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How to Humanist asks life’s questions big and small with the help of brilliant humans along the way.
SHAY:
Welcome to How to Humanist. It is Shay Leonia, your host, as usual, on behalf of the American Humanist Association. We have so much going on, but truly I have no time to get into anything besides what you're about to witness, which is my dreams coming true, basically.
No biggie, but I graduated from the American Musical and Dramatic Academy, shout out New York campus, and I therefore went to school for acting, for music, for performance, for dance, all of the above. And on a separate note, I, along with millions of people around the world, tuned in every week to This Is Us and just sobbed my eyes out. What a show.
If you had told me that I would then one day get to work somewhere that would give me a podcast that would give me an excuse to bring Jon Huertas, who is actually a humanist, to my joy and happiness he decided to say yes and join me for a conversation around humanism.
And for those who aren't in the know, Jon is an agnostic humanist, an Air Force veteran, a musical theater graduate, and he has 31 years in the game. Jon Huertas is Miguel on This Is Us, Esposito on Castle, and Poke in HBO's Generation Kill. Now he's calling the shots, directing The Rookie, Tracker, Ballard, and more, prepping his feature debut, Letters from Lebanon, and building series through his company, West Side Stories.
He's an Academy member, and he lives on a horse ranch in Nevada City, California.
Now, I also wanna make mention that this is a very important month, and so I'm really happy that he came on when he did. It is Hispanic and Latin Heritage Month. So all the stars aligned and could not be happier to present you with this wonderful conversation from this incredible human being. Oh, what more can I say? There's nothing.
SHAY:
Thank you so much for taking time out. You're doing a million and one things.
JON:
No problem. Yeah, that's ADD for you, ADHD.
SHAY:
Can relate, for sure.
JON:
Just reorganizing my windows so I'm not looking all over the place.
SHAY:
Do you have a million and one tabs open like I do?
JON:
Oh, yeah. Again, ADHD. Windows and tabs. Craziness.
SHAY:
It's craziness, yeah.
JON:
Somehow I know where everything is.
SHAY:
Exactly, yeah. The mess makes sense to you.
JON:
Exactly.
SHAY:
I'm really doing a fantastic job, if I might say so myself, keeping restraint and being super chill in front of you. But just so you know, inside I'm screaming, because I'm such, not only a huge fan of your work, I'm also a musical theater grad and I am also somebody who grew up watching Moesha.
JON:
Oh my God. Reaching back there, aren't you? What's funny about you, I didn't realize until I started poking around, no pun intended, but I was poking around and didn't realize that you were a recording artist also.
[SHAY interjects: Get it? Wink, wink, nudge, nudge. He played Poke in Generation Kill.]
JON:
Then when I was looking at your resume, I was like, "He's done so many music related roles, or co-starred with people who were also recording artists like Brandy, like Mandy Moore." And I just thought that was so interesting.
SHAY:
Yeah, I mean, music's always been a part of who I am. 'Cause I, the whole reason I'm in this business is because I was forced into a Christmas musical when I was in Catholic school. So it's what gave me the bug to even wanna pursue a career in entertainment. 'Cause I had to sing a solo in that show, and I'd never sang before, especially in front of people. I may have sung like my ABCs, but I was six, so I was super young.
But yeah, and then I think coming up in theater in school, depending on who your drama teacher is, there's a lot of musical theater in high school and in middle school and all that stuff. It kinda just stuck. And thinking, how do I become a professional actor? And asking my drama teacher, and they're like, "You have to get an undergrad degree and then a master's degree." And just always being pushed to musical theater. I thought that was the natural progression.
And then, the music is always there. Even now as a director, when I'm directing, I think I'm looking for the musicality of a scene. When a scene is working, when it feels like everybody's doing their harmony right, all of the lines, all of the action, all of the everything is part of a song. Once everything is in alignment, that's when the scene is working, and that's when you can basically say you got it.
JON:
Now, when did you know that you wanted to spread your wings and direct? Was that always in the back of your mind that you wanted to try that?
SHAY:
In high school I took a cinematography class, and it wasn't really until then. But then we started making movies, me and the other kids that had taken that cinematography class, we started making little movies. And once I got to California and started trying to be an actor, trying to be a dancer, trying to be a singer, directing was there. That was something that I had done, and I thought maybe that's a way for me to get ahead, like other directors or even actors had directly done their own thing and got themselves some attention.
And I thought, I wanna be creative, I like writing, so let's just direct something. So it started when I first moved here, but then it sucked. It failed. It really wasn't a successful attempt. So I thought, you gotta focus on something and find success in that. And then maybe once you do, you can branch off and try to do the other things, like directing or singing or whatever.
And you called me a recording artist earlier, I wouldn't call myself a recording artist. I think I've recorded some music and put it out there, 'cause it's easy to put things out there now. But yeah, I would say it's an expensive hobby, recording something and putting it out there. That's what it is. I'm not really a recording artist.
JON:
I tend to disagree, but it's your career.
So who was inspiring your musical sound?
SHAY:
Originally it would have been New Edition, probably going back to the '80s. That's my New Edition picture on the wall right there.
JON:
Wow. Did you go see the concert, New Edition, Boyz II Men, and Toni Braxton?
SHAY:
I would have loved to. I've gotten to see Boyz II Men in concert. Did not get to see New Edition, but that'll be on the list at some point.
JON:
So they just did a tour earlier this year. My wife and I went, and it was amazing, because you're seeing New Edition, Boyz II Men, Toni Braxton. Everybody's on stage at the same time at some point. But also, when you get tickets to a New Edition show, you don't just see New Edition. You see multiple acts. New Edition, BBD, Johnny Gill, Bobby Brown. And then you see Boyz II Men, and then Toni Braxton. It was just amazing. You got all these different artists in one place, and they had this great overlapping show. It was fucking phenomenal.
But yeah, I would say New Edition early. I mean, I liked all kinds of music coming up, from '60s, '70s, but when I started thinking about what am I gonna sing, what does my sound align with more, yeah, New Edition I would probably say it was.
SHAY:
Now did your culture inform any of the roles that you were doing? Because you got chances to represent some people that are not necessarily as spoken about today. In Why Do Fools Fall in Love,
[SHAY interjects: So he actually played Joe Negroni, a founding member of The Teenagers with Frankie Lymon, and just, wow. I'm still in disbelief that I'm sitting across from him getting to hear this story.]
SHAY:
I mean, you're playing these pivotal roles and bringing these people back to life. Is that something that you're like, "Oh, no, they chose me because I can play a Puerto Rican guy because I am a Puerto Rican guy"? Or is it more, "No, this is an honor to portray this person"?
JON:
It was both. I was lucky enough to get that role to play Joe Negroni, a real Puerto Rican kid from the streets who sang under a streetlight. Which I had, I don't know if I'd ever sang under streetlights, but definitely sang on street corners with my friends. But he was Puerto Rican. And to be able to step into those shoes, and I think to be seen as that guy, because that's who I represented when someone looked at me. It was almost the first time, I think, at that point in my career, because I think that was before Moesha, and it, we never talked about what my background was, what kind of Latino I was, right?
But yeah, specifically in Why Do Fools Fall in Love, this was a Puerto Rican character, and there were two of us who were both Puerto Rican playing two Puerto Ricans in that show. And I think Gregory Nava, the director, who was Latino, and he had made Selena, and he wanted to make sure that he got it right.
SHAY:
I didn't realize he was the same one as Selena.
JON:
Yeah. A lot of people don't realize that J. August Richards, who was also in that, playing one of the Black teenagers, is also Latino. He's a Black Latino, Black Afro-Latino Panamanian. I don't know what the character he played, I don't know if he had any Latino in him, but I thought it was interesting that it was the beginning of showing people that Latinos aren't just the kind of archetype and stereotype that you see in TV and film.
We have Black Puerto Ricans, we have white Puerto Ricans, Black Latinos, white Latinos, indigenous Latinos, Asian Latinos. Our diaspora is, in my opinion, like the shiny beacon that everyone could look to see a prime example of how diversity actually works within a culture.
There has been colorism in the Latino culture, but ultimately I think we all can say, if we meet somebody who's on the island of Puerto Rico and he's white but his last name is Hernandez or whatever, we accept him as a Latino. Same with a Black person with the last name Hernandez, same with an Asian person who speaks Spanish and grew up in Puerto Rico. That's a Latino, it's a Puerto Rican.
I found that whole experience interesting, that we were able to show, 'cause I'm Afro-Latino as well. My grandmother's biological father was basically Black Puerto Rican. We're not taught here in the States what our makeup could be, or we're not pushed into understanding the complexity of what our genetic makeup is as a human.
SHAY:
Yeah.
JON:
So I think nowadays people are repping that and understanding where they came from. I got an early taste of it when I was a kid, but yeah. Anyway, that was a long answer for that simple question.
SHAY:
No, that's beautiful. You've done so much work. Did you find that you were just hoping for characters that would allow you to stretch into a role that could fit anybody? Or was it at one time or another just, "I need to get the work"?
JON:
Definitely at the beginning it was, I need to get to work. I was lucky enough to start getting roles that were, like, I think one of my first jobs was on 90210, guest star on that show, and it was a character named Steve Magnuson. So it wasn't written on paper as a Latino, but they were like, "Let's just keep it open," and take who they might have thought the best actor for that job was.
And so on, on Sabrina the Teenage Witch, which was not too long after that, his name was Brad and he had no last name. But I tested against Charlie O'Connell, which is Jerry O'Connell's brother. So it was Charlie O'Connell tested for that, and there was another kid who tested for that, and he was also a white kid. They gave it to me.
But then at the same time, I played a gangster on this show, NYPD Blue. I'm playing a kid from the streets, gangster level, or Cold Case, same thing. You're trying to build a resume, you're trying to build a body of work, trying to prove that you're hireable and that you can deliver and carry your part of the scene.
But then as I started building up that resume and started having that body of work, I at some point decided I don't need to do those types of roles anymore, so I'm not going to audition for that kind of stuff unless they're taking a different angle on it, a different approach on it.
Famously, I think, when I was doing This Is Us, but I was also starting to recur on Elementary, and the role was offered to me, and it was this kind of head of this gang that was very much modeled off of MS-13, so tatted face and all that stuff. And at first I was like, "Eh, I'm good, I'm doing my thing." But the guy who created the role really liked my work, especially from Castle, and he was like, "I just think that you'd do something different." I was like, "Then let's do something different."
I said, "I'll do it if we can take the approach that this guy is at the top of his game. He runs this enterprise in whatever neighborhoods he runs, and the only way he can get there is if he has a level of intelligence that is on par with Sherlock Holmes. So I'll do it as long as we can say he's as smart as Sherlock is, but he just uses his powers for dealing drugs and trafficking, and Johnny Lee Miller's character, Sherlock, uses his powers for good and trying to solve crimes." They were like, "That's great, it's awesome." And I was like, "Yeah, he's driven around in an SUV, he's got staff, he wears Armani suits." They went for it.
I'll play a guy like that, who's a bad guy, because it's more interesting, and the character feels driven, because he thinks what he's doing is the right thing to do for him and for his people and for his family. So I would love roles like that. But on the other hand, I'm not gonna glorify gang life anymore. I don't wanna portray Latinos as gangsters or as wife beaters or anything like that, for me personally. I don't think that's necessarily the choice for everybody out there who's Latino.
You have to, if you're starting at the bottom, if you wanna pay your bills, you have to work. And if you can get that work, and if it's a dream job, this is a great, incredible job that not a lot of people get to do, and if you can get that job, then build yourself up from there.
SHAY:
I'm so glad you're saying that, because there are so many musicians that I run into that are just starting out, and they will cite the big names, "Oh they did this, Rihanna did that, and so that's the path that I'm gonna take." And all for dreaming big, but also being realistic about where you're starting out at.
And so I'm glad that for any aspiring actors or current actors that are listening to you say this, to be able to just ground themselves in what's necessary, and most importantly, to not be embarrassed or ashamed of it.
JON:
Exactly. Any choice you make, you can learn from it. There's probably things out there that you could be embarrassed by, but definitely never ashamed of. As humans we make choices I think usually based on gut and instinct, and it's not always gonna be the right one, but you have to learn from it, whether it was the right one or not. If it was the right one, learn from that. If it wasn't, learn from that, right?
In my opinion, our choices are not so precious where we hinge our life or our mental health on a choice that we made, 'cause I think we can always, we have the capacity to really think about and contemplate our choices, how we made them, why we made them, and if we made them because of how we were raised, our environment or whatever.
Maybe how we were raised by our parents, why did they make the choices they made? We're able to have this perspective where we can really go wide. You can hover high above the history as we know it personally, our own familial history or whatever, and you can go, "Wow, yeah, I had a fucked up childhood, but so did my mom, or so did my dad, or so did my grandparents, and how do I expect to have that much of a better childhood unless you yourself realize exactly what affected you, and you're gonna make sure you don't impart that onto maybe your kid."
That's it, it's up to you to break the cycle. And just 'cause your mom or dad or grandparents didn't break the cycle, it's harder, and we are always evolving. We're a species that is always evolving, and that's why I don't blame or hold in contempt or hate on any relatives that were a part of my childhood. I just go, "You know what? They just couldn't do better with what they had."
SHAY:
That Maya Angelou quote, it haunts me every day, "When we know better, do better." It's such a compassionate and subsequently humanist thing to say, and just such a humanist approach.
I read somewhere that you started a massive critical thinking journey when you were just a kid, but when did you go from agnostic to being like, "No, I'm humanist, I'm for the people"?
JON:
Here's the thing. I think that, for most people in the non-believing community, they cite a difference between being agnostic, being atheist, being humanist, being non-theist, all of the different branches of non-believing in a supernatural entity that magically formed us from clay. So I think that there's an overlap between all of them, more of an overlap than we wanna admit sometimes.
I think being an atheist means there's theism, atheism, you don't believe in the theology that someone's trying to teach you about creation. Agnostic is, "I don't know, science will tell me, prove it," whatever. But atheists also believe that science is the answer to questions that are brought up, and until the evidence presents itself, you believe what the evidence tells you.
I'm definitely agnostic, because I literally cannot prove there is no God, but then nobody's proving to me with God as the Bible defines it, and/or any other religious text, which I wish there was no word called religious really, but text, old stories, but then there's no way for me to prove that there is or isn't, so I'm agnostic by definition, right? And then there's the idea that I'm a humanist because I believe that humans told and then wrote down all of those stories.
But then that tells me that we actually have the ability and the power, the intuition, the instinct, and the genetics to take responsibility for our own decisions and our own actions. I wanna give humanity credit where it's due. We have the capability to be harmonious creatures on this planet. We just keep making decisions as multiple societies, there's just too many of us on this planet, in my opinion, but we keep making decisions that hurt us, hurt your immediate circle, and it pushes further and further out all the way to Iran or Gaza.
And then we also do damage to just the planet, to every ecosystem there is, to animals. So we have the capability and capacity. That, to me, is me being a humanist. I believe in humans. I believe that we could, but we have been unfortunately steered in the wrong direction starting about probably 3,000 years ago. Stories that came even before the Bible, right now those stories inspired the idea that there's ultimately right now three different religions always wanting to fight each other, and we're never gonna get anywhere, 'cause the majority of our population is probably gonna fit into one of those three. And then there's Hinduism, of course, and Buddhism, but they're just chill, you know what I'm saying.
That's me being a humanist. The universe is too big for a creature like us to ever be able to fully explain creation, why we're here, how we got here. I don't think there's an answer for why we got here. I personally think, and it's my theory, and I don't care if it gets proven or not, we're just a happy accident. A single-celled organism became what we are, and every other animal is, right. And I don't think ever in my lifetime are we ever gonna know, and it doesn't matter. We're the tiniest speck in something that we'll never completely understand, and I am completely at peace with that.
SHAY:
Wow. I think we got here by accident, not by design.
JON:
Happy accidents.
SHAY:
I love that.
[SHAY interjects: I'm pretty sure it's actually true and verified that we were all brought here by Bob Ross. We are all happy little trees.]
JON:
I would never do this, and I think this is what makes me human, I'm not gonna fill in that gap with stories that haven't been tested or proven. And people live their lives and fucking make bad decisions for other people based on that.
SHAY:
Yeah, that's what Fox News is for.
JON:
True.
SHAY:
So as a humanist, how did you, you're a veteran, you're an Air Force veteran, correct?
JON:
Yep.
SHAY:
Were you already feeling as though you were a humanist once you joined the military, or, because I've spoken to one veteran so far who was a medic, but you were in Operation Desert Storm, right?
JON:
Yeah.
SHAY:
That's intense.
JON:
I mean, it was nothing like the more current conflicts, you know, OIF, this was 1991, '92, and it was a very quick two-week conflict for the most part. We did do some rotations after that to the Middle East to make sure that peace was kept.
But yeah, serving, first of all, I remember they made me pick a religion to put on my dog tags, and because I had gone to Catholic school, I had to put Catholic. They would not put atheist down, 'cause at that point I was just saying I'm an atheist, right?
SHAY:
Really?
JON:
Yeah. Back when I was in, the whole idea of a psychologist or a therapist wasn't really a thing. They more encouraged you to go to the chaplain, and it was a Catholic chaplain, to talk about anything that you were going through. And even though I was an atheist, I still went and talked to the chaplain about something I might be going through.
My chaplain, this guy, and this is early when I first got in, in the early '90s, he was a Catholic priest who spent money like no other Catholic priest I've ever seen before. He bought the first laptop that was ever made. He bought a Mercedes. He was not giving up his worldly possessions, that's for sure. And he was gay. I didn't see him as a Catholic priest, I just saw him as this dude who you could bounce stuff off of, give you some good advice, and then he'd show you his new toys, and then you'd go back to work. It wasn't like...
SHAY:
Wow.
JON:
But yeah, while I was in the military, I wasn't very religious. And also, it's funny, back when I was, I don't remember anybody who was that super religious when I was in the military. There's one guy who's a friend of mine, I actually took the last name from one of my great friends in the military and put that on Miguel.
[SHAY interjects: Jon here is of course referring to the legendary character Miguel from This Is Us.]
JON:
He talked about becoming a Jehovah's Witness right before he was getting out of the military. And I was like, "What?" I don't know if he had been a part of it before or whatever, but it was literally right before he was getting out. And then I was able to get back in touch with him 20 years later, and he was a witness. And my former co-star's wife, former co-star from Castle, his wife was Jehovah's Witness. She calls it, like, escaping a cult. She's like it really did damage on her and her family and all that stuff. So I don't know enough about that religion to know why she feels that way.
[SHAY interjects: I'm like Jon here, I don't really know that much about Jehovah's Witnesses, so I just wanted to put you all on, because one of our friends who also works at Recovering From Religion Foundation, his name is Josiah Engel. He is on Instagram and TikTok. You can follow him to start learning about deconstructing from being a Jehovah's Witness, and his account, I think it's the same name on TikTok, is ApostateForThePeople. Go check him out.]
JON:
But I'm at this point not sure if the guy I was stationed with is still a Jehovah's Witness, 'cause he does curse a little bit. But for me there was barely any religion when I was in. I remember in basic training, if you went to church on Sunday, you were gonna see other people from other flights at the church, and you'd see the girls. So I would use the opportunity to go to church to try to talk to girls. Literally, I wasn't there to listen to the pastor or the priest talk about the Bible. I was scanning in the back of the room, who's that, who's that, I wanna talk to that girl after this is over. It was that kinda thing. So I would use religion to get privileges, really.
SHAY:
Oh my gosh, ai-yi-yi.
From the people that I've met who are veterans or are currently serving in the military, the removal of emotion and feelings is so severe, just from my opinion. I understand why it's necessary. But how did you reintegrate after that? Because you need to be able to tap into those things when you're acting.
[SHAY interjects: And obviously it's important to be able to tap into those things as a human being and especially as a humanist.]
SHAY:
I've met so many veterans who are just like, "Oh, feelings are stupid, or emotions are stupid." And I'm like, "Oh, you were in the military."
JON:
Yeah, I think that's probably something I had definitely when I first came out. You wanna not be seen as weak, you wanna be seen as strong, that can get through anything. But I feel like today it's different than even when I was, I think it was more of that when I was in. PTSD wasn't really a thing when I was in the military. They were still calling, like if you did have something from a combat-related incident, they'd still call it shell shock, which was a leftover from the Vietnam era.
I guess, when I was going through acting school, we did those, syllabi, syllabuses...
SHAY:
It might be syllabi.
JON:
Syllabuses. Let's go with syllabi. Why not?
SHAY:
Yeah, Fish would know.
[SHAY interjects: Turns out we were both right. You can actually say syllabi or syllabuses. I feel like syllabi sounds better.]
JON:
Anyway, so we would do those ones where it's like a chart where you write down the line, and then next to it you have to recall what memory you're gonna tap into, and right next to that you have to define what the emotions were. We did all that labor-intensive acting school stuff.
But I always wondered, how do people in the military who have found a way to remove that, or at least put their emotions and feelings on the shelf, how do they tap back into that? And is it more difficult, can it be more traumatic for them? I just wasn't sure. So I was so intrigued when I found out that you were in the military.
I would say that because I was studying acting while in the military instead of going to theater school, for me, I never, I may have maybe acted tough, or I can, in a situation, compartmentalize the emotion to the pragmatic thing I need to do at hand.
Out here in LA, there have been a couple moments when there was an accident right in front of me. I saw a little girl get hit by a car, and she went flying in the air 12 feet, and she hits her head on the curb, and she's 12, and some other people around were just panicking, as you might do if you see someone bleeding like she was and unconscious. But she needs help, and so emotionally I was able to go, "All right, let me just deal with this." And I had somebody in the car with me who was another actress, and she was one of the ones freaking out. But assess the situation calmly, administer life-saving measures like first aid, all this stuff.
But then afterwards, the emotion is there, and you can then allow it to bleed in, and I can talk about it with this other actress, and it's not something that I didn't experience, that's where PTSD comes in. Sometimes I think people, if they aren't letting it bleed back in, then it gets bottled, but if you are able to talk to a psychologist, if you're able to talk to people, and you're able to work through it, then it's there, and you can hit it head on, you can deal with it, you can understand it, you can understand what you've experienced a little bit better.
But for me, I think when I first got into LA, I had walls up. They weren't because of the military and not having emotions. They were just more like, I thought, I gotta be cool. I got people to see me as cool. So it wasn't until I got into the Groundlings, and they literally make you, it's improvisational school, you probably heard of it. There's an exercise where, "What's your spirit animal?" And you tell them, and they go, "Okay, cool. Everybody's gonna get on the floor, and you're gonna start out as your spirit animal." I felt sorry for the person who picked snake. I picked a lion or some shit, you know what I'm saying. And what they want you to do is you're making your way around the room as your spirit animal, and then they start saying, "Okay, now you're 100% lion." "And then, now you're 10% human, what's that look like?" And you start, now what does lion who's 10% human look like? And they build it all the way up until you're all the way human, right?
That's a silly game to play. You can't be cool and play that game. You can't be cool in front of nobody. So your walls come down. It's not about being cool. It's just about being able to, look, that exercise is amazing, because you're literally, what's it like to be this much one thing and adding this much of another, and that's what characters are, this much this, this much that. So it's a really cool exercise. It sounds and feels silly at the beginning, but it definitely helps knock down walls. And I think that if you're a veteran and you're going into this business, that's what you gotta be willing to do, is knock down walls and be ready to be open to whatever a director, whatever a script, whatever a story is asking you to do.
SHAY:
Yeah, as silly as those improv exercises were, the Mr. Miyagi of it all, and I love a good Mr. Miyagi moment, is that you're also learning how to just get over your fucking self.
JON:
Right.
SHAY:
'Cause if we think about just the silliness of acting to begin with, it's something that we love, yes, but there are gonna be moments where I'm singing in someone's face, and if I'm apprehensive about how I sound, and if I'm not in my body, like I'm not committed to the part, everybody else can tell.
JON:
Yeah, those become a lion things are very useful. Fuck yeah.
Oh, and then one of the things you just said about getting over yourself, that is a great segue back into being an agnostic humanist. Because for me, with the idea that we've got these books that tell us how the universe is, and it's putting so much importance on the human being, and for a human being to think that we have the capacity to understand why or how we're here, get over yourself. Get over yourself. This whole thing in the Bible that says that we have dominion over God's creation, that's, get over yourself, no, stupid.
I wish the dinosaurs were here sometimes, so that somebody, some human who thinks they're all that stumbles upon a fucking pack of raptors or a T-rex. See how fucking...
SHAY:
Jurassic Park, ah, oh, I wanted that to be real.
JON:
Me too. What a classic.
SHAY:
I looked for amber with bugs in it, trust me.
JON:
I know, yes. For the longest, I'm gonna make this shit real, I'm gonna figure out how to get a needle in this motherfucker right here, and I'm gonna get it out.
SHAY:
Ugh, and somehow involve Jeff Goldblum.
So okay, we have to talk about Miguel. The entire world that watched This Is Us sobbed every single episode. What fascinated me was, and I'm sure you as well, it's not every day that you run into, spoiler alert for anyone, you don't run into these roles that allow you to play every phase of your character's life and to jump around. And it's not like you all were shooting sequentially. So how was humanism able to help you address where Miguel was in his life, because what a story arc.
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JON:
I mean, I think if you were to look at Miguel's journey at the beginning, some people reacted negatively to Miguel being with Rebecca.
SHAY:
Definitely had my what the fuck moment.
JON:
Right? But me as a humanist, I was like, "You know what, I think people are easily manipulated with great storytelling, i.e., why so many motherfuckers are religious, because the Bible is, crazy as it is, there's some well-told stories in it, motherfucker, right? We can turn them around with some great storytelling, right?" And that was a challenge.
When I was coming up as a student of the craft of acting, it was about always make sure your character is likable, even if you're the villain. Make them love to hate you, or make them hate to love you. So when people definitely reacted at the beginning like, "Oh, man, Miguel, did he kill Jack?" Crazy shit like that was coming up. They don't like my character that much right now, but the challenge is getting them to like me by the time the show ends, which we always knew it was gonna be six seasons, right?
So how do we do that, as me, the actor, working with the writers? We would literally talk about it at the beginning of every season, what are we doing, and slowly planting seeds and Easter eggs early on to pay off later. But humanism helped me believe that we could tap into someone's humanity and say, this man was there for a woman till the day he died, and from the beginning.
People forget that Miguel tried to get Jack promotions at the job that he got Jack, and he was doing this so that Jack could support this woman that he loved so much, this great woman that Miguel saw as, man, she's out of your league, she comes from this kind of neighborhood. And trust me, I know, 'cause that's the kind of neighborhood I'm trying to end up in. I'm fighting for that as the character. I know where Jack comes from, he don't come from that neighborhood. So if you want to stay with that woman, be with that woman, you gotta step it up.
I started doing that from the beginning. And then at the end, Rebecca, at her worst, when she was a shell of who she was, when she needed someone the most, he was there. So if you don't like that, if you end up not liking Miguel, then you are a demon, not a human.
SHAY:
Yeah. And it was really interesting how, and I don't know if this is something that you intentionally developed with the writers, I'm fascinated by the fact that it was such a, from what I've heard, a collaborative process. But the fact that from the beginning you never get a sense that Miguel is going after Rebecca or that he wishes any undoing of their marriage at any point in time. And even when you do become her husband, there's still almost this wall of respect up for what Jack had with her, and a permission for her to still feel that true love.
And again, spoiler alert, so feel free to skip ahead, in the final episode when she walked past you on the train, I was like, this guy sacrificed so much to let her, even in the afterlife, in the supposed afterlife, be with Jack again. And that was my biggest thing, was like, what happens to Miguel now, he just spends the rest of his afterlife by himself? What the fuck? I was so mad.
JON:
No, there's a lot of girls in the afterlife. They're all the ones that were sitting in that church I was scanning. Remember I told you I was scanning the church? All those girls are up there.
SHAY:
What was that like for you to play into something that is literally portraying the afterlife? Yes, it's your job, but again, humanism and talking to you now, you're very clear on your skepticism, and is that just something that, again, you just put on the shelf for the character?
JON:
I didn't actually look at that as the afterlife.
SHAY:
Oh.
JON:
I looked at it as the moment that your consciousness slips away from your body, your brain, right? That's, you know, the train, as you die, you still have memory as you die. And so I think that's her going through everything she remembers, everybody she remembers, and then when she sees Jack at the end, that's when the lights go out, and then there's nothing. That's my take of what that train journey was, right?
And I have my own theories that, in my mind, are brilliant, but other people might think you don't know what the fuck you're talking about. But consciousness is something that scientifically, we all know that our universe is expanding, getting bigger, and why and how, we all know we're made up of matter and energy, and there's no way to prove this, obviously, unless you die.
Maybe when you die, maybe there's something you learn. Because possibly, I don't feel like the universe is, I feel like it doesn't waste anything, doesn't waste any energy, right? So you build this consciousness inside this animal, and they're all animals, right? I think all animals have a consciousness, they're all, to include the insects. And is there any value in allowing that consciousness that the universe, is there value behind it, and it goes into the universe?
If we were to look at the universe as maybe a living thing, a living organism, and we're all made up of matter, atoms, and all that, so maybe, just maybe, why the universe is expanding is because every consciousness that builds over either a dog's life, which is 12 to 13 years, over a human's life, which is 80 years, over a tortoise's life, which could be 100-some years, that consciousness, is that now, is there energy there, and does that energy then go into the universe? Is that what expands the universe?
So that's my own little theory that I don't care if it's real or not. I'm just gonna die, and whatever happens. But possibly that was Rebecca's consciousness taking the journey to however it's gonna go and expand the universe, and the consciousness is replaying all the most important things and important people in her life to kinda lock it in, and then boom, she's gone.
But like I said, I didn't see that as the afterlife, 'cause that would suck if that's all you have in your afterlife is just that train, that aisle, and that train to go back and forth. Or just that room with Jack.
SHAY:
I get motion sickness, I don't, I can't. Or is she gonna live in that room with Jack by themselves? What the fuck? That would be terrible.
Do you ever run into any contention when working with actors that are deeply religious and have it inform their work?
JON:
No, I would say unless you're working on a religious project, it doesn't really come up. I think people in our industry, most, I think, that even are religious, there's a respect for, one of my really great friends and colleagues, a great actress, she's pretty damn religious, and she talks about it and brings it up, but she knows I'm not. There's no contention between us at all. We wanna work together.
But obviously we've seen some actors that have just jettisoned themselves out of the business. Kirk Cameron, who probably could have a huge career by now, but he was like, "Nah, I'm out." He had a problem with people who are not religious, I think, in our industry.
So yeah, one of my favorite people is super Christian. I remember asking him once, "Are you seriously, do you believe that everything in the Bible is truth, that book?" He's like, "No." He gave me that face, he was like, "No, if I did, I wouldn't be a good Christian." I was like, "Wow, I never heard that before." And he's great and giving and loving and hates Donald Trump, just like I do.
So yeah, there's no contention, just, if there's any, it probably would more so come from me, because I actually feel that organized religion is damaging to our society, our planetary society. I think that religion has caused a lot of death, a lot of destruction, a lot of genocide, a lot of just encroachment on ecosystems. A lot of the discovery of the New World, the intention was to spread Christianity, you know what I mean. So I look at religion as being dangerous, personally.
[SHAY interjects: Important distinction to make here real quick. So Jon is referring to religion in the same way that we were talking with Dr. Anthony Pinn on episode 26, around people considering religion and theism to be synonymous. So just take that as you will.]
JON:
I think it's a dangerous thing. And a lot of people who are non-religious are like, "If it makes them happy." And I'm like, "It doesn't make them happy, it makes a lot of other people and things unhappy." So forget that it makes them happy, it makes people believe fantasy, it makes us put ourselves on a pedestal above everything else on this planet, which is dangerous.
SHAY:
And it brings about laws that we're currently dealing with, and also the laws that we've fought so vehemently against, interracial marriage, gay marriage, like all of those things, and all of the things that we're facing today.
But so we've talked about how that's influenced your acting. What about your Latin heritage? Because I was speaking with Cain Culto on the podcast, and he was just explaining how he came from this very conservative background, and I can't imagine telling a Puerto Rican family, "Hey, I don't believe in God."
JON:
I didn't come from a very, I don't think, conservative religious background personally. I went to Catholic school, but I think that was more for my education and a place for me to be while my grandmother worked. But it drives me crazy that it seems like Latinos and Blacks are the most devoutly religious people in our society, and especially in this country. It drives me crazy, and in Latin America, 'cause it's like, you don't understand that this, that Christianity, Catholicism was used to enslave, to eradicate swaths of people, of human life. And you adopt this as your, the afterlife of God or heaven is your beacon. Everything you do is just to get to that. That is what enslaved people, that's what erased cultures, erased languages, erased practices that have been in practice for thousands of years with indigenous people, with indigenous African people. It just drives me crazy.
So I personally love telling people that are conservative and Latino and Black that, "Oh, I don't believe in it." When they say, "What?" I go, "Yeah, it's silly." I'm super honest with how I feel about it. And I think that when I do that, it actually makes them answer that question in their own mind, is it silly?
And of course most of them probably go, "Nah, it's not, it's what I was taught." But some of them hopefully go, "Yeah, this kind of sounds silly." I remember being a little kid, going to church and they're reading excerpts from the Bible or having us read stuff from the Bible, and I'm reading Isaac Asimov too, and it sounds so similar. It's like science fiction, this fantasy science fiction. There's so much fantasy in the Bible, it's like a fantasy novel in a lot of it, right? How is this any more real than this?
I hope that when I react in a way when someone asks me, 'cause people ask me a lot, "You believe in God, right? You religious? You Christian? You Catholic?" Whatever, and I go, "Nah, no way." I laugh at it a little bit and they're like, "Like what?" I'm like, "Yeah, it's just silly."
SHAY:
I read one of your heroes is John Leguizamo, who is also not religious. Have you gotten a chance to meet and bond with him over this at all?
JON:
Not over that. We have met, we know each other. I did a movie with him my first year I moved out here. It was an amazing experience 'cause I got to meet someone I was already idolizing who wasn't as big as he is now. I think when I met him he was starting to get those great jobs that put him on the map.
But no, I haven't bonded with him or Ricky Gervais, who I also love. I don't know, I think me and Jon, we probably talk more, and what we do kind of bond on now is the representation of Latin culture and Latin characters in TV, film.
SHAY:
Yeah, talk more about that than...
'Cause I imagine, without that being a thing, you get to just be.
JON:
Yeah, exactly.
SHAY:
I wanna respect that we're about to end. I could geek out over acting stuff with you and music stuff with you forever, but where do you wanna see humanism go in the future?
JON:
I mean, I'd like to see it start to permeate politics. I think then we might see some better decisions made when it comes to what the government's doing for humans in this country at least, and in most countries. I think in some of the more non-religious countries like Sweden and Finland, they have a much better governance for their people, what they give their people.
I don't like the two-party system, I never have, I'm not registered Democrat or Republican ever. I think the two-party system is bad, it causes division. So I'd like to see a party that I'd actually wanna join, a secular party, a humanist party, whatever it is. Or there should be a secular and a humanist party, there should be tons of parties. If you go to Portugal, there's 13 in a country the size of fricking Virginia.
So I'd like to see that with humanism. I'd like to see it permeate our politics a little bit more so that people were not making decisions for their constituents based on what someone heard in church on Sunday.
And other than that, I'd also like to see it maybe play a role in how we treat the environment, how we're looking at the ecosystems that we inhabit, for plants, animals, how we farm. All the stuff that I think, if you take a humanist approach to something, you're making a decision based on what you are. We're no better than any other animal on this planet, and just like every other animal here, we only get one life here, and what are we gonna do with it, right? So that's what I'd like to see.
SHAY:
The work that you do as an artist is just, it's gonna last forever. So thank you for putting such impeccable art in the world and just caring so much. Being an artist who knows that they absolutely can speak on politics and speak on other things, it matters so much. And thank you for joining me again, especially for Hispanic Latin Heritage Month. You're the first guest that we've been able to have on to celebrate that, so thank you.
And last question is, how do we support what's coming up next for you?
JON:
Just watch television, watch movies.
SHAY:
Sweet, I could do that.
JON:
Go see theater. And I might show up in some way. I direct, I'm directing mostly now, it's what I enjoy more than anything at this point in my life. I don't post as much as I used to on the IG, just because of kind of where our world is, I don't even know what to say, you know what I mean? I just, I don't wanna say the wrong thing, I wanna say the right thing, but my emotion, my anger, my sadness, whatever, that'll cloud what I say. So I don't post as much, but I'm sure at some point, what I'm most excited about next, I'll put something on Instagram.
So if people wanna follow me on Instagram, they can, @johnhuertas. Maybe I'll post some stuff about my farm up north, some other things to just distract from the craziness of our world.
SHAY:
Wait, do you have time to tell me what animals you have on your farm?
JON:
Just one right now, a horse, that's the captive animal, but there's tons of animals on my property, from anywhere 25 to 30 wild turkey. There are probably about 12 deer living on our property. There's no hunting on, around my property, so we have all these groves of giant trees that the deer live inside of.
But we had a little Bambi on the property, a little fawn that was all spotted that would live right outside my workshop. I had a little camera, we had a couple of those this year, a lot of bucks, there's a lot of bucks on my property, which is cool. We got fox, we got lots of snakes and lizards and tree frogs, I like those animals as much as I like the farm animals. But eventually we'll probably have, hopefully I wanna get a Highland cow.
SHAY:
Oh, they're so cute. That'd be cool. I just wanna cuddle with them.
JON:
Yeah, I'm gonna get the big one, not the mini one, I'm gonna get the big one.
SHAY:
They love to cuddle, too.
JON:
Yeah.
SHAY:
They're super good, don't underestimate the desire to cuddle.
JON:
Oh, horses, not horses, but of course they love to cuddle too, but cows love to cuddle. Yeah.
SHAY:
Yeah. All right, well, no pressure, but I would love an invite at some point to come cuddle with the cows that will arrive and the horse.
JON:
For sure. Where are you located?
SHAY:
Everything, I'm in Philly.
JON:
Oh, Philly. Cool.
SHAY:
But yeah, I'm from Jersey, right outside the Bronx. I went to New York, American Musical and Dramatic Academy.
JON:
Oh, cool. Very cool.
SHAY:
Yeah.
JON:
Yeah, all right. We have, we're developing a show right now that's set in Philly, a new TV show.
SHAY:
Stop it. Really?
JON:
Yeah. And I just did an audio series. I produced an audio series with Chris Sullivan, who was on This Is Us with me, and it's called the McGuire Incident.
SHAY:
Oh my gosh.
JON:
Yeah, and it's about something that happened in the '70s right outside of McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey. And it's got a great cast, we've got Wilson Bethel, we've got Jennifer Morrison, we've got Wyatt Oleff from It, and we've got James Badge Dale, Mark Menchaca. We've got a phenomenal cast, a bunch more. But we've fully recorded it and are in post right now. So I've been spending a lot of my energy around the idea of Jersey and Philly.
SHAY:
I thank you.
JON:
You're welcome.
SHAY:
Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Thank you for those tax credits.
JON:
Anytime, bud. Tax incentives, you know what I'm saying.
SHAY:
Jon, thank you so much. At some point, let's have you back on, let's change the world.
JON:
Yeah, anytime.
SHAY:
All right.
JON:
Yeah.