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October 16, 2018 60 mins

Trust us, Steven Seagal is a world class monster. On episode 26, Robert is joined by the Internet's Seanbaby about Seagal's aikido, alleged human trafficking and unconscionable blues music.

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Episode Transcript

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Speaker 1 (00:00):
M Hey everybody, I'm Robert Evans and this is once
again Behind the Bastards, the show where we tell you
everything you don't know about the very worst people in
all of history. And with me today in this special
San Francisco City by the Bay episode of Behind the
Bastards is Sean Riley, also known as Sean Baby. It's

(00:22):
a pleasure to be here. I had to check up
on your last name because I've only ever known you
with Sean Baby. It is Riley. Yeah, Sean Patrick Riley
got because you know, my dad, it was his turn
to name the kids and he really wanted an Irish name,
so he said triple the Irish. Sean Riley is very
Irish and adding a Patrick in there just too much, exceptionally,
so it's too much. Well, we are talking about the

(00:43):
opposite of an Irish person today, Steven Seagal, we have
cans of wine. Is not normal, not normal normally, I'm
sober other than the natural high durritos gives me. I'm
gonna be your first drunken Irish guest. Drunken Irish. Yeah,
we did a really drunk one at Unite the Right too,
But anyway, we're just gonna dive right in here to
our story about Steven Seagal. God, I can't wait now.

(01:06):
If you all remember Steven Seagal kind of mediocre, bordering
on decent sometimes action starts of such films as Under
Siege on Deadly Ground. Yeah, what on Deadly Ground is
not so great? No? No, no, no, understieges all right,
we're talking hard to kill, Yeah, hard to kill above
the law, above the law. Hard Target was a Jean
Claude May Name movie, which was better than all these.

(01:28):
You don't we should talk about Jean Claude Van Name
for three hours. Well, the thing about Steven Seagal, I
suspect a lot of people listening to this might be
surprised that Steven Seagal has been picked as a subject
for this, And I want to ensure everyone up front.
He's a monster. And that's part of what's so important
to talk about in a day, because honestly, you can
kind of tell from his movies like There seemed to
be made by a very insecure man. I know if

(01:49):
you watched a lot of his films, but he has
never taken a shot. Steven Seagal movies are just him,
like just walking through his enemies. Oh yeah, yeah, no
he's not. It's not like a Bruce Willis thing where
he's gonna be shot and choked and eat up. And
he's just I'm the toughest guy that's ever been. And
even when he made The Glimmerman and like Keenan every
Wayne's had all these funny lines, He's like, you know what,
I should these funny lines too, and so like there's

(02:10):
two funny man. There's no straight guy in that movie
except Steven Seagal, you know, has no comic timing and
he sort of sucks, but like again, walks through everybody
and you have a you have a knife, Steven Seagal
has nothing. You're so dead, Like ten seconds into that fight,
you're dead. Oh yeah, he's gonna break your arms to
the knife goes back towards you, and then he's gonna
stab you with your own knife. That's the kind of
action here on dam He'd get stabbed like seventy five

(02:32):
times and make a heroic come back. That's a story. Yeah, yeah,
that's an arc. There's no arcs and Steven Seagal movies.
The arc is just Steven Seagal is a badass. There
are people opposed to him and then they're dead. Yeah.
Um so. Stephen Frederick Seagal, or well, Stephen Frederick Siegel
is the original pronunciation of his name, so we'll get
to that in a second. Was born on April tenth,

(02:52):
nine two. On his personal website Steven Seagal dot com,
he describes his early life vast lee. A son of
a math teacher and a medical technician, Stephen's humble childhood
was underscored by a fascination with the martial arts and
the blues. Some would say that this is a strange combination,
but ask any martial arts expert or blues legend and
they will both tell you that it is the spirit

(03:13):
that reaches deep and within your soul that drives the artistry.
I learned on an ancient mountaintop. It's actually freaky how
accurate that is to what he claims about his training
in the blues. Um, I like every stupid thing I
make up. You're like, oh, yeah, that's actually no. You
can't think this is dumber than it is, and then

(03:34):
it gets really sinister. So that's the Steven seagaltail. So,
according to the Guardian, Stephen began studying a keto when
he was seven years old, and soon thereafter Quote professed
to his parents that he was not of this cosmic realm.
I learned from credit class that space. Yeah, uh, it's possible.

(03:55):
This was because young Stephen Segal was actually the reincarnation
of a seventeenth century Buddhist lama. Again more and that later.
Probably the best source I've been able to find on
Siegel's early life was a November article in People magazine,
written at the height of his popularity. The author actually
got to interview his mom, Pat and get some presumably
accurate information about the stars early life. The article notes

(04:16):
that while Siegel claimed that quote a lot of my
youth was spent in Brooklyn, his mom says that he
was born in Lansing, Michigan, and lived near Detroit until
the family moved to Fullerton, California, when he was five.
Here's a quote from that article. Although Segal likes to
paint himself as an urban street kid whom the Fullerton
youths saw as some kind of crazy gangster, Pat says
her son was frail and suffered from asthma. He was
a party kid back then, she says, but he really

(04:38):
thrived after the move from Michigan. So good for him. Yeah, no,
moving moving to Fullerton was great. Yeah, the weird thing
to lie about, Yeah, what wanting people to think that
you were a gangster at five? I just I wouldn't
have bought it anyway. But like, go and ask his mom,
and his mom sells him out immediately. He doesn't even say, like, Mom,
I told every want to come from the karate streets.
You gotta you gotta come before me. She's like, I'm

(05:00):
not doing that, sweetheart. People magazine calls, I'm telling them
the truth. You are fat and asthmetic and you're not
from space. You know. Uh, you know that kid in
like elementary school who always has all these like bold
lies about his uncle who is a Navy seal or
whatever like that. Steven Seagal is that, but never growing

(05:20):
up or learning anything like That's a great way to
describe him. Um So, Steven's mom says that he spent
most of his youth playing rock music rather than the blues,
but confirms that he was obsessed with aketo from an
early age. So that does seem to be true. Well,
it's a perfect sport for a seven year old. Some
shade on Aketo will not be the last. She says, quote,
he worked with this nice old Japanese man at a

(05:42):
dojo and garden grove. He where it's Stephen to go
to Japan. We don't know when Stephen first went to
Japan because he is a viitual liar, but in sundry
interviews he's claimed to a first gun there at various years,
from between nineteen sixty three to nineteen seventy three, so
somewhere in that period. Fullerton College enrollment records note that
he was enrolled there from nineteen seventy too of any one,
which suggests he would have been at least nineteen before leaving.

(06:03):
This is meaningful because one of Steven's claims to fame
is that he studied under Morahi Uyashiba, the founder of akito.
Since Mr Uyashiba died in nineteen sixty nine, it's likely
that Steven's lying about that too ridiculous. Yes, it won't
stop being that so Segel moved back to California nineteen
seventy four, where he met Miyaku Fujitani, a second degree

(06:25):
black belt and daughter of an Akito master from Osaka, Japan.
They met in l a at a dojo where she worked,
and Stephen pursued her quote aggressively, Um no, no, it
will be creepy later. At this point, he was really
good looking in his youth, like he has legitimately swollen
like a handsome guy like in his early twenties, and
she was charmed by it. She says he somehow lost

(06:45):
all that by the time he made his first movie.
Oh yeah, he went downhill from like ag eight teen on.
It has been a steady slide, to be honest, I
think he might have peaked at five. So Miako eventually
went home to Osaka and even went with her. So
he went back to Japan a second time. They got
married there. According to Robert Strickland, a former ci A

(07:06):
consultant who knew Segal in Japan, Segal claimed to have
married Miako and moved there in order to quote avoid
the draft. Marrying a Japanese national would make him less
likely to be sent back to the United States. So
he doesn't talk about that so much anymore now that
he's Steven Seagal law man. But yeah, that's that's apparently
why I moved to Japan in the first place, to
avoid the draft. Yeah, to this day. Segal claims that

(07:26):
he was the first and at the time only white
man to open a dojo in Japan. If true, that
would be impressive. Spy Magazine says that that's bullshit. However,
Spy magazine magazine calling your bullshit, I bet that's some
serious bullshit. I really like every article of Spy I read,
because they had a great one about Paul mana fort
like this one. They spent six months studying Steven Seagal

(07:47):
and like talking to people who knew him as a
kid and really getting into his back story. It's a
fun journey into the youth of Steven Seagal. Yeah, mazin
Spy Magazine baby quote. In fact, the dojo, which was
founded by Fujitani's father and noted Akito black Belt, was
owned by his mother in law and managed by his wife,
herself a black belt. Seagal has also boasted of his
courage and battling criminals. Sometimes they are bugs of the Yakuza,

(08:09):
the Japanese mafia. Other times they are mere garden variety criminals.
I jumped right in front of their faces, Sigal told
movie Line. I was a tenacious motherfucker man, and I
was fearless Miako. His ex wife says Segal was not
exactly telling the truth about fighting the Yakusa man quote,
it is a lie. He once chased a few drunks
away from the dojo, but was never involved with the yakuza.
So it could have been yukuza. You don't know, You

(08:32):
don't know. Man could have been drunk yakuza. Another major
Segal claimed to fame is that he was the first
Westerner to receive a black belt in Akito. His ex
wife doesn't challenge this exactly, but she did tell Spy quote,
the only reason Stephen was awarded the black belt was
because the judge, who was famous for his laziness, fell
asleep during Steven's presentation. Judge just gave him the black belt.

(08:53):
It's like, where am I? Who is this guy? You
know what? Here's a black belt. Normally only give these
two nine year olds of the way. But you seem
like a good guy, like a yah because of fighting
good guy. This is a ridiculous story. It's really ridiculous,
like such dubious honors to lie about the first black belt. Okay, dude,
that is a black belt is one of those phrases

(09:15):
that's like a shortcut to me, just cutting, closing my
ears to somebody like, Okay, you're bragging about being a
black belt, unless the question is can you teach me taekwondo,
in which case absolutely drop your credentials. Why not? Yeah?
So Steven spent a sizeable chunk of the late seventies
teaching martial arts in Japan, and according to him, this

(09:35):
is when he first attracted the attention of the CIA.
Here's how Steven put it in the nineteen interview with
the l A Times. These guys were my students. They
saw my abilities both with martial arts and with the language.
You can say that I became an advisor to several
CIA agents in the field. Through my friends in the CIA,
I met many powerful people and did special works and
special favorites, special favorites like the largest Kumfu trophy and

(09:56):
all of Minnesota. Even claims that during this Lansing Michigan
there too. Stephen claims that during this period he did
security work for Archbishop Desmond too too of South Africa.
The shot of Iran and Egyptian President and War Sadat.
I'm gonna guess one of those, probably probably not, probably not.

(10:17):
I don't buy it. And wat I mean clearly his
security team wasn't great because he got assassinated. So maybe
Segal was maybe tried a keto against the sniper. It's
not working. Oh sorry, and more that was that was unfair.
Um for a time, it was hard to refut to

(10:39):
confirmed Steven's claims of badassory. His ex wife Miako did
admit that he would regularly go away for long chunks
of time during their ten years together, saying my children
don't have any memory of him as a father god,
so he must be in Nina. The first thing to
appears the illusion of Steven Seagal, actual action hero turned
movie action hero was that wonderful article ann of Dishonor

(11:00):
by John Connolly. Now, like I said, this article was
the result of a six month investigation, and it was
the first place to point out that Steven Seagal's last
name would originally pronounced Siegel, not Segal. Are you going
to guess how that came about? I'm gonna say I
definitely had to do with Ninja's He had to have
been defending some kind of a dojo. No, this is
actually the only believable story he's ever told. He apparently

(11:22):
went to a Chegal exhibit at a museum and liked
the pronunciation. Never would have guessed that. I believe that's true.
No one would lie about that. Uh So, when Segal
came back from Japan in nineteen eighty, he opened two dojo's,
one of them in Taos, New Mexico, and one of
them in Los Angeles. Houses an odd choice, kind of
a small town to open an aikido dojo, and familiar

(11:46):
must be a great akido town. It's a beautiful town.
I didn't notice any Aikido going on there, so I
think it failed to take on. Miako says that her
then husband told her that he wanted to go to
the US to either get rich in Hollywood or by
running restaurants, which he doesn't seem to have ever done.
Uh She supported him in his dreams, though, and spent
years saving up money and living like a popper to
fund his trip back in his attempts to start a business.

(12:07):
So that's sweet. I'm gonna guess he does right by her.
Let's read the next paragraph. Before he left her, he
told her quote, I will always do the right thing.
I will never betray here you. Then he took her savings,
went to America and married another woman, Adrian LaRussa, in
nineteen four. Shortly thereafter, he met another woman, actress Kelly LeBrock.
According to Joe Hiams, then Warner Brothers VP of Publicity,

(12:28):
Segal saw LeBrock in the film Woman in Red and
said she is my destiny. So Hiam's and Segal wound
up having dinner with Jerry Pam, Lebron's former agent, and
during dinner, Segal asked Pam what the best way to
get publicity was. Pam told him it was to be
seen in the company of famous people. So Segal asked
him if he could help him meet Kelly LeBrock. Pam
told Segal that Colley was currently in Japan. So Steven Seagal,

(12:48):
who was still married to Miako and illegally married to
a second woman, flew to his first wife's home country
to try to pick up a third woman because she
was famous, which is that's how all the great story start.
It's almost a work of art as far as being
a shitty person as it's like the being a garbage
husband version of the Mona Lisa, like if you were

(13:09):
in a writer's room and you're like, Okay, we gotta
have this piece of ship do some stuff to like
let the viewers know he's a piece of ship. You'd
be like, nude, pump the brakes on all this. This
is way too much, and it is way too much,
And yet that does seem to be what happened. So
he did meet Kelly Lebron in Japan, and within two
weeks they were lovers. Within a year, she was pregnant.
By this time, Adrian Larissa had decided to file for

(13:31):
an annulment, so that's good. Shell granted her an ennulment.
She didn't seek any financial support, and in an interview
later stated that, in fact, quote, I gave him money
for months afterwards, just to get him out of my life.
I can't say very much because I'm afraid of Steven
and his friends. We'll talk about who Stephen and his
friends here. But yeah, yeah, it's sad for this girl,
like a lot of women, for Kelly Lebron. I mean,

(13:53):
there's not a whole lot of shame in that. Like
that's got to be most women's fears. Yeah, But like
I just he'll pay the guy money. Yeah, and he's
also got another wife, yeah, yeah, I bet you didn't
even get those karate trophies. No, no, no, I guess not.
Mia could divorced Segal. Right around this time, he and
Lebron headed back to Hollywood and her Beverly Hills mansion.

(14:14):
Now he wasn't a movie star at this point. He
was just sort of living with a movie star as
part of his quest to get famous. His house Do
Joe failed in the late nineteen eighties, leaving him desperate
for cash. In the words of Robert Strickland, according to Strickland,
Stephen arranged for a mercenary he knew to steal Lebrox
Porsche Carrera for the insurance money. Mercenary, A mercenary he
knows a lot of mercenaries. In interviews at the time,

(14:34):
Segal claimed to be actively searching for the monster who
had stolen his wife's car. Christ It's pretty remarkable, right,
just keeps going. I went in this hating Steven Seagal.
Now I'm like, now, okay, coming around, Now you're coming around.
This really wiped the stain of hard to kill out.

(14:56):
Money problems were common with pre movies. Stephen Segal. Multiple
sources who knew him for years alleged to Spy that
he seemed to have mysterious backers who would regularly help
him out of his pickles and presumably helped him start
his dojos in the first place. Two of his friends
were called a time when he left for around a
week and returned with a new car and quote a
stack of hundred dollar bills six inches high. Yeah, I

(15:17):
bet hey someone for money. Well that is what he claimed.
Segal bragg that he had gotten the money for pulling
off a hit for the mob, like he confessed to
murder to his friends. Know his friends later told Spy
magazine spoiler alert about Segal, none of his friends stay
his friends, maybe because he's a giant piece of ship
that might have an effect whether or not he actually

(15:40):
carried out a hit for the mob. Seagal spent years
telling lies like this in order to craft an aura
of danger. Spy reported in nine that Seagal packs of
forty five in his belt, not just loaded, but cocked
and chambered. Some might think this tough, others merely creetanus,
since he's just as likely to choose himself in the
testicles as to drop an attacker. Now, in fairness to
Seagal cocked in, chambered, or been locked as a common

(16:00):
way to carry a single action called nineteen eleven, which
sounds like the gun he was carrying. In more fairness
and in more accuracy, if you carry a cocked and
loaded pistol of any kind in a belt without a holster,
you are asking to get yourself shot in the c Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
it's dumb. It's a dumb thing to do. I'm wearing
one right now, and I mean I got shot in
the pick four times, five times. You lose track after

(16:22):
a few, you know, but you save a lot of
money on birth control. That's a great point. Male birth
control is here, and it is called dangerously carrying a
loaded handgun in your pants. So Stephen's supposed history as
a badass was not invented out of whole cloth. Throughout
his life, he's had numerous friendships with former CIA operatives, mercenaries,
and soldiers. Spy suggests that this is because he basically
just steals these people's stories and relates them during interviews

(16:44):
to seem like a badass quote. On one occasion, one
of Segal's students, a former Green Beret, was talking about
his time in Lao. Later, Segal told the same story
to another group, only now he had become the protagonist. Unfortunately,
the Green Beret was in this group. Makita remembers the
soldier saying, hey, Eddie, that's my story. Yeah, and that
man died after three quick chops of a kido. Speaking

(17:08):
of a keto, you know what flips and throws hunger.
This is this is this is a derrito's blood. But
it actually is time for us to have a normal
ad break. So imagine that I made a comment that
tied a keto into whatever ads come up next. We're

(17:29):
back and we're talking about Steven Seagal. I'm going to
read another quote from his website. Al Right, it gets
into how he describes the start of his film career.
Most of us know Stephen for his roles as an
action hero, with an acting career that was launched at
his Los Angeles do jo in the late eighties, where
he taught martial arts to the likes of Sean Connery,
James Coburn, and the famed talent agent Michael Ovitt's fun fact,

(17:51):
he broke Sean Connery's wrist yea when they were sparring.
Not too bad. Well, I mean, yeah, I guess. I
mean it's a sign of clumsiness. You probably shouldn't break
a student's wrist. Yeah, but I mean, at least didn't
shoot his dick off. He didn't shoot Sean Connery's dick off,
which I'm sure a lot of people are grateful for
Stephen Sigal aready, this is a better day than most.

(18:13):
Uh quote. It was Mr Ovits who paved the way
for Stephen to co write and star in his first
and hugely successful action film, Above the Law in y.
It's a good movie. It's a good movie. It's a
good movie. The story for how he came to be
in it is a little bit more complicated than Steven
Seagal's website gives, and involves a lot more of the mob,
of course it does. Would you have guessed before this
that Steven Seagal's career was bankrolled at the start by

(18:35):
the mafia? Yes? Or the y I guess, yeah, the
Japanese mafia, whatever, No, the American mafia. No good has
ever led Steven Seagald doing anything. No, I would. I
would say that's a problem, unfair. So let's let's hear
about how we got into above the law. We're talking
about the law. We're talking above the law. Yes, we're
we're definitely talking about to the bank, the blood bank. Wait,

(18:56):
is that a real line form movie? Fantastic? Okay, it
is almost certainly true that Michael Ovit's arranged for Sigal
to meet with a group of Warner Brothers executives to
show off his akito skills. He was apparently quite impressive.
Warner Brothers president Terry Simmel recalled, with just a toss
of his hand, Stephen would send the other guy flying.
It was pretty astounding. Mark Mikeeda participated in this demonstration.

(19:17):
He ran a dojo in Los Angeles and basically agreed
to be tossed around with the help of his friend.
He said, and later in an interview quote, I still
can't believe those guys at Warners didn't know it was
rehearsed demonstration. It shouldn't have fooled anybody. Segal could not
toss me or anyone else in the air unless we
were in on it. Yeah, if I can interrupt here
for a second. Sure, if you watch an keto demonstration,
it usually is one dude in the center of like

(19:38):
a crowd, and they run at him one at a
time and he'll like do a little thing with their
wrist and they'll go flying into a front flip. It's
clearly bullshit. Yeah, and we've now had you know, three
decades of m m A in our country and many
more in Brazil and Japan, and no one has ever
gone in there as a nikto expert. And he said,
like this is me. I'm gonna aketo a guy and
they come in and he flips them all around. It

(19:59):
just simp doesn't work. There's no record of akdo working
on someone who doesn't want akdo to work on them. Yeah,
but what way I've heard it described? And you know,
in case our listeners don't know who you are, you
you have a lot of experience in this world. I
wrote a few UFC games, you know, A big fan
of sport, trained in a jiu jitsu, and I, you know,
I like I like this stuff a lot. I think

(20:20):
about this stuff a lot, and like everyone else, when
UFC first came, I kept expecting some magic tai chi
guy to come down out of the mountains, or an
akdo guy to come out, or a jeet kundo guy
to to lock everybody's hands up and beat them with compass,
and it just it never happens. Like these traditional martial
arts have sort of been proven bullshit. They're great ways

(20:42):
to stay fit and have fun with your That doesn't
explain the size of Steven Seago. I'm not even shared
that's true. I think it's a good place to like
leave a kid for an hour. Anyway. My point is
stories of akdo devastating yakas and members. It's unlikely. Yeah,
And if you grab a guy by the rest and

(21:02):
he does a front flip, he probably didn't mind doing
that front flip so much. He's helping you out. It
was a consensual flip, right, yeah, as opposed to the
non consensual flips, which I think are more useful in
a fight. I'm not an expert, I would say, so, okay,
all this, uh, you know, Steven Seagal is a big,
fraudulent sort of exhibition where he tossed around his friend
was enough to convince the WB executives to drop fifty

(21:22):
dollars on a screen test, which shows you what money
means in Hollywood. The screen set test was apparently an
absolute disaster. Seagal had no charisma, talked like whispering ghosts.
Like that sounds like him. Yeah, that sounds like Steven Seagal.
That's how you would describe him in like, yeah, whispering ghost.

(21:42):
I have no charisma. My head stores one triangle. He
does have a weird Ovit's appeared to really love Stephen though,
because he continued to vouch for this kid that he
just met. So Warner Brothers was like, this kid's no good.
We're not going to put him in a movie. We
already wasted fifth granded on it. So ovit's his last
job before starting to work with Seagal is he had

(22:03):
done like the casting for Lethal Weapon, which obviously giganticit,
so they wanted him back for Lethal Weapon to clearly
he's good at casting, and he agreed not to take
a pay bump, which you're guaranteed for a job like that,
a sizeable paid bump if you're working in the sequel.
He agreed to work for what he'd gotten paid to
make the first one if they would give Steven Seagal
a job. Um, So, Michael ovit's really fucking believed in

(22:27):
Steven Seagal, or at least that's one possibility here. Um,
it's possible that Ovit's just saw something in Steven Seagal.
It's also possible that Seagal's career was bankrolled by the
Mafia from day one, and that Ovits was maybe bribed. Uh.
I don't know. I've never heard any allegations that Ovits
was bribed. Maybe he just loved him. But there are
credible allegations that Steven Seagal started his career in the mafia.

(22:49):
People do get like a sort of a cult like
love for their martial arts instructor. Like if you're going
cold as an adult, especially and like start taking like
karate classes, you'd be like, oh my god, my karate.
Start taking levitate, don't even know with one finger he
can knock you out, And like that's just sort of
becomes he's just staying at the strip mall because he's
too enlightened to work somewhere better. Right, So this guy
might have just thought that Steven Seagal truly was magic.

(23:11):
Then that is entirely possible. I'm glad you you brought
that up, because I wouldn't have thought about that. Um,
we do know that in nineteen nineties, Steven Seagalf formed
Steamroller entertainment with a guy named Julius Nasso. Now, Nasso's
main business was providing pharmaceuticals to merchant boats. But he've
broken off pharmaceuticals to merchant boat. He's so drugs um though.

(23:34):
Julius got into filmmaking, UH, and he claimed to spy
that he had been introduced to Segal via Tony Danza.
Danza denied this. Danza knew who Nassas was and basically said,
he's no fucking friend of mine. Don't don't talk to
me about that guy. So Segal told people that Nassa
and he were related, although neither he or Nasso ever
gave any detail as to how Stephen's mother denied any

(23:55):
relation between them, whatever the truth, Julius uncle, also named
Julius Nasso, owned a concrete come in New York. In
nine revealed that Nassa's concrete firm had participated in a
bid rigging scheme with Anthony Salerno, the original Fat Tony
that's where the name comes from on the Simpson's Tony Salerno. UH.
Several employees testified against him. Nasso, the younger in Seagal

(24:16):
were good friends for about a decade. Nasa was the
best man at Seagal's second wedding. He was also the
co owner of Seagal's five hundred and sixty thousand dollars
Staten Island home. It's worth noting that several other mob
guys connected to the Gambino family wound up having roles
in Seagal's early films. Quote from That's By article. One
of the technical advisors on the set of Under Siege
was Robert Booth Nichols, who has been identified in federal

(24:36):
wire taps as associating with the Gambiano crime family. A
retired Navy captain named Joseph John who was a technical
adviser in the same movie responsible for securing the use
of the U S s Missouri, described Segal and Nichols
as asshole buddies, which I think means butt buddies and
not both assholes who are friends. But I can't tell. Yeah,
I've never heard the term. It doesn't mean they have
sex with each other. It might, I don't know. I

(24:58):
don't know this guy, Martine, he's can get all out together.
Uh so. Another performer in a Segal film, Jerry Cri
is the stepson of a mafia capo, Robert Zimbardi, who
reportedly got Segal to give his stepson apart and out
for justice. Segal hired Cri, who has ambitions to be
a movie star, to play a bookmaker and a key scene,
Segal beats up a number of bad guys in the bar,

(25:18):
the one vronman who never takes a punch of Cri,
No way. Segal was going to take a swing at
Bobby Zam's kid. Spy was told that is suspicious that
you're a bad guy at Steven Seagal scene and you
didn't get punched in the face. Involved, Yeah, yeah, Yeah.
Even weirder than all this is the fact that during
the nine deposition for a civil assault case, which I
could not find more detail about, but I don't think

(25:40):
he was the one being charged, but he was deposed
in the civil assault case, Segal, under oath claimed not
to know how much money he had, what he actually owned,
or what he was paid per movie. His attorney explained
that Segal did not have an individual contract with Warner Brothers. Instead,
Warner Brothers had a contract with Sigal and his friend Nasso.
At times, some of the money paid to Seagal went
directly to Nasso, so that is a little weird. That's

(26:02):
a little weird. But your movie deal is with another
guy who has mob ties and he gets some of
your money, and no one seems to know quiet why
his agent. No, no, they owned a production company together,
his asshole, but it was his asshole buddy. Yeah. So
in the early nine nineties, Julius Naso started walking around
to l A with a card saying he was a

(26:22):
Warner Brothers producer. So it seems like Warner Brothers might
have given him some title on some but it's also
like they refused to talk about this at all, so
who knows what happened. Spy interviewed him and he claimed
that he would be handling foreign distribution for the movie
I think for under Siege movie. Yeah, great movie. The
interviewers that Spy thought this was odd since w B
at the time had the largest foreign distribution system of

(26:43):
any Hollywood studio. Warner Brothers refused to comment, so Naso explained,
because of my experience in the drug business, I had
contacts all over the world, which is why he was
the right man to help sell this movie overseas. Yeah. Boy,
those high sailors man, they were really like understiege. Hey,
I've always said if you can get say Hiler side,
you can sell movies overseas, especially about Navy chef that

(27:04):
kicks ass Okay so at. At the time in this
is about all that spy new. But in the decades
since nine, a lot more information has come out. It
turns out that Nasa was an associate of the Gambino
crime family, and he loaned Segal at least half a
million dollars of their money. Segal claims it was for taxes.
When segaland Nasso had a falling out around two thousand,
Segal was forced into a meeting with several mobsters where

(27:26):
they demanded a hundred and fifty thousand dollars per movie
he'd made. So here's a quote from a two thousand
to New York Times article on the matter. Steven Seagal,
the action film star cited as a mafia extortion target,
has told investigators that after he stopped working with his
long time producer, he was ordered into a car in
Brooklyn last year and shuttled to a Landmark restaurant where
he was threatened by mobsters. According to officials and lawyers

(27:47):
involved in the case, he was so intimidated, He recounted
that he agreed to turn over seven hundred thousand, although
investigators are still trying to trace the money. Do you
know what I would do if I was in a
car with all those mobsters and I knew, akdo fucking
akdo everybody in the car? Just you can't throw someone
in a car. No, I can't think. I think it
worked really well in those closed quarters. They try to
punch and you like slap slap. Movies have taught me

(28:09):
that just liquid human all over the just bloody pieces
of money. Well, my favorite out of the water, like
twenty minutes later. That's how long I hold my breath.
I was sucking there out of their dead lungs that
whole time. You should direct to Steven Seagal. My favorite
thing about this is that some of these guys who

(28:29):
were doing the meeting were tapped, and so the FBI
listened into them laughing about intimidating Steven Seagal. And the
thing they thought was funniest is that he had a
gun but was too scared to do anything. Like they're
just laughing at him. They just think it's hilarious. Has
said he was the thing about Steven Seagal, is you
really get the idea he like buys into his own
bullshit and after something like that, like he's got to

(28:50):
rethink like three decades worth of that bullshit he's living under, Like,
am I really a pussy? I'm going to correct you there.
I don't think Steven Seagal has ever refought anything. Like
they're lucky I didn't do my key to pull my gun.
Takes a real badass to get out of a situation
like that with only seven d dollars in spending. No
one expects me to be my pants for eight streight minutes.

(29:14):
Oh so, Steven Seagal in court claimed that these guys
were basically just his business partners and then the mob
extorted him. It sure seems like what really happened is
that the Gambino crime family, through Nasso, invested in Segal
in the hopes that they could cash in on a
long and successful action movie career, which the joke was
a little bit on there got him a little too
late there. Whatever the truth behind his start, Seagal became

(29:35):
the hottest new action hero on the block and was
on his way to becoming a massive start. Gary Goldman,
an ex mercenary was one of the badasses Seagal liked
to surround himself with For a while, they were working
on a script together, and Seagal had Goldman vouched for
him in interviews. In one interview with The l A Times,
Goldman claimed that Segal had gone with him quote on
several missions and that he has a high level of
skill that you don't just pick up reading fantasy magazines.

(29:58):
I don't think anyone would question escape abilities. A lot
of mercenaries they take dudes who just read fantasy magazines
with them and they're like, damn it, another one of
these fantasy magazines. Guys. I really should have learned not
to bring random people on my mercenary missions. We've been
getting magic spells on this mission. No, this is a
real life he is not a fantasy magazine. Well, my

(30:19):
only expertise is fantasy magazines. I've cut out these little
lightning bolt things. We gotta get that Stephen Seagal guy back.
He knows what he's doing. Well, Okay, so full full disclosure.
About a year after this point, Segal and Goldman had
a falling out and Segal backed out of their plan
to write a movie. So Goldman wrote a letter to

(30:39):
the same journalist at the l A Times he'd lied
to a year earlier and recanted. He said, quote, the
plain truth of the matter is that Segal wasn't as
a gutlass coward who was trying to convert the heroic
deeds of those brave men into a personal history for himself. Yeah.
Among other other things, Goldman's letter claimed that in nineteen
eighty eight, he and Segal had gone treasure hunting near
Barbados with Randy Whitner. While they were all hanging out

(31:01):
on a boat, Seagal bragg repeatedly about his time as
a Navy seal, which do I even need to say
that he was never absolutely not. At one point, Stephen
and Goldman had to wait into the water to deliver
equipment to a Zodiac boat, which is like a real
badass cool thing that like a real cool person might
have been able to handle. Steven Seagal was not. Here's

(31:22):
how Goldman said it went. Quote the surf was unbelievable,
really tough. He started screaming and panicking and was sure
he was going to die and all that crap. Goldman
claims that Randy Wintner had to pulse Segal up by
his hair while well, Goldman quote pushed his ass onto
the boat with my shoulder. Well, the one thing I
know about Navy seals is when you get him like
in rough water, they just freaked. Oh yeah, no. Their
training is to panic and water is rough. That's what

(31:45):
makes beautiful Corona Beach. But it's it's like lovely and
you can watch the planes land, but there's the sound
of all those Navy seals. Just me just panishes, and
I like, you're doing good work. Panic a little harder,
you'll be the best. You really want to lose your
mind at this young recruit, Steven Siegel. We're gonna we're

(32:07):
gonna send you to the desert, so we want you
scared of the sea. I love that they have special
circumstances just to say, oh, you're a Navy sea Well,
here's the water. And he just fucks it up so badly.
It doesn't even in there. Because later it became clear
that Segal could not read a compass or a map,
both things the Navy seals sort of stress, kind of important.

(32:31):
In his letter to The l A Times, Goldman said
Segal quote would surely die of starvation. If he was
given a compass and a map that led to a
restaurant five miles away. That's that's some good, like badass
way to cause someone. Yeah, that's that's some solid mercenary ragging. Yeah.
Goldman smack talking prompted Segal to take action. He called

(32:52):
up his friend Robert Strickland, the former contract employee with
the CIA, and had him meet on the set of
a movie he was filming, I think on Deadly Ground
as the sat Inness Trail. As they sat in his trailer,
Seagal handed Strickland to dossier he'd had compiled on Goldman
and then showed him a briefcase with fifty dollars in it.
According to Strickland, he said this, I'd like you to
do me a favor. I'd like you to kill Gary Goldman. Now.

(33:16):
I should note Mr Seagal was thirty eight years old
at this point and in the prime of his career.
Robert Strickland was a sixty eight year old retiree who
was a good foot shorter than him. Strickland claims his
first response was you're crazy, to which Seagal responded, if
you won't do it, get someone who will pay him.
What you want and keep the rest. This would not
be the last time Steven Seagal tried to pay to

(33:37):
have somebody hurt. Well, what you want is a long
paper trail when you when you want to assassinate someone,
you want to outsource it and then have them outsource it.
That way, it's easier to get away with when lots
of people know about it. The more documentation you have
for your crimes absolutely better. No, I think most criminals
would agree with that. In the Summer of writer named
Alan Rickman, not the actor that kind of messed me

(33:58):
out for a second to wrote an article about Seagal
for Gentleman's Quarterly. It was not complimentary. Segal flew an
intelligence analyst to his Staten Island home to help him
dig up dirt on the writer. Quote from Spy, Segal
tells the consultant that Rickman is gay, a fag. In
the actor's words, he once Rickman set up with a
homosexual quote to get pictures of Rickman going down on
the man. When the security consultant refused, Segal asked what

(34:19):
it would cost to have a hypothetical man whacked. When
the consultant replied whacked dead, Segal said, of course, you
people do that all the time. What if what if
you were Rickman masking I suck your dick? Here? Is
that gonna work? My favorite part about this is that,
like in an television interview, he lied about the other
man's height and he called him a pansy, even though
Rickman was an army captain who was also taller than

(34:42):
Steven Seagal. Stephen, He's just step He might be genetically
incapable of telling the truth. It's it's really hard to say,
Bob Strickland, that former c A contractor seems to have
been one of the people who put up with Seagal's
bullshit for the longest amount of time. Sa actually paid
Strickland fifty thousand dollars of a two hundred and fifty

(35:02):
thousand dollar deal for his life story. Strickland thought this
meant that Segal was going to make a movie about him,
but it actually just meant that Segal wanted the right
to lie about his own life and tell stories from
Strickland's life when he was interviewed. So one night, Strickland
was watching the Arsenio Hall Show and saw Steven Seagal
telling a story from Strickland's own life. That's an amazing
interview too, by the way. Yeah, yeah, he gets all

(35:25):
dark for he's like, I think he's talking about Kelly
Lebron and how like she was misbehaving, and he's like,
my house, my rules. It's a real window in the
darkness that is inside that man. Well, if I was
not a hack and a fraud, I would have seen
that one. I was too busy reading about Steven Seagal.
So Strickland got really angry when he heard his own
stories being told by Steven Seagal. So yeah, he uh

(35:47):
called Stephen a bunch of times, left a bunch of
angry messages, and Steven's response was essentially to threaten Strickland,
which prompted the former ce A contractor to file a
sworn affidavit in the Burbank Superior Court. Quote on December,
Steven Seagal said to me in my attorney's press, if
anybody from the CIA fox with me, they will be hurt.
He claimed he was backed by very powerful people, more
powerful than the CIA ship in their pains. No, yeah, yeah,

(36:10):
I mean he's he's one of those non swimming Navy seals,
which he knows are the deadliest kind. And if you
want to hear something that's even better than a Navy
seal who can't swim. Sponsors, it's an ad break. Yeah,
it's a sponsors and we're back. We're talking about Steven Seagal,

(36:30):
who has just ruined what probably the longest friendship he
ever had with a former CIA man by lying and
stealing his life, becoming an experienced vampire national television. That's embarrassing. Yeah,
it's a really shameful thing to do. So. In the
affidavit Strickland filed, he claimed that a mutual friend of
he in Segal, had quote called me from New York
and advised me to watch my ass. He stated that

(36:51):
my safety could be in jeopardy because Steven Seagal is
backed by powerful people who have vested interest in preserving
his image and reputation. Which might have been true at
that point and entirely honest, like he you may not
have been lying about that. Seagal quickly followed the success
of Nine Above the Law, which was his first film,
with three more action hits, Hard to Kill, Mark for Death,
and for Justice. Yeah. Yeah, his career peaqud in nine

(37:14):
with Undersiege or with Undersiege. I may have sucked that up,
but he was a pretty big star in when he
was invited to host an episode of Saturday Night Live.
Not not the greatest success in the history of that show.
In a way, it might be. In a way it
might be. It depends on how much enjoyment you get
out of this next anecdote. So in the book Life
from New York, which is a history of the show,

(37:36):
several cast members chimed in about the week Stephen Seagal
was the host. Tim Meadows, the biggest problem with Steven
Seagal was that he would complain about jokes that he
didn't get. So it was like, you can't explain something
to somebody in German if they don't speak German. He
just wasn't funny, and he was very critical of the
cast and the writing staff. He didn't realize that you
can't tell somebody they're stupid on Wednesday and expect them

(37:56):
to continue writing for you on Saturday. So people like
of him intentionally bad ship because they hated him. I
think so. I think that that's part of the explanation.
David Spade said, quote he didn't want to go along
with what the plan was that week, and as a result,
I think that was the first week that I heard
talk about replacing the host and just doing a cast show. Yeah.
And then Julius Sweeney, when we pitched our ideas for

(38:16):
Sigal at our Monday meeting, he gave us some of
his own sketch ideas, and some of his sketch ideas
were so heinous, so hilariously awful, it was like we
were on candid camera. He had this idea that he's
a therapist and he wanted Victoria Jackson to be his
patient who's just been raped. And the therapist says, you're
going to have to come to me twice a week
for like three years, because he said that's how therapists
fucking are. They're just trying to get your money. And

(38:39):
then he says that the psychiatrist tries to have sex
with her. That's Stephen Seagal's idea of comedy. That's so weird.
It will not be weird later in this story it
will actually make total sense about I've been a comedy
writer for many, many years now, and I am seriously
racking my brain how to get to a place of
comedy from such a dark premise. No, there's no punchline

(39:00):
anywhere in that description, and I don't think there was
a punchline in the show. I can't even if you
had nine hours to build the context for this, I
don't think you can make that like funny funny. No,
And I do think it's important to note that nightmare.
I suspect that four Seagal the punchline was the psychiatrist
tries to rape his patient. I think that was his idea.
That was the joke. You ready for this. It's a salt,

(39:24):
it's a horrible the sexual self victim. Oh see, you know,
it's like poetry. It dies back to the beginning. Oh god,
he would have said that. He wouldn't compared to absolutely
would have compared it to poetry. And then he fucking
cried a chop through the table, vanished in a puff
of flower cloud. In two thousand fourteen, when guest Nicholas

(39:46):
Cage expressed a worry to Lauren Michael's that he would
be quote the worst host ever, Lauren Michael's reportedly said, no,
that would be Steven Seagal. He's one of the only
people ever banned from being on Saturday Night Live ever ever.
Ever ever again. They did that joke on Sarah Live,
remember Lord Michael's coming out and saying like, no, no, no,
the worst was sal but there was something real about it. Yeah, no,

(40:09):
I mean it sounds like he was terrible. There's another story.
I think it was Rob Schneider who saw Steven Seagal
like walked up to him and said, I just finished
reading the best screenplay in my life. And Schneider was like, oh, yeah,
who wrote it? And he was like me and it
was not a joke. Oh my god, Steven Seagal, what
a dream set up for that answer, though, because like
if if you said, oh, I made the best screenplay,

(40:30):
most people are like, oh, what's it about? But he
asked who the writer was, to perfectly set up Steven
Seagal to say, men, that should be the team. Schneider,
Oh my god, Oh my god. I would throw my
own money into the production of that film. Yeah, especially

(40:51):
if all of the bad guys are Segal and Snyder.
I love it. Like some sort of a time loop
made it so every person in that universe was segalange Nier. Yeah,
I'm not saying there in map it's like really that,
it's really that you commit to the premise. Yeah, Hollywood,
of the phone, this is an inspiring idea. That idea
of the sex assault victim and the therapist. That's a

(41:13):
dead end. That's a dead end. Don't pursue that. But
but Schneider and Seagal, that's at least a skit. Let's
do another podcast after this. We'll save it for that.
But the storyboard, the whole thing. Yeah, okay, So you remember, like, actually,
way less than twenty minutes ago, when I said that
him wanting to make the joke be entirely about sexual
assault would make sense very soon. Yeah, it's about to

(41:34):
make sense. Yeah. So the early nineties were a time
of great professional success for Steven Seagal, and they were
also when he began his career as a sexual predator.
I mean, maybe he began it earlier, but we certainly
know about assaults dating back to the early nineties. The
signs were already present as earliest nineteen nine, when Robert
Strickland watched Seagal harassed one of his personal assistants. She
was brushing her teeth in his trailer when, according to Strickland,
Seagal told her that she needed to get over there.

(41:56):
Immediately when she came out, still brushing her teeth, he said, Gee, Ranne,
you look like that when I come in your mouth
some more Steven Seagal humor there. That is the absence
of a romantic relationship before that. No, Strickland, the former
CIA guy, who I'm going to guess was a pretty
coarse fellow, thought this was gross. I think yea profoundly gross. Yeah. So.

(42:18):
Earlier this year, Julianna Margoulas of the Good Wife was
a guest on the Katie CorX podcast. They talked about
the me Too movement, and Margoulas recalled an unsettling encounter
with Seagal in the early nineteen nineties. He was a
big action star at that point and she was still
quite new when a casting director told her that Stephen
wanted to do a scene with her in his room. Quote.
I walked in and I sat down, and I jumped

(42:39):
right back up because there was something very uncomfortable and
hard in the couch. He laughed and said, oh, sorry,
that must have been my gun, Margoulies recalled. He lifted
up the cushion and he took out his gun. When
Margoolies grew noticeably nervous, Segal explained that he casually packed
to protect himself from quote all the crazies that are
out there. Yeah, if your guns in the couch, you're
the crazy verse. I think he might be right. Yeah,

(43:00):
that's not where the gun goes, not in the couch.
What so next, if you've got company coming over, why
you leave your gun in the couch? He wanted her
to find it. Yeah, he wanted her to find What
kind of a person thinks like this will turn the
girl on almost dying. I don't think turning her on
was his goal. Maybe it was was he trying to
like terrify her. Maybe the thing that he did next

(43:21):
in this interaction was tell her that he was a healer,
and then he wanted to read her palms, So maybe
he was trying. Yeah, quote he told me I had
really weak kidneys at that point, to be honestness and
New York girl, I kind of started laughing inside. So
shortly thereafter, Ma Gooli said she squirmed out of the room,
but then realized that she hadn't received the cab fair
she had been promised, so she went back and asked
for it. She got the cash as well as the

(43:42):
part and out for Justice, although she demanded she never
be alone with Seagal on set, so not to diminish it.
But this is a rather tame story to compare to
the stories of many of the other women's who have
reported their interactions with Stevenson. Would be real pretty if
you had better kidneys. Steven Seagal is Out for Kidneys.
In nineteen John Connelly, the author of that spy article,

(44:03):
wrote another article about Segal, this time for Penthouse and It.
He alleged that four female staffers had resigned from the
production of his film Out for Justice in protest of
his constant sexual harassment and quote a sexual attack on
one of them. They claimed Segal tried to undress them
during casting interviews. Once stated, when I was finally able
to get him to stop, he told me I had
the part. So that does seem to be Stevens modus

(44:25):
opera and I Another woman claimed Segal would constantly brush
past women in his office and touch them. His former housekeeper,
La bum Garner, claimed Segal sexually attacked her while she
was working at his house. She did plead guilty to
stealing from him later. Maybe I mean I could also
see steven crimes. Yeah, a little more minor. In fact,

(44:47):
stealing from a rich guy barely qualifies, barely qualifies as
a crime. Connolly talked to six women in total who
accused Seagal of harassment. They would not be the last.
He stated at the end of his article that the
code of silence around seagal' suggish behavior is starting to crack.
Shatter would be a more apt term. In n Jenny
McCarthy talked to Movieline about her audition for the classic

(45:09):
film Under Siege two, a sequel to Seagal's biggest hit,
in one of the first real clear signs that his
career was already passed. It's a fun fact he outruns
an explosion in that movie, which is impossible because Steven Seagal,
actually he runs like a fat woman waking up in
a bathtub covered in snakes. That's a good description of
Steven Seagal running. And I've I've written a lot of

(45:31):
Steven Seagal runs like jokes in my career, and I
think that might be the most evocative he is. You
owe yourself to look up Steven Seagal running on YouTube,
because he has never managed to run like a normal person.
He like tucks his elbows in and he kind of
has like limp wrists and he keeps the elbows tucked
in tight and he just sort of wiggles through the
air and it's like a scurry. Yeah, but they're just

(45:54):
like in these movies. And you look at Tom Cruise,
he just got beautiful form because until he spent it
out run and then Steven Seagal, it's like a hamster
getting electrified. Well, and it's one of those things you
talk to people. I've talked to someone who does firearms
training for movies, Like his job is helping movie stars

(46:14):
like learn how to use weapons and like do shooting
against like like choreographed gunfights and stuff. And he says,
and you can find this in other articles, like Tom
Cruise is really good with a gun. With all the
physical stuff he's done, he's really good at everything. Nobody
says that about Steven Seagal. Nobody praises his ability to
do stunts. So in Jenny McCarthy talked to movie Line

(46:37):
Yeah about her audition for the classic film Understage two
and which Steven Seagal at runs an explosion. Um, here's
what she said happened. I was wearing this very baggy dress,
which I always wear to auditions with my hair pulled back.
I'm listening to Seagal go on and on about how
he found his soul in Asia and was one with
himself or whatever, and I said, well, I'm ready to read.
He said, stand up. You have to be kind of
sexy in the movie and in that dress. I can't tell.

(46:58):
I stand up and he goes take off your dress.
I said what, and he said there's nudity. I said, no,
there's not, or I wouldn't be here right now. He
said again, there's nudity, and I said, notable fully closed woman. Well,
she said, the pages are right in front of me,
and there's no She's right to make this objection. I'm
getting to it. He goes take off your dress. I

(47:19):
just started crying and said, rent my Playboy video, you asshole,
And yeah, fair enough funny on single that I always
thought like that hot girl's way funnier than the hot
I would like you McCarthy a lot if it wasn't
for advocating child or not get vaccination. She's got a
lot of bad and she's certainly in the right here.
Think that she has more wit than you'd expect. No, she's.

(47:40):
That's a funny, funny thing to say. Yeah, No, she's.
She's got a great response. Her recollection of the events
is really good. When the Daily Beast question segall spokesman
about this, he said, the claim was completely false, and
I should note several times so we don't get sued.
Steven Seagald denies any history any of the many many many, many, many, many,
many many many. The Washington Post says, there are too

(48:02):
many allegations of assault and harassment to count, too many
to count, the Washington Post, and they have great they
have whole people who Yeah. So there's no nice segue here.
It's it's about to get really dark, so buckle up
the delicious flavor of no. This is not the time
for that um. When Steven Seagal was filming one of

(48:25):
his most popular movies, on Deadly Ground, he met an
eighteen year old extra named Regina Simmons. He invited her
to a rat party at his house. When she showed up,
no one else was there. Yeah. Regular listeners will remember
this as the same basic strategy used by Bill Cosby
on several occasions. Tell him there's a party. It seems
to be a pretty common Hollywood creep strategy. Yeah. Regina
says he told her everyone else had already left, and

(48:48):
then he took her into his bedroom. Quote. He closed
the door and approached me from behind. He started kissing
my neck and taking off my clothes. I was in shock.
I was completely caught off guard. Segal was more than
twice my size and twice my age. I was not
sexually active, nor had I ever been naked in front
of a man before I froze. She alleges that Segald
and raped her. She says, there was nothing consensual about this.
I couldn't move, and I felt as if I was

(49:09):
watching my body from above. I felt tears coming down
my face. Yeah. When Segal was done, he asked her
if she needed any money, and then allowed her to leave.
He called her the next day. I don't know what
actually is going It is a good question what is
going on in Steven Seagal's head, because I seriously think
he probably doesn't think of himself. He kept calling this
this woman. I don't think he thinks of himself as

(49:29):
it rapist. Yeah, I I don't know. I like not
that that mitigates it at all, because he seems to
be a monster, but I think that is part of
his psychology in this Now. This story came out in
March of last year after several women, among them Portia
de Larossi from Arrested development alleged Steven Seagal being a
creepy sexual harasser. There was a whole press conference when

(49:51):
Regina came out and another woman was there to support her,
Faviola Datis. She auditioned for a part and as if
yet unproduced vanity project with Steven Seagal about Genghis Khan,
which Segal was supposed to write, direct and star in.
He was, Oh my god, that's amazing. Yeah, it's a
dark story. So I don't want to get lost in this,
but that may be the only unproduced vanity project I

(50:11):
do kind of want to say. Um Data said her
initial meetings with Segal took place in public and didn't
give her any cause for concern. The two bonded over
shared interest like Buddhism and martial arts, she said, and
quote soon developed a friendly relationship via text and phone calls.
At one point, Segal invited Datas for a private audition.
She said. He explained to me that he would like
to evaluate my figure and see if I would be

(50:32):
suitable for the role. His assistant told me to arrive
wearing a bikini or a broad and panties under my clothing,
as this is quite standard in the modeling industry. I
agreed to do so. Now Datas noticed some strange things
right off the bat. For one Segal, it asked her
to meet in the evening at a hotel that he
had booked. Quote. I was taken up to Seagal's room
by his assistant, who repeated to me multiple times in
the elevator, Steven's word is as good as gold. I

(50:52):
thought this was a bit strange, but I did not comment.
When she arrived, only Stephen and his bodyguard were in
the room. The assistant who had led her there immediately left.
Stephen asked me to take off my clothes, which I did,
although I was nervous considering there were no other individuals present,
and do a cat walk through the room for him.
I did so, and Stephen approached me and said that
he would like to act out a romantic scene to
get a sense of our chemistry. Davis told him that

(51:13):
she was uncomfortable with this and said, no, that's when
she alleges Segal reached under her bikini top and groped
her while fondling her vagina with his other hands. She
yelled that the audition was over. Steven sat there calmly
as if nothing had happened, and while I was noticeably
upset and terrified by the experience, Steven's security guards stood
blocking the doorway and only moved when Steven motioned for
him to do so. I left feeling horrified and totally violated.

(51:35):
Steven Seagal there, His lawyer denies both of these allegations.
It was so gross. But then to have like a
security guard there too, Yeah, that that lot the creepiest thing.
You're gonna stand here and watch, I think it will
really help her, like feel more at ease if there's
a weird dude watching. What if there's a giant guy
standing in the back of the room, Well, I like groper,
Like I'm gonna move fast, so like I just want

(51:57):
you to stand there and be weird. Which it's one
of those things there's always in these stories of Hollywood
sexual predators, so many people complicit. You know, the assistant
has to know what's playing on. This is not Steven
Seagal in his prime, when someone might think, yeah, maybe
a young actress wants to meet this handsome guy, Like
this is someone knowing something creepy's going to go on.
But this is my paycheck, so I'm just gonna soldier on.

(52:18):
There's other jobs you can take where people don't rape. Yeah,
you know what I mean? Yes, Uh. I have never
worked at a place where someone's just trying some rape
out near me. Yeah yeah, yeah you work here, right,
so like you're cool with this rape, you understand this
is just how kings works. Well, I sure need this job.
I'll just block the door in case anyone tries to

(52:40):
make a run for it. This is a really bad
time for an ad segue tremendously disastrously. Kinkoes is not
a supporter of the podcast, so I really don't care
what you do to them. How you feeling about Steven Seagal,
it's a little little roast, Like these intimate details of

(53:02):
like this type of interaction is what's like it's easy
to say, like, oh, this guy, he's a he's an
attempted rapist, that guy, but then when you like learn
these little details, it's so gross that some woman had
to explain that this is exactly what happened. I should
say we're back, but I think we've been back since
the start of this conversation. Uh, it's it's remarkable to me.

(53:26):
I guess one of the things I can never stop
thinking about because I like watching old movies is like
you look at like Humphrey bogartan screen and you like,
did you assault somebody? Bogie? Probably right, yeah, probably, yeah.
I don't know. I've never heard anything about that, but
you just see how many of these guys did something
fucked up. Even Bowie has some dark stuff in his background,
and it's like not like this, nothing like this, but

(53:48):
like some stuff that's questionable anyway. It's a bummer, And
there is something about like celebrity that I think Jack's
your game up. Yeah. It's one of the things that
confused about this to me is I've read a lot
of allegations from various because we're not going to cover
every allegation spinning at Steven Seagal again. As The Washington
Post said, there are too many to count. Um, there

(54:11):
are a number of allegations where he will do creepy stuff,
He will grope someone clearly against their will, but they
will say no, that they don't want sex, and he
will let them leave, which makes me think in his head,
Steven Seagal, I don't I don't know, like A yeah,
I don't want to mitigate it, but I'm certain he
doesn't think of himself as a rapist, which again I

(54:33):
believe the women in this case, because, for one thing,
there are too many allegations to count, which is usually
the first sign that it's true. Like so, yeah, back
in March is when those two latest allegations, including one
of straight up rap we're filed against Steven Seagal, not
the first time allegations have been made, but the first
time in the meat Too era. For sure, there were

(54:53):
allegations against Steven Seagal starting back in the nineties and
the early two thousands, and then right after me two
kicked up, people started talking about them again, and of
course these two women came forward in March. But in
January Stephen Seagal decided that he wanted to get ahead
of these sexual assault rumors and really deal with the
problem in a proactive manner. Can you guess what media

(55:13):
outlet he chose to talk to. I bet it was Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Steven Seagal showed up on info Wars in January of
two thousand and eighteen. He told Alex Jones that the
many many many many many many many many many many
many many many many many many many women who had
made claims against him were paid liars. Someone has deep pockets. Quote.

(55:36):
This isn't just about me, because hundreds of people in
Hollywood have been attacked and hundreds of people have been,
in my opinion, falsely accused. My opinion is that sixty
of these people are completely innocent, and that includes me.
In most of these cases, the accusations are years old.
They're not providing evidence or proof of witnesses. They're just
throwing it out, and all of a sudden, somebody's life
is ruined. Yeah, when people say it's a witch hunt,

(55:58):
it's worse than any other witch hunt in America's ever seen.
This is ruining our country. This is worse than the
time we burned people to death, worst in the time
we burned witches. He's the real victim here, he is
the real victim. And I'm never not excited by how
many times terrible people's lives intersect Alex Jones. And of course,

(56:18):
of course they wound up talking to each other. How
could they have not? How could the world have allowed that?
I always wonder like when say, you buy your own bullshit,
like and you meet someone like Alex Jones who's also
full of shit, Like, do they completely believe all of
the other guys bullshit? Does that like start to create
like this bullshit spiral where like they start just like
I'm gonna just stay some crazy Steven believes it may

(56:41):
just be a matter of like Alex Jones knows that
Steven Seagals talk about his time as the Navy seal
that didn't I can talk about like all the badest
stuff I've done and like the globalst trying to kill
me and stuff. Yeah, and so like if Alex Jones
is being like I used to win fights against men
when I was a child, like Stevenson allowed to be
like I know you're full of shit? Or is he
like I can't pretend like I know you're full of
ship because that would admit that I understand the limits

(57:05):
of this absurdity. It's mutually assured destruction is applied to lies,
shameless lies. It is remarkable. So Steven Seagal's career peaked
around nineteen nineteen four. By the year two thousand, he'd
had a string of flops and was no longer considered
in the same tier of action star as Bruce Willis,

(57:26):
if that was ever a fair thing to say, you know,
he was. He was like of a Jean Claude Van
Dam contemporary, but his films were like, didn't have as
much joy or fun and uh, they weren't his like,
um adventurous, I guess yeah. And when you've seen to
Stephen Seagal, mo, you've seen all every Stephen Seagal movie.
It was one of those things when when John Clyde

(57:47):
Van Dam came back and did j c v D
a couple of years ago, everyone was like, oh, yeah,
you know, I'd like to watch John Claude vandam I'm
sure nobody feels that way about Stevens. Nothing level about
Steven Seagal. What John clad is a movie star? Yeah,
And the early two thousands began the start of a long,
sharp decline for Steven Seagal, from movie theater releases to

(58:07):
direct to video releases to eventually direct to digital productions,
which is kind of where he is now. And if
you've seen a recent Steven Seagal movie. It's a heavy set,
elderly man pulling guns out of people's hands and trying
not to move to rutch. Just a bunch of catwalks
in Eastern European really dark lighting. Yeah, um so Yeah.

(58:30):
The early two thousands definitely marked the end of Steven
Seagal's career as a serious action movie star, but they
also marked the start of something else, something we're going
to get into in Part two of this podcast, Steven
Seagal's twin careers as a blues musician cop. Well, I
should say three careers because in addition to being a
blues musician and a cop, he's an alleged human trafficker.

(58:51):
So all that and more in Part two. Yeah, Sean,
do you have any plug doubles that you would like
to plug? I'm easy to find on Twitter search for
Sean Baby. Uh. I still write jokes at Cracked. Uh.
Play calculords on your mobile devices. Yes, Play calculates on
your mobile devices and you will get some of Sean

(59:12):
Baby's signature humor, great jokes, great way to teach math,
and listeners should know. Sean Baby essentially invented comedy on
the Internet and was it might legally be true? Yeah,
what was one of like the three or four people.
That is a big part of why I got into
this industry. So I didn't tell you that until now
because I wanted us to have emotional resonance unlike a

(59:33):
Steven Seagal movie. I wanted to prove we could do
it better. What a perfect button on a perfect episode. Uh.
You can find me on Twitter at I right, Okay,
you can find us on Instagram and on Twitter this
podcast at at Bastards pot and you can find us
online along with some really sad pictures of Steven Seagal,
Behind the Pastords dot com and all of the many

(59:54):
sources for this episode if you've been wondering what would
it be like if I spent sixteen hours reading about
Steven Seagal's life and times ordinary day for me. So
we will be back on Thursday talking about way more
Steven Seagal and really getting into his intersections with like
three other people we've done podcasts on because he is
just the worst person and intersects with all the other

(01:00:16):
worst people. But until then, I'm Robert Evans. This is
Behind the Bastards, and I love about h

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