Jon Bernthal

speaker

633 appearances 2 recordings 2 series first heard May 2025 last heard 8 Jun

Jon Bernthal’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 1.

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SmartLess · "Jon Bernthal" · 8 Jun 2026 podcast

So for me to kind of go in there like that, you know, I got to go, you know, I rode out with those guys every night for three straight months and went on SWAT raids with the county SWAT team and the city SWAT team, but got to know Wayne, got to know, you know, that whole unit of the Gun Trace Task Force.

So I made unbelievable friends and I was able to see, you know, I'm just so grateful to really see it in that way.

But I think more than anything else, man, and...

you know, look, he was considered, you know, the most corrupt, the most vicious, the most sort of vile, you know, police officer in the history of that city.

So to go into the police department and say, hey, I want to ride out with you guys.

I want to be around you guys to research this, this very, very ugly chapter of their life.

I learned quickly, you know, with policing, you know, how

other than the victims and the community that are just drastically devastated by corrupt policing, it's also good cops are just, are terrorized by it.

And their careers are completely destroyed by it.

And their safety on the street is totally upended by it as well.

But I think mostly...

you know, for me, the key for me was how do you play this guy and not just play him as a monster?

How do you find, you know, some sort of, and it was interesting, man, because every single person who knew Wayne, it was the first thing I said to him when I first met him, everybody who talked to him said, you know, even if he was in the middle of robbing a drug dealer or, you know, shaking a guy down, making a false arrest, no matter what it was, if

any of his kids needed him at any point.

If there was ever an issue with the kids, he would run home immediately.

And it really hit me, you know, how can you engage in such corruption knowing that most likely this is gonna have a bad end because criminality almost always ends bad.

How can you be that corrupt

attuned to your family and you're really doing one to support your family because you feel like you're not getting paid what you deserve.

But that sort of conundrum and dichotomy, you know, really was at the crux of who I think he is and why he was so kind of torn apart.

But he wasn't just a monster.

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