South Beach Sessions - O'Shea Jackson Jr.

1h 19m
"I got our name in places it hasn't been before, and I want to continue to do that." O'Shea Jackson Jr. is absolutely his father's son, and he's not shy about it. Instead, he's on a mission to match that passion and legacy. O’Shea talks with Dan about his father’s career and what it means to follow in those giant footsteps… including playing him in 'Straight Outta Compton'. And, of course, O’Shea shares the stories only a star-studded childhood could tell, like calling up Kobe for inspiration. He also dives into his journey through the film industry to franchises like Godzilla and Star Wars, starting with how struggling in school actually taught O’Shea that he was always a writer. Watch, listen, & subscribe to the "No-Contest Wrestling Podcast with O'Shea Jackson Jr. & TJ Jefferson", available wherever you get your podcasts.
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Runtime: 1h 19m

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Welcome to the West Coast edition of South Beach Sessions. Right here, we've got generations of Los Angeles in front of me.
O'Shea Jackson Jr., your father's very Los Angeles. You're very Los Angeles.

You know, I'm from Den of Thieves. He played his father in his debut role in Straight Out of Compton.
You got Godzilla.

You got Cocaine Bear. But the thing that's most important, the only thing that matters right now, the greatest pride that he has, is his nerddom in wrestling.
Oh, yeah. No contest wrestling.

You've got a podcast and you are immersed in all things wrestling. How have you not been dissuaded of this as an adult? The greatest arguments I had with my father was, Dad, that's not fake.

Jimmy Snooka, you can't, that's not fake. That can't be faked.
Yeah, it's

you definitely, I grew up having those arguments and,

you know, things like that. But once you start to become a smarter wrestling fan, you know what you're looking at, but then you know what you're looking for too.

If you can, with everyone's knowledge of the business, for a split second, for however long, make them believe

you got them. You got them in the palm of your hand.
And

as an actor, I appreciate what they do because in my line of work, I get cuts, I get redos. It's not going to be in the movie until it's perfect.

But with them, it's live and they have to add to a character every week as opposed to, you know, waiting for a season. So, yeah, I mean, and to go

is so much better than watching on TV.

There's some things, some aspects that a television match can give you that you don't get from live, like you're not hearing the announcers or anything like that, but the energy of the crowd and just seeing people that might break a limb just for our applause, you got to admire them.

I want to keep talking to you about wrestling, and we will, but the screenwriter in you, the screenwriter who went to USC dreaming of what?

What is it that you were going to be when you start at the dream in college?

I wanted to, everyone's there to write for TV and movies. I wanted to write for video games.
That was what I was going to do.

At the time of my freshman year, I think Call of Duty made a billion in a weekend. And I was like,

you know, like your father's son, man. Yeah, I can make you pay $16 a movie ticket or I can make you pay $60 a game.
So that's where I was headed. And then,

you know,

second year,

Pops tells me, you know, know they're taking this nwa movie serious and i didn't think that the conversation was going to lead to my career path i was just like all right cool it's dope i'm happy for you and he said in a perfect world i want you to play me and i was not uh

not necessarily jumping for joy because

it's not really a lot of good rap movies especially at that time and

But the thing is, my dad's never asked me to do anything. You know, he's just always been a provider.
And this was was the first time where I felt like he needed me. So I had to jump on it.

He said, we're going to have to make you audition. And I said, please make me audition because I've heard the Godfather 3 stories, you know, the

Francis Ford Coppola's daughter and how that went. And if I don't get it in an audition, I'm just not good.
It's not like I didn't try.

So we auditioned. And

Gary Gray saw something that he liked. From there, he got me an acting coach, Aaron Spicer, who I feel like I owe everything to.

Aaron Spicer hooked me up with Susan Batson. I flew to New York to work with her for a few weeks.

Two years later, of auditioning and watching my friends graduate without me on Instagram, got the part. Here I am.
So it's an accident? Kind of.

Like, it kind of just fell in my lap, and I left school to pursue it. So now it's just about making it work.
The one thing that I do wish I would have did differently

when you go to college and you're in your major,

you don't really grasp that

college is about putting a bunch of people with the same idea in the same room together.

And you're supposed to make these connections with these people because you don't know who you're going to need or what.

as you go further in this career that you're choosing. And I didn't do that.
I lost touch with my writer friends and I wish I would have kept touch with them.

Because now that I'm in the door, as far as the film industry goes, I still have my ideas for shows and everything. And I wish we all would have stayed.

I would have held them tighter because I would have had a team. I would have had a team of writers right there and people that I know can do it.

So, you know, I got to go on Instagram and hunt them all down, but I wish I would have had a better connection with them. So take me through that, though.

You're basically leaving school with your father's blessing to chase this, and you think your father is needing you, asking you for something for one of the few times. Yeah,

it's an amount of pressure that he's never vocally said, but just that as his son, I felt. And

when you

put all your, you know,

you go all in,

you put pressures on yourself and

you put yourself in a situation where you have to. Like, we have to get this.

A lot of times with second generation

kids, the Nepal babies,

the first generation, a lot of their want, need, or drive is external stuff. You know, like, whether that be, I don't want to live like this anymore or I need to get out of this environment.

I need to better myself. I need to be above all this.

When you're a second generation, life is good.

You look around life and it's like, what am I running from? You know, so you have to.

You weren't straight out of college. Yeah, so I had to have an internal thing.
You have to have like an internal thing of wanting more for yourself.

And that comes from the conversations with my dad and my mom about whether that's you, they never said anything like, you got to stand on your own two feet, but just want more for yourself.

And so I had to

use things like that, that pressure of going all in and not having an option afterwards. Because at USC, the screenwriting program is a four-year program.

You can't just leave in your second and then just jump back. It's hard to get into as well.

So I kind of felt like if I don't make this work, I'm screwed. So that's that fire.
Now I got to win the role.

He didn't tell me this at the time, but I found out when he told the higher-ups that he wanted me to play him, their response was, is this a joke? That would have been more fire for me.

Wanting to do it for my siblings. Wanting to do it for my siblings because

when I win, I feel like we win. I do it for Daryl, Karima, and Sharif.

And then you got...

My cousins like, well, you got to get it. So it's these, all these things that I'm using to fuel my fire.
And then once I did get the role,

then all the nepotism talk starts. So I'm like, all right, now I'm going to prove to you that I can do it.
And then when I do it, and it's great,

then it was, well, of course he could play his dad. So I used, so you have to have, they tell you not to read comments and do all that stuff, but I use that as fuel.
I use that bulletin board.

And yeah, I got to go at them. Was the doing of it fun or was it pressurized? The first

month,

pressure.

I was scared to death. You know,

I had amazing chemistry with Jason Mitchell, Corey Hawkins, my man Aldous Hodge, Neil Brown Jr. That was the crew.
That was NWA.

And if it wasn't for those guys and the chemistry we had and just being excited to work with them all the time, laugh with them all the time, I would have had a very hard time

doing straight out of Compton, harder than I already did. Well, which is the one that you're distrusting the most?

The fact that Hollywood doesn't make very good hip-hop movies, or that you're not going to serve the legacy of your father the way that you or he would want it to be served in film?

I knew

auditioning and working and workshopping for two years on that role,

I knew by the time that the first action, I was ready.

I've been holding it and focused for two years straight. There was really nothing that was going to stop me from portraying my dad, how I know him,

and to make sure that what I put on the screen was true.

You're always nervous that you want the movie to do good.

You want to. And when you're in it, everything feels good.
But then once you put it out, you're hoping and wishing. And it crushed.
So a lot of the fears were,

I'm going to say, more so

whether or not I was getting it right from an acting perspective. I knew.

I know how my dad would act in certain situations, but is it translating properly on the camera? And I feel like it did. How did your life change after that?

Well,

I can't watch movies the same. Movies have been ruined for me.
Every time I watch a movie now, I just think about how it was shot, how long that probably took. This probably sucked.

Like, I was watching

Godzilla vs. Kong.

And that's a movie you're supposed to just kick back, turn your brain off, man.

And there's a scene where Godzilla flips a ship that that Kong is still chained up to, and somebody has to dive into the water, hit the button.

And all I could think about was, do you know how much, how annoying diving into that water was 13 times? So, like, that type of stuff is ruined for me. But

that's a shame. You used to be a film buffer, right?

Now I'm like, oh, man, what a nightmare.

Every time, or, or I'm impressed, but you know,

well, you're not, yeah, you're you're not watching the movie. You're watching how it was made because because it's now your life.
It's funny to hear you say that it's an accident, though.

So writing for video games, what was that going to be?

Explain to me what writing for video games would have been as a career versus what it is you're presently doing. Like

what was the path to?

Well, at USC, what I was really taken in is

the art of storytelling. You know,

the difference between

a popcorn movie and what they consider cinema. You know,

what things draw what emotions from people.

The best video games have a story behind them, along with gameplay, because gameplay is important. But they have a story behind them that sticks with you forever.
When I was in,

so I was about 12, 6th grade,

I played a game called Kingdom Hearts. And a Kingdom Hearts is a mixture of a franchise Final Fantasy and mixed with Disney.
And so on the surface, it's just, you know, it looks like a fun kids game.

But I have, you log in all these hours, like over 80 hours or whatever,

whatever the game is.

you have this attachment to this character and what they're going through and you want the best for them and when it doesn't work out it crushes you or when you're left on a cliffhanger you're I'm on that cliffhanger forever

and I wanted to do that for people I wanted to create those those feelings and those emotions that I'm having that

that never let go I wanted to do that for other people and so it was I was at USC learning how

The greats did that through that media and doing whatever I can to translate a story of the magnitude of a movie and then form it into a video game.

What's going on in your household that makes it so attracted to storytelling? Your father and hip-hop, that's all it is, screenwriting, wrestling, like it's it's all stories.

Yeah, I didn't know I wanted to be a screenwriter until probably

nine months before I applied. Like it wasn't like on my radar.
I was supposed to play for the Lakers until I was 17 years old. That's when I called it quits.
But

I had a teacher. Shout out to Hernan and shout out to Rochelle.
Because these two

mean so much to me. And I have to hunt them down and find them.
But they were my homeschool teachers. I was in public school from kindergarten through seventh grade.

Seventh through 11th, I was homeschooled, and then I didn't feel like graduating in the kitchen, so they let me go to Taft.

But

I was a daydreamer.

I understood my schoolwork, and a lot of schoolwork is repetition, and repetition is where I get bored. So

I was a daydreamer, just zoning out, and I got a notebook dropped in front of me, and he said, whatever you're thinking about, just write it down because you're not here right now.

If I let you write it down, will you come back? I was like, all right. So he would give me 30 minutes every day to just write, write, write, write, write, write, write.

And then next thing I know, I had like 120 pages of a handwritten story. And he would read it, you know, while I was doing my school work.

Then he goes, you ever thought about screenwriting? No.

You never thought about it. Like, with your dad, you've never thought about it? I'm like, no.

And,

you know, my mom showed me like, Because she keeps like all our school projects and things like that.

And she showed me like all these projects that i did these creative writing projects and you didn't even know you were a writer you were spaced so spaced out through childhood that you get to college not even knowing your mom's showing you the scrap oh yes you've always been a writer yeah you've always liked writing i'm like oh yeah it's nice to meet me and then um they got me a a teacher to teach me how to write scripts bill rubenstein

And from there, we changed my handwritten story into script form, script form into an application, application, then I go to USC. But yeah,

I'm oblivious. A lot of people in the world don't know what they're good at because it comes so easy to them.
They think like the great things are supposed to be hard to do.

But when it comes easy to you, you're not paying attention to it. There's so many people that don't know what their talent is.

But yeah,

here's this mural I made, but yeah, it's nothing. Like

you have to pay attention to yourself. And sometimes it takes people on the outside to show you that mirror.
When you say here's the mural, do it as much as you can.

What's your child look, childhood look like? Like who are your uncles? Who's in the house?

What is happening in your childhood when you're the son of a rap star?

I

first of all, we go to Hawaii like all the time. So much so that as a kid, I'm like, man, Hawaii again.
Now as an adult, I miss Hawaii.

I miss her.

You miss those writers at USC. Now you're you're all grown up and you realize what you missed on them.

I long for Hawaii.

But going to premieres, normal.

Just another reason why I got to get dressed up. But Slaker games,

really

the things that are still within me, just experiencing them through childhood, always at Staple Center. Man.

I love Staple Center. I'm sorry, crypto, but like it's Staple Center.

So always at Staple Center, whether that be for concerts or games, Kings games, Laker games, or if you're really, really bored, we go to a Clipper game.

And from there,

meeting cool people, you know, running into cool people.

There's not a lot of stars that like

I'll say like, you know, was one of, you know, the fake uncles,

but Uncle Dr. Shaq is for sure, boss.

um

and yeah i i remember going to my first all-star game getting to meet a lot of great players i remember the first time i met kobe lost my mind it was just one of those things that

you appreciate in the moment but especially now man

i met kobe probably five times and i remember each time and then uh The coolest thing that ever happened is one day my dad picked me up from school, which is that this is grandma territory.

territory all right grandma picks us up from school so my dad picked picked me up from school that's a big deal yeah whispers have already flooded through the school to me shit your dad's here your dad's here your dad's here so now i'm thinking what have i done i can't i feel like i'm doing good in school what could he possibly be here for what did i do and so i walk out to school and he's in the nice car so we got the four doors and everything he's in the two door he's in the nice car so now I'm really skeptical I get in a car and we start driving and he

asked me about my day normal conversations we're definitely not going home because we're going really far we're driving all the way to Venice which for a little kid is very far and we sit at this table at this restaurant and the rock walks in and sits at the table and just starts talking to my dad.

And you have to give a kid at least 24 hours. At least 24 hours.
Like, hey, so we're going to have lunch with your hero tomorrow. Anything.

I was so, for the first time in my life, starstruck, I couldn't say a single word. Nothing would come out of my mouth.
And to this day,

like, I have, first of all, he paid. He got a cheeseburger.
I got a cheeseburger. I dug that.
I got a root beer. He got a Diet Coke.
Thought that was weird, but you know, he's the rock.

He paid for it. Lady brings him his change, but he walks out and I stole his quarter

just to have it. Just to have it.
Stole that woman's money. Yep, for sure.
A crime.

You committed a crime. That some might say.
You stole that woman's money. That wasn't your money.
That was the

youth. That's how the universe works.
That's how the youth of today's universe works. That is not how that one works.
You stole that woman's money. I'm here for this, man.

Well, but take me through the Kobe meeting.

I want to talk to you about rock, the rock and wrestling, but are you noticing in the Kobe meeting that Kobe's just as respectful of your father as your father is of Kobe?

Like, you're understanding the weight that your father has everywhere, right? Yeah.

Yes and no. I know,

you know, my dad does music. My dad does movies.
People love him. I didn't grasp how much my dad means to people until I was 18.
Like, it took that long of, and

it's just another one of those things. Like, you don't, you don't get it until you really get it.
And when I was 18, I went with my dad on tour.

Me and my older brother Daryl, we worked on crew. So, you know, we're helping with the crates.

Just anything, helping build the sets with the, you know, the blow-up W's.

We were working as crew, helping with sound check, anything that, you know, we could do, but we were just on the road.

And that took me all the way to Australia for the first time. And in Australia, a dude in the crowd,

after we were taking the set list off the stage, a dude in the crowd, you know, waved me over. He had a card.

So I grabbed the card and he was like, Tell your dad I was, you know, living on the wrong path,

you know, gangs, the whole nine, and listening to his music, I became a doctor. And I was like, damn, like, that's

wow. And it kind of hit me that he's my dad, yes, but there are people out in the world that needed him.
And if they didn't have him, who knows where they would be.

And from something he probably wrote in the kitchen. you know, wrote just

not understanding, well, probably believe understanding at that time, but just the things that he sends out, they mean so much. Those words mean so much that they could be the make or break thing that

leads to a doctor who saves other people's lives. That, you know, and that right there is the moment I knew.
All right, he's a, he's a bad man.

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The holidays are here, dude. I was just the other day with my dad.
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Right now, I wanna leave this ad read in the middle and go share a Miller Light with my boy too. Dude, can we do that? All right, let's go right now.

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You probably get a lot of this. I am of his age, so I will tell you that I'm in college.

I'm a freshman at the University of Miami amid those University of Miami football teams that would end up feeling a lot like the Raiders teams that he loves or grew up on when he was like just loving the renegade spirit of things.

And all I'm playing is straight out of Compton and as a freshman in college, and it's introducing me to something culturally that I simply have had no access to.

Like you're opening up a window to the world on the East Coast

where I'm in the middle of

black sports rebellion and

the rebellion of hip-hop music at its at its edgiest and most aggressive. I'm being introduced to culture through your father, basically.
Yeah, and it's

that right there, bringing awareness, being the voice of the voiceless, having everyone kind of

let's look into that. You know, that's where the power really started, where you even got government officials listening in, you know, and

you don't see that when you're the kid. Like, you don't recognize it.
And even doing the film,

in my mind, these are stories I've heard all the time.

Getting the perspective of what other people, like, not from just the ice cube side, really kind of warped my brain around what was really happening.

And to think my dad at that time was 16, 17 it's wild what do you know about that time in its life and like what do you know about obviously you researched extensively for the movie you've got to feel like you really know what your

what your father's growth was

i mean you know you you won't know the day by day but i know growing up in his house you know he had

both his parents hard workers and he wanted that for himself. He's the, you know, the youngest of his siblings.

and my i look at my little brother sharif and he's got the most discipline out of any of us that dude is a machine so i can only imagine what you know the younger version of my dad was

and i'm man i'm grateful for it and i'm sure there are some crazy times that i'm so glad he survived because i don't know if you know this But the 80s was insane.

I don't know how any of y'all got through it. It doesn't make sense.

The 80s was the wild, wild woman well i mean you know his stories you know all of his stories it's a bit it's a bit of a miracle in a number of different ways that he got uh to where it is that he got god bless the latchkey kids wherever y'all are i'm so happy y'all made it

uh do do was there a lot of discipline in the house like what what was

you're getting to college daydreaming and not having had to suffer or sacrifice very much right i mean in the in the

don't be bad, all right, because you're getting disciplined. But my parents always said, if you handle your business,

get whatever you want. And my business as a kid is school in your room.
I was terrible at the room one. I was really good at school.

And so my parents never really had to get on me until they saw some slip-ups. If they see, when they see it, they attack it.
I

sixth grade going into seventh grade. It was my first time ever going to summer school.

Now the thing with me wasn't that I didn't understand the work or I couldn't like comprehend what I was reading because when I got to summer school, the two classes that I was there for, I ended up with A's in both classes.

And I had one of the teachers ask me, what are you doing here? It's hard for me to

have six teachers. Like it was six different personalities, six people.
Like, you might be having a good day, you might be having a bad day. And just, I, it's just, I can't focus that way.

I need a one-on-one teacher, you know, I take in information better in a one-on-one setting. So, when that was able to, you know, be compressed a little bit,

I got the AEE. So, then

that led to the homeschooling. I got a one-on-one teacher.
I'm killing it, crushing it. So,

that was the only time they saw a slip up and

sacrificed public school.

That was my biggest sacrifice. When you go to

your only school is the only girl in your school is your sister. That's terrible.
I love my sister, Dan. I went to an all-boys high school.
I was ill-equipped for college.

I had no training on how to just talk to a person

who was not male. Didn't know how to do it.
Didn't know how to do it. Yeah, so that, I mean, that was probably the biggest one.

Yeah, anytime they saw slippage in me handling my business, and it's that mindset that I still have.

It's just, you got to handle business. Handle business first.
You know, even now,

being an adult, having the success that I do, I don't go out. I don't do any of the things that would affect me handling my business.

Okay, but you're, I feel like you're skipping over some stuff where, yeah, of course, don't be bad. And there's an understanding you're going to be responsible.

Your dad is to be feared and respected, your mom is to be feared and respected, but

you still came upon discipline. Like, you, you, your, your, your little brother is very disciplined, like something was happening in the household.

A little rare for a Hollywood family to be together that long, for it to be stable, functioning. Like, it's not the most normal of things.
Yeah, I think it

stems from a

there's a part of me that the part of me that stays disciplined, or the, you know, whether it be the drive and my little brother,

it's just the choices that we make when it affects the way that we like to live,

you just have to turn it off. And it starts with you.

You can't, nobody else is going to do it for you. That's what we always were taught.
Nobody else is going to do it for you.

And if you don't, if you don't like it, if you're not willing to change it, then you're choosing it. And

yeah, I guess that's where it stems from is not wanting to let them down or each other down. We were such a tight family unit.
Anything, we were so

we were terrible at like family talks because we don't want to hurt the other one's feelings. Like

we're such a tight-knit family that way. So I can't even put a real finger on it besides not wanting to let each other down.

What are the cons of working with family? You don't want to let them down.

I still haven't really worked with him, though.

When we started Straight Out of Compton, he was doing right along two.

So

in the beginning, he was an iPad floating around set. Like there was somebody holding an iPad of him so he can check things out.
But by the time he got there, I had my feet wet already.

I was rocking. And so then it became just like a player coach type thing.
But I really want to do a film with him and like really work with him and

see how that feels. I'll tell you one thing.
We used to do, I used to, I probably got three songs with my dad. That's crazy.
I like writing. I like

the aspect of thinking of something that you weren't thinking of. But like writing a song, I'd rather pull my hair out.
I can't write a song. Like I, for whatever, I just get in my head.

is it catchy enough that's not for me so that a lot of my choice to go into movies was because it's just not fun for me to do music it's just not fun movies i have fun for sure

three songs yeah i think it's she couldn't make it on her own

um

And then I think we did another one that's like

an ensemble of like four or five artists

and I'm pretty sure I did a song with him on one of his albums

no it was a it was a song that we had that didn't get released but that's it yeah and then I tried the music thing but I just didn't have the love for it like I do with film where I'm passionate about it to the point of like being competitive because I I if you're gonna rap rap to be the best Don't rap to just like

you know, make a quick buck. I didn't want it, I wanted to be taken serious in whatever I chose.
And with music, I don't think I'm gonna take my family name to any higher than what it is.

In movies, though,

I feel like I can get some new roles for us.

Did you have any imposter syndrome after the first difficult month?

No, I was locked in. I still do get a little bit of imposter syndrome because

I,

my biggest flaw, Dan, is that I don't know how great I really am.

I'll sit in the trailer first day of work on every project and I'll be reading all the things I have to do.

And then it sets in of just like, what the hell am I doing here? Like, what am I doing here? They're going to find out they picked the wrong guy. This is about to be terrible.

Why did I choose to do this?

And then I get my feet wet. I'm like, oh man, we're going to crush this.
We're going to kill this.

And it just, it just happens. It's the first day of school.
It's all those things creep into your head when something is new. And

I don't think I want to get out of that because it keeps me on my toes. But let me put you in two scenarios.
So I put you between

50 Cent and Gerard Butler on Den of Thieves. You feel like you belong?

Yeah.

Gerard is intimidating,

but at that point, I was just so happy to be doing a movie. This is my third movie ever.
So I was just so happy to be there. I was like, yeah, let's do it.
I got to shoot guns. Not in the movie.

But they made me weapons train anyway. And

yeah, I had Angry Goes West, had Sundance. I was feeling good with myself at that time.

Okay, so, but I want to get to the next one where I'm not going to believe you if you tell me, even as if you have your father's confidence, Michael B. Jordan and Jamie Fox.

Man, I'm not even really in that movie.

I'm not even really messing with them.

I got to meet Mike and Brie Larson one time.

I don't even see Jamie.

But

your name is in lights around them. Yeah, I just, in that moment,

no.

In that moment it's like all right it's a great that we're in this and in those situations my thought process is when you're on camera you gotta steal it you gotta steal it you have to stand out because you're around titans right now you gotta steal it and

how I've always looked at it or or given an example

When you're not the lead, okay, when you're not the guy that necessarily is pushing the movie

Everybody wants to be Luke Skywalker Han Solo gets the girl Han Solo gets the car Han Solo gets the sidekick with Chewie Han Solo's pretty dope when you're

everybody wants to be Woody

Buzz Lightyear is the coolest toy in the world. So if you got a

support just make sure you steal the show whether that be

10th on the call sheet or number two on the call sheet, wherever, if you steal the show, if you stand out,

you'll do good for yourself. And there was a scene where I shake Jamie's hand.
I stole that scene from him. I ate you up, Jamie.
I ate you up, bro. Stole that shake.

You saw that shake holding back tears? No, nothing about that.

He still is haunted by that.

It's as memorable as

Schwartzenacre and Ventura and Predator. The way that you shook his hand, he underestimated you because he thought that

he put his guard down for a second and you took it from him. I thought it was sweet around here.

Tell me the best stories around Cocaine Bear. How I got it is pretty funny.

So I'm on Twitter a lot. Some might say too much.
I don't listen to them.

So

I saw Elizabeth Banks get the rights rights to cocaine bear. And I'm like, all right, this is probably a movie about some runner they call the bear.

No, not at all. It's about a bear on cocaine.
100%.

So I retweeted it and I said, just take my money now. You know, I'm on my way.

And she saw the tweet, hits them like, hey, I think we could get O'Shea.

So I get a call like, hey, you want to be in it?

Yeah.

So they sent me the script.

And, you know,

this is why I love Elizabeth Banks. Nobody can ever tell me anything about Elizabeth Banks because I'm reading the script.

And I couldn't help but notice on page 96, Elizabeth,

I don't make it. I die.
She was like, you don't want to die? I was like, no.

No, I don't want to die. She said, all right, you don't die.
That was it. That's not usually how those conversations go.

She was so chill. She was like, all right, well, Carrie Russell plays like a nurse, so like, we'll just say she saves you.
And that's how you try to get cocaine bear too, Dan.

That's how you do it, folks. Congratulations.
That's excellent work there.

You're making them look really easy in Hollywood. It's unusual.
All you got to do is ask. What are they going to tell you? No?

Hey.

But you hadn't read the script or anything. No, no, I read it.
I read it, but I just didn't. And I didn't even die by the bear.
I get shot by Ray Liota.

And so I was like, yeah,

I can't do that. Elizabeth was like, You don't have to.
That's why I love Elizabeth Banks.

The last time we talked to you on our show, you were explaining that you had called your father from the set, they were making you wait a long time, and he told you to just leave.

And you're like, I'm not you, I can't

just leave.

What are some of the things that you would say you have learned from your upbringing? Knowing your worth, knowing, like

I'm I'm respectful I'm easy to work with but I'm not a pushover like know when you're being played know when

to trust your instincts a little bit of like this doesn't feel right

and

at that time in my life on the first dinner thieves third film ever I was so bent on

good report cards you know good report cards don't make waves Everybody already thinks that you're just coming here

thinking you're the man anyway. In actuality, I just want to work and I am happy to be here.

You don't have to be happy to be here after a while. You know, after a while, you got to know that they need you right now.

And

they don't.

They could not want you, but they still need you.

So it took some time. It took, you know, a lot of different sets, a lot of ways how people work on things and

learning, you know, learning through trial by fire. But then you get to a point where like, nah, it's cool to say no.
It's cool to be like, that doesn't work for me.

And at the end of the day, filmmaking is a collaborative effort to make a, you know, a beautiful project. And you got to make sure you get yours too.

And so I don't I don't wait around no more you know I'm 10 years in baby

I got some some veteran privileges and it's also not nearly as glamorous as people think it is right you're waiting around a lot there's there's a lot of boredom in it the movie is great making it is a it's a it's an effort and also

I know as an actor

You know, you're the one in front of the camera. If the movie's bad, they don't really think about, well, who wrote this? No, they think about, yo, that O'Shea movie was terrible.

And so, yeah, you're the face of the watch, but the gears that make the watch, that really, like, I'm in movies. The people who are making the movies, those people got my utmost respect.

I'm, I'm, every crew I've ever worked with, I made sure that I'm approachable, that I thank them for what they do because they really have the less glamorous spot.

And when the movie is terrible, they're not really blamed. But when the movie is amazing, they're not really applauded either.
So shout out to the gears of the watch, man.

Every department, everybody, whether it's

costumes arguing with sound or props arguing with costumes because the watch is a prop. It's not really a piece of clothing.
Hair and makeup.

Everybody, the grips, everybody who Transpo, especially, shout out to Transpo, but all those guys, man, those guys are

really making the movie. Can you really not turn off your brain and just watch a movie and say, I enjoyed that anymore? You're thinking about costume design and how it is.

You're now looking at the, you're not telling the time, you're looking at the pieces of the watch. Yeah.

The last time I got to really like,

where I was like, I'm not even, you know, I'm being a fan was Deadpool Wolverine. Deadpool Wolverine.
I'm just like, I just enjoyed the ride, you know, and it was a

fun experience, man. I sat front row in a theater.
I haven't done that in forever.

So you were transported. It's probably the child in you a little bit that finally got to be a child.
You probably know too much at this point.

I've heard too much, man. I've seen some things.

That's funny, though. You can't be, it's really hard to transport you in a movie.
It's, it's, yeah, because it's like... The mechanics of it are too fascinating to you.
And even

like I look at acting different because of Jason Mitchell. Jason Mitchell, who played Easy E and Straight Out of Compton, he's the one who taught me how to look at acting like a sport instead of just

playing pretend.

Because we, you know, we walk, we'll watch something together and he was like, man, he killed him. Or like, man, he got him right there.
Or just like he looks at it like boxing.

and so when

i see two actors going toe to toe i'm like man that was a good round like you know so it's just that competitive spot and that's not how you're really you shouldn't be going into a scene like i'm about to kill this dude you should you're only focused on you but it's just something about

a scene where somebody either has a monologue or something where you're like man he crushed and you can see it almost like you can see a dunk And

that's where you really, as a peer, start to become fans of people.

Competition and sports,

your father's a bit of an insane person when it comes to just fans. They're living with Dr.
Seuss, Dan.

His fandom is crazy.

The business entrepreneurship of what he's

done, I'm not going to say trying to do, but I know what he's trying to do and how he's trying to do it. It just seems like ambition that's not necessary at this point in your life.

Hardship that's not necessary. Why the work ethic? Why is it important for you to work hard when you don't have to?

He,

because he hasn't stopped working. He hasn't stopped working.
And also,

I feel like I'm not nowhere near where I want to be. And even when I get there, I'm going to want something else.

I

was at a point point in my career,

2019, in October. I was in my apartment.

Little did I know the whole world was going to change the next year. But I was in my apartment.
I might have had,

I might have been a little inebriated, perhaps. I'm an American citizen.
I'm fine.

You're allowed to be a little inebriated in your home. A couple libations.
Maybe a lot inebriated. You're also allowed to be a lot inebriated.
So I'm in my apartment and I was kind of down on myself.

I felt like my career was a little stagnant. Like I had plateaued.
And it's because

I don't need much.

I don't need much to make myself happy. So I'm happy, but I became content and I wanted more for myself.

And so I started having these thoughts and these emotions and scrolling through Twitter. And then something told me,

Kobe follows you. DM Kobe.
Kobe's retired. Kobe's been, you know, retired for three years now.
And he got up, won an Oscar. He's about to do the,

that's when he had the children's book out and the body armor thing and the mama academy.

And so I hit Kobe and I was like, dude,

you've done everything and you still get up and you still want more.

What

pushes you? I feel like I'm stuck. So what pushes you? Give me some books.
Give me some mantras, some movies. He gave me his number.
Now I'm drunk.

Okay, whoa, it's escalated since we were talking. It was maybe inebriated.
I'm a little bit more. No,

you're slurring in your hammer. I am drunk.
And my first thought was, I cannot talk to Kobe right now.

I cannot talk to Kobe. This can't be my first phone call with Kobe.
This is my hero. And so I text him.
I was like, hey, I got you locked in. I'm like, please don't call me.

He was like, I'll call you in a couple days. And so

from there,

call me in a couple days. I'm waiting, waiting, waiting.
You're waiting for the call.

Yeah.

So

I he said, I'll call you in a couple days. A couple days is very vague.
So I'm like, all right. So I'm just waiting every day for Kobe to call.

And I did a table read

for

this show that worked but kind of didn't work. But I got two of my best friends from it called The Now.

And

I'm driving and I'm riding in the Uber. And then my phone rings.
It says goat.

It says goat.

And I'm like, oh my god, today is the day.

So I tell the driver, hey, can you turn down the radio?

I got to talk to Kobe.

And he goes, Kobe Bryant? I said, yeah, man.

You had to brag to the Uber driver.

Keep it quiet in here, right? Kobe Bryant is about to talk to me. So I talked to Kobe.

And

Kobe told me.

That feeling of I haven't done enough or that I all the accomplishments that I have don't mean much, and that

like just how hard I am on myself, keep it. Keep that.
He said, that's what I feel

every day.

I feel like we're not done, or I feel like I ain't done nothing.

And this dude won five championships, MVP,

gold medalist,

all the nines, the all-star games, all of that. Nothing.
Doesn't mean nothing.

He said that he paces, I pace as well, throughout his house. Like, you just,

your mind is always working, and you have to hold on to that feeling if you want to keep going forward.

We talked about our dads making the decision to go in our father's footsteps.

He told me that your parents are never going to want you to go through anything.

And you got to ignore that. You got to do stuff for you sometimes and see where you're going to end up from it.

Whether that be learning that, all right, maybe we shouldn't do that, or you might like where you end up,

but they're always going to want to protect you because that's their job.

So, you got to know when, like, you got to do something for me, and you got to know when to take that advice because they're the people that are going to love you the most.

And we talked for

24-25 minutes, and then

hung up and you know all right man talk to you later some text here and there I ran into him at a just mercy screening in Philadelphia and that was like

like November I think so all this is like from October 2019 January 2020 he was gone

and if I

didn't have

even though it's a bit of a liquid courage if I didn't have that courage to hit Kobe,

I would have never had that conversation with him and I would have never had those words with Kobe.

So I

can't let Kobe down. He had to tell me that.
You know, he had to tell me that. So I have to hold on to this feeling.
And so far,

it's helped me

make some good decisions.

I've run into some wild decisions, but

it's just something from him that I'll I'll always hold on to.

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head to blinds.com now for up to 50% off site-wide plus a free professional measureblanks.com rules and restrictions may apply people don't understand how hard it is to make a successful living in here, correct?

Like they assume you've been in a movie, therefore he's going to have 30 years of movies, right? Yeah, no.

After I did it straight out of Compton, I didn't work for a year.

No one called. There was a couple of script offers, but nobody cared.
Nobody called.

Nobody? No, dude. I mean, you crushed it.
My God. Thank you.

I'm like, my phone about to blow up. It's, you know, yada, yada, yada.
And I'm just sitting waiting.

We got a couple of nibbles with like some scripts but i'm like it's whack so like i but you think at this point you're assuming right you're as soon as this movie gets to 200 million or you're getting hearing the numbers yeah i'm something where are the offers how i got to get more agents right and so it it i i had reached a point where i was confused

and

I had to go out and get something. And I had a movie kind of fall in my lap.
You know,

I went to some awards show where I was presenting and I saw Aubrey Plaza in the green room and I'm going to go talk to Aubrey and then these two lovely ladies stop me and tell me that their grandson loved Straight Auto Compton and yada yada.

And we take the picture and Aubrey's gone. So then I go on Twitter, as I do.

and talk about how I almost met Aubrey Plaza. So the night's going great.
And she sees that, hits me, says, hey, I got this film.

I kind of need you to do it. I was like, I'm not sure that's how it works, but let's set up a meeting.
So

she gives me her number. I text her.
I say, hey, it's Batman. She goes, great.
Exclamation point, exclamation point.

And then from there, we set up a meeting at some bar that neither of us knew. And she goes, how did you like the script? I said, what script? She said,

the script I sent you. I said, you didn't send me a script.
What's my email if you sent me a script? So she goes, look, she goes, why did you tell me you were Batman? I was like,

I don't know, man. I was trying to be cool.

I'm Batman. I don't know.
She goes, your dude in the movie is obsessed with Batman. So I told everybody that you said yes.

All right.

Now I got to do it. Like, now I have to do it.
That's too funny. And that was Angry Goes West.
Wait a minute. You gotta be shitting me.
You couldn't get work. You couldn't get work?

There was no, you were typecast as he looks like Ice Cream. Of course, he could play his dad.
Of course, he could play his dad. Jason and Corey got to do Skull Island.
I was furious.

It was like Easy and Dr. Dre are in King Kong, and here I am just watching the account get lower.

So

I was hot.

So this lovely movie, Inger Goes West, by the grace of God, I get Inger Goes West. Inger Goes West takes me to Sundance.
I get Variety Hats. Wait a minute.
Was your career dead? No, I was done.

I was about to be on Sepulvina. I was done.
Your career was dead out of crushing it and straight out of content. You thought

you were getting cruddy scripts.

A lot of horror. No disrespect to the horror community.
Not really a lot of awards there. I'm like, man.

Oh, yeah. I was hot, bro.
I was hot for a year, scared to death. I mean, but how could you not be? That doesn't even make any sense.

It doesn't make sense because it's like, of course, he could play his dad. What are we going to do? Just find a movie where we can't get his dad and make him do it?

So, like, but even in that, there's a career.

I was done. I was done.
It was over. If it wasn't for Ingry Goes West, Matt Spice.
But how is that? Wait a minute, but how is that even possible?

Like, clearly, anybody watching Straight Up Compton could say that is well acted.

Like, he's never mind that my introduction to you was like, holy shit, how does that look so much much like Ice Cube when he was younger? Like, how is that possible? That's my introduction to you.

But how does Hollywood not notice? No, he's and Hollywood marketing agents of a certain age that would have grown up as I did on Straight Out of Compton would have also been like, that's good acting.

Dude, I have no, I got no clue. The only people that I like, I would have my meetings and they would go nowhere or I would do auditions.
Shout out to Carmen Cuba.

I love you forever but I would have my you know auditions you rarely get auditions bro I'm gonna just be real like it's such a rarity to get those anyway but I was doing the audition thing doing all that but the only people that the only thing that had a little like okay this might be something was uh

den of thieves

So Christian Gudegas was somebody who was looking for me after straight out of Compton. And Angry Goes West, bro.
After that,

anybody was looking for me. And so it's not just like a set thing to do.

So take me through what is the funniest or most embarrassing of the rejections in retrospect when you think you're going to catapult now to stardom.

And instead, you're nine months in and you got to, you know, meet somebody at whatever, at a diner to be told that you can't have this sixth role. There was a...

There was a movie that I was supposed to do with my boy Thomas Middleditch that never got off the ground at Fox. I forget the name of it.
If he was here, he'd tell me.

There's also a situation where

the reason why, Carmen Cuba, all right, she's a

casting director.

And I love Carmen Cuba because Carmen Cuba is so real with me. I was auditioning for Alien Covenant.

And

she

in the middle, like after I do one audition, the second time going around, she goes, Shay,

have you seen Alien?

Yeah.

So, what happens in every alien? I said, you know,

aliens hit the ship, and then she goes, and then what's at the end? I said, oh, yeah, there's usually a lady that's the only. survivor.
She said, exactly. And you don't want to die yet.

I said, oh, yeah, I did tell you that. Like, yeah, you're going going to die horribly in this.

Is this what you want to do? No.

Have a good day, Shay.

Thanks, Carmen. Thank you so much.

And

she just looks out. So that was probably my funniest audition.
But I've, man, I've auditioned for plenty of films. I auditioned for the Han Solo film.
Got real close.

Real close. But my man,

my man Donald Glover got it. God bless him.
He's pretty good, too. Pretty good, too.
He's super talented. Like, he's super talented.
But, like, for about three months, took every song off my phone.

Every single.

Every single vengeance, just straight vengeance. You know, just something about him.
But no, now I'm playing. And you had a lot of Chadris Gambino.
You were playing? Yeah, I love Children Scampino.

I love

Glover since he did Derek Comedy on YouTube. Like, I'm a fan of him.

But you hate him right now. No, no, no, right, no, right now.
I love him.

I'm saying

at that time. Competitive year.
trying to be Lando Calrissian. Yeah.
Uh-huh. Yeah.
Couldn't stand it. Hated his guts.
Something else I think you couldn't stand was your name for how long? O'Shea.

O'Shea was not a name you liked, right? I mean, it's...

I've always, I have liked my name. It just hasn't...

It's just hard when you're trying to make a name for yourself and you...

Got the guy's name, looked like the guy, and your first job is playing the guy. So it has its challenges, but I've never met.

Actually, I take that back because I have met another O'Shea, and I wanted to kill him. I was like, What? What do you mean? You're like, Yeah, my name's O'Shea, too.
You think I give a damn? So,

like, you're named after my dad. There's no way your mom was like, Let me get this name of Irish descent and just pass it on to your black ass.

So,

yeah, I didn't like it. I don't like that.
Like,

you, at one time, you didn't like being the only O'Shea, and then you get to 17 years old, and you... I'm the man.
You're the only one. I'm the only one you know.

No disrespect if you see this, but me and my dad to go to a Celtics game because Jalen Brown is a friend of my dad's.

And

so we said courtside at a disgusting Boston Celtics versus Houston Rockets game. I am in Laker gear head to toe courtside because, you know.

And they had a dude named O'Shea on the team.

he said my name's O'Shea too

threw my chair give a damn I don't care man you Celtic if he was a Laker it'd be really cool but no man

yeah y'all are named after my dad I don't even know where my name came from I was like

my grandmother I was like where did

O'Shea like where did what was either that or Orinthal so I just shut the hell up there

Why is it between

Muhammad and McLovin?

How did we get down here?

So I just tell people my name came from a hat. They just pulled it out.
But you don't actually know the story. No, no.
But it was better than Orinthal. That's a better story.
Yes, that is correct.

What a coin flip for me.

Is your father's shadow in any way a burden? Because you always speak of it so reverently, eloquently. You're you're always loving and kind.

Is it a shadow that you have at any point wanted out from under?

It's a shadow.

Shadow is like, is a third-party ideology. When you're in it, you don't think like that.
And when you start to listen to other people, you think that you're supposed to. You think that like...

you're supposed to think like the whole the coattails the shadow that all that the mountain to climb all that is it doesn't exist the only thing that exists

is

your family's name

and i look at my family's name and my or legacy whatever you want to call it i look at it as like a physical thing that i have to push forward so that

this name goes further through time than just this one individual.

And that is a torch that you just have to keep passing on and so that's what I don't look at it like a shadow I look at it like this Jackson name is going to reach everywhere it has reached mountains so high in music and I feel like we can go higher in movies so that's what I'm gonna do and I want

Adam Sandler God bless him

Adam Sandler took an MTV award from my dad one time and I hated his guts immediately. I love Adam Salad, but I really wanted that popcorn.

And when my dad wins awards, he brings them home and I get to look at him and I really wanted that MTV popcorn.

I know, prestigious, I know.

But

when straight out of confidence happened, it just happened to fall on the 25th anniversary of the MTV movie awards. And that popcorn I wanted since I was a kid.
The first time that

it went through my family's doors, it it had my name on it.

And that meant something to me. So that right there, I was like, every award

that they

wouldn't give my guy, I'm going to go and grab them. So that's, that's,

there's no shadow. It's only pushing the name.
And I'm, I, I got the name in Star Wars right now. I got the name in Godzilla.

I got our name in places it hasn't been before, and I want to continue to do that. Can you explain to me why and where all of that comes from?

Like the need to push your father's name forward as your father is a symbol for black pride, for black excellence, for pride and excellence in general. Like the can you explain it to me?

Why is it so important to you? My name too,

Junior. There's no heavier two letters in the alphabet put together than J.R.

And he's even had moments where he has thought about, you know,

me having my own

Identity, which I still feel that I do.

We're vastly different people, but still the same ideologies about how you're represented or how you look because the things that we do in the in the media that we

are both in the things that we do are going to be out there forever. They don't go away.
So it has to be something that when you look back, you can be proud of.

And

I'm not cowering away from

the challenge. And it's important

because if you push, when a name has weight,

things move for it. And the more I can add weight to that physical thing,

it'll make things easier for my daughter. It'll make things easier for my

siblings. When you have one Titan

carrying the name, doing all those things, if you can have two, now you,

then you get a third. Like, you know, so I just have to keep it going forward.
And with my kid, I'm not,

if she don't want to do entertainment, that's not going to do anything to me. Entertainment kind of sucks.
Kind of sucks.

It's a blessing, but there's just certain things people don't understand when they're on the outside that

your privacy,

that's your sacrifice. It's gone.
The mistakes you made, magnified everywhere. You can be the main character of the internet, which is scary as hell.
You never be the main character of the internet.

So it is

a jellyfish. It's beautiful to look at.
It looks amazing. You get wrapped up in it.
It will kill you. So if my kid doesn't want to do entertainment, I'm not going to put that on her.

But whatever she does decide to do,

I'm going to help with it. But as far as this business, business, I have to push this name forward as far as I can to make life easier for her.
Her name's Jordan, right? Jordan.

No pressure of name there, right? She's not named after Michael.

Her real name is Kobe Jordan.

Yeah, I know. Her real name,

listen, listen. What an asshole.

What an asshole her father is. Her name is Kobe Jordan.
You didn't do that. Listen.
Her name is listening. You didn't do that.
Her name is Kobe Jordan. But

when she was born, her mom had a dog named Kobe so she didn't want to put the Kobe on it but like we both know like

so when she's 18 I'm gonna explain to her this story so like if you want to go get your name go get your name your name is Kobe Jordan you've mentioned

you've mentioned a couple of times now that your father's got you in music but you're coming after him in movies I suspect in the home if I know anything about the trash talking family around sports at all that you've shown me from the outside I suspect you've already already told your father that if you have not surpassed him, you will surpass him in movie making.

Do I have that wrong? Are you too respectful to do that? He's such a, he's my biggest fan. He's my biggest fan.
He, when I did straight out of Compton, he said,

it's like, it's like watching my son win the Super Bowl with my team, you know?

So he's so happy for me, but I will say,

when I did get, when I got Godzilla, he did just happen to switch agencies. I'm just saying.

But

he's my biggest support. He's always had my back.
But

between you and I, don't tell him it else. It's just you and me here.
Don't agree. Got to get that fourth Denneth.

He's had, like, he's done trilogies. I don't think he's done a fourth one on anything.
I've got to get that fourth Dennett Thieves. I can take him out.
Yeah. Take him out.
Anyway, yeah. Good talk.

Make Kobe Jordan proud of her father.

Last question on the way out, I will tell the people again. His passion project of the moment is the podcast, No Contest Wrestling.

Your obsession with wrestling, your need to have a microphone and speak of the daily storylines. Where does it come from? And why is it so important to you? Why does it matter?

I've just always, I've always been a fan.

And me and my friends,

we have like

pay-per-view watch parties. Like we, like, wrestling is like our thing.
It's been our thing.

And

when the strike happened, when the actor's strike happened, it was immediately after I finished filming Den of Thieves 2. And I had a show

out

called Swagger.

Kevin Durant produced. Apple TV, the whole nine.
Loosely based on him, right? Yeah, yeah. Things had to change because of the pandemic, so it was like, yeah, but it's very loosely based on him.

So the second season aired during the strike. We can't promote.
Like, SAG rules, we can't promote any of our work.

So it just happened to be, you know, just word of mouth of people telling people where to find it and yada yada yada. But none of us can retweet it.
None of us can speak on it.

And we kind of just had to watch it just

do something on your own, hopefully. Because,

you know, respect to Apple, but they don't put trailers on a lot of things. It's not a lot of like,

go here to see this show from Apple.

The marketing just is just not there.

And so when Swagger happened, we're just kind of watching it. It got up to Apple's top four.
So we're like, all right, let's go. You know, we're so happy for it.
And then they canceled us.

And so it was like, wow.

and now those phone calls or those that thought process of another season is gone and i'm not really having any meetings with movies because everybody's on strike so that's that's they're just fizzling out plans that i had to do other shows gone

eight months no income every job that you had lined up slowly dying in front of you And I was scared. I got scared again.

That fear, that will put that internal fire I was telling you about, that fear will put that right in you. And I was scared again.

And so I

had to look at

what am I good at? Like I said, the things that you're talented at or the things that you could probably make a career out of is something you're not really paying attention to.

So I had to look inward.

What do I do every day that doesn't feel like work?

I talk shit on Twitter. I talk shit on Twitter about wrestling every day for free.

So let's get paid to do that.

And

so I was just going to go on like Twitch or some shit with my sister and just like ramble about wrestling and do it that way.

But then, by the grace of God, Rich Eisen, Rich Eisen called and was like, hey, so I'm putting together a couple of different podcasts for the network. And, you know, TJ

Jefferson, my tag team partner, my dog, he

suggested you for a wrestling show.

And at first,

I wanted to do something with my sister. So

I had plans with her, so I didn't want to do it. He was like, all right, well, if you change your mind.
About a couple months later, he called back and was like, I need you. We got to do this.

TJ won't. budge.
He says, you you got the motion. You know what you're talking about.
He thinks you can do it. So I was like, all right, I'll do it.
We worked out a deal. We found a way.

And, you know, I'm grateful for my man TJ. And we have our balance.
You know, I'm more of the new school. He's more of the old school.

He's a little bit calmer than I am. I'm a little aggressive.
I admit it. You have to admit these things.
And

I've loved every minute of it. And we've got some motion in these wrestling streets.
Tony Khan invited TJ out to their pay-per-view, all in. Triple H is, me and him have had our rapport.

He's invited me to a Saturday night main event. I'm going to go to Survivor Series.
I'm going to miss SummerSlam because it's close to my daughter's birthday, and I don't play that shit.

I'm a good dad.

And then Mania, they've hooked us up with Mania, Royal Rumble.

And so it's been a beautiful thing. I've gotten to meet a lot of cool people.

Definitely will say, hanging out with a bunch of fit people all the time has really gotten me into working out.

And if I ever get to the point where I, like Luca Dodgic am on the cover of men's health I'm gonna tell the truth working out sucks is garbage and you should do it that's probably what the that's what the cover sucks okay that's what you got for men's fitness

you're you're looking at those eight months though those stayed with you huh those eight months of no money when you thought

everything's gonna work out again but you didn't think everything was gonna work out you thought you thought those eight months it was going to be raining money and opportunities never mind no money and opportunity

no money and it it's it's it's just how the game is even right now den of thieves 2

january number one movie in the country two weeks all of that and i'm right now i'm just focused on wrestling don't let it bother you and the big fish will come but i'm hitting up these indies baby because of anger goes west that that that scary time after straight out of the coptic anger goes west that indie changed my life If it wasn't for Angry Goes West,

I wouldn't get Obi-Wan Kenobi if it wasn't for Angry Goes West. Those are words Deborah Chow told me.

But that was total luck. Like, it's total luck that you're going to be.
That's all entertainment is, baby. Right place, right time.
But that's legitimately.

You thought you had bad luck because somebody wanted to take a picture with you.

And then... Largely a misunderstanding becomes I have to take this role, whether I want it or not.
Yeah. It was great, though.
Yeah, that is. And they let me do my thing in that.

Shout out to Angry Girls West. No contest wrestling is the name of the podcast.
He is delightful. Thank you for sharing that delight with us.
Wait. Uh-oh, what's happening here? Got you a gift, man.

You got me a gift? Oh, thank you. Look at this.

Ice Cube bobblehead night. Ice cube.

But wait a minute. This doesn't look like Ice Cube.
Who is this here? Hold on, man.

Listen, I don't know what the factory got,

but they put the moles on his ice cube, baby. Put them eyebrows.
Yeah. Pick me up.
Wait a minute.

Hold on, bro. I don't mean to be mean about a gift, but that looks more like a slimmed-down Gabriel Iglesias than it does like you or your father.

I don't know what they do at the bobblehead factory, but here's a limited edition Dodger bobblehead. Enjoy.
I am being rude by not accepting your gift.

Why have you given me a bobblehead of a Mexican man in a Dodger

uniform? Listen, I'm not going to say he said the same thing,

but we are grateful. We are grateful.
I was moved by your father walking out onto the field representing Los Angeles World Series. And you've told me these people have made him.

It's been a great conversation. Thank you, sir.
Always, man.

Tony, my guy, it's that time of year. It's the holidays.
The holidays are here, dude. I was just the other day with my dad.
We were talking about what we're going to do for the holidays.

And you know what? Even in the planning of our holidays, you know what we did? We cracked open a nice cold Miller light.

Whether it's the can, whether I'm at a restaurant and I get that draft with the nice, the golden color and the nice little

head at the top.

Oh my God. Right now, I want to leave this ad read in the middle and go share a Miller Light with with my boy too.
Can we do that? All right, let's go right now. All right, we're leaving.

All right, we'll finish this and we'll do it. Miller Light, it just fits.
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Tis Miller time. See what I did there?

Holiday cheer. Celebrate responsibly, Miller Brown Company, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 96 calories.
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