Bonus: Justin Guarini Full Interview

This is the full version of our conversation with actor, singer, educator, entertainer, parent, and human Justin Guarini. A portion of this interview appeared as part of our episode, RACE (Part 1).
In this conversation Justin and I chat about finding family balance during COVID, creativity, investing in ourselves, moving forward in faith instead of fear, and the Netflix show Big Mouth.
You can find "The Talk" on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, and if you'd like to contribute to the conversation by sharing your story about one of our episode topics, you can do so by sending a voice memo or an email to thetalk@thetalkthepodcast.com. 

Transcript

As part of our recent episode exploring how we talk to our kids about race, I sat down for a chat with Justin Guarini. Because of time constraints and topic relevance, we could only include a limited portion of the conversation in that episode. But the interview was so much fun and went to so many different places, we decided to release it as a bonus episode. So here is my full, minimally edited conversation with actor, educator, entrepreneur, parent, and human Justin Guarini. Enjoy.

Justin Guarini: I've been in my office here. I rented an office down the street because children.

Jeremy: It looks new and unfurnished.

J.G.: It is. I need to put something besides this plug thing

Jeremy: Just some plants or something or a statue of a dog.

J.G.: Put a Fiji bottle or water bottle here. Put a little M&M's in my coffee cup right here.

Jeremy:  That's perfect. That's great. What is it like having an office space that's outside of your house?

J.G.: It's nice. It works because I can't work with all the children and everything and the three dogs and the children as well. It's one of those things where it's like, well, if I'm going to spend the money, I gotta make the money. And so that's what I'm doing.

Jeremy: That's right.

J.G.: Yeah. So it is as scary as it is exhilarating. How about that?

Jeremy: Yeah, that's an interesting little flip on the head of the "you got to spend money to make money." I mean that's in there too. But you said the reverse of that. If I'm spending money, the money that's the motivation to make the money to justify spending the money.

J.G.: Well, yeah. And you know what, that is for me, that is a principle that I have made a must in 2020 and 2021 where it's moving forward in faith as opposed to moving forward in fear. Right? I'm going to move forward in 2021. I know that. So, OK, how am I going to move forward? And so many times, whether comes to an audition or just those moments in career or family relationships, I have chosen and we've all chosen to move forward in fear. To take the path of least resistance that we know is going to get us at least something, right?  And instead, I rented this office here, and it's one of those things where I'm not rolling in the dough or I'm not like, "Hey, no problem." It's not going to make or break me, but it is significant. And if I'm going to spend that money and just sit here and just have my sanctuary from the children and the dogs and all the noise, then it will break me, eventually, and sooner than I would like to admit. But I know that I am getting this office here. And today I was shooting films and I am doing podcast interviews with my little mug in the background. And I am making this place a part of my business and a part of something that is going to be an investment that will make me money.

Jeremy: Yeah, I know you're early into it, but you must feel just so productive, like you can get to be so much more productive in the space. Yeah.

J.G.: Absolutely, yeah. I mean I tried it for six, seven months in 2020 in my house, in a room, our spare room that we turned into a walk—in closet, which is great for acoustics but terrible for the fact that it was always like "Hey Dad!" I want to wear a shirt that says "Hey Dad..." because that's like the mantra in my house. "Hey, Dad, can you... Will you... I need..." And I mean, that's parenthood. Right? But when you have children doing it to you every five minutes, it's impossible to focus on anything. And so that was why I said, "OK, this is a risk to do this. This is a risk." And at first, it is going to cost me way more money than it's going to make me. But it's an opportunity for me to be able to have a little bit of that space to think, a little bit of that space to plot and strategize, and then the dedicated space that I need to be able to say, "OK, I need to make a video, boom. I'm going to go over here to this side of the office, shoot it, come back over here, cut it together, give it to my CMO, and then she's going to put it out here." You know what I mean? Like just getting it going. And I would not be able to do that in my home.

Jeremy: Yeah. I mean, obviously, there's the part where, like, you just listening at the door for those thirty seconds of silence so that you can do a thing. But there's also—are you a person who's able to compartmentalize work? Like if you get interrupted, can you jump right back in and be where you were? I cannot do that.

J.G.: No, no, no, no. And there's scientific proof behind that. When you get interrupted, it's like what, twenty, thirty minutes before you really get zoned back in? And there's a reason for that. And being a musician or an actor or a creative like we are, it's like, "Oh man," when we get connected and we're in that flow stage, it doesn't matter what profession you're in, but especially the creative arts, right? Then you're in that flow state and it's just— you stop thinking, you stop all of the sort-of conscious processes, and then when somebody comes in and there's that record scratch sound and everybody looks at the door. That—it is so jarring to me. And I have— I started getting angry. I started getting angry and I started yelling and I recognized—I was like, "OK, you know, I am very aware of my relationship with my children, my relationship with my family, and that means so much to me." And I started to see myself walking down a path that was like—it was dark. It was anger, anger, right? I would yell and I would—my temper would be short. And I did not want that to be a dynamic in my home. And so I was willing, again, to make the investment to make sure that I have the space to be able to get it all out so that when I come home, I can be at home.

Jeremy: Yeah. Yeah. How old are your kids now? When we met, they were—you didn't even have all them when we met. By a long shot.

J.G.: Oh, I didn't realize that was that long ago. Yes. So basically now—"basically" as I'm like ballpark figuring. No, no. My youngest son is about to turn eight. The youngest one, who I don't believe was born or was "fresh" when we did our show at Joe's Cafe, and then my middle son is about to turn 10 and then my daughter just turned 16, which is crazy.

Jeremy:  Dude, wow. It's amazing.

J.G.: And I always used to say when I was younger, I would listen to people say "just watch your kids, be with them because the time goes so quickly" and they're right.  The time really, truly does go so quickly. And I turn around and my daughter, who I have known—my stepdaughter, but she's my daughter, basically, to me, that I've known since she was two years old, I mean, I when I look at her, I still see that little girl. And I know I'm not alone in feeling this way as a parent, but I still see that sweet little baby. And when she is stressed out about virtual school,  I just think back to when she would just be playing in her little tutu, like just a tutu, just to have. She wasn't even in a ballet class. She just had a little tutu and running around with her little Barbies and contrasting that against—at the freedom against how kind of inundated by this adult stress that she has in high school, that she has because of this pandemic, it's just—like it's heartbreaking.

Jeremy:  Has being home so much and all being in close quarters and all that kind of stuff, how has that changed your relationship with your kids? Has it?

J.G.: You know what? It has and it also hasn't. I think that because of the nature of my business and our business, really, where it's just like we don't nine to five. Right? We have a gig or we don't have a gig. And there is that gig time. And then there's that long swath of short but mostly long swath of time where you just don't have a gig and you're at home, like, "OK, great," you know. And so in that sense, it hasn't changed. But what has changed is the need for private space, the need for making sure that we are very clear about our boundaries. Right? That that has changed. And so the weird dynamic is that I have—I just the other night took away the iPads from my children. They have a switch. They have—I took away the iPads and the Xbox because I mean, we're a video gaming family, right? Not like "gamer gamers", but I took away the iPads, I took away the Xbox because the Xbox is Fortnite and the iPad's over a period of time. It's like that mission creep in the military terms where it's like, "Yeah, sure, you can have the iPad, but you're only going to have these apps and it's going to be the three-plus apps for kids who are three or three and under and then over time and we all get tired and 2020 happens, all of a sudden he's looking at TikTok and like I'm having to explain to him what these adult concepts are, right? Then he's like [unintelligible]. And so I was just like—it got to a point the other night where I said, "OK, guys, it's time for bed. Put your iPads down. I want you to play with one another. No screen time, no TV, no Xbox, no iPads, no whatever," because they're on screens all the time because the school and within five minutes, the play totally degraded into "I hate you," and "I hate the fact that you're my brother." And one of my older child who loves—who's a button presser was just like "hehehe" like laughing because he had totally just incited a riot inside of his younger brother, who was just like "[gibberish]". And I just was like, "ENOUGH," the voice of God. And I took all of these devices that had all of this stuff, and something I should have done a long time ago, but I took it and I just took it away and I just pulled the brake. I pulled the brake, the e-brake on the entire thing. And so I've gotten so far away from the question. But the boundaries. That was it, that was the question that we were talking about. So when it comes to those boundaries, I really was a little lax in making the boundaries a little bit too big at times where I wasn't as cognizant of, like, "OK, here is my home time." Here's a little bit of that that goes to just "I need a little bit to relax", but there's another bit of that that goes to me helping out the kids with school, right? There's another little bit of that that goes to me spending quality time with the kids and the quality time with the kids because of my "oh, just I got business to do." And I'm doing this and that and thinking and I'm doing breakfast and I'm doing dinner and I'm putting the kids to bed and I'm getting them up and also having to be CEO, and influencer and all that other stuff. So that was the big, the very long version of the answer of that. Just creating the boundaries and being aware of the boundaries, not let them get too far away.

Jeremy: Well, you get the sense that, when you're not using them and when you haven't put them in place, that boundaries are like going to be difficult to build and difficult to get in the habit of. But really, like you said, if you don't have them there and if you don't keep them for yourself, then no matter where you are, you are also someplace else. If you're working, you're feeling that guilt that you weren't engaging at home. And then when you're at home, you're feeling like "What I need to do for work?" So, yeah, it might be difficult to get in the habit. But what you reap from doing that for yourself and for your family is like so much more than that work that you initially have to put in.

J.G.: And it's painful at first. And I think you speak to a really good point of creating those boundaries within yourself and recognizing that there is a season for everything, right? There's a season for the work. There's a season for being at home and taking care of crap in the yard, which I had to do. I took down an above-ground pool, right? And I left it for months. Like it looked like a bomb went off in my backyard. There's a season for quality time with the kids. There's all these seasons inside of your home and inside of your life. And it takes effort to say, "I'm going to wear this hat now and I'm not going to think about that other hat for that other season." Right? And that's a challenge within yourself. When you can get into the routine, it feels good and you're like, "OK," you can be so much more present.

Jeremy: Yeah. I think we could continue going on like this for a long time, but I don't want to keep you all night and and and I don't want to stay all night either. So I'm struggling a little bit with the title for this episode. When I conceived this season, I came up with a list of like 30, just kind of like important things that kids should know about and there should be communication around, but kids often get left out for whatever reason. Adults are uncomfortable, adults didn't learn from their own parents, whatever. So I came up with this big, long list and one of the things that I put on this list was the word "race." I knew that I wanted to address this, but I also, kind of quickly—I was reading, as a lot of white people were over the summer, I was reading Ta-Nahisi Coates and Eram Kennedy and these people and learning and trying to to ingest a lot of voices that I had as a cis, white, straight male had ignored for a long time out of ignorance, embarrassingly. But I was doing that and hearing them talk about the idea of race as a construct, the word "race" and hearing them use terms like "racial groups" and trying to get away from this term for certain reasons. I was like, "OK, maybe I don't want to call this episode race." Maybe I want to try to embrace a little bit of what they're saying and do this. So then I came up with the idea of calling it Episode Skin because this is a specific thing that we allow ourselves to use to separate ourselves from other people, right? It's a specific, tangible thing that people see, people notice, and it allows us to do that in a way that other characters or an abstraction like race isn't quite so—it's not quite so obvious how vitriolic it is when you say the word race.

J.G.: Yeah, we don't really think about it, but the word race. I mean, to me when I hear that, I think a verb. And when I think race, it's like there has to be a winner and there has to be a loser, right? There has to be a constant struggle to get ahead there. Think about a race, right? All of those facets exist within the conversation of race and when it comes to racism, the subjugation of one race versus another. That's learned behavior. It's all learned, and the thing that I love about 2020 is with the complete shutdown of our entire lives, we all had the opportunity to have 20/20 vision on our lives. Some of us took the opportunity. Some of us didn't. And it's very interesting how you, many people I know, really took the time to take in and take stock of their own lives and then take stock of the experience of other people's lives, especially people outside of their realm of normal existence. Gorgeous. As terrible as 2020 was, look at the awakening that happened in so many people. And so, yeah, I think that the conversation of skin is so important when it comes to unlearning and reeducating ourselves and be our children who, if we think about it, they're rediscovering the world, right? I love my children when they're tiny babies. I was like, "Wow!" I got to watch them rediscover a world that had become mundane to me. Right? And so that same thing as they get older, as they can or are able to ingest larger concepts of life, we have the ability to rediscover what our biases are, rediscover what our viewpoints are, and just move the ball forward, I guess, for humanity, if we take the opportunity.

Jeremy: Yeah. One thing that's really encouraging to me about what you just said is with my kids, they're three and six right now. And I'm realizing sometimes when they ask me questions that my initial instinct is to, sort of, give them an answer. Even if it's not something that I—even if I don't truly know the answer, I want to give them the answer because I'm their parent. I want to speak the truth into their lives. But it's been so wonderful for me to kind of check that instinct and instead say, "Let's discover, let's find out together. Let's find this out together," because the questions that they have are questions that maybe I need to ask myself after this period of time, like you said, a world that has become mundane to us or things that I don't think about anymore. And I need to ask myself those things. So it's so I'm learning through them, not just learning things through them, but learning how to see the world again through that, just like you said.

J.G.: Absolutely. My 16-year-old, to speak more to that, is inundated and was born into the concept of breaking those gender constructs, race constructs. I mean, just within the past two to three years, maybe even two years, there has been a whole blossoming of identity that goes way beyond the old argument of gay marriage and Don't Ask, Don't Tell that we grew up under that it blows it out of the water. And I was watching Big Mouth the other day, which I think is one of the greatest, greatest, greatest shows out there.

Jeremy: I literally just talked about it in my newsletter today, in my newsletter for this podcast. It's so unbelievable.

J.G.: It is, it's amazing.

Jeremy: I've been telling people, kind of like half-joking, that this should be required viewing for like all 11-year-olds. I mean, it's like tougher to rationalize kids because it's like really... you know.

J.G.: Right, I think that it does get way into the adult humor, right?  But I would say definitely people who are like 16, 17, that would be the kids who I would be like, "You got to watch this!" Because it is not afraid to tackle. And I don't think 11-year-olds is out of the realm of good taste and possibility because we like to think that, "Oh, they're 11 and they shouldn't be exposed to this." But guess what? They're being exposed to it. I know of kids, little kids, 11-year-olds who are sexually active. Right? And there's no one to guide them. There's no curriculum for that in school.

Jeremy: You're right. You're right. We place this level of decorum over this level of truth and information that our kids need to have. You're absolutely right.

J.G.: Yeah, and we're lying to ourselves while we do it, because if they have access to the Internet and we don't have some sort of—even with parental filters, I mean, pssh, it was challenging for you and I to hide things from our parents without the Internet as we know it. Right? Because we had the social net, right? And somebody was going to mess up and tell one of their parents and then it was like, phone ringing, we got the call, right? But now, I mean, there are so many different ways to hide information. And the more that we as parents can be open and say, "Let's talk about it, I'm not going to get mad at you, I'm not going to shun you, let's just have an open and clear line of communication, because I want to make sure that you understand the consequence and the gravitas." Of course, I wouldn't use that word with a child, but you know what I mean?

Jeremy: I probably would.

J.G.: Like the gravitas of this, right? but you know what I mean. Like, they really understand what this is and let's talk about it. Let's talk about it.

Jeremy: Yeah, yeah. The thing I love about the show is that it's taught me so much about the things that I struggled with when I was that age and that I didn't know how to talk about. And no adults in my life, knew how to talk about or wanted to talk about. And so I'm learning now, at age thirty-eight, about shame. Not literally learning about it but understanding that that's what was happening then. That's what I was going through then.

J.G.: And it's so great how they have the characters—I'm sorry to cut you off, it's so great—how they really, again in that cartoon sort of way, you get such a visceral—he's like, "Come on, let's go." It just feels so like, "Oh my goodness, I get that!" Because we grew up with the wonderful world of WB cartoons where Bugs Bunny would be creeping along and it would be the pizzicato violins "Ting ting ting ting." There was such a visceral feeling to the action in the cartoons and then here in 2020 with that. When shame comes along and he's like this really snarky Englishman in tattered robes,  it's that version for us. And I'm so glad the kids had that.

Jeremy: Yeah. Yeah, me too. What season are you in? Are you, caught— are you catching up? Caught up?

J.G.: I think I'm in the current season and I think it's just the musical. They just had the—what was it? Disclosure: The Musical. I think that's the last one I just watched. But the one that I really was like—just blew me away this current season was the one where they did the whole musical number about all the sort of sexual identities that people can have. And it's like, "Oh, OK, I can feel X, Y, Z way and still be X, Y, Z." You know what I mean" It just is like, "Oh!" It removes that shame, it removes that sort of confusion and need to be feeling like you're a round peg trying to fit into a square hole.

Jeremy: Yeah, yeah. Ok, so this is good. This is great. I'm enjoying this a lot. Would you talk to me a little bit about when you were growing up? You were born in Atlanta and you lived there until you were six, seven years old, something like that.

J.G.: Yeah, so I was born in Columbus, Georgia. My father was a prominent politician, a police officer who would eventually become chief of police in Atlanta. A black man who'd become chief of police in a segregated police force. When he started out, there was a segregated police force and he rose all the way to the top job. And then my mother was an anchorwoman and a producer for the local ABC network and then would go on to be one of the first anchorwomen on CNN when it first started up. And so I grew up in the South, a child of mixed race. My parents weren't even allowed to get married before I was born or when I was born, right? Yeah, exactly. I mean, this 1978. You could not get married to a white woman if you were a black man and vice versa. And so that was what I grew up under. One. The other, I grew up in this sort of weird world of lights and cameras and entertainment. And I would wake up in the morning at five o'clock on a cot in my mom's dressing room at CNN, and I would see her putting on her pancake makeup, getting ready to go out. And then I would go to breakfast with the weatherman and I would play on the set. And I love telling the story about how one day somebody let me run the teleprompter during a live broadcast and now the teleprompter is literally a computer program like Word or something like that that you hit a button and boop, it zaps it right to the screen and it's all computerized and screens. But back then, a teleprompter was literally what we know of as a grocery cart belt when you go check out your groceries. And on that belt, they placed copies. Literal pages of printed-out copy and it would go on this conveyor belt and above the conveyor belt, staring down, would be a camera. And so it was this system where somebody literally had to sit there and make the donuts, right? Somebody had to sit there. And then depending on how fast or slow the people read, there would be a little knob that made the belt go faster or slower. And at five years of age, somebody, some very lovely and foolish human being allowed me to twiddle the wheel. And he said, "OK, a little bit faster, a little bit slower, a little bit faster." And I was like, "Hey, what's that? What's that orange button that's glowing down there?" He's like, "Don't push that. That's the self-destruct button." Obviously, it was the off button. I was fine, but he's like, "Don't push that, please don't push that." And he let me do it. And so that and then my father being this politician, all of these heads of state, all of these famous people, all of that would be coming to Atlanta and he would have some sort of role in it. And in the South, when you're a child, especially a child of my generation, you're to be seen and not heard. And so I had to put on the suit, or the tux, or the whatever, and I had to go out and I had to stand up straight and I had to squeeze the person's hand and look them in the eye when I shook their hand and I just learned decorum and just learned the the the state of politics and all of that or at least the state of being in politics. And that was one portion of my life that then at the age of five or six, split when my parents split. So all of that still existed in Atlanta. But then my mom moved up to Pennsylvania, back where she was from, and remarried my stepdad—to my stepdad, rather. And then I was literally split along the lines of my race. It was so interesting. My mom has told me stories, or not told me stories, but I've found stories about where she felt like she needed to hide me away from some of the older generations of my family. I come from an Italian family and some of them would not have taken kindly to a black child being in their family. And so it was just this very—and we lived in Pennsylvania, we lived in Virginia and my dad worked—my stepdad worked in Washington. And so it was this very interesting situation where almost like by day and during the school year, I was Justin Guarini, son of Kathy and Jerry Guarini and a white kid who just went to school and did all the things a normal child would do during the school year. And then during the summer, I would go down south—Oh and would go to the Roman Catholic Church, right, and would be raised in that sort of religious playground. And then during the summers, I would be Justin Bell, son of Chief Eldrin Bell, a black child who would go to the Black Baptist Church and who would travel all over the world and be in this sea of famous people and politicians and this other stuff. And so my life was literally—I lived two different lives until I went to college and then, eventually, had my own adult life.

Jeremy: Yeah. Was there one or other of those places that you felt more comfortable and more like yourself? More free? Or were you able to really compartmentalize between those?

J.G.: No, no, I wasn't able to and I didn't. I felt like a man without a country.

Jeremy: So neither place you felt like a whole self.

J.G.: One hundred perfect myself. Yeah, I didn't feel like that because I knew that I was different in each situation and I felt like I was only accepted to a point by either situation, by either grouping of people. And that was more my story, I think, than anything else. That was my perception. I don't know if that's necessarily true because there are so many people who love me and who care about me and who could care less about what my race was. But I think I was really conscious of it growing up.

Jeremy: But that perception in you that developed as a young kid came from somewhere, right? It came from somewhere. So it makes me curious about what kind of sort of implicit or subtle messaging you were getting from the people around you. Did you know other kids who had interracial parents?

J.G.: No.

Jeremy: No in neither place.

J.G.: Neither. I mean, there's those light-skinned folks, right? But  there was no one that I went to school with who was like me. I think where it really hit home for me was in junior high, where I first really got my first taste of racism. And a sort of—I was a little ostracized for it and it's just like I will never forget. And it was—I was ostracized on one hand, but then, also, it was just so blatant and all, I didn't know what to do. I just could just laugh at it because there was this guy who— and it was back when Doc Martens were all the rage, right? And so we were in gym and we're in the gym locker room and we're getting dressed and he is just like—I would not be surprised if he was one of the people who was at the Capitol. Just that was already in him at that point. And I was like, "Yo, man, your boots are great." And he's like, "Yeah, they're my N-word stompers." But he didn't say N-word. Yeah! And I was like,"ha ha ha... ha ha ha" Right? And he was smiling at me and it wasn't malicious. It was weird because I know that this guy, if I was like, "Yo, dude, I need you to have my back," he'd have my back. It was weird. And I think he knew, right? That I was—. But he accepted me. It was so strange. And so I felt like that was happening. And then there was the one black girl in our school. And when I told her that I was mixed, she was like,"Oh, oh!" And she then called me a cracka N-word but like, almost hyphenated. "Oh, so you're a cracker N-word." And I was like, "OK."  And so even from like my sister in the school, even then it was like, "You are separate. Yeah, you're different.

Jeremy: How can you be expected to find a place in the world when you're perceived as a threat from every angle. So strange.

J.G.: Or as "other."

Jeremy: As other, right.

J.G.: Yeah, that's why I felt like a man without a country. And I kid you not that it has been probably, there were some frayed wires, but 2020 is what really helped make significant connections for me in that area. And I'm forty-two. So we're talking between the ages of forty-one and forty-two, it didn't come together for me in the fullest sense until everything this past year really happened. And what it was for me is that I just decided to take a stand in my own lane, in my own self. I decided to take a stand. I didn't wait for other people to give me a position or a place in the world. I decided to say "This is who I am." And I decided to identify with my Caucasian side and identify with my African-American side. But what I truly, truly just—instead of being that man without a country, I just said, "You know what? I am unapologetically who I am, which is not necessarily either one of these things." And I identify with that. I identify with "other". I'm comfortable with being "other." It's a blessing that I haven't really recognized and a gift that I haven't given myself. That like. "Oh! I'm what everyone's going to look like in two hundred years." Right?Like I'm ahead of the curve. And no by anything I did, but it's just like, "so that's OK." And that for me, that clarity, brought on a sense of certainty and then just helped to create so much more of a foundation in my life that I'm building more and more on and that I give to my children.

Jeremy: Yeah, well, I was going to ask about that next. When do you and especially this past year, what have your conversations with your kids been about their heritage? You know, you grew up in this particular space, so you must know that there's a risk for them also finding themselves in this space. And so how do you talk to them about that?

J.G.: Well, we have very open conversations about it. And my wife and I, my wife is Italian and Syrian, and then I would categorize myself as African-American and Italian. And so when George Floyd was killed, when the temperature just spiked through the roof, it opened up an opportunity for us to talk to our children about what race is and who we are. And every single time they were like, "Well, why are they doing this? Why are they doing that?" I made sure to say, "Well, look, this is what's happening to our people." I was very, very intentional in my use of language, saying, "This is our people." And what's very interesting is that my father, their granddaddy, is both a black man and a cop. And so I had such a unique perspective, and I still have, just being able to speak to him, he gives me such a unique perspective because he not only was just a cop, he was the top cop in Atlanta, which is like the New York of the South, basically.

Jeremy: And in the early '80s.

J.G.: Right? Like what? This is a hotbed of all of these issues. And he was, at one point, seen as a savior and, at another point, seen as a betrayer, right? And so when he goes into, or a went into a project and cleaned it out, there were those two factions of people saying, "Man, you're betraying us." "Thank you so much. You're saving us." And so his take on policing and what we've lost in policing is that A) our police do not represent and/or come from the communities that they are set to police, right? That's a huge problem. And then on top of that, when people are protesting, when people are exercising their constitutional rights, instead of seeing them as an enemy, and you're going to have people who do things that they shouldn't do that are illegal, right? But my father always said, if you were going to protest, A) I'm going to be out there with you. B) I want the organizers to be with me or to be wearing the yellow vests or the whatever. And I want to be in contact with them at all times because if I see something happening that is not OK or where I might arrest somebody, I'm going to go to that organizer and say "You better handle your people or I will. And the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to lock you up and then I'm going to lock them up." Right? And that's the kind of on-the-ground policing that we just don't have anymore. And that disconnect and the distrust now that has been sown between the police and between the people who are legitimately exercising their rights. And then it leads to the trickle-down effect of situations getting out of control and then the media just shows the looters and the rioters and the message gets lost in the sort of polarization that we face now, right?

Jeremy: Yeah, yeah. Do you have a pretty— are you in touch with your dad frequently? Do you have a good relationship with him?

J.G.: Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. And it just has gotten better as I've gotten older. I was angry for a long time, as children can be in a situation of divorce. And yet, over the past ten years, but especially the past, I would say even three years, I call him multiple times a week and we chat. I just, I love hearing his voice. And as I see myself get older, I look at my hands, I see his hands. I hear myself saying the things that he says and speaking like he speaks. And it's a mark of my age and my understanding that I've only got so much time left, right? And all the stories that I created don't matter. Right? Good, bad, indifferent stories that I create around my relationship with my father don't matter. What matters is that I am—and this is the way for everybody, I think—but especially in my situation, considering who he is, what he has done. His name is Eldrin Bell, if you want to look him up. E-L-D-R-I-N B-E-L-L in Atlanta. He is a living piece of history. He was born in the 1930s in country Georgia and he never went to the doctor for X amount of time in his life. But once a season, his parents and his grandparents would line up all the children and they'd give them like ipecac or some sort of horrible thing that made you puke and poop your brains out and everybody'd be fine, right? But it's those things. And in terms of the speeches he's given, there's so much history that I am soaking up from him as much as I can. I'll record conversations with him sometimes because, he—and this is the last thing I'll say about it—when he was born in the 1930s, his head was crushed by the birth process. And the doctors at the time, white doctors, said "This child is not going to live." They gave him up for dead. But his grandmother, who was a slave, took his infant body and just rubbed his head and massaged his head and massaged his head. The same hands that had picked cotton, the same hands that had been bound, the same hands that had born and birthed—she was a midwife—however many children, she just rubbed, rubbed, and literally, almost like play-doh, reshaped his head. And had it not been for her, had it not been for that ancient wisdom that kept him alive, I wouldn't be here, and that's a story that I love telling my kids because I wouldn't be here, my dad wouldn't be here, my children wouldn't be here, and we wouldn't be having this conversation. And so there's so much wealth in my relationship with my father and it's taken me forty-two years or forty years to recognize it.

Jeremy: Yeah. I was going to ask you earlier, when you were talking about high school, I was going to ask you, you mentioned that there was no one around that you could see who was like you. I was going to ask you if there was a time in your life when, being an actor, that's kind of important that you're unique, that there's no that there is nobody else like you. And I think you've partly answered this question already, the question of "Was there a time in your life when you were able to embrace that?" I heard you answering that question that it has happened recently and it has happened over the last couple of years. But I'm curious, when you look at your life now, if it feels like this is a point of delineation, and what you see and feel for yourself going forward from that point of realization,

J.G.: One hundred percent. It is an awakening that, for me, is finally fully stepping into my power. I recognize that I have been playing small for a very long time. I recognize that I was born into a circumstance, a set of circumstances, that were designed to create the life that I now have. I was born into the lights and the cameras. I was born into the political landscape, the entertainment landscape. I was born to someone who is an orator, and an educator, and a mentor. I was born into a situation that time and time and time again has pointed to exactly what I'm doing right here and right now, which is being an entertainer by day and an educator by night. So it is my moral obligation, my moral duty, to take the wisdom and the experience that I have learned and to pass that on so that other people who are like me and other people who are not like me can avoid the pitfalls that I fell into, just like I was able to avoid the pitfalls that my father fell into and my mother fell into, right? And so it's a gift and it is a delineation. And I have to move forward. And it brings us right back around to where we started in the beginning, the conversation about, "Am I going to move forward in fear or am I going to move forward in faith?" If I move forward in fear, my life's not going to be over. I'm not going to get in a car accident and die. I mean, hopefully not. But things are going to blow up. I will achieve something. But there's a whole universe and a whole set of options that open to me when I am moving forward in faith, and that's not just in business, that's moving forward in faith with my children. Knowing that, I can be, and that I am, and that I must. It is my moral obligation to spend quality time with them, and not just to hang out with them, but to integrate them into my life and to repeat the pattern of positive exposure that I got from my mom and my dad. I love to tell—I was on The Oprah Winfrey Show, back when it was in Chicago, and I was sitting there being interviewed by Oprah. And I said, "You know, a lot of people don't know that I had a horrible drug problem when I was younger". And she goes, "What? You had a drug problem? But your dad was chief of police." I said, "Yes, he was aware of it." I said, "I had a horrible drug problem because my dad drug me everywhere he went. And it was the greatest thing he could have done for me." And, you know, ha ha ha ha ha ha. But that's it. I want my children to have that kind of drug problem, right? I want them to be able to say, "My dad drug me up to New York," which I have done to Broadway. I have drug my children to the studio when I've been recording things. I have drug my kids to the office here and I'm going to continue to drag them around the world because that was what happened with me and it made all the difference in my life.

Jeremy: Yeah. That Mark Twain thing about—I wish I could remember it, but something about travel being the killer of prejudice, right? And that, truly, exposure to things outside yourself is what causes you to think about yourself in relation to other people and causes you to understand that everyone deserves dignity and respect in the same way that you want it. I mean, it's empathy.

J.G.: Yeah, bottom line. And the more that we can in the digital world that our children are growing up in the ones and zeros and the ability to hide behind some sort of screen name and to not even use your real voice. And when we look on Instagram, to not even be able to see our real face anymore, to see the highlight reel, the more that we can develop empathy, which is untouched by any algorithm, right? The more that we can develop empathy, the more that we can fight against the natural tendency to spin out off into the void or the natural tendency to isolate ourselves and to be small and close-minded. It's so interesting. We're more connected than we've ever been in any other point in history. And yet, we have the ability to feel more alone than we've ever felt.

Thanks so much to Justin Guarini for spending this time with us. Justin has a new book coming out this month called Unshakable Confidence: The Powerful Formula for Being, Doing, Having, and Giving More Than You Ever Imagined. You can find the book by visiting Justin.club. Thanks for listening to this episode of "The Talk". You can find us on the Web at Thetalkthepodcast.com and on Instagram and Facebook at TheTalkThePodcast. If you'd like to support us, you can do so by visiting Buymeacoffee.com/coffeetalks or by purchasing one of our wonderful tote bags at Thetalkthepodcast.com. If you'd like to support us without spending a dime, you can leave us a rating or review on Apple Podcasts or just tell a friend about your favorite episode of "The Talk". Dana Gertz created all of our original artwork for the show. Mackenzie Yaddaw is our post-production assistant, and perpetual and eternal thanks goes to my wife Jenny and to our kids for being the reason "The Talk" can exist at all. Goodbye.