Episode 60 - Ser'Darius
Welcome to the Vermilion podcast, a free audio library of business strategies,
creative inspiration and industry knowledge for actors, filmmakers, writers and anyone
looking to activate their creative potential. I'm Misha Calvert, a writer -director who
helps artists build the careers that they dream of. I really hope that this podcast
inspires you in some way. Thanks for tuning in.
So I'm actually traveling this week and as a result we are pulling from the
archives. This is a conversation I had with movie star Sir Darius Blayden. He was
in Jumanji. He played Fridge. Loved him also in Star Trek. He's done a bunch of
other films that you may or may not have seen and I just love his energy, I love
his ambition, the self -generating spirit that he takes towards acting and towards
being an artist. He really speaks my language. I really enjoy this conversation,
one of the most enjoyable I think I might have had on the podcast. This will be
with myself and my former co -host, Brett Epstein, back when we were running Unlikely
Protagonist, but I really hope that you enjoy this delicious and beautiful
conversation with Sir Darius. He's a total icon. I think the first thing is that
the whole thrust of our show is that we talk to people who have successful in film
and TV who have made it in the eyes of our audience and that is definitely you.
And we try to frame it where you are the protagonist of your career.
You know, it hasn't just landed in your lap. You worked to get here. So what are
the differences between what people see, which is fabulous celebrity Hollywood actor
guy, and how your day -to -day actually goes? Whatever you want to say about that.
That's one of the best questions I've probably ever been asked and one of the most
truthful ones. When you just said, quote unquote, "made it," I literally like
exhaled.
that's been putting in work for 10 years, nonstop. And he's obsessive about it, far
more so than even I am. I've been very, very lucky to have the career that I do.
Honestly, I'm gonna say something you shouldn't normally say while not putting in the
maximum amount of work at all times. I struggle with depression myself. Most days I
don't feel like I'm good. I feel like I sucks to be perfectly honest with you.
Well, it took my 10th acting job to feel like maybe I wasn't lucky anymore. I
think the moment you feel like you made it, the moment you feel like you got it
is when you start sucking. So I try my best to always be like learning something
new and challenging myself to something new. You'll never feel comfortable in it
because this is a kill to eat sport. I'm very realistic about the business to all
the actors that I teach. And the first thing I always tell them is that I never
encourage people to act. I never encourage them to pursue this field at all. This
business is a really weird way of kind of eating people up. I'm saying in general,
you don't have a very strong knowing of who you are, what your purpose is,
and where you're going. It can get very tough out here and I think we all feel
the pressure of it. You never feel good enough. I don't care how many jobs you've
ever done. You never feel good enough. I had a conversation with Jamie Foxx about
two weeks ago. I was at his house from Martin Luther King Day, and I was like,
man, I would see remnants of that, even in him, and he's maybe the best to ever
do it. This is not like anything else. You don't wax stronger in confidence,
and I think maybe it gets worse, to be honest with you. You have fun in the
moment, and you say, Thank God I got this gig in the moment and thank God for
this opportunity in the moment because we know that the antithesis is also true.
Constantly forgetting to live. And so I always try to remind actors to live and
actually experience this life and don't just endure it. I've been really lucky. I've
been very grateful, but I also know that each job can be my last. - Wow.
- The most beautiful answers I've ever heard from anybody. I love I appreciate that.
It triggered a few things in me first of all thank you so much for being very
transparent and vulnerable about depression off the bat and it's good for I think
people to hear it. So many actors no matter what level so many artists no matter
at what level will be battling things like that throughout and it may not go away.
How do you find the next step in a purpose and what path you're supposed to be on
in the field. - The problem is, I think that it's drilled into us that in order to
be successful, that's something you have to obsess over it. And I don't agree with
that. Symptomite whatsoever. Acting is a very small part of my life. I obsess over
human beings. I'm a people watcher to the max. I like to put together social events
so that I can put this person together and this person and see what happens. I
don't obsess over acting. I watch movies every single day. I really do, so I do
obsess over it. But it's not, I don't walk around thinking like, oh, I'm an actor.
It's so weird. I gotta go to the grocery store today and I've been putting it off
for three days. My girlfriend is bothering me because she doesn't think I'm romantic
right now. All these things, right, are all of these alarms that we kinda keep
hitting the snooze button on in our life. And those are actually the real human
moments that we have. And my career doesn't define me. It's a part of who I am.
One of my favorite parts of who I am, but I'm constantly watching. I'm constantly
looking at the world and how people move, how they talk, how they think, why they
think what they think. People are constantly watching themselves rather than seeing
the world. They're enduring life rather than living it, and that can become a very
big problem when it comes to trying to provide solutions, which is what we're doing
in scene work or in music or whatever. We're either providing solutions or we are
settling ourselves with the answer to said problem. That's literally all that you can
possibly do in the arts. So I'm constantly looking at how problems exist in the
world and how people overcome them and how they act socially. We're very awkward
people, all of us. So I'm interested in awkwardness. - Not really giving a shit
about acting as your main event, but instead being a student of the human race and
your purpose aligning and your worth aligning to other things is so and genius and
critical to not driving oneself crazy in this business. Because this business just
folds in on itself, like your idea of who you are becomes this kind of meta hall
of mirrors. How do you recommend somebody stay sane and navigate the inherent
narcissism of the acting industry? - We're one of the few industries that has to be
quantified with what was your last job? When people meet me and they say,
"What do you do for a living?" Which is a normal question. I very rarely answer
that I'm an actor because most people can't really wrap their mind around it. I
don't wanna seem like a dick and be like, "It is my day job," because people can't
really conceptualize that. It's a thing where people are gonna to ask you what you
do to the day that you die. Actors tend to go internal, especially if it's been a
while since you've worked, but a doctor with a degree who hasn't, you know,
had his own private practice in three years is still a doctor. An actor who hasn't
had a gig in a couple of years is still actually an actor. We're the only ones
where it's like, oh, it's quantifiable, you haven't worked in a while, so you're not
actually who you say you are. We've realized that the work is in the studying and
the studying is in the experiences, so I do my very best to make sure that I'm
having the most intimate human experiences that I can on a daily basis.
That's more important than actually studying the craft itself. That is the craft.
How do you put yourself into another person's body that is not like you without
seeing other people that are like this person? We're painting a big -ass mural,
and I need to have as many different types of paint as I possibly can in order to
make this picture. So I think that that's probably one of the more important parts
for me.
- You're drawing a lot of very Chicovian conclusions, I think, and your approach is
very Chicovian in the sense that he studied humanity. - Legitimate. We overcomplicate
a lot of things. But you know why? 'Cause we fell into the fucking trap. We became
adults. I swear to God, the worst thing you can do as an actor is become an
adult. Fall into the idea that you have to be a certain way and kid actors are
better actors than any adult will ever be because they have not fallen to the trap.
They can be much more free, much more loose, and laugh at themselves for making
mistakes because they have the advantage of that childlike reckless abandon.
They can just see life for exactly what it is, man. Like, I think we overcomplicate
things way too much, you know? - Do you think that's ego? The ego of adulthood?
- Absolutely. Especially if you live in big cities, You don't want to look like a
loser? Who does? The average person is lying to themselves on a daily basis. They're
not even doing what they really want to do. 10 % of Americans like their job. It's
only 10. 1 % of performers make their living from performing. If I can make my
living off of this for the duration of my career, I think I've done well. At the
end of the day, I just-- I want to at least call the shots for part of my life,
at least a little bit of it. - You do have a side hustle of a luxury travel
business, is that correct? - Definitely. The travel company, I have a prepackaged
meals company called King's cuisine, which is actually like my baby. That's the most
important one to me. I'm better at cooking than acting. No, honestly, I really am.
I'm better at it. I worked in restaurants for 12 years and hospitality is like at
my core, it all correlates. Hospitality, athletics, playing sports and stuff like that
and acting, they're all this exact same thing. It's all service. A lot of people
get this business confused when things are going well for them, especially if it
started going well really quickly too, where they think that this is some sort of
self -serving business and it's really a business of service. You're in service of
your fellow actor if I were to play basketball. I am in service to my teammates I
want to make sure they get the best shots possible, etc We're providing answers or
conversations about problems as actors or the conversations that we present on the
screen So I tell actors all the time like if you're in this to like get rich or
famous and stuff like that that can be done it's just less of a sure thing rather
than if you're looking to feed yourself so I'm always looking for an opportunity to
serve So actually on that note What process do you have for the audition in the
callback when you may not have that chemistry? What do you tap into to get to the
level of okay? He's the one for Jumanji. Yep That's probably the worst example.
I had no idea. I was trying to leave that audition early 'cause I was like, this
is stupid. I'm not getting this. I've been here for over an hour and a half. They
haven't seen me yet and I have two more auditions today and it's pilot season, I
need to go. What's the process? I mean, it depends on the gig. I'm not like a big
memorizer. I'm not like going over the scene, running it, running it, running it,
running it, running it. What I started realizing is that I wasn't having fun with
the work anymore. It's like, It was like, okay, I have five auditions this week. I
have six auditions this week. What's the most important one to me? And you started
doing the whole logical, deductive reasoning kind of thing rather than like trying to
connect. And I was like, I'm not connecting with anything that I'm doing anymore.
And I'm not booking right now because I'm not connecting. I think that was the
direct correlation. But I started focusing on the relationships in the scenes more
than anything. And how do I see myself? How does this person in the scene see me?
Relationship became utterly important to me, where I was just like, "All right, find
out what relationships are, then you'll find different responses." I dug into that
more than anything, and I think it kind of revolutionized the way that I auditioned.
What I was able to find is the relationship and be able to tweak it each take.
If I'm in an addition room and I have to do it three times. It's gonna be three
slightly different reads, I guess I'll say. minutia is very important to any craft.
It's detail that sets us apart. Actors falling in love with the idea that they are
already interesting without doing anything. I try to find the interesting parts of my
character that also align with who I am as a person. - You have such a sound and
holistic, healthy approach to the whole business and to the craft. It's really lovely
to hear. - Thank you, thank you. Nobody knows nothing, everybody knows everything.
Pete Montelliano, he was an acting coach I had in New York and he would say that
all the time. Like, what does that mean? He would say, nobody knows nothing and
everybody knows everything. I can tell you what makes sense to me in this scene and
figure out your own philosophies on what this is and what it means to you. The way
that I tell you how I approach my work is not gonna work for you. I did the
regimented way of learning my scenes and blah, blah, blah for so long and I was
like, oh shoot, movie number 10, I'm not even having fun anymore. So how do I make
this more loose and feel real and genuine to myself? Find your own processes,
you know? - When you were working on American underdog with legends like Dennis Quaid
and In Fortress with Bruce Willis. Were you able to witness their craft or just get
a sense of how they are approaching the work? - I've never seen so many superstars
not paying attention in my life.
And they fully knew it. They knew everything about it. They knew all five,
six, seven different ways we're going to do it on each take. And I was like, I
literally have no idea what I'm doing, because they had such an easy approach to
the crap where like you look at somebody like Kevin and Dwayne, who are constantly
distracted by six other gigs that they had going on at the same time, but can
still bring creativity to the role and self direct. We did a table read for Jumanji
back in 2016. We did a table read in Hawaii. All the network execs,
everybody from Sony have flown in for the day just to come to the read. And I was
there like, I'm 28, they're gonna know that I'm not actually 18, and they're gonna
kick me out of here. So let's just be prepared. Anyway, we get in the read.
Kevin's on his phone the entire table read and missing their cues and, you know,
popping in late. By the end of the read, I was like, "This is kind of a
disaster." Kevin Hart had notes for every single page, and he was like,
"I'll page 66, change the block to make himself the butt of the joke. I think it's
funnier there." The Rock had an entire seven -page rewrite. He broke that entire
thing in about five minutes, and they were like, "Yeah, we can do it. They're
always engaged even if it looks like they're not and they know every single person's
name and a detail about them. It's really nuts. I was like wow they're fully
engaged even when it seems like they're not. They're literally splitting themselves so
they can hear in two places at once.
Anything specific on set throughout that experience that surprised you?
The biggest sets are the most chill. They're really the most relaxed.
And on high level TV shows that have $30 ,000 an hour for production,
et cetera. It's because they lean into the idea of knowing the person next to them
knows exactly what the hell they're doing.
The micromanaging happens on the worst sets. And I've learned to just kind of smile
and nod and like act like it's my first day. Everybody leans into each other's
genius. Greatness comes forth when people really trust and believe that I think
you're probably the best costume designer. I think you're the best set designer. I
think you're probably the best carer. And it's that trust and willingness to like
just lean into the idea of the genius of the person next to you. You don't get to
this point leaning into your teammate's genius that has been really eye -opening on
the biggest stages, everybody's just calm.
- Fascinating, God, I cannot wait to get to Hollywood. Do you have any words of
wisdom of maybe how to hang in there or how to go forth in their careers. - I
just told my good friend, Tian Richards, you cannot be in this business and expect
to only be an actor or only be a director, only be a producer,
only be a writer, be a multi -hyphenate. It's really important you add value to
every project that you're on by knowing the ins and outs of the business.
- I mean, San Creative makes you respectful of everyone's process.
It makes you kinder to PAs who become ADs one day. And I've seen that happen
several times where casting assistant is now Jessica Sherman, one of the biggest
casting directors out here. And she helped me out as a casting assistant nine, 10
years ago on "Start Trucking to Darkness." darkness, which is like, I can't tell you
what this project is, but I think you want to go out in the hallway and re
-memorize this and come back in better.
Relationships is everything. This is an ecosystem that we're building here. Just be
cognizant of the fact that you're part of a community. Always try to be a giving
creator period and be of service to your fellow man. We're ladies and gentlemen
serving ladies and gentlemen. That's the only thing I can really say that would hang
my head on in this entire thing. - I could not think of a better first guest to
chat with. Thank you for talking about the highs and lows of this industry, and
thank you for being you. Keep killing it. It was a true pleasure to meet you and
chat with you tonight. - Man, you guys are great. Thank you so much. - The
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