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 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 1.
Appearances
The whole thing. For me, being a dad, I love things that you're never going to lick, that you're going to fail at constantly, that you just want so bad that you can pour every bit of your heart into and that you just keep running into walls. And my God, do you just fail over and over again as a parent?
You admit it and you show up. And so trying to figure it out now, I don't know if you could say the same thing, but I'm tremendously grateful for how I grew up, where I grew up, even with all of the walls that I ran into. And there is a huge pressure on me for my kids to learn what I've learned. Unfortunately, I don't think they're going to be able to learn it the way that I learned it.
Nor should they. Nor should they. But I think it really could have gone and did go bad a lot of different times. And, you know, my brother was definitely not a brilliant student. No, not at all. He really got bullied a lot. I think D.C. at that time, no matter where you were in that city, was a rough city. And it was rough on him.
And I think a lot of the decisions that I made, how I was going to conduct my life and how I was going to carry myself was really in reaction to that. In a very similar way, I think my little brother made those same decisions of what not to do based on what I was doing. Sure. It was a pendulum swinging in your family. I think so.
But I think the thing that was steady all the way through with my folks, because yes, both of my brothers are really wildly successful guys. And I think more than just that, they've had unbelievably satisfying careers. They're deeply kind and good people who put helping people and being there for other people before anything else. They're family first people. They have wonderful friendships.
They have wonderful marriages. They have wonderful children that they love. Oh, I hate them. I hate both these guys.
Believe you me, we have anything that you could possibly have within a family. But with our immediate family, I was doing an interview the other day for this movie I have coming out and they asked Ben Affleck and me, like, what is your superpower? I mean, it was just so clear. I really do think it's them. It's my family. There's never been resentment among each other. There's not been jealousy.
There's been total support. I did get in trouble a lot when I was young. What brand of trouble did you find yourself in? Got locked up a bunch of times and it was mostly I had problems with violence. Okay. Got into martial arts and boxing when I was young and probably learned from some of the wrong people and a lot of questions with my own manhood and fear.
And I feel like so much of that stuff comes from shame anyway. And again, when I talk about teaching my kids, I really believe every person has to have their own problem. fluency and relationship with violence, I find specifically as a man, I think you have to be able to have a healthy relationship with it to sort of understand it.
Because I think when it's super far away from you and you've never delved in those waters, it can be enormously toxic. And so to try to teach my kids that, my boys and my girls, but teach that to them in a place shrouded in honor and respect and kindness and justice and under the umbrella of safety has been a real focus of mine. And man, I wish I had that. I mean, it's just super basic.
It kind of goes for everything with these kids and with us. And I try to remind myself all the time, try to not let your feelings be the boss of you. Try to not do anything out of anger, out of resentment, out of fear. Try to be your own master in that way. You're never going to have that licked. You're But you can aim towards it. You know, you can try.
Going to this unbelievably prestigious and lauded school that I went to, I still, you know, by the time I was 11, I was taking the subway and the bus to school. I'd gotten jumped. I'd gotten mugged. That's not going to happen to my kids in Ojai. No, no, no, no. That is not going to happen. They have better odds of coming face to face with a cougar. For sure. For sure. But let's teach them that.
In both this business and in life, I've come across so many people who clearly walk down the street and walk into a room and have no situational awareness and didn't grow up the way that you grew up and aren't thinking about those things. And it's not that, oh, gosh, they're a sitting duck or, oh, they're vulnerable or, oh, this is going to be bad for them. It's just that. Who knows?
And these things could become enormously valuable at a certain time. And when it does, what you don't want to do is sit in the corner and say, oh my gosh, make it end.
I think you want to be able to be in a situation where you can protect your family, protect your friends, stand up to somebody who's getting it bad, no matter what that is, but to never fall to the base inclination and desires that push you to say, oh, I feel bad about myself. I'm going to go bully that guy. I know what I can do right now. I feel a little bit ashamed.
I'm going to be the loudest talker in the room. Rather, hey, you've been there. You've been on the mat. You've been in the ring. All that stuff, you recognize it for what it is. It's noise. And to give you a sense of confidence that's curated by really, really spiritually strong people. And what a gift I think you can give. And for me, because I had my boys first. So you have two boys and a girl?
Oh, happy birthday.
Let's go. You'll go tonight and spend the day tomorrow? Exactly.
My niece's dad, he's in prison in Florida. He's not going to get out. And my wife's sister, who's wonderful, is six months sober now, but really been fighting her her whole life. Good for her. Yeah, she's really, really fighting the fight. This little girl, she's seen a lot. She's been through a lot and was going into the foster system. And we were able to get down there and get her to us.
Oh, good on you. And the gift has been so profound for my kids.
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