getting these cavities
01:42:12.100
And even when the things are coming at you, you know, meditate, pray, eat well, sleep well,
01:42:17.380
guys, I can't, sleeping is so integral to your mental.
01:42:22.640
Oh, no, no, I understand, which is also the reason why, thank God, we've got a night nurse
01:42:26.620
and there's going to be, there's going to be some help.
01:42:28.240
But nonetheless, yes, there will be sleep that is lost.
01:42:32.000
I know that's a part of the process, but I'm prepared for it and I can't wait.
01:42:35.340
I think it's only going to triple your blessings here.
01:42:45.720
He's such a cute baby with his just one, one little baby.
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