Previously Unpublished: An Interview with Adam Baldwin

As we continue trawling through my collection of interviews done during past TCA tours that I never managed to transcribe because I never had a paying outlet that was interested in them at the time I did them, we come to one I did with Adam Baldwin on January 10, 2014 at the Langham Hotel in Pasadena. I know all those specifics because I posted about them on Facebook at the time. (I also confirmed that I did this interview just prior to the one I did with Steven Weber, which also never ran at the time and, as such, was first published here back in November.)

As you might be able to tell from the accompanying photo, Baldwin was at the TCA tour to promote the debut of TNT’s The Last Ship, so that’s the topic that kicks off our conversation, of course, but from there we dipped into his back catalog to discuss My Bodyguard, Daybreak, Chuck, Firefly, D.C. Cab, Cohen and Tate, and Full Metal Jacket.

Give it a read, won’t you?

Oh, and obligatory reminder: on April 1st, first-run material like this will shift over to the paid-subscription version of this newsletter, so if you’re one of the folks who’s already decided to support me in this endeavor, I thank you, and if you haven’t made that decision yet, well, I hope you do, but if you don’t and/or can’t, it’s all good, I totally get it, and - God willing - I’ll still be doing interviews for other outlets that’ll result in me getting paid and you not having to pay anything to read them.

Plug concluded. Onward to the interview!

Regarding The Last Ship, were you actively looking for a full-time series gig, or was this something that just landed on your radar?

Adam Baldwin: No, I was looking, because Chuck finished, and it was time to pound the pavement again, and this one came up. TNT has a... It's not as much of the traditional pilot season that I'm used to, which usually takes place in February or March. It was earlier. So this one came up, I went in, and...what do you know?

It's not a bad team behind it.

No, they're great!

So tell me about your character, Commander Slattery.

He's Commander Chandler's conscience. The way the executive officer and the captain work together, and the chief, they are the... [Starts to laugh.] You know, it's a benevolent dictatorship, basically. You have to have order and chain of command, but you also have to have an inner circle of advisors, and that's what the second-in-command and the chief are able to provide for the captain. But ultimately it's the captain's decision. And with the societal breakdown that's taking place during this, Chandler needs a council, so that's basically my role: to keep him in line while still trying to figure out whether we're going to be getting back to home to see our families, hopefully to rescue them. Hopefully they're still alive. We don't know.

Did you have to do any sort of research before going into the series, or did you choose to do any research to prepare for the role?

Most of the research took place on ship when they invited us onto the U.S.S. Halsey and Dewey. We shot the pilot on the Halsey, and we've been shooting on the Dewey for the series. And talking to the captain himself on the different ships, and the executive officers and the chiefs and the ensigns and everybody has given me a sense of what it means to be aboard and do your job. Because they're not just naval fighters. They also have a regular job on the ship, whether it's the engineer or whatever. They're all fighters, but they have specific tasks that they can carry forward into the real world when they eventually get out. 

Being as you're filming on actual naval vessels, I guess there's no question about the authenticity of the show, at least as far as the military side of it goes. Was that something that was arranged well in advance? 

Oh, yeah. And we did get to go out on maneuvers last year for some second-unit shooting. They took us out over the horizon - there's a firing range offshore about sixty to a hundred miles out there - and we got to spend a couple of nights out there while they were doing that. So we saw life aboard ship. 

Was there a particular bit that was the most educational for you?

I'm glad they're on our side, let's put it that way. [Laughs.] The things I saw make you grateful and makes you appreciate the technology and the superiority that we actually have. It would take the enemy a long, long time to catch up. 

I wanted to ask you about a few other projects you've worked on. I did an interview with Martin Mull a few weeks back, and he had an impressive wealth of stories about Ruth Gordon from My Bodyguard. 

Oh, yeah? That's sweet.

Do you have any specific recollections about her?

She was one of the nicest, kindest, gentlest souls you'd ever meet, and she was very giving...and very forgiving of our youth. Because we were just these young kids ho didn't really know what we were doing, and here she is, one of the masters of the craft,  and for her to spend time with us the way she did and just be so giving just made you fall in love with her. The one thing she also did was, she sat in a straight-backed wooden chair for her posture. She would sit very upright and very proper and had great posture, and she didn't want one of those folding cast chairs. She wanted something sturdy. I'll always remember that about her. But she was just lovely. And Martin Mull was hilarious. He made me laugh, but he was also warm and welcoming to us. Because like I said, me and Matt Dillon and Chris Makepeace, we were just kids at the time, so to have these adults supervising our growth... [Laughs.] It was quite beneficial. I felt very blessed to have been invited in by Tony Bill and Don Devlin, guys who'd been around for a long time. They took us under their wings and didn't let us get too out of hand. 

The best story he had about Ruth Gordon was regarding her contract, where one of the producers said, "Okay, so we're going to give you this much up front, but it's kind of a back-end deal." Martin said she reached across the table, grabbed him by his tie, pulled him forward, and said, "Young man, I am 84 years old and my back end could be Friday, so you're paying me everything now."

Good point. [Laughs.] 

I didn't think to ask you about this until I saw Taye Diggs on another panel, but I usually ask actors about their favorite projects that didn't get the love they deserved, and Daybreak is one of my favorite recent single-season wonders.

Yeah, me, too! Thank you!

How was that experience?

I'll tell you, Daybreak holds up if you watch it. If it was on a Netflix-type format where you could just sit down and watch it chronologically, it would really hold up. I think it had a big challenge being on commercial television and having the breaks in between. It's not a linear show. Like Memento: you wouldn't want to watch that if you had to have wait a week to see the second half or whatever. But I really enjoyed that. Ian Anthony Dale is here today, actually, for Murder in the First.

I had a chance to talk to Mitch Pileggi about it at one point, too.

Oh, yeah. Mitch is great.

You mentioned how Chuck came to a conclusion. Was there any storyline that you didn't get to explore with Casey that you wanted to?

I was begging them to let me die at the end. [Laughs.] I wanted to go out in a blaze of glory. I figured that's the way Casey would do it. But they wouldn't let that happen. Um... No, I thought they served him very well. He was sort of the glue that held the danger aspect into it. I would've liked to have seen him blow a few more people away... But that's just my personal preference. 

If someone decided to try and do the Kickstarter thing and fund a Chuck movie, would you be into that?

[At this, Baldwin just smirked and shook his head.]

Really? You don't think so?

How? Logistically, how would that even work?

You got me. 

No, I think it's done. It's served its purpose.

Were you happy with the way it wrapped up? I mean, they did have warning, which is something not every show gets.

Yeah, I think they did a good job with it. But I don't see it coming back. I mean, never say never, but the further away you get from it, the less likely it is. It's the same thing with Firefly. That's not coming back.

I wouldn't even have asked that one.

There was a time when it may have, but...not now. 

This does, however, play back into that question of projects that didn't get the love you thought they deserved. 

Oh, yeah, Firefly, for sure. It's come around and gotten far more love over time than I ever thought it would, having gotten cancelled. So that's one obvious answer. It just didn't catch an audience when it was on the air. [Long pause.] Maybe D.C. Cab.

I love D.C. Cab! Of course, I was totally smitten with Irene Cara at the time...

Oh, yeah. What a feeling! [Laughs.] 

Any Mr. T stories?

The thing about Mr. T is that he is a loving man of God. The rough exterior... I mean, he's tough! But behind the gruff hides a heart of gold. But it comes out now. He'd come on the set and just make fun of his persona. Remember, that was... I think season two of The A-Team, during his hiatus, and he was the biggest star in the world that year. So to have him on the film and be a part of that... I mean, I was a 21-year-old kid. I didn't know what the hell I was doing. I was just along for the ride. But he was a nice, loving, caring man. And still is. 

I scored a copy of the DVD of Cohen and Tate when it was reissued recently.

Yeah? I had a good time on that. That was fun! Roy Scheider and I... He was an old song-and-dance man, a Broadway guy, and he would sing show tunes while we were in between takes and set-ups, sitting in that car. Because he sat in that car a lot. My dad called it Night Drive.

[The inflection he used when saying the words "Night Drive" were almost precisely the same way they say "Speedway Squad" in this clip, which made me laugh really hard.)

My dad's funny. He's an old military guy, and he said, "Why the hell didn't you just put the punk in the trunk?" "Good question, Dad. Because then we don't have a movie!" [Laughs.] "Well, I would've tied him up and put him in the trunk!" "Okay, Dad."

peaking of the military, I'd be remiss if I didn't ask you about working on Full Metal Jacket.

Well, I was 23, and...I was only contracted to be on that for about three months, and I ended up being on and off it for about nine months. When we would get a little impatient - the young actors on that film, we wanted to be doing stuff, and there was a lot of waiting around for light and whatnot - and I would say, "When are we going to finish this, Stanley?" Kubrick would say, "You're just not patient, Adam. When you get a little older, you'll have patience." So if there's one thing that Stanley Kubrick taught me, it's that. And a little chess.

Oh, really?

Yeah. He was great. 

What was your knowledge of Kubrick before that? Had you been a fan of his work going into the film?

Oh, yeah! Yeah, I'd seen The Shining, obviously, and Paths of Glory is really one of my favorites. I like war movies. Spartacus is another one. We presumed... Well, at least I had this vision of hi as this English gentleman who we were going to go meet and be fearful of, but he was a man from the Bronx who just built a little fiefdom there north of London. And physically he wasn't an intimidating guy, but intellectually he could crush you. [Laughs.]

Do you remember the audition process?

There was no audition process. Except for doing a videotaped scene that you sent his way...or, rather, we got it to the casting director, and she sent it off to him. But I learned later that what he would do with all those videotapes when he would call for an audition was, he would stockpile them and use them to record over as extra footage that he would need. [Laughs.] Or he would sent the tapes to his mother and have his mother record Yankees games and then have the games sent to him before they were broadcast on the BBC! But we asked him, "So can I see my videotape?" And he would sort of hedge and say, "Well, I... I don't know where that is anymore. I have it somewhere..." And then he'd say, "But it doesn't really matter, does it? Because you got the job! You don't really want that back..." As in, "Wink, wink, I've used it already and recorded over it, you're not getting it back."

Oh, but here's a sad tale that I'll tell you just to close. Well, I find it sad. But Animal Mother [Baldwin's character] is carrying a machete on his back throughout the whole movie, and it's there for one purpose: to cut off the sniper's head in the end. And we filmed that, and we had two beautiful Madame Tussaud's wax figurine heads that Animal Mother cuts off. But they cut that out of the movie because it was too gory. But I always wanted to see the footage of that scene, because we shot it, but I never saw it. Well, I ran into Stanley's assistant recently, and I asked him whatever happened to the footage. And when Stanley died, in his will, all of his extraneous footage was incinerated. All of his outtakes, all of his extra stuff... Burned. Because he knew it would end up on YouTube out of context, and he didn't want that. He said, "My films stand alone, and I don't want that leaking out." So he destroyed them and had them all burned.

I appreciate his position, but...you're right, that is extremely sad.

Yeah, I know. [Shakes his head.] Man, I wish I could've seen that scene...