November 30, 2022 • 39 mins
Welcome to Unbreakable! A mental health podcast hosted by Fox NFL Insider Jay Glazer. On today's episode, well-known American actor Christian Lee Navarro opens up about his mental health struggles, suicidal thoughts, the value of therapists, life on the set of 13 Reasons Why and much more.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
This is Unbreakable with Jay Glazer, a mental health podcast
helping you out of the gray and into the blue.
Now here's Jay Glazer. Welcome into Unbreakable, a mental health
podcast with Jay Glazer. Luckily I'm Jay Glazer. That's why
I'm sitting here today. And you know, doing this podcast
(00:23):
allows me to meet people I never would have met.
And that's the one thing about living in the gray.
It's really attached me to people that I never would
have come across in life. And you know, me opening
up talking about this, I didn't know how many teammates
I really had out there. So for so many years
I just sat there and suffering silence and just you know,
hit it and created this other character about myself, the
(00:44):
glaze that you all see on on television, um to
hide what was really going on behind my eyes. But
it turns out I got a lot more teammates out there,
and welcoming in one of them right now who reached
out to me after one of these podcasts, and man,
it was just so moving and touching and really for
everybody out there who's afraid to open up, this shows
(01:06):
you how alone you're not when you do let yourself
be so vulnerable, and with that, I'm gonna welcome in
my dude, Christian Lee Navarro. You may know him from
Thirteen Reasons Why, you may have know him from a
host of other things a long time after, and he's
now my new teammate. So welcome in and kind of,
you know, let's give a little background first before we
get into you know, what prompted you to reach out.
(01:27):
I think it was after the Frank Grillo episode, right.
My dad had sent me that episode, and he had
been my dad, Mena Varo, who's a cop, retired cop
now twenty years in New York. He kept telling me,
you gotta listen to this podcast. And honestly, I knew
what the subject matter was, and I don't think I
was at a place to listen to it. I was
still in a fragile place, right. I knew that it
(01:48):
would make me look in the mirror and make me
think about things and and help ultimately, right, And I
think I was sort of in in a place where
I didn't I didn't know I wanted to help yet,
and I had sort of gotten off my ask final
least try to get back in the gym after suffering
with depression, and anxiety. And I'm listening to this podcast
and I'm listening to Frank, who I admire as an actor.
(02:08):
I've seen him countless things. He's a certified badass March
law in his boxer, UM, just a real man's man's right.
And I'm I'm I'm listening to him talk about his
his friend's suicide and dealing with his mental health as
a as a result of that, and after that, and
opening up about his journey generally in the business, and
you with him and really feeling this teammate vibe right,
(02:32):
And I thought, I need to reach out immediately and
and let this guy know that he's making a difference
in my life personally, right, just in case. You know,
sometimes whatever we do is as and I will consider
you an artist, my friend. Um, as artists, whatever we do,
sometimes we put that out there into the world and
we don't know what's coming back at us. And I
thought I got to reach out and say thank you,
because I did feel included, I felt heard. It was Um.
(02:55):
It was the first time in a while that I thought, man,
they really get you know. I'm in therapy. I've been
in therapy, but it's it's good to have the validation
amongst your peers and people you look up to this way,
and I think your show validates a lot of people's journeys.
What led you to be in such a dark place? Well,
it's a it's two fold, man. I I took this
incredible ride with this show Thirteen Reasons Why, you know,
(03:17):
number one show on the planet for a while. Half
a billion people tuned into this thing on Netflix. For
for people who don't know, it's a show about suicide. Yeah,
it's it's a show about suicide prevention. It's to show
us a show about mental health awareness. And whilst on
this show, I I all over the world that people
who shared their stories right, and and it was a
privilege to be in that position. A lot of people don't.
(03:39):
They didn't feel like they had anyone else who could understand.
And because I portrayed this character. Uh and my character
on the show is is sort of a little bit
more even Keel, and he's there for everyone, you know.
I they felt like they could bring their their pain
to me and I would listen to it and you know,
really empathize. But I never during this four or five
years we did this thing, I never once stopped thought
(04:00):
about me, my mental health and where I was. I
was just writing this high. You know. For ten years
I was auditioning and getting bits here and there, and
then this thing happened and thinking, fuck, it's the dream,
right to see it. I'm on the top of the mountain.
And then it ended, right, the show ended. Pandemic happens
two years. No one's calling, nothing's happening. Um And I
(04:21):
think what I allowed to happen was this thing that
I loved and still love so much. I let it
become me. I let it become the thing that defines me.
So when I didn't have work coming in, I didn't
understand it. I'm watching people who are you know, they
say comparison is the thief of joy, right, and social
media screws us all it does, it does, and that's
(04:41):
the era we live in, right, it's in now era.
It's a social media era. I'm watching all of my contemporaries, Excel.
You know what I'm going, Well, I I know, I
work harder, I have the work ethic. I know, why
isn't it happening for me? You know? At the same time,
I met this woman who was everything I had ever
asked for in a person, and I allowed the one
to poison the other. You know, my I had never
(05:03):
dealt with depression, anxiety, I certainly never had self confidence issues,
and all of these things were compiling on top of
each other. Whilst I'm trying to hold on to this
person who was and you know, I still love her
very much, but I couldn't do it. I allowed that
to poison the one, you know, one to poison the other,
and it took me to places I didn't know I
(05:24):
could go in that regard, and for the first time,
I realized, holy shit, I'm not I worked on the
show and I never once thought about my own mental health,
and never they offered it to us, you know, Universal,
excuse me, Paramount and Netflix. They we had counselors on set,
they had research, but yeah, yeah, we had I mean
everything from therapy, dogs and psychiatrists. I call it everything
(05:45):
diligent about taking care of the actors as we were
trying to tell his story. But I never thought I
needed it. I think part of that is growing up
the way you grow up as young man in the society,
and I think part of that is I really felt
like I was on a high right, I and I
didn't feel bad until it was taken away from me.
And you gotta look in the mirror and who are
you if all that ship's gone? Right? That's that's the
(06:07):
tough question I was coming up against. But but it's
also interesting because your character, right, you're you're basically there
to spread the message and the word of why someone
else committed suicide, and then the rest of the world
comes to you like you're really that person. That's a
big burden take on in the real world, and I
take it on here doing a mental health podcast. People
act like I'm your therapist. I'm not. I'm just the
(06:27):
dude who's fucked up, who's learning to be good with
this fuck upness, and God bless me with the ability
to communicate about it. And I think that, you know,
there's this this great line I heard recently, the pressure
is a privilege, um, and it's it's hard sometimes to
really see that, but it is true. Now, the flip
side of that is these people think that you have
it all figured out too right there coming to you,
You're saying, this is my story, thank you for helping
(06:49):
me get through this, and then retrospectively, I'm going out.
I'm just as fucked up as all of you, right,
I'm just get through this thing we call life, just
like everybody else. Um and still, I was just in
England at a convent, thirteen thousand fans, you know, meeting
coming up saying hi, thank you, telling me there's stories,
and I got this this letter in this lady handed
me a six page letter telling her what she's been through.
(07:10):
And that's like, that's a that's a regular occurrence because
of the show we were on. But it is it's
a bit of a burden. Uh. And you know, you
take on, if you're empathetic, you take on what's happened
and you and you really live with it. And so
it can be it can be a bit much, but
it is a privilege. Also, you know, listen, you know
one of the things because you're talking. Also, look, doing
what you do is hard to what I do, because
(07:32):
you're you know, kind of beholding to what somebody else
thinks of you. Right, that's how you get your job,
which fucking sucks. Right. So I always marveled at actors saying, like, man,
the most successful ones have been rejected ninety nine of
the time. A lot of rejection doing for me to
get to where I got to the first eleven years
(07:53):
of my career. People who know this, and I wrote
this in my book and Breakable. I was rejected for
eleven years. I was making nine thousand, four and fifty
a year, live in New York City, try to out
work the world. I just decided I'd be rejected more
than anybody else and I'd be relentless in my pursuit.
But man, that rejection, folks, it sucks with the like,
be careful what you wish were when you want to
(08:13):
get to this level, because it definitely fucks with you
behind your rib gage, between your ears, and it gets
to you. But I'm in a different case. Once I
got somewhere, I'm there. You have to constantly do it. Yeah,
It's it's really strange. It's the only business where you
gotta constantly prove yourself. For instance, I'm this I was
talking to you earlier on in the process of in
the running for this show. It's been six months I've
(08:35):
been auditioning for this thing, and uh, I think to myself,
there's already fifty sixty seventy hours of my work on TV,
you know, And I started in one of the in
this show, and it just it doesn't matter, None of
it matters. You just gotta show up and prove yourself
every day. And if you're not mentally tough, if you
don't take care of your mental health and check in
with yourself and check in with your therapists and with
(08:55):
your friends, and conversations like these, I mean, yourself with plummets.
And I was able to ride that high and never
had self confidence issues. But then my ex left and
that was really the trigger for for all the spiral, right,
And then all of a sudden, I started going in,
I worth its. Self confidence starts creeping in, and then
the audition started becoming desperate, right, because you become beholding
(09:18):
to this job. I need this next job instead of
it'd be nice if I get this, I really need
this thing, and you can feel that desperation and it
becomes a domino effect. And yeah, it's it's tough to
deal with the nose, but that's the business really, And
I think also, look, you kind of got hit with
something where a lot of us get hit with as
we get success. Like I think I was happier mental
(09:39):
health wise when I was broken. Yeah, I know, people
after they are gonna go shut the funk up, Glazer.
You don't know what's I've been on both sides, like
I've had. Right when I was making my ninety four
bucks a year, I had to decide, is my electricity
to get it turned off this this month from my
guests gonna get turned off? And am I just gonna
get fine for not paying my rent? Am I gonna
have to worry about getting evicted? I knew my phone
bill how to stay on because I'm an investigative, you know,
(10:00):
NFL reporter, so I that have to stay on. But
I had nothing to lose, so I didn't give a fuck, right,
and now I have so much to lose. And saying
with you, you've you've hit that peak, You've had that pinnacle.
Now all of a sudden you have to try to lose.
You start, like you're saying, almost acting from a place
of fear of losing something instead of just being relentless
because you have nothing to lose. I think it's a
(10:21):
journey that every actor probably goes on, and everyone in
this business probably goes on. Right, There's always another a mountain,
And I don't think you know that as a young
person just trying to get to that peak, and then
once you get there, you know there's just as many
valleys and you can see just as many peaks in
front of you, and so it becomes daunting. Right, It's like,
oh shit, I gotta keep climbing. I thought I worked
ten years to get to that point to have that show.
(10:43):
It happens, and now it's like, okay, but I'm only
only one. There's another ten years in front of me.
I gotta keep working and keep going. And I think
it's normal to have those roadblocks and have those pitfalls.
I just wasn't prepared. I didn't have the tools. Even
though I had been working on a show that was
giving me the tools, I didn't have the tools. I
wasn't ready to use it if I had them. So
for people are first time listeners this show. I'm hosting
(11:04):
the show because I have what I call the gray.
I have depression anxiety, a d D, bipolar. I got
it all but my depression anxiety. I had a choice.
I could let my depression anxiety tap me out, or
I could say, Okay, you know what, I'm gonna use
it to motivate me for something else. So I'm not
able to know what it feels like to love myself
(11:25):
in the inside out. I just never felt worthy of it,
and that's what my depression anxiety told me. So it
forced me to go do all these big, great things
to get love from the outside in. And I hope
they met at the middle. But when I got there,
you know, it was the first every minute I meant
a breaking news guy in this country when the internet
thing first came out, which I think it's gonna take off.
I think it's gonna be hit one day, give us
(11:47):
some time. And man, all of a sudden, you know,
I got my first six figure gig and seven figure gigging. Man,
I'm gonna Television Hall of Fame now with foxing Able Sunday.
And I thought it'd be all rainbows and unicorns when
I got there, and it wasn't. If you don't know
how to love yourself on the inside out, if you're
not able to live in the blue like something I
stopped to do, all the successful world doesn't get you there.
(12:08):
Do you not know now the work you've done it yourself?
Has it always been there for you? Or is it
as a result of how tumultuous your career has been.
I think that all particularly actors were all sort of
bastards and broken things. Right. I think when I analyzed
why I got into this thing, I'm a pretty smart guy.
I had a lot of options in high school, going
(12:28):
into college. This seemed crazy to my parents, to myself
even to get into this field. But I think I
loved it because I got to be other people. I
got to explore other aspects of humanity. I wasn't really
happy with who I was all the way back, right,
because that's what That's what got me into it. And
then I went to college at Conservatory of an acting Conservatory,
(12:49):
where I continued that that that sort of through line.
I just got to be other people. I got to
explore being other people, and I was good at it. So, Okay,
now I can make the living at other people. I
don't ever have to be myself. So I was running
away from myself. I think since I was a kid,
I've been running away from myself. And I'll tell you
what it was. That the last season of Thirteen Reasons Why,
(13:10):
I had a director. She came in for three episodes.
I think Brenda Strong, incredible woman, incredible director, and I
had all of these things that really started to hurl
in on me at the same time, and I was
working on a scene with her, having a really hard time,
and she pulled me aside and she said, everything that
you've been has gotten you to this point, and it
served you, but it can't serve you anymore. And that's life.
(13:33):
You gotta learn who you're going to be now. And
it was birth chattering to me because I was the
Puerto Rican actor from the Bronx who left, moved to London,
got classically trained, came back and worked harder than everybody else.
That's all I cared about. That's that's all I gave
a ship about, was being the hardest work in the room,
like Rock said, and proving myself every day as a
minority in this business. Um, it didn't matter anymore. All
(13:55):
of that didn't matter. And I had to figure out
who am I if I'm not this to in this role,
doing this room, in this room, you know. And that's
when I really that's when I really started to kick
in that I had been running from myself for all
these years and I wasn't trying to be me. And
so that's deep. We all have a chance to be
(14:15):
a therapist. So you never know. And what I mean
by that is you don't have to be a license
therapist to teach somebody something for so for her to
come up with that, like you never know what lies
around next Tuesday, and to hear that to change you.
So when you heard that, what step did you take
to help you from the inside out? The show ended.
I moved down to Los Angeles. We shot in San
(14:36):
Francisco for four years, five years, and I had moved
down to l A. And I delayed it right. I
had looked in the mirror and I said, it'll come
to me in my own time. It'll come to me
in my own time. Um. And then I met a
woman and it's supplanted the therapy that I needed, but
all of my energy into that. We need that outside love. Yeah,
I do the same thing, and it wos up every
relationship I have exactly. That's exactly what happened to me.
(14:59):
I didn't with that I needed to do. I focused
on this relationship. I put a hundred percent into it. Um.
I funked up and made mistakes and all that, but
that one, that nagging thing of you don't have the work,
so you're nothing right. It's that voice in your and
your it's what you talk about sometimes too, having those
those sometimes friends sometimes enemies in our brain going you're
not good enough. Yeah, the roommates in your head. If
(15:21):
I had those roommates going, you know, yeah, you had
this thing, it's gone. What are you if you can't
do that again? You know, who are you if you
can't provide for this woman is relying on your responsible
You know that you're responsible for And that just kept
getting louder and louder and louder until depression and anxiety
really sunk in and she left because who the funk
wants to deal with that, you know? And then that's
(15:42):
what spearheaded me and I contacted an organization called Better Health.
Fantastic organization. They do all my therapy sessions, but you
get to choose your therapist, you get, I mean you can.
They're sponsor of this show. Oh so there you guys,
there you go. I reached talk to them and I
wrote them similarly. I reached out on Instagram and I said, listen,
(16:03):
I need help. I don't really feel like going through
the ordeal of going to one therapist isn't in my insurance.
Blah blah, blah blah blah, all this bullshit. You guys
seem like it will work for me. Day and I
worked together. They gave me a couple of months of
therapy and it was it became life changing. Wow, better help,
but absolutely saved my life at that point, I mean
(16:23):
I was ready. Wow. Yes, they are the sponsor of
the show, and it's incredibly you're you're saying this, it's
just um. But also look, it's so brave you. It's
braver for you to reach out to somebody or something
you don't know saying I need help. And I want
others to hear that also and say, look, i's two badasses,
like the two of us could say that that we
do this. You can't too, Like, no one's gonna question
your manhood. I think therapists are like coaches, right, So
(16:46):
like anything we do in the gym or athletically, there's
no shame on us talking to a coach and going
to a coach. In fact, you gotta go to a coach,
there shouldn't be any shame and us going to a
feelings coach, a mental coach, a you know, a coach
for what's behind our rib cage. So it's beautiful that
you did that. Man, I thank you. Yeah, you know,
I'll tell you what it was that that spearheaded that
(17:06):
moment my dad showed up on my doorstep. My best
friend Jack commins, he hears from me all the time, right,
He hadn't heard from me in a couple of months,
and he reached out to my dad and he said, listen,
I'm worried about your son. And my dad hadn't heard
from me as frequently either, and that time they didn't
know this was happening. But during that time, I'm I'm
here doing everything but what I should be doing. Right,
I'm drinking too much, I'm started. I've always smoked weed,
(17:29):
but I started to really use it as a coping mechanism, right,
and not think about things. And I'd sit on this
couch and pretty systematically, day by day I'd go, what's
keeping me here? Um? Here? I mean a lie? And
I would reason out these things like, okay, whatever the
responsibility was, well, it'll be okay you know if I
if I go. And I started to really the thought
(17:50):
of suicide became real for me in a way that
it had never been. It became this thing that I thought, Um,
if I can just logic out all of the things
that would prevent me for doing this thing, I'd be
okay with it, right. And the last thing that was
standing in my way where my dogs. I got three
beautiful fucking dogs. Um, and I love him. I get
emotional when I talked about because during the darkest days
(18:11):
of my life, you know, it was waking up and going,
I gotta take care of this this thing that needs
me and love me that that wroll me through, you know.
But I had gotten to this place where I was
starting to go, you know, my dad will take care
of the dogs, he loves him, so and so will
take care of him he loves And the next day,
my dad showed up in l A unbeknownst to me.
You know, he's retired and just do that. So I
(18:32):
had to have these conversations with him. Right he saw me,
He knew his son, he knows what I looked like,
and um, I wasn't in a good place right and
he I saw him have the heartbreak of I can't
help him. And I never wanted to make my father
feel that way again because he's my superhero, you know.
And then that was it for me. I said Okay,
no more. You gotta pour your bootstraps up. And my
(18:52):
dad's always been of that ilk right, poor you bootstraps up,
go to work, be the best guy in the room.
Excellence is the best to turn against racism. And these
are all things he always taught me, you know. And
I saw him go I can't help him right now. Uh,
And I didn't like that feeling, and I thought, Okay,
I gotta come back out of this for him. But
because he taught me better. Wow, the fact that you
(19:13):
did a show about suicide and then you started thinking
about suicide, was there any correlation? Only in irony? You know,
I would think about it. That show was all about
having a reason to live, right and that there are
so many reasons to live um and and I was
sitting here eliminating those reasons. It was ironic, it was.
(19:33):
It was dark, a sort of sardonic kind of humor
to it. But ultimately I think havn't worked on That
show reminded me in the end of all of the
reasons I do have to stick around, right, And and
since you continue to create as you go on, we
all have reasons that Look, you know again, I have
a whole chapter on book about you never know what
lies around next Tuesday. You never know, like, because you're
still here, somebody may hear this podcast. You may save
(19:56):
somebody's life. You know, you'll definitely affect someone's life, and
you never know when that love can come around the
corner and how much you could be of service to people,
and when your next thing may happen, or you know,
like you may not give a funk whether it's acting
or not acting. That's something that could make you happy
all of a sudden, And we just gotta stick around
for those reasons. You say, you know, I'm always trying.
(20:18):
I'm trying to villainize suicide because it's it's too glorified
right now. And it's a little controversial that I say this,
but it's too often, you know, people look at and
they go, man, somebody else tells himself and everybody's loving
that person up, and you're saying, well, my life sucks
right now, I'll come You know, I don't feel loved,
so ship if I want to love, I'm gonna do
the same thing. And that's not our answer. That can't
(20:38):
be the answer. We've got to stick around, if not
for us, for everybody else, and it's hard to feel that, uh,
no one, you know, you get and I've gotten so
dark and suicidal myself, where no one's gonna miss me
if I'm God, Yes we will. We'll absolutely miss you
if you're gone. And and I think you know, I
mentioned that convention and these letters and things, and I
called my dad when I was in England. He was
(20:59):
in of the pool, and I said, you know, if
nothing else in my short time on this planet, I
have affected a lot of people and and save lives.
And all I'm doing is acting, you know, I'm just
I'm portraying characters, someone else's words. I'm giving my law
to it, but I'm just acting. But it's made a
difference in a lot of lives. And I'm telling them like,
(21:20):
that's that's enough, isn't it? You know that should be enough.
Right to be here and and someone else is made
better by your presence, by something you've done. It's easy
to forget that. But I'm lucky enough to get these
these flinders every day, so absolutely, And that's you know.
The other thing is when when people do and I
bring this up also like and I say this to
(21:40):
a lot of our combat veterans. When you know, I
have a charity called m VP Emerging Vets and Players.
We work with a lot of combat vets and emerging
with X athletes, and it's a very high suicide read
amongst our vets. And you know, we've had a couple
of close calls, if you will, or a brother of
one of our members actually commit suicide, and the whole
rules crying. And I always say, hey, do you think
(22:02):
your brother right now is whatever afterlife you believe in?
Looking at seeing all of us crying, us in the
room crying, celebrating, they were all prying like yes, or
do you think he's up there saying like, oh funck? No,
what did I do? I didn't want to do this
to these people. No, I didn't. I was just trying
to take my own pain out. I didn't mean to
do this to everybody else. And I think if we
(22:22):
kind of can look at it that way, I don't know,
maybe we can help prevent somebody else from doing that too.
I think at the heart of that Jay's is acts
of service, right, like the thing that holds us through
You might not ever be okay right were not we
might not ever be okay with sitting alone, right and
feeling okay, Like happiness is an illusion sometimes, right, I'll write,
(22:44):
I'm always gonna be in pain, I'm never just not.
I was born like this if it isn't about us,
and in my thinking, it camp be about us, because
we're only here for a split second. Right, It's got
to be about the impact you leave on other people,
and when in doubt helps someone out right, Like any
time I've ever committed an act of service, I've walked
away feeling better about myself. Absolutely is a pillar to
(23:07):
get us through that gray. Yeah, absolutely, I love that
that that phrase in the gray because I feel like
more people than not are in the gray. Yeah, people
and not are walking there. And I think what what
shifts in a little bit, even for just a moment,
is having someone else's in the gray go up to
you and be like, I'm here with you, buddy. And
then there's a little bit of color in that. And
I want people to understand too, like it just you know, like,
(23:28):
look at us, we're bonding over this. It's the first
time we've met, right, we we We've reached out, and
I appreciate you reaching out because now you're my brother
walking in this gray with me, Like now you're fucking
stuck with me, whether you like it or not. But
my friends are the baddest motherfucker's in the planet. It
is the Rock and Stallone and Randy Guttur, Chuck Lidell
and Michael Strands and how he longs, And this is
who I work with. This is my cruit right, Not
(23:48):
one of them. I've cried every one of them. I've
gone to each one of them when I need help.
I've gone each one of them when I'm having my
gray days. Not fucking one of them have called me.
It was told me to suck it up, or said,
oh Jay, what do you have to be sad about?
Your life is so great? In fact, it's done the other.
It's gotten us all so much closer together, And we
(24:09):
as dudes really need to do a better job of
understanding that's what's gonna get us close together. Me me
having the next round Randy Guttur in the cage is
not what gets us closer. Me and him sitting around
afterwards talking about ship and crying to each other, that's
what gets us closer. So it's okay, And I want
people to understand that, Like, look at the bottom that
you and I are forming over this. And if you
(24:33):
and I were just talking sports or talking fighting, or
talking football, talking acting, it wouldn't be as close. It
wouldn't be this type, this bomb, wouldn't be the strong.
And that's where somebody like you and somebody like me,
we we can be of service well passed what our
jobs are. Yeah, I thought, and I said when I
reached out to you. I think it's important for young
men specifically. There's many figures out there right now in
(24:55):
social media, on TV politics that preach a certain out
of lifestyle right, very vitriolic, etcetera, etcetera. And I think
it's important for young people all over to understand that
it's not wrong to be empathetic, that in fact, it
makes you stronger to be vulnerable. To be empathetic, to
killer about your brother and sister is a fucking superpower. Uh.
(25:17):
And I sit sometimes and think, imagine if all of
us gave a fun the way that you give a fuck,
the way that the rock cares, the way that you know,
imagine if we all had that effort, where we would
be Um. I think oftentimes dissenting voices can be the loudest, uh,
and and so they cause a lot of trouble, and
they bang a lot of posts and pains. But your voice,
(25:39):
our voices, it cuts through all that bullshit because it's true.
Uh and and it's about sticking together, right and coming
out on the other side stronger. You're never gonna be
weaker again, you know, it's always gonna make a strong
Give me a story of again. I'm not an actor,
so I don't have these experiences. Give me that experience
for you were like, fuck, man, here's my moment. I'm
there and it didn't happen like you thought you made it,
(26:01):
you know, like Frank Briller was saying, right, he got
he thought it was a minority report and he went
to walk the red carpet and he found out during
the premiere that he was cut out. I've had those
moments too. Yeah, man, I'll tell you this is a
more recent one, and I'm sort of able to laugh
about it now. But at the height of the success
of the show, you know, you try to strike while
the island's hot. As a Puerto Rican First of all,
(26:21):
there are not many people that I can look to
as examples in the business. There There hasn't been traditionally,
right second, the roles that we typically play are asked
to play or not the kind of roles that called
to me. I'm not a thug or a drug dealer
or so there's a certain amount of doing that because
you gotta pay the bills. But then you know at
a certain point and you're like, now I can do
this at the highest level. I don't want to do
this to serve this narrative, right, so you start trying
(26:45):
to make things happen. And I reached out to Warner
Brothers d C at the time, because there's not very
many Latino superheroes, but there's one. And I had start
to write a treatment forward and I bought the comics
and I immersed myself in it because I don't do
anything half asked in that regard. And I got a
meeting with him, you know, with these two guys I
won't name them, but they were running the company over there,
(27:06):
at the DC unit over there at the time of
Warner Brothers and the fucking when it makes them r
an amazing meeting. They're thinking, I'm hearing them tell me
and as you know in Hollywood, they say one thing
and it could be another thing. Right, but I'm hearing
them say, uh, you know, we love you for this.
The blue Beetle is the character. Uh and uh, I
pitched my ideas and say, you know what, we got
a script. Go on, it's in development. When we when
(27:27):
it's done, we'll give you a call. Fast forward a
year later. I mean, and this it really did hurt.
They they didn't have a casting process. There was nothing.
They had just announced. They went with this other guy. Um,
and I thought, man, that's humbling, right, Like you think
I got my foot in the door this way at
least maybe the same role. Yeah, they just there was
no audition process. They just gave it to this guy.
I'm sure he had to read for it and things
(27:48):
like that, but it just went to this other guy. Um.
And I felt gutted, right, I felt like, oh my god,
they didn't even call me in to read for this thing.
You know, I'm I'm on this show. I'm starting in
the show blah blah blah blah, and you eat it
starts to get on. Uh. So that that broke me
for a while, because after that it was sort of
a domino effect of getting really really really close um
(28:09):
and and then not getting anything at all. Right, And
now I've learned, and I think it's trial by combat certainly,
But now I've learned that you've got you get the
ones you get by and large, you know. I think
a lot of actors will tell you that you get
the ones you're supposed to get. I read a story
about Christian Bale, one of the best fucking actors on
the planet. He just had an Esquire article out about
how he's only gotten roles that Leo DiCaprio has turned down. Yeah,
(28:33):
and you're thinking, Christian Bale, he's one often, he's incredible, right,
and he's staying for the longest fucking time. I would
only get work that Leo turned down, you know, and
it puts it puts him in perspective. So I've I've
mellowed out a little bit about the audition process and
also learned that, uh, I'm not just an actor. I
had to figure out who I was outside of that,
(28:54):
you know, which led me to Johnny Stanton, football guy
and d n D enthusiast Unders and Dragons enthusiasts. I
fallen in love the last three years with Dungeons and
Dragons and uh table top gaming and all of that
and it's opened me up to an incredible group of
people and they've really saved me. Man, that these folks
a critical role and the Dungeons and Dragons universe, and
that's aw, that's that's incredible. And think about something that
(29:16):
as a kid we just idolized that it would come
back and serve you, you know, decades later. I never knew,
you know, I grew up in the South box. Uh
my dad's a cop on my lifelong martial artists. I
grew up hitting people and getting hit. I didn't know
about Dungeons and Dragons. I didn't know about any of
that ship. And it's funny. I talked to the people
in the world now and I go and I mean this,
if I would have been introduced at nine or ten
(29:38):
or eight, you know, two two Dungeons and Dragons, I
would have tried to make it my whole fucking life
because I love it, you know. Uh, I went into
acting and now it's coming around a little bit later
in life. But I'm really happy that I've met the people,
have met and have been steeped in that world now,
you know, So there was something I kind of I
guess mind games you've played my games. When you are
going for for jobs constantly, that you're again. It took
(29:58):
me eleven years, eleven years a rejection to get a
full time job, and it fucking sucked. It takes so
much out of your soul. But I read something in
a prayer book and it said, appreciate the toil of
the climb, and that really became on man. For all
those years, it was like, okay. In other words, you know, hey, man,
I was interning at this place. I'm interning at w
(30:19):
f a M Radio New York, and I'm getting to
go to press conferences. This is the cool thing. It's
the pot of goal of the end of the rainbow.
Isn't getting the job at the end, isn't getting your
dream job. It's the journey itself. And I did train
myself to believe that, like, and it seems like you're
going through the same thing of the journey. That's the richest.
That's the richest, not what you get. Are the jobs
(30:42):
that you get hired for the journey itself. Are you
able to live that a little bit more? Now, I'm
coming out of my dog days, right and I'm starting
to see the light there and you can see behind me.
My favorite act on the planet is al Pacino. He's
got this quote that I've I've heard a thousand times.
It's just now starting to really seek in and it's it.
I'm gonna paraphrase, but actors hate auditioning. But if you're
(31:02):
not auditioning, you're not acting that week, right, Like the
five minutes I get in front of a camera and
these people is the only time that I get to
do what I fucking love more than anything else on
the planet. So that shift for me the last couple
of months auditioning for this project I've been talking about
with you, It's made it so much more rewarding to
just be processed right, And I'm really starting to look
(31:24):
at life that way. I'm not one to make friends easy.
I've had the same group of friends for a leaven
years now. I've been forcing myself to you know, I
mentioned Dungeons and Dragons. I reached out to this group
of people, put myself out there. I said, man, listen,
I've never played. I love you guys. You've helped me
through some dark days. I'd love to meet you guys.
You know, taking that sort of initiative, it's just not
(31:45):
who I am. It's not well, I should say it's
not who I've been, but it does mean it can't
be who I am now. Uh, And I've sort of
been living by that, you know, and trying to be
one percent better every day and getting back in the
gym was a big deal. Listening to podcast like yours
is a big deal for me because you gotta want
to help yourself. You know, your cast of thirteen Reasons.
(32:06):
Are you guys a close the group? Have you guys
remained close? I think the show ended and we went
our separate ways because it was a lot of time
altogether all the time. But I will say that I've
worked on a bunch of shows and I've never had
the experience that I had with these guys in the trenches.
There's a lot of controversy, there was a lot of gammoil,
and we were all there for each other. Um So
(32:26):
I don't think, you know, I haven't seen some of
them in months, some of them in years. But I
know if they called me and said I need you here,
I'd be there in a heartbeat. And and I know
in my heart that it's reciprocated. We're a family. How
are you able to deal because again, you're an actor,
You're not therapist or not in this, and all of
a sudden you're thrust in the middle of suicide talk
and there was a lot of controversy. How are you
(32:48):
guys able to handle that because that's not what your
training is in. No, Well, we had to get training
real fucking fast. UM. I was disappointed, honestly in just
how much they relied on us to in front of
the firing squad. You know, I remember that happening and
thinking this is not this dims all with the lights
right now, you know, like, this is not what we
should be dealing with. Um, you wrote words on a paper.
(33:11):
I spoke unbelievably and it had an impact and now
I'm answering for the words that you wrote. Right. So
it was it was difficult to navigate at first. But again,
and and I really mean this, the pressure is a privilege.
I think some of us handled it better than others. Um.
But we realized pretty quickly that we weren't just actress
on the show. It was a movement that that we
(33:33):
had started inadvertently, whether we knew it or not, we
were we were now responsible for this thing, this labor
of love. That we created in six months, talked away
and fucking San Francisco, uh in Valetjo. We didn't know
what we were doing, and then it came out and
it was like here. So we all had to stand
by it and stand up for it. And it made
us closer as a group. And it makes every other
(33:55):
project pale in comparison. Right, I hope at least I'm
not gonna have to go through the ringer with some
of those things the way we did with that show. Um,
So it's a life lesson. It makes it tougher. Right,
It didn't knock us out. It could have, but it
didn't be. We kept going talk about life lessons. My
last question to you ask all my guests, give me
your own breakable moment, like that thing that should have
broken you didn't. You came through the other side of
(34:16):
that tunnel. And now you could use that for the
rest of your life. Yeah, here's the story. Not many
people know. I mean, I've I've mentioned I think one
of them more recent was my bout with my my
struggle with these suicidal thoughts and my dad coming to
the rescue there and spearheading it. This is another one.
My freshman year College Conservatory in New Jersey. Me and
some of my friends. We we were broken, hungry, and
(34:38):
we figured out that we could steal from Target, food, clothes,
all of this ship. Over the course of six months,
we took twenty dollars and ship. I mean, we would
take lists on Rutgers University where I went, who needs underpare,
who needs clothes, who needs blah blah blah blah, and
we made it happen. So you're good thieves, is what
you're saying, if you're gonna do something to be good
at Yeah. We we we were that. And we had
(35:01):
a rule nobody drove twice in the same week, etcetera, etcetera.
We got caught somebody, somebody sucked it all up, which
was a good thing, right. And I'm sitting in the
jail cell in a middle Middlebrook County, New Jersey. Uh,
And I remember thinking, my dad told me a long
time ago, if you ever get arrested, don't call me.
I'm a cop. It will be the height of embarrassingment
(35:21):
for me, and I will leave you in that fucking GM.
This is going through my mind going. I got one call,
so I didn't call him. I called my best friend,
I said, I got enough money in my bank account,
go to them, trying to explain what the situation. Of
course I didn't know at the time. I was young
and naive. I'm thinking they're gonna git my money right there.
So everyone else got bailed out. The next day, I
sat there because I was Adam, and I said, whatever
(35:43):
you do, do not tell my parents. My mom's a cop,
my dad's a cop, my uncle's a cop, like everybody's
a cop. Don't tell him. I'll be here forever, you know. Um.
So they're trying to collect the money amongst themselves to
bail me out. Finally, you know, he has to call
my mom, and uh, my mom comes in bail me out.
I remember oursel was on the first floor, so I
(36:03):
could see people coming in to pick other people up right,
and you'd hear the name coming in so and so
you're leaving, blah blah blah. And I heard my name
and I saw my mom and I turned to my
my selmmate Rick, and I said, funk, I want to
stay in here, like she's gonna kick you know, I
don't want to go. I don't want to go. And
I get in that car with her very sobering experience. Right,
my mom and I. My mom and dad divorced. We
(36:25):
didn't see each other much at that time. This was
the first time in a long time that I had
seen her this way. And she came, no questions asked,
and did this thing for me. Um, And she goes,
we're gonna take you back to school the day you're
gonna pack up your ship. You're coming home because your
dad wants to see him. All my heart sack, right,
obviously she told him. Next day comes I go to
breakfast Willem and he sits there and he says, I
(36:46):
told you what would happen if if you ever got arrested,
especially something like this. I don't ever want to talk
to you again. Mat. Yeah, my dad is my best friend,
my whole world. Right now, looking back, there's no way
we were gonna go. Are the rest of all live
without speaking? He was teaching me a lesson and and
I came out of that experience. I had one more
meeting with the school conservatory. I was in one of
(37:08):
the best acting conservatories on the planet, Rutgers, Mason Gross
and they met with all of us. They got arrested,
and I'll never forget. The man's name was Israel Hicks.
He was the head of the program. He said, that
woman over there, Barbara Marshawn and acting teacher, she's the
only reason I'm not kicking you all out. Actors used
to be on the same par as prostitutes and thieves,
and today you proved all of that. Right. I don't
(37:31):
think you'll ever amount to anything, but she thinks you will.
I don't want to again. And he got up and
he left right JA. This is one of the biggest
regrets I have in my life. That man died that summer,
Israel Hicks. He had cancer. No, when you're very strong. Man.
He's a in the theater world. He's a fucking legend,
titan of a man. Um he died. He was the
head of our program. He died that weekend that summer.
(37:51):
Excuse me, and I looked back every day and I
think I wish he lived long enough for me to
prove to him that I was worth the time, that
I was worth the effort. You know, that moment that
that summer, everything that happened as a result of that arrest,
the entire world thought I wasn't gonna come out on top.
I thought I wasn't gonna come out on top, and
I had to make the decision to to prove to
(38:11):
my dad, to prove to Israel, to prove to myself
you're worth more than the mistakes you make. I think
he was real. Season Yeah, I think we just read
these bodies the souls of vomb Forever. I'm sure he
sees it. I'm sure he's proud. I hope he's frob
but he you know, he never knew how big that
moment was for me and how he changed my life.
And I think about him often, you know, I think
(38:32):
about him often. That's incredible, brother man. I appreciate you
man so much. This is uh, like I said, this
is us all. Diving into mental health is going to
give us bonds stronger than we ever thought we could
have had. So you know, Michael Phelpson had him on
two weeks ago, and you know he now when he's struggling,
he reaches out to me. And I was struggling the
other day. He saw something I posted and he reached
(38:54):
out to me, and you know, just check it out.
So you and I now, you and I gonna be
walking this walk together and appreciate the bonds we have
brother likewise, bro your family now and I appreciate you
and I have some people today and it means the
world for me. So thank you you two. Brother man,
I appreciate you. Let's keep walking and swalk together. Love
you brother,
This is Unbreakable with Jay Glazer, a mental health podcast
helping you out of the gray and into the blue.
Now here's Jay Glazer. Welcome into Unbreakable, a mental health
podcast with Jay Glazer. Luckily I'm Jay Glazer. That's why
I'm sitting here today. And you know, doing this podcast
(00:23):
allows me to meet people I never would have met.
And that's the one thing about living in the gray.
It's really attached me to people that I never would
have come across in life. And you know, me opening
up talking about this, I didn't know how many teammates
I really had out there. So for so many years
I just sat there and suffering silence and just you know,
hit it and created this other character about myself, the
(00:44):
glaze that you all see on on television, um to
hide what was really going on behind my eyes. But
it turns out I got a lot more teammates out there,
and welcoming in one of them right now who reached
out to me after one of these podcasts, and man,
it was just so moving and touching and really for
everybody out there who's afraid to open up, this shows
(01:06):
you how alone you're not when you do let yourself
be so vulnerable, and with that, I'm gonna welcome in
my dude, Christian Lee Navarro. You may know him from
Thirteen Reasons Why, you may have know him from a
host of other things a long time after, and he's
now my new teammate. So welcome in and kind of,
you know, let's give a little background first before we
get into you know, what prompted you to reach out.
(01:27):
I think it was after the Frank Grillo episode, right.
My dad had sent me that episode, and he had
been my dad, Mena Varo, who's a cop, retired cop
now twenty years in New York. He kept telling me,
you gotta listen to this podcast. And honestly, I knew
what the subject matter was, and I don't think I
was at a place to listen to it. I was
still in a fragile place, right. I knew that it
(01:48):
would make me look in the mirror and make me
think about things and and help ultimately, right, And I
think I was sort of in in a place where
I didn't I didn't know I wanted to help yet,
and I had sort of gotten off my ask final
least try to get back in the gym after suffering
with depression, and anxiety. And I'm listening to this podcast
and I'm listening to Frank, who I admire as an actor.
(02:08):
I've seen him countless things. He's a certified badass March
law in his boxer, UM, just a real man's man's right.
And I'm I'm I'm listening to him talk about his
his friend's suicide and dealing with his mental health as
a as a result of that, and after that, and
opening up about his journey generally in the business, and
you with him and really feeling this teammate vibe right,
(02:32):
And I thought, I need to reach out immediately and
and let this guy know that he's making a difference
in my life personally, right, just in case. You know,
sometimes whatever we do is as and I will consider
you an artist, my friend. Um, as artists, whatever we do,
sometimes we put that out there into the world and
we don't know what's coming back at us. And I
thought I got to reach out and say thank you,
because I did feel included, I felt heard. It was Um.
(02:55):
It was the first time in a while that I thought, man,
they really get you know. I'm in therapy. I've been
in therapy, but it's it's good to have the validation
amongst your peers and people you look up to this way,
and I think your show validates a lot of people's journeys.
What led you to be in such a dark place? Well,
it's a it's two fold, man. I I took this
incredible ride with this show Thirteen Reasons Why, you know,
(03:17):
number one show on the planet for a while. Half
a billion people tuned into this thing on Netflix. For
for people who don't know, it's a show about suicide. Yeah,
it's it's a show about suicide prevention. It's to show
us a show about mental health awareness. And whilst on
this show, I I all over the world that people
who shared their stories right, and and it was a
privilege to be in that position. A lot of people don't.
(03:39):
They didn't feel like they had anyone else who could understand.
And because I portrayed this character. Uh and my character
on the show is is sort of a little bit
more even Keel, and he's there for everyone, you know.
I they felt like they could bring their their pain
to me and I would listen to it and you know,
really empathize. But I never during this four or five
years we did this thing, I never once stopped thought
(04:00):
about me, my mental health and where I was. I
was just writing this high. You know. For ten years
I was auditioning and getting bits here and there, and
then this thing happened and thinking, fuck, it's the dream,
right to see it. I'm on the top of the mountain.
And then it ended, right, the show ended. Pandemic happens
two years. No one's calling, nothing's happening. Um And I
(04:21):
think what I allowed to happen was this thing that
I loved and still love so much. I let it
become me. I let it become the thing that defines me.
So when I didn't have work coming in, I didn't
understand it. I'm watching people who are you know, they
say comparison is the thief of joy, right, and social
media screws us all it does, it does, and that's
(04:41):
the era we live in, right, it's in now era.
It's a social media era. I'm watching all of my contemporaries, Excel.
You know what I'm going, Well, I I know, I
work harder, I have the work ethic. I know, why
isn't it happening for me? You know? At the same time,
I met this woman who was everything I had ever
asked for in a person, and I allowed the one
to poison the other. You know, my I had never
(05:03):
dealt with depression, anxiety, I certainly never had self confidence issues,
and all of these things were compiling on top of
each other. Whilst I'm trying to hold on to this
person who was and you know, I still love her
very much, but I couldn't do it. I allowed that
to poison the one, you know, one to poison the other,
and it took me to places I didn't know I
(05:24):
could go in that regard, and for the first time,
I realized, holy shit, I'm not I worked on the
show and I never once thought about my own mental health,
and never they offered it to us, you know, Universal,
excuse me, Paramount and Netflix. They we had counselors on set,
they had research, but yeah, yeah, we had I mean
everything from therapy, dogs and psychiatrists. I call it everything
(05:45):
diligent about taking care of the actors as we were
trying to tell his story. But I never thought I
needed it. I think part of that is growing up
the way you grow up as young man in the society,
and I think part of that is I really felt
like I was on a high right, I and I
didn't feel bad until it was taken away from me.
And you gotta look in the mirror and who are
you if all that ship's gone? Right? That's that's the
(06:07):
tough question I was coming up against. But but it's
also interesting because your character, right, you're you're basically there
to spread the message and the word of why someone
else committed suicide, and then the rest of the world
comes to you like you're really that person. That's a
big burden take on in the real world, and I
take it on here doing a mental health podcast. People
act like I'm your therapist. I'm not. I'm just the
(06:27):
dude who's fucked up, who's learning to be good with
this fuck upness, and God bless me with the ability
to communicate about it. And I think that, you know,
there's this this great line I heard recently, the pressure
is a privilege, um, and it's it's hard sometimes to
really see that, but it is true. Now, the flip
side of that is these people think that you have
it all figured out too right there coming to you,
You're saying, this is my story, thank you for helping
(06:49):
me get through this, and then retrospectively, I'm going out.
I'm just as fucked up as all of you, right,
I'm just get through this thing we call life, just
like everybody else. Um and still, I was just in
England at a convent, thirteen thousand fans, you know, meeting
coming up saying hi, thank you, telling me there's stories,
and I got this this letter in this lady handed
me a six page letter telling her what she's been through.
(07:10):
And that's like, that's a that's a regular occurrence because
of the show we were on. But it is it's
a bit of a burden. Uh. And you know, you
take on, if you're empathetic, you take on what's happened
and you and you really live with it. And so
it can be it can be a bit much, but
it is a privilege. Also, you know, listen, you know
one of the things because you're talking. Also, look, doing
what you do is hard to what I do, because
(07:32):
you're you know, kind of beholding to what somebody else
thinks of you. Right, that's how you get your job,
which fucking sucks. Right. So I always marveled at actors saying, like, man,
the most successful ones have been rejected ninety nine of
the time. A lot of rejection doing for me to
get to where I got to the first eleven years
(07:53):
of my career. People who know this, and I wrote
this in my book and Breakable. I was rejected for
eleven years. I was making nine thousand, four and fifty
a year, live in New York City, try to out
work the world. I just decided I'd be rejected more
than anybody else and I'd be relentless in my pursuit.
But man, that rejection, folks, it sucks with the like,
be careful what you wish were when you want to
(08:13):
get to this level, because it definitely fucks with you
behind your rib gage, between your ears, and it gets
to you. But I'm in a different case. Once I
got somewhere, I'm there. You have to constantly do it. Yeah,
It's it's really strange. It's the only business where you
gotta constantly prove yourself. For instance, I'm this I was
talking to you earlier on in the process of in
the running for this show. It's been six months I've
(08:35):
been auditioning for this thing, and uh, I think to myself,
there's already fifty sixty seventy hours of my work on TV,
you know, And I started in one of the in
this show, and it just it doesn't matter, None of
it matters. You just gotta show up and prove yourself
every day. And if you're not mentally tough, if you
don't take care of your mental health and check in
with yourself and check in with your therapists and with
(08:55):
your friends, and conversations like these, I mean, yourself with plummets.
And I was able to ride that high and never
had self confidence issues. But then my ex left and
that was really the trigger for for all the spiral, right,
And then all of a sudden, I started going in,
I worth its. Self confidence starts creeping in, and then
the audition started becoming desperate, right, because you become beholding
(09:18):
to this job. I need this next job instead of
it'd be nice if I get this, I really need
this thing, and you can feel that desperation and it
becomes a domino effect. And yeah, it's it's tough to
deal with the nose, but that's the business really, And
I think also, look, you kind of got hit with
something where a lot of us get hit with as
we get success. Like I think I was happier mental
(09:39):
health wise when I was broken. Yeah, I know, people
after they are gonna go shut the funk up, Glazer.
You don't know what's I've been on both sides, like
I've had. Right when I was making my ninety four
bucks a year, I had to decide, is my electricity
to get it turned off this this month from my
guests gonna get turned off? And am I just gonna
get fine for not paying my rent? Am I gonna
have to worry about getting evicted? I knew my phone
bill how to stay on because I'm an investigative, you know,
(10:00):
NFL reporter, so I that have to stay on. But
I had nothing to lose, so I didn't give a fuck, right,
and now I have so much to lose. And saying
with you, you've you've hit that peak, You've had that pinnacle.
Now all of a sudden you have to try to lose.
You start, like you're saying, almost acting from a place
of fear of losing something instead of just being relentless
because you have nothing to lose. I think it's a
(10:21):
journey that every actor probably goes on, and everyone in
this business probably goes on. Right, There's always another a mountain,
And I don't think you know that as a young
person just trying to get to that peak, and then
once you get there, you know there's just as many
valleys and you can see just as many peaks in
front of you, and so it becomes daunting. Right, It's like,
oh shit, I gotta keep climbing. I thought I worked
ten years to get to that point to have that show.
(10:43):
It happens, and now it's like, okay, but I'm only
only one. There's another ten years in front of me.
I gotta keep working and keep going. And I think
it's normal to have those roadblocks and have those pitfalls.
I just wasn't prepared. I didn't have the tools. Even
though I had been working on a show that was
giving me the tools, I didn't have the tools. I
wasn't ready to use it if I had them. So
for people are first time listeners this show. I'm hosting
(11:04):
the show because I have what I call the gray.
I have depression anxiety, a d D, bipolar. I got
it all but my depression anxiety. I had a choice.
I could let my depression anxiety tap me out, or
I could say, Okay, you know what, I'm gonna use
it to motivate me for something else. So I'm not
able to know what it feels like to love myself
(11:25):
in the inside out. I just never felt worthy of it,
and that's what my depression anxiety told me. So it
forced me to go do all these big, great things
to get love from the outside in. And I hope
they met at the middle. But when I got there,
you know, it was the first every minute I meant
a breaking news guy in this country when the internet
thing first came out, which I think it's gonna take off.
I think it's gonna be hit one day, give us
(11:47):
some time. And man, all of a sudden, you know,
I got my first six figure gig and seven figure gigging. Man,
I'm gonna Television Hall of Fame now with foxing Able Sunday.
And I thought it'd be all rainbows and unicorns when
I got there, and it wasn't. If you don't know
how to love yourself on the inside out, if you're
not able to live in the blue like something I
stopped to do, all the successful world doesn't get you there.
(12:08):
Do you not know now the work you've done it yourself?
Has it always been there for you? Or is it
as a result of how tumultuous your career has been.
I think that all particularly actors were all sort of
bastards and broken things. Right. I think when I analyzed
why I got into this thing, I'm a pretty smart guy.
I had a lot of options in high school, going
(12:28):
into college. This seemed crazy to my parents, to myself
even to get into this field. But I think I
loved it because I got to be other people. I
got to explore other aspects of humanity. I wasn't really
happy with who I was all the way back, right,
because that's what That's what got me into it. And
then I went to college at Conservatory of an acting Conservatory,
(12:49):
where I continued that that that sort of through line.
I just got to be other people. I got to
explore being other people, and I was good at it. So, Okay,
now I can make the living at other people. I
don't ever have to be myself. So I was running
away from myself. I think since I was a kid,
I've been running away from myself. And I'll tell you
what it was. That the last season of Thirteen Reasons Why,
(13:10):
I had a director. She came in for three episodes.
I think Brenda Strong, incredible woman, incredible director, and I
had all of these things that really started to hurl
in on me at the same time, and I was
working on a scene with her, having a really hard time,
and she pulled me aside and she said, everything that
you've been has gotten you to this point, and it
served you, but it can't serve you anymore. And that's life.
(13:33):
You gotta learn who you're going to be now. And
it was birth chattering to me because I was the
Puerto Rican actor from the Bronx who left, moved to London,
got classically trained, came back and worked harder than everybody else.
That's all I cared about. That's that's all I gave
a ship about, was being the hardest work in the room,
like Rock said, and proving myself every day as a
minority in this business. Um, it didn't matter anymore. All
(13:55):
of that didn't matter. And I had to figure out
who am I if I'm not this to in this role,
doing this room, in this room, you know. And that's
when I really that's when I really started to kick
in that I had been running from myself for all
these years and I wasn't trying to be me. And
so that's deep. We all have a chance to be
(14:15):
a therapist. So you never know. And what I mean
by that is you don't have to be a license
therapist to teach somebody something for so for her to
come up with that, like you never know what lies
around next Tuesday, and to hear that to change you.
So when you heard that, what step did you take
to help you from the inside out? The show ended.
I moved down to Los Angeles. We shot in San
(14:36):
Francisco for four years, five years, and I had moved
down to l A. And I delayed it right. I
had looked in the mirror and I said, it'll come
to me in my own time. It'll come to me
in my own time. Um. And then I met a
woman and it's supplanted the therapy that I needed, but
all of my energy into that. We need that outside love. Yeah,
I do the same thing, and it wos up every
relationship I have exactly. That's exactly what happened to me.
(14:59):
I didn't with that I needed to do. I focused
on this relationship. I put a hundred percent into it. Um.
I funked up and made mistakes and all that, but
that one, that nagging thing of you don't have the work,
so you're nothing right. It's that voice in your and
your it's what you talk about sometimes too, having those
those sometimes friends sometimes enemies in our brain going you're
not good enough. Yeah, the roommates in your head. If
(15:21):
I had those roommates going, you know, yeah, you had
this thing, it's gone. What are you if you can't
do that again? You know, who are you if you
can't provide for this woman is relying on your responsible
You know that you're responsible for And that just kept
getting louder and louder and louder until depression and anxiety
really sunk in and she left because who the funk
wants to deal with that, you know? And then that's
(15:42):
what spearheaded me and I contacted an organization called Better Health.
Fantastic organization. They do all my therapy sessions, but you
get to choose your therapist, you get, I mean you can.
They're sponsor of this show. Oh so there you guys,
there you go. I reached talk to them and I
wrote them similarly. I reached out on Instagram and I said, listen,
(16:03):
I need help. I don't really feel like going through
the ordeal of going to one therapist isn't in my insurance.
Blah blah, blah blah blah, all this bullshit. You guys
seem like it will work for me. Day and I
worked together. They gave me a couple of months of
therapy and it was it became life changing. Wow, better help,
but absolutely saved my life at that point, I mean
(16:23):
I was ready. Wow. Yes, they are the sponsor of
the show, and it's incredibly you're you're saying this, it's
just um. But also look, it's so brave you. It's
braver for you to reach out to somebody or something
you don't know saying I need help. And I want
others to hear that also and say, look, i's two badasses,
like the two of us could say that that we
do this. You can't too, Like, no one's gonna question
your manhood. I think therapists are like coaches, right, So
(16:46):
like anything we do in the gym or athletically, there's
no shame on us talking to a coach and going
to a coach. In fact, you gotta go to a coach,
there shouldn't be any shame and us going to a
feelings coach, a mental coach, a you know, a coach
for what's behind our rib cage. So it's beautiful that
you did that. Man, I thank you. Yeah, you know,
I'll tell you what it was that that spearheaded that
(17:06):
moment my dad showed up on my doorstep. My best
friend Jack commins, he hears from me all the time, right,
He hadn't heard from me in a couple of months,
and he reached out to my dad and he said, listen,
I'm worried about your son. And my dad hadn't heard
from me as frequently either, and that time they didn't
know this was happening. But during that time, I'm I'm
here doing everything but what I should be doing. Right,
I'm drinking too much, I'm started. I've always smoked weed,
(17:29):
but I started to really use it as a coping mechanism, right,
and not think about things. And I'd sit on this
couch and pretty systematically, day by day I'd go, what's
keeping me here? Um? Here? I mean a lie? And
I would reason out these things like, okay, whatever the
responsibility was, well, it'll be okay you know if I
if I go. And I started to really the thought
(17:50):
of suicide became real for me in a way that
it had never been. It became this thing that I thought, Um,
if I can just logic out all of the things
that would prevent me for doing this thing, I'd be
okay with it, right. And the last thing that was
standing in my way where my dogs. I got three
beautiful fucking dogs. Um, and I love him. I get
emotional when I talked about because during the darkest days
(18:11):
of my life, you know, it was waking up and going,
I gotta take care of this this thing that needs
me and love me that that wroll me through, you know.
But I had gotten to this place where I was
starting to go, you know, my dad will take care
of the dogs, he loves him, so and so will
take care of him he loves And the next day,
my dad showed up in l A unbeknownst to me.
You know, he's retired and just do that. So I
(18:32):
had to have these conversations with him. Right he saw me,
He knew his son, he knows what I looked like,
and um, I wasn't in a good place right and
he I saw him have the heartbreak of I can't
help him. And I never wanted to make my father
feel that way again because he's my superhero, you know.
And then that was it for me. I said Okay,
no more. You gotta pour your bootstraps up. And my
(18:52):
dad's always been of that ilk right, poor you bootstraps up,
go to work, be the best guy in the room.
Excellence is the best to turn against racism. And these
are all things he always taught me, you know. And
I saw him go I can't help him right now. Uh,
And I didn't like that feeling, and I thought, Okay,
I gotta come back out of this for him. But
because he taught me better. Wow, the fact that you
(19:13):
did a show about suicide and then you started thinking
about suicide, was there any correlation? Only in irony? You know,
I would think about it. That show was all about
having a reason to live, right and that there are
so many reasons to live um and and I was
sitting here eliminating those reasons. It was ironic, it was.
(19:33):
It was dark, a sort of sardonic kind of humor
to it. But ultimately I think havn't worked on That
show reminded me in the end of all of the
reasons I do have to stick around, right, And and
since you continue to create as you go on, we
all have reasons that Look, you know again, I have
a whole chapter on book about you never know what
lies around next Tuesday. You never know, like, because you're
still here, somebody may hear this podcast. You may save
(19:56):
somebody's life. You know, you'll definitely affect someone's life, and
you never know when that love can come around the
corner and how much you could be of service to people,
and when your next thing may happen, or you know,
like you may not give a funk whether it's acting
or not acting. That's something that could make you happy
all of a sudden, And we just gotta stick around
for those reasons. You say, you know, I'm always trying.
(20:18):
I'm trying to villainize suicide because it's it's too glorified
right now. And it's a little controversial that I say this,
but it's too often, you know, people look at and
they go, man, somebody else tells himself and everybody's loving
that person up, and you're saying, well, my life sucks
right now, I'll come You know, I don't feel loved,
so ship if I want to love, I'm gonna do
the same thing. And that's not our answer. That can't
(20:38):
be the answer. We've got to stick around, if not
for us, for everybody else, and it's hard to feel that, uh,
no one, you know, you get and I've gotten so
dark and suicidal myself, where no one's gonna miss me
if I'm God, Yes we will. We'll absolutely miss you
if you're gone. And and I think you know, I
mentioned that convention and these letters and things, and I
called my dad when I was in England. He was
(20:59):
in of the pool, and I said, you know, if
nothing else in my short time on this planet, I
have affected a lot of people and and save lives.
And all I'm doing is acting, you know, I'm just
I'm portraying characters, someone else's words. I'm giving my law
to it, but I'm just acting. But it's made a
difference in a lot of lives. And I'm telling them like,
(21:20):
that's that's enough, isn't it? You know that should be enough.
Right to be here and and someone else is made
better by your presence, by something you've done. It's easy
to forget that. But I'm lucky enough to get these
these flinders every day, so absolutely, And that's you know.
The other thing is when when people do and I
bring this up also like and I say this to
(21:40):
a lot of our combat veterans. When you know, I
have a charity called m VP Emerging Vets and Players.
We work with a lot of combat vets and emerging
with X athletes, and it's a very high suicide read
amongst our vets. And you know, we've had a couple
of close calls, if you will, or a brother of
one of our members actually commit suicide, and the whole
rules crying. And I always say, hey, do you think
(22:02):
your brother right now is whatever afterlife you believe in?
Looking at seeing all of us crying, us in the
room crying, celebrating, they were all prying like yes, or
do you think he's up there saying like, oh funck? No,
what did I do? I didn't want to do this
to these people. No, I didn't. I was just trying
to take my own pain out. I didn't mean to
do this to everybody else. And I think if we
(22:22):
kind of can look at it that way, I don't know,
maybe we can help prevent somebody else from doing that too.
I think at the heart of that Jay's is acts
of service, right, like the thing that holds us through
You might not ever be okay right were not we
might not ever be okay with sitting alone, right and
feeling okay, Like happiness is an illusion sometimes, right, I'll write,
(22:44):
I'm always gonna be in pain, I'm never just not.
I was born like this if it isn't about us,
and in my thinking, it camp be about us, because
we're only here for a split second. Right, It's got
to be about the impact you leave on other people,
and when in doubt helps someone out right, Like any
time I've ever committed an act of service, I've walked
away feeling better about myself. Absolutely is a pillar to
(23:07):
get us through that gray. Yeah, absolutely, I love that
that that phrase in the gray because I feel like
more people than not are in the gray. Yeah, people
and not are walking there. And I think what what
shifts in a little bit, even for just a moment,
is having someone else's in the gray go up to
you and be like, I'm here with you, buddy. And
then there's a little bit of color in that. And
I want people to understand too, like it just you know, like,
(23:28):
look at us, we're bonding over this. It's the first
time we've met, right, we we We've reached out, and
I appreciate you reaching out because now you're my brother
walking in this gray with me, Like now you're fucking
stuck with me, whether you like it or not. But
my friends are the baddest motherfucker's in the planet. It
is the Rock and Stallone and Randy Guttur, Chuck Lidell
and Michael Strands and how he longs, And this is
who I work with. This is my cruit right, Not
(23:48):
one of them. I've cried every one of them. I've
gone to each one of them when I need help.
I've gone each one of them when I'm having my
gray days. Not fucking one of them have called me.
It was told me to suck it up, or said,
oh Jay, what do you have to be sad about?
Your life is so great? In fact, it's done the other.
It's gotten us all so much closer together, And we
(24:09):
as dudes really need to do a better job of
understanding that's what's gonna get us close together. Me me
having the next round Randy Guttur in the cage is
not what gets us closer. Me and him sitting around
afterwards talking about ship and crying to each other, that's
what gets us closer. So it's okay, And I want
people to understand that, Like, look at the bottom that
you and I are forming over this. And if you
(24:33):
and I were just talking sports or talking fighting, or
talking football, talking acting, it wouldn't be as close. It
wouldn't be this type, this bomb, wouldn't be the strong.
And that's where somebody like you and somebody like me,
we we can be of service well passed what our
jobs are. Yeah, I thought, and I said when I
reached out to you. I think it's important for young
men specifically. There's many figures out there right now in
(24:55):
social media, on TV politics that preach a certain out
of lifestyle right, very vitriolic, etcetera, etcetera. And I think
it's important for young people all over to understand that
it's not wrong to be empathetic, that in fact, it
makes you stronger to be vulnerable. To be empathetic, to
killer about your brother and sister is a fucking superpower. Uh.
(25:17):
And I sit sometimes and think, imagine if all of
us gave a fun the way that you give a fuck,
the way that the rock cares, the way that you know,
imagine if we all had that effort, where we would
be Um. I think oftentimes dissenting voices can be the loudest, uh,
and and so they cause a lot of trouble, and
they bang a lot of posts and pains. But your voice,
(25:39):
our voices, it cuts through all that bullshit because it's true.
Uh and and it's about sticking together, right and coming
out on the other side stronger. You're never gonna be
weaker again, you know, it's always gonna make a strong
Give me a story of again. I'm not an actor,
so I don't have these experiences. Give me that experience
for you were like, fuck, man, here's my moment. I'm
there and it didn't happen like you thought you made it,
(26:01):
you know, like Frank Briller was saying, right, he got
he thought it was a minority report and he went
to walk the red carpet and he found out during
the premiere that he was cut out. I've had those
moments too. Yeah, man, I'll tell you this is a
more recent one, and I'm sort of able to laugh
about it now. But at the height of the success
of the show, you know, you try to strike while
the island's hot. As a Puerto Rican First of all,
(26:21):
there are not many people that I can look to
as examples in the business. There There hasn't been traditionally,
right second, the roles that we typically play are asked
to play or not the kind of roles that called
to me. I'm not a thug or a drug dealer
or so there's a certain amount of doing that because
you gotta pay the bills. But then you know at
a certain point and you're like, now I can do
this at the highest level. I don't want to do
this to serve this narrative, right, so you start trying
(26:45):
to make things happen. And I reached out to Warner
Brothers d C at the time, because there's not very
many Latino superheroes, but there's one. And I had start
to write a treatment forward and I bought the comics
and I immersed myself in it because I don't do
anything half asked in that regard. And I got a
meeting with him, you know, with these two guys I
won't name them, but they were running the company over there,
(27:06):
at the DC unit over there at the time of
Warner Brothers and the fucking when it makes them r
an amazing meeting. They're thinking, I'm hearing them tell me
and as you know in Hollywood, they say one thing
and it could be another thing. Right, but I'm hearing
them say, uh, you know, we love you for this.
The blue Beetle is the character. Uh and uh, I
pitched my ideas and say, you know what, we got
a script. Go on, it's in development. When we when
(27:27):
it's done, we'll give you a call. Fast forward a
year later. I mean, and this it really did hurt.
They they didn't have a casting process. There was nothing.
They had just announced. They went with this other guy. Um,
and I thought, man, that's humbling, right, Like you think
I got my foot in the door this way at
least maybe the same role. Yeah, they just there was
no audition process. They just gave it to this guy.
I'm sure he had to read for it and things
(27:48):
like that, but it just went to this other guy. Um.
And I felt gutted, right, I felt like, oh my god,
they didn't even call me in to read for this thing.
You know, I'm I'm on this show. I'm starting in
the show blah blah blah blah, and you eat it
starts to get on. Uh. So that that broke me
for a while, because after that it was sort of
a domino effect of getting really really really close um
(28:09):
and and then not getting anything at all. Right, And
now I've learned, and I think it's trial by combat certainly,
But now I've learned that you've got you get the
ones you get by and large, you know. I think
a lot of actors will tell you that you get
the ones you're supposed to get. I read a story
about Christian Bale, one of the best fucking actors on
the planet. He just had an Esquire article out about
how he's only gotten roles that Leo DiCaprio has turned down. Yeah,
(28:33):
and you're thinking, Christian Bale, he's one often, he's incredible, right,
and he's staying for the longest fucking time. I would
only get work that Leo turned down, you know, and
it puts it puts him in perspective. So I've I've
mellowed out a little bit about the audition process and
also learned that, uh, I'm not just an actor. I
had to figure out who I was outside of that,
(28:54):
you know, which led me to Johnny Stanton, football guy
and d n D enthusiast Unders and Dragons enthusiasts. I
fallen in love the last three years with Dungeons and
Dragons and uh table top gaming and all of that
and it's opened me up to an incredible group of
people and they've really saved me. Man, that these folks
a critical role and the Dungeons and Dragons universe, and
that's aw, that's that's incredible. And think about something that
(29:16):
as a kid we just idolized that it would come
back and serve you, you know, decades later. I never knew,
you know, I grew up in the South box. Uh
my dad's a cop on my lifelong martial artists. I
grew up hitting people and getting hit. I didn't know
about Dungeons and Dragons. I didn't know about any of
that ship. And it's funny. I talked to the people
in the world now and I go and I mean this,
if I would have been introduced at nine or ten
(29:38):
or eight, you know, two two Dungeons and Dragons, I
would have tried to make it my whole fucking life
because I love it, you know. Uh, I went into
acting and now it's coming around a little bit later
in life. But I'm really happy that I've met the people,
have met and have been steeped in that world now,
you know, So there was something I kind of I
guess mind games you've played my games. When you are
going for for jobs constantly, that you're again. It took
(29:58):
me eleven years, eleven years a rejection to get a
full time job, and it fucking sucked. It takes so
much out of your soul. But I read something in
a prayer book and it said, appreciate the toil of
the climb, and that really became on man. For all
those years, it was like, okay. In other words, you know, hey, man,
I was interning at this place. I'm interning at w
(30:19):
f a M Radio New York, and I'm getting to
go to press conferences. This is the cool thing. It's
the pot of goal of the end of the rainbow.
Isn't getting the job at the end, isn't getting your
dream job. It's the journey itself. And I did train
myself to believe that, like, and it seems like you're
going through the same thing of the journey. That's the richest.
That's the richest, not what you get. Are the jobs
(30:42):
that you get hired for the journey itself. Are you
able to live that a little bit more? Now, I'm
coming out of my dog days, right and I'm starting
to see the light there and you can see behind me.
My favorite act on the planet is al Pacino. He's
got this quote that I've I've heard a thousand times.
It's just now starting to really seek in and it's it.
I'm gonna paraphrase, but actors hate auditioning. But if you're
(31:02):
not auditioning, you're not acting that week, right, Like the
five minutes I get in front of a camera and
these people is the only time that I get to
do what I fucking love more than anything else on
the planet. So that shift for me the last couple
of months auditioning for this project I've been talking about
with you, It's made it so much more rewarding to
just be processed right, And I'm really starting to look
(31:24):
at life that way. I'm not one to make friends easy.
I've had the same group of friends for a leaven
years now. I've been forcing myself to you know, I
mentioned Dungeons and Dragons. I reached out to this group
of people, put myself out there. I said, man, listen,
I've never played. I love you guys. You've helped me
through some dark days. I'd love to meet you guys.
You know, taking that sort of initiative, it's just not
(31:45):
who I am. It's not well, I should say it's
not who I've been, but it does mean it can't
be who I am now. Uh, And I've sort of
been living by that, you know, and trying to be
one percent better every day and getting back in the
gym was a big deal. Listening to podcast like yours
is a big deal for me because you gotta want
to help yourself. You know, your cast of thirteen Reasons.
(32:06):
Are you guys a close the group? Have you guys
remained close? I think the show ended and we went
our separate ways because it was a lot of time
altogether all the time. But I will say that I've
worked on a bunch of shows and I've never had
the experience that I had with these guys in the trenches.
There's a lot of controversy, there was a lot of gammoil,
and we were all there for each other. Um So
(32:26):
I don't think, you know, I haven't seen some of
them in months, some of them in years. But I
know if they called me and said I need you here,
I'd be there in a heartbeat. And and I know
in my heart that it's reciprocated. We're a family. How
are you able to deal because again, you're an actor,
You're not therapist or not in this, and all of
a sudden you're thrust in the middle of suicide talk
and there was a lot of controversy. How are you
(32:48):
guys able to handle that because that's not what your
training is in. No, Well, we had to get training
real fucking fast. UM. I was disappointed, honestly in just
how much they relied on us to in front of
the firing squad. You know, I remember that happening and
thinking this is not this dims all with the lights
right now, you know, like, this is not what we
should be dealing with. Um, you wrote words on a paper.
(33:11):
I spoke unbelievably and it had an impact and now
I'm answering for the words that you wrote. Right. So
it was it was difficult to navigate at first. But again,
and and I really mean this, the pressure is a privilege.
I think some of us handled it better than others. Um.
But we realized pretty quickly that we weren't just actress
on the show. It was a movement that that we
(33:33):
had started inadvertently, whether we knew it or not, we
were we were now responsible for this thing, this labor
of love. That we created in six months, talked away
and fucking San Francisco, uh in Valetjo. We didn't know
what we were doing, and then it came out and
it was like here. So we all had to stand
by it and stand up for it. And it made
us closer as a group. And it makes every other
(33:55):
project pale in comparison. Right, I hope at least I'm
not gonna have to go through the ringer with some
of those things the way we did with that show. Um,
So it's a life lesson. It makes it tougher. Right,
It didn't knock us out. It could have, but it
didn't be. We kept going talk about life lessons. My
last question to you ask all my guests, give me
your own breakable moment, like that thing that should have
broken you didn't. You came through the other side of
(34:16):
that tunnel. And now you could use that for the
rest of your life. Yeah, here's the story. Not many
people know. I mean, I've I've mentioned I think one
of them more recent was my bout with my my
struggle with these suicidal thoughts and my dad coming to
the rescue there and spearheading it. This is another one.
My freshman year College Conservatory in New Jersey. Me and
some of my friends. We we were broken, hungry, and
(34:38):
we figured out that we could steal from Target, food, clothes,
all of this ship. Over the course of six months,
we took twenty dollars and ship. I mean, we would
take lists on Rutgers University where I went, who needs underpare,
who needs clothes, who needs blah blah blah blah, and
we made it happen. So you're good thieves, is what
you're saying, if you're gonna do something to be good
at Yeah. We we we were that. And we had
(35:01):
a rule nobody drove twice in the same week, etcetera, etcetera.
We got caught somebody, somebody sucked it all up, which
was a good thing, right. And I'm sitting in the
jail cell in a middle Middlebrook County, New Jersey. Uh,
And I remember thinking, my dad told me a long
time ago, if you ever get arrested, don't call me.
I'm a cop. It will be the height of embarrassingment
(35:21):
for me, and I will leave you in that fucking GM.
This is going through my mind going. I got one call,
so I didn't call him. I called my best friend,
I said, I got enough money in my bank account,
go to them, trying to explain what the situation. Of
course I didn't know at the time. I was young
and naive. I'm thinking they're gonna git my money right there.
So everyone else got bailed out. The next day, I
sat there because I was Adam, and I said, whatever
(35:43):
you do, do not tell my parents. My mom's a cop,
my dad's a cop, my uncle's a cop, like everybody's
a cop. Don't tell him. I'll be here forever, you know. Um.
So they're trying to collect the money amongst themselves to
bail me out. Finally, you know, he has to call
my mom, and uh, my mom comes in bail me out.
I remember oursel was on the first floor, so I
(36:03):
could see people coming in to pick other people up right,
and you'd hear the name coming in so and so
you're leaving, blah blah blah. And I heard my name
and I saw my mom and I turned to my
my selmmate Rick, and I said, funk, I want to
stay in here, like she's gonna kick you know, I
don't want to go. I don't want to go. And
I get in that car with her very sobering experience. Right,
my mom and I. My mom and dad divorced. We
(36:25):
didn't see each other much at that time. This was
the first time in a long time that I had
seen her this way. And she came, no questions asked,
and did this thing for me. Um, And she goes,
we're gonna take you back to school the day you're
gonna pack up your ship. You're coming home because your
dad wants to see him. All my heart sack, right,
obviously she told him. Next day comes I go to
breakfast Willem and he sits there and he says, I
(36:46):
told you what would happen if if you ever got arrested,
especially something like this. I don't ever want to talk
to you again. Mat. Yeah, my dad is my best friend,
my whole world. Right now, looking back, there's no way
we were gonna go. Are the rest of all live
without speaking? He was teaching me a lesson and and
I came out of that experience. I had one more
meeting with the school conservatory. I was in one of
(37:08):
the best acting conservatories on the planet, Rutgers, Mason Gross
and they met with all of us. They got arrested,
and I'll never forget. The man's name was Israel Hicks.
He was the head of the program. He said, that
woman over there, Barbara Marshawn and acting teacher, she's the
only reason I'm not kicking you all out. Actors used
to be on the same par as prostitutes and thieves,
and today you proved all of that. Right. I don't
(37:31):
think you'll ever amount to anything, but she thinks you will.
I don't want to again. And he got up and
he left right JA. This is one of the biggest
regrets I have in my life. That man died that summer,
Israel Hicks. He had cancer. No, when you're very strong. Man.
He's a in the theater world. He's a fucking legend,
titan of a man. Um he died. He was the
head of our program. He died that weekend that summer.
(37:51):
Excuse me, and I looked back every day and I
think I wish he lived long enough for me to
prove to him that I was worth the time, that
I was worth the effort. You know, that moment that
that summer, everything that happened as a result of that arrest,
the entire world thought I wasn't gonna come out on top.
I thought I wasn't gonna come out on top, and
I had to make the decision to to prove to
(38:11):
my dad, to prove to Israel, to prove to myself
you're worth more than the mistakes you make. I think
he was real. Season Yeah, I think we just read
these bodies the souls of vomb Forever. I'm sure he
sees it. I'm sure he's proud. I hope he's frob
but he you know, he never knew how big that
moment was for me and how he changed my life.
And I think about him often, you know, I think
(38:32):
about him often. That's incredible, brother man. I appreciate you
man so much. This is uh, like I said, this
is us all. Diving into mental health is going to
give us bonds stronger than we ever thought we could
have had. So you know, Michael Phelpson had him on
two weeks ago, and you know he now when he's struggling,
he reaches out to me. And I was struggling the
other day. He saw something I posted and he reached
(38:54):
out to me, and you know, just check it out.
So you and I now, you and I gonna be
walking this walk together and appreciate the bonds we have
brother likewise, bro your family now and I appreciate you
and I have some people today and it means the
world for me. So thank you you two. Brother man,
I appreciate you. Let's keep walking and swalk together. Love
you brother,
Fox Sports Radio News
Host
Jonas Knox
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