Speaker
Jon Bernthal
Appearances over time
1 episodes
Episodes
1
Podcasts
Quotes & moments
Jon Bernthal lived and studied theater in Russia from 1999 to 2001, a formative experience he credits with saving his life.
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.
Bernthal's first theater teacher, Alma Becker, later officiated his wedding, representing a lifelong bond that began with the punishment of an audition.
Bernthal says buses are coming from Staten Island to see the Broadway show, with many audience members attending the theater for the very first time in their lives.
Bernthal rode out with Baltimore SWAT teams every night for 3 straight months to research his role as Wayne Jenkins in We Own the City.
Bernthal made Tom Holland's Spider-Man audition tape while Holland made Bernthal's Punisher audition tape when they worked together in Ireland — Holland was 17 at the time.
Bernthal built a theater in a defunct school building in Ojai, with all proceeds going to the public school theater department.
Bernthal has three biological children aged 14, 12, and 10, plus a 4-year-old niece who has come to live with the family in recent years.
Bernthal describes his character Wayne Jenkins as considered the most corrupt, most vicious, and most vile police officer in the history of Baltimore.
When Bernthal was in Russia in 1999, there were shootings at the Duma (the Russian Senate) and Chechen apartment building bombings — conditions he describes as 'the Wild West.'
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.
Bernthal has been coaching football in his Ojai community for six years and also teaches kids to box.
The cast of Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey filmed for 8 months across 8 different countries; Bernthal was part of the group for a couple of months.
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.
Bernthal's best friends growing up were wild kids whose way of saying they loved each other was taking crazy risks together. When he found theater, he realized it demanded the exact same energy — reckless abandonment, the high-wire act, a willingness to throw everything away. The difference: acting channeled all of it toward joy and connection instead of jail. He didn't stop being that guy. He just found a use for him.
Dog Day Afternoon on Broadway isn't just a hit — it's doing something rarer: expanding who goes to the theater at all. Bernthal says people are coming backstage saying it's not just their first time on Broadway but their first time in a theater, period. Buses from Staten Island. That's the Russia effect in real time: theater should be vital and for everybody, not an exclusive thing for the gentry.
Bernthal knows adversity shaped everything good about him. He also knows it came razor-close to destroying him — and he's lost people who didn't make it through. So he teaches his kids to swim, to box, to survive the outdoors. He puts them in hard, challenging situations under a safe umbrella. And above all, he asks them: are you a protector? Are you sensitive? Are you curious about people who look and pray differently than you?
When Bernthal and a 17-year-old Tom Holland were filming together in Ireland, Holland made Bernthal's Punisher audition tape and Bernthal shot Holland's Spider-Man audition tape. Holland told Bernthal with total certainty: I am Spider-Man. Bernthal privately had his doubts about those odds mathematically. A decade later, they're in two movies together and Bernthal says he's never met a better person in the industry.
Bernthal has lived in Ojai, California for 15 years and watched the community shift as Angelenos moved in and the public school system suffered. His response: build a community theater in an old defunct school building and direct all proceeds to the public school theater department. He's also been coaching youth football there for six years and teaches boxing to kids. The goal is to be the kind of man his father was — someone every kid in the neighborhood could count on.
To play Wayne Jenkins in We Own the City, Bernthal rode out with Baltimore city and county SWAT teams every night for three straight months. He came in with David Simon's Wire credibility behind him — which turns out is literally required watching among Baltimore cops. What he discovered was that corrupt policing devastates not just communities and victims but also good cops, whose safety and careers are destroyed by it.
Bernthal knew he couldn't play Wayne Jenkins as a pure monster. He found his key when everyone who knew Jenkins told him the same thing: no matter what Jenkins was doing — robbing a drug dealer, making a false arrest — if one of his kids needed him, he would run home immediately. That contradiction, corruption coexisting with devoted fatherhood, was everything. The character isn't redeemed by it. But it makes him human.
The Walking Dead succeeded because every single actor was 100% committed to the premise — zombies are real and terrifying. If one person didn't believe it completely, Bernthal says, everything else falls apart instantly. That total commitment, not the zombies, was what kept audiences on the edge of their seats for years. He credits Frank Darabont for building that culture from day one.
When Bernthal arrived in Russia in 1999, there were shootings at the Duma and Chechen apartment building bombings happening in the city. He considered himself street-smart and a boxer, but nothing prepared him for a place with a completely different alphabet, language, and a jarring blend of brutality and profound reverence for the arts — statues of playwrights and poets on every corner.
Everyone warned Bernthal that Nolan's sets are brutally rigorous. He was delighted. What surprised him was that within Nolan's airtight structure and total vision, he still demanded real creative freedom from his actors — not just allowed it, demanded it. For Bernthal, needing it to be a certain way is the biggest telltale sign of mediocrity. Nolan, somehow, has maximum structure and maximum freedom simultaneously.
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.
Analysis
What they talk about
- Arts 33%
- Society & Culture 33%
- TV & Film 25%
- Education 9%
Connections
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