#353 From Villains to Voices: Inside Erik Passoja’s World

Jeff Dwoskin 0:00

What's it like having a career filled with playing serial killers, Nazis and Charles Manson? You're about to find out. Eric Fauci is here. We're talking about that and more. All right, ladies and gentlemen, I'm excited to introduce you to my next guest actor, comedian, fifth degree black belt. Welcome to the show. Eric Fauci, what's

Erik Passoja 0:22

up? Thank you. Jeff, how's it hanging Detroit? La, what? Peter, lied. Instant communication, I'm here, you're there. We're not seeing each other. We're seeing representations of each other and hearing legacy audio. It's

Jeff Dwoskin 0:39

beautiful. This is amazing, what a world we live in. So fifth degree black belt. So are you more Eagle Fang or Miyagi? Do? Miyagi do? Or Cobra Kai? Oh, I'm

Erik Passoja 0:52

definitely 100% Cobra Kai. I think you need to go for the knee. I think you know, especially if he's thin, vulnerable, and doesn't really know the martial arts. You got to just take that knee out right away. No, I, you know, I was a kid when I saw it, obviously. And I had been training since I was four. So I was, you know, I was in my teens when I saw it. What I like most about it is that the original film is Mr. Miyagi had him do repetitive movements, up, down, on, off, all that work. And that's what we do in the martial arts. You know, I can't tell you how many punches I've done, but it must be in the hundreds of 1000s over time. And it's that one movement. And, you know, everybody has what's called the totally waza, which is, you know, the favorite technique. And you just drill a drill over and over and over and over and over again. And what I loved about that film is it really was about dedicating yourself to the boredom of doing something and then using it in an applicable situation. So I dug that.

Jeff Dwoskin 1:51

Yeah, it's I wax on, wax off. I mean, people still,

Erik Passoja 1:56

I know, I know.

Jeff Dwoskin 2:00

And the lessons, do you watch Cobra Kai, like, How real is it like with the karate? Like, when you watch sometimes, when you know something, and you watch something, you're like, oh,

Erik Passoja 2:10

honestly, it's hard for me to watch martial arts, because, you know, Kill Bill, for example, Uma Thurman, I trained for months for that. Well, really, because you just beat the hell out of 75 professional martial artists. You know, it's like, it's, you have to suspend your disbelief when you're watching Cobra Kai. But as a martial artist, you know, the movie Black Swan is a good example. All the ballet dancing in that film, I was like, This is amazing. Natalie Portman was great. And all the ballet dancers are like, Yeah, you know, it's just what they you know, it's the extension of the hand and the gesture and the fingers together and all that that comes after doing that for 15 years, six hours a day, you know. And you know, I doubt Natalie Portman's feet broke over the process of that. But all these, you know, ballet dancers on point, have had, have broken most of their toes, like, I can see the difference. Now, let me give you another example. Though I saw Lethal Weapon four for the first time, not having watched a lot of kung fu movies, and the instant I saw Jet Li standing, I'm like, Who is that guy? I didn't realize he was an international martial artist, but just the way he was flicking through those beads and standing and keeping that perfect distance, and then he moved. I was like, this guy, Donnie Yen, is another one. I didn't really know his work, but he swung a bo stuff and went, I'm like, That is a person who knows how to swing a weapon. You know, you could just tell immediately.

Jeff Dwoskin 3:39

That's awesome. That's great insight. That is great insight. I never but, yeah, it's like, you when you know something, and then it happens on screen, you're like, and everyone else is like, I love it,

Erik Passoja 3:53

yeah, but it's, but it's fine, you know, I appreciate the, appreciate the conversation about the martial arts, and I appreciate that. You know, in things like Cobra Kai, the goal is to not fight, the goal is to avoid situations. And, you know, I'm going to knock on wood, but I haven't been in serious situations since I started training seriously.

Jeff Dwoskin 4:18

Oh, that's good. Let's hope that continues

Erik Passoja 4:21

well. So here's the thing, by the way, you I'm never afraid of the big guys. The big guys have to spend their entire lives being nice to people, so people aren't terrified of it's a little guy with a cauliflower ears you got to be really careful of. And most of those guys get it all out in school, though. You know, they're getting it out at the dojo. They're rolling around. They're choking each other out. So when they're on the street, it's not, it's not usually the martial artists I'm worried about is the people who don't get enough fighting it.

Jeff Dwoskin 4:52

So I gotta say I I was watching your YouTube channel, and I was digging deep. I went this. I kind of went a little bit. And. Into the archives. Oh, wow, archives, so, but since we're on this topic, it was a lot of you had a couple with a lot of a lot of views mind, like water. It was a 51,000 views, but it was what goes through a person's head when he's held up at gunpoint. And, I mean, it's short. It wasn't that long. And it was a video. And it was fascinating fast, because you talk about kind of these things, but and what in a mugging situation, it was that was really cool, by the way.

Erik Passoja 5:34

Thank you. I was, I was right, right before, right after, 911 and I woke up one night in the middle of the night, I'm like, I got this idea for a short film, and I wrote it down. I wrote it in a day, and then, you know, it took me two years to make because I did it all alone on my what was it? My was it the 5g Macintosh computer? I did all the visual effects for it. It was what it was, but it, yeah, it's the story of someone who walks away from a situation that would have been deadly, even though this person knows they would have had the physical upper hand on his opponent. There's, there's a surprise element that hasn't realized that he made the good decision to walk away from that fight. Yeah, it was

Jeff Dwoskin 6:21

brilliant. I I found it fascinating because it wasn't just like a little short movie of a guy getting mugged. I mean, you go into the whole philosophy of how to survive this event and play through the different scenarios. I thought it was tickled

Erik Passoja 6:36

you watched that. Thank you, Jeff. I appreciate that. Yeah, motion mind like, well, actually, it really is. Motion means no mind. What is it does? Seishin, no coro, which means, truly means mind like water. So in a way, it was a mistranslation, but it's the same idea. You empty your head and you don't fill it with anything, and you allow the moment to decide what you're going to do, which, by the way, works perfectly for stand up comedy and acting. That's really where you need to be,

Jeff Dwoskin 7:09

absolutely, absolutely gotta kind of be in that moment. So you're, you're comedian, actor, like, what's, what's your origin story? Eric, how did you I know your parents are, like, all geniuses, and you come from, yeah, this

Erik Passoja 7:25

meteorite struck near my house. No, yeah, my like, what I have to audition for this? Well, we did it with four actors, because you're not going to take two high school students and do that. But I remember opening night, the whole school was there. I was downstairs in the bathroom from this really nice, size, beautiful theater, and I remember going through each of my characters, going, all right, Petey, Fisk, vulnerable. I really love animals. I'm really scared of people. I'm really shy. And I went through all my characters, and I realized now looking back, I was doing method acting work right then, and I was 15 years old, and it just evolved until I was a straight math and theater major, and then a chemistry and theater major, and then I said, Screw it, psychology and theater major, and then I did a psychoanalytic profile of Richard the Third and I played the role like that was it. I was just going to be an actor and and that's what I do. You know, I'm grateful to be able to do it.

Jeff Dwoskin 8:27

Where does comedy come into this timeline? Where, because you've done that for decades as well? So that's

Erik Passoja 8:32

Can I curse on the show? Sure, what a waste of fucking time. That was, No, it was, it was, I was, I was on tour with a French, English production of the miser by Moliere, and I was playing Harper gum lead. And we just, I mean, I was 21 years old. We were getting $273 a week, and they were putting off us up in motel sixes, like there's no way you can even make enough living to go on the road. I don't know where they think we somehow, I made it through. I remember seeing the movie Aladdin at the time, and I really experienced how much fun Robin Williams was having. I mean, he's, as far as I'm concerned, he is probably one of the greatest comedy minds ever to walk the earth, an eidetic memory, a cauldron of jokes, complete freedom, willingness to improvise. And by the way, sometimes he was improvising and it wasn't he would just dip into this cauldron of jokes. Sometimes they weren't his own. I get it, but I said, I want to do that. And so I wrote some comedy while I was in the road, and I had been doing improv for years, so I was on an improv open mic show, and they said, Hey, we're also bringing stand up comics on. If you think you're funny, jump on. And I'm like, All right, let me get a couple of beers. And then I did and then I I just did comedy professionally for for years and years and years in New York. And. And then here in LA did the road, did colleges and and I quit last year. I'm done with comedy, at least. I've

Jeff Dwoskin 10:08

never heard of somebody being able to quit comedy. I haven't done it as much, but there's an old saying that you never can quit.

Erik Passoja 10:14

But, yeah, yeah. But no, that's not true. Like, let's look at Mike Royce, who wrote everybody, everyone loves Raymond. I mean, I used to perform with Mike at the comedy cellar. So did Ray, by the way, Mike, Mike became a major writer showrunner. David J Nash is another comic who became a major writer, showrunner. I know Tim Allen has jumped on stage since his acting stuff, and I think he put together a special. But you know, Jim Carrey's not doing stand up. You know, there were a lot now, there are people like Eddie Izzard who, like my other favorite comic of all time. I see him live whenever I can. I saw him do a show at Largo a couple years ago. He went on at midnight, did two hours and 10 minutes of the most hysterical comedy I've ever seen. It was like seeing Jimi Hendrix in his prime. And I comic, you know this as well. I laughed. How often do we let I laugh? I belly laughed like he's got to do it.

Jeff Dwoskin 11:09

That's awesome. Yeah, maybe, maybe the old saying is, if you don't have a multi million entertainment career that that followed it, but you're right. I saw Tim Allen. I saw one of those shows. I got a chance to work. I actually worked with Tim Allen. I did a benefit show in Detroit. Well, I think it was one of his very first returns to comedy. He did, like, 20 minutes, and that was fun. And I then it. He did a secret show at Mark Ridley's comedy Castle, like where he did 45 minutes. And so, you know, it's, it's fun to see, it's hard though, right? So I think Eddie Murphy was saying talking about this, because he was trying to do stuff, when you become that famous and you try and go back with technology now and people leaking stuff, it's hard to people, because people, because people don't really understand the process, and they don't understand that you suck at jokes, suck before they become brilliant, right?

Erik Passoja 12:08

Well, Dave and Louie, Dave Chappelle and Louis, Ck, they have people put their phones in these pouches and close them. So, you know, even so, when David had that, when Dave had that really hard set, was that in Detroit where he was, yeah, when he had that hard Detroit set, someone got some film of that. So it still happens. And, yeah, the best comedians on the planet, they try their new stuff out, and it dies. And, you know, that's what the topic of, of Seinfeld's comedian movie was about, is about him going back to stand up and saying, Alright, I'm going up with no material, and I'm going to bomb for a while, you know? And that's, that's the deal, yeah, it's tough. Me. I just, I'm a homebody, Jeff, I my my creativity is very quiet. Can be very cerebral. It's very from the gut. And I don't like being in a hotel in Cleveland. I don't like, you know, going to the airport and flying to Kansas and then driving four hours to Manhattan, Kansas, and then doing a gig for either 10 or 1000 people and then driving all the way back and taking the flight back. That's, that's a nightmare for me. And there are some people, some dear, dear friends, who are phenomenal headliners. Some you've heard of, some you haven't heard of, who do cruise ships and live for it. They live for that stuff. Me, every day on set is a good day. Every day on set. People like, thanks for coming. I'm like, Are you kidding? Are you kidding, dude?

Jeff Dwoskin 13:45

I don't disagree with that about the comedy. It's like, I think somebody brought up Indiana the other day, and I remember the Red Roof Inn I had to stay in for three days, and how depressing that was. It's, you know, alone, and it's, it's not, you know you're when I'm on stage, right? And I bet if you got on stage and even just did 20 minutes, you'd be like, this is fantastic. Like, once you get that rush, but once I'm off stage, yeah, I don't need to go back on until, like, I'm forced to go back on stage. But there is nothing better than being on stage and making people laugh. I love it so much. You get the same high acting. But

Erik Passoja 14:26

yes, but know what you said, go on stage and do 20 minutes. Name me, anyone who can go on stage and do 20 minutes and make a living. Now you can go on stage and do 45 minutes, do an hour and make a living. That's after you show up three days early, and you do radio, and they dropped the check in the middle of your set, and the entire crowd has to be there to see you, or you don't go back to the venue. And the second show, on a Friday night, everyone was working all week. They went out with to dinner with their work friends. They got shit faced, and they came to the club, had two more drinks, and now they're heckling, and that. This set where you're going to try your new material. You know what? Bye, bye, bye.

Jeff Dwoskin 15:04

I can't disagree with any of that.

Erik Passoja 15:07

And by the way, yes, I mean seriously, Jeff, you could throw, you could throw me up in the air. I'd land on my feet right now. And I do a set for anyone 20 minutes. No problem. But

Jeff Dwoskin 15:19

I just meant to get to get that high again? Hell yeah,

Erik Passoja 15:24

I might do that, but I'm not gonna. I'm not gonna write a Netflix special and go and do 700 sets to get ready for it and then get done with it and be like, who's gonna buy it?

Jeff Dwoskin 15:35

Right? It's, it's not easy now. And Netflix flooded everything. There's like 1000 comedy things on Netflix, and

Erik Passoja 15:43

some really good ones, by the way, some really good comedy sets, you know? I mean, that's how bill burr got famous, really, through his Netflix sets. And guy's a beast. I mean, I started with him. He's amazing.

Jeff Dwoskin 15:54

So there's He's hilarious. I love Bill Burr. So many funny people. So alright, so you're alright, so you're classically trained, Yale, fancy, fancy.

Erik Passoja 16:09

Or, as some people might pronounce it, jail. I did. I went to Yale. It was best four years of my life so far, don't tell my wife and kids. It really was a great experience. You know, it I was not going there like I'm an actor, I'm an actor, although my freshman year became that I ended up in the music and science residential college there, and the people who surrounded me blew my mind. I mean, my best friend in college was a nuclear physicist. There were two guys who were one was a pianist and a clarinetist. They were both engineers. There was a guy who became a serious businessman in San Francisco, one guy, one guy, my roommate, Sanjeev, he ran out of Yale physics courses his freshman year and had to go to MIT, like those were the people I was hanging with, and it raised the bar, and everything I did, you can't I mean, you might be a genius and not study and do okay, but everybody else there is smart, so if you're in a class, you better do the work, because it's not like, you know, an Easy school where you don't have to do your homework at the same time, 3500 smart women, oh my gosh, it was the best. It was the best.

Unknown Speaker 17:39

Yeah, that's awesome, yeah. And that's

Erik Passoja 17:41

where I learned how to do Shakespeare. That's where I fell in love with Shakespeare. And Shakespeare is probably is my favorite thing to do. It really is, what's

Jeff Dwoskin 17:53

your favorite play or role? Oh, Richard

Erik Passoja 17:56

the Third, for sure. I joked that, you know, on TV and film, I've played more serial killers than there have been serial killers, and I've been playing Nazis longer than World War Two happened, and I'm Jewish. But one of the things I love about Richard the Third is it is possible to be a funny villain as Richard the Third, and with comedy and being able to express my dark side, it's just, it's, it's a romp. Plays a romp.

Jeff Dwoskin 18:24

You'd be a funny King and hat and Hamilton.

Erik Passoja 18:30

Oh yeah, boy, he was tremendous. What's his name from Man Man hunts can't remember his name right off hand. He's a tremendous actor. He what I loved about his work in Hamilton is he was so still. He was so tremendously still, unless, which was very royal, unless he was trying to make a point, and then he hit it like a sledgehammer, and yet his voice expressed all the inner life. Everyone's going, I know his name, I know his name, and I'm sitting here going, Yeah, I'm 53 I'm forgetting shit.

Jeff Dwoskin 19:10

It's an impress that is an impressive comedic role, I mean, for everything that happens on Hamilton, and if you haven't seen the play, go fast forward to the scenes on Disney plus. But it's amazing when you're actually there and there's like a million people dancing around and doing all this, and then just this one guy comes out and just owns the entire theater for the time of things. Wow, that's who it was amazing, all right? Well, yeah,

Erik Passoja 19:41

by the way, his his his comedy was three gestures. At one point he goes and the audience loses it, but the rest was completely still. So he was able to say, I know that this is a good comic. Lot of good comics do this. Long setups. Dave Chappelle, long. Setup, but when he does the punchline, he knows we're gonna laugh, and that's what Groff did with that. Yeah,

Jeff Dwoskin 20:05

it's brilliant. It's brilliant. All right, so Nazis, so, all right, so probably the, probably the greatest shtick to a Nazi would be as a Jew playing a Nazi. You can't think of anything that would annoy a Nazi more than a Jew playing a Nazi. So good on you. Thank

Erik Passoja 20:27

you very much. I was just, I was doing that to really stick it to the Nazi, yeah, well, actually, it's funny. Nazis aren't really Nazis anymore, you know, I think Hitler saw Neo Nazis. He gasped them all. I mean, they're a bunch of losers. You know? The reality is, Nazis are no longer these. There are plenty of them, certainly in armed forces and in the police forces in Germany, as we discovered. But it's no longer this top down structure of Aryan European people. It's a bunch of psychotic, bald, tattooed wife beater wearing people that call themselves Nazis. But yeah, I look like the Nazi poster boy. Do I look like Rob from the sound of music, I am 17 going, but I'm a Jew.

Jeff Dwoskin 21:21

You do got you do, got that look, but you know, but only, but you as a good actor, you can become that character based on on your frame and look, but Well, Jeff, your life is super nice.

Erik Passoja 21:33

Thank you. Thank you. Here's the thing, when you play bad guys, I don't want to give my secret away, but I'll get my secret away if you're already dubbed a bad guy, or if you do bad things, you don't have to play a bad guy. Let me give an example. I just, I just had the pleasure and joy of doing six episodes of the flight attendant on HBO, and I played a CIA agent Jim Jones, aka cloudy eye guy, and they put a cloudy contact lens in my right eye, and if you look at me, I mean, if I say, I love you, you'd run away. You know, I didn't have to play a bad guy. And in fact, if you actually watch the series, I don't want to give it away, but I didn't. There's nothing I have to do looking like this and saying, Hey, where are you going? What do you mean? Hey, where are you going? You're a cloudy eyed dude in a suit following me through an airport. I don't have to kind of Yeah,

Jeff Dwoskin 22:35

you're going to freak people out. You're going to freak people out. I But yeah, so let's spend the next 3040, 50 minutes talking about Kaylee Coco.

Erik Passoja 22:47

I actually I could. What do you want to talk about? I'll listen.

Jeff Dwoskin 22:51

No, I'm kidding. I love her. I just want but you've worked with her, so I

Erik Passoja 22:56

will say this. I have nothing but good things to say about Kaylee Coco for a number of reasons. One, I think she's a tremendous actress. She's funny. We all know this, but there are a couple scenes in this, in this last season of the flight attendant, that will tear your heart out. And she's not doing it from a put on place. She really goes there. They're not a lot of people who can go there. She absolutely goes all she there's one wonderful scene where she's talking to her dad, over over his grave, and she's, I want to cry. She's falling to pieces. But who can do that? By the way, she played four or five characters. She had to memorize all those lines. And she's a creative producer of the show. I have never been on a show where people took care of me as well as Kaylee Cuoco production company, they sent me holiday gifts. They treated me like a king I am. She's the

Jeff Dwoskin 23:50

best, really. That's awesome.

Erik Passoja 23:54

And by the way, I die at the end of the season. So I'm not saying this to get another season. I mean spoiler.

Jeff Dwoskin 24:00

No, she's great. I talked to a friend of mine, Brian Bihar, who was on, can't remember the the John Ritter show that she was on. Oh, she was really young, yeah, but that that she was just brilliant. Like, Jennifer, yeah, like the next Jennifer Anderson breakout. Like that, good of a comedic actress, like, you know, like early on Great and Big Bang Theory. I'm

Erik Passoja 24:26

telling you, she's, if she manages to avoid the traps of being a star when you're young, she's going to, she's going to go all the way through a very, very storied and really impactful career. So good for her. I'm sorry have any dirt on her, I don't I think

Jeff Dwoskin 24:46

my dirt. I wanted to hear good stuff. I just more like, yeah, yeah. And she's

Erik Passoja 24:51

lucky enough to be beautiful. Isn't that great?

Jeff Dwoskin 24:57

I mean, you and I are cursed with the same that same. Yeah, I know.

Erik Passoja 25:04

Thank goodness, this is radio.

Jeff Dwoskin 25:07

So speaking of, oh, let's go back to Nazis for a second. So which was your favorite Nazi to play? Which? Which got it?

Erik Passoja 25:18

I got to tell you, but I'm on the Amazon series, hunters. And one of the things I loved about it again because we know who I am, I didn't have to play that. I played a father of five. I played someone who just worked his ass off for six months and finally came home was exhausted. My feet are sore, and that's it. Now if you know what I did, you know I'm a monster, but the reality was, I'm playing a human being. And it's very interesting that you asked that question, because when I was in high school, a Holocaust survivor came and spoke to us, and she talked about being in that line where someone points whether you live or die. Hey, let's talk comedy. No, it's points where you live or die. And she said, the man who is standing at the front of that line making the decisions an officer. She had heard violin playing out of a window every night, and she looked at his hands and realized that he was the violinist and that he was the one making the decision. And there is a cut off, you know, if you look at the insurrectionists on January 6, when they weren't doing that, you would probably have a conversation with these people. But there's something wrong, and that's, that's the, the interesting thing about story, which is that story will tell you that he, this person, has done something wrong without your having to play it sometimes. And then, of course, sometimes, you know you are in a scene where you are killing someone. And then you go, there, you know, if you're playing someone evil.

Jeff Dwoskin 27:00

Got it great. I love as a Jew myself, also, who's never played a Nazi, but I enjoy shows where they're hunting Nazis. It's just it's a natural thing, and they can't

Erik Passoja 27:15

kill him. They can't kill enough Nazis, as far as I'm concerned, no all day long now,

Jeff Dwoskin 27:19

and everyone hunters is on Amazon Prime, and I recommend it to everyone. It's, it's a really good show as well. Al Pacino's in it and others. And it's interesting because it there's, well, it's, it's probably fiction. There's a thread of some realness to it that talks about this operation paper clip where the United States brought over the genius people who happen to also be Nazis and helped us with our space program and and help move us faster than, say, the Russians or anything like that. But the price they paid, the soul they gave up was that these were Nazis that just earlier, had been killing Jews and others, you know, left and right without,

Erik Passoja 28:06

yeah, but they were excellent consultants, right? So, you know, you got to give them math, right, right? A bunch of murderous bastards. They were really good at helping, right? They

Jeff Dwoskin 28:15

could handle a boardroom. Well,

Erik Passoja 28:19

yeah. And what's really interesting is Kate Mulvaney, who's on the show. She's wonderful. She had also, she's a well known Shakespearean actor in Australia. She'd also just played Richard the Third, and Al Pacino had played Richard the Third. So it's really interesting to have conversations you know about that character on set? So, yeah, it's a really talented cast, and Jordan Peele and David. Oh no, oh no, no, no. David is wonderful. Don't know Dave. Don't remember David's last name. The show runner. They shopped it around and pitched it David, wild, I think wild. Wild.

Jeff Dwoskin 28:56

Yeah, cool. All right, well, I guess so who? What was your favorite? Second favorite Nazi. Then

Erik Passoja 29:03

interesting. You know, if you have ever played a first person shooter, I speak German, by the way. So I speak, I speak, I speak a few language a handful of languages. I do a lot of German looping, a lot of German voices. If you've ever been in a first person shooter game, and you kind of like a Nazi sneak up on you and you shot him in the face. That was probably my voice. So my fate, my one of my favorite, was I did a Medal of Honor recently, one of the first VR immersive first person shooters, where, literally, if you throw a grenade, you have the VR gloves on. You put your hand near your mouth, you pull it away, and you actually make make the gesture to throw a grenade. So it's really cool. And I played, you know, when you play these utility characters, these smaller characters, it's actually like five, six days of work, because they record like 1000 lines, like, boy, step Yes, here come, you know. And it's great, because it is a workout. It. A full emotional workout from, like, getting blown up to, you know, your friend dying, to sneaking up on someone. I have so much fun with those, really, I do, oh,

Jeff Dwoskin 30:11

you know, I think I saw the con man with Alan Tudyk. I think there's a scene where he's doing that he's due to him, and two other people are doing voices, and they're like, all right now, like, you just took it to the shin or now, and it just kept doing it over and over again. So, yeah,

Erik Passoja 30:29

yeah, yeah, can I? Can I make a boiling and oil sound a little better? Like, No, a little bit less throat. Yes, it's

Jeff Dwoskin 30:41

impressive. It must be impressive, though, how they can catalog all of those so that they actually know that they have them and can use them when they need to.

Erik Passoja 30:49

Oh, yeah, you know, I guess for $2 billion I think you might have a system down. I mean, those games make so much more money than anything else in media is ridiculous. Not only do they sell the game, but they sell some monthly subscriptions. You know, if you want to power up and get certain weapons, there's another 999, it's a thing, and it's a great, you know, it's a great income. So, yeah, they have, they have hundreds of people that work on these games. One person's only job is to categorize every little sound clip I say and put it in my character and know in what situations, you know, they add some variables that that should be used. It's fascinating.

Jeff Dwoskin 31:33

You did Star Wars ones too.

Erik Passoja 31:37

A couple, actually, couple. I did LEGO Star Wars. I loved Lego stars. I played the stupidest storm trooper ever. I just kept dying no matter what I did. I'm like, oh, what's in there? Boom, you know, that kind of thing. And then I played jacks, a droid.

Jeff Dwoskin 31:54

Very cool. Yeah. Tail. Was it? Tails from Galaxy's edge? Yeah,

Erik Passoja 31:59

I got to tell you, man, working with those ILM people is like a dream come true. It's just they're the best in the business. And you know anything, Star Wars, I do it for free. Don't tell anyone. I do it for free. I

Jeff Dwoskin 32:11

would too. They would hire me. Drop my name. I need some work. They Well, while we're on voices Doom Patrol.

Erik Passoja 32:19

Oh yeah, yeah. It's so much fun. It's based on a DC comic, and I play ship Lee, the sarcastic Time Machine. Like, I'm constantly like, basically, I narrate the person's inner life, and I'm constantly like, doing these little jabs at them for their own personality foibles. Is a great job. It's,

Jeff Dwoskin 32:41

it's a, it's a fun show for those who think Brandon Frazier is just making a comeback now, he's been doing Doom Patrol since, what, 2019 so here's my question, is he in that suit? I mean, wouldn't take that role and be in the suit that just seems so crazy to me, or as well his voice, but

Erik Passoja 33:02

it's like the guy who voices Darth Vader, you know, what's his name, Jimmy Earl, something. Yeah, he, he's never on set with Lucas doing it. He's, you know, you know, David Prowse is just going like this, and nobody can see it, but I'm just rocking back and forth. And then, you know, he's going, I am the old father, you know, in a

Jeff Dwoskin 33:22

booth somewhere, James Earl Jones signed over the voice to Star Wars. I'll do it. You should go ahead do it. Wait,

Erik Passoja 33:30

wait, I need a Oh, damn, I usually, I usually like to have a real picture. Like, if you're in a comedy club, you grab an empty picture of beer because it makes a nice like, I am your father.

Jeff Dwoskin 33:46

It's not quite it was good. I'll, I'll, I'll add some effects to it.

Erik Passoja 33:50

Alright? Thank you. Give it a little Reaver. I'll give

Jeff Dwoskin 33:54

it a little Reaver. We'll do it. We'll do it up. When did you have time to learn French, Japanese, German and Hebrew.

Erik Passoja 34:01

Well, I was a language nerd in school. When I was in seventh and eighth grade, I did. I spent two summers abroad in France. It was a French boy scout for the first summer. So I write it on the in the Alps and the French Italian border. And I sort of learned survival skills and French. And then the second year, I went to a little went to Paris and a little town called Daniel de show, which is by the Spanish border. And then the next year, I learned German in school, and I lived in Germany with a family. And then my my sophomore year of college, I decided, when I got really serious about karate, one of my mentors, a gentleman named Stan Schmidt from South Africa. One of his students was my martial arts teacher at Yale. Stan Schmidt came to visit and did some weekend work. He's the highest ranking non Japanese person on the planet. He's phenomenal martial artist, completely dedicated all of his students in South Africa. Are bad asses. And he said, Eric, you should go to Japan and train. I went. And so with a letter of recommendation from my my Sensei Master, Okazaki in the United States, I went and lived in Japan and trained twice a day, six days a week, at the hotel dojo in Tokyo. And I learned Japanese the hard way. I speak fluent karate Japanese and broken Japanese. Taught English there. I lived like a student the walls and there was a dormitory in Tokyo. My room was half again as wide and as deep as my single bed, and the walls were sticky, but it was $250 a month, and my only obligation was to train six days a week, and everyone was better than I was. Everyone, almost everyone had graduated college was a higher rank than I was, and had just gone to Japan to train so that they could become chief instructors of the countries they're from. So sensei Renee is now Chief Instructor of Chile. There are people sensei Rai is now the chief instructor in Indonesia. These guys were fully dedicated martial artists. And about halfway through I went, I went, I really want to work on Richard the Third. Mm, so I learned that again, Hebrew, because I'm a hit, I'm a I'm a year so

Jeff Dwoskin 36:31

my but I never, I never fully learned it, a word here or there. But even when I went to Israel, I never picked anything up. But, yeah,

Erik Passoja 36:40

Israel hard to learn Hebrew. I was, uh, yeah, I was a reformed Jew, then a conservative Jew. Then I used to daven with the Orthodox minion at Yale. And then it became a Jewish,

Jeff Dwoskin 36:52

you know, that's about, right? Yeah,

Erik Passoja 36:56

similar, yeah. When, you know, when growing up, I threw away childish things, or is that the New Testament, alright?

Jeff Dwoskin 37:03

So when you're not playing Nazis. Charles Manson, oh, thank

Erik Passoja 37:06

you very much. Yeah, there we go. I played Charlie. I did. Wow. Blast from the past 2000

Jeff Dwoskin 37:14

Yeah, The Beach Boys, movie Up The Beach Boys, an American family 2000 Yeah, this is going way back. Yeah.

Erik Passoja 37:22

This was very interesting. Jeff, the whole how this happened. I was about to head to New York to do a gig at Carolines and then to do two colleges in North Carolina, and my manager called said, you have an audition. It's a strange audition. I said, what for? I said, Charles Manson, I'm like, what? Yes, let's do that. So you know, halfway through reading Helter Skelter, I did the audition, flew to Carolines, did a set, was literally driving down to North Carolina to do my first college, and I got a call. Hey, Eric, you got a call back. I'm like, of course, of course. Now I get the call. So I did my first college. I drove back to New York, flew to Los Angeles, rented a car, drove to the audition, did my callback, drove back to the airport, flew back to New York and drove back down to my second gig at North Carolina, and I booked the role and and this was before the internet. Thank you, and it wasn't all online, so I had to go. I called Vincent faliosi, who's since passed, who wrote Helter Skelter, and was the lawyer who litigated against Charles Manson, and, you know, and got the family indicted and everything else. And I interviewed him, and then I went to this place that people in LA might know if they're a certain age called Kim's video. And it was, it's, you know, blockbusters around lots of other but Kim's video had these just great, rare, strange, funky, fun videos, and one of them was a documentary that the Manson family made, or made about the Manson family back around 1968 and the reason I say that is because, you know, if you went to the the Museum of Television and Radio, you'd see Tom Brokaw interview with Charlie Manson, and that was after he'd been arrested Carver swastika in his forehead, and was a bit of a gangster. I want back when. You know, helter skelter murders happened. Everybody was looking for a guru. You know, the Beatles had the MA Rigi. Everyone was what dropping out and tuning in, or tuning in and dropping out. And Charles, Charles Charlie Manson likened himself, you know, he said, I studied Scientology. I'm a clear and this that and the other, and he just manipulated people and made them part of, like, a culty spiritual thing. I'm like, that's the vibe I want. And in this documentary, we had that Charlie. So I just watched it over and over and over again. And, you know, I had two months to prepare Central Library had all this information Los Angeles, because this is where it happened. And then I. On set of The Beach Boys, American and American family, and I was surrounded by these beautiful, hippie women that had been cast for the show. And then in walks Dennis Wilson. I'm like, what's with all this Beach Boys shit? And I realized, oh, man, I'm ready. You know, like, I hadn't even dawned on me that this show was about the Beach Boys, even though I knew it was and it was really cool, because that's what Charlie was about. Yeah, whatever. Beach Boys, I got some music, man, and they had me write some music for this because they didn't want to ask Charlie for permission to use his music. By the way, I listen to his albums over and over and over again. So, yeah, I wrote someone, and I played this role, and they put me in this wig, and they this beard, and I they completely transformed me. I think they may have won an Emmy for makeup and costume that year, because they did some amazing work on this show. And, yeah, it was a complete immersion in that world. And since there have been like 10 people who have played Charles Manson and different things, I'm actually thinking of calling them all along with houses name was in Helter Skelter. I'm so glad I'm not going on stage today, because if I can't remember names, and I'll go into some barn Los Angeles, like everyone has ever played Manson and having drinks together, that'd be fun. That

Jeff Dwoskin 41:28

would be nice. All right, so I have to ask you about Firefly, because I can't think of a like a TV series, a one season TV series that has so much mythos around it. So you were on one episode of Firefly.

Erik Passoja 41:45

I was, you know, I didn't really know the show at the time, but as soon as I saw the set, I'm like, This is awesome. And I find it really interesting when a series has a cult following like that, because you got to ask yourself, why, you know? Why does that have the cult following and space 1999 didn't you know, or all these other shows, and I think it was because, you know, there was a certain degree of freedom that these characters had on a sociological perspective, and yet they still had trials and tribulations of being, being in the situation they were on that ship. And I think people really somehow just connected with it. It was

Jeff Dwoskin 42:29

very show. I mean, people still talk about it to this day. It's been 20 years. So,

Erik Passoja 42:33

yeah, it was on the Fox lot. You know, you walk in there and you realize, one of the things you everybody has to understand is that we as actors, we walk into a situation where people have done sometimes, if it's not a series, if it's just a movie, sometimes if people have done one to two years of work on this before you even walk in, and you walk in and you look at the production design, you're like, This is someone's not a bunch of people's lives, and they put their passion into this. And I'm grateful to be here. And Firefly was one of those, you know, it was really, really carefully put together, meticulously and with love. And I always say, like, if you're on a Steven Spielberg set and there's a little figurine in the background on a shelf, you can bet that the best person in the business to do that, obsessed over like, nine figurines, to pick that one figurine that somehow fits the movie right in the back there. And that's how I felt about, you know, that set and the people who did the work on it,

Jeff Dwoskin 43:35

that's awesome. That's great to hear. That's really, really cool. And then you've been on every NCIS and CSI. I

Erik Passoja 43:44

haven't done a NCIS Hawaii yet, but

Jeff Dwoskin 43:46

you get your agent on that go, and I play

Erik Passoja 43:49

a deputy FBI, Deputy Director, Sweeney, and I, you know, if they had me on Hawaii, they'd either have to wait and have me play a completely different character, or I'd have to be Sweeney, because now I'm sort of kind of part of that universe. So you know, when I went to someone different every time, yeah, NCIS, New Orlean, I played a Russian operative, horrible human being in NCS, LA, I played a German sex trafficker, another sweet dude. And then I got to play Deputy Director of the FBI. So that's that's a nice shift, although I'm the antagonist, this character is the antagonist, which is really interesting to me because I can't see it that way. Just to kind of give you an overview Gary Cole's character, Parker, what worked for my character worked, you know, at the FBI, and he disobeyed my order, so I fired him. Next thing I know, he's over at NCIS, like, oh, you kind of failed upward. And then he is possibly guilty of murder. He's a suspect NCIS per. Protects him, and I have to hunt him down, but I'm the bad guy. And the only reason I'm the bad guy is because of story. Everybody except for me, knows he didn't do it, everybody the audience, everybody I didn't know he didn't do it, and I'm hunting him down, so I'm the bad guy. What is Gary Cole? It is Gary Cole I love him. I think he's, I think he's, you know what? This has happened to me before I got to work with Pierce Brosnan on a film called some kind of beautiful I remember meeting him for the first time. It was very strange, because it's similar to NCIS. This happened with Mark Harmon and with with Pierce Brosnan. I hear Eric, and I turn around, and there's Pierce Brosnan. I swear the first thing out of my mouth was, you are way too good looking. And he just, I mean, Pierce Brosnan is just beautiful. I mean, he was like, you know, an older dude at that point, and he shook my hand and he laughed. Thank you so much for coming to this I was so glad to have you Eric, like he knew my name, and by the way, Mark Carmen was the same way, he said, Eric and I turned around, and there he was in a makeup chair, and I'm like, didn't you retire? He said, Yeah, but I'm back for a haircut. Very sweet. You know, this hair person had been there for years. He was there. I got to meet him. And Gary Cole is such a good replacement because he is way too handsome. He's charismatic. He is a terrific actor. He's done some great work, and he's a perfect person to take over, sort of the head of NCIS Mark Harmons job gives you know

Jeff Dwoskin 46:35

absolutely, yeah, that's so cool. So what are you working on now? A lot. Actually,

Erik Passoja 46:43

I never stop when I'm not on set. I'm taking four classes a week. I mean, I'm literally working on a scene from doubt right now I'm working on Hamlet short film that I made. It's called guru money. It took, took us six years to make. It is a music video. Check out. Satosat.com S A D, A S A T, S A D, A S A t.com, it's, it's a music video about a woman who tries a shortcut to enlightenment and ends up getting trapped up in the mental and physical and financial games of a fake guru. It's, I play the fake guru, and I wrote this hip hop song a number. There's a story. I'll tell you the story, right? I took Kundalini yoga for years. In fact, my wife, Rita, and I, we were married by one of the instructors at golden bridge, guy named sadas at Singh, he's great. And I used to go there, and I go, what's her name? And they go, my name is Guru Dev Naham. Naham, what's your name? My name is Gurmukh. And I realized that Yogi Bhajan, sort of the head of the organization, gave them all their names, and they said, What's your name? I'd say Eric, and that didn't sound right. So after a while, they say, What's your name? I say, my name is Sara Saad Bing, and I would get a laugh. And so I started writing this, this rap song. My name Assata South yoga's Mom, I make guru man, and it goes, Ching and my wife have to write this song. So eight years ago, I wrote this song. And then six years ago, my seven years ago, my wife said, we have to make a music video. I'm like, what? She said, Yeah, record the music. So she, she was our producer all the way through, she did a tremendous job. Went through three different groups of musicians till I found the one. Carl got it immediately. If it's, it's very based on the sort of flow of that Diggable planet song called cool like that. Then I got in the best shape of my life to 2017 I trained six days a week for this. I was already doing CrossFit, but I got shredded for this. We shot it. Started editing. I realized we had to shoot more than a year later, I had to get back into shape, into the exact same shape. It crushed me. We shot again, and then we spent a couple years editing, and then COVID. Then COVID happened. And after everything was done, I said, You know what? We need to shoot more. So last fall, 2021 Susan, our lead in the music video. We shot the bookends of this music video at her place. Finished all the visual effects. I can't tell you, Jeff how many visuals. It's all visual effects with green screen shooting and everything else, and I'm real proud of it. While

Jeff Dwoskin 49:30

everyone's checking out that video, don't forget, head over to Eric. So just YouTube channel and check out his Peter the demon video. Oh

Erik Passoja 49:40

my forgot about Peter the demon. 25,000

Jeff Dwoskin 49:43

views, you didn't forget about Peter the demon. You check that daily? No, yeah,

Erik Passoja 49:49

check it daily. It's, it's the only thing I can masturbate to. Um, no, it's interesting. He was taking a drink. You didn't see this, but it almost came out. I was, I was shooting a movie number of years ago, and they had me in full demon makeup, and there was a lot of waiting, I think it was a student film, and they were just trying to kind of get it together, and I had hours in this demon makeup. So I put on a powder blue shirt, oxford shirt, I had one of the producers hold a camera to me, and I pretended I was a demon looking for a date on match.com we just improvised for like five minutes, then we cut it up, and I just put it on YouTube, and I called it eligible bachelor, and, like, within weeks, it had gotten 10s of 1000s. I think someone was looking for an eligible bachelor or something like that, and they saw this demon thing, and they What the hell is this? And they started, and it just Yeah. And then we ended up making, making a series of pitching, a series, a web series called no place like hell. It's about Peter, a demon who's been banished to Earth because he's two nights, and he's living with his roommate, Kira, who is at this gorgeous, all American Satanist, and she wants nothing more than to have demon babies with him. But he's in love with he's a meter maid, by the way. I mean, what a better job for a demon than giving people parking tickets. But he's in love with his boss, ubiquit, who's played by Retta from Parks and Rec. You probably know reta. She's an amazing person, amazing. Oh yeah, yeah. So we've got that shot, and we we've been shopping it around. We'll see I still have faith in that piece, but it all came from that video. Jeff,

Jeff Dwoskin 51:27

that's hilarious. That's hilarious that the last thing for me is because I was obsessed with this show, and it's day nip talk you were.

Erik Passoja 51:39

Yeah, it's very funny. The link with this I did charmed a number of years ago, and it just so happens that my episode of charm was Julian McMahon's star turn. First episode of charmed so he became sort of a star. Got Nick tuck and then Julian McMahon and I got to work together on Nip Tuck. I play a guy who was suffering from AIDS, and want to build up my face again, because I've sort of fallen apart. And clearly I had the money to do so, so I went to them to get help. And, yeah, you know, you know, working with that team. I mean, we see where it's gone. Ryan Ryan Murphy, thank you. I'm so glad I'm not on stage today. And just like Ryan Murphy,

Jeff Dwoskin 52:35

sometimes I sometimes it comes to me, and sometimes I have days where they don't come to me. You know, sometimes I surprise myself where I'll just be like, Oh yeah, man, but I was, yeah, I got your back. I got you back. Thank you.

Erik Passoja 52:48

I appreciate that. You know, Ryan Murphy has gone on to create some amazing shows from, you know, from from Glee to American Horror Story to, you know, the OJ Simpson trial story. I mean, Versace, Versace. And so it was a real interesting opportunity, and it had a little bit of that charmed feel to it. It had a little bit of that production feel of, well, the whole thing about Nip Tuck is it was about shallowness on a level, right? It really was, but it was also about the dark side of humanity. And what's really nice is I played someone. You wouldn't know this until you saw my scene. I played someone who was gay and just amazingly attracted to Julian McMahon. So here I am sitting in the scene with him, and I'm just looking at him like I'd like to kiss this guy, and he's got my face, and he's looking at my face to see the work he's done, and I'm feeling like he's grabbing my face and coming to kiss me. So it was a really interesting juxtaposition of the work to say, what if I pick something that's not on, that's not on the page, which is the most fun, by the way, if you know, for all of you who are aspiring actors, right there, 95% of the actors who go in for an audition or duro or playing what's on the page, it's the other 5% who blow your mind. It's the other 5% who make a choice that make you go, Oh, she's rocking a baby. Oh, isn't that a sweet baby? No, she's rocking the baby trying to get it to shut up. Because if she doesn't, the bad guy is going to find her. That's a choice that may not even be in the scene, but if she's trying to get it to shut up, you can't take your eye off that person. So in that particular scene, I had the opportunity to be immensely attracted

Jeff Dwoskin 54:41

to he's a good looking guy, so I'm not going to say that was a stretch. Well, yeah,

Erik Passoja 54:48

another way, but that's what we do. You know? We you know he was, he was my wife. He was my very

Jeff Dwoskin 54:56

powerful scene. You did? You. Thank you. Bravo. Thank you. Thank you. So where can people keep up with you? On the socials, yeah.

Erik Passoja 55:06

Eric pasoja on Facebook, Eric pasoja on Instagram, Eric pasoja on Twitter, I'm going to spell it for you ready? E R I K. That's right, if you got it. E R I K. Path soja, P, A, S, S, O, j, A, that's like football pass to O, J, who's out of jail. A, Eric pasoja,

Jeff Dwoskin 55:26

I'll put a link in the show notes. Thank you. I agree exactly. Everyone

Erik Passoja 55:31

smokes weed while listening to your podcast. Jeff, no one's going to remember

Jeff Dwoskin 55:38

whatever gets them through it. Thank you so much. I really enjoyed speaking with you and meeting you. It's so fun.

Erik Passoja 55:44

Thank you. It was so fun talking to you. I really love what you do, and I appreciate you. Thank you. Thank you. Applause.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai