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Sam Prince 0:05 Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be a great actor on stage or television? Do you wish you had an acting coach to help you get to the next level? Or maybe you just have a great idea for a movie series are played but aren't quite sure where to start? Well, you are in the right place my friend. My name is Sam Prince and I am the director of a production company here in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and have been an actor for over 30 years. I've directed and written plays, and screenplays and taught many acting classes. This podcast is your place to learn how to move forward with your career in acting, theater, film, playwriting, screenwriting and much more. There will be inspiring conversations with special guests as well. So welcome to the creative torium podcast and action Welcome to the creative a toy thank you for joining us. So appreciate it. My name is Sam Prince. I am your host and I am here with my really good friend Jesse Lee. How are you sir? Good Safra. Well, okay, you know what, I'm going to spill it. I'm going to spill it. Okay. Yeah, I forgot to hit the record button. So we're laughing because we're just repeating ourselves. And it's just kind of funny to do that. So all you podcasters out there. Press record. Yes. Record. It's important. It's important. Yeah. So yeah. So you and I have known each other. For what? Five, six years? Yeah. Yeah, Jesse Lee 2:16 yeah. It'd be at least five close to five. Yeah. Yeah. Sam Prince 2:20 Right. Yep. Because the see I was I was going to tribes, probably for years. And I think I met you while I met you the first time. Now that I remember. I met you. Oh, I saw you perform. was like an Easter thing. Was it a Jonah? Jonah? Jonah? Yeah, yeah, you were so awesome. Man. I was like, blown away. It was you all by yourself doing the monologue? And I was like, wow, that guy's really, really good. I need to work with that guy. Jesse Lee 2:58 Thank you, Sam. I know that now I definitely, definitely know. Thank you for your reassurance. Sam Prince 3:13 You're welcome. You're welcome. And Jesse Lee 3:18 I don't I don't know if you were there for that performance. But I'll let you know a little a little insight. Little inside no on that one when I was performed. Yeah. There was one part when I was raising about to raise my fist towards God. And I started to raise my middle finger on the stage of the sanctuary and tribes church I heard one person and you know, I that I brought by ARB the rest of the way up but the go up, but I believe that's how Jonah fell. I believe that so frustrated that you know, so. Wanted to go as far as I could. And then yeah, so that was Sam Prince 4:08 if you didn't get to guess, might the finger going Jesse Lee 4:11 up? Yeah, I might have put up all my fingers. Sam Prince 4:17 That's great, man. Hey, I mean, you know, you gotta go with how you feel. You know, if you feel strongly, you know, a guy will accept it. He will accept it. Jesse Lee 4:34 Stronger anyways. Sam Prince 4:36 Exactly. Right. Right. Yeah. Well, since then, you know, you and I have worked on a bunch of different projects. We'll talk about that. But let's talk about Jesse Lee. And for the folks that don't know you, tell them about you and how you got started and what you've done, what you plan on doing all that good stuff. Jesse Lee 5:00 So I started out in like, elementary school or middle school. I wasn't even looking for it. And one of the cast members for a Christmas program, he was going to play this like, crazy, kind of offbeat weatherman kind of guy. And, and, and he got sick. So the teachers like, Hey, does anybody want to do this? And I was like, I don't know what to do. Well, I'll try. And she's like, okay, so then I, you know, I rehearse and stuff. And it was it felt pretty good. You know, I was like, Oh, this is fun, you know, this is and then it got to the night or night of the performance and, and I, you know, started doing my lines of light shone on me the music cued, and then I started doing my lines, you know, today, it's gonna be a high of cloudy or, you know, whatever I said, while I was getting into it, they started to play music again. And oh, no, it cued me on before, before I was finished. You know, and I didn't even get to it was horrible. You know, what do you do? There, you know, alone and the light shining on you. And then you know, they keep the music and then the light goes off of you and that you have to stop. You know, you can't keep going. Sam Prince 6:20 Wow, what a terrible first experience. Jesse Lee 6:23 Yeah, that wasn't great. It was fun, but it wasn't great. Right? Right. Right. But it's like the man. I don't know if you've heard this story, but it's like the guy. It's the same exact situation for the guy, basically, who gave the speech for the Statue of Liberty is giving a speech. And, you know, they're you've got tugboats ready to blow their horns, you've got cannons ready to fire. You got flagged ready to drop all this stuff. In this dude gives a dramatic pause, for effect. And then the dude in the tower who's supposed to drop the flag to signal everything. You notice the celebration. Done. So he drops the flag and then everything goes on. Oh, dude, for the new game, this speech for the Statue of Liberty, and Americans Sam Prince 7:11 never got to visit. Wow, I never knew that story. Yeah, that's a good story. Yeah, that's like, I mean, sure. When was the Statue of Liberty born? Built like early 1900s. Ish. Something like that. Something like that. Jesse Lee 7:26 I remember that story. I don't really remember the date. Sam Prince 7:30 A long time ago. Yeah. No time on that. Yeah. Right. They didn't have you know, earpieces. And walkie talkies back don't probably know. Yeah, we know. Right? Wow. All right. So that was middle school. Now, Jesse Lee 7:51 and then, later in like college I, I connected to a friend to do an episode two play a character on Gun gilliat Lane, which is like a children's radio drama series, which is pretty cool and played like this male counselor for a church or something. And then after that, I didn't really do much. I mean, I had a lot of fun with it. But I didn't really have any ambition towards it didn't really know how to do it, even though I'd already done it, apparently. And then, after my career and education after I kind of completed what I wanted to in there, and decided to go to Los Angeles and get trained there. And so from then, I've been, I've acted in LA I've acted in Michigan, Chicago, Indianapolis, Detroit, Lansing, North Carolina. all over the Midwest, and in China and Korea. Wow. Sam Prince 8:54 Wow. I want to help every single one of you achieve your dreams. Whether it's acting, screenwriting, play, writing, play producing, whatever it is, I just want to help you so go to sampler dot productions. That's Sambre dot productions sh m b r, and click on available classes and you'll see every single possible classes you can take to fulfill your needs. If I can help you achieve your dream How cool is that? Samer productions see you there? Will Tell me about tell me about LA like how was la Jesse Lee 9:43 Wow, how do you describe la that's why they only give it two letters because they're like if you don't get it in too late. You know, it's gonna take too long. So yeah, but it was really it was really cool. It was really it was just it was just so It was just so great to be in, like this giant bubble of creativity and artistry all the time. Just everywhere you go, everybody you talk to, it's just saturated there. And it was. It was really cool to to feel that and to be a part of that. You know, it's exact. Yeah. Sam Prince 10:20 Heck yeah, man. Thank you. I mean, we we don't have regrets in life. But one things I really wish I did was go out there. Man did do New York later in life, like, okay, towards my 30. But I wish right out of college, I just went to LA. And just experienced what you just what you just explained, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Alright. So after, so you So Korea. Wow. All right. So you did some stuff there. Jesse Lee 10:55 Yeah, I didn't even know. I didn't, I didn't even know how to act. Well not really like it in any formal professional training. And I was tasked, because my supervisor, she's my director. She's like, Hey, I'm you. You're interested in acting now. Right? Yeah. Do you want to make a children's program? Okay. You know, an educational children's program. Learning English, so was called edible kids cooking and gardening. And you teach the skills of English and math and science and gardening and cooking on this show. So and then it'd be shown to, you know, the parents and the kids and sometimes we'd include some of the students. So it was really cool. Yeah, I had to read scripts, I had to research. Okay, what's going to be? What's going to be my what's going to be my goal here? What is going to be? Okay, what am I going to model it after? Because there were a lot of shows that came to mind when I started brainstorming. Okay, what is the show format going to be like, so yeah, figure all that out. And I really like the red green show. They're not necessarily a kid show. I don't know if you've seen it. But yeah, like this dude in Canada had to at the possum, possum, possum Lake Lodge or something. And it's, it's a sketch type show. So they have a bunch of sketches all throughout the show. So there's these little scenes that you see all throughout the show. And there's kind of a narrative running through them. But they're all different elements, you know, tied in together. So it's really cool. So I was like, okay, sketch, that's really cool. Because then you can do a lot of different things. And you don't have to be just in one thing. So that's cool. I looked at Blue's Clues. I did research on the Sesame Street. And I did research on a couple of shows that children's shows that were very famous in Korea, all to try to figure out okay, how am I going to format this show? How long is it going to be? How many characters are we going, you know, so all these questions that I didn't really know that much about, but what I just dived into, did a bunch of research, and then, you know, wrote the scripts and acted in it, and it was really cool. I was really grateful for the opportunity, even though I had no formal training. Sam Prince 13:02 Right. That's awesome. No, man, I, I would love to talk to you. I mean, it's like a whole nother podcast just about producing, writing. All that did you did for it for God? Because I mean, it's, it's a big, I feel like that's a big market, you know? Yeah. children's entertainment. You throw little videos in there and keep them occupied and teach her some stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome, man. So what did you use your puppet Marco in Korea at all? Jesse Lee 13:35 Yes, I did. I had created him in Michigan right before I left for Korea, like six months before six to six months before I left for Korea. And then I took them with me. And then. So he was a character, a guest on the show. And Sam Prince 13:51 yeah, and then China was after that, right? Jesse Lee 13:53 Yes, China was a few years. A handful of years later, like five or more. We got out of Korea in 2014. And then, and then I went to China. My first year I think was 2018. January 2018. So about however many years and then I took Marco there too. And we did Marco and me. Sam Prince 14:14 Yes, we did, which was very cool. And for the listeners. So we both went to tribes. We talked about that tribes church, and I was the kids ministry pastor at the time. And you're done Marco for the kids in person? Yeah. Right? A couple few times. And they just loved you. So we thought, hey, even though you're in China, let's film some videos of you talking about China and the Bible at the same time. And, you know, and so, we, you know, the kids had questions and I would email Jesse, and he would answer them and They just thought that was a coolest thing ever, man. They love it, man. They, so they wanted to watch this. I mean, we were trying to teach him some real biblical structural things to help them in their lives. And they were like, We don't care about that. We just want Marco in the Mr. Marco in me. Yeah, I literally I seriously did play it like five times one Sunday. I mean, I mean, five times, I guess it would have been 10 times. Because there's two services, right. I mean, both. Both services wanted to be played multiple times. I don't know how many. But it was a lot. Yeah. But it was so cool, man. Because I mean, just just can we just walk ourselves through this again? Like, yeah, you filmed it in China. To directly to our tribes. Kids answered their questions from China. How cool. Is that? Super Gora? Yeah. Technology, man. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, we definitely need to continue that. But that's another whole nother subject. Yeah. But let's talk about Frederick for a minute, if we may. Yeah. Yeah. So we just got done doing a run of Frederick Douglass play that I co wrote. And it's based off a book by AC cargo, I'm sorry, play basic cargo, about the great Frederick Douglass. And he was gracious enough to say, hey, use whatever you'd like. And he was very grateful about it. And I was very grateful for him for saying that. We wrote pieces around there. And Jesse played Abraham Lincoln, which was just amazing. I mean, I really only thought of you for the role. So I'm so grateful that you said yes. In some prompting. Yeah. Jesse Lee 17:12 Well, I was a little I was hesitant to do it. Because not because I didn't want to I want I definitely wanted to I was a little intimidated, too. Because it's Abraham Lincoln. Yeah, you want to want to get him right. Sure. Yeah. And, and but I, you know, I'm, I'm short. I'm only like, five, seven. And he's like, six, whatever, you know. So for me, the height was the biggest, the biggest thing that pushed against me like, Okay, I want to portray him accurately as accurately as I can. And so yeah, you you really, you really pushed me to do it. And like, I wanted to do it, but I felt I shouldn't I kind of felt I shouldn't do it. Because I wasn't I wasn't tall enough. And you know, I want it to be completely believable. And so, you know, we talked about stills and shoes and stuff like that. Then you probably you you mentioned that there was a character in another movie. I can't remember what it was. But he was a short, he was short, kind of shorter like me, but he played this taller dude. And it's just William garrison. Whoever played William garrison in the movie. Yeah. But you're like, yeah, man, he was shorter. And I watched and he totally killed it. And I didn't think anything about aside so I was like, okay. Sam Prince 18:39 Yeah, we did. We did. We did elevate you a little bit. You know? Yeah. To give you that height was good. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and I appreciate you saying that, man. I mean, of course, that's a factor. You know, everybody knew Abraham Lincoln was tall, you know, so we got it done. And you killed it higher? No, I wasn't a factor. It wasn't factor. And I really just marveled at how you really became him and really embodied him. So you know what? Let's take a break first. And then we will get into more about how you invited him. And just Frederick in general how you felt about doing the fight. All right. Hey, thank you for listening to the creativity Korean podcast. Again, my name is Sam Prince. And it is my honor to be your host and thank you so much for listening. I would also be honored if you could leave a review on Apple podcasts and say some nice things about what you just heard. And definitely please listen every week, we come out Every Tuesday. Also, for more information about coaching classes, workshops and upcoming productions, please check out our website Samber dot productions, that's s a m b e r dot productions, and you can also subscribe to our newsletter. And remember all the worlds a stage