Speaker 1: I am all in. Oh, let's kiss you. I am
Speaker 1: all in with Scott Patterson and I Heart Radio podcast.
Speaker 1: Hey everybody, Scott Patterson, I am all in podcast Miniso
Speaker 1: here one on one interview. Uh. I Heart Radios one
Speaker 1: of theven productions. And we have Brandon Barash, who appeared
Speaker 1: in uh Those Lazy, Hazy Crazy Days, episode one, season three,
Speaker 1: that's when we first seem last time we seems as
Speaker 1: Jamie in season four, episode twelve, Family Matter. Welcome to
Speaker 1: the show, Brandon, How are you doing? Heyy, good to
Speaker 1: see you, guys. Good to see you, Brandon, So thanks
Speaker 1: for coming on. Of course, thanks for Yeah. Man, you
Speaker 1: played the role of Jamie when Gilmore Grows for three
Speaker 1: episodes two thousand to two thousand four, student at Princeton,
Speaker 1: Paris's very first boyfriend. Um, you were also So that
Speaker 1: was the first time. Last time we saw you was
Speaker 1: season four, episode twelve A Family Matter. So we have
Speaker 1: that to look forward to from St. Louis. Uh. You
Speaker 1: lived in Missouri, Texas, California. Family business is Oh my goodness,
Speaker 1: really wow? Damn? What else do you know about? Look
Speaker 1: at this guy? Wow? We need to talk. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: know all about that company. Cisco. Yeah, I do. How
Speaker 1: do you know about Cisco because I have a coffee company.
Speaker 1: We're trying to get in, yes, and we know that
Speaker 1: we know there the beverage, the beverage portion of that
Speaker 1: businesses is quite large. In the coffee slice of the
Speaker 1: beverage business is something I wanted to try to get
Speaker 1: a piece of, but it's very difficult to get a meeting.
Speaker 1: So you went to USC you got a degree. Wow,
Speaker 1: you're on the West Wing Criminal Minds, and you've been
Speaker 1: on General Hospital two thousand seventeen and two thousand sixteen,
Speaker 1: and since two thousand nineteen you've been on Days of
Speaker 1: Our Lives. You're working your butt off. You play Jake Demera.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about the first time you got the role,
Speaker 1: and uh, tell us how you got the part? All right?
Speaker 1: So I was, I was fresh out of college, all right.
Speaker 1: I had gotten to use a douche industry term, hip
Speaker 1: pocketed by an agency from our senior showcase, which for
Speaker 1: non industry people basically means they'll kind of see something
Speaker 1: in you, but they don't like you enough to say, yes,
Speaker 1: we're gonna sign you and you're gonna take up space
Speaker 1: on our roster. Hey, Brad, Brad Pitt was hip pocketed.
Speaker 1: There you go, And so I would get pocketed by
Speaker 1: this agency. And one of the first auditions they sent
Speaker 1: me out on it was Gilmore Girls. I was working
Speaker 1: at Nordstrom selling clothing at the time, and drove to
Speaker 1: Warner Brothers on my lunch break, drove back, found out
Speaker 1: when I got back, I got a call back. Cool,
Speaker 1: So the callback was scheduled for a day when I
Speaker 1: was supposed to be in Manhattan Beach on like a
Speaker 1: staycation hero. Right. This was before smartphones. Okay, this is
Speaker 1: when we still had to take out the Thomas Guide
Speaker 1: right and page L four and then continue to page
Speaker 1: like a six point three. And we didn't have ways.
Speaker 1: The point is, so I couldn't gauge how much traffic
Speaker 1: there was going to be from Manhattan Beach to Warner Brothers.
Speaker 1: I miscalculated, uh really really badly, not in my favor.
Speaker 1: And it was about an hour late to my audition.
Speaker 1: All right. Called my manager on the way. I said,
Speaker 1: I'm would be an hour late. Should I just turn around?
Speaker 1: He's like, no, I just go. I walked in the
Speaker 1: room and I just started making fun of myself about
Speaker 1: how late I was because it was the only thing
Speaker 1: I could think I could do, and made some really
Speaker 1: terrible jokes in the process, and uh walked out of
Speaker 1: the audition not knowing what the hell had just happened,
Speaker 1: and was driving home and found out I booked the
Speaker 1: part and it was, Yeah, it was. It was the
Speaker 1: coolest feeling ever because I don't know my sad card right,
Speaker 1: So they, you know, taft Hart lead me in and
Speaker 1: and it was it's a big set, uh, And I thought, great,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go quit my job now because it's only
Speaker 1: up and up from here. And cut to five years later,
Speaker 1: I was still working in retail, but five years later
Speaker 1: I was able to finally quit my day jobs. Oh good. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So what do you remember about your first Dawn set?
Speaker 1: I was freaked out, as as is evident by my
Speaker 1: brilliant acting um in that first episode in any I mean,
Speaker 1: I was my acting chops were not up for the
Speaker 1: television when I did go more girls. But that's okay,
Speaker 1: So I didn't notice anything. You did a fine job.
Speaker 1: What are you talking about anyway? You're too kinds, You're
Speaker 1: two kinds. You you you you filled the role perfectly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was just I couldn't get out of my head though.
Speaker 1: You know, as young actors, like the biggest hurdle that
Speaker 1: we have is to just tell that voice to shut
Speaker 1: the hell up, right, you know, the voice is like,
Speaker 1: how's this going? Are they? Like? Am I making senses?
Speaker 1: I don't even know what my scene partner just said,
Speaker 1: but I'm gonna say in my line. It was just
Speaker 1: I was so in my head on all the episodes.
Speaker 1: So you only have you only have one voice, not voices. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm only telling you about the ones I got you yet,
Speaker 1: So yeah, so anyway, no, I mean I was I
Speaker 1: didn't know, you know, my ass from my elbow on
Speaker 1: a set at usc which is where I went. I
Speaker 1: got my degree in theater, and I could have moved
Speaker 1: to New York the day after graduation and established myself
Speaker 1: as a really great theater actor. They only and I
Speaker 1: think the curriculum has changed since, but they only gave
Speaker 1: us I think two classes um auditioning for the camera
Speaker 1: and acting for the camera. And they were just kind
Speaker 1: of thrown in at the end of our curriculum. So,
Speaker 1: you know, hitting a mark, we not not once we
Speaker 1: were heard sitting a market. So it was just all
Speaker 1: this new information swirling around in my head. I was
Speaker 1: a nervous wreck. But I guess I made it work.
Speaker 1: You did, you know? Yeah? You you blended in perfectly.
Speaker 1: I mean it was all a good buddy um. Anyway,
Speaker 1: so you had what we all described a perfect Princeton
Speaker 1: preppy vibe going, uh, tell us, tell us what you
Speaker 1: remember about that character. I remember in you know, throughout
Speaker 1: the audition process, the note I kept getting was young
Speaker 1: Bill Clinton, think young phil It okay. And this is
Speaker 1: of course after the getting on the whole thing. I
Speaker 1: was like, well, which which part about Bill Clinton's life
Speaker 1: in my emulating year? Just to be clear, be careful,
Speaker 1: should I take a cigar into the mission room or
Speaker 1: and so you know, the notes I kept getting were
Speaker 1: think young Bill Clinton and speak faster, okay. And so
Speaker 1: it was, you know, just trying to negotiate again all
Speaker 1: of those things that the cameras, the lights, the booms,
Speaker 1: the you know, the the mind splitting silence of a
Speaker 1: TV set or a movie set, right, and so it
Speaker 1: was just, yeah, young Bill Clinton is what I keep
Speaker 1: remembering from that whole process. Yeah, that's very interesting, very interesting.
Speaker 1: Um so paris uh fell for Jamie at first. Uh,
Speaker 1: pretty hard, you know, pretty hard. She was her first point.
Speaker 1: What do you think about the character of Paris. I, well,
Speaker 1: I'm Eliza was great. I'm sure she still was great.
Speaker 1: Um speaking about her like she's not here anymore. But yeah,
Speaker 1: she was great to work with. Uh, she was. Paris
Speaker 1: was intense and uh I think you know, I think
Speaker 1: Jamie enjoyed that. It was it was a different Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, he wasn't used to that. You know, he
Speaker 1: was kind of a slower speed kind of guy. But
Speaker 1: he was just along for the ride until we all
Speaker 1: know he wasn't we all know what happened there? Um?
Speaker 1: Would you have liked to see that relationship continue on
Speaker 1: through the series? My career would have loved that. Look,
Speaker 1: I'm not I'm not an happy worrying might now I'm
Speaker 1: very happy, but back then, yeah, yeah, I was bummed
Speaker 1: out for sure when when I found out that she
Speaker 1: had left Jamie for an older man and Jamie's time
Speaker 1: and was it stars hollow? Is that right? Was it
Speaker 1: was over? So you were born into the Cisco food business. Um,
Speaker 1: did you did? Did your parents support you when you
Speaker 1: were announced you were going into acting or did your
Speaker 1: dad wants you to come in uh to that business
Speaker 1: so he could teach you that business. Was there any
Speaker 1: pressure there? What was the reaction like when he said
Speaker 1: I'm going I want to go to USC and get
Speaker 1: a theater degree. It was well, I mean, look, the
Speaker 1: food business was was a very important part of my
Speaker 1: family's history. They immigrated here from Ukraine, actually a town
Speaker 1: called She told me, um, you know back hundred sixteen
Speaker 1: years ago when they were doing the same thing they're
Speaker 1: doing now, except they were singling out juice. And so
Speaker 1: they came here and they started. My great grandfather started
Speaker 1: a fruit stand, and the fruit stand, this is a
Speaker 1: long story short turned into the biggest seafood purveyor in
Speaker 1: the Midwest. He didn't make the best decisions, you know.
Speaker 1: At that point my dad was working with the company
Speaker 1: as well. The company went under. So then my dad
Speaker 1: got offered a great job from H. B. Cisco Cisco
Speaker 1: Foods out in Los Angeles when I was I think
Speaker 1: three years old, so that's when we moved out here.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I come from a very kind of corporate family. Conservative,
Speaker 1: not in like the political sense me no conservative now,
Speaker 1: but conservative and that you know, you should be a doctor,
Speaker 1: lawyer or do something corporate. And so when I got
Speaker 1: accepted by USC into their b f A program which
Speaker 1: only accepts ten to twenty students a year, and my
Speaker 1: dad said, well, you'd be silly not to not to
Speaker 1: take that UM. And at the time I wanted to
Speaker 1: do Uh, I was really torn because my whole m
Speaker 1: you know, young life, I'd wanted to be a doctor.
Speaker 1: I wanted to be a cardiaco with the pedic search.
Speaker 1: That was like, that was my jam. Science was my jam.
Speaker 1: The human body, you know, I just I couldn't get
Speaker 1: enough of it. I still can't. But two years, about
Speaker 1: a year and a half into college, I was, you know,
Speaker 1: taking twenty two units a semester. I was in classroom
Speaker 1: eight in the morning to ten at night between classes
Speaker 1: and theater rehearsals. And finally, halfway through my sophomore year,
Speaker 1: I thought, Okay, I'm doing fine at both of these things,
Speaker 1: but I'm not. I'm not excelling it one. And if
Speaker 1: I'm honest with myself, me, you know, going through the
Speaker 1: premed motions is now more about what my family wants
Speaker 1: me to do rather than what I want to do.
Speaker 1: And once I came to terms with that and was
Speaker 1: able to say, all right, I'm gonna, you know, put
Speaker 1: all the proverbial eggs in one basket and go for
Speaker 1: the acting. I called my dad and I was terrified,
Speaker 1: and he was. He couldn't have been more supple. It
Speaker 1: was awesome. It was it was a game changer. It
Speaker 1: sounds like it sounds like a great man, great guy.
Speaker 1: He wasn't. Maybe we all have fathers like that. Um right,
Speaker 1: my god, um well, it certainly seems like you made
Speaker 1: the right choice. You're making a lot of people happy
Speaker 1: in your career. Um. Do you still get nervous? And
Speaker 1: this is from me, do you still get nervous going
Speaker 1: to auditions? Absolutely? I get you know. I think I
Speaker 1: think nerves are healthy. I think the day, as performers,
Speaker 1: the day we stop getting nervous is the day we
Speaker 1: should start finding something else to do. I think a
Speaker 1: healthy dose of nerves, as long as you know how
Speaker 1: to harness them. I think it's good for any performer.
Speaker 1: I really do, any artist. It's uh, yeah, I get
Speaker 1: nervous going to auditions. I get nervous, you know. I
Speaker 1: mean I've probably filmed I don't know, between well, episodes
Speaker 1: of daytime television, and I still get nervous before I
Speaker 1: go on, and it's part of my ritual. I enjoy
Speaker 1: the nerves I I you know, it's more of like
Speaker 1: a surge of adrenaline now whereas before. And I'm sure
Speaker 1: you can relate to this. Any you know actor can
Speaker 1: harken back to their younger days and find a time
Speaker 1: where their nerves ruled then, right, And it's a real
Speaker 1: paradigm shift happens when you realize you're in control of that.
Speaker 1: That makes sense, Yeah, Yeah, for me, it was just
Speaker 1: all about the level of preparation to write to control
Speaker 1: the nerves. Yeah, because if you're prepared, you know that
Speaker 1: you're ready for anything that happens in that room or
Speaker 1: on that set, and you can be loose and you
Speaker 1: can play a Preparation is huge, Um, because there's really
Speaker 1: two schools, right, it's like not really knowing. I mean,
Speaker 1: you hear the stories of Brando and Jack Nicholson. They
Speaker 1: don't want to know. They don't want to repeat their lines,
Speaker 1: they don't want to rehearse. James con never wanted to rehearse.
Speaker 1: I did a film with him, he did. He didn't
Speaker 1: want to rehearse. He knew his stuff. He looked at it.
Speaker 1: Once he knew it, let's just do it list I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't want to make it stale, and we need
Speaker 1: to keep it fresh. And so there's but unfortunately, when
Speaker 1: you work in television, you're in these very tight schedules,
Speaker 1: and yeah, you gotta know your stuff called especially in
Speaker 1: soap operas. For God's sake, you guys are covering. You
Speaker 1: guys are doing how many pages a day we do
Speaker 1: on average? When I walk in the building, I'll do
Speaker 1: anywhere between usually between fifteen and thirty pages. It's crazy,
Speaker 1: that's crazy, and it's nuts, man, But it's it's such
Speaker 1: a great lesson in preparation, like we're saying, and commitment.
Speaker 1: You know, you have to walk if you want to
Speaker 1: do good work, and doing good work is important to you,
Speaker 1: and being a good scene partner is important to you,
Speaker 1: then you have to walk into that building knowing you're lines,
Speaker 1: knowing your intention, you know, knowing all that right, like
Speaker 1: having broken down the script and knowing the circumstances your
Speaker 1: characters walking into because when you you know, at one
Speaker 1: o'clock whenever these shows are on, when you turn on
Speaker 1: a daytime television show, you're not seeing a fleshed out product.
Speaker 1: You're just not because there's not time for that. You're
Speaker 1: seeing a rehearsal. You're seeing, you know what You and
Speaker 1: I on Gilmer Girls or any other prime time show
Speaker 1: would spend thirty forty minutes doing while we're blocking, while
Speaker 1: they're calling in you know everybody too, you know the
Speaker 1: grips and props and everybody to watch while they're lighting.
Speaker 1: That's you're watching the first one of those on daytime.
Speaker 1: And so it, yeah, it takes a lot, It takes
Speaker 1: a lot of discipline commitments. So do you have a
Speaker 1: system that was learned memorizing your lines? You do? How
Speaker 1: do you do? How do you It's evolved, it's evolved
Speaker 1: over time. I used to, and you're gonna think I'm
Speaker 1: a nut. I used to take yellow legal pads and
Speaker 1: write every scene, every single not every scene in the script,
Speaker 1: but every scene that I was in. So if I
Speaker 1: had twelve scenes that day, thirty six pages, I would
Speaker 1: sit and write out, you know, the scene from beginning
Speaker 1: to end, including stage directions. And that helped me get
Speaker 1: into the character's said, to help me get into the
Speaker 1: writer's and the directors, so that by the time I
Speaker 1: had to break the script down and actually memorize the
Speaker 1: lines they were memorized because you know, pen to pen
Speaker 1: to mind for me, happens to work. That's your theater training.
Speaker 1: It is, it is and so but then you know
Speaker 1: there were nights it was taken me four hours. Script
Speaker 1: can't do it, and you and I can't do like
Speaker 1: you can can't do that and so and so. You
Speaker 1: can do it if you're in a play. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: you know you have the you have have the time
Speaker 1: and rehearsal to do that. If you're gonna play. You
Speaker 1: can't do that on serious television's funny, no chance. So
Speaker 1: then now what I do. You know, I have my
Speaker 1: iPad and I have which totally I don't know how
Speaker 1: if you work from an iPad or you work from paper.
Speaker 1: I prefer paper. But again, doing the volume of scenes
Speaker 1: I do a day, the amount of paper I'm wasting,
Speaker 1: and you know, just ink and everything, and it's great
Speaker 1: to keep everything together on one device. I know, if
Speaker 1: I go to work and I have five scripts that
Speaker 1: I'm working on that week, they're all in this timy
Speaker 1: little device. So now it's you know, it's on the
Speaker 1: iPad and it's just this um I have a system
Speaker 1: that I go through. It's much more streamline. Now, well,
Speaker 1: we want to say big congrats on your engagement to Isabella.
Speaker 1: Thank you. Photo is that Devotov because one team is
Speaker 1: de Voto? Yeah? Uh uh, and we saw that adorable
Speaker 1: proposal on Instagram. How is the wedding planning coming along?
Speaker 1: It's going well. We found a date. We found the venue,
Speaker 1: which is like half the battle right, so uh, we're lucky.
Speaker 1: We found the venue that covers a lot of you know,
Speaker 1: the things that you'd have to normally go outside and rent.
Speaker 1: So h the hardest thing, man, is this guest list?
Speaker 1: It's right, be careful man. Yeah, people have the humans
Speaker 1: have the uncanny ability to make someone else's wedding one
Speaker 1: h about them. It's just it's really getting married. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: so fans loved, they really enjoyed that your daughter Harper
Speaker 1: was involved in the proposal. Did she help that? Did
Speaker 1: she help you use those nerves when you were popping
Speaker 1: the question hunt the please? She eases every every nerve
Speaker 1: in my body, that little girl. Yeah, oh yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: And it was just as much about her as it
Speaker 1: was my fiance. I mean, the reality is I would
Speaker 1: not be marrying Lisa without Harper. I mean she led
Speaker 1: me directly to her. Harper was in a Spanish Emergence
Speaker 1: summer camp one year, and he said, was one of
Speaker 1: her teachers. And that's how it happened. And you know,
Speaker 1: we got to know her very well, and she started
Speaker 1: spending time around us. And one day, Harper, when she
Speaker 1: was I think five, sits me down at the breakfast
Speaker 1: table and she said, Daddy, are you and Lisa friends?
Speaker 1: I said, yeah, nothing was going on, and I said yeah.
Speaker 1: She said, you guys should be together. I said, wait, what,
Speaker 1: how do you know what that even means? What? What? What?
Speaker 1: What do you mean be together? And she explains the
Speaker 1: concept of being together with somebody, being a partner with somebody.
Speaker 1: Where did you get this, bro, And and so she
Speaker 1: has been advocating for this relationship since before it happened.
Speaker 1: And then we waited a while. Once it did happen,
Speaker 1: we waited a while to tell her because dating as
Speaker 1: a single parent it's a minefield, man, And if you
Speaker 1: have your kids best intentions at heart, you're not going
Speaker 1: to introduce that kid to every person you did, because
Speaker 1: that would just I mean, come on. Yeah, So you know,
Speaker 1: we waited, god, almost a year I think, until we
Speaker 1: told her, until we knew that it was going in
Speaker 1: a serious direction. Then it became I knew it, And
Speaker 1: when is she going to become my step mom? Yeah?
Speaker 1: And so you know, and it's just it's great because
Speaker 1: we get along well with with my ex wife, Harper's mom,
Speaker 1: and it's you know, they're sure ups and downs, but
Speaker 1: it's um, yeah, Harbor, my daughter is fully on board
Speaker 1: and we wouldn't be here without her. So important, isn't it.
Speaker 1: It's so important, so important. Yeah, well, I'm really happy
Speaker 1: for you. That's great. So do you have a passion
Speaker 1: for music? M isn't that fantastic? What's the status of
Speaker 1: your band, pork Chuck. The status of my band pork
Speaker 1: Chuck is well, we couldn't perform at all during the
Speaker 1: pandemic at least. So what we did to kind of,
Speaker 1: you know, get rid of the bug was we broadcast
Speaker 1: a couple of shows from this great studio in Burbank,
Speaker 1: and I think we did that three are so times,
Speaker 1: which was a lot of fun. The hard thing with
Speaker 1: the guys in the band is that I'm on days. Uh.
Speaker 1: One guy is still in general hospital and to the
Speaker 1: other one lives in Nashville, and another one lives pretty
Speaker 1: far south of Los Angeles, an one within Sacramento. So
Speaker 1: it's very difficult for us to get our schedules SYNCD
Speaker 1: up to say, hey, we're gonna go on tour, you know,
Speaker 1: the third week of October, market out because it doesn't
Speaker 1: work for everybody. So we're trying to figure out a
Speaker 1: time when we can go out on the road, but
Speaker 1: we have full intentions of hopefully doing that. Sometimes do
Speaker 1: you have management and the whole thing? And yeah, we
Speaker 1: have booking you know, we have a booking manager. We
Speaker 1: don't have a band manager, but we do have a
Speaker 1: you know, a booking manager we worked very closely with
Speaker 1: and she books us, and you know, she's booked us
Speaker 1: anywhere from like you know, two fifty people person comedy
Speaker 1: clubs to like the Wilbert Theater in Boston and you know,
Speaker 1: all venues in between. And so yeah, I think what
Speaker 1: we'd like to play is, you know, a house that's
Speaker 1: really no bigger than like four because we know we
Speaker 1: can sell that out and and it's a party. We're
Speaker 1: a cover band and we just you know, we put
Speaker 1: our own twist on on classic songs and just have
Speaker 1: a party. Yeah, well that is fantastic. Are you ready
Speaker 1: for rapping fire? I'm gonna fire. I'm gonna I'm gonna
Speaker 1: fire questions at you haven't done this in a while
Speaker 1: with the guests, but I'm gonna fire all these questions
Speaker 1: that we gotta do. We gotta go through a quick
Speaker 1: That's why it's called rapid fire. Ready. Oh, that's that's
Speaker 1: the rapid part of it. This is the rapid apartment.
Speaker 1: You got that part? Okay? How many coups of coffee
Speaker 1: you having today? Zero? Are you a team Logan, Team Jess,
Speaker 1: Team Dean? Huh? Exactly? What is your favorite Gilmore girl's character?
Speaker 1: There you go? What would you order it? Luke Steiner?
Speaker 1: I would order a grilled cheese inside of talks? Would
Speaker 1: you rather go on a road trip with Taylor or Michelle? Both?
Speaker 1: Finish the lyric? Where you lead? I will follow dot
Speaker 1: dot dot take me to your leader. Jackson's vegetables are
Speaker 1: Suki's baked goods, sake goods every day the week and
Speaker 1: twice onthiing there you go. Would you rather listen to
Speaker 1: Drella's harp or the Trooperdour's cover? So songs, songs, children
Speaker 1: prep or Stars, Hollow high Man. There you go. It
Speaker 1: was a pleasure of Brandon. Um, thank you so much.
Speaker 1: Good luck with everything. I hope the band gets back
Speaker 1: together and starts touring. I know people love that. UM
Speaker 1: so much fun and uh, it was a pleasure talking
Speaker 1: to you, and uh, good luck with the wedding. Stay safe,
Speaker 1: all the best to you my friends. Likewise, all right,
Speaker 1: take care m hm hey everybody, and don't forget follow
Speaker 1: us on Instagram at I Am all In podcast and
Speaker 1: email us at Gilmore at I heart radio dot com.
Speaker 1: Oh you Gilmore fans. If you're looking for the best
Speaker 1: cup of coffee in the world, go to my website
Speaker 1: for my company scott ep dot com s C O
Speaker 1: T T y P dot com, scott ep dot com
Speaker 1: Grade one Specialty Coffee. Yeah.