This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:00] Matt Jones: Hi, this is Matt Jones, and you're listening to Behind the Awards.

[0:13] Eila Mell: Hello, and welcome to Behind the Awards. I'm Eila. I am here with my favorite co-host, Bruce.

[0:20] Bruce Gotlieb: Oh, Eila, you flatter me so. How are you today?

[0:23] Eila Mell: I am excellent. How are you?

[0:26] Bruce Gotlieb: I'm good. I'm good. So I know I shared with you on a debriefing that we had.

[0:33] Eila Mell: Aside from our audience, I had the opportunity to see Bat Boy.

[0:37] Bruce Gotlieb: I'm so jealous.

[0:38] Eila Mell: At CineCenter this weekend.

[0:40] Bruce Gotlieb: I'm a little mad at you that you didn't invite me, but okay. No, not really. But I'm jealous that you got to see it. Tell me, tell me, how is it?

[0:49] Eila Mell: It's great. I mean, listen, I went in, I might be one of the few people who did not know the show, hadn't seen the show. So I went in with no expectation, no preconceived notions, no knowledge of anything. But it was a lot of fun. It was a lot of fun. I will tell you, Carrie Butler, I mean, my goodness, she is so good.

[1:14] Bruce Gotlieb: All you have to do is see her in Xanadu, and you know she's just brilliant. She can do anything.

[1:18] Eila Mell: Yeah, she was so much fun. And you know, it was really cool because she played Shelley in the original incarnation of the show, and now she's playing Shelley's mother.

[1:28] Bruce Gotlieb: So there was a small talk back after the show that I attended, and they asked her about that. And it was funny because she said that she finds herself sometimes falling into Shelley's harmonies. And she found herself also, you know, in rehearsal, like, wanting to say like some of Shelley's lines, like, it's ingrained in who she is. So it took a lot of, you know, brainpower to be like, okay, I have to do this new part now, which I thought was really fun.

[1:59] Eila Mell: Yeah. I saw Alex Timbers briefly before the show. Was he part of the talkback?

[2:03] Bruce Gotlieb: He was not part of the talkback.

[2:04] Eila Mell: Oh, I'm surprised.

[2:05] Bruce Gotlieb: The writer was part of the talkback. Friend to the show, Andrew Resnick, is the musical director of the show. So he was there, part of that, talking about, you know, infusing what he does into this new production, which was kind of cool. Andrew Durand is in it, he's fantastic.

[2:21] Eila Mell: He's so good.

[2:21] Bruce Gotlieb: Alex Newell, Taylor Trench as that boy, Christopher Siebert, Marisa Jarrett-Winokur, I mean, it's a who's who of a cast.

[2:29] Eila Mell: I mean, that's what's so much fun about these city center productions, because they get the best people.

[2:34] Bruce Gotlieb: They do, they do. And the set is cool. The lighting is cool. Everything's, you know, very moody and almost like comic book-ish, you know, in terms of some of the colors that are, you know, they're really fun. It's a really great time. If you have the opportunity to go see it, you should. It's through the night. You have a couple of minutes left, but you should grab a ticket and go. It's a lot of fun.

[3:02] Eila Mell: I hear there's some new music added to it.

[3:04] Bruce Gotlieb: That's what I've heard. I don't know the original soundtrack enough to know. But yes, people I went with that had seen the original and loved the original shared that with me, and everybody loved it. The place was packed. The gentleman sitting to my left, I would say, easily had to be late 60s, 70s, and he was wooing after every song.

[3:26] Eila Mell: Excellent.

[3:27] Bruce Gotlieb: And then you had, you know, younger generation of people that were there loving it. So it reached the masses.

[3:33] Eila Mell: Yeah.

[3:34] Bruce Gotlieb: I think it's a must see.

[3:36] Eila Mell: So I know that part of the deal is that people are on book for these productions. How much?

[3:40] Bruce Gotlieb: Very little.

[3:43] Eila Mell: Oh, that's great. That's even better.

[3:44] Bruce Gotlieb: Very little. The first scene, they came out with books. And then there was another scene where they handed scripts to both Kerry and Chris Siebert. Somebody literally hands reached out. Other than that, that was really it. The rest of it was off.

[4:03] Eila Mell: Okay. Well, that's great.

[4:05] Bruce Gotlieb: Yeah. You know, Taylor Trench is doing some really cool things physically with the show.

[4:08] Eila Mell: Yeah.

[4:09] Bruce Gotlieb: Well, you know, when it opens and, you know, walking like an animal, you know, using all fours and contorting himself. So it's a really interesting physical ask, even then on top of that vocally and characteristically, he makes you believe that he is this creature.

[4:25] Eila Mell: He's on a roll. I mean, he just got a Tony nomination for Floyd Collins, and now this, and he did The Seven Year Disappear. He was so great. And that was Cynthia Nixon. He's, you know, I think he's really, really someone to keep your eye on because he's just so talented.

[4:42] Bruce Gotlieb: Absolutely.

[4:43] Eila Mell: And then obviously, anything Alex Timbers does is so worth seeing. He's such,

[4:49] Bruce Gotlieb: Oh, yeah.

[4:50] Eila Mell: He's such a specifically good director. And I mean, that he can do so many different specific things, right? Like, he's great with, you know, like the one man shows that he does. And of course, he can do a big musical like Moulin Rouge, and then a smaller musical like Just In Time. And then he's directing this Muppets TV show, Muppet Show reboot. And I mean, he's so, so good at what he does. And all his projects are so interesting, right? Like there are certain spaces that need his touch, because he just has a really great sense of that.

[5:23] Bruce Gotlieb: Sure.

[5:24] Eila Mell: Like, especially Just In Time, don't you feel like specifically for that space, he was the right director for that show, that space?

[5:31] Bruce Gotlieb: Oh, yeah, absolutely. You know, it was one of my favorites of last season.

[5:34] Eila Mell: I do.

[5:34] Bruce Gotlieb: I just love it so much.

[5:35] Eila Mell: I know.

[5:36] Bruce Gotlieb: I would see it again and again and again, if you could get a ticket.

[5:41] Eila Mell: Well, it's good for them that it's very hard to get a ticket.

[5:43] Bruce Gotlieb: Oh, yeah, absolutely.

[5:45] Eila Mell: Yeah. And that's what every director, producer, actor, that's what they want, right?

[5:50] Bruce Gotlieb: Absolutely. Yes. Well, let's shift gears a little bit and talk about our guest today. So I first knew about Matt Jones because he was on Breaking Bad.

[6:02] Eila Mell: Sure.

[6:02] Bruce Gotlieb: You know, I mean, I think many people were introduced to him on Breaking Bad, but he's done so much work. You know, he just you see him on TV all the time. I just saw him on an SVU episode where he was a bad guy. Yeah, so much fun. So why don't we bring out Matt Jones and hear what he has to say? He's got a great movie coming out.

[6:23] Eila Mell: Yes, called Once More Like Rain Man. So let's bring him out. He's going to tell us all about it.

[6:30] Eila Mell: Well, Bruce, I am so thrilled and I know you are to welcome Matt Jones to Behind the Awards. Hello, Matt.

[6:37] Matt Jones: Hi, how's it going?

[6:38] Eila Mell: Excellent.

[6:39] Bruce Gotlieb: We're doing great and thrilled to have you with us.

[6:42] Matt Jones: Thank you for having me.

[6:43] Eila Mell: Well, I mean, TV viewers know you from so many different things. Do people come up to you for all different reasons?

[6:49] Matt Jones: Honestly, yeah. I say that I'm six foot four and I've got a weird voice. It's pretty impossible for me to hide anywhere. So yeah, I get all different kinds. I can't even tell anymore. Sometimes I used to be like, oh, this is gonna be a Breaking Bad film. But now you never know who watches like NCIS or Bob Hearts Abishola. There's a surprising amount of like, adult men who are Mom fans.

[7:17] Eila Mell: Oh, really?

[7:18] Matt Jones: Yeah, yeah.

[7:19] Bruce Gotlieb: Well, Mom was not so female. I mean, it was female oriented, but it was pretty raunchy, which was great.

[7:25] Matt Jones: No, yeah, but it's a lot of men that like kind of look around and be like, you know, I'm a big fan of Mom. Like they're embarrassed.

[7:33] Eila Mell: No, as somebody who's six four, I know somebody who also is six four and they get very upset when they're not the tallest person in the room.

[7:41] Matt Jones: They feel like, oh, really?

[7:42] Eila Mell: Yeah. Like, how dare somebody be taller than me? I'm six four.

[7:46] Matt Jones: I love when I'm not the tallest. I think it's great.

[7:49] Eila Mell: I have this friend who's six eight, and when he sees me, he like, bear hugs me and lifts me off the ground. It's the coolest feeling. I never get that.

[7:58] Matt Jones: It's not so obvious how tall you are from watching you on television. Do they do tricks to make other actors appear taller next to you?

[8:06] Bruce Gotlieb: No, no. I mean, on Mom, Allison Janney is six foot. So maybe that's why. But Anna Faris is, you know, not.

[8:14] Matt Jones: No. And if you see me, if you see me hug her on that show, she comes up to my belly button.

[8:22] Bruce Gotlieb: So, I mean, you mentioned Breaking Bad. Obviously, you know, so many people love that. That's so many people's favorite show of all time. What was it like getting to work on that?

[8:31] Matt Jones: Well, it's it's been a very, very long road. It's funny. Next week is will be my 18th anniversary of auditioning for the show.

[8:41] Eila Mell: Oh, wow. Wow.

[8:42] Matt Jones: So my first episode we shot in November, October, November of 2007. So it's just been so long. And the first three years of that show, the show is always going to get canceled because no one was watching it. And then it just became one of the biggest shows in the world. And no one, no one was expecting that. So there's just been so many ups and downs and literal kids born, people died. Like, I mean, a lifetime of things have happened since then.

[9:16] Eila Mell: I wonder if any babies have been named Badger after your character.

[9:20] Matt Jones: I hope not. I get to imagine going through life.

[9:23] Eila Mell: Please, take care of your children, guys.

[9:28] Matt Jones: But, you know, what's really exciting is this short film you have coming up. Can you tell us about that?

[9:33] Matt Jones: Well, we've done quite a few festivals already, and now it's in contention for some fun awards. And yeah, I do shorts when I have time. And this one was, had a cause with it, which I really liked. And autism is part of, you know, my life and family. And I just, I had fun working on it. It was just a lot of really fun people involved. And it was, had kind of a dark sense of humor about autism, which I do as well. And there's not much like it that I've seen before. So I jumped on it and we shot it almost two years ago. And even Bella is so much older now than when we first did it. But yeah, it's been a long one with that one too. So yeah.

[10:20] Eila Mell: And what's the name of the film?

[10:22] Matt Jones: Once More Like Rain Man, which is an homage to the 1988 Dustin Hoffman movie, because a lot of people, this is from the point of view of a girl, an actress who is autistic. And whenever she auditions for something autistic, they want her to act like Rain Man. And she's like, that's not how autistic people are. So that's kind of the theme of the movie.

[10:48] Eila Mell: What's so good about it is that you're not treating autism with kid gloves. It's not so precious. You know, you're just treating it very much how it is in the real world.

[10:57] Matt Jones: Yeah, it's simultaneously like very precious, but also very loud and messy. And it's not a, it's a very complicated subject. So the movie deals with it. And I think a very fun way.

[11:08] Eila Mell: Now, you typically play characters that, you know, a little shady, a little, you know, certain checkered past. So how has it been in this playing this father that doesn't have all of those underlying darknesses?

[11:24] Matt Jones: I mean, honestly, the reason, the number one reason I jumped to doing this is because I got to just play a dad, which is what I am in real life. I have two kids, a 10 year old and a three year old. And like, I love my kids. And it's like, acting is very second to them. My family is everything to me. And I never get to do that. Because here's the typecast of, you know, that's what I'm known for. And that's what they want me to play. I mean, there's still the word cast and typecast. So yeah, it's a good thing. It's a good thing. But it was really fun to actually get to play who I actually am, which is, you know, a dad.

[11:59] Eila Mell: Are you one of the producers on the film also? Because I know you do produce, but you have in the past.

[12:04] Matt Jones: I have. Yeah, I made a, I made a movie season of TV show, a bunch of other things. But no, I just came on as acting and screwed around and helped out as much as I could.

[12:17] Eila Mell: Can people see this at home yet? Or can they go to the theaters? Or it's just in the festivals right now?

[12:22] Matt Jones: I, it's just in festivals at the moment, but it will be available to watch other places. There's a place called ocean of entertainment dot

[12:32] Bruce Gotlieb: At what point did you feel a shift in your career? Was it Breaking Bad that sort of changed things for you?

[12:47] Matt Jones: To be honest, the real shift, I was really struggling when I was on Breaking Bad just to make ends meet. We were paid very, very little as guest stars. I was doing commercials a lot at that time. I was writing. I was just doing anything I could to just stay afloat because Breaking Bad was not helping at all. But then I started booking leads on pilots. I did, I don't know, a number of network pilots that didn't go. And then the one that stuck was Mom was my first series regular. And I did four years of that show and then five years of Bob Hearts Abishola. And doing network sitcom, like getting into the motion of that, that was the turning point for me was a job with a little bit of stability and down the street from my house and on a major network. It was just a whole other ballgame other than just guest stars on cable.

[13:51] Bruce Gotlieb: Do you feel like you kind of got in at the end of that? Because I feel like there's no TV season anymore. Or is there even a pilot season?

[13:58] Matt Jones: There's not a pilot season. I don't know. They're talking about bringing it back. I don't know. Everything is still up in the air with television and everything in the entertainment industry right now. But we kind of missed the boat in some ways. And we were kind of part of it at the end. Yeah, I don't know how specific you want me to get, but...

[14:14] Bruce Gotlieb: As specific as you care to get. It's a good conversation.

[14:19] Matt Jones: No one's ever going to get paid the way like the Big Bang guys got paid. That'll never happen again. So that didn't happen for us. What happened at the end of Bob Hearts Abishola was pretty rough for all of us. That was kind of a precedent. And that was pretty rough. For season five, they fired all the series regulars and brought us back as guest stars to save money. So I don't know. It's a whole new world in the TV industry. And we're all just trying to navigate it. And I'm, you know, I'm a working class guy, and I'm always going to be and I just want to get back to work and, you know, doing all the things I can.

[14:55] Bruce Gotlieb: Yeah, yeah. Because you've done obviously, TV series, feature films and short films. Now, is it a different approach, a different format doing a short film versus a feature film? Is there anything different that you have to do to prepare for it?

[15:02] Matt Jones: No, honestly, everything is so completely different. I've been on things where, you know, there's a group of you and the camera coverage is all on the outside. So that feels more like a play. And then like, I just did this horror thing the other day for some people that was really fun. But that was just a million different shots, really closed blood and all this stuff. And it and that's a movie that it could not be more different project to project. So it being a short and being a feature of being television, that actually doesn't matter as much as the style, if that makes sense.

[15:42] Bruce Gotlieb: I guess that's got to be exciting too for you, because then you show up to work and there's some variety. It's not like you're doing the same thing every time. Even if the character is different, the style brings a different flavor to each piece that you do.

[15:56] Matt Jones: I'm always excited to work with new people. And I'm also excited to work. So. Working is a great thing. I mean, I think that people assume that if someone is known for being on television, that they're automatically rich.

[16:10] Bruce Gotlieb: And it's so unbelievably wrong.

[16:15] Matt Jones: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. That might have been true in the like 90s. People hear about Friends and stuff like that. That does not happen anymore. I know people that are series regulars on shows that you watch that live in one bedroom apartments because they can't afford anything more than that.

[16:33] Bruce Gotlieb: Especially if the show is streaming, right?

[16:37] Matt Jones: Especially if the show is streaming. The whole misnomer of being on movies and TV means you're wealthy is that is completely incorrect. There's also people now that are major celebrities that you think, oh, they just did this movie, so they got paid a ton. Major celebrities are getting paid less than ever before. That's why they're doing television commercials. They get paid a ton for doing a TV commercial. But the movie that they used to make, you know, five, ten million dollars for, they're making half a million for. And if you want to get into actor math, half a million, you're only getting like maybe 25 percent of your gross after taxes and everything like that.

[17:12] Bruce Gotlieb: Right. So, you know, you've got somebody like a Julia Roberts or whoever only making 200 grand off a movie.

[17:19] Matt Jones: And you can't live off of that in Los Angeles. Anywhere. Anywhere in America. Come on.

[17:25] Bruce Gotlieb: Right. No, I know. It sounds like a lot of money to people and it is a lot of money. But, you know, when you're at that level, you have a lot of, you know, of overhead. So, you know, it kind of balances out.

[17:34] Matt Jones: Yeah. But even like just the math of it all, they say now, what is it in America? Anything under eighty thousand a year as a household is poverty.

[17:45] Bruce Gotlieb: Huh. Wow. Right. Yeah. So if I make for me to make eighty thousand dollars to bring home, I have to make like two hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year. That's how much I have to make to bring home eighty.

[17:57] Matt Jones: Right. That's how bad actors get paid. So that's really two hundred fifty now in the industry is pretty hard to come by.

[18:04] Bruce Gotlieb: So why has that changed?

[18:08] Matt Jones: They make less episodes of shows. People are getting paid less per episode as well. Length between seasons. Sometimes you'll go two years between a season. So if you're making ten episodes in one year, then you're making ten two years from now, you're only making 20 episodes in four years. Back to back in the day, you used to have series that had twenty, twenty two episodes, twenty six episodes.

[18:35] Bruce Gotlieb: Yeah, right. It would go through the whole calendar year just about.

[18:38] Matt Jones: Absolutely. You just have the summer off. And no one really does that anymore. Yeah, it's pretty rare. But even those shows, a lot of those shows have let go of a lot of their series regulars and just have people at bottom bargain contracts. It just it's kind of how things are being done nowadays.

[18:56] Bruce Gotlieb: Do you think that is partly because it's corporations running, you know, entertainment rather than studios?

[19:01] Matt Jones: Well, as you see with everything now, it's everything's being bottom line to cross the board.

[19:08] Bruce Gotlieb: Yeah. Stock price is worth more than prestige.

[19:12] Matt Jones: So they don't there's a certain aspect of the industry where they don't need a show to be good, make money. It's not the way it was. Yeah. So they like shows to be good. I'm not saying they don't, but they're not going to go out of their way to spend a ton of money on a show to make it just that much more or and they can spend way less and make the show fine. Yeah. It's just how it is now.

[19:38] Matt Jones: But I also know a lot of people is like we're willing to work for less because we just want to work.

[19:44] Bruce Gotlieb: Well, yeah, that's the thing that you have to do.

[19:47] Matt Jones: Yeah. And if that's what you love, then that's it. You're kind of in a bind. I've been doing this for over 20 years. I'm not doing anything else.

[19:54] Bruce Gotlieb: Yeah, exactly. Right. You're not just trying to see if you like it at this point.

[19:57] Matt Jones: I have a career. So, yeah, that's it.

[20:05] Bruce Gotlieb: This is Montego Glover and behind the awards, we'll be right back.

[20:17] Bruce Gotlieb: And how about theater? Do you ever feel like you want to do more theater?

[20:20] Matt Jones: I mean, I would love to do theater. That's just that is a time versus money ratio that is kind of impossible.

[20:27] Bruce Gotlieb: Yeah. That's the big that's I mean, it leads to a bigger discussion over the whole industry. But there's a lot of discussion now of barrier to entry for young people.

[20:42] Matt Jones: If I was 22 now trying to make in the industry, I don't know how people do it. I just I know a lot of people that are starting off are rich kids because that's there's no other option.

[20:56] Bruce Gotlieb: Yeah. You can't survive off of just doing one or two jobs a year. And people don't understand that auditioning and trying to get jobs is a full time job.

[21:05] Matt Jones: That really is the job. Right. And then when you get a job, it's it's gravy. So you're doing so much to just get a couple of things to put it together. And if those couple of things don't pay enough and you know, what are you what are you doing?

[21:20] Bruce Gotlieb: Yeah. And there's so many young people now that can't afford to have families or have kids and they're choosing career over those things because they just can't afford it. So theater is taking a that's a backseat because theaters. I have friends that run theaters. They can't afford. They want to pay people as much money as they can.

[21:38] Matt Jones: Yeah, sure. And I live in L.A. Like L.A. theaters, you know, what are they going to do?

[21:44] Bruce Gotlieb: Yeah, it's almost volunteer based.

[21:47] Matt Jones: Yeah. I remember as a kid going to L.A. to visit family and, you know, being from New York, I had always gone to Broadway and I wanted to see L.A. theater. So they took me and I couldn't believe like every role in this Wendy Wasserstein play that I saw was filled with like this huge TV star. It was it was crazy.

[22:04] Bruce Gotlieb: So different from what you get in New York.

[22:05] Matt Jones: And it was so much fun. But I was just in New York a couple of weeks ago. And a friend of mine is in this really great Broadway off Broadway play. It's like a gay farce. It's called Ginger Twinsies.

[22:15] Bruce Gotlieb: Oh, we thought we had the creators on our show. Did you see it? We love Ginger Twinsies.

[22:21] Matt Jones: Oh, so great. Oh my God. My friend is Bill Tarantula.

[22:26] Bruce Gotlieb: Bill Tarantula. He's great.

[22:28] Matt Jones: He played the the the evil stepmom.

[22:31] Bruce Gotlieb: Yeah, Elaine Hentgen's part.

[22:33] Matt Jones: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But the the hats. Oh, my God. I love his monologue, too.

[22:38] Bruce Gotlieb: Yeah, he's so good.

[22:40] Matt Jones: He and I went to high school together. Anyhow, these people work so hard on these shows all the time, and they are barely keeping it together financially. It's just there's no money there.

[22:53] Bruce Gotlieb: And you have people that are starring on Broadway. Like I knew somebody who was like a lead in a major Broadway show for four years. And they came out to L.A. and they did, you know, two TV shows. And that was more than four years of Broadway, like backbreaking work. Right.

[23:10] Matt Jones: So you have to love theater.

[23:13] Bruce Gotlieb: You have to. It's right. It's eight shows a week. You get one day off. It's a rush. And also having family and kids and live in New York. I just can't do it.

[23:21] Matt Jones: Yeah.

[23:23] Bruce Gotlieb: Yeah, it's expensive.

[23:24] Matt Jones: Yeah. You have to live in like New Jersey.

[23:27] Bruce Gotlieb: Right. And so many do.

[23:30] Matt Jones: So many do. We have one favorite actress who lives upstate and has to commute, you know, for her shows.

[23:36] Bruce Gotlieb: Yeah, it's a lot. But again, I would love to do theater. It's just it's a tough Rubik's Cube to solve.

[23:43] Bruce Gotlieb: Yeah. Well, hopefully at some point you will have that opportunity because it's like nothing else.

[23:47] Matt Jones: Yeah, I was a theater kid in high school. I really miss that.

[23:52] Bruce Gotlieb: With the movie being in festivals and stuff, do you get the opportunity to kind of travel with it and present it?

[23:55] Matt Jones: You know, sometimes I'll have people for talkbacks and things like that. Do you get the opportunity to go and speak about the piece?

[24:05] Matt Jones: Yeah, I have opportunities to go to festivals. I mean, to be very honest, I have a hard time going to festivals. I get really anxious. Talking about the same thing over and over. I don't know what to say when I get in my head about it. And I'm like, just let the director talk. I'll go and wave from time to time. Sure. Also, I love supporting the films. I also don't like watching stuff. I'm in over and over again. I think it's a good movie, but I don't want to look at myself over and over again. I get it. Like, I've only seen Breaking Bad once.

[24:39] Bruce Gotlieb: Like, really? Wow.

[24:41] Matt Jones: Yeah, I need to rewatch it. I'm waiting for my son to get a little older and then I'm going to go through the whole thing with him.

[24:46] Bruce Gotlieb: Oh, gosh.

[24:48] Matt Jones: Because people have been stopping me his whole life. And he's like, I got to watch this show. I'm like, you're 10. We got to wait a little bit.

[24:55] Bruce Gotlieb: Pump the brakes on that.

[24:58] Matt Jones: Yeah. I told him 13, 13.

[25:01] Bruce Gotlieb: Yeah. He lives in L.A.

[25:33] Matt Jones: You know, it's like such a thing that happens in real life. And it's just, you know, it's just, it's so sad. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's, that's one of my favorite scenes of the whole show. Yeah. Because you weren't expecting it to happen until it happened. And the moment it all happens, you're like, that makes perfect sense. And it never felt like it was building to that. No. It was, yeah, it was perfect. Right. And then, you know, on another level, it's another turning point, you know, another moral turning point for Walter White.

[26:02] Eila Mell: So in those first three seasons, did you have any idea that it, you were creating something so special?

[26:07] Matt Jones: Well, I'll tell you the first episode I did, which was, again, November of 2007. I get in there and, you know, Aaron's a kid. I'm a kid. And we hung out, we became friends quickly. And we're in the middle of shooting the episode. And he goes, Hey, let's go. Do you want to go back to my place? And I'll show you the pilot. And I was like, cool. I had no idea what the show was. Nobody did. It was a guy from out in the middle of cooking meth in the desert. Right. All we knew. Right. And so I sat and watched the pilot. And it was like this, it was like an indie film. Yeah. A gritty indie film. I'd never seen anything like it. I was like, Oh my God, this is so cool. I had no idea this is what we were doing.

This is after I shot for like three days. I had no idea this is what we were doing. I was like, this is so cool. No one's going to like this show. There's no way people are going to like this. And then Brian won the Emmy the first year off of just seven episodes because they canceled it early because the writers strike. And that was such a surprise, but it also felt like a fluke. And then he won again and then Aaron won, but still no one was watching the show. And I remember AMC used to have these really cool parties. It was so cool back then because it was Mad Men and Breaking Bad. Pretty much that was it. And we were just these two very unique shows. And you go to the Emmys and these parties were so fun.

And I had a executive at AMC tell me, he was like, yeah, we, we are going to cancel the show. Nobody's watching it. Not enough, but we all want to know what's going to happen. We are all fans of the show. And then they put it on Netflix and it just overnight was, I think the ratings went somewhere like 200,000 views to like 10 million. Like it was ridiculous. Yeah. Those are terrible numbers, but it was something obscenely ridiculous. That's how I found it. Yeah. The live numbers just skyrocketed. It was so much fun.

[28:04] Eila Mell: Yeah. How much of a character description or history do you get when you're a guest star like that?

[28:09] Matt Jones: None. So it's all, it's all your, the actor's homework to figure out who this guy is. Yeah. Or you just have to, I mean, you get like a, it depends on the show, but usually you get like a one sentence description. And then you read the, if they let you, you read the episode and then you kind of guess. Back then that was like Sharon Bialy and Sherry Thomas. You would go in and audition and you'd do it for them. And then you kind of look at them after your first take and you know, any adjustments, is that good? And they'd be like, oh, that's really interesting. I never thought of it that way before. Great. Try to do this, you know, and you would make the adjustment. Nowadays there's none of that.

There's, you don't get any feedback or anything because you're never in the room. It's just auditioning on camera. So you just guess and you just throw it out into the ether and then you never hear back. So I don't know if I made a weird decision, a great decision. I don't know anything. So there's no more learning in auditions. There's no more growth. There's just guesswork. I understand why they do it, but it's a shame because a lot of times people were hired because of the adjustments, because of how they took direction. Absolutely. Or just the energy of that person in the room, the way they walked into the room. You hear that all the time and there's no walking into the room anymore. But also it's not on cast directors.

They desperately want to get us back in the room. It's just the budgets have been cut for cast directors. They're not even paying for their offices anymore. So you never know. I don't know. There's been an overcorrection. It's going to come back. You have to believe that.

[29:57] Eila Mell: But it always does, right?

[30:03] Matt Jones: It does. But it takes a while. It does. But so as an actor, when you're doing, you know, an audition, a self-tape, do you have to sort of make bigger choices than you might later on because you need to do something to grab their attention? Or how does that work for you?

[30:12] Matt Jones: Honestly, it's case by case, but I also, I try not to do that because I don't want to be a shitty actor. Yeah. I could see why people are doing that. I could see why young people would do that. I have to believe in myself and have more confidence of my own body of work and what I bring to the table. And if they look at me and go, I know him, I see what he's doing. I know what else he can do or not. I can't drive myself crazy concerned about that. Yeah. I will say there have been times where I've done things more in a subversive way to just see if people are watching my tape. Right. So at the end when I slate, I like I do my audition and then I slate and then I like flip off the camera or something and I'll see if anybody tells me not to do that. That's so funny. But no one's ever told me not to do it. You're sprinkling in your own little Easter eggs. There you go. You know, if you stay to the end, you'll get a surprise.

[31:13] Eila Mell: That's right. So we had not long ago, we had Christine Ebersole, your co-star from Mom on our show. I'm sure you miss working with her.

[31:19] Matt Jones: I miss Christine a lot. Yeah. Was that a fun show to do because it was about a family?

[31:25] Matt Jones: Yeah. I mean, it was a fun show. There's so many levels to it because at the right towards the end of season one, COVID happened. And so we literally became a pod of people. We became more of a family on top of each other, quarantined. We came back like August of 2020 when no one else was coming back, maybe September. We went through a lot on that show. I thought a lot unfairly. I don't feel like CBS publicized us at all. I thought we did really good work. I thought Billy and Flocky were incredible on that show. Yeah. I just think obviously, like I told you, I was a nerdy theater kid. I'm sitting next to Christine Ebersole every day. She just starts singing all the time. She's nuts. And just talking about, you know, she has some wild Broadway stories where she'll just, stuff I can't repeat.

She'll just start talking about something. It's like, isn't that weird? I was like, no, no, that's illegal, Christine. That's horrible. Right. We've crossed the line of weird. Oh my God, Christine, you should have called the police. There's so many of those stories. Oh my gosh. She's such a legend. Plus she was also, and she was in Tootsie. Let's not forget. Yeah. She was on SNL in 1982. That's right. Yeah. That's right. Oh my gosh. So many wild stories. We, yeah, we got very close and then the show just went away as every show does. I'm not upset about that. Like everything goes away, but I missed those people. And I really like working for Chuck and the people he surrounds himself with. Everybody on set's like old in the way of like, they're just really good at their jobs and they've been doing it for a long time. You don't feel like you're around a bunch of kids figuring it out, which is nice.

[34:20] Eila Mell: I love that you have Bernie Watson, who is from Welcome Back Cotter.

[34:24] Matt Jones: Brené, if you ever have a chance, she made this documentary. Somebody made this documentary about her, about like all of her jobs, her jobs. It's insane. Like she was on, yes, Welcome Back Cotter. She was on The Love Boat. She was on, I think she was in so many, The Jeffersons, the list is endless. The number of shows she, you don't even know she was on.

[34:48] Eila Mell: I know. Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.

[34:50] Matt Jones: Yeah. Fresh Prince, obviously. Yeah. She's just the, the working man's actor.

[34:55] Eila Mell: Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. And Gina Yoshary, obviously. And Gina, but like also Barry Shabaka Henley, he has, he's been around for forever. Yeah. He was one of my favorite people on the show. I just, I felt so, I mean, I'm 43 and I felt like a kid on that show. It was so fun.

[35:20] Eila Mell: Well, the good thing is that Chuck does a lot of shows, so there's a really good chance that you're going to have another show with him soon enough.

[35:24] Matt Jones: I'm sure. I'm sure. I'll, I'm sure I'll be working with Chuck again.

[35:27] Eila Mell: Oh, which would be amazing because he does great, great shows. So other than this movie that's obviously, you know, making its way around any other projects in the works that you're able to talk about?

[35:35] Matt Jones: I don't know what I'm able to talk about, to be honest anymore. I don't know. I can tell you, I did a Law & Order SVU. That's very good. That's coming out soon. I can't tell you what it's about.

[35:48] Eila Mell: Okay. Excellent.

[35:48] Matt Jones: But it's very, I got to work with Mariska Hargitay, which is really cool.

[35:53] Eila Mell: Yeah. That's a very salacious episode.

[35:57] Matt Jones: I'm on a very, I don't know what I'm allowed to say, a very popular Apple TV show. I can't tell you what.

[36:03] Eila Mell: Oh my gosh. Okay.

[36:05] Matt Jones: I comment on that a little and then it looks like I'm doing this movie in January that I can't talk about. Okay. Well, but I really don't, I don't have hints to drop at the moment.

[36:15] Eila Mell: Well, that's okay. We completely understand. We don't want to get you in trouble with anyone.

[36:20] Matt Jones: In trouble, but everyone just will have to keep their eyes peeled.

[36:23] Eila Mell: Yes. Yeah. Keep them peeled. Do you think your voice helps you get work? Because it's so distinct.

[36:28] Matt Jones: Well, I do a lot of voiceover. I do a lot of cartoons that a lot of kids chose. And that has been kind of the little engine that could my whole career, which has been pretty wonderful. I did this video game called Final Fantasy, which has this weird following, a lot of Nickelodeon, a lot of that kind of stuff. But yeah, it gets recognized.

[36:47] Eila Mell: That's great. I mean, it's so nice to have something that sets you apart.

[36:50] Matt Jones: It gives you, it gives also diversity, I'm sure to your career too. And yeah, another way to just be expressive and do something that you love to do.

[36:57] Matt Jones: Yeah. I mean, I was in bands and stuff when I was younger and I used to sing a lot. I was like a first tenor in theater. It was this like beautiful angelic voice. And I got a job in Amsterdam back in early 2000s. I did a thousand shows in three years and I blew out my voice over and over and it stuck this way.

[37:25] Eila Mell: Oh my gosh.

[37:25] Matt Jones: And now this is how I sound for forever.

[37:29] Eila Mell: So the movie again is called-

[37:31] Matt Jones: Once More Like Rain Man.

[37:32] Eila Mell: Once More Like Rain Man. That's a great title because it says everything there is to say. And I think people have in their heads what autism is, but it's really so many different things. It isn't any one thing.

[37:44] Matt Jones: No. And yeah, there's so many things with Sue Ann Pien who directed it, Bella who wrote it and stars in it. There's so many issues relating to autism that aren't talked about or completely misinterpreted all the time that this is giving them a platform to talk about these things. So I'm happy to be a part of it.

[37:59] Eila Mell: Well, we can't wait to see it. Can you remind everybody the website you said to go to where they can track where it's going to be?