Bonus Interview: James A. Watson Jr.

The Projection Booth Podcast

The Projection Booth

Film Reviews, Film Interviews, Film History, Tv & Film

4.8 • 686 Ratings

🗓️ 9 May 2025

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Actor James A. Watson Jr. joins Mike White in The Projection Booth for a lively and insightful conversation about his remarkable career. Best known for his work on Quincy, M.E., The Rookies, and Hill Street Blues, Watson reflects on breaking into Hollywood, the challenges he faced as a Black actor, and his early film roles in Halls of Anger and The Organization. He shares behind-the-scenes stories from Airplane II: The Sequel and offers a candid look at working in both television and film across the 1970s to today.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hold your ears, folks.
0:06.8	It's showtime.
0:08.6	People pay good money to see this movie.
0:10.9	When they go out to a theater, they want cold sodas, hot popcorn, and no monsters in the projection booth.
0:17.3	Everyone pretend podcasting isn't boring.
0:20.0	Shut it off.
0:22.6	Turn it off.
0:23.6	Turn it off. Hey folks, welcome to a special bonus interview.
0:42.7	This is the rest of the interview that we had with actor James A. Watson Jr.
0:47.5	You can hear a little bit of that on our airplane to the sequel episode.
0:51.5	But here it is in full.
0:53.0	Had a wonderful time talking with Mr. Watson. I hope
0:55.4	you have a great time listening to it. Thanks so much and enjoy the show. I would love to know
1:00.1	a lot more about you, especially how did you even decide to get into acting? Whenever I would give
1:05.0	speeches or speak in front of a large organization or something, I'd always blame my mother
1:10.3	because when I was
1:11.9	little, she was a young mother with three kids and I was the oldest. And basically there were five
1:18.8	siblings, but at that time, it was just three who lived in Washington, D.C. And my father was a hardworking
1:24.4	physician, a doctor. He was gone all the time. So at night, she would sneak in a babysitter and to watch my two sisters and my mother
1:32.7	and I would go out to the movie.
1:34.7	And that was a very endearing experience for me.
1:38.0	And the Spielberg story is similar to what happened to him.
	...

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