Episode 1030 - Jeffrey Meek

In this episode, Jeremy chats with Jeffrey Meek (Mortal Combat: Conquest, Raven, The Exile) about the relationship between martial arts and acting.

Jeffrey Meek - Episode 1030

SUMMARY

In this episode, Jeremy Lesniak engages in a captivating conversation with actor and martial artist Jeffrey Meek. They explore the evolution of martial arts media, the journey of Jeff from a young martial arts enthusiast to a seasoned actor, and the intricate relationship between acting and martial arts. Jeff shares his experiences on various action shows, the challenges of performing stunts, and the importance of character immersion in acting.

The discussion also highlights the synergy between martial arts and acting, emphasizing how both disciplines require performance and audience engagement. In this engaging conversation, he shares his experiences in the action film industry, discussing the inherent dangers of stunt work, the transition from athlete to actor, and the importance of resilience and grit in both life and career. He reflects on memorable auditions, the evolution of filmmaking, and the significance of living artfully, emphasizing the value of hard work and the willingness to fail in order to succeed.

TAKEAWAYS

• Jeffrey Meek's martial arts journey began with boxing and wrestling in school.

• He was inspired by martial arts legends like Bruce Lee and Chuck Norris.

• Jeffrey's acting career started in theater before moving to television.

• He trained in Aikido and Taekwondo to stay fit for acting roles.

• Jeffrey's role in 'Remo Williams' introduced him to action in television.

• He had to prove his physical fitness for action roles.

• Jeffrey played both Raiden and Shao Kahn in 'Mortal Kombat: Conquest'.

• He emphasizes the importance of character immersion in acting.

• I've been hurt more as an actor than ever as an athlete.

• You have to be okay with not being okay.

CHAPTERS

01:00 Jeffrey Meek's Martial Arts Journey
04:05 Acting and Martial Arts: A Dual Career
10:03 Behind the Scenes of Action Shows
15:52 The Art of Character Immersion
22:04 The Synergy of Martial Arts and Acting
35:33 The Dangers of Action Filming
38:52 Behind the Scenes: Stunt Coordination and Safety
41:12 Injuries and Risks in Action Roles
42:51 The Transition from Stunt Work to Acting
44:49 Memorable Auditions and Missed Opportunities
47:45 The Evolution of Filmmaking and Safety
54:34 The Importance of Grit and Resilience
59:23 Living Artfully: The Journey of an Actor

Connect with Jeffrey Meek:

www.jeffreymeek.net

After listening to the episode, it would be exciting for us to know your thoughts about it.

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Show Transcript

Jeremy Lesniak (02:32.33)

What's going on, everyone? Welcome back to another episode of Whistlekick martial arts radio slash video. There's a little bit of pre-show humor that's just for Jeff and I. And today I am joined by Jeffrey Meek and we're going to have a great conversation. I'm Jeremy Lesniak, host here for the show, founder of Whistlekick, where everything we do is in support of traditional martial arts. If you want to know what that means, if you want to understand the connect, educate and entertain philosophy.

If you want to know why I'm so big on getting everyone in the world to train for six months, please go to whistlekick.com and learn more about all the things that we're doing. And if you want to go all the way to the basement, all the way across, all the things related to this show, go to whistlekickmarshallartsradio.com. You can check out every episode we've ever done, the show notes, the links. You can subscribe to our exclusive Marshall Arts Radio newsletter and get emailed every single time we release a new episode.

with links right there in the email so you never miss another great installment. And with that, Jeff, welcome to the show. Thanks for being here.

Jeffrey Meek (03:36.76)

Well, thanks for having me.

Jeremy Lesniak (03:38.526)

Of of course. Now you've got quite a body of work.

I'm sure we're gonna move around. Some of it is a little more relevant to our audience than others, and that's okay. But I'm gonna ask you, is there a place you wanna start?

Jeffrey Meek (03:51.406)

Mm-hmm.

Jeffrey Meek (03:57.39)

Well, just, know, is a, arts is such a, you know, major part of my career. You know, I started off, I guess, you know, the martial arts part of my career started off before I was even an actor. You know, I started boxing when I was in school and, you know, did some wrestling in high school. And I was really interested in martial arts when I was even a little kid, you know, just growing up watching Bruce Lee and, you know, Chuck Norris and.

you know, some of the great...

Jeremy Lesniak (04:28.318)

Do you remember your first martial arts movie?

Jeffrey Meek (04:32.1)

yeah another dragon

Jeremy Lesniak (04:34.408)

For so many people remember their very first martial arts movie and I find that interesting. Yeah, believe it.

Jeffrey Meek (04:37.282)

Yeah, yeah, and it was huge. I watched it like 15 times. And I I loved it. just think, you know, there's hasn't been, you know, martial arts aside, there's not too many people in the history of cinema has more charisma than Bruce Lee. You know, he was so solid and so, you know, he was a real movie star and also the, you know, the Jackie Chan stuff that came after that.

Jeremy Lesniak (04:52.251)

Mmm.

Jeffrey Meek (05:04.62)

You and also I loved doing it. It kept me in shape as an actor too, because I was a football, basketball, baseball guy when I was in high school and college. And I love playing tennis and I was kind of a jock for the most part. Strangely enough, I was still in the theater department, which was very kind of paradoxical, I think. And so, but my father was, he was a football player in

Jeremy Lesniak (05:26.974)

Yeah.

Jeffrey Meek (05:33.646)

high school. In fact, he was, I think, honorable mention all American as a football player. So I had to play football, you know, it's one of those things. And so I loved it. I love the skill set of it. I loved, you know, basketball, I think is just such a magnificent sport. I loved baseball. I loved the just everything about team sports, too, but the individual part of it. I also like tennis and I like martial arts. And I liked the individual quality of boxing.

because it's just you and God and the opponent. It really is an amazing way to stay in shape too. And so when I started acting, just to keep myself in shape, started going to work out and I'd go to the, I started training in Aikido and I started training in Taekwondo and I loved it. But I was primarily an actor.

You know, I really wanted to, was in the theater for 10 years before I, you know, I was in a Shakespeare company for a brief period of time. And then I got lucky and I got into some television stuff. And then after that, I, um,

I was asked to do a show called Remo Williams. And it was based on the movie that I don't know if you remember the movie was with Fred Ward and Joel Gray. And it was about a guy who was a cop in Chicago that didn't really have a family. So what they faked is death. And then they trained him to be this sort of ninja character by this sort of pseudo Korean.

a character that was played by Joel Grey, which you can't do anymore. was this white guy playing an Asian character. And so when they did the pilot, I was auditioning for it because I could do some of the martial arts and I get through it. so Joel Grey played it in the movie, but they were trying to cast the older character and they were a little bit reticent about hiring me because I was new.

Jeffrey Meek (07:45.878)

And so they liked what I did in my audition and everything, they were just, they wanted to, I think they wanted a bigger name. And so I asked, or I think my manager asked them, could I possibly read for the lead character for the Chun character, the Asian mentor? And could I read with them in their audition? Which was kind of a ploy, I guess. It was fun.

And so I read with everybody and there was a lot of stars that came in to read for that. And one of them was Roddy McDowell and Roddy McDowell and I kind of hit it off. And then he walked over to the producers as I was standing there in the audition room and he said, so who's playing Remo? And they said, well, we haven't cast it yet. And he said, well, what about him?

And he looked at me and they looked at me and I went, I'd be happy to do it.

So they ended up giving me a shot. And I think that Rod and McDowell had a lot to do with that. And so we shot the pilot, tons of action in it. I mean, I had to surf down some water off a three story building. had to dive off of a four story building and run through fire. I was doing all my gags, but I had a great stunt coordinator, Bobby Bass from Stunts Unlimited, who was a

Jeremy Lesniak (09:05.502)

Were you doing your own homework?

Jeffrey Meek (09:14.55)

God at the time. he, my stunt double was Chad Randall, who was, I consider one of the great stunt guys in Hollywood ever. And he did a lot of the work on some of the gags that are really super dangerous, you because they, a lot of times, unless you're Tom Cruise, where you're actually paying for the movie, the Bond company won't let the star do the gags. So I was stuck with doing most of them.

Jeremy Lesniak (09:40.478)

heard about.

Jeffrey Meek (09:44.276)

But the ones where there was me hitting the ground, can't just why they call him a fall guy, of course, because, you know, they're the ones that are taking the fall. Because they're afraid of breaking the actor because you break the actor and then the show closes down and then there's nothing going on anymore. So I did a lot of this stuff there. I got hurt in that show, though. I got blown up once and I got shot in the neck.

That was really interesting. My hair started on fire. I felt like Michael Jackson. My hair started on fire because this fence, tried to use this C4 on a fence to make it look like it sparked. Because I threw a wire on it. know, the character throws a wire on it and it's supposed to spark. And so he had taken C4 and put it on. He didn't know how to make it spark otherwise. And it blew the whole fence into my face. This is back in the day. There's no CGI back then.

And so it's singed my eyelids closed to the other eyelid. If I hadn't closed my eye, I'd lost my eye. But if my hair started to fly, I was going, okay, that's not happening. And so then the same guy, he does a gag in the show where it was.

No, so anyway, he he got fired. And but there was a lot of stuff that I had to do. had to run through fire. There was lots of explosions. It was really a big action packed pilot. Now, it was going to be on the docket for the network, but the company that did it was the film company. And so the film company that did Remo Williams, they had never done any television before.

And so it was real film quality. It was really great, but they were a little late in delivering it to the studio. So they were a little hesitant of actually giving them a go on the series, but the pilot was terrific. It was really fun and Roddy was great. It was just really a good little piece, but that introduced me to the networks and it was as somebody that could do action stuff. And I did a lot of gags that were really pretty outrageous. And so that led to.

Jeremy Lesniak (11:54.814)

sounds like lot of stuff that maybe someone in your position today coming in being kind of green wouldn't get all those opportunities.

Jeffrey Meek (12:03.95)

No, no, if I, you know, but I had to show them that I could do the action. there was a fight choreographer that had to come in and work with me. There was, you know, they had to check to see whether or not I was physically fit to actually handle the part, because it was incredibly physical part, it was difficult. So, and that started me really training.

you know, because I wanted to get my body in shape. I wanted to look good on camera, whatever the case may be. But I was, you know, really doing a lot of work, just trying to deal with weapons and knives and guns and, you know, just a lot of martial arts too. And then after I did a couple of, I did a series in New York, a little short stint there, and then I did another pilot and then I did Raven. Actually, I did a pilot and a series in France called The Exile.

And it was about a guy that was, he was a joint CIA KGB agent. He was a double agent. So when the wall came down in the nineties, he, the KGB thought he was a double agent and the CIA on the other side, his liaison, his only source or connection to the CIA.

was murdered. And so he ends up being this sort of lost soul in France. Yeah, tough gig. But the character had to do a lot of, you know, real espionage stuff. There was a lot of action in that show, a lot of shoot-em-ups and a lot of physical fighting and running. And it was just really a very action-packed thing. So CBS, who had done this joint production with the French, it was sort of a French-American production.

They were trying to find ways to raise money, you know, to shoot television. And also the French wanted to learn a little bit more about how Americans made TV. And so after I did that for about a year and a half, they canceled the series, but I got called in to audition for Raven, which was a, you know, he's essentially a ninja that grew up in Japan and he ends up trying to find his son in Hawaii. And so,

Jeffrey Meek (14:25.002)

I had to train a lot. I was even training in France to prepare for that pilot. And I worked with some really great martial arts, the Jeffy Mata and Al Leong. And then I was doing a movie with, at that time I was also doing a movie that I was supposed to be in. It ended up not working out, but I trained for six months with Benny the Jet, your key to this.

who in my opinion is probably one of the greatest kickboxers in history. And that guy beat the shit out of me. I mean, he really was amazing. But he trained me every day. I'd be in his gym for at least four or five hours a day for six months. You get fairly good after, otherwise you break.

Jeremy Lesniak (15:13.692)

He he was...

Yeah.

Jeffrey Meek (15:19.63)

I really enjoyed that and that was for a film that was called Ford Fairlane, The Rock and Roll Detective with Andrew Dice Clay. But what had happened is that after I trained for six months, Robert Englund, was Freddie Krueger, do you remember the movie? He became available somehow and so Fred Silver, who was the producer of the picture, decided he was going to fire me and then hire Robert Englund. He had to pay me for the whole gig because I had been working for six months.

But yeah, so that led me into doing Raven. And then Raven, I worked with Billy Blanks and Howard Jackson and Jeffy Mata and just so many great martial artists came through there too. It was really a great education to do that show. And then after that, I ended up doing a bunch of pictures and then I did a series called Mortal Kombat.

conquest, which was, you know, some of the best martial artists in the world.

kicking butt on that show. That was really fun. I played two characters on that show. I played Raiden and Shao Kahn, which was a gas. That was really fun. It's an interesting time because I auditioned about six times for Raiden. then when I went into, I don't know why. I don't know why. They were trying to figure out whether or not I was tall enough or whatever. It's I don't know.

Jeremy Lesniak (16:44.314)

Why so many?

Jeffrey Meek (16:54.008)

But I was in there for the sixth time and it was the Mortal Kombat people and there was Larry Kasanoff and there was the Fern Champion as the casting director and I was reading for Raiden and I was thinking after six times you guys better give me this part. And so after I finished reading they sort of whispered to each other. And I'm going, uh-oh. And so they whispered to each other a little bit more and then Fern Champion gets up and hands me another script. It says here, read this. And I went,

So you want to place, you want to audition for another character? I was thinking this, I wasn't saying this out loud, but I was thinking, you got to be kidding. Now I'm furious. And so Shao Kahn is like, he is like the devil. And so they said, do you want to step outside and read, you know, and go through it? And I said, nah, let me just read it right now. I'm in the mood.

And I just said, if you like it, you want to make adjustments, then go ahead. We'll make an adjustment. But I'm not going on anywhere. I just let them have it. And then they started whispering to each other a little bit more. And then Fern turned to me and she went, would you like to play both parts? And I went, what? You want to play both? And I said, you know, I get paid for both? They went, absolutely. And I went.

Yeah, yeah, let's let's go have some fun in Florida. So yeah, really a trip.

Jeremy Lesniak (18:22.366)

It's a trap. You think you would have gotten the Shao Kahn part if you hadn't been irritated?

Jeffrey Meek (18:32.066)

That's a really good question. you know, maybe not because it was authentic. I was pissed.

Jeremy Lesniak (18:38.128)

I, that's what I'm hearing and anybody who knows that Mortal Kombat universe knows that that, I mean that's kind of an important component to that character.

Jeffrey Meek (18:41.902)

Ha

Jeffrey Meek (18:49.55)

I was just so irritated. just I didn't even want to read it You know, I was just gonna go I'm just gonna vomit all over you people and see what happens so that was perfect I guess for the part. So anyway, but that was fun. That was a great show. What great people really fun I just loved it then you know, some of my you know, I still have dear friends from that show and it's just Yeah, what a group what an amazing group. Yeah, it was really fun

Jeremy Lesniak (18:52.114)

I'm trying.

Jeffrey Meek (19:18.082)

That was a great gig too. But I'll tell you what though, if I played Raid and everybody wanted to hang out with me, if I played Shao Kahn and put the mask on, I was just a loner, man. Nobody on that set ever came up to me and said hello. They were just scared. It was really weird. I felt so lonely as Shao Kahn. What's that? Yeah, I guess. It was a very lonely part.

Jeremy Lesniak (19:33.384)

Comment in there though, isn't there?

in there that you're playing it well if they don't want to hang out.

Or could just call it method, right? I've heard actors talk about, they get into certain roles and they just get so immersed in the loner aspect or the rude aspect of that character. you could just, you were method acting Shao Kahn.

Jeffrey Meek (19:58.316)

Yeah, yeah, I subscribe to that. know, if you get the opportunity to be a little bit method, you know, know, Daniel Day-Lewis has the luxury, you know, he'd get a part, no, a year in advance of what he was doing. Well, how luxurious is that for an actor? It's often, you know, most of the time you just only have a very short period of time to prepare for a part. But someone like that, you know, he's, he's got a...

year, six months to work. can go and hang out and, you know, build the village that he's going to be living in as the character, you know, he's, you know, when he did the crucible, he actually, I think, for six months, he built the town that of Salem, you know, and he was out there, you know, putting it together and living in that condition and not bathing and

Jeremy Lesniak (20:50.59)

I haven't heard that, none of that surprises me. But then again, it's Daniel Day Lewis.

Jeffrey Meek (20:54.03)

Yeah, that's, yes, exactly. And so he's a great actor, had the opportunity to know what he was dealing with. I would do the same thing. It's like doing a play. Usually have six weeks to rehearse a play. You don't have that in a film or television. And so those six weeks are tremendously luxurious for an actor to be able to connect to the character. That's what, for me, that's what a method is, is that I have a chance to immerse myself in that.

Jeremy Lesniak (20:58.812)

You can't argue with the results.

Jeremy Lesniak (21:06.326)

Hmm.

Jeffrey Meek (21:23.47)

character, you know, why not? And so during the day when you're shooting too, it's, it's, it's troubling to go in and out of the character. It really is. It's hard to, you know, differentiate the, you know, some, unless you're Marlon Brando, you know, it's hard to do. And so I would, the isolation for me when I was doing the show was actually, you know, useful. And, you know, I could

The most distracting part about playing Shao Kahn though, I have to say, is that the throne that he was sitting in is backlit and it would light the catwalk where all of the tour would be going through. And so it's the most distracting thing as an actor to see, you know, baby carriages and tourists in shorts scratching themselves as they're going waving at you as you're writing the take. It's a little much.

It was a little much. So after a while we tried to figure out, know, could you just, when we're rolling, could you have stop, just don't move around, but incredibly distracting. But that studio was amazing. I loved working at MGM. Loved working at, it was Disney really. I lived in Celebration. Do you know where that is? Celebration is is a planned community. It's a Disney planned community. It's right next to the center there.

And so it's just a bridge over to from over the freeway. And so it's got it's planned everything. It looks it's a Stepford kind of place. It's sort of it's the same guy that designed the Truman Show. The Jim Carrey movie is the same guy that designed that. That's my understanding of it is the same guy that designed that. So it was me and I was playing Shao Kahn. So I had shaved head and I told them if I was going to play Raiden in Shao Kahn.

I don't want to wear a wig over my hair and I don't want to have a skull cap on me if I'm going to be the bald guy. So I said, I will shave my head. But the deal is, is that if I shave my head, then you as a makeup artist or a hair designer, you have to shave my head whenever I want it. And so every time I'd come in the morning, even if I wasn't working, they'd have to shave my head. But I was driving around in a beach bike in celebration with my golf bag on my back.

Jeffrey Meek (23:39.416)

with my sunglasses on, my little bald head looked like Uncle Fester going to the... And everybody thought I was insane. But the rest of the actors thought it was a little weird to live there. So they lived mostly in town in the part of... They thought it was kind of strange there, but I loved it. The golf course was amazing. It's right down the street. There was a huge gym there with a basketball court. It was fabulous. Had a pool. There was a...

huge pond. They would even have fake snow during the wintertime in the halls. It was a fabulous place. Good restaurants. I loved it. It was a good gig.

Jeremy Lesniak (24:12.752)

Sounds like a cool spot.

Jeremy Lesniak (24:18.718)

opportunity to talk to a number of actors who are also also martial artists and I'm phrasing it this way with with intent and I found that most of them were one that also did the other but they primarily identified as I'm an actor who does martial arts or I'm a martial artist who acts

I don't know which category to put you in the way you've talked.

Jeffrey Meek (24:46.338)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm an actor. Yeah, yeah, because I never, you know, I think martial artists for the most part, somebody that competes in it, you know, I did it for...

Jeremy Lesniak (24:49.49)

You're an actor who does martial arts.

Jeremy Lesniak (24:57.156)

You talked about martial arts at a, you know, pretty early on, even before TV and movies anyway.

Jeffrey Meek (25:01.26)

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I got bullied as a kid, too. And so I wanted to, you know, protect myself. And my brother was bigger than me. And so I wanted to kick his ass, too. He was a year and a half older than me and just beat the hell out of me. And so I decided, OK, I'm just going to be I'll be Bruce Lee. So I yes. So I.

Jeremy Lesniak (25:07.282)

Okay.

Jeffrey Meek (25:29.686)

I just wanted to beat my brother up. And so that's how I got into it really, is that I didn't want to be bullied anymore. I was getting picked on. I was kind of small until I was about a junior in high school. I was about five, two as a sophomore. And then I grew a whole foot between my junior year and my senior year. So a lot of people got there, come up in my junior and senior year. And it was, and also too, I'd been training.

and I'd been playing sports. So I was in good shape. I was skinny, but I was in good shape, you know? And so, yeah, I would say that I'm an actor first. I really wanted to be, you know, Laurence Olivier. I wanted to be, you know, great at what I did. So I trained very hard to be a good actor. So I think the reason that I got hired quite a bit, you know, is because I'm an actor that could do it pretty well. You know, I had trained for a while.

And also I was a pretty good athlete. I wasn't great, you know, but I was a good athlete. And so I can fake it pretty good too, you know. But I really love it. I think it's a great thing for everybody to do. I think it's a marvelous way to get centered and connected to your body and how to move in the world.

You know, that the floor is your friend and the older I get, the more I realize that Aikido is really a lifesaver as you get old. You know, what's the main problem for older people is falling. You know, but falling doesn't seem to be an issue, except for last year I fell off a 12 foot ladder. That was kind of insane. I was trimming trees. And then I was an idiot. I was on a wooden ladder.

Jeremy Lesniak (27:14.27)

were you doing?

Jeffrey Meek (27:22.87)

And the wooden ladder, I didn't fall. The wooden ladder snapped underneath me. The two legs of it at the same time snapped. So I got pitched and I was going through, I was landing on my head and I spun my whole training in midair. I'm thinking get on float back slap. And so I was slapped the ground, but hit the pavement and broke my hand. And so, but I didn't hit my head. I landed.

Jeremy Lesniak (27:31.516)

that ladder.

Jeffrey Meek (27:52.77)

just fine, didn't hurt my back, hurt anything else, but I broke my hand from slapping the crowd. It was like hitting the mat. I was hitting the mat. But yeah, save me. otherwise I would have been, I was heading from, you know, my head. But it was, you know, the training comes in handy, you know, it really does. And also just how you carry yourself, you know, how you feel confident enough to be in the world.

Jeremy Lesniak (27:57.47)

It's like as good of an outcome as you could have.

That's right.

Jeffrey Meek (28:20.96)

I think it's just a great thing to do. And I have such admiration for fighters and MMA guys. And I just love it. I love watching it. I love great fighters. It's really an amazing thing to do. The UFC is such a what an amazing thing that that has become. Right. I can remember when we first started out, I was going, this is going to be huge. This is going to be huge. You're going to take

Jeremy Lesniak (28:44.294)

It's pretty incredible.

Jeffrey Meek (28:50.33)

We're taking Mortal Kombat to another level. And now it's real humans doing it. And I went, this is going to be magic. And it is. They've done

Jeremy Lesniak (28:59.778)

You mentioned Benny or Kides, any other fighters from over the years that...

Jeffrey Meek (29:05.1)

Yeah, I think Billy Blanks, think a lot of people think of him as Tybo, you know, but Billy Blanks was seven time world champion.

Jeremy Lesniak (29:09.374)

People do not know.

Jeffrey Meek (29:14.575)

that's the baddest guy on the planet. I'm sorry, if he was in the UFC, he would have been the greatest champion ever.

Jeremy Lesniak (29:19.326)

At his peak at his peak the stories that people tell because I wasn't around when he was fighting in his peak But I've talked to enough people on this show and off this show that talk about him in competition and they just they talk about him as If he could teleport that he was that fast

Jeffrey Meek (29:29.922)

Mm-hmm.

Jeffrey Meek (29:37.474)

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, I trained with him for about six weeks and he patted me up, put me in the dojo and I was trying to spar with him and he was wearing a baseball cap. Okay. I couldn't hit his baseball cap for six weeks.

That's just defense. And then he would just blister me. The guy could bench press like 400 pounds. He was unbelievably strong. I saw footage of Billy Blanks actually going and jumping in competition over a guy's head, doing a flip, kicking him in the head, knocking him out and landing on his feet.

Jeremy Lesniak (30:07.934)

Big, strong, fast, I've heard also very good.

Jeremy Lesniak (30:20.252)

I've heard a number of those stories.

Jeffrey Meek (30:22.058)

You never seen that in the UFC. I've never seen I've seen guys need you know, but never flip over I He his he was ungodly athletic his brother was a great athlete, too. I Played basketball with him. He could he could dunk with his elbows. This guy was just ridiculously athletic and Billy was such a he's such a help. my god, and I worked with also with

Jeremy Lesniak (30:24.763)

No.

Jeffrey Meek (30:50.764)

Garrett Warren, was with, he was my, ended up becoming, know, Chad was a great stunt guy, but he was not necessarily a great kicker. And they wanted a lot of real flashy stuff when we were doing Raven. And so they wanted my stunt double to be able to kick crazy, you know, and I can't, you know, I can kick. Okay. I can kick somebody's head, but I can't kick the lights out, you know, 15 feet above my head. Although I could put my foot through the basketball hoop.

I could jump up and kick through the basketball hoop when I was in my prime. Garrett Warren was really amazing. He was truly amazing. He did a lot of the stunt coordinating for the Avatar movies. Yeah, he's the coordinator there. There's a lot of action in that thing.

Jeremy Lesniak (31:27.176)

It's impressive.

Jeremy Lesniak (31:41.042)

Okay. Some creative choreography in there.

Jeremy Lesniak (31:49.278)

Yes.

Jeffrey Meek (31:50.734)

Garrett, then it became my stunt double and then I trained with Garrett for a long time too and we would work out and that show was challenging. It's challenging to do action for television because you know if you think about it, it takes eight days to do an episode, seven, eight days to do one hour show, but you might have two or three different fight sequences in that one show and so

That's going to take you six to eight hours to shoot one fight. And so you got to stay warm. And so it's like a basketball player going off the court. You got to kind of keep yourself warm and stretched out and everything, because you got to go in and change an angle and shoot it again. And so in seven days, you've got three of those days are going to be nothing but six, eight hours of action. So it's really, really challenging physically. you know, my body was kind of breaking down after about 10 months of that.

Jeremy Lesniak (32:27.89)

Yeah.

Jeffrey Meek (32:47.19)

And so I don't know how anybody could do that. Because if you go back and watch the show, which I suggest everybody does, because I think it was some some really good action in it and some great martial arts and the I had Billy blanks there with me every day. I had Jeffy Mata was in the pilot. Jeffy Mata trained me so well. Al Leung, the great Al Leung, he helped me with my training as well.

So many great people. They were so kind too, you know, because it's so superior to me and yet made me feel as if I could do it. It's great. I just like that whole group, you know, it's a small group, but it's a, you know, they're tight. They're really tight people and good people. Let's see who else? James Lu. Do you know who James Lu is?

Yeah, James Lew and I did a sword fight in the pilot over fire. It was like a catwalk and we're doing it with fire everywhere in this. I can imagine what it did for everybody's lungs in that shot, but that took us like four or five hours and a burning building doing a. You know these writer writes it, but you actually have to do it, you know, and so. None.

Jeremy Lesniak (34:10.29)

And like you said, no CGI. think people under misunderstand.

Jeffrey Meek (34:14.328)

So when we blew stuff up, was in the shot. It's scary when something's getting really blown up behind you. You don't know how far it's gonna blow up. Because I've been burned and you know, I got, I told you that one time I got shot was in my character of Raven, I'm supposed to run, it's a drive-by shooting and I'm running in front of a truck. But in order to make it look like the bullet holes are hitting the truck, what they do is they drill holes in the bullet, where the bullet holes are.

Jeremy Lesniak (34:21.854)

Yeah.

Jeffrey Meek (34:42.606)

And then they bond to it up and put a 45 charge on the other side of it. And then they have a little wires that go to a switch and the guy hits the switch, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. And so I told him, I said, you know, I want to be looking at camera so you can see it's me, but don't get ahead of me because you won't see the shot for one thing. And the other thing is you're going to shoot me because that's coming out there like a bullet. It's the bondo is hard. It's rock. And so you put a 45 charge on the other. That's a bullet that's coming out of that truck.

Jeremy Lesniak (35:12.243)

In some ways that might be harder than the lead of an actual round.

Jeffrey Meek (35:15.606)

Yeah, it's more dangerous because it's bigger. can take you out. And so it hit me in the chin, slit my throat, and I was bleeding all over the place. I chased that guy off the set.

So it was crazy. So I did that. I've broken my knees in an accident. I one time I was, you know, I have a little fear of heights too, because in Raven, one time I was supposed to be dangled off the edge of one of the hotels. It was like 35 floors. And so they didn't have a rigging for it. So they just said, well, I'll have two of the Simone guys that were the bodyguards there hold my ankles. And I was an idiot. I did it.

How stupid is that?

Jeremy Lesniak (35:59.262)

You know what's funny is everything you're saying about maybe...

These roles. What's like modification to the sentences. What's more short is can say things about that. You know we you know we were sparring and we did this or we were running the self defense scenario we did this or we went to this competition we did this and. I was so stupid and i you know i i i don't know my chin or you know i got stabbed with a with a knife during some work or something right so it's it's.

Jeffrey Meek (36:31.746)

Right. Yep.

Jeremy Lesniak (36:34.926)

I've always appreciated these, synergy between acting and martial arts because there's such a strong physical component, but there's also such a strong expressive component. And I suppose if all you do within the realm of martial arts is combat, the expressive component is less relevant. if you're, you know, when you're working fundamentals, when you're working forms, if you're presenting in competition, there's an acting component.

Jeffrey Meek (37:01.038)

Totally.

Jeremy Lesniak (37:01.192)

The closest I ever get to acting is doing forms in competition. I go to a different place, yeah.

Jeffrey Meek (37:05.006)

That's right, it's performance. Well, it's performance. You have an audience. That changes everything. It's one thing to do your acting or martial arts or performing at anything without an audience. It's much easier. But then your brain goes through a transformation when you get in front of people. It's called critical situation. So your brain is

Jeremy Lesniak (37:23.55)

Mm.

Jeffrey Meek (37:33.646)

functioning differently. Your amygdala is firing off, which is your ancient little almond-sized part of your ancient reptilian brain. And then all that chemistry gets released in your body, your adrenaline, but also opiates. so your brain is actually not processing the information the same way. So it's easy to get hurt. Many times I got whacked, hit in the face, eyes poked, because just...

when you're rolling camera, everybody's got the adrenaline's flowing. So if you miss a mark and I'm doing a spinning heel kick, if you're not on the mark, you're gonna get your head taken off. And that happened a couple of times where people got sent to the hospital. One time I was doing a, there was an incident in France when it was really late night and we were doing another one of those drive-bys with the bullet holes in the car. And I had already had the experience of getting my throat cut with it.

And so I told the, there was a French director had never done it before. And I said, you know, what, wait a minute, you, what are you doing? So what they did is they actually, in France, they have curbs that are really high. And in this shot, it was at night, it was like three o'clock in the morning. And so the light was actually reflecting from the wind, the window of the car into the lens.

So instead of actually just rolling down the damn window, what they did is they picked the car up and put it on the curb so it was on an angle. So all of those squibs that were gonna shoot out of that car were shooting down at the street in front of it. And so what they wanted us to do for the gag is that my scene partner, which is my co-star, Christian Burgess, was his name, standing right next to me and we were supposed to dive under the car, in the front of the car, and then the bullets, and I went, whoa, whoa, whoa, no, no, no.

That's dangerous. And then I asked the stunt coordinator and he said, it's going to be fine. And I went, okay. He didn't, he wasn't sure. So I went, I'm not diving there. And he said, no, it's perfectly safe in his French accent. And then I said, no, I'm driving in front of the car and Christian, suggest you do the same because you're going to get shot. And the director says, no, I guarantee it. You won't get shot.

Jeffrey Meek (39:51.95)

And I went, have you ever done this before? And he went, no.

Okay, so and then Christian started getting mad at me. He said, Jeff, it's three o'clock in the morning. Let's go home. Let's just do the thing and let's get it. I said, Christian, I'm trying to save you from being shot. So I went to the director and I said, you you got to guarantee me you're going to put some skin in the game. So if you send my friend to the hospital, I send you to the hospital. And he went, okay, shook on it.

Jeffrey Meek (40:27.374)

And he went, let's drive by. So I dove out of the way, Christian dove in front of the car. Bap, bap, bap, bap, bap, bap. And he's screaming and yelling. He lift up his leg and there's three bullet holes in his leg. They scoop him up, him into the, throw him into the car. I walk out in the street, bang. Hit the director. I said, that's a wrap.

Jeremy Lesniak (40:52.381)

You just-

Jeffrey Meek (40:54.446)

And then the next day he showed up. He was fine.

Jeremy Lesniak (40:55.132)

I love it.

Jeffrey Meek (41:00.27)

He just didn't say it. He didn't say it. No, no, no, no, But we had a deal.

Jeremy Lesniak (41:00.582)

You've gotten away with that in Hollywood.

That's it.

Jeffrey Meek (41:08.898)

We had a deal. So I just went, you got to be careful about what you're getting yourself into because when shit gets blown up, now this doesn't happen so much anymore because they do so much CGI now. so AI, thank God for that because you're actually in it. The actress in street clothes and everybody else is behind the camera in plexiglass and like, they look like they're in a bomb shelter, you know? And so you're out there naked.

Jeremy Lesniak (41:33.522)

feel like an x-rays, dental x-rays.

Jeffrey Meek (41:36.882)

Yes, I got lead and goggles and helmets. You're gonna be great, Jeff.

Jeremy Lesniak (41:41.702)

It's it's fine. It's fine. They're behind a six foot wall

Jeffrey Meek (41:48.408)

Closer to the fire! Great! Great shot! So, anyway, that happened. And what else? Yeah, just, you know, you got to be careful. I was jumping over, and when I was doing the Remo Williams thing, I'm jumping over these cinder blocks, and they look like concrete blocks, but they're made out of cinder, so they blow up easy.

And so they're they're pumice. It's like a pumice rock. And so when I jumped over it, he's going to blow it up because this laser thing is shooting at me. And I land on some pads on the other side of it, do a little tumble roll. And so I'm doing it. I said, well, be careful when you, again, timing is everything, right? Don't blow it up until I'm over it.

because if you blow it up, it's going to hit me. And I was really worried about my junk, you know, so I was trying to cover myself up and I should have covered my face because it blew up in my face and the cinder went behind my eyelids. And so I had to have that rinsed out from the night to go to the hospital and get it on. And so I looked like I was, you know, been in a fight with Mike Tyson after that. And so it took a while for me to heal.

that with the burning of the eye and you know so the you can get hurt really easily if you're in these kinds of action sequences you know it's so it's and it can get out of hand in a hurry I've been hurt more as an actor than ever as an athlete

Jeremy Lesniak (43:27.998)

What I would have guessed based on these stories.

Jeffrey Meek (43:31.468)

Yeah, yeah, I've broken pretty much, you you name it, my elbow, knees, feet, toes.

Jeremy Lesniak (43:39.55)

but you're one of those rare types that's doing both the acting and a significant amount of stunt work. I haven't talked to too many actors who have done as much stunt work as you at the level that you've done it. I've talked to quite a few who that's their shtick, that's what they're trying to do, but they haven't gone as far. Or I've had a number of folks that their path has been

Jeffrey Meek (43:45.731)

What's that again?

Jeffrey Meek (43:55.074)

Yeah, yeah, did a lot.

Jeremy Lesniak (44:08.424)

They reach a certain level of competition, the national levels, international levels, and then they transition into stunt work. And maybe they do that for a little bit, and then they try to shift over into more conventional acting roles. But they've been essentially typecast at that point.

Jeffrey Meek (44:26.178)

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, think, you know, I mean, there's not a lot that, you know, acting's a real craft, you know, it's, you know, so making that transition is not easy. You know, if you're a martial artist, that's one thing and being an actor is a totally different gig. You know, so I, yeah.

But the physical part of it was extremely challenging for somebody to do, especially in television. It's one thing to do films you can recover. I I broke my ankle doing a movie called Winter People when, well, I was on a break. It was a really horrible spring. I was fighting with Kurt Russell and I'm beating him up in this cabin. I'm playing this mountain man and I'm beating him up and I throw him outside and he goes through the railing into the snow. And I go out there and I jump off the

the porch of this little cabin onto the snow and someone in the paint department had not removed the paint can. They just cover it with snow. And so I landed on the paint can and really did a number on my ankle and went down. was rolling around in the snow. Kurt Russell was going, oh, you really hurt yourself. I thought you were just really good actor.

It's so we ended up having to. My character gets drowned in the water, so after I healed my ankle, my character is ends up getting drowned in a frozen river by Kurt Russell's character. The movie is called Winter People. I'll never do another movie with the title winter. That's for sure. So he. His his his background of his character is sort of a Norwegian guy that likes to take ice baths. You know, he's sort of he's immune to it.

So it neutralizes the size of my character and the meanness of my character by getting in me in that river. And my character's pretty drunk too. So we're drowning. So this took two nights. I'm in a dry suit. It's frozen. Banner Elk, North Carolina is absolutely cold. It is so cold. And so we're in this river. And I don't know if you've been in frozen river in your head, underwater. It's rough on your head. And so that's the only thing that's not protected.

Jeremy Lesniak (46:46.962)

Believe that.

Jeffrey Meek (46:49.272)

So everything's, I'm in a dry suit with like Vaseline all over my body, just try to stay insulated, but I have nothing on my head. And all I can hear is the director on the bullhorn going, dunk them again, Kurt, dunk them again. And so I'm like, God, so I'm under this ice water, right? And so we did that two nights. And the third night, the director comes up to me and he goes, okay, we're gonna go in tonight. And it was like 12 below. The river had frozen.

There was absolutely no way that we're getting in this river that I could think of. And I said, so how are you going to break the ice of the river? It's different than the night before. How are you going to match that? He goes, oh, we're going to drive a truck over it. I said, what? You're going to drive a truck over the river and break the ice? Yeah, yeah. Sounds ridiculous, right? And it's in, well, how are you going to get the ice chunks out of the? And he goes, oh, we're going to just take electrodes from the generator. We're going to stick them in there. We're going to heat it up and try to see if

I said, you're serious, you're not kidding me. And he said, yeah, yeah. So I walk over to Kurt's trailer, which is about maybe, you know, a hundred feet away and he's in his pajamas. It's the middle of the night and he's, and I go to Kurt, you know, we're getting in the water tonight. And he went, you're, you're sort of laughing. You said the stunt guys left. And I said, no, no, no, we're getting in the, they're setting up the shot now. And so he put on his parka, some boots and his little.

pajamas, he walks down to this tree, the producer and the director underneath the tree. Ted Koch was the director, by the way, he didn't want to do it either. But the producer was kind of forcing the issue. And Kurt says, we're going in the river tonight. And the director went, Mm hmm. And he looked at the producer, we're going in the river tonight. goes, Mm hmm. And he said, you know what, I got the balls to get in that river.

And Jeff's got the balls to get in that river. But I'd never have the balls to ask someone else to do it. And he walked away. I thought, yes, heroic. And so they tried. They never broke the ice. We had never ended up having to shoot it. I couldn't get in the river. And so we ended up shooting the last part of that sequence of me drowning in the river in Malibu Creek in Los Angeles. It was like 80 degrees.

Jeremy Lesniak (49:00.574)

Great story.

Jeffrey Meek (49:15.458)

They snowed it in. It was comfortable. We're having like drinks. Yet you couldn't tell the difference. You could not tell the difference in the shot. I ended up getting hypothermia from that. ended up, I went to France. had a girlfriend in France at the time I went there. I was in the hospital. I got so sick because I thought I almost died from, know, pneumonia because of just being in frozen river. So you gotta,

Jeremy Lesniak (49:20.702)

on the beach, on the banks.

Jeffrey Meek (49:45.294)

you know, protect yourself a lot as an actor. think that, you know, it can get dangerous. Especially with heights. I don't like heights.

Jeremy Lesniak (49:54.59)

I want to ask you, sure. I don't blame you. And I haven't even been dangled by Samoans.

Jeffrey Meek (50:04.088)

I got a story for that too if you want to. It was a recent. Yeah, go ahead.

Jeremy Lesniak (50:06.244)

Well, let's do that and then I'll ask you my question.

Well, you can go ahead with, yeah.

Jeffrey Meek (50:13.326)

Oh my sorry, I was doing a film with the great Chris Christopherson. All right, God rest his soul. And he, we were in the middle of the Indian Ocean in a place called the Comoros Islands. You ever heard of the Comoros Islands? Yeah, right. It's like on the other side of the planet. Okay. And so it's in between Mozambique and Madagascar in the Indian Ocean. It is so remote and it was incredibly remote.

Jeremy Lesniak (50:29.895)

No.

Jeffrey Meek (50:43.362)

So there's like one hotel when we were there, I don't know what it's like now, and My care is it's based on a cyclone that's happening. So there's the end of the picture my character gets blown away off of this Lenai porch of the Sixth story of this particular hotel room so I'm hanging literally hanging on a pole that's attached to the building on the porch and they've

going to put me in a rig where my body's in the rig and my feet are in the rig so I look horizontal like I'm really being blown by the wind, right? And then they, it was a cheap film. They had a airplane engine, prop engine that they had rigged on the side of the, but now we're four stories up from the beach and it's nothing but rock underneath me. And so they've taken the cable.

on a line that I'm dangling from and they strung it all the way down to the parking lot of the hotel. You can see this is gonna get bad, And so, how is this gonna happen? This is where you're gonna get pulled down the line by the truck. We're gonna have the start and pull you down the line.

Jeremy Lesniak (51:54.558)

She where this is going.

Jeffrey Meek (52:11.234)

Well, how do I stop on the line and as well we have some guys that are going to help you break it. I went, God, right. So, and I don't like heights already. I'd already done Raven. So I get on this first of all, said, I watch it. I'm going to test it first. So they put about 200 pounds, 300 pounds of sandbags in the rigging and they pulled it down the thing and it worked fine. Okay. And I'm going, God, now I've got to get in it. So

I get in the rigging, they turn up the thing. Now you can't hear anything too when this engine's going. So our plane, we're gonna do all the dialogue in post because there's no way you can hear with an airplane engine going on 10 feet away. And so it's really windy, really loud, and they have built a scaffolding on the outside of the building to put the camera, which is about maybe four feet away from me. And that goes all the way down four stories. It's an incredible.

shot. It's a lot. They spent more money on the shot than they did the movie. And so I'm hanging on this thing. Roll camera. And Christopherson is like reaching out for me. You know, it's a character from the hotel room hanging onto the wall and reaching out to grab me. And I'm hanging onto this pole, right. And the rigging gives way.

on my body, but not my feet. And so I'm falling head first to the rocks and I reach out and I grab the scaffolding of the camera crew outside the building. Now I'm outside now, not on the porch anymore. I'm outside of it and I'm hanging on the one rung of the scaffolding and the crews right above me. Nobody does anything. I'm hanging there.

They're all freaking out. If I let go, I'm dead. And so they run down, they grab me, and it takes like two or three minutes. They're holding me there to let go of my feet from the car. I had to take the rigging off of the car. And I finally got pulled back onto the scaffolding and never did that.

Jeffrey Meek (54:29.976)

So this was one of the reasons why I'm not so good at it with heights anymore. It was so weird. It's so weird.

Jeremy Lesniak (54:37.966)

I would imagine you don't take a lot of zipline tours.

Jeffrey Meek (54:41.198)

I've already done my zip line stint, but I

Jeremy Lesniak (54:43.582)

That's all I could think of when you were setting that up was I've been on some ziplines that I thought were going to go in that direction.

Jeffrey Meek (54:51.086)

But I just, you know, anything can happen, you know, they say, okay, I'm going to drive this and you know.

Things can happen in a hurry, And it happens. Murphy is going to show up. The whole thing about Murphy's Law, it's going to show up. So you've got to be really, really protective about how you're setting up a gag. But there's so much of it anymore. It's amazing that more people don't get hurt. Or I think people do get hurt, but they keep it under wraps for the most part. They don't want that to be the main story of the movie.

But

Jeremy Lesniak (55:33.576)

My understanding is the insurance. You the bond on the movie is that, you know, there's a lot of stunt injury that just kind of gets pushed to the side.

Jeffrey Meek (55:35.491)

Yeah.

Jeffrey Meek (55:42.252)

Yeah, Yeah, well, the Bond Company ended up taking over, I think, the movie Winter People, because we were up in the mountains and it was so cold that the roads froze over, so we lost like 29 cars. And so they're all rentals. It was a rectum. They just couldn't stay on the road. And so the Bond Company took over the picture because they were just going, how do you you guys all drunk? And it was a dry state. There was no booze at all on the mountain. It was just that it was so bloody cold.

that we couldn't keep the cars on the road. Couldn't keep the trucks and the cars on the road. It was really wild. That was a wild shoot. That's why that movie, The Revenant, know, wow. I know the logistics of that was insane, just like we were doing with Winter People. It was insane. You know, you're dealing with real weather. You know, that's hard on the crew, hard on the cast.

Yeah. So anyway, it's getting to the martial arts part of it is, is that again, I think it saved me in a lot of ways, you know, just being a martial artist. I got saved in so many situations, you know, just being prepared for the worst. You know, so

Jeremy Lesniak (56:58.75)

Some of that sounds like the worst.

Jeffrey Meek (57:01.666)

Yeah, I'm like, you know, I think I've got, you know, I got, you know, nine lives kind of a thing going on with, yeah, it's felt like I was, what's that movie where,

Jeremy Lesniak (57:07.518)

You must.

Jeffrey Meek (57:14.67)

it's the turn. It's I don't know where everybody thinks they're going to die and it's their time is up. so death keeps following them. Never mind.

Jeremy Lesniak (57:23.856)

yeah, final destination. Yeah.

Jeffrey Meek (57:30.956)

That's it. Very good. Very good. Yeah, I sort of felt like that for a while. So.

Jeremy Lesniak (57:36.094)

I believe it. So here's my question for you before we kind of wrap because the roles that you've taken are always fun, but I imagine that there are roles that you didn't take, didn't get, got to the 11th hour, five auditions and they went elsewhere. Anything else that our audience, along the martial arts,

Jeffrey Meek (57:55.64)

Yeah.

Jeffrey Meek (57:59.01)

Yeah, Batman. Batman, I was in the first Batman. I tested for it, met with Burton, everything. I came over the dark night and he was just going, I don't know what that is. So he went with Michael Keaton, who is a Michael Keaton comedian, you know, it's a totally different kind of character. But then eventually Chris Nolan took it to the place where I, that's where I liked it. I thought that, well, that's where I thought what Batman was. mean, anybody who puts on a costume and goes and chases the bad guys and has a...

Jeremy Lesniak (58:15.016)

Yeah.

Jeremy Lesniak (58:21.352)

Those are my favorite ones.

Jeffrey Meek (58:28.694)

alternative, you know, he's got a, he's so duplicitous. It's sort of like Raiden in Shao Kahn. You know, he's Bruce Wayne, suave, Devin Eyre, you know, but then he becomes this, he's the scourge. I mean, that's how I portrayed it. And so I got close to that. I got close to Dracula with Francis Cope Coppola. remember auditioning with Gary Oldman. We were testing for that picture.

Jeremy Lesniak (58:32.296)

Yeah. Right.

Jeremy Lesniak (58:50.334)

Hmm.

Jeffrey Meek (58:56.654)

And Jim Morrison in the Doors movie. Because I sing too. so I went in and I told, know, he, you know, I like the, I really do like the director very much. He was good to me, you know, but he,

When I first went into the office with the director, he looked down at my photo and he was reading my resume and stuff, he wouldn't look at me. And I was playing Jim, you know, was in the room with him. And so he said, well, your manager and your agent seems to think that you're the second coming of Jim Morrison. What makes you think you can play this part? And I went.

makes you think you can direct it and I was playing gym, you know So he finally looked up and he went alright, okay Alright, and then can you sing and so then I sang a couple of tunes for him anything So anyway, and so I came back, know quite a few times and Then he called me in one day and he said, you know, I'm I'm gonna go with Val and I went I said but I want you to play Ray Manzarek and I went I can't

Jeffrey Meek (01:00:27.31)

I was an idiot. You know, I should have played Ray Manzarek. I should have been in the picture. But I ended up doing the Doors musical after that with the Doors. so Ray Manzarek was in the band and he produced it and everything. And so it was awesome. So I got to play a rock star for like six months. It was fantastic. And so it kind of came full circle for me, too, because after I didn't get the part, I went to do the show in France. so Jim Morrison is.

Jeremy Lesniak (01:00:38.398)

trip how's that

Jeffrey Meek (01:00:53.986)

buried at Pierre Le Chase in Paris. And so I went to his grave and I had a drink and a smoke there with him. Sorry, man, I really wanted to be you. I really wanted to play you and honor you and all this stuff, man. And so I came back and then I ended up auditioning for the musical. got the musical. ended up doing that with the doors. And when I was younger, too, I ended up playing in a band with John Densmore. So I played with all of them. It was really quite wild. I, yeah, I've gotten close to so many.

You know, it's funny though, when you're in the business and you've been there for a long time, it really comes down to like four or five actors, you know, because you're sort of in a niche, you know, you're either an A player or a B player, C player, but those A B players are constantly, you know, vying for, you know, the role. And sometimes you get lucky, sometimes you don't, maybe you're the right size, the right coloring, whatever the case may be.

Jeremy Lesniak (01:01:51.262)

You click with whoever you're reading with. click with whoever's making the choice at the table.

Jeffrey Meek (01:01:53.708)

That's it. Yeah, you know when I auditioned for the first movie of Mortal Kombat I auditioned for Johnny Cage and I read with Cameron Diaz. She was yeah, she was good gonna play the the female. I yeah, yeah And she didn't get it I didn't get it but Larry Kasanoff was in on that and I think that that from that led to me doing the television series later on So yeah

Jeremy Lesniak (01:02:06.002)

No way.

Peace, Sonja. Yeah.

Jeremy Lesniak (01:02:19.038)

Hmm.

Jeffrey Meek (01:02:22.272)

It's funny how the industry is, is that, you know, how close you're either, you know, it's feast or famine, right? It's either you're, it's sort of like golf, you know, either you're winning or you're losing.

Jeremy Lesniak (01:02:31.198)

Hmm.

Jeremy Lesniak (01:02:37.13)

Here's this, right. My favorite little bit of moral combat trivia is that when the game was created, Johnny Cage was intended to be Van Damme. That's who they were thinking of. So you get all the noises and everything. And you look at it in hindsight and you go, oh, it makes complete sense.

Jeffrey Meek (01:02:53.666)

Makes sense.

Jeffrey Meek (01:02:58.24)

Yeah, yeah, wow, he's a big star, you know, I mean that right foot is pretty amazing You know, so yeah I yeah that was fun. I know I auditioned a couple of times for that but Yeah, and

Jeremy Lesniak (01:03:15.806)

Are you still auditioning? Are you still going?

Jeffrey Meek (01:03:18.926)

I'm directing and writing more. I'm a screenwriter as well. so I co-wrote the Bobby Darin story with Kevin Spacey, which is a whole other story. I mean, it's really kind of wild story. But I co-wrote that and I've written like 25, 30 scripts. I have them in studio. I'm working with some other filmmakers and we're putting some stuff together. But I'm directing primarily now.

Jeremy Lesniak (01:03:27.579)

cool.

Jeremy Lesniak (01:03:36.936)

honest.

Jeffrey Meek (01:03:47.202)

I'm directing a play here in San Diego. Probably in September, we're putting together the cast for that. And I've got a pilot that I wrote with a friend of mine, and we're trying to get that off the ground. it's, yeah, so I'm mostly behind the scenes these days. But the last thing that I did was I was doing a play. did a play here in San Diego called The Humans.

which is a wonderful play that I saw on Broadway and I really wanted to do the part. So I got a chance to do that. But yeah, I've been primarily working more as a coach and as a writer director than I have as an actor recently. But I haven't stopped acting. I just have been focused on other things right now. But yeah, I love directing. I directed a pilot a couple of years ago that I'm trying to

Jeremy Lesniak (01:04:20.446)

Real nice.

Jeffrey Meek (01:04:44.258)

figure out what to do with right now. didn't, I shot half of it. I still don't want to shoot the other half, but we have to raise some money and you know, I don't know if I could even get my cast back together again. So yeah, it's an interesting journey, you know, having a good time, but you can go to my, you know, studio and see what we're doing. Yeah, it's the, it's a Jeffrey Meek studio. can look at jeffreymeek.net. You can see where the, we're doing some stuff and

Jeremy Lesniak (01:05:01.81)

Yeah, please. should people go? Websites and all that.

Jeffrey Meek (01:05:14.726)

And yeah, so I'm primarily just working more as a writer now. I I wrote a movie about a woman who just she's figured out a cure for diabetes and her journey. And she's from old Yugoslavia when it was in the Soviet hands. And now it's, I think, New Macedonia, North Macedonia. Yeah.

But yeah, so I've been making my living doing that more than anything. So love it. I, know, yeah, still training.

Jeremy Lesniak (01:05:54.568)

Right. I don't think we've had, you know, we've had some, certainly had actors who shifted into directing, but I don't think we've had anyone that's been, I'm gonna call it well-rounded with all the writing, all the directing, the acting, the stunt work. You know, that's, it strikes me as an old approach to Hollywood.

Jeffrey Meek (01:06:22.402)

Hmm. Well, I'm old.

Jeremy Lesniak (01:06:22.418)

versus the newer, more specialized.

Jeremy Lesniak (01:06:27.646)

But when I look at something in the same way that I look at martial arts, I've never been an advocate for, I'm just gonna be this part of martial arts. I want all of it. It doesn't mean I'm gonna be exceptional at all of it or even really good at all of it, but I think all of it, and let's see if my comparison seems to hold here, the better I get at any one of it, the better the rest of it gets.

Jeffrey Meek (01:06:41.826)

Yeah, me too. That's right.

Jeffrey Meek (01:06:54.766)

Yeah, yeah. It all came around organically this way, too. First of all, I wanted to be an actor because I didn't know what I wanted to do. I wanted to be a fireman, and I wanted to be a soldier, and I wanted to be a doctor, and I wanted to be a lawyer, and I wanted to be a sports figure. So I thought acting, at least I can dabble in all of them. So if you're lucky. And so I got lucky. It was that.

Jeremy Lesniak (01:06:58.046)

Hmm.

Jeffrey Meek (01:07:21.9)

The writing led from acting. was doing a play with an actor friend of mine. I said, what are you doing in between gigs? So we got together and we started writing together. Jack Nicholson says, you he says the reason he's a good actor is because he's a good writer. You know, you got to know how to tell the story. And so when I was doing my television series, too, you're working in new material all the time. And so I had input.

Jeremy Lesniak (01:07:39.24)

Hmm.

Jeffrey Meek (01:07:49.592)

to this after a while, you know, start adding stuff or you try to figure out, you know, the writer would write something very quickly and so it might not be coming out of your mouth naturally. So you try to figure out how to shape the dialogue so it actually becomes more natural. And so there was that and, you know, I've done a lot of theater and, you know, it just adds up after a while. And so, you know, I thought, well, let's write in between gigs. And so we got successful.

With that, we wrote something that got some heat. It didn't get made, but it ended up being tossed around in Hollywood for a while. And so we went, well, maybe we can do this. And so I started writing on my own after that. And then the directing part of it is I started directing when I was doing the film with Chris Christopherson, I did all the B camera stuff. Chris was doing something with Marissa Berenson.

And so I had like two or three weeks off. And so I told the director, said, why don't you just give me a B unit and I'll go out and I'll do a bunch of really beautiful stuff and do a sequence. And so I started doing B camera stuff and I started, you know, helping out with that when I was doing my series. And so it kind of happened organically over the years, you know, it was why not write? Why not direct? Why not act and direct and write and produce and, and

you do different kinds of martial arts. I love Taekwondo, but I also love Wing Chung, and I also love Aikido and Jiu Jitsu and kickboxing and boxing and wrestling. And I think they're all so spectacular. why not have variety as a spice of life? So I've always felt that I wanted to partake in.

I'm just interested in life too. think that helps a little bit, you know?

Jeremy Lesniak (01:09:47.346)

I think that's a great way to sum up what I'm hearing is you're open. There's more. Let me try it. Let me do it. Let me learn from it, experiment with it.

Jeffrey Meek (01:09:57.538)

Yeah, and not be afraid to fall on your keister. You you're going to fail. You know, I think that you're going to get confident in anything. You got to be willing to fail at it. And so it's your relationship to failure that makes you really good at something. You you want self-confidence? Well, how do you get self-confident? Well, you got to try it and fail at it over and over and over again until you get it effective and good.

And then that's what virtuosity is, is that you got to have a work ethic of practice and practice and practice and practice. And I don't, you know, I think in this day and age too, it's hard to do that because everything is sort of a soundbite anymore. And it's hard to really kind of compress your ideas and to really know how to practice in a way that is deliberate. You got to know how to deliberately practice. And that means physically deliberately practice because you have to put it in a shorter period of time maybe to

and know how to focus on your practice if you're studying for something or you really want to do a part and how to get really good at that quickly. How do you train for a particular? I always felt that when I was doing the martial arts and films, it's really just a scene. So the acting helped me with my martial arts and my martial arts helped me with my acting. So.

knowing how to deliberately practice and having a duration of failure. How do I keep going after this even though I feel like I can't do it? Well, use the analogy of juggling. Do know how to juggle?

Jeremy Lesniak (01:11:37.821)

start with one.

Jeffrey Meek (01:11:38.926)

start with one, then you start with two and toss it to hand to hand. Then you throw in the third one, you're going to drop it a lot. But instead of going, oh shit, why don't you say, aha, I know what I did. The arc wasn't right. The timing wasn't right. I was thinking of something else, whatever the case may be. But that's how you can, then you throw in the fourth ball. But acting and martial arts and every, all of that stuff is for me, it's how do I spin and

You how many how many balls can you keep in the air? How many plates can you spin? But that's duration of focus, you know, it's it's really a question of how that you go about learning something and Really teaching yourself to be good at something that you're not good at a Lot of people I think give up, you know If they feel like they're fail out at the first time It's like, know, you ride a bike you fall down on the bike. Do you get it? Do you just

the bike away and never get on it again? I don't know, man. And again, with martial arts too, is that you can get in trouble with that too. What if you get in a competition? Some of these fighters, it's amazing. You can lose the fight, get beat up, get knocked out. Are you done?

I think the greatest ones, they get up. That sense of resilience in the work too. It's work ethic. My dad and mom, I think, they were just that way. They came out of the depression and they didn't know any other way to do it but just really work hard. And I'm not quite sure that, I think it's kind of a, I don't know. I see people that...

really are successful. think they're just really hard workers too. And grindy. It doesn't mean they're any better than anybody else. It just means they're grindy. They have grit. It's a lost term. Grit, man. Right?

Jeremy Lesniak (01:13:42.12)

people want it instant and none of it, if it's going to last, it's not instant.

Jeffrey Meek (01:13:47.084)

Right. And the joie de vivre of being alive and that you've got something to look forward to, you know, learning to do something and getting better at it, getting stronger, being able to suffer through the failure so that you can actually be good at it. That's that's a muscle. You know, you got to really develop that. I think it's a skill, though. I don't think it's a talent. I think you can learn to do that. You can train your. Yeah, you can really train yourself to be.

Jeremy Lesniak (01:14:11.71)

I would agree.

Jeffrey Meek (01:14:16.11)

that kind of a grinder. But you gotta be okay with not being okay. Being comfortable with being uncomfortable.

That's how, right? Isn't it? It's just, it's so true though. Is that, you know, I don't like going to the gym and working out. I like having gone to the gym and worked out. Yeah. So, and I think that's what it is too with a new skill. You know, there's a skill in writing. There's a skill in directing. There's a skill in acting. There's a skill in martial arts and each one of the disciplines. There's a skill in how you go about

Jeremy Lesniak (01:14:29.038)

One of my favorite things to say.

Jeffrey Meek (01:14:57.74)

doing anything, I think. I think what it boils down to is that I also wanted to live artfully. You know, it's that my life ended up becoming the project. And I failed at this many times. So it's, but I keep thinking that what gets me out of bed most of the time is that I'm just going to try to live artfully today. Try to be the best version of myself today.

I usually don't make it, you know, but I think that's the effort. That's the fun of it. Is it how can it be efficient and effective? These are all good questions, I think, rather than, God, I got to do the dishes today. Yeah, so it's a living artfully, I think is really the key for me. it's.

It's not easy to do, especially when you have so much loss in the world and we're all in this existential trip of death and destruction. It's a hard thing to keep buoyant. But I think it's the trip, you know? So I think that's why it's been kind of a progressive thing. And over the years, after a while, if you do something for 10,000 hours and you do it, try to do it well, you're going to get pretty damn good at it, regardless of your talent.

You know, I know a lot of talented people don't work much, but I know a lot of skilled people that work all the time. have a little modicum of talent that they've actually crystallized. You know what I mean? Is that those are the people that get things done. And, yeah, it was great, a great lesson to, to have that when I was growing up with my pop and my, mom too. I've got good folks that helps too.