S2E2 FINAL ===

Sarah: [00:00:00] I'm like giddy about our guest today.

Paul: Yes.

Sarah: So officially hello and welcome back to prison breaking with Sarah and Paul. I'm Sarah.

Paul: I'm Paul. That's Paul.

Sarah: And Paul, do you want to tell them who we have on today?

Paul: Um, well, our guest is one of the most celebrated actors from the American stage. Uh, he has an extraordinary filmography.

Uh, he has Lifetime Achievement Awards. He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Sarah: Um, in fact, that actually, I know, I know. You know what's funny? I've actually got a few friends with stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame now. And I'm like, I guess that makes me, no, no, no, that makes me like, uh, [00:01:00] adjacent. I'm like the gum on the side.

Anyway, um, my point is that Prison Break was such a tiny part of this phenomenal actor's career that we could, uh, if you could take it out and he would still be a national treasure. So we have Stacy Keach is joining us today, is what we're saying, um, who played Warden Henry Pope himself. So let's cut to the chase, get our Calestine Index done, and get to Stacy.

Paul: Yes. Uh, I cannot wait. He's, uh, not only a wonderful actor, but he is just, he's, he should be a national treasure just personality wise alone, let alone his extraordinary talent and career.

Sarah: Everybody should have a Stacy Keach plush toy. Just for when they're sad.

Paul: It's tasty quiche plush toys. Probably not easy to say.

Uh, okay, ladies and gentlemen. Episode 202 was called Otis and it aired on August 28th, 2006. It was directed by Bobby Roth. Written by showrunner Matt Olmsted. And it pulled in over 9. [00:02:00] 44 million viewers in the 8 p. m. slot. Those numbers seem huge. Also airing in that slot was a new special on NBC called Katrina, the long road back, since this is about the one year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana and Texas, uh, as well as reruns of ABC and CBS as wife swap and two and a half men respectively.

Sarah: So quickly to recap the episode, uh, Pope and Bellic face discipline. Uh, after the escape. After C. O. Geary's testimony. That slimy little son of a gun. Um, Bellick is fired. Pope quits in a fit of pique. Uh, Bellick later finds Pique? Actually, it's not even pique. It's just like standing up for what he believes in.

Bellick later finds that the government has put a bounty on the capture of each of the Fox River Eight. The escape team goes their separate ways.

Paul: As he's putting a Just thinking about killing himself. He

Sarah: basically tries to kill himself. His mom from the other room saved his life. Um, the [00:03:00] escape team goes their separate ways, but when Lincoln learns that LJ is going, uh, to be tried as an adult, he convinces Scofield to try and rescue his son, which is not tattooed anywhere on Michael Scofield's body, this plan.

Uh, and because it's an ad hoc plan, perhaps the plan is foiled. By Mahone, who figures out the code that Link had used to give the secret instructions to LJ. And the brothers are forced to escape without LJ, who is carted off to the clink. Um, meanwhile, oh, meanwhile, Bagwell Oh boy. Gives his hand, gruesomely reattached before killing the vet, that's right, vet, who did it, and stealing, uh, his car, intending to go to Utah where Westmoreland's money It's hidden and tweener continues pickpocketing and accepts a ride with a college girl going home also to Utah

Paul: in pop culture in this week on August 30th The Venice Film [00:04:00] Festival opened with the showing of Brian De Palma's the black Dahlia The 58th Emmy Awards were held a few days earlier on August 27th hosted by Conan O'Brien at the Shrine in LA and just a few days later on August 28th Jack Black hosted the MTV Music Video Awards at Radio City Music Hall where Panic!

at the Disco won Video of the Year.

Sarah: And in world events, on August 24th, the International Astronomical Union voted to demote Pluto from the ninth planet of the sun to one of the dozens of known dwarf planets. And I, Paul, I'm still really upset about this. My kids will tell you. I, like I mean, me too.

Paul: Anybody of our generation is like, what?

Sarah: Yeah, like the things you learn, grade three and lower, shouldn't change. Don't tell, don't tell me that like six is now not in the first ten numbers. Don't tell me that red is no longer a color and don't tell me that Pluto is no longer a planet. I memorized it. Um, and now I'm breathing.

Moving on. August 31st. [00:05:00] Um, Edvard Munch's iconic 1893 painting, The Scream, was recovered after a two year investigation because it had been stolen. Several individuals were convicted. Uh, convicted for the theft and sentenced to prison. Um, I don't believe they were broken out. It is currently on display at the National Museum in Oslo, Norway.

Paul, could you please just do a quick version of the scream? Oh, well, I was reading off the thing. Oh, that

Paul: might be, it might be Home Alone.

Sarah: It's the same, I mean.

Paul: It's kind of the same.

Sarah: Like, it's a thin, it's a thin line.

Paul: Since then, and this obviously didn't exist at the time, the, the memes of that have been, become incredible.

There's so many great memes using the scream.

Sarah: Is that right?

Paul: Mm hmm.

Sarah: We'll be back with Stacy motherfucking Keach. Woo! Okay.

Paul: Okay, we're back.

Sarah: We're back.

Paul: Okay, so Stacy's career is So, uh, impressive and massive that we just had to write it [00:06:00] down for a written introduction. Uh, his film career goes back to the late 1960s with Heart is a Lonely Hunter.

He's worked with Paul Newman, Georgie Scott, Faye Dunaway, amongst others. He was nominated for a Golden Globe for playing artist Hemingway. He has portrayed Wilbur Wright, Napoleon, and Oppenheimer on stage. He's played Hamlet, Falstaff, Scrooge, King Lear, Richard III, and Macbeth. Are we in a theater? No. And just the tip of an ice, that's just the tip of the iceberg that includes awards like three Helen Hayes awards, a handful of lifetime achievement awards, and starred in one of my favorite 70s movies, Fat City.

Sarah: Okay. Amazing. He, um, he's also an award winning director. He's a super accomplished piano player. His television resume is so long that we don't have time for it. But, uh, we do have to mention that he played the title role in Mike Hammer. And that made a familiar face to a generation of television viewers, 20 years before Prison Break ever aired.

Plus, he's an [00:07:00] incredibly nice person.

Paul: Anyway, here's Stacy. Welcome.

Sarah: Stacy.

Stacy Keach: And I don't mind not seeing myself. We

Sarah: know how you feel. We know how you feel. Um, so the whole time you were doing Prison Break, you were going back and forth to Poland.

Stacy Keach: Back and forth.

Sarah: Every episode.

Stacy Keach: Every other, well, we do two episodes, and then I would have some time off, and then we do two more.

I do the end of the first episode and the beginning of the second. But I spent a lot of time in Chicago even in spite of it, you know, which I, I love Chicago. I've done, I did Arthur Miller's last play in Chicago. I did my King Lear there. Yeah.

Sarah: Because the King Lear was Season 2, right? While we did Season 2 in Dallas, you did [00:08:00] Lear in Chicago.

Stacy Keach: Right,

Sarah: exactly. And I mean at least to us, Paul and I talked about this last week, the move to Dallas was a huge surprise to us. We all thought we were coming back to Chicago.

Paul: Yeah.

Sarah: And then there was a sort of last minute pivot. Did that change, like were you going to be in more of season two?

Stacy Keach: Uh, you know I don't know.

I really don't know. At that particular point in time, things were very kind of, for me anyway, I didn't know what was going on. I mean it was, it was uh, You know. Quite frankly, I don't think anybody did quite yet. We're still in the process of trying to make decisions. Yeah, that's right. That's right.

Paul: Stacy, do you remember, do you remember taking the role, getting that offer and deciding to do it?

You hadn't done television in a while. Um, and, and then you decided to do Brisbane. I know you love Chicago, but was there other [00:09:00] stuff about that project that made you want to do it? Is there anything particular?

Stacy Keach: Yes. That's one of the things I wanted to talk about. You know, I, I had been incarcerated myself because I was a drug addict in, in 1981 and two, and I spent six months in Redding jail.

Wow. Where? Oscar Wilde, no way this time. And so I got to learn the warden and his behavior. I was in deep shock because I felt. Instead of being incarcerated, sent to prison, and as it turned out, it was an amazing experience for me. And I was given nine months. The warden at the time, Governor Hague, was an amazing man.

And he, he had lost a [00:10:00] son to drug addiction, so he was very sympathetic to me. And he gave me, he couldn't show favoritism, but he gave me a job as a librarian. And one of the functions of the librarian was to translate and write letters for the young offenders, for the kids that were in prison. And there was a whole wing of them.

So I was very busy. Wow. The whole time. He was a very compassionate man. And I thought Warden Pope was a very compassionate

Paul: warden. It's one of the things that's so interesting about the character and his relationship with Michael. And of course, also, Pope has a son who died. Was that already part of the story?

Is that something that you brought to them?

Stacy Keach: No, it wasn't part of the story. It was something I brought. I think it was something that was definitely, um, not [00:11:00] manufactured, but it was, I brought it because of, again, because of the experience of the warden. At Reading Jail, who had lost his son when he was 21, 22 years old.

Sarah: And, Stacy, when you said that you were, you know, you obviously tried and incarcerated, what was it, what did they, like, what'd you get? Well, it was possession of cocaine. Okay, so you were, like, going through the airport or something?

Stacy Keach: Yeah, I was exactly, I was coming out of the airport. Okay. Exactly.

Sarah: And those were some wild days.

I mean, I, so after I worked with you years later, I went on to Walking Dead and for our second season, Frank Darabont called, I think, four of us, me, John Bernthal, Andy Lincoln, and Laurie Holden. He said, I just hired Scott Wilson, and if you don't know who he is, I'm sending you two films. I'm sending you

Stacy Keach: The Ninth Configuration.

He said the

Sarah: Ninth Configuration was one of them, but the other one was the [00:12:00] one in Cold Blood.

Stacy Keach: Yeah.

Sarah: He said, don't you dare show up to set without seeing both of these movies. This is one of the best actors alive and I'm watching the ninth configuration going, holy shit. That's my buddy Stacy and I mean that movie is Crazy and Scott and I got really close Hearing some of his stories of what it was like back then

Stacy Keach: Well, I'm the only person in the, in, in, still alive who

Sarah: made that movie.

And you were two boys from Georgia, kind of in your prime. I mean, I can only imagine the two of you tearing up. Where did you shoot that movie?

Stacy Keach: The Night of Evacuation? Yeah. We shot it in Hungary. Budapest. Part of it, and part of it was also shot in Northern California, financed with, with frozen funds from Pepsi Cola.

Paul: Wow. Really? Those were the days, man. Yeah.

Stacy Keach: Even when we did Prison Break, [00:13:00] it was the beginning, just the beginning of a, of a, of a different platform for television series. We were just coming out of ER. Mm hmm. Very popular. Mm hmm. Lost

Sarah: had just premiered.

Stacy Keach: Yeah. I just got through playing, uh, George Clooney's father.

Oh, really? In our next movie together. Oh, fun. Which will be out in 2025. Uh, who directed it? Noah Baumbach. Oh, great. Greta Gerwig's husband. It's a very expensive movie, too. I would bet.

Sarah: What's the title so we know to keep an eye out for it?

Paul: J. Kelly.

Sarah: Jay Kelly.

Paul: I'm going to take you back to prison break for a second.

So when you Yes, please. When you come and do a character like Pope, and you've had this experience with this warden, and there's the similarities, does that go into how you think [00:14:00] about the character, obviously psychologically, does it go into the characterization too? Like what he looks like, how he moves, all that kind of thing?

Yeah, totally. That

Stacy Keach: part of it is

Uh, instead of being literally, you know, I didn't want to literally imitate, um, Ryan Hayday, it was about the essence of compassion. Yeah. That's it. That he really cared for his inmates and he wanted them to be busy and involved and good to one another. Mm. This was the But as far as the physicality of the character was concerned, I did, I chose my own look and my own walk and my own, yeah.

Paul: It was such a, um, Sarah and I were talking about it in season one, when we were watching season one. It's such a, uh, great ballast, [00:15:00] um, for the show that Pope is this, Compassionate authority figure, because obviously the whole premise of the show is prison, bad, have to get out, bad things happen, it's all corrupt, he's there for the wrong, you know, he's been falsely accused, Lincoln's been falsely, and falsely convicted, but then you have this, this kind of, I mean, Pope is, of all these people, the true believer.

Absolutely. I mean, he really gets taken advantage of in a way.

Stacy Keach: I get, I get sucker punched. I was very, very lucky to have had that experience, and it totally justified my time in jail. Really, uh, if I hadn't been, had that experience, horrible as it was, I would never have been able to play this character the way I played it.

You know, and as far as [00:16:00] the badness, the bad people. That was Belling, Wayne Williams. That's right. We became very, very good friends during that period. Yeah. The great thing about that era, that particular cast, the cast of that show was superb. Everybody was so right for the characters they played, and it was like ensemble theater.

It was like Doing a play. Yep,

Paul: it really was.

Sarah: Well, and there were certain scenes, I remember when we were watching last season, watching those scenes in the execution chamber, where there were sort of six people inside, and then there was an actual proscenium, and the audience, and the people watching, and it, it feels like a play, all of a sudden, and I remember the, the energy in that room.

Um, and, you know, I mean, for me, I was at the [00:17:00] very beginning of my career. I mean, we shot that stuff in 2005. I got out of grad school in 2002. I was just learning. And all I'd ever done is theater. And so, you were a big part of learning to translate one skill set into another one. Thank

Stacy Keach: you. I appreciate that.

Working in front of a camera has always been a very interesting experience for me. There are over years of questions. You learn, you learn tricks and techniques you would never even consider if you were just working in the theater.

Paul: And to me, I, I grew up doing theater, um, in Chicago. And then most of the stuff, I'd done a little film and I'd done a little TV.

And the way that you're talking about, you know, things were changing in the landscape at that time. There was almost a feeling. When I was started late nineties doing TV, the TV and film were different and that it did it right. The tone of [00:18:00] it was different. Obviously, the process was different just because of the speed of television, but prison break.

And this is something else we noticed. And some of these other shows that started coming out, then they started to feel more like films.

Stacy Keach: Exactly.

Paul: Watching you, uh, cause I was, you know, like Fat City was one of the reasons I wanted to become an actor. I, I saw what you were doing on Prison Break and I was like, oh, this is, there's no difference between film acting and TV acting.

Stacy Keach: Well, thank you. I appreciate that. You know, it was a huge, huge, huge hit in Poland. And the way they do television in Poland. They have one voice who takes you, who reiterates all of the dialogue, male and female. Oh my god. Wait, so you

Sarah: So one voice does every dubbing? You hear the English too? Every character?

You hear them both

Stacy Keach: at

Paul: the same time?

Stacy Keach: You hear, you hear the, you hear the English [00:19:00] underneath. Uh huh. The Polish is on top.

Paul: Oh, that's amazing. It's

Stacy Keach: amazing. And, and they, that's how they do all their movies. I can't

Paul: stand

Stacy Keach: it. Oh, it'd drive you crazy. It'd drive you crazy. Ah! Ah! But it works. Does it make it hard to

Sarah: follow?

Stacy Keach: No, not in Poland. No.

Paul: Wow. Oh, that's, what a great challenge as an actor to have to do that, that would be fascinating to do.

Stacy Keach: I, I thought one of the great virtues of, of our show, was the camaraderie between the actors most of the time.

Paul (2): Some,

Stacy Keach: I mean, the bad guy actors, of course, sometimes it were difficult.

Generally speaking, the, the, the togetherness. And the inspiration and the [00:20:00] respect that each of the actors had for one another, I think, catapult that show to the success that it

Sarah: became. I really think audiences smell that.

Stacy Keach: Absolutely. I think

Sarah: they sense, they sense trust. Um, they sense trust. Was it, was it odd for you coming in, like, you had a career that, quite frankly, if you took prison break out of it would still be?

illustrious career. We were all a bunch of brand new idiots. I mean, I

Stacy Keach: love you guys. No, I loved everybody. No, no, he was, he was a wonderful experience. Right from the beginning. Yeah, he generated a very good vibes. He was a good director. I know a lot of actors don't, I love, I think he was one of those guys who, uh, That's really cool.

Paul: The experienced actors do their thing, and then other people he maybe wasn't so great [00:21:00] with.

Stacy Keach: I think that's a very good, accurate description of his,

Sarah: You were just talking about your history informing why this was the role that you took. Do you have a sort of overall matrix or sort of guiding principle when you decide what roles?

Stacy Keach: Well, in my later years, Yes, but as a young actor, no. I just took whatever came along. But in my later years, I look for, I look for more comedy. I love doing comedy.

Paul (2): I really

Stacy Keach: do. I didn't do a lot of it in my early years. I was a very serious actor. I just, uh, I love doing comedy. I love doing Titus, for example.

And I love sitcoms. I really do. Oh,

Paul: I loved Titus so much. I loved that

Stacy Keach: show. And Two and a Half Men, with John Amos,

Paul: played

Stacy Keach: my lover.

Paul: And did that feel like theater to you, because you're doing [00:22:00] it in front of a live

Stacy Keach: audience? Yeah, totally. It's very much like theater in that respect. And I, you know, but now, things are changing so rapidly that even series television doesn't It's taken on a whole new color that, quite frankly, I'm not crazy about, Ernie.

Sarah: Would you say more about that? About sort of what you mean when it comes to the change in television? Because, I mean, you were there from, all the way from Mike Hammer to Prison Break to now. I think

Stacy Keach: that a lot of it has to do with economics, of course. Of course. And time. Time is money. And time, the time spent, uh, in television today is, It's always been fast, it's always been quick, and you've got to be there, boom, you know, you've got to be ready when they turn on the switch, you've got to have yourself ready to go.

One rehearses [00:23:00] that way. You rehearse what the scene is about, memorize your lines of course, and try doing it as many different ways as possible. Because that to me is the crux to really wonderful acting. You don't repeat the same thing twice. Even though, one of my favorite stories, Kurt Russell and I were doing Escape from L.

A., and John Carpenter was directing it, and he said, Let's, uh, That was great. That was absolutely perfect. Let's do one more. And then you said, That was so perfect. Why don't we just print that one twice? Yeah.

Sarah: Yeah.

Paul: You know? That's

Sarah: it. That's it. Uh,

Paul: are you, are you, Do you want that kind of variation when you're And you can't do it again.

Do you want that kind of variation when you're doing a theater run too? I mean, do you feel Yes. Night to night to do? Yes,

Stacy Keach: absolutely. [00:24:00] You want to be long. You want to be spontaneous and there at that moment. Every, every, every, every, every night. And in fact, it's wonderful when, when things get richer and deeper.

Mm hmm. Mm hmm. I mean, the exercise when I was teaching acting was always how many ways to say I love you. Mm hmm. It's a great exercise, for young actors particularly, because then they really get to see the difference between, Oh, I love you. You know. You know, to see those different tones and shades, which is what, to me, is the It's the benchmark of a great actor, with variety.

It's about variety. And it's about living in the moment that you are living in yourself. Unless you're doing comedy again. If you're doing [00:25:00] comedy, it's a whole different set of circumstances.

Paul: You think there's more, more freedom in comedy?

Stacy Keach: I think so. I think there is. Because you, in order to make something, in order to get the laugh, you've gotta, you know, you may have to try 14 different things.

Paul: Oh, I see what you're saying. Uh huh.

Sarah: What, what always It's felt like such a joy of what we do is that when you're working with a terrific actor, the audience will see one performance cut together and it'll be great. But I've seen six because I've seen all the different choices that actor has made in that scene.

Right. Only one of them is going to make the cut. And I got to watch them all, and that, that to me is part of the joy of the job, is watching up and somebody surprising you, whether it's acting or directing, somebody, you're watching it going, Oh, I would never have thought to read the line that way, which then changes everything that comes afterwards.[00:26:00]

Um, you, I remember, there's no reason you would remember it, but it stuck with me, I called you, I think a couple of weeks after you opened Lear at the Goodman in Chicago, um, and I was like, how's it going? My mom's a Shakespeare scholar. She actually saw it later when you moved it to DC, um, and loved it. But I remembered calling you to ask how it was going because it's, Lear has a reputation of chewing actors up and spitting them out.

Paul (2): Yeah.

Sarah: And you said something I'll never forget. You said, Sarah, the irony of Lear is that by the time you're old enough to understand him, it's really hard on your body to give the performance. And you got off the phone really quickly. You're like, I'm not talking when I'm not performing the show right now because my voice is going.

And it, it was such an, it made such an impression. on me about that. And I [00:27:00] just wondered if you wanted to speak to that at all, because there are some of these roles that you grow into.

Stacy Keach: Yeah. And again, with Lear, as with, well, not just Lear, most of Shakespeare that I've done, it's never the same. It's always different.

It's always, you know, Um, I mean, to be or not to be, that is the question, or that is the question that is You know, actors, they goof on how to, how different, how many different ways you can say any number of things. Again, as an exercise to not find yourself in a, what I call a repetitious rut. Where you do what you did yesterday to same today.

Bold, bold faced honesty. Yeah.[00:28:00]

Sarah: So, okay, so you've gone, you've been in the business for a while. You've been TV famous.

Paul: Yeah, my camera. Watched it all through high school. You've been

Sarah: movie famous. You've been, uh, you've been celebrated for theater. You have, I discovered, um, walking to get groceries one day in Los Angeles, a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

I apologize, I stepped on you, um, but I, I, I backed up and apologized and said hello. Um, how do you feel about fame?

Stacy Keach: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's the most, uh, elusive, and I think dangerously elusive, When you put too much emphasis on that, being famous or being well known, it can get in your way. Oh boy. And [00:29:00] it hasn't with me, you know.

I was never very comfortable being a star when I was a young actor. I was, I, I, to me, it was about the work. It wasn't about fame, you know. But then I began to see other actors. Get better rules because they had They were in a movie and made money So suddenly I said well, maybe maybe fame ain't such a bad thing after all

But i'm still I'm not in charge to me. It's not as important respect Right, you know as an actor in the theater. It was always good to get good reviews I I just I made a distinction between that And fame. Fame, to me, was more of a, I don't know, more of a, like a popularity contest. [00:30:00] Instead of, instead of judging somebody's work and the quality of their work.

Which has always been more important to me. Titus had a lot to do with it. Titus was, I really loved creating that guy. Creating that bad guy. Just as nasty as he could be. It was so much fun. So I began to equate fun With, you know, success, and that was an important move for me. I didn't want to take myself so seriously.

Paul: I think at the beginning, especially if you're not strictly doing comedy, as some people come up, Uh, it's, you want to be taken seriously. And, you know, you're young, and so, I mean, in Chicago, for instance, there were two [00:31:00] distinct I think they're more intermingled now, but there was the comedy scene and there was the serious theater scene and they didn't really mix.

No, they were very different.

Stacy Keach: Well, Second City had a lot to do with it.

Paul: Yeah, that's right. And Steppenwolf. There was kind of like you were either here or here. And, you know, we were so serious because we wanted to be taken seriously as actors. So you didn't, you know, you, you wanted to enjoy work, but like saying it was fun or it was like, you know, you needed to be a little tortured.

You needed to be. Beating yourself up and it takes a certain kind of I don't know it took time to be able to say We're just we're just playing we're just fucking around. I mean we you know, you you always trying to get back to that But I'm glad that you're able to say it so plainly because I think it's important always to have that sense of you know Yes, a sense of joy joy a sense of joy Even if you're doing the most serious thing in the world that it's you know [00:32:00] It is called a play.

I mean, it is

Stacy Keach: called a play. It's called

Paul: playing a scene.

Stacy Keach: For me, that was one of the things that I wanted to do with Lear.

Paul: I

Stacy Keach: wanted to make sure that the human didn't abandon the human. There's not a lot, there's not a lot of it, but there is. But it's there. He gets what he gets when he goes bonkers.

Paul: And then it's, and then it's fun to do.

I tried to get up to Chicago for it. And then it kind of lightens the load of what you're doing. Yeah.

Paul (2): Hmm.

Sarah: You've talked a little bit about, already, what's changed, obviously, in the business in that time, but is there anything else, like, as you look, I don't know, I, forgive me for keeping coming back to this, but your perspective is fascinating, because when you think about what's changed, you know, you talk about the, the speed and the pace and the money, and the way that that's, there's been a sort of attrition of quality in television because of that.

Are there other changes that, that, you look at as [00:33:00] It

Stacy Keach: has a lot to do with amount. The amount of work that's available now, particularly in the theater on the road, is almost zipped. I mean, one or two plays, that's it. In the old days, there'd be half a dozen at least. You know, I think the nature of the experience of watching a play, when The amount of time it takes, what an audience has to go through to buy a ticket, to stand in line, to, you know, to come and sing.

It's more, it's more work than it used to be. It used to be a luxury that you enjoyed. Now it's just, oh God, I don't want to have to stand at the box office and wait for my tickets. It's a totally different feeling.

Sarah: Okay, so I know we got to let you go [00:34:00] soon, but I want to ask a, a Yes, no, let's hear it. At least my final question.

Paul, if you want to follow this up, please feel free. Um, but one of the things, uh, a couple of years before he died, he wasn't sick yet. Scott and I were having dinner and he turned to me. We were talking about career. We were at Musso and Frank's. And he said, Sarah, I say this without ego, by the way, we were two martinis in at this point.

So I just have to, they're big at Musso. So I just got to caveat that a little bit. So I think what he said from what I remember was I've been in about nine films that were nominated for Academy Awards. I've worked for Tennessee Williams on stage. I've been doing this since I was 20 some years old. I am known exclusively as the old guy on The Walking Dead.

And we laughed so hard, I think because someone had just come up to us in the show. And he thought, or come to us in the, uh, in the restaurant, and was like, You're that guy from [00:35:00] The Walking Dead. And he was so gracious, and he was so sweet about it. But it was really fascinating to him that after this incredibly long, illustrious career that spanned theater, radio, film, television, Poland, England, Italy, the U.

S., all over the world, he was known for this weird old zombie show. What is it that people know you for? What, when people come up to you? Primarily

Stacy Keach: Mike Hammer.

Sarah: Mike Hammer. And is that what you want to be known for?

Stacy Keach: I don't have any control. But I mean, I, I, When somebody says, I love your Hamlet, or your Lear, or your Falstaff, that means, that means more to me than I love your Mike Hammer.

Even though, you know.

Sarah: It's cool.

Stacy Keach: Fair.

Sarah: Fair. The things we're known for are very often not the things we're most proud of, I find. And we don't, and it becomes,

Paul: at a certain point, it becomes, uh, what's the, [00:36:00] you have the right to the work, but not to the fruits of the work. It's like you do it, and then it goes out into the world.

Stacy Keach: Well, you know, I, I, I'm very, at the, at the tail end of my career, I'm very excited that I got it to play. George Clooney's dad in a very, very nice part at the end of the movie. Only at the end. I'm only on at the end. But it's a wonderful role. Really. And I love working with George. He's, he's the real deal.

He is, he's a superstar. He's so nice to everybody. And, and he's very talented. I think he's more talented as a director than he is as an actor. But he's a great movie star. He is a real

Paul: definition of a

Stacy Keach: star. Miss Jordan. All

Paul: right. I have a question for you. And this is a question that we're asking all our guests this year, because of what happens in season two of prison break [00:37:00] last year, we asked about, you know, final meals and things like that.

This year we're asking if you had to run from the law and hide out for the rest of your life, where would you, where would you go? What would you, where would you go? And what would you do? I picked like a, you know, I'd work on a clam shack in the Caribbean somewhere. That's where I would try to disappear to.

Stacy Keach: Either Tasmania or Hobart.

Paul: I'm not sure. Oh, wow.

Stacy Keach: It's down at the bottom of Australia.

Paul: Yeah, no one's going to find you in either one. No one's going to find you in either one of those

Sarah: places. We just ended with a geography lesson.

Stacy Keach: That's a good question. I like

Sarah: that. That's amazing.

Stacy Keach: Well, this has been great fun, you guys.

I'm so happy we did this.

Sarah: Well, I mean, honestly Yeah, so good

Paul: seeing you. Thank you so much. Yeah. You too.

Sarah: It's such an honor. It's great to see you again. And, you know,

Paul: this [00:38:00] show, this show, you know We had a lot of fun. They put it out on Netflix, whatever it was, a month ago, a half ago. It's blown up again. It seems like every four years, it just

Stacy Keach: It's a great show.

It was a big change for me. Well, it was a great, great event for me, personally, because I got to express all the things that I learned in prison when I was, when I was an inmate.

Paul: Well, thank you so much for being here with us. We really appreciate it.

Sarah: Bye. All right. Ciao, friend.

Paul: What a, what a just incredible career and, and, and human.

Sarah: Yeah. And we didn't even get to how many languages he speaks because it's like, I mean, he's living in Poland. He speaks like three or four. Really? Yeah. Just, yeah. Amazing. Um, so thank you all for being with us. And, uh, yeah, we're grateful that you are with us as well.

Yes. Um, so if you want to watch the watch party with [00:39:00] us, uh, we actually do talk about episode two, because we're watching the watch party. That link is, uh, uh, in the show notes, um, to the Patreon community, wherever you're listening right now. Um, and if you want to drop any Pope fan art. Uh, in our DMs on Instagram, uh, we'd love to see it.

That's at prison break podcast. And here is our call in question for the week in honor of this great living stage actor. Um, maybe read us your favorite sonnet or poem or monologue, whatever inspires you. Um, you know, share something from maybe the theater or poetry or something that, you know, is, uh, Stacy Keech slash Henry Popeworthy.

Paul: Wow. Cool.

Sarah: Um, you can leave it on our call in line. That's 1 (401) 3-PBREAK. P-B-R-E-A-K.

Paul: And we should maybe, um, back in the day, [00:40:00] Lane, who we're, Lane Garrison, who we will have as a guest, Yeah. does an incredible Stacy impression.

Sarah: Does he?

Paul: Yes. It was Stacy playing golf because they played a lot of golf together.

But it, he, it's a, it's a great, it's a great loving impression.

Sarah: Amazing. Okay, well, when we have Lane on, because we are having, we'll have, maybe we'll have

Paul: him read as sonnet as, as, um, Stacy.

Sarah: Oh, yes, yes. We absolutely will. And if you wanna read as sonnet, as Lane Playing Stacy, please. Whoa. That sounds amazing to Thomas.

Whoa. Yeah.

Paul: Whoa.

Sarah: Anyway, thank you everybody. Thank you. Um, have a great week and don't get hunted. Prison

Paul: Breaking with Sarah and Paul is a Calibre Studio production.

Sarah: Your host have been Inmate, Sarah Wayne Callies and Paul Adelstein.

Paul: Our prison warden is producer Ben Haber,

Sarah: getting us all caught up in the prison yard.

Is editor and sound designer Jeff Schmidt. The front

Paul: man of our jailhouse rock band is yours. Truly Paul Adelstein made all the music.

Sarah: Our prison yard tattoo artist, logo and brand designer is John [00:41:00] Nunzio and Little Big Brands. Check them out at www.littlebigbrands.com.

Paul: Follow us on Instagram at Prison Break Podcast.

Email us at pbpodcast@caliber-studio.com and call us at (401) 3-PBREAK.

Sarah: Prison Breaking with Sarah and Paul has been a Caliber Studio production. Thank you for listening. Voidware prohibited. Not available in all 51 states. Why, Paul? Because there are only 50 states.

Paul: Because there's only 50 states.

Sarah: But! So far.

We love a Maori. And we want, uh, we want Puerto Rico. Correct. I don't know, I just made up a political standpoint for no reason.

Paul: Well, it's, I, I stand with you.

Sarah: There we go. We'll see you next week. Bye, everybody.

Paul: Bye everybody.

Sarah: [00:42:00] Cheers.