One on One: Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs

Lawrence Hilton Jacobs. Ladies and gentlemen, he is here. You were part of my childhood watching you and welcome back Connor, that brilliant comedy. Um, so, how are you doing? What's going on? Oh good man? Keeping it busy, you know, and stuff like that. You know, Um, you know, kids are big. You know, we got grandkids, you know, the drails.

Look at the youngest one is twelve out of my grand babies, and so you know, she's developing, she's becoming young ladies taking me out and uh, well it's wonderful to watch them all grow up, isn't it. It's just such a wonder man. How you holding. I'm doing good? You know, I'm in Halifax. Shooting a TV series. I missed my I missed my boy more and more every day. I don't know how I'm gonna get through this, but I'm gonna gonna have to get through it. Um miss

my wife, I miss everybody. It's just it's it's hard to be on location. I'm sixty three years old now and I'm on location and I never thought i would be on location at this age. But you know, it's a great job. But can what can you do? You know, it's a it's a great role, it's a great part. So the family that we're down with them because they know that, and we just have to roll with the dice and you know, the actor's life. Well, look, thanks for coming in. You played principal Martin. How did you

get cast? Tell us about it. It's funny man on casting, But I was the only male up for that gig. That was I was like, you know, I don't think it was gonna happen to you because I came in and men and they have the audition process, and I saw these females and a lot of one of the actresses have been around for a long time, you know, and so forth, and I was like, well, okay, Lee was going to do my thing and I went in, I popped on my glasses. That did it and didn't

let me leave the room. I told me I had the parts. Nice. Um, why did you decide to go into acting? And how did you break into the industry? Because I was like, you were nuts, psychiatric help. I've been doing it now five years. Man, you know I'm coming to Sunday. I'm gonna be sixty nine, he said,

sixty three six coming up, you know. And um, I've been doing it since um sixteen, nineteen sixty nine when I got into the game, and um, you know, while I was going to school of Art in design, I grew up New York City, I just always wanted to do it and try it, and you know, and as a kid, I used to always um elementary school. They always equip me in the place and always got to leave. But it was like Peter and the Wolf, and I guess it's just in you know, something like that. So

many remember you from Welcome Back Hodder. You play student, and you years later on Gilmore Girls and you're a school principal. What did you think of being back in school setting, but this time playing an authority figure. I didn't think of it in that way, you know. I thought of it as let me do a good job and learn the lines, and then the Gilmore girls you have to learn the lines exactly as they are. It

was fun, you know. It's always interesting to try something different or something that um can stretch you as an actor, you know, and I've been I've been blessed in that way. I've been able to play a moder variety of roles over the many years of doing it. So it was fun. I know. We had a little back and forth when there was kind of you know, and um, we were into it and so well I think we did all right.

Oh yeah, um, so we just recapped that episode Keg Max where you played a pivotal role in justice life and telling me he isn't graduating high school. Do you remember the scene? You know something? I remember both of them because I did him a you're apart. I remember the first one was with the was the first one with you. The second one was with you the second year we have done the scene. I think the first I think the first one was with me. It was

with you. Okay, I'm getting flipped and but but I remember the young man coming in, and um, he was a nice dude. You know, we talked and I mean, you know, you don't remember everything. You kind of getting around a while, but remember the experience was good. Um, it moved pretty quickly and so forth, and so there it is. Man, Yeah, so what so you recall Milo was a nice young kid and um, as an actor, he was definitely ready and on on, which you know,

we always gonna appreciate. Um. You know, your show was the show that was very exacting on how you had to perform something in terms of dialogue and so forth. But I didn't feel restrained by that. But we're able to find a little give and take with each other that had some spontaneity in it. So that meant he was a responsive young man. And um, so that that enlightened me. Mm hmmmmm. Um. So what was your experience

like on the set compared to others? Um? Uh, you know, when you're doing television as we've done for a lot of the years, especially when we did Welcome mcconter, we had dialogue, but we could be loose with it at times, you know, and many times would have happened on camera that became the lore of the show. We made it up on the spot and somehow we just knew how to respond. That ain't the Gilmore Girls. You know you

gotta written has got to be this and and so forth. So, um, that made you really pay attention and it woke me up a little bit. But on the set it right, It is very very nice, you know, it was. You could feel it as a family crew or a crew. People are familiar with one another, so nobody tripped. They were certainly very nice to me, um, and I was nice to them as well. So all right, Um, had you watched Gilmore Girls before taking the role? You know

something I had seen. It's like a lot of television. Um, when you're in television as long as I've been in it, you don't watch a lot of shows, which may not be a good advertisement for our game, but it is. But I had seen many clips and so I had a feeling with the Gilmore Girls about this is the popular show and on the c W back in that day, so it was there. So I was very aware of the mother and the daughter and the whole nine thing. So I had a feeling what it was about. And

I like the show. I know some of my um younger family. Uh you never know anywhere, but younger than when they saw it. They were like lightening. Well that's my favorite chilly Compare what it was like working back in the seven early seventies, like Cornor was on. What were the years? It was early seventies and mid seventies, five to seventy nine, five seven nine, So what was tell us how different it was back then compared to now. You know a lot of television television as well as

movie still had movie stars and big stars. There was a lot of fanfare behind that. When we did the Welcome Macato Show, you did the show where you came in on a Monday, you had to read through with the cast and the crew and all you know, the staff and so forth. Then you gotta when you started rehearsing on its feet. You did that for a couple of days. By Wednesday you would do it again, but this time the network would come in and give their

approvals and make the changes. Then Thursday would come around and we would block the show. The camera block it will they Then on the fifth day, which is Friday, you get it was being rewritten all the way. You get your rewrites delivered to you early that morning. You get to work by twelve thirty day afternoon, and then you really pin, you know, fine tune what you've been rehearsing in terms of camshots and so forth. And then at five thirty we would do an earlier show with

an audience of three hundred. We should call at the out of town tryouts. And then you do that, and then we go off to dinner and we get notes, and then we come back and we do an eight collection with a new audience and three people, and that that was over. We might do some pickups. Now, in the beginning we first did it, we were there. We'd come to work and we'd be there to tow three in the morning shooting. But you get your show down,

you know, after a while. By the time we got into the third year, certainly the fourth year, I mean we're out of that. Studios passed, we really got notes, we shot it, we were at it about not thirty and night we're done. Wow. You know. Even rehearsals, we would come in and rehearsals used to be at like nine am, and it would go till six. Eventually it became like eleven to four. I would sit down with not not even trying to memorize it, read the script

and know it. It just it just got to be like that for right, right right, and and you know that's the difference thing working on a sitcom in front of a live audience as opposed to working on a show like Gilmore Girls. You do you like it better in front of a live one? Did you like the conter four or four camera live audience sitcom better than anything? I think you make the adjustments that you go along least that's might take on it. Um I came, I come from theater. Is a lot of us, do you know?

I did different guys growing up as an actor and living in New York City. Um, I learned to make the adjustments. I started doing a lot of film before I ever came to the sitcom thing. And when we got in there with the four camera, the three cameras in the one fourth camera as an isolator which they call iso camera, you make the adjustments and so forth and so um is there a preference? Um? Probably the future films I like doing. I like doing the film

thing more like what you guys are doing. But doesn't make any difference to me. No, you know, you just make the adjustment and you, um, you understand that you have to lay yourself back a certain way if you're doing television, or you have to deliver it a certain way if you're doing theater, and you just um step up to that to that flavor, right right, right. So you so you did a lot of New York theater. You did you work with Joe Pop? Did you work

with uh? That wasn't When I went out one summer with Joe Pap doing um, the New York Shakespeare Festival, we did um ceremonies and UM when a ceremonies in different what the wine sellers by with Joe Pap and Joe Pap was really this is what he always did. He was he would come around, he'd be a nice guy.

He always brought this I don't know if he came out of the celling he read this this uh box with all these wines and they came out of this big creep and he gave everybody a bottle of wine and thank you and this episode joke right, Uh, did you ever? Did you ever work at the circle wrapper

place like that? A circle rapper? I auditioned for Joyce Scott and didn't get the part George Sea, thank you, um, but I tell you down at the public theater, and we were down here a really enlightening thing for me is um. Other people were always rehearsing work there. So there was a young actor who was just about to happen, and he was a North Broadway star and he was rehearsing and he was no further further than maybe five

feet from me. And I'm in the audience watching him rehearsed with the strip in his hand, and he's intense and he's into his thing, and he's so there's Alpaccino. Man. Wow. And then and there was like local joking dude, he walks in. It was Morgan Freeman. So this is what happened. This is the kind of people who was floating in out and Dick, Anthony Williams and Roscoe round and oh man, it was a nutsman. Johnny could say a lot of them, catchman.

I would see them all the time down there and then get to know some of them and talk to them. So for a young actor it was super education. So that they all came through the public theater as well. Everybody had stepped through the public theater that ever took a step in New York City and wanted to be an actor. We had down there. There was also the

Lamana Theater. There was you know, there was a new Um, the New Federal you know theater down there with Whitty King Jr. Ran forever until he retired recently, and um, we all had our steps. There was was the Wooster group going that weren't going back in the seventy front. That's Willem Dafoe and Elizabeth the Compton um not knowing that super super they were down on Garage Street or

something like that. I mean, it was just like this super experimental stuff, that stuff going on down in the village, you know, Like I said, the Lama, it was like that. Mama did a lot of Yeah. I studied out of the New Ensemble Company and then up in Harlem at the Fantastical Ensemble. You know. Um, I had two days in the actor's studio, did you Yeah, you know, I mean there there was always gonna be really difficult to

get into the actor's studio. So listen, I walked up to the door and they didn't they said, you're in. I was shocked. I guess they had seen I've done a movie called Clodian, you know, and so they had seen that movie and so they knew me. They said, no, you're in. And then two days later I got Coolie high, so I had to split. So the actor's studio admitted you as a member without auditioning because they've seen you

in a film. That's my assumption. These So they didn't give me any they didn't give me no, no preamble, and they said, okay, you're I came in and set a couple of times to see people doing that thing. You know. Didn't do it with Eli Strassburg, but other teachers were there. And that was gone for six weeks, six and a half weeks in Chicago doing COOLi hut I was. I was an observer there for a couple of years. I did a bunch of plays there, but I never I auditioned once and they stopped me in

the first two and a half minutes. So it's like they were shattering. But they never they never let anybody buy after their first audition. Never the front door there, you know, when you went in there and it was all closed off in that little bobby, you know, and they had this little slip thing they you know, they opened up and looked like you know, Joe sent me. It almost felt like, you know how that just worked out, you know with me. So I had to act studio,

very intense experience in there. That that was That was something um um. So you're currently working on a series called A House Divided on Amazon Prime and All Black or A L L B l K All TV, which also Amazon Prime. It's underwritten by A mc amaz We're doing that now for about three years. We just finished a fifth season and playing this super lely rich guy who's got a family of problem children and everybody else and we're going through the most intense drama this last season,

which is coming out in October. They decided to make me go nuts and I was having all just losing my mind. So I'm missing everybody up, I'm having a good time with and and that's that's Cameron Sanders, the character of Cameron Sanders writing. I'm directing, and they got me doing it all man so and I'm one of the co producers on the show. So it's pretty cool. All right. So check out Lawrence Hilton Jacobs and the Amazon Prime House Divided. Uh, you'll be glad you did.

You also have a film coming out this October called night Stalker. What can you tell us about it? We don't start until a late part of October, and it's based on a true story about a serial killer whoever were killing a lot of women in Atlantic City and then eventually went up to Long Island and they can They never knew who this guy was, so they made a story based on that with myself in two hot shot female detectives and who come to the wrong jurisdiction.

But we gotta get this guy. And so that's the through line of the film. Now, in real life, I heard from the director, whose name is Keith Veil that Um, the guy who had um was the elusive killer. They found him, but he was a junkie and odeed and he had an ode brother that I mean buddy that you know, fested up about him. So did They didn't rewrite the movie to put that in there because they

had a better in me. I just they like. But but he gets his in the end, and you know and um, I won't give it away, but um, but I get him. Um. Okay, you're ready to play rapid fire, Come on with it, man. How many coups of coffee you have them? Every day. I don't drink coffee at all. None. Who is your favorite Gilmore Girls character? The guy I'm I'm looking at right now? There you go, There you go? What would you order it? Luke's Diner? Um? Hamburger? Would

you rather go on a road trip with Taylor or Michelle? Um? The jury is out? Yeah, that's probably neither. Uh finished finished the lyric? And where you lead? I will follow? What's the w where you go? I believe that's it. I'm never remembering anywhere that you tell me? Too so close. We're gonna We're gonna give you the We're gonna give you the points on that one. Uh, Jackson's Vegetables or Suki's Baked Goods Jackson's Vegetables. Man mean, yeah, you get

better believe it? Uh? Would you rather listen to Drella's Harper the Trooper Doors cover songs? Trop Doors? I used to go, hang up there? Are you kidding me? Children? Prepper Stars Hollow Hi? Sit again? Chilton Prep or Stars Hollow Hi? Oh Stars Hollow Hun. That's because you're the principal. That's right, man, I'm in charge. Dare I tell people were like what to do and maybe actually listen to me, Lawrence. It was a pleasure talking to you, catching up with you,

and you are the real deal. I'm gonna read some of your credits if you don't mind. Uh. You were best known for playing Freddie Boom Boom Washington. Absolutely, welcome back Carter, Welcome back Cotter. Uh oh, and you had so much attitude. I remember when I was a kid watch watching you. The attitude. I was like, Wow, that's good. We're bout a little tough New York guys. When we

got all of us. You will also appear a number of films and television use Glen Claudeine what you mentioned got you into the actress studio Coolly High Roots Wow, Roots was a massive television event. I don't know Roots. This Sunday, I was at Glenn Terman's house that just ranch has a ranch and you want to have a bunch of people over. And I had not seen him in years. I was sitting down with Ben Vereen from Roots.

Oh my goodness. Really in Years Man, which was just wow, Uh, Bangers and Mash Alien Nation, The Jackson's in American Dream and thirty one. Uh. Lawrence, has been a pleasure. Thank you. You're the real deal. You're a real, real New York theater actor who branched out and and uh got success in film and television. Can't wait to check out the new series. I'm gonna I'm gonna dig into it tonight, I think. Okay, Uh, I'm good luck with your show, you know. And keep on strolling, man, But get homes

and say hi today that sun man. Darn right, man, I'm counting the days anyway. Much love, take care man, Thank you, thanks for coming on you too, buddy. Hey, everybody, and don't forget follow us on Instagram at I Am all In podcast and Emailie at Gilmore at I Heart radio dot com. Oh you gil More fans. If you're looking for the best cup of coffee in the world, go to my website from my company scott ep dot com, s C O T T y P dot com, scott ep dot com Grade one Specialty Coffee. Yeah.