446: Nick Searcy—Justify This

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe — Episode 446: Nick Searcy—Justify This

Release Date: August 12, 2025

Hosts: Mike Rowe and Chuck Klausmeier
Guest: Nick Searcy

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1. Introduction

In Episode 446 of The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe, host Mike Rowe engages in a candid conversation with actor Nick Searcy, delving into Searcy's multifaceted career, his recent works, and his perspectives on significant political events. Co-host Chuck Klausmeier also contributes, adding depth and humor to the discussion.

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2. Nick Searcy’s Career and Acting Roles

Mike Rowe begins by highlighting Nick Searcy's esteemed career in acting, referencing his notable roles in series like Justified and films such as Fried Green Tomatoes. Rowe praises Searcy as a "terrific character actor," emphasizing his versatility and dedication to meaningful work.

Notable Quote:

Mike Rowe [01:09]: "Nick Searcy is our friend. Well, he's your friend... He's a terrific character actor."

Searcy echoes this sentiment, acknowledging his long-standing friendship with Rowe and the evolution of his career over the years.

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3. Documentary “Capital Punishment” and Sequel “War on Truth”

The conversation shifts to Searcy's documentary Capital Punishment, which explores the events surrounding January 6th. Searcy discusses the challenges faced during its release, including resistance from major media outlets like Fox, which declined to advertise the film.

Notable Quote:

Nick Searcy [09:17]: "The truth is coming out... I was overjoyed when Trump pardoned the January six people."

Searcy further elaborates on the sequel, War on Truth, a four-part series that delves deeper into the narratives surrounding the Capitol events, challenging the mainstream portrayal of participants as domestic terrorists.

Notable Quote:

Nick Searcy [13:29]: "We are pushing it pretty hard... revealing who these people are that the government has been telling you are domestic terrorists and white supremacists... They’re nothing of the sort."

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4. Reflections on January 6th and Its Aftermath

Searcy provides a firsthand account of January 6th, describing the atmosphere he witnessed. Contrary to media reports, he recounts seeing people praying and singing hymns, with little visible violence.

Notable Quote:

Nick Searcy [11:05]: "I was there on January 6th, and what I saw was people praying and singing hymns. And people were joyful."

He criticizes the response from authorities, highlighting instances where the Capitol Police were the aggressors, using munitions like flashbangs and tear gas against peaceful demonstrators.

Notable Quote:

Nick Searcy [16:12]: "The Capitol Police began firing munitions into the middle of the crowd... It's a much bigger conspiracy than I can explain."

Searcy shares the story of Tarek Johnson, a Capitol policeman who acted independently to clear the chambers, potentially saving lives, only to be subsequently suspended and placed under house arrest.

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5. Personal Anecdotes and Humorous Moments

The episode is interspersed with light-hearted exchanges and personal stories. Mike Rowe shares his humorous mishap with cigars on Joe Rogan's podcast, drawing parallels to earlier interactions with Chuck Klausmeier.

Notable Quote:

Mike Rowe [07:55]: "It was like that scene in Young Frankenstein... but I conflated it with Blazing Saddles."

Nick Searcy and Chuck Klausmeier add their own anecdotes, including humorous stories about Searcy's attempts to manage actors in wrestling matches and the challenges of navigating personal and professional relationships post-documentary release.

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6. Searcy’s Book “Justify This” and Future Projects

Searcy discusses his first book, Justify This, which blends humor and honesty, reflecting his personality akin to his character Art Mullen from Justified. The book features forewords from both sides of the political spectrum, aiming to reach a broader audience.

Notable Quote:

Nick Searcy [30:26]: "I had a couple of people from the right and the left write forewords, which I think is terrific."

Additionally, Searcy touches upon his upcoming project, Where I'm Bound, a film inspired by his family's history in gospel music. The project aims to explore the tension between sincere belief and the commercialization of religious practices.

Notable Quote:

Nick Searcy [45:53]: "Where I'm Bound is about... spreading the gospel, but there's also this... we got to make a living here."

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7. Personal Life and Experiences

The dialogue delves into Searcy's personal life, including his marriage to Leslie, whom he met during a challenging theatrical production with minimal audience turnout. They share heartfelt stories about balancing personal relationships amidst demanding careers.

Notable Quote:

Nick Searcy [73:34]: "We met in that play... We had to improvise the relationships between the actors, and I was in love with Leslie, and she bought it."

Searcy also reflects on the impact of losing close friends, reinforcing his commitment to pursuing projects that matter deeply to him, rather than conventional acting roles.

Notable Quote:

Nick Searcy [54:02]: "Those losses really brought something home to me, which is like, I don't want to spend the time doing something that I don't care about."

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8. Closing Remarks

As the episode wraps up, Mike Rowe commends Searcy for his unwavering dedication and authenticity. They share light-hearted moments discussing potential future collaborations, such as Searcy’s interest in launching a whiskey brand, blending their mutual appreciation for craftsmanship and storytelling.

Notable Quote:

Mike Rowe [81:35]: "For a guy without an agent who's being guided by apparently things that matter to him, good on you, man."

The episode concludes with Chuck Klausmeier endorsing Searcy's book and expressing appreciation for his performance, cementing the camaraderie among the hosts and their guest.

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Key Takeaways

• Nick Searcy's Commitment: Searcy exemplifies dedication to projects that align with his values, even in the face of industry pushback.

• Challenging Narratives: His documentaries aim to present alternative perspectives on politically charged events, emphasizing the importance of truth and accountability.

• Personal Resilience: Searcy's personal experiences, including losses and professional setbacks, have strengthened his resolve to create meaningful work.

• Future Endeavors: With projects like Where I'm Bound and his book Justify This, Searcy continues to explore narratives that intertwine personal history with broader societal themes.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps:

• Mike Rowe [01:09]: "Nick Searcy is our friend. Well, he's your friend... He's a terrific character actor."

• Nick Searcy [09:17]: "The truth is coming out... I was overjoyed when Trump pardoned the January six people."

• Nick Searcy [13:29]: "We are pushing it pretty hard... revealing who these people are that the government has been telling you are domestic terrorists and white supremacists... They’re nothing of the sort."

• Nick Searcy [11:05]: "I was there on January 6th, and what I saw was people praying and singing hymns. And people were joyful."

• Nick Searcy [16:12]: "The Capitol Police began firing munitions into the middle of the crowd... It's a much bigger conspiracy than I can explain."

• Nick Searcy [30:26]: "I had a couple of people from the right and the left write forewords, which I think is terrific."

• Nick Searcy [45:53]: "Where I'm Bound is about... spreading the gospel, but there's also this... we got to make a living here."

• Nick Searcy [73:34]: "We met in that play... We had to improvise the relationships between the actors, and I was in love with Leslie, and she bought it."

• Nick Searcy [54:02]: "Those losses really brought something home to me, which is like, I don't want to spend the time doing something that I don't care about."

• Mike Rowe [81:35]: "For a guy without an agent who's being guided by apparently things that matter to him, good on you, man."

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This episode offers a comprehensive look into Nick Searcy's dedication to storytelling, his courage in tackling contentious subjects, and the personal experiences that shape his work. Listeners gain insight into the challenges of producing meaningful content in today's polarized environment and the resilience required to remain true to one's convictions.

Transcript

[Mike Rowe]

You are about to hear another episode of the Way I Heard it with me, Mike Rowe, and the one and only Chuck Klausmeier.

[Chuck Klausmeier]

Yes, hello?

[Mike Rowe]

Yes. Yes to what?

[Chuck Klausmeier]

Yes, you'll hear me, but you'll basically hear Nick Searcy more than me.

[Mike Rowe]

That's true, that's true. Of the three of us, you will be heard very little. The least. The least. But still, you do chime in with a couple of interesting points.

[Chuck Klausmeier]

Very important stuff. Earth shattering, really, when you think about it.

[Mike Rowe]

Nick Searcy is our friend. Well, he's your friend. You've known him for a long time. You introduced us virtually about a year and a half ago after he did a movie that damn near got him canceled and caused me no amount of grief either. Capital Punishment was the film Nick did in the aftermath of January 6th. And you know what? I just thought it was worth talking about. And it wasn't a big political conversation, but I was glad to have it. I've always liked the guy. You know him from Justified, you might know him from Fried Green Tomatoes or maybe 40 other films that he's done. He's a terrific character actor.

[Nick Searcy]

Yep.

[Mike Rowe]

He's written his first book, it's called Justify this. It is funny, it is smart. I mean, if you know Nick, you're going to get this great blend of. Of honesty. I mean, he's very much like Art Mullen in Justified.

[Nick Searcy]

Yes.

[Chuck Klausmeier]

And he said that that character is based on his father know. So he's really kind of sort of playing his father, it seems.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah. So that's a plug for Justified. It's. If you haven't seen every season of it, you really should. It's terrific.

[Nick Searcy]

Yep.

[Mike Rowe]

His book is great. He's got a new project that he's working on as well called Where I'm Bound, which we get into. And he's got a follow up to Capital Punishment because he's a glutton. For punishment.

[Chuck Klausmeier]

For punishment, Right.

[Nick Searcy]

Yeah.

[Chuck Klausmeier]

That's called the War on Truth and it's a four part series which is available online.

[Mike Rowe]

I admire him. I admire him because he has plenty to lose and he simply doesn't want to spend the rest of his life doing anything that doesn't matter to him. And you know, when you find people like that in this industry, you might not agree with them, but you'd be foolish to ignore them. You can just learn so much, I think, from people who take real risks and big swings. Yeah. In this place we call Sodom and Gomorrah.

[Chuck Klausmeier]

Indeed.

[Mike Rowe]

Justify. This is the name of the Book. It's also the name of this episode. Nick Searcy is the name of my guest. If you don't already like him, you're about to right after this. Dumb. My first thought when I heard about the concept for Company Cam was dog gone it. Why didn't I think of that? It's one of those ideas that is so good, you just know it's gonna succeed long before it's even executed well. I've since met the guys who started the company and my envy and admiration for what they've done is now complete. Because everybody in the skilled trades is signing up for CompanyCam. Here's what it does in a nutshell. CompanyCam is a photo based communication tool that contractors and pros are using to document jobs, centralize, store project details, and then quickly share all kinds of visual information. A crew on a job site, for instance, can take unlimited time stamped photos and videos of their work and then quickly add them to their checklists and their reports. There's never been an easier way to track work, document work, manage teams, and then move projects forward than with CompanyCam. In other words, it's a total game changer. CompanyCam is being used right now by professionals in over 50 different trades, including general contracting, restoration, H Vac, roofing, landscaping, welding, solar, all of them. I think it's going to be a tool in every toolbox all over the country. And with 2 billion photos already filed on 80 million individual projects, they're well on their way. Simplest thing to do if you make your living in the trades is go to companycam.com, watch the demo, read the reviews, and you'll get a sense of what you're missing out on. It's impressive. Companycam. That's companycam.com. if anyone, anyone can. It's Company Cam.

[Nick Searcy]

It's Company Cam.

[Mike Rowe]

I can't believe we've never met in person.

[Nick Searcy]

I know, it is funny.

[Mike Rowe]

Even when you walked in, I'm like, oh, hey Nick. And I just realized I should be saying, well, it's nice to finally meet you.

[Nick Searcy]

Yeah, well, nice to meet you too.

[Mike Rowe]

I'll tell you now, the shirt did throw me for a loop, but then I looked in the mirror and I realized I'm sporting some colors that don't occur in nature either. So here we sit.

[Nick Searcy]

This is a shirt that my wife picked out for me. And I just don't question it. I just go, oh, you think that?

[Mike Rowe]

Okay, so did you evolve into that level of perpetual acquiescence or was this just good instincts from the beginning?

[Nick Searcy]

It Took me a long time to learn that. Yeah, it took a while. I just went about five years ago, I think I just went, oh, this isn't worth fighting about.

[Mike Rowe]

Right.

[Nick Searcy]

Because I never win.

[Mike Rowe]

What a silly hill to die on. Or even get wounded on.

[Nick Searcy]

Yeah, I'm not gonna fight anymore.

[Mike Rowe]

Speaking of which, Chuck told me a funny story about you. I think that the day you guys met, how long ago would that have been?

[Nick Searcy]

10 years?

[Chuck Klausmeier]

At least.

[Nick Searcy]

Yeah, I would say maybe 15.

[Chuck Klausmeier]

Yeah.

[Nick Searcy]

Something probably more like it was a while ago. Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

I don't even know if you remember, but I don't know why I offered you a cigar. I don't have any cigars.

[Nick Searcy]

That's all right.

[Mike Rowe]

But then I realized there was like a. Like a memory artifact. And Chuck had told me that the day you guys met, you came over to his apartment.

[Nick Searcy]

Yeah. And I said, can I smoke a cigar here? And he said, no. And I said, well, let's go to my house then. I've got a room that you can smoke a cigar in.

[Mike Rowe]

I mean, you've got rooms where you have to smoke cigars. That's right.

[Nick Searcy]

It's required.

[Chuck Klausmeier]

I was fresh out of those kinds of rooms.

[Mike Rowe]

Right. So did you hesitate, Chuck, for a moment, knowing that an actor you admired a great deal and had watched over the years was suddenly in your home making an indecent proposal, and you had to give him the bad news? Like. Like, did you think about saying, yep, screw it?

[Chuck Klausmeier]

Not even for a second.

[Mike Rowe]

Really.

[Chuck Klausmeier]

It was immediate. It was like, no, I think I said it just like that.

[Nick Searcy]

I think he did.

[Mike Rowe]

I think high pitched and womanly.

[Nick Searcy]

I remember that tone. It was kind of whiny. Here, wear this shirt. It was like. It sounded more like ooh than no hickey.

[Mike Rowe]

I don't have much of a cigar story, but something deeply humiliating happened to me about four months ago. I did Joe Rogan's podcast. You know, we sat down and got everything squared away, and you kind of hunker in because you know you're going to be there for three hours, right?

[Nick Searcy]

Yeah. You got to relax.

[Mike Rowe]

It's a commitment. And so he's like, hey, you want a cigar? And unlike Chuck, like, the honest answer was without the high pitched part, which is like, no, man, I'm not going to smoke a cigar. I'm going to sit down and talk with you for a while. And it's a small room, like, all the smoke. What do we do? You know? I mean, is there going to be whiskey, too? If so, maybe. But of course I said, oh, yeah, that'd be great. So he hands me a cigar, and then he rolls this device from the future across the desk, which, of course, is just a lighter. But there have been so, like, the last time I smoked a cigar, I struck a match on a brick.

[Nick Searcy]

Big match. Yes.

[Mike Rowe]

This thing has got, like rocket fuel in it and it's like air fed and.

[Nick Searcy]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

And it took me, like two minutes to figure out how to operate it. And then, of course, I'm just, you know, it's the first big drag I took. And I was right in the middle of telling some story, like the part of my brain that I wanted to work tried to say, it's like that scene in Young Frankenstein when Gene Hackman, right. Offers cigars to the creature.

[Nick Searcy]

Right.

[Mike Rowe]

But I conflated it with Blazing Saddles. I got everything all wrong.

[Nick Searcy]

And Joe's like, high from the cigar.

[Mike Rowe]

I'm high from the cig, embarrassed because I can't operate the lighter. And Joe's like, no, man, I didn't see that scene. So I really came out of the gate weak. Weak and all.

[Nick Searcy]

Well, those torches, I think they're basically those cigar torches. It's for golf courses. They came because you can do that in the wind, in the high wind. You can also burn your eyebrows off if you're not careful.

[Mike Rowe]

Have you done that before? Well, almost, because I got that too. I had a portable little stove working with a farrier down in Kentucky, I think. And we were making horseshoes out in the middle of nowhere and the gas built up and I got too close and suddenly I'm picking pieces of contact lens out of my eye and just thinking, I dodged a bullet there.

[Nick Searcy]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

You've been dodging bullets your whole life, brother.

[Nick Searcy]

Fake ones.

[Mike Rowe]

Fake bullets, yeah, but they leave a mark too, man. They leave a mark.

[Nick Searcy]

The mark on your soul.

[Mike Rowe]

What's the latest bullet that you've dodged? Or did you just take one for the team? Like, what are you in the midst of right now? I got so many things I want to talk to you about, but capital punishment, obviously, and everything that's happened since then, and what a strange time it must be for you to see the headlines.

[Nick Searcy]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

I mean, are you feeling vindicated at all?

[Nick Searcy]

Yeah, I mean, more and more I'm beginning to feel vindicated. I mean, the truth is coming out. And, you know, we were kind of ahead of the game, even though we weren't sure about exactly what we were finding. When we made the documentaries, we made the first documentary, capital punishment, in 2021.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah.

[Nick Searcy]

Like November we released it same year of January 6th, so we were kind of, like, piecing it together and handing it things. But, no, it's been. I mean, I was overjoyed when Trump pardoned the January six people, because by this point, I'd interviewed 65 or 70 of them, and I'd gotten to know them, and some of them had become friends, and I knew what kind of people they were, and I was just. There's that pins and needles kind of thing leading up to it. After he got elected, it's like, is he really going to do it? Because so many people, John Strand, Brandon Stracha, Colton Maccabee, all these people that I knew that I knew their stories, and I knew that what had happened to them was not fair, but I didn't know if Trump was really going to go through with it, if he was really going to pardon them.

[Mike Rowe]

Well, we talked to you about this. It's been over a year, right?

[Nick Searcy]

Yeah, I think so easily.

[Mike Rowe]

And Chuck was nervous. I was a little nervous. I mean, there was a lot of blood in the water. I was more interested not from a political perspective point of view, but just from this idea that so many people there seem to experience such a different thing at the same time. That level of ambiguity and experiential difference seemed undeniable, and yet there was so much certainty in the narrative. That's what freaked me out, Nick, honestly.

[Nick Searcy]

And that's why I kind of wound up going down that road, because I was there that day. I was there on January 6th, and what I saw was people praying and singing hymns. And people were joyful. Yeah, pretty much. And I really didn't see any of the violence. You know, I didn't see what they were showing me on television. And I was there. So that was sort of what sent us down the road of, like, let's figure this out. Somebody said, would you like to make a documentary about that? And I said, sure, I would like to.

[Mike Rowe]

And I remember, too, after talking to you, thinking, boy, somebody's gonna pick this up in a hurry. This is gonna go tearing through the corridors at Fox. It's gonna go tearing through. And, Matt, nobody touched it. No, they were scared. They were. The people were straight up, flat out scared.

[Nick Searcy]

Yeah. Fox wouldn't even let us buy advertisements for the movie because they. I think they were in the midst of that whole, you know, election. They were being sued and, you know, whatever.

[Mike Rowe]

980 million among friends, but whatever.

[Nick Searcy]

Yeah, but they were afraid to have anything on that might jeopardize that, I guess. And so. But yeah, it wasn't just Fox. I mean, everybody was kind of nervous about it and we were coming out strong saying, this is all a lie. They're lying to you. Listen to us. And nobody really wanted to jump in and go endorse that, you know, because we were kind of, we were pushing it pretty hard.

[Mike Rowe]

So what am I looking at here? Is this a sequel of sorts?

[Nick Searcy]

We made a sequel to capital punishment called the War on Truth, which is now the first edit of it was four and a half hours long. We cut it down to two, and then we decided to release it in four parts. So now it's a four part miniseries. And it basically mostly what the War on Truth is about is revealing who these people are that the government has been telling you are domestic terrorists and white supremacists and violent, hateful people. And they're nothing of the sort. And that should give you some idea of how deep the lie goes. Because they have to demonize these people in order to preserve the narrative. If they can't keep the idea going that January 6th was a violent uprising by people who wanted to overthrow the government, then everything crumbles around them.

[Mike Rowe]

What do you think? I know you don't have a crystal ball, but institutions are still, I think, operating at all time, low levels of trust in general. Certainly the media has got an awful lot on them right now. Can the Democratic Party recover, do you think, the current as people are grappling to get up to speed with the fact that there really and truly was a cover up, is that going to break what you would call the spell surrounding this day?

[Nick Searcy]

I don't know. I keep telling people ask me that and I say, I don't know what they do if they give up the lie. It's like if they admit that they lied that profoundly for that long, the only consequences for them have to be legal. They have to go to jail. So I think their only chance is to try to continue to push the L. And that's why we're still getting pushback on our movie and on the things that we're saying. There's still a lot of fear about coming out and saying exactly what happened.

[Mike Rowe]

So I mean, just remind people though, the movie, it didn't leave me feeling like you were denying any of what we saw on tv. Yeah, it was more like the blind guy grabbing the tusk on the elephant and concluding that he was holding onto an ivory statue.

[Nick Searcy]

Right.

[Mike Rowe]

You just didn't see enough to understand in context the totality of what happened.

[Nick Searcy]

But also I mean, what we did see, what we found out later, even after we made the first film, we had hints of it. It's like we had footage of people changing clothes in the bushes and changing out of their gear into Trump gear. And we were going, what is that about? These people are obviously not actual sincere Trump supporters. These are people that were sent there to do some damage, to cause some ruckus. And that is coming out more and more. That's being shown to be true. And we hinted in the first movies, like, there's a lot of reports that there were people from the government that infiltrated the crowd, that caused a lot of the vandalism, that incited the crowd to do some things. Yeah, some of the people did some bad things, but what caused them to do it? And in the War on Truth, you see more and more that the Capitol Police were actually the aggressors in the situation. You had a huge crowd outside the Capitol that was out there just singing songs and doing nothing. And the Capitol Police began firing munitions into the middle of the crowd.

[Mike Rowe]

What kind of munitions?

[Nick Searcy]

Flashbangs, tear gas canisters, rubber bullets in many cases. There's one guy that got hit by the rubber bullet in the cheek. And when it happened, the people in the crowd were screaming, what are you doing? Why are you firing at us? So that kind of thing is. That's not come out yet as clearly as it should, because the Capitol Police were the aggressors. And we in War on Truth, we interviewed Tarek Johnson, who was a Capitol policeman that day, who testified that this was all a setup, that the Capitol Police were set up just as much as the crowd was. And he, Tarek Johnson, is the one who cleared the House and Senate before the crowd got to them, because he knew that if the crowd had breached the House and Senate while the senators or the Representatives were still in there, that would have been a situation where the Capitol Police would have had to open fire because they're not allowed to do that. He was radioing his superior officer saying, let me clear the House and Senate. Let me clear the chambers. And they. No response. He never got an okay. And then he did it on his own. He did it of his own volition. He cleared the House, he cleared the chambers, and he probably saved hundreds of lives. And then the next day after that, because he did that on his own, he was suspended for 17 months and on house arrest. So it's a big, big, big deal. It's a much bigger conspiracy than I can explain.

[Mike Rowe]

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[Nick Searcy]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

With their cell phones on or something.

[Nick Searcy]

Well, there's. There's a lot of stories I could tell, but, I mean, the one story that I do like to tell is because it's not just the jail time. I mean, so many of these people like Colton Maccabee was in jail for four years. He was in there for the whole time. And three and a half of those years, he wasn't even charged. He couldn't even get bond, couldn't get bonded out because he was classified as a domestic terrorist. And when you hear his story of what he actually did that day, he basically tried to save Roseanne Boylan's life and tried to give her mouth to mouth resuscitation. He fell down on top of a police officer. He was pushed in by the crowd. And in the audio you can hear him saying, I'm trying to help. And the police officer goes, I know you are. I know you are. And he helps him up. And the police officer says, thank you. In the trial, the judge wouldn't allow them to play the audio so that you could hear the police officer thanking Colton for helping him up. So if you just don't play the audio, it looks like Colton threw the guy down on the ground and then jerked him around, you know, and that's the impression they were trying to give. And another story is my friend, Sorry, Nick, go ahead.

[Mike Rowe]

Are you naming names? Like what judge did that, who decided to take the audio out of the tape? These things are outrageous to the point where you just. It feels like they're coming out of a real thriller, a fictitious who done it? You've got to be kidding me. They did this right in front of us.

[Nick Searcy]

Well, I don't know the exact judge that that was, but there's about nine or 10. All these cases went before D.C. judges because that was another thing they did was they made it so that you could not get a change of venue. So every one of these cases had to be tried before a D.C. jury, which is 99% Democrat. And most of the people in the District of Columbia think that everybody who went to January 6th that day needs to go to jail. And the judges are in the same boat. So you have judges like Royce Lamberth, Colleen Kahler, Catelli. These are just the names I can remember off the top of my head. But none of these people could get a fair trial with these judges. And in fact, Kahler Katelli is probably the worst one. She would call people insurrectionists in her summation, even though no one was ever charged with insurrection. I don't have the name of that judge off the top of my head, but I will say that a lot of, a lot of the damage that was done to these people was in their communities, their reputations. They lost their businesses because the government put out this, like, idea that everybody who went there was some sort of racist terrorist. So everybody, they're demonized in their communities. Their sandwich shops, their coffee shops, all these things that they owned are now getting terrible Yelp reviews. And don't go eat at this place.

[Mike Rowe]

It's a scarlet letter.

[Nick Searcy]

Yeah. And my friend Jay Johnston, who was an actor like me, he was trapped in the tunnel fracas. And during that, you know, it was a lot of pushing and shoving. During that whole melee, a police shield was passed back through the crowd. And Jay's a pretty big guy. And Jay, you know, the shield was passed back to him. He took it, and he just passed it on to somebody else. Well, that was characterized as attacking with a deadly weapon because he put his hands on the police shield. Jay was completely ostracized in Hollywood at the time he did that. He was on a show called Bill's Burgers or some animated show.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah.

[Nick Searcy]

I can't remember what it was. But anyway, lost his job. All of his Hollywood friends turned their back on him. You know, he comes out of the comedy community, all those comedians just vilified him. We're never working with him again. So it's not just what the government did. It's what the government narrative caused the community to do.

[Mike Rowe]

That's what they enabled. I mean, it's. I remember as a kid reading about. Oh, in the. You know, the old Puritan days, like, the hardest thing that could happen to a person was to be excommunicated, to be banished.

[Nick Searcy]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

And you don't think about that. It just feels like an artifact of some old thing. But to not be able to go into your favorite diner, your sandwich shop, your church, the school.

[Nick Searcy]

Yeah. You know, it's like, where do I go to get my reputation back? Even though they've been pardoned, even though they. Yes, the legal trouble is over, but they're all like, where do I go to get my. My rep, my standing in the community back?

[Mike Rowe]

Well, look, that's the oldest dodge in journalism. You know, when the headline's dead wrong, the correction shows up on the back of the bottom of the. Of the last page. Nobody. Nobody sees.

[Chuck Klausmeier]

Hey, there's one part I think you failed to mention was that Colton Maccabee was a police officer.

[Nick Searcy]

Oh, that's right.

[Chuck Klausmeier]

Sheriff or something like that.

[Nick Searcy]

Do you remember? Colton Maccabee was a. No, he was Tennessee. He was a Williamson county, where I live. He was a deputy there. At the time that he went to Washington that day.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah.

[Nick Searcy]

And he even had police on his clothes that day showing that he was, you know, he wasn't on duty, but he was. And he was immediately the sheriff's department there. They. They were, Couldn't speak about him. They couldn't talk to his wife. And the way I wound up making the war on Truth, by the way, is because I was in a butcher shop right before Christmas, and Leslie and I are going, you know, the kids are coming over. Let's go order a roast. And so we go into this butcher shop. I look up on the Internet. This is the best one in Franklin. I go in, I order the steak from or the roast from this nice young lady. I get home, I get a text from her. Mr. Searcy, could you give me a call? I helped you with your roast today, so I thought, okay, they run out of meat or something, I don't know. So I call this lady back and she said, I thought you sounded. Your name sounded familiar, but I couldn't place you. But then I talked to my husband, and he said that you were the guy that made Capital Punishment, the first movie about January 6th. Oh, that's great. Your husband's one of the 10 people that saw it. Can I. Can I speak to him? And she said, no, he's. He's in the D.C. gulag. He's been there for two years. And it was like. It was Sarah Maccabee. It was Colton Maccabees wife.

[Mike Rowe]

Good. With the roast.

[Nick Searcy]

And I just went. Because up to that point, I've been resisting. It's like, now it's real.

[Mike Rowe]

Real, real.

[Nick Searcy]

Yeah. Like, I didn't want to make a sequel. But then I was like, okay, I think God's telling me I need to make the sequel.

[Mike Rowe]

You typically listen when you're pretty sure the suggestion is coming from on high.

[Nick Searcy]

I try to. I try to. Sometimes it's not what you want to hear, you know, but I try to.

[Mike Rowe]

How hard was it for you and Leslie when you. I mean, I'm sure you wrestled with it, prayed about it and so forth, but when you decided to make capital punishment, people got to remember that you did this right on the heels of this thing. I mean, you just literally walked up to the wood stove that you were absolutely conscious, was roaring, and you just put your hand on it as if to say, is this thing hot?

[Nick Searcy]

Right.

[Mike Rowe]

Was it?

[Nick Searcy]

You know, I think in that, for that first one, I didn't really question it. It was sort of like, okay, I've Got to do this. There was never really a doubt in my mind. I said, I knew that, you know, there were going to be some repercussions from it, but I had already directed Gosnell, the abortion movie.

[Mike Rowe]

Dodge that bullet.

[Nick Searcy]

Yeah. And so, I mean, I was kind of already exposed as one of those people anyway.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah.

[Nick Searcy]

In Hollywood. So I figure, how much worse could it get, you know?

[Mike Rowe]

But why are you still standing? I mean, if you think about the guy you just described, Jay, was it? Jay.

[Nick Searcy]

Yeah. Right.

[Mike Rowe]

And. And so many others, you. You're a clear and present danger. You're a threat.

[Nick Searcy]

I don't know. I don't know. I mean, I'm sure that there have been jobs that I haven't gotten because of it, but I've continued to work enough, you know, you're too busy to.

[Mike Rowe]

Miss the jobs you didn't get. You don't even have an agent, do you?

[Nick Searcy]

No, no, I don't have one anymore. I. And the reason I don't have an agent is because I was talking to him. It was like, right when capital punishment came out. I said, what did you think of it? And he goes, I'm not going to watch that. I go, you're not even going to watch it? He said, I'm not watching that. That was an insurrection, full stop, and I'm not going to watch that propaganda.

[Mike Rowe]

He wouldn't even watch 10% of it.

[Nick Searcy]

I said, well, yeah, right, right, exactly. I should have used that line. But I said, I guess you don't want to be my agent then. You know, why do you want to represent some insurrect Correctionist, you know? So I fired him. And ever since then, I've been some agents that have come sniffing around, saying, you know, I'd like to represent you. And I'd go, okay, run it by everybody else in your office. And then I never heard from them again.

[Mike Rowe]

Yep. Because it goes. It goes that way, too. Like the same way you get excommunicated in your neighborhood for being on the wrong side of that argument. Can you imagine working in the 10 percentery? Oh, in this town?

[Nick Searcy]

Oh, yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

I mean, there must be some. But I don't.

[Nick Searcy]

I know it's a good friend of mine who got run out of being an agent for the same reasons. He was too open about what he thought. And I do know some other agents that are, you know, at least a little bit on the right side of things. They can't really expose themselves to their. The rest of their agency because they're. They would just be Excommunicated.

[Mike Rowe]

What about the persuadables who are on the other side of the aisle? Your friend Graham. I love your book by the. The book is called Justify this. And here we'll shamelessly pivot to this for a moment. But it has two forwards.

[Nick Searcy]

Yeah. You know, one from the right and.

[Mike Rowe]

One from the left, which I think is terrific. It's great that you would do that and talk about Graham, if you would.

[Nick Searcy]

Well, Graham. Graham's Canadian, so, you know, that explains a lot.

[Mike Rowe]

What can you do?

[Nick Searcy]

But Graham and I've been friends for a long time. I met Graham on From the Earth of the Moon. He was one of the supervising producers. And the story I always tell is, like, for 15 years after from the Earth, the Moon, Graham was writing all these movies. He wrote Speed, he did Boomtown, he was doing all this stuff. And I'd be emailing him going, I thought we were friends. What, you don't ever have anything for me? And so he said when he read the pilot for Justified, he said, finally, I've got something for Nick. I can shut him up. So that's kind of how I got into Justified.

[Mike Rowe]

But it's now. Did you guys ever talk politically? Were you aware from whence the other was coming?

[Nick Searcy]

Well, Graham is very, very funny, has a great sense of humor, and we joke about it. You know, he. He knows that I think he's a communist and whatever, you know, but, you know, it's never been like, we don't have arguments because we know there's no point. You know, I like Graham, he likes me. You know, we. I like him as an artist, he liked me as an actor. So we. We never really had some big powwow about politics.

[Mike Rowe]

But I. Look, I think that there was a time, and we're both old enough to remember, where that was the default. Yeah, I mean, it was simply like. It's like, okay, we're not going to be singing together out of that hymn book, but look at all the other things we can do in life. And that. That, to me, is the great tragedy of the times that we're in now, as a rule. And I say this with great respect. I don't think too much about Oprah Winfrey. I don't care about her latest diet or her thoughts on America's future or whatever's next in her fabulous career. But I will tell you that one of Oprah's favorite things is also one of my favorite things. I refer, of course, to the single most well received gift I've ever given the Aura Digital Picture Frame. Let me back up. Don't buy an Aura Digital Picture Frame just because Oprah and I happen to agree that they're awesome. Buy two, keep one for yourself and give the other one to somebody you love but don't see as much as you'd like. Then sync the frames together and start sharing photos in a way that'll surprise and delight the two of you for years to come. Doesn't matter how far you're apart, the Aura Digital Picture Frame will bring you and your loved ones closer together. It is the best digital frame ever made, according to Wirecutter, who knows way more about these things than me and Oprah combined. Aura Frames gives you unlimited capacity to store all the photos and all the videos you could ever hope to take and share. Start reliving your favorite memories and sharing them with an Aura Digital picture [e-mail] For a limited time, listeners can get 35 bucks off their best selling Carver Matte frame. I can't speak for Oprah, but that's the one I gave my mom and she loves it. Auraframes.com promo code Mike Support the show by mentioning us at checkout. Please terms and Conditions apply at auraframes.com A U R A U R A U R A frames.com.

[Nick Searcy]

Mike When I was coming up, you know, I got my career started in North Carolina in a regional market, and I knew people that were, you know, we would have discussions in the waiting room for auditions and it was never contentious. You know, there were some guys that were Clinton people or whatever. You know, we just talked about it. But then when I got to, by the time I got my career going, I moved to la. I was like, I didn't realize that that wasn't the same in Los Angeles as it was in North Carolina. It was a bad thing if you really came out. And by the time I realized that, it was too late. So I just had to roll with it.

[Mike Rowe]

So when you read the pilot, I assume Graham sent it to you. I'm curious to the extent that he and you both were already familiar with Elmore Leonard and what, if anything, what kind of impression that guy had already made on you.

[Nick Searcy]

I had read a couple of his books. I mean, I wasn't like a big avid Elmore Leonard fan, but I kind of read a couple of his books. And so I sort of got the tone of it. You know, I got the, the snappy dialogue and the, you know, the crispness of it.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah.

[Nick Searcy]

You know, and Graham, I think, really, I don't know if Graham had really read Elmore Leonard before, but he certainly steeped himself in it after he got this assignment, and he. He had Elmore Leonard's 10 rules for writing posted up.

[Mike Rowe]

I got him, too.

[Nick Searcy]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

I literally have him on my wall.

[Nick Searcy]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah, yeah. My favorite is. I think it's dispensed with the hoopty doodle. Yeah. Right. Just get all the stuff out of the way. And it's funny, you know, David Mamet was sitting right where you are, you know, yesterday.

[Nick Searcy]

Well, that's an honor.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah. Boy. Well, I mean, I didn't connect the dots then, but there are very few guys he reminds me of as a writer, but Elmore Leonard's one of them, you know, And Hemingway to an extent, too.

[Nick Searcy]

Yeah. Sparse cleanness of it. Yeah. Like, don't say anything, but he said.

[Mike Rowe]

You know, I remember that. That's right. The attributions.

[Nick Searcy]

Yeah. Right.

[Mike Rowe]

Never. Yeah. And not replied.

[Nick Searcy]

Not yet.

[Mike Rowe]

Or side intoned.

[Nick Searcy]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

Not even asked.

[Nick Searcy]

Right.

[Mike Rowe]

You know, it's. All the attributions are he said and she said.

[Nick Searcy]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

And at first it feels. It. It's a little awkward at first because you're not used to reading that way, but then later, it's. It's actually very comforting.

[Nick Searcy]

Yeah. Because you don't spend any time. You're just right through it.

[Mike Rowe]

He's not selling you and, like, ad or adverbs. Anything that ends with ly. I think he was firmly against or against firmly.

[Nick Searcy]

There's another writer I love, Lawrence Block, you know, his style is a bit like Elmore's, I think.

[Mike Rowe]

So was Art Mullen. Stupid question you've added a thousand times, but I think I know the answer. That. That had to be a hinge in your curriculum. Viet.

[Nick Searcy]

It was a great gift for that to come along. At that point in my life, you know, I was in my 50s, and it's like, you know, you're kind of facing the over the Hill gang, you know, I'm getting ready to ride with those old men, but to get a part like that at that stage in my life was just a great gift.

[Mike Rowe]

When did you know it? Like, when did you know? I mean, obviously, the offer was kind, and the fact that Chuck has yet to see the program is unforgivable. What? What are you talking about? You know, I don't believe you're familiar with Justified.

[Chuck Klausmeier]

Every single episode I have seen.

[Mike Rowe]

Not one.

[Nick Searcy]

Right.

[Mike Rowe]

Not one.

[Chuck Klausmeier]

Every single one.

[Nick Searcy]

He's just saying that to make me feel better.

[Chuck Klausmeier]

Is that his wife, Leslie, is in It. Yeah, I watched the whole thing. I binged it before we had him on the first time.

[Mike Rowe]

Oh, I. That's right. Because you hadn't seen any of it.

[Chuck Klausmeier]

I hadn't seen it up until then, but you had been telling me about it for years.

[Mike Rowe]

For years. Yeah. See, I. I am an Elmore. I feel like I. I knew the Harlan story, and I knew everything that came out in that first thing, and I. I didn't see it promoted. I didn't see it advertised, which is almost impossible to do anymore. I just found was just one of those things where it's like reaching in your pocket of your old tuxedo and finding 200 in a money clip you didn't even know you had, like, going. Wow, I'm so happy to find this. It was just terrific, man.

[Nick Searcy]

Yeah, Just terrific. It's a really good show. And for me, personally, it's a tribute to my. My own father. You know, it's like the way I played that character was like. I just played him like my dad, because my dad was always a boss and ran a restaurant, and he just had this really acerbic sense of humor and this really cutting way of keeping people in line, but in a. In a way that was pleasant and funny.

[Mike Rowe]

Tough, kind.

[Nick Searcy]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

With just a little. Just enough world weary on you.

[Nick Searcy]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

But not bitter.

[Nick Searcy]

Right.

[Mike Rowe]

I mean, it was. It was just terrific to watch.

[Nick Searcy]

Yeah. I'm very grateful for that.

[Mike Rowe]

When people stop you in airports, etcetera, it's usually for that.

[Nick Searcy]

Well, since I moved to Kentucky.

[Mike Rowe]

Oh, boy.

[Nick Searcy]

I'm a huge star in Kentucky. Yeah. Like, I don't get recognized that much, but in Kentucky, I walk into a restaurant, they go, art Mullen. Yeah. You know, they know.

[Mike Rowe]

Have you been following Walton Goggins?

[Nick Searcy]

Yeah, he's done great.

[Mike Rowe]

I mean, but again, we were just talking earlier, it's like, well, I've been following that guy for years, and then all of a sudden, the white lotus thing.

[Nick Searcy]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

And now. Now the country's, like, discovered him.

[Nick Searcy]

Yeah. He was blowing up. Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

What a ride.

[Nick Searcy]

Yeah. No, he's done really well. I'm happy for him.

[Mike Rowe]

Well, I'm happy for you, man. I love that you don't have an agent. I love that somehow you're still standing. This is your first book.

[Nick Searcy]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

What do I need? I mean, is it. It's not really about Justified.

[Nick Searcy]

No. It's just sort of a summation kind of a autobiography, you know, and it just came about because this company approached me and said, we think you should write a book. I said, I'm just some character actor. You think anybody's gonna buy that? And they gave me a guy to work with to help me write it or whatever. Johnny Russo. Yeah. And so I would tell him these stories, you know, I just started talking to him. He said, I'll just record you, and then we'll put it together. Well, after about, I don't know, 16, 17 hours, he sent me an email one day and said, well, I turned the book in. I go, what are you talking about? I haven't even seen it yet. And he said, no, no. I said, send me what you sent in. And I looked at it, and it was like, I sound like an idiot. You can't send that in. And so I called the company. I said, look, you got to let me rewrite this, you know, so. Because he had kind of just transcribed what I said, and, you know, you sound like an idiot if somebody just. It's every and every. Well, every dot. And then I. You know, so I kind of rewrote it all and then, you know, added some things that he hadn't written about, you know, that we hadn't gotten to yet. So it started out as something I was going to go, oh, that won't be much work. And then it turned into, like, okay, I really kind of had to write that book.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah, well, same thing happened to me, and I realized it really was the frog in the boiling water, where all of a sudden, I. I don't know when it became so precious, but it did. And I, like, I was agonizing in ways that I normally wouldn't. I just think, you know, there's something about writing. The business of writing a thing down.

[Nick Searcy]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

That obviously amplifies it in some way.

[Nick Searcy]

And there's a permanence to it. You know, this is going to be around. I have to make sure that this is embarrassing, you know, it's going to live for a while, you know.

[Mike Rowe]

What about. What about this thing, man?

[Nick Searcy]

Oh, yeah. Well, that's the movie I'm trying to put together. A friend of mine and I wrote this movie. His father, who is now a minister, was sang in gospel quartets in the 60s. And most of a lot of my cousins were preachers, and my first cousin was a. A gospel singer. So he started telling. We were doing a play together, this guy and I, and he started telling me the story about his father, and I said, that sounds like a movie. Because the whole thing was about him going into the gospel music world and finding out that it was much more of a Business than he thought it was.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah.

[Nick Searcy]

You know, he thought it was just, I'm going to be spreading the gospel. But he finds out that it's a little darkness there and a little bit more, you know. What's the word? Calculated than he thought.

[Mike Rowe]

It is an extraordinarily deliberate world. I don't know a ton about it, but I know enough. I got hooked on the Cathedrals one night, and actually, it's funny, we have a friend. You remember Steve Lahan from the old days.

[Nick Searcy]

Sure.

[Mike Rowe]

He wound up working at a. At a Christian radio station, wrbs. And I introduced him to a quartet called the Haven of Rest. And he introduced me to the cathedrals. And then we just went down this rabbit hole. There are hundreds of famous Southern gospel quartets. It's not barbershop. No, but it's those same power harmonies. And there's always a tenor with no top and a bass with no bottom.

[Nick Searcy]

Right.

[Mike Rowe]

And just the idea that there's. Here's this world where these musicians, many times without instruments but sometimes with. Are like, on the circuit, you know, making the rounds. It's like a. I don't know, oh, brother, where art thou? Kind of vibe over the whole thing.

[Nick Searcy]

Yeah. The Blackwood Brothers, the Inspirations. I grew up with the Inspirations because they were from western North Carolina, where I grew up. And actually my mother was a biology teacher and the chemistry teacher was Martin Cook, and he left teaching to become the piano player for the Inspirations when I was about six years old.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah.

[Nick Searcy]

And he kind of. I think his grand. His son or his grandson is now running the Inspirations. So it's a long standing. I mean, they've been around for 50 years.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah.

[Nick Searcy]

So.

[Mike Rowe]

But the originals.

[Nick Searcy]

Well, there's a whole young. It's the New Inspirations now.

[Mike Rowe]

Right.

[Nick Searcy]

But it's. There's a. You know, vestiges of the old guard. They're still. They're like the, you know, Lynyrd Skynyrd. There's one guy left that's still alive.

[Mike Rowe]

Right. What is it about that form of music, in your view, that resonates so profoundly with some people, but it is so. Just completely alien to others. It's so specific.

[Nick Searcy]

It is. It's a real interesting subculture, and that's kind of why I wanted to do the movie. There's never been anything about it, you know, very little. The Righteous Gemstones thing, that's a parody, you know, that's. I think it's the. Like you said, it's the power of the harmonies and it's that fascinating sort of mixture between sincere religious belief.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah.

[Nick Searcy]

And showmanship.

[Mike Rowe]

That's it. You know, there it is.

[Nick Searcy]

Because they are putting on a show and they are selling something to the audience, you know, above and beyond the sincerity of the message they're trying to deliver.

[Mike Rowe]

Do you remember? So the inspirations were your inspiration, I suppose, but were you in a church the first time you heard that kind of music come at you with all the Stenturian force that men in harmony can muster?

[Nick Searcy]

Yeah, well, my uncle was an evangelist. He was a traveling preacher, and so I ended up going to a lot of revivals that he was. And he was. He played the guitar and sang, and his daughter and his son sang with him sometimes. And his son is the one who became like a lead singer in a gospel quartet. So I just remember. I think my first memory of it is seeing my uncle sing harmony with his son and daughter. That was my introduction to it. And then, you know, I would go to these gospel sings where there'd be five groups or something, and they'd all, you know, sing for an hour and.

[Mike Rowe]

Do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do. So my mother has been seeing my commercials for PureTalk, and now she's thinking about switching from Verizon, but she's suspicious about the offer. So she called me the other day with some questions, Michael. She said, how can PureTalk offer me the same basic service as Verizon for? Doesn't seem possible. I said, mom, it's actually very simple to explain. Just hop on your computer and ask Google how much Verizon spent on advertising last year. A few seconds later, my mom says, oh, my goodness. $12 billion. Michael, is that a typo? It must be a typo. I'll tell you the same thing I told my mom. It's not a typo. It's a fact. Verizon spends $12 billion a year on their commercials, and their customers are paying for it. Well, PureTalk doesn't spend that kind of money on advertising. Trust me, I would know. Consequently, they can offer you and my mother unlimited talk, text and plenty of data on America's most dependable 5G network for just $25 a month. Just go to PureTalk.com ro It takes 10 minutes to switch, but the savings go on forever. That's PureTalk.com row everything you need and nothing you don't. PureTalk.com row pew, pew, pew, pew.

[Nick Searcy]

Talk.

[Mike Rowe]

Have you talked to Nick before about Barbershop and the weird thing we grew up with?

[Chuck Klausmeier]

Yeah, I mean, I told him that, you know, that we sang together, and, you know, we do it on the podcast all the time as well.

[Mike Rowe]

Well, I'm thinking more of the. Like, the first time, we were 17, maybe 18 years old, and our music teacher was a big deal on that world, and he directed an international world champion men's chorus that sang the old songs. Now, this was not a religious group, although they really could tear up. Near my God to thee. Yeah. I mean, like. Like, in a way that would make you cry regardless of what you believed in or didn't believe in.

[Nick Searcy]

Right.

[Mike Rowe]

It's that. It's that kind of magic that's baked into this. It was the first time in my life I saw 120 men, many of whom had fought in the Korean War and the Second World War, shoulder to shoulder, singing about the pals that would never let you down and the sweetheart Sigma Chi and a mother's love. Tough men, hard men.

[Nick Searcy]

Right.

[Mike Rowe]

Weeping as they sang. And I remember I was just a boy sitting there next to Chuck. And it got us. It was the combination of unapologetic sentimentality with actual talent and. And a wall of sound and that, too. You know how on a hot day, you can, like, see the heat coming up off the macadam?

[Nick Searcy]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

Right.

[Nick Searcy]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

You could see the sound waves in the air. It was. It, like, it. It just hit you, and it knocked the moisture out of your eyes.

[Nick Searcy]

Right.

[Mike Rowe]

I don't know. There's just something. There's an alchemy in that.

[Nick Searcy]

I remember my. My best agent, Joe Rice, who passed away sadly about a few years ago. I've never gotten another one as. As good as him, but he. When I played him the music that we. I'd written this show, and we had links to some of the music that was in it.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah.

[Nick Searcy]

And Joe Rice said to me, I love that music. I don't even believe in Jesus. It made me cry. It was great.

[Mike Rowe]

He chased a dream. He found a calling.

[Nick Searcy]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

You got to have a deck, don't you? Yeah.

[Nick Searcy]

Anymore. Yeah. And we're pretty far down the road. I mean, we. We have a company out of Nashville called Third Coast Film, and they are. They're putting the deals together. Patricia Heaton and her husband are helping David Hunt. They're going to be involved. Patricia is going to be in the cast, and you got Sam Rockwell. It's coming together. Well, that's. That's who I want.

[Mike Rowe]

Oh, I got you. I was like, oh. I'm like, wow, this is an amazing cast.

[Nick Searcy]

I did. I did a movie with Sam, I know, Laurie. I mean, you. These are the people that I want. But I keep telling these guys, you got to get the money together because, you know, these guys have schedules. I got to be able to tell them when they're going to work.

[Mike Rowe]

It's like, so you're in the midst. Like, all these projects have just life cycles that a lot of people probably don't understand. But it's kind of like being a farmer, I guess. You're either reaping or you're sowing or planting or doing a rain dance and hoping for the best.

[Nick Searcy]

Yeah, People don't really. And I didn't know before I started doing this, but how long it takes to put together a movie like this. I mean, we're going on seven years. We wrote the script seven years ago and then rewrote it and rewrote it and changed. You know, different companies get involved and then they fall away or whatever, you know.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah.

[Nick Searcy]

But it's a long road.

[Mike Rowe]

That's so funny. I'm thinking of Jack Teeter now, who was here three hours ago. You'd love this guy. His great uncle was blind from the age of 5 on and in spite of that, was determined to become an engineer, which he did, and then went on to. To invent the automatic transmission.

[Nick Searcy]

Oh, wow.

[Mike Rowe]

And then cruise control. Yeah. He changed the automotive industry. Ran a company out of Hagerstown, Indiana, for years called Perfect Circle, which made. The point is, you know, this guy decides, I have an extraordinary relative and a movie needs to be made, and I wind up narrating this documentary. And we just had him in here to talk about it. And my point is, you know, if you don't have an agent and if you're not playing the Hollywood game, then all of these projects become very personal, whether it's January 6th or whether it's where I'm bound. Right. And so something is certainly guiding you.

[Nick Searcy]

Well, you know, something happened this year. I lost two of my best friends in the same week. Right. In the first week of January this year, my wife lost one of her best friends. And Chuck knows one of them. Loy, our friend Lloyd, who was there the night, wanted to smoke cigars.

[Chuck Klausmeier]

That's right.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah.

[Chuck Klausmeier]

You were coming to see Loy. He was staying with me. He was visiting from Kansas City.

[Mike Rowe]

Voiceover guy.

[Nick Searcy]

Yeah, that's correct.

[Chuck Klausmeier]

Yeah.

[Nick Searcy]

Lloydge. Yeah, yeah.

[Chuck Klausmeier]

Very funny guy.

[Nick Searcy]

I think I said wonderful guy. Yeah.

[Chuck Klausmeier]

I sent you the audio of him singing a very funny song.

[Mike Rowe]

That song. I can't play any of it. That's correct. I would like to play all of it, but that was the filthiest song I've ever heard.

[Chuck Klausmeier]

It's pretty dirty.

[Nick Searcy]

Yeah, it's pretty awful.

[Chuck Klausmeier]

Pretty funny.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah, it's like, pretty dirty. That's like saying there are. There are a lot of people in China. That's right.

[Nick Searcy]

That's right. Well, my buddy Rodney Carrington, who makes a living singing dirty songs.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah.

[Nick Searcy]

Loy and I played it for him, and he's like, that's too dirty. I can't do it. I can't record that. True story.

[Mike Rowe]

True story. Oh, my God. Well, I'm sorry for your loss, but.

[Nick Searcy]

What I was saying is, like, that those losses really brought something home to me, which is like, I don't want to spend my. What time I have left doing something that I don't care about. You know, I don't want to. I'm not, like, looking for a job anymore. I don't. You know, I'm not rich, but I've got. I'm not going to starve. And I would rather spend my time doing things that it's worth taking me away from my home, from my family, from. It's worth me spending the time to make that movie.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah.

[Nick Searcy]

So, like, when the manager calls and goes, we got this thing, three and a half months, you'll be in Vancouver. I go, how much?

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah, right, right.

[Nick Searcy]

I just don't want to. I don't want to waste any more time.

[Mike Rowe]

It's funny. And by funny, I don't mean funny at all, but I mean human. How sometimes it's like something has to grab you by the lapels and shake you. Yeah.

[Nick Searcy]

You know, I just. It forces you to go, okay, realistically, I probably don't have 30 years. Maybe I've got 20. Maybe it's in the teens, you know, do I want to. You know? And I think of Ray Liotta. Ray Liotta, who. I never worked with him, but always looked up to him. And he dies in the DOMINICAN REPUBLIC At 63 doing a little independent film. And I just go. I don't. I don't want to go that way.

[Mike Rowe]

No, it's the Big Chill. Yeah, you're right in that neighborhood, too, right? Yeah, I'm 63 now.

[Nick Searcy]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

Man, he was something in Field of Dreams. Oh, it really snuck up on you.

[Nick Searcy]

That performance, you know, and Goodfellas, and, you know.

[Mike Rowe]

Well, Goodfellas didn't sneak up on me. That hit me like a. Yeah. I mean, but the subtlety that he brought to that. Just those couple of scenes. They're crazy how that like what you do, what you've done, those little moments that get just embedded in your crawl.

[Nick Searcy]

Yeah, I've had a few of those, you know, not many, but you know, I've been a character actor, you know, and I had a few little brushes at sort of doing something really memorable. Fried Green Tomatoes maybe?

[Mike Rowe]

That was the first for sure.

[Nick Searcy]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

I mean that was. You were the, you were the bad guy.

[Nick Searcy]

I was the bad guy. I was the wife beating husband. But the funny thing is whenever I meet a young lady that's in their 30s and she goes, you look really familiar, I'll start rattling things off. No, I never saw that. I go, did you have the Disney Channel when you were a kid? And she goes, yes. And I go, do you remember the movie Double Teamed? And they were like, you were the dad. This TV movie about these two tall girls and their mean dad made them play basketball and then they wound up in the WNBA. Every woman 35 to 40 right now had the Disney Channel. They saw that movie 50 times. So that's what I'm most famous for.

[Mike Rowe]

What are you most proud of?

[Nick Searcy]

Well, outside of my personal life. You mean outside of being putting up with Leslie for 38 years?

[Mike Rowe]

Yes.

[Nick Searcy]

It's been tough.

[Mike Rowe]

Who I just met on the telephone, by the way, she sounds delightful.

[Nick Searcy]

She is, she's great. I don't know, I wouldn't be anything without her. Probably the thing I'm most proud of is Justified's up there. Fried Green Tomatoes is up there. But the documentaries, you know, I think they're going to, you know, they'll be out there. There's still haven't wound up on Amazon or, you know, where I would like for them to be seen by people who didn't know it was coming. But I think those are going to be an important piece of history. I think of. You know, I was able to chronicle something that most people ignored or didn't.

[Mike Rowe]

Didn't want to look at or didn't have the guts to do themselves.

[Nick Searcy]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, maybe, yeah. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know if it's bravery or stupidity.

[Mike Rowe]

Well, I'm not sure. Like what's really the difference other than, I guess, motive. Stupid doesn't have a motive.

[Nick Searcy]

Right.

[Mike Rowe]

You know, it's back to touching the wood stove that you know is, is hot. If you do it stupidly well then you know, that scar is probably remembered differently. But if you lurch for it to get the baby off of it because somehow or another a baby is on the hot stove. Don't unpack the metaphor too deeply, but.

[Nick Searcy]

Right, yeah, yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

Something pushed or pulled or kicked or prodded and, you know, whether you're around another 10, 20, 30, 40 years or whatever, it's not up to you anymore, man.

[Nick Searcy]

Right.

[Mike Rowe]

You're the pitcher who let the ball go, and now it's out there.

[Nick Searcy]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

And we'll see where it goes.

[Nick Searcy]

I think that's part of why I decided to make those movies, because when I would hear these people's stories, I would think back to where I was on that day and like, if I had been where Colton was or where Jay Johnstone was, I might have done exactly what they did did, and it would be me there instead of them.

[Mike Rowe]

Right.

[Nick Searcy]

So I think in some ways I look at that and I go. I think I was being protected that day so that I could tell the story, so that I would be able to make these films and tell these stories.

[Mike Rowe]

Is the wall of resistance coming down? Do you feel like you're going to be able to get more? I guess, hate to. It's just promotion. Is anybody going to help you tell these stories?

[Nick Searcy]

Well, I don't know about that. I mean, I've had a little bit of a struggle with the producers of the movie, the people who funded it. You know, they have a certain way that they want to do things, and I haven't been able to convince them otherwise. I've certainly reached out to Amazon and to companies to try to help me get these things. You know, I want to just give it away at this point. I just want it to be on Amazon so that somebody could just go, what's this about? You know, because I'm tired of preaching to the choir. The only people that watch it are the people that already agree with me. You know, I want to show it to some people, the persuadable people.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah.

[Nick Searcy]

But I haven't figured it out yet. I got a turning it over in my mind, you know, my. I don't have an agent, so you keep saying that.

[Mike Rowe]

Careful. You want one?

[Nick Searcy]

I want a good one. I'd like to have one like Joe Rice, but, you know.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah, you just kind of glossed over it before. But you said when you were a boy, there were these tent revivals in your world. And again, that's the thing I think most people kind of know about, but very few have experienced. What was that like? And what kind of impact did it have? And to what extent are these things moral circuses?

[Nick Searcy]

Yeah. Well, it's that Blend. It's that blend of showmanship and sincere belief. And I did a one man show about a preacher when I was struggling actor in New York for about three years. And that was what was fascinating to me about it because I never doubted these people's sincerity. But I would often marvel at like, okay, the showmanship is going a little bit far now. The, the dramatic nature of their presentation and the tent revivals, you know, it was always like, we got to take up a collection. We got to make enough money to make this so that we can get to the next town to spread the gospel, you know, so it's that sort of. That's the tension. It's like, how much of this is commerce and how much of this is spreading?

[Mike Rowe]

Ministry, redemption.

[Nick Searcy]

Yeah. And I, like I said it fascinated me because I never really doubted their sincerity. I never, like, you know, I never thought I was being, you know, watching somebody being a shyster or being, you know, trying to screw people out of their money. But the showmanship was. Always fascinated me. And I think that's part of why I became an actor. I think for a while I wanted to be a preacher. And then I realized, no, it's the acting that.

[Mike Rowe]

It's the acting that I like. Right, right. Yeah. I mean, it's funny, you know, if it goes Too far, it's P.T. barnum in that direction.

[Nick Searcy]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

Too far in the other direction. We fall asleep.

[Nick Searcy]

Yeah. And that's why I think a lot of movies have all, you know, Leap of Faith, that Steve Martin movie a long time ago. They've always gone for the, you know, the dark side of it. They sort of assume that the. The preacher is lying. And it's like, I always. That's what Where I'm Bound is about. It's like. No, they mean it. You know, I want it to be sincere, what they're trying to do. But there is also this, you know, we got to make a living here.

[Mike Rowe]

Right. You know, where'd the title come from?

[Nick Searcy]

There's a song that the man's father wrote that called Heavens, Where I'm Bound. That is the sort of closing song of the movie.

[Mike Rowe]

I was just thinking it's a phrase from that. Peter, Paul and Mary sang it. I don't know who wrote it. Maybe Dylan. I'm walking down that long lonesome road.

[Nick Searcy]

Babe Where I'm bound yeah, yeah. I can't tell. And there's a Nancy Griffith song, too, that has that phrase in it. Where I'm bound Where I'm bound I can't remember the song right now, but, yeah, it was always a phrase in my head. And then when he played me this. There's four original songs that my writing partner's father wrote back in the day that were never recorded or published. And Heavens Where I'm Bound is one of them.

[Mike Rowe]

It's the last great movie you saw.

[Nick Searcy]

Wow. It's going to be really old.

[Mike Rowe]

That says plenty.

[Nick Searcy]

Yeah. Gosh, that's a tough question, actually.

[Mike Rowe]

Does it mean you don't watch movies anymore or you just haven't seen a great one in a while?

[Nick Searcy]

I don't watch very many. You know, I watch a lot of documentaries and wrestling. I want to watch a lot of professional wrestling.

[Mike Rowe]

Do you really?

[Nick Searcy]

I love it. I'm hooked on it now.

[Mike Rowe]

That actually makes an incredible amount of sense, juxtaposed with the showmanship that attracted you to a tent revival.

[Nick Searcy]

Yeah. Oh, yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

We're still on that same.

[Nick Searcy]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

Sliding scale.

[Nick Searcy]

Well, just like two weeks, not even a week ago, there was a local wrestling show in Owensboro, Kentucky. And those are my favorite. I like the local wrestling more than I like the wwe.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah.

[Nick Searcy]

Because you go there and those guys are trying to establish themselves, and they have to sell their characters the minute they come out.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah.

[Nick Searcy]

And so they have to establish, is this the heel or is this the good guy or whatever. I love it. And the crowd. There's usually 300, 250, 300 people in the crowd. And they are. They are real fans.

[Mike Rowe]

What's going on with this? Let's unpack it. And maybe that's because it's like. It's not. Never mind the tent revival, but that. It's like a monster truck pull. Yeah. There's something completely without guile or pretense.

[Nick Searcy]

Right.

[Mike Rowe]

Like there's a bargain. Like, we all know you're playing a character, and we all know that everything is an exaggerated version of something real. But we still go along for the ride. We willingly spend disbelief.

[Nick Searcy]

And that's what I love so much about the wrestlers, is that they have to be so good at acting that they make the crowd want to pay money to see them pretend to get the hell beaten out of them. You know, because wrestling is always about the bad guys.

[Mike Rowe]

Right.

[Nick Searcy]

It's always about the heel making everybody so mad. They're going, I'm gonna go see that guy get killed. Cause I don't like him, you know?

[Mike Rowe]

Right. So that's what Catharsis. That's some. You know, Aristotle or Plato would have something to say about that.

[Nick Searcy]

Well, it's protagonist and Antagonist.

[Mike Rowe]

Right.

[Nick Searcy]

I remember when we. When Leslie and I first met, we were living in New York City, and we were talking, and she was like, I've never been to a wrestling match. I'm like, what? You've never been to a. So, like, our second or third date was like. I said, we're going to. We're going to Madison Square Garden, and you're gonna watch Hulk Hogan wrestle Chuck just for grins.

[Mike Rowe]

I don't know if there's a picture out there, but Google my name next to WWE and Halloween Havoc.

[Nick Searcy]

Oh, yeah, I remember.

[Mike Rowe]

You remember Halloween Havoc.

[Nick Searcy]

I remember you were on it.

[Mike Rowe]

That must have been 25 years ago.

[Nick Searcy]

It was 1999 or something, probably.

[Mike Rowe]

Oh, yeah, that was. I was in a. A very, very different part of my life where I was just. I would take any gig anywhere for I didn't care. But somehow or another, I got pulled into that world, and I started doing these, like, ringside interviews, and I didn't know the world, Nick. I didn't know the world like my. And I didn't appreciate it at the time, but I was. I was an actor then. I was just acting like a host.

[Nick Searcy]

Right.

[Mike Rowe]

So I'm there in my stupid, you know, turtleneck, like, Big Stick Mike, interviewing these people who ever. Like, there must have been 30,000 people in this stadium, and I didn't know who the hell they were. They were all just dressed up, beating the hell out of each other. That's hilarious. And I felt like such a. Such a fraud, but I was so interested. Again, it's a world, man. It is a world.

[Nick Searcy]

Oh, yeah, no, that's always been. I've always wanted to get on a WWE broadcast or something or just even be in the crowd. And the. Cut to me, but I'm not a big enough star for that. But I did get to do one wrestling match as a manager with Matt Hardy, one of the Hardy Boys.

[Mike Rowe]

Really?

[Nick Searcy]

Yeah. He and I got to be friends, and he said, I'm doing a match. He was wrestling with a group called Ring of Honor. So I'm doing a match in Nashville. You want to come be my manager? Sure. You know, and this was when Justified was still going on. So I get there two, three hours early. It was a tag team match. Matt Hardy and Mike Bennett versus the Briscoe brothers. And I'm the manager. So I had, like, a black coat and, you know, glasses, and I brought my Peabody Award that I won. Unjustified.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah.

[Nick Searcy]

So I was going out to the crowd going, this is an award for excellence in television Something you losers will never understand. And so they set up this gag that I'm going to throw my Peabody Award into the ring, and Matt's going to catch it and hit the guy with it and then try to pin him, and he kicks out. And so then I'm supposed to crawl into the ring and get my Peabody.

[Mike Rowe]

Get your Peabody.

[Nick Searcy]

Well, I get in the ring, and Briscoe brother grabs my Peabody and won't give it to me. And I'm going, you get your filthy hands off that award. And he. And we set it up so that he would kick me in the stomach and hit me on the back, and I'd lay down, and his brother would jump off the top rope and drop the elbow on me. Like an elbow drop off the top rope. And when we're setting this up, I'm, like, going, that sounds like it's gonna be really funny.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah.

[Nick Searcy]

Won't that hurt?

[Mike Rowe]

It could hurt a lot.

[Nick Searcy]

And Jay Briscoe says, oh, yeah, you'll feel it, but, yeah, I'm gonna hurt you. Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

Oh, there it is.

[Nick Searcy]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

I can't believe you actually saw that.

[Nick Searcy]

I've seen. I've never missed one. My wife can vouch for that. I've never missed one.

[Chuck Klausmeier]

That's the only picture I could find.

[Mike Rowe]

Well, this is as good as it gets, man. Look at that hair. That's a deep cut.

[Nick Searcy]

Chuck, that really is amazing.

[Mike Rowe]

Those were the days. I don't.

[Nick Searcy]

That was wcw.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah.

[Nick Searcy]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

But look at the size of my head. It's. I don't have a thought in there, Nick. All I know is there's some guy dressed up like a vampire on my right who I'm about to interview.

[Nick Searcy]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

And some other gladiator type dude.

[Nick Searcy]

Vampira.

[Mike Rowe]

Vampire. Yeah. Yeah. What about. What about the ufc? Does that appeal?

[Nick Searcy]

I used to watch it with a friend of mine, but it makes me uncomfortable because they're really hating each other.

[Mike Rowe]

They are beating the absolute snot out of each other.

[Nick Searcy]

I like the fake stuff better because I know at least they're trying to not hurt each other.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah.

[Nick Searcy]

It's a show, you know.

[Mike Rowe]

You know, I. I've Forrest Gumped my way into that, too. I was in an office with Dana White and the guy that used to produce Dirty Jobs, and he was pitching the Ultimate Fighter the show. And I walked in just in time to hear Craig Palidian go, well, that's Mike. You know, he's doing the dirty jobs. He does voiceover stuff. And Dana's like, yeah, I've seen you say something. And I said, previously on the Ultimate Fighter. And he said, yeah, fine, you're hired. Did 13 seasons.

[Nick Searcy]

Genius.

[Mike Rowe]

13 seasons.

[Nick Searcy]

You're a genius. You're hired.

[Mike Rowe]

But, I mean, who knew that the Ultimate Fighter would go on to eclipse. Really? All of it?

[Nick Searcy]

All of it, yeah. It's still going.

[Mike Rowe]

Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, my God. It's huge.

[Nick Searcy]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

But it just goes back to whether it's a tent revival or professional wrestling, ultimate fighting, boxing, it's gladiators, it's. Are you not entertained? And this whole quest to try and figure out what the hell does the audience want. It's all Halloween havoc.

[Nick Searcy]

It is.

[Mike Rowe]

One way or another.

[Nick Searcy]

When Leslie was at the wrestling match watching Hulk Hogan, she looked around, and we were doing a play together at the time. And one night, we had one person in the audience, and she's, like, looking around. There's 25,000 people there, and go, just think if this many people came to the theater. And I'm going, this is theater.

[Mike Rowe]

This is the theater. This is it. What's it feel like to do a play with one person in the audience?

[Nick Searcy]

It was. Well, in that situation, you know, Equity says that you can vote. If the cast outnumbers the audience, the cat has to vote about whether they're not gonna. They're gonna do it or not. So we all voted. Yeah, let's do it. What the hell?

[Mike Rowe]

Let's call it a rehearsal.

[Nick Searcy]

Yeah. And so we did it. And like. Like, at intermission, we're, like, going, I think he likes it. We're all peeking through the curtain. You know, he's still there. He's gonna stay.

[Mike Rowe]

I think he likes it.

[Nick Searcy]

He laughed once. Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

Oh, man. God. I mean, how demoralizing if, you know, the guy has to go up to go to the can. Oh, yeah, we'll wait. Yeah, we'll wait. Should we wait? We'll just pause for a minute. Let's take a yellow flag on this one.

[Nick Searcy]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

Good God. What was the play? Do you remember?

[Nick Searcy]

Yeah, it was called the Kennedy play.

[Mike Rowe]

Comedy.

[Nick Searcy]

It was a. It was like a Pirandello. Six characters in search of an author kind of play where we were all playing actors trying to put together a play about the Kennedy family.

[Chuck Klausmeier]

Six actors in search of an audience.

[Mike Rowe]

And that's why there was one person in the crowd.

[Nick Searcy]

It was not a good play, but. But we also had to improvise the relationships between the actors, and I improvised that. I was in love with Leslie, and she bought it. So that's how we got married. We met in that play.

[Mike Rowe]

You and Your wife met during a production of a play with one person in the audience?

[Nick Searcy]

Well, some nights we had nine or ten, you know.

[Mike Rowe]

How many were at your wedding?

[Nick Searcy]

Oh gosh, I think about 65.

[Mike Rowe]

See now that's a performance.

[Nick Searcy]

Yeah. And they had to come to North Carolina. We got married at my parents house in North Carolina.

[Mike Rowe]

Nice.

[Nick Searcy]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

Speaking of which, what the hell is going on in your state right now? I've got some friends there. I'm trying if I can to take this project I'm working on now to that area. Because the recovery, it just seems to be interminable.

[Nick Searcy]

It is.

[Mike Rowe]

I don't know how they're to going, going to get out of this.

[Nick Searcy]

It's also, it's like, I don't know how you rebuild. Like whole towns are gone.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah.

[Nick Searcy]

You know, just wiped away. Banner Elk and Blowing Rock and some other towns that are just not there anymore. And so I think that's part of the problem is like how do you rebuild an entire town that's just not there? And I, you know, I think that land has some value for some mining and I think there may be some of that going on that they're, they don't want to rebuild it because they want to get the, get the minerals out of the ground.

[Mike Rowe]

It's amazing how the rebirth of a town. I mean when I look at what's going on in Lahaina, which I don't understand. It's been two years now.

[Nick Searcy]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

And they're, they're not building anything. And I wonder about the Palisades and Altadena. And you just, you look around and you see these geographical do overs, you know, and what's going to happen to our cities? Nick.

[Nick Searcy]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

Just real quick as we start to land the plane. What's going to happen to the species and the future of mankind as we understand it? If you could just very quickly.

[Nick Searcy]

Well, that's simple, Mike. Well, I think what we're seeing happen is there's a real exit from the cities. The cities are becoming more concentrated and people are fleeing. So I think what you're going to see is more and more people flooding the countryside and getting away from the cities because Pacific Palisades is gone. Like you said, who knows how long that's going to take to be rebuilt and how expensive it's going to be to live there. So I think we're headed for back to nature kind of thing. I think we're, we're gonna have to learn how to grow tomatoes and raise chickens again.

[Mike Rowe]

You know, it's Interesting. Conversely, I heard a guy not long ago from the Brookings Institute holding forth, and somebody asked a question about China and the degree to the existential threat vis a vis the military, of course. And this guy who wrote a couple books on the thing just kind of said, look, I don't think it's a thing. What China's dealing with right now that people don't understand is the exact opposite. Everybody's coming to the cities. And by Everybody, he said, 400 million people are leaving the countryside and coming into the city. They want their industrial revolution. They. Right. And so you're talking about a population 20% larger than everybody in this country, all running to towns. And his point was, you just can't imagine what that. What kind of pressure that's putting on a country.

[Nick Searcy]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

And I don't know. Maybe there is. Maybe the good news is, is that this is the opposite of that. Maybe the cities here have gotten too big.

[Nick Searcy]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

You know, I fly a lot, and I spend a lot of time looking out the window, and I don't see anything, man. Yeah, there's a lot of open room.

[Nick Searcy]

There is. There's a lot of open highway. Except in Nashville. Maybe everybody's moving to Nashville.

[Mike Rowe]

Are you in Franklin?

[Nick Searcy]

Yeah, I have a place in Franklin, but we have our. We have a place about 2 hours and 45 minutes north of Nashville that is kind of our dream home kind of thing. Got a hold of this a little over a year ago, and it's 1875. House on 16 acres with five outbuildings and end of a road. I mean, it's totally silent at night. You can't hear a thing.

[Mike Rowe]

And you can actually see the stars in a way that almost makes your eyes water.

[Nick Searcy]

And on one side, we've got the river. We've got barges going up and down the river. And on one of our borders, we've got a railroad track. So every once in a while, train comes through.

[Mike Rowe]

You know, I just said that to somebody the other day. I think the sound of a train in the distance is. I don't know if there's a better. More evocative.

[Nick Searcy]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

Way to make your imagination go, man. Where's that going?

[Nick Searcy]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

Or who's coming?

[Nick Searcy]

Yeah. And what's it got on it, you know, on the train? No, it's a. It's a magical place. And we bought it from a friend of ours that we've been visiting for 30 years. And for 30 years, I've been saying, if you ever want to sell this place, let me know.

[Mike Rowe]

And he let you know.

[Nick Searcy]

Yeah, he finally did.

[Mike Rowe]

My whiskey's made down in Columbia. Yeah, actually, we were talking about that earlier. Are you actually going to dabble in that world?

[Nick Searcy]

Well, I got to figure out how to do it. I mean, I might want to talk to you off the air about how you set that up, because it's. These guys are making whiskey all the time. It's like, okay, what do I do? Do I just do a single barrel? That's like, you know, one batch, that's the Nick Searcy brand, you know? And do I sort of come up with the mixture? I mean, I don't know. I'm just thinking about it.

[Mike Rowe]

They.

[Nick Searcy]

They mentioned it to me, so I'm trying to figure it out.

[Mike Rowe]

It's fun, but it's a knife fight in the phone booth, too. I mean, like. Well, if you look around, you know. You know what the world needs, Chuck, really, right now more than anything?

[Chuck Klausmeier]

What's that?

[Mike Rowe]

Another celebrity with a bourbon brand. That's what we need.

[Nick Searcy]

Well, that's what I've been thinking.

[Mike Rowe]

With cigars.

[Nick Searcy]

I'm trying to fill a need here.

[Mike Rowe]

I'm so glad you came. Thank you for making the time, Mike.

[Nick Searcy]

It's been a pleasure. Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

Anything. I forgot to ask you. Anything? We want to drill down on a little harder. Good.

[Nick Searcy]

I don't think so. I'm happy doing what I'm doing now, and I'm really excited to see what happens to me now that I'm not really acting anymore. You know?

[Mike Rowe]

It's like you're watching your life from an elevated height, like you're the one guy in the audience looking at the Nick Searcy revival going, huh, I wonder how this is going to play.

[Nick Searcy]

And I think I'm the only guy interested.

[Mike Rowe]

I promise you, man. That's not true.

[Chuck Klausmeier]

Hey, I want to say something. First of all, the book is called Justify this, and it is very funny. I listen to the book.

[Nick Searcy]

Yeah.

[Chuck Klausmeier]

And Nick. Nick reads it, and it's a great performance.

[Mike Rowe]

And thank God, man. Yeah, thank God.

[Chuck Klausmeier]

We appreciate when authors actually read their books.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah.

[Nick Searcy]

I tried to get a really good actor to do it, but they're too expensive.

[Mike Rowe]

But, yeah. Yeah, not with your age.

[Chuck Klausmeier]

You did pretty good.

[Nick Searcy]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

And the dream project currently in the works is called Where I'm Bound. And.

[Chuck Klausmeier]

What is it called? The War on Truth. Is that correct?

[Nick Searcy]

Yes.

[Chuck Klausmeier]

And how do you see capital punishment?

[Nick Searcy]

It's on Rumble. If you do a search for capital punishment, Nick Searcy, you can watch it for free on Rumble.

[Mike Rowe]

It's quite a palette, folks, you know, and for a guy without an agent who's being guided by apparently things that matter to him, you know? Good on you, man. I really wish more people had that compass.

[Nick Searcy]

Thanks, Mike. Thank you.

[Mike Rowe]

Best to Leslie.

[Nick Searcy]

Thank you.

[Mike Rowe]

I'll switch shirts with you if you want.

[Nick Searcy]

She's a big fan of yours, by the way.

[Mike Rowe]

Well, that's nice. Yeah, I'm a big fan of hers.

[Nick Searcy]

She's read your books and, well, told me how good they were.

[Mike Rowe]

Tell her I think she's a woman of exceeding taste and sophistication, obviously.

[Nick Searcy]

Obviously.

[Mike Rowe]

Clearly. Nick Searcy, everybody. Thanks. Talk to you next week when you leave a review. Only five stars will do. Not just one or just two or just three. We were hoping four more. As in one more than a four, please. One.

[Nick Searcy]

One and four.

[Mike Rowe]

Just a quick review with five stars, too, from you. Five stars will do. You say you'll never join the Navy, that you'd never track storms brewing in.

[Nick Searcy]

The Atlantic.

[Mike Rowe]

And skydiving could never be part of your commute. You'd never climb Mount Fuji on a port visit or fly so fast you.

[Nick Searcy]

Break the sound barrier.

[Mike Rowe]

Joining the Navy sounds crazy. Saying never actually is. Start your journey at navy.com, america's Navy, forged by the sea.