SmartLess

Podbit · SmartLess

"Jon Bernthal"

Explore episode Jun 8, 2026
Arts
The Accidental Actor: How Jon Bernthal Stumbled Into Theater

"Jon Bernthal" · Jun 8, 2026 Arts

Bernthal signed up for an intro theater class thinking it was 600 kids watching movies in the back of a lecture hall. Instead it was 10 people who took it very seriously. When his turn came to share something meaningful, he had nothing — except his catcher's glove — and launched into a completely fabricated story about his mother giving it to him on her deathbed. His mom was alive and well in D.C. The whole class, including Bernthal, burst into tears. His teacher recognized something real in the chaos and changed his life forever.

3m 30s

Where this was said

Moscow 1999: The Wild West, Brutality, and the Reverence for Art

At 19:30 · chapter starts 17:30

Jason asks whether Bernthal would go back to Russia today, given the news. Bernthal says he'd love to but can't now. In 1999, Moscow was what everyone called the Wild West: shootings at the Duma, Chechen apartment building bombings, and a social landscape unlike anything he'd ever encountered. As a boxer who fancied himself street-smart, the physical danger didn't deter him. What arrested him was the contrast: real brutality on the streets, and on every corner a statue of a playwright or a poet. Acting was a revered, masculine pursuit. His teachers had been part of a generation that performed in subway tunnels and abandoned buildings when public gatherings were outlawed, risking prison for themselves and their audiences because theater was that vital to them — it was religious. Bernthal thinks he would not have responded the same way to American theater training. The Russian context cracked him open in the exact way he needed.

Arts
Russia Saved His Life: Theater as a Lifeline

"Jon Bernthal" · Jun 8, 2026 Arts

Bernthal's first theater teacher, after catching him fabricate that deathbed story, sent him to the Moscow Art Theatre as both a punishment and a revelation. His teachers there had performed illegal plays in subway tunnels and abandoned buildings during times when public gatherings were outlawed, risking prison for art they believed in religiously. That combination of danger, reverence, and masculine cultural respect for the arts hit Bernthal differently than anything America could have offered him at that age.

2m 5s
Arts
Russian theater was done in subway tunnels

"Jon Bernthal" · Jun 8, 2026

Bernthal's Russian teachers performed plays in subway tunnels and abandoned buildings during times when public gathering was outlawed, risking prison for themselves and audiences.

18:10 – 19:00
Arts
Fake deathbed story launched career

"Jon Bernthal" · Jun 8, 2026

Bernthal improvised a fictional story about his living mother giving him a baseball glove on her deathbed, moved the class to tears, and got discovered as an actor.

20:27 – 21:55

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