Hi guys. Renee Pezzota
acting my age. If you're new to the channel,
welcome and please hit subscribe and come
back every Wednesday for new videos. Today,
I'm excited to welcome actor, writer, director,
producer, Shawn Christian. You probably know
him best from his stint on Days of our Lives
as the sexy, Dr. Daniel Jonas.
I am so excited to welcome
Shawn Christian. Thank you so much for being
here.
Thank you for that
and the introduction and the blood orange
drink. I appreciate that. Yeah, let me get
[crosstalk 00:00:42]
They're not our sponsors,
but we drink them.
They will be after
this.
They should be our sponsor.
We're going to have
to hint them up. Get it? Stay with me people.
Alright. I get it. I
get it. I want to know about you.
Where are you from?
I'm originally from
Michigan. All my family and friends are still
there. My buddies are all still there. My
close, close buddies are there. I had gone
from Michigan to Chicago and studied as an
actor there [inaudible 00:01:05]. I mean,
I actually got my degree in marketing in Michigan,
left the next day to pursue acting.
Good for you.
So, I told my dad,
probably about a month, I met with agents
a month before I graduated and I said, "Dad,
you know what, I'm going to go pursue what
I love to do." But where I come from, nobody
says, "You can make a living, you can be an
actor, you're gonna be huge, you're going
to make a lot of money." That doesn't happen
where I come from. So, after talking with
my dad, completely working class family, he's
like, "You're going to what? And how are you
going to pay for all these student loans?"
And, and I just said, "I'll figure it out."
Took a bar job for
about three months. It's no disrespect to
those who are doing the bar thing, you got
to do what it takes to survive. But what I
was doing in Chicago was working at a bar,
you know, of course till two in the morning,
cleaning up till three, partying till six
and pissing your weight, you know, pissing
your day away and I'm like, "No, I can't do
that."
I didn't have the discipline
at that age. I said, you know what, I'm going
to make myself make a living at this profession
and took classes with a variety of different
coaches, a variety of different styles, tried
to find my own voice and all of that. For
me, it turned out to be improv, where I was
like, oh wait, I can actually speak with my
own truth and put my, inject my own ... I
think it was becoming very technical. You
know, you can spend a lot of time with acting
coaches who are wonderful, but eventually
you got to answer that call yourself. This
is what I have, for me, discovered.
Yeah.
Cause I was looking
to too many different coaches for the answers.
Yeah and Chicago, I've
never met a person who was an actor in Chicago,
who wasn't brilliant.
It is the, if I had
to say, what is it about a Chicago actor,
it makes ... I'd have to say the work ethic.
You have to do the work. There's no other
the thing, I think the greatest advice I've
gotten early on in my career from Jane Brody,
my acting coach, and I was, you know, you
work on your scenes and you're supposed to
meet with your scene partners at their place,
at their apartment. And I was running around
trying to make money and trying to act and
learn and she goes, "Sit down." She goes,
"Do you want to be a motherfucking pretty
boy? Then you go do that, but if you want
to act, you work on that. You make that decision
right now."
That's great.
And I was like, "I
want to be an actor I don't give a shit about the
pretty boy stuff." It was the greatest wake-up
call for me very early on.
That's great.
Yeah.
That's great.
Thank you, Jane Brody.
Hey, shout out. So listen,
I know you from Summerland.
Hold it right there. You have
a home and there's plenty of room in it.
Johnny, that's crazy.
Why?
Because these are children,
not chihuahuas.
Yes, very good.
I used to kind of have
a girl crush on Lori Loughlin.
We all did. Don't we
all have some form of a crush on Aunt Becky?
Yes. I mean come on, she's
amazing.
But I would say a lot
of people know you from Days of our Lives,
right?
Oh, yeah. Dr. Jonas.
Dr. Daniel Jonas.
You said Jennifer pushed
you down the stairs and killed your baby.
You are lying cause you knew the baby was
already dead.
So let me ask you about
soap opera acting because I liken it to the
Olympics of acting.
Yeah, I think that's
a pretty accurate statement.
I mean, you get how much
dialogue a day, would you say, when you're
a lead character on one of those shows?
I'll just give you
by comparison. So for example, in film, you
can do probably five to maybe eight pages
a day, television, 10 to 12, maybe if you're
cooking, in soap operas, you probably do 160
pages a day. Insane
Do you have to be word
perfect? You're kind of inhabiting that character
after awhile so I would imagine that it kind
of flows from you.
There's some tricks,
good and bad, by the way. I mean I think the
biggest, there's two things, there's a lot
of things about the soap world. I think there's
some of the hardest working actors on the
planet.
For sure.
It's the working class
actor who just goes in. You do the work you've
got to deliver, hit your mark, get out of
the light, say the lines which sometimes are
really not that plausible and be as honest
and sincere and authentic as you can in this
genre which is very dramatic, if you will.
You learn and you know,
people talk about, "Oh, do that tag, look
come on, do that thing." My first script,
I was in New York and I did As the World Turns
and everybody goes, "you need to do that,
you need to tag the scene." I'm like, "What
does that mean?" They don't teach you that
in acting. Jane Brody wasn't going, "You know
what you need to do, look in the camera and
go ... " I found it sexy, whatever that thing
is, right?
So you do learn how
to think. The greatest thing is you learn
how to think on your feet and learn how to
the technical stuff very quickly say exponentially
faster than any other genre that you need
to kind of say these words that are kind of
implausible, hit your mark and you don't get
another take another take. You're done, that's
it, moving on. And I was a doctor, Dr. Jonas
as you've mentioned. I've played a doctor
on Days of our Lives and so it's a lot of
this technical, surgical type of cross before,
but you have to get it. I was like word perfect,
right to save some money. And I saved everybody
on that show except myself? Can I have a moment.
Can you give me a tissue? [inaudible 00:06:29]
me a script where I [inaudible 00:06:30] chest
cavity, bringing myself back to life. I literally
did that for everybody else. Why couldn't
I save myself?
You're decapitated, put
your head back on.
I swear to you, I've
solved diseases the CDC can't solve. I think
people were like, I think Dr. Jonas can actually
save himself.
Yeah, why not?
So I remember going
through all these monologues of like, you
know, we got to save the patient and it's
very quick and ... alright, "Cut, print, we're
good." I'm like, "I think I attached the aorta
to the femur bone. We're good?" "We'll fix
that in post. All right, we're moving on."
Don't worry.
Of course, then I'm
going to sleep with my patient.
Yes, of course. What
do you have coming up next?
There's a few things
on my plate, thankfully. I just finished filming
Ruby Herring Mysteries.
Dad, what should I do?
You need to follow that herring
hunch. Why do you think I named you Ruby?
Thought it was cause of the red
hair
It happens so fast.
It was a hallmark, on their movie and mysteries
channel, which is a series. So, we're slated
to do multiple films.
Great.
Which is great pending
the audience's enjoyment. So, all your Ruby's
out there, get it on. Let's hear from you.
Sold a script that we'll be filming in Hawaii
in presumably March for a May 5th release.
Wow.
Talk about now, you
know, the soap world's moving really quickly,
now the production schedules are moving quickly.
So, editors out there, God bless you all because
they [inaudible 00:08:01] much faster than
they ever used to.
Absolutely.
And then there's a
little other exciting project I might be taking
to you about this wonderful lady that I worked
with before [inaudible 00:08:11], I don't
know if you've heard of her. We did a little
show called [inaudible 00:08:15] Anonymous
together years ago that I had produced and
she was brilliant in and we have a small little
conversation about what she's cooking up now
and I said would be more than happy to collaborate.
That's a great segue.
Let's talk about Boo. So, Rakefet
was nice enough to sit down and talk to me
about Jax in Love and then what she has coming
up which is her new project, Boo, which Shawn
is going to executive produce.
I'm very excited to
collaborate with Rakefet. I think she's
very talented, hardworking. I mean, for me
when those combinations come together, if
you've got a level of talent and a great work
ethic, you're kind and sincere, you have my
attention and she had me at "Boo."
Ohhh yeah.
[off camera voice] I'm swooning behind the camera
right now.
think that's the perfect
entrance for [inaudible 00:09:14]. Come over
here and take my seat.
Had me at Boo, that should
be our tagline. You've been so available to
me since we started talking about this. Like
you're on top of it and it's nice. We have
our Seed&Spark campaign is not midway,
it pretty much just started.
Week number one and
you're just killing it.
Week 1, we're 44% funded
and everybody's been so great to pledge money
and we actually have a new incentive that
we're going to be offering, right?
Yes, we do. What I'll
be offering is I'm going to offer some phone
calls, messages ...
Video messages
Video messages for
if you want to send a message to somebody,
Happy Birthday, Happy holiday, Happy Valentine's
Day or I just hate my job and tell your boss
to piss off. I'm sure we could come up with
something very clever and funny because sure,
it's going to be great. And yeah, it's a wonderful,
I know that we appreciate all the contributions
that have been coming in, just fantastic.
And you know, to be clear, you're like, well,
is it a contribution? Is it an investment,
is there an ROI on this and right off the
top in short, no, it's not a fiscal investment
at this first stage, at this first inception,
but it is an investment in female filmmaking.
Correct. Essentially women
in horror, which is completely different.
Clearly different and
you've nailed it and you've tapped into something
that people haven't seen, it's definitely
needed. You as the director, you as a writer,
the female producers on board, that is worthy.
That's it. I guess. Thank
you Renee for having us.
Thank you Renee. Just
people like this, people like you.
Yes, exactly.
Who are helping us
get this thing off the ground. So much appreciated
to all those who are busting their tails,
working hard, who contributed and are contributing.
So, thank you for coming along for the ride
because it's going to be you who built this
brand. So, I'm really excited about where
we're at and where we're going.
Do the tag, do the tag,
Oh, wait, I'm excited.
[off screen voice]  I'll zoom in as you do
that.
Okay. I have to look
at the camera. I'm really excited about where
we're going. [LAUGHTER]
Thanks for watching.
If you liked the video, give it a thumbs up
and leave a comment below. Also, if you want
to help out Sean and Rakefet with their
short film, Boo, the Seed & Spark information
is down below. Also, don't forget there's
some pretty good incentives being offered.
I do recall Shawn just said he was going to
give a video message.
That's it for this week.
I'm Renee Pezzota, acting my age.
