Grayson Russell

That's what I grew up under.

Um, but certainly, you know, when you don't know any different, um, you know, there's always another, there's always another side to it.

And then when you fall out of that or fall into something else, it's always a perspective back on what was healthy or unhealthy about what you had going on to start with.

Not wholeheartedly because I always understood that the only reason why I'm doing the things that I am doing or have been afforded the

the opportunities that I have is because the man upstairs decided to.

which at certain times in my professional life has been a burden.

For those of y'all who don't know what I do, my name is Grayson Russell.

I'm an actor and singer-songwriter and travel and play music and mental health counselor, all kinds of mess.

But the first movie I ever did was a NASCAR movie called Talladega Nights.

That's what most people know it from, which might have been more your time.

So I played Will Ferrell's youngest son in that, a kid named Texas Ranger.

I had no intention of being an actor at all because I grew up in the same town that my granddad and all his older sisters had lived in.

Small town.

Small town, Clanton, Alabama, 9,000 people maybe.

Wow.

And so I'd done commercials for the guy who owned the local car dealership, but he would use the cheer squad.

It wasn't a big thing at all.

And I was six maybe.

I was in the first grade.

Talladega nights was an open call audition in the newspaper.