Shaun Squad Society
The Shaun Squad Society Podcast is a podcast written, produced and hosted by three women who want to keep the Magic of a Midnight Sky alive!
Cindy, Dorese and Dame became friends at a Shaun Cassidy concert and immediately decided to form "The Shaun Squad." Soon after, the Shaun Squad Society Podcast was conceived to discuss and reminisce about all-things Shaun Cassidy, from his first years as a teen idol to his current career as a writer and producer.
This podcast brings together a community of Shaun's devoted fans, the ones who played his albums non-stop, and who tuned into The Hardy Boys Mysteries every Sunday evening. And now, 46 years later, Shaun's story-telling tour has delighted fans again. So, join us for the stories, fun-facts, and fascinating interviews as we take you down memory lane with our Teen Dream, Shaun Cassidy.
Shaun Squad Society
Parker Stevenson: Exclusive Interview!
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We're thrilled to welcome the multifaceted Parker Stevenson to the Shaun Squad Society Podcast. Known for his roles in The Hardy Boys, Baywatch, and Greenhouse Academy on Netflix, Parker’s storied career and love for photography are at the core of our conversation.
Parker gives us a candid peek into his life growing up in the limelight and the friendships he's formed along the way. He fondly reminisces about working with industry greats such as Sam Elliott, Burt Reynolds, and Martin Sheen, and how these experiences paved his way through his acting career. His photographic journey is equally intriguing. With an approach rooted in capturing emotionally resonant images, Parker shares the influence of his work and his collaborative project ‘The Jetty’ with Christy Lee Rogers.
As we meander through his life, we explore Parker's fascination with architecture and his 3 wishes as a young adult, one of which was owning homes in New York City and California. He shares his transition from architecture to acting, and the impact of seeing himself on TV. Finally, we discuss his relationship with his wife, Lisa, "chef by day" who has made some extraordinary dishes. So, join us as we traverse the captivating life and career of Parker Stevenson, a beacon of creativity and resilience.
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Email us at shaunsquadsociety@gmail.com
A Conversation With Parker Stevenson
Speaker 1I hope. I mean, I feel like if people want to know me, if they want to understand at all what I'm about, it's my photography, not my acting, and not even my directing. Hello everybody, get down, get with it.
Speaker 2Hello everybody get down, get with it. Hello everybody, get down, get looking. Welcome to the Sean's Quest Society podcast. With your host myself, penny, cindy Day, madonna and Doris, I invite you to share our love and enthusiasm for all things Sean Cassidy, from his teen idol days to his recent adventure back on the road again. Please join us for our stories and memories that connected us to those happy days that helped create the Sean's Quest Society podcast.
Speaker 3Welcome back to another episode of the Sean's Quest Society podcast. We are so thrilled today to introduce our special guest, aren't we girls? We've been waiting for today and we are so excited for this. He is a familiar face and everybody watched him as Frank Hardy from the Hardy Boys, and you also could have catch him running around on the beach in his red shorts as a lifeguard on Baywatch back in the day. Remember that show? That was a fun show. And his recent role was as Louis Osmond in the greenhouse academy. That's airing currently on Netflix. You can catch that one. And additionally, he does take great pride in his photography work. He has a photography website called Shadowworks. You might want to check that website out, see all of his great photography. And, lastly, you may have had him on your wall back on the day next to your other TNITO posters, and I'm talking about none other than Parker Stevenson. We are so excited you were on our show. Welcome to the Sean's Quest Society podcast, parker.
Speaker 2Yay Welcome, parker Welcome.
Speaker 1Oh, I thank you. I'm glad to be here.
Speaker 3Hi Parker, we are so excited that you have made time to talk with us today and you know we've all been following you on your social media pages and it looks like you've been busy lately. You've attended a few fan shows, like the Hollywood show and the Night of Dreams with Jimmy and Kristi McNichol.
Speaker 4And it sounded like I was reading on your social. It sounded like it was a really good time, like they were both fun, and I thought I just asked you real quickly if you had anything you want to share about that. I'm sure you probably had a great time.
Speaker 1I had a good time at both. I haven't done those kind of appearances in a long time Just because of the pandemic and the industry being shut down and the strike and all that stuff. I just been doing my own thing and I haven't done the LA show autograph show in a bunch of years. You know, I got to like Pamela Sue Martin, who was I'm as close with as Sean Well, pam was at that show, so she and I were together at that show and then she came home with me and we she spent the night before she flew out and then I get all that time and I mean those are great experiences. That kind of come about only because of a connection like that.
Speaker 3Yeah, I saw her picture I saw you post the picture over.
Speaker 1That was very nice, so great, pam's so fun and I had a similar. My relationship with her goes back even farther than with Sean, because I did a movie with Pamela two years, maybe three years, before Hearted Boys and Ancestral. So we go way back and we've just always had a really, really great ease and friendship. So those things are nice surprises. Good things can come out of those those you know events those long friendships, yeah, really really nice.
Speaker 3Just like us.
Speaker 4The fans love them, Parker. They love when you guys come out and you interact and connect with us and it is really as much as it is for you. It means that much to us.
Speaker 2Definitely yeah Next time you're in Chicago, we're going to be there.
Speaker 1I will. I love Chicago. I've done that Chicago show and it's really fun. Oh yeah, I really love the next one.
Speaker 2We want to get it now.
Speaker 1We're there, I don't know, I don't know, I'm not gonna doubt about that Chicago show.
Speaker 4After you were here I saw like a thing on our local news that they were saying this week on WGN News we have Parker Stevens. I'm like you have who when, where, we were all good, you said like wait a minute.
Speaker 3How did I not know this? Just like we miss Sean on Oprah right, oh my gosh, so may we miss Sean on Oprah.
Speaker 2One of my questions is and I have like a couple, if you don't mind what is your favorite episode of the Hardy Boys and Baywatch?
Speaker 1Well, I love actually I would say I love the pilots of both the Baywatch pilot because it was a two hour and it was a little more complicated and dramatic than the regular episodes, and the Hardy Boys pilot because it really the whole show was going to born in the process of doing a 24 hour shoot which was a kind of a trailer for the network to buy the show, which they did, and then in the interim between that 24 hour shoot and putting together the rest of the episode, the show really kind of became, it came into its own. That's what they realized, what the show could be.
Speaker 2Well, that's really interesting. I don't think I read that I have heard about that first recording.
Speaker 3That took a long time.
Speaker 4Was that the one about the Dracula? Dracula, yes, the first episode that took you guys 24 hours to record. The sun started coming up and everything Was that the Dracula episode.
Speaker 1Yeah, and you know, it's the one that we were in our underwear riding around in motorcycles graveyard.
Speaker 2I did read that, I remember that.
Speaker 1But what happened was there was an order, the executive producer, glenn Larson. He got approval to shoot for one day and put together a little trailer so the network could see what he was thinking about, and he shot for 24 hours. Sean says it was 25 hours and he might be right, because I know the last shot of the day of the full 24 hour, 25 hour day, they put us in a grave in the graveyard and put a tarp over the top of this so that it would still look dark. And that's how we did the last shot, because the sun was coming up.
Speaker 3That is interesting so.
Speaker 1I got to know Sean really quickly 25 hours with someone you don't know him.
Speaker 2With lots of coffee.
Speaker 3I might add.
Speaker 2Yeah, and two teen idols in the dark together.
Speaker 5Yep.
Speaker 2Wow. Well, another question is and I have your sheet here of all the characters.
Speaker 3Oh wait, did he mention Baywatch? Your Baywatch Baywatch episode, favorite Baywatch episode.
Speaker 1Yeah, the pilot Panic at Malibu Pier which was the two hour.
Speaker 2Well, speak of that, that's old Baywatch. Yeah, well, speak of that. When I was looking at some of your photography. There's the photo of the lifeguard huts, is that?
Speaker 1from.
Speaker 2Baywatch.
Speaker 1No.
Speaker 2Okay.
Speaker 1But I live where we did Baywatch, so I'm at the beach all the time.
Speaker 2Oh nice.
Speaker 1In the winter they pull those towers back away from the beach to keep them away from the water and the winter storms and they put them together. I think are you talking about three towers together?
Speaker 2Yes.
Speaker 1Yeah, yeah, that's how that happens. They put them together during the winter projection.
Speaker 2Wow, good, that's a neat story, yeah. So another question is, like I said, your rap sheet of all the characters you've played and you have played in many, many movies and many series and film and so why, out of all of them, was your favorite or do?
Speaker 1you even have one.
Speaker 1I do have things that you know. A lot of the work that we do as actors, you know is work that comes along and we audition for it or we're lucky, we get an offer and off we go and some turn out to be a lot more personal than others. And in a funny way, the miniseries North and South, which was very melodramatic and big, you know glamorous soap opera about the Civil War, became very personal because while I was making that it was six months on location. I learned that my great-great-grandfather handling general at Gettysburg Right.
Speaker 3Oh.
Speaker 1I saw that.
Speaker 5I saw his picture.
Speaker 1You saw his picture. He's a very funny looking guy.
Speaker 1George Gordon Mead, and it turned out that he was a family member and I grew up going to my grandparents' house and was a big portrait of him. It was just a scary guy in the staircase, but then you know, learning that suddenly it wasn't long ago that my family members were in those battles and in that conflict and suddenly it became more than just you know, doing a thought-free soap opera. That's kind of fun. It certainly was. Oh, this actually has roots in something real and difficult and all that and personal. So that's where a project can really shift over, sometimes In a funny way.
Speaker 1I probably the thing I just did called Greenhouse Academy because I love the kids that were in the cast so much. There were seven or eight principal kids who were all so fun to work with and hardworking and talented and I was kind of the figurehead, so I would, I was around all the time but they were really doing the heavy lifting. But I really got to know those kids and that I really felt like kind of an older mentor to them. I felt like I could help them in ways, whether it's dealing with production problems or dealing with personalities on set. I'm glad that I could be there and help out that way, not just come in, do lines and go.
Speaker 2Yeah, that's great. Well, speak of your family name, mead. I actually have a client and I was framing some playbills for her a couple of months ago and she actually has your mother's playbill.
Speaker 1No way yes.
Speaker 2Yes.
Speaker 1Does that inherit the wind? Yes, it inherits the wind.
Speaker 2She has the playbill from Inherit the Wind and I probably framed like 25 different playbills for her and it didn't really mean anything to me. Some of them I was familiar with. And then when I was doing some research and I saw that I asked her and she goes oh yeah, that's, that's what it's from. And I'm like, oh my God, I had no clue and I was doing this, that's so fun.
Speaker 1So yeah, that's really cool.
Speaker 2Yeah, we usually do a six degrees on the show on every episode, and that's kind of my six degrees, I guess.
Speaker 1Yeah, that's amazing. That's amazing. Yeah, I see that was really cool, yeah.
Speaker 2But I do have another question real quick on your photography, and I know one of the other girls is going to go more in detail of that, but I saw that you had taken a picture. It looks like it's two pillars and I want to say it's from 9 11, the 9 11 memorials and it has a nine oh three in it, like as nine oh three a m.
Speaker 1Yeah and yeah, that's the. That's the Oklahoma City bombing.
Speaker 2Oh, okay, yeah, because I have visited all of the 9 11 memorials and I was at the flight 93. And I thought that it was that there, because it just really stuck out to me that I had seen that. But that's the Oklahoma bombing.
Speaker 1Okay, thank, you for clarifying that. Yeah, well, you were really close on it. That is exactly. I don't think I identify it is. That's what it is.
Speaker 5Yes, I remember that day.
Speaker 1Just have the image. But that's, you were spot on. That is exactly what that is.
Speaker 4Thank you, Parker.
Speaker 3I have questions she has questions, she always has questions.
Speaker 1Oh, doris, I've been waiting.
Speaker 4I've been waiting a little, a little time I won't say how many years, but a little time to ask you this first question.
Speaker 2Yes, when I was a little girl Parker.
Speaker 4I would watch a lot of TV and I saw you in a pearl shampoo commercial and you were in shower and you were washing your hair and you said, your hair was fluffy and puffy or something like that. His hair was fluffy and puffy A few weeks later maybe three months later or something, the Hardy boys came on and before I focused on the other character, joe Hardy, I looked at the party and said that's the guy from the pearl commercial that was naked in the shower.
Speaker 3My TV I think it's some interviews. His hair is mentioned, yes, mentioned in interviews Do you remember that commercial?
Speaker 1I remember it well because I remember I mean that's how I started doing commercials. I was in New York at 14 when I ran doing commercials and for a long time I didn't get any. But okay, I was running around New York and that was fine. And then I started to get them and I get things like the pearl commercial. Or I did a span commercial and a clear. I did over a hundred commercials and the pearl commercial stands out because when I went to show up to film the commercial they looked at me and they went oh no, your hair is much too fluffy, we need to dampen it down. And this goes against truth and advertising. They took Vaseline and they put Vaseline in my hair to make it look greasy.
Speaker 1To make it all greasy and gross. And then, of course, I looked different when I did the pearl, which is really strong shampoo yes, I see those commercials now and then people will send them to me links on YouTube stuff and they just cracked me up. I mean, I was not. I was not a model, I was not, I was just a goofy kid.
Speaker 2Well, I was just trying to see if I could pull up the commercial, but I do have a question. I did read, or here on one of your interviews, that your parents let you move to New York at 14.
Auditions and the Actors Diet
Speaker 1Yes, although there was a caveat. I was there staying in a friend of theirs apartment because they would leave every summer and they somehow, and my parents somehow, trusted me to be on my own at 14 and run around the city and go to auditions and that's really all I did. I mean, I wasn't really doing anything wild and crazy, that just kind of wasn't in my wheelhouse. I would walk the city and I go to three or four meetings a day and eat peanut butter and tuna fish and walk in the park.
Speaker 2The actors diet. The actors diet. It's good.
Speaker 1It is, it's totally.
Speaker 4the actors diet, yes, oh, and the Elvis diet.
Speaker 2whichever way you want to look at it. Obviously bananas on his or something. Yeah, that's amazing because when we were kids, 14 years old seemed so grown up. But in today's world 14 year olds aren't even allowed to babysit. I don't think so. I just can't picture little 14 year old Parker Rome of the streets of New York. I can.
Speaker 5He was taking pictures.
Speaker 2I can see it.
Speaker 1It was, yeah, I was taking pictures, Absolutely.
Speaker 1You know what, and I can't say I wasn't lonely, you know, doing that because I wasn't social and I was too shy to kind of, you know, reach out to people and stuff. I'd go and have my meetings and I do my auditions, and I go back and I just kind of did my own thing and then and then I go to school. Then I go to school during the school season, you know, but even sometimes holidays I'd be in the city on my own and I'm grateful I mean my parents, I think, because of my mother having been an actress. My father didn't approve of it, but I don't think he had a choice in it and I was able to pay for school. So I was independent, I did my own thing and and then, that way it was, it was a godsend and I learned to have some independence, absolutely.
Speaker 2It makes you grow up fast.
Speaker 1Yeah, yeah, and I'm, you know, I'm comfortable in my own company, you know, and that that I think I learned in those teenage years do my own thing, and that's probably where I got my appreciation for art and architecture and all that New York has. It's so amazing.
Speaker 4As the kids today say you do you.
Speaker 1That's true, you do, you yeah.
Speaker 2You, do you.
Speaker 1Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 4So my boss tells me so, parker, I have a second question. I can't decide which one of these two I'm going to ask you next, so I'll just go with on the Hardy boys, all of these guest stars, and I have my favorites. I really love Bernie Toppin and. I really love when Valerie Burton Nelly was on there. But what was your favorite guest star? Or maybe you have more than one. Who are your favorite guest stars?
Speaker 1Like I said, well, Joseph Cotton is one of them. No, maybe a lot of people won't know Joseph Cotton unless they know Orson Welles and you know in his body of work and his players and all that. But and Ray Milland was another one who was a big star, got the Academy Award for Lost Weekend in the 50s I think. And I would sit around with them, you know, in the in the 10 days or two weeks sometimes for episodes and just pick their brains about what Hollywood was like in the 30s and 40s and 50s.
Speaker 1What was the studio system, what were there, what was it like socially, and they tell me all the stories about Hearst Castle and the parties up there and and just the way, the way it all worked, how they got their breaks and all that. You know, sitting in at the studios were all that. That all took place was magical. You know a lot of that's all broken up now and it's not around, but I got to kind of get a sense of all that. I mean, even when we were doing the Hardy Boys, Sean and I, we each had these little bungalows right near our soundstage and the bungalow between us was Alfred Hitchcock's and he'd come and go and we had lunch with him on occasion and and so all of that. Really old school, that kind of ties into history.
Speaker 4Some other episodes we we've had, and this comes up a lot. We were just talking about old Hollywood, because Patrick Cassidy I'm sorry, ryan Cassidy has a book called James Cagney was my babysitter and we were just thinking of old Hollywood and James Cagney and all of that old Hollywood stuff that we all know and love and and for you to even mention those people as your favorite stars, that that touches me, because a lot of people don't connect to old Hollywood.
Speaker 1Yeah, yeah. Well, I kind of go on a watching those movies really little. And yeah, so it was. It was the old Hollywood people that would come in and do little turns, and then it was like Valerie coming in, they were getting people whose careers were just starting right now.
Speaker 1Melanie Griffith came in and did that episode right in the beginning of her career and Tippi was on the set to kind of make sure she had everything she needed. But she was OK. But they were young. I mean it was, it was a, it was a place that really young people could come and do work and show it was wasn't going to be violent, it wasn't going to get gross. You know it was. It was a nice intro for people.
Speaker 4I was reading the list and it seems like if they were on TV or or about to go on TV, they were on the Hardy Boys. It's a long list of people who had their beginning you know, first role or maybe third or fourth role, they were on the Hardy.
Speaker 3Boys and Doree said I had a story about recording the Hardy Boys back then in those days. Oh yeah, we used to funny.
Speaker 4We used to take our little cassette player and put our microphone by our TV before VCR, before we could afford a VCR, and we would record the Hardy Boys. And I still am my, my little cassette recording. She still does.
Speaker 3I lost my but she's afraid to play because it might crumble.
Speaker 1In my crumble and I was living by the airport.
Speaker 3So I would get mad because every time I would try to record the Hardy Boys the plane would go over. And I tell my mom can you? Please call the airport and tell him not to fly over our house when the Hardy Boys is on.
Speaker 4And I would get mad because my younger brothers were bursting into the room and scream real loud, yeah, just to interrupt my recording of the Hardy Boys.
Speaker 3It was the only way we could record back then, so that was really serious.
Speaker 2Sunday night was serious. Well, it kept me out of a Sunday night church.
Speaker 1The.
Speaker 2Hardy Boys was my church. That's right, that's right.
Speaker 4Well, that kind of leads me right into my third question. So, yeah, you've recently and I have mine right here with me you sold scripts, your Hardy Boys and some Baywatch scripts and I'm wondering I have Alcapocal Spies and I love that you signed it and you sent such great package with it and I appreciate that, yeah, but what prompted you to start selling your scripts?
Speaker 1I have saved every script I've ever done and they've been in storage for decades, going all the way back, every script, every project I've ever been in.
Speaker 2Even from Gunsmoke.
Speaker 1Even from Gunsmoke.
Memorabilia and Connection With the Audience
Speaker 1Wow, when I did guest spots and I was young streets of San Francisco or hotel or whatever shows that I was doing. I just always kept the scripts. I'm not sure why. It wasn't that I expected to have a lot of scripts, I just did. They just kind of went in the closet and won the box, but so they were all in storage. And they've been in storage for 30, 40 years and during the pandemic there was nothing to do and so I thought, okay, it's time for me to get rid of this storage.
Speaker 1I've moved many times, I've had a lot of different places I've lived. It seems every time I move I end up with a whole other bunch of stuff that goes in storage. So I started going through all my storage and I found all these scripts. And people have asked me over the years, you know, do you have any scripts, do you have any memorabilia? And I've always just not wanted to deal with it. But then I thought during the pandemic I'm going to find homes for these scripts.
Speaker 1I've been approached many times by collecting groups or people who have memorabilia. You know marketing companies and they buy scripts and then they sell them or the money you pay, and I didn't want it to go that way, and one friend of mine who has a very successful company said well, what you should do is you should copy the scripts, keep the originals, and you can keep making copies and just sell the copies, and I was kind of horrified by that, because that's not the intention. The intention is to put the real script in the hands of people that love the show, not a copy. My script is full of my notes. You know I had my coffee cup on top of it. Or you know I was in the back of my bag as I'm going back and forth to the set. It was to sell something real from that time in that show. So that's what I did and I the best part of it was. I mean, frankly, it's been a lot more of a hassle than if I just let giving them to an auction house. But it's been such fun communicating like with you Dorees, back and forth about what script and which one did you like and what you think you were interested in, and sending you a picture of the script. You could actually see it.
Speaker 1But getting to know people a little bit and hearing their stories and their connections with the show gave me a connection to the audience that I've never had. I don't particularly like doing theater because it's just grueling and as much as I love the work, I don't do it for applause. I do it because I love the work. I'm not doing it to affect an audience. I'm doing it because the work means something to me and so I haven't had that connection with the audience through most of my 56 years or whatever I've been doing and doing. This placing these scripts has given me a sense of that. It's been really great. It's been a real bonus in these tough years that that actually was part of. What my last couple years experience has been was placing these scripts, communicating with people, talking to people and hearing about them, and it's been great. It's been a really, really big gift to me.
Speaker 4That is cool, parker, because you mentioned something memorabilia and what means something to the people and Cindy and I always talk about. We have boxes of memorabilia and I've carried this stuff with me, as you did, for the last 40 some odd years. I have tons of. Hardy Boy stuff, my Hardy Boy's fan club all of my Tiger. Beat magazines, tons of stuff. And my life wasn't complete until I got the Parker package as.
Speaker 4I like to call it but then I look at it and I'm like we're all connected now and this is gonna always be something that I have. That was on the set of the Hardy Boy's and I really really appreciate it. I'm so glad you're here that way.
Speaker 1That's the point. The point is that was for that period of time. That was my life, that's what I was focused on, so that was a part of my life, and so that going out feels wonderful, feels really nice.
Speaker 3It's really nice to me, yeah, the hands of somebody who really, yeah, and you appreciate it too when you get it, that you know that we're gonna take care of it if somebody really wants to get it. It's like the records I do I do?
Speaker 1It's something happens to me that someone's not gonna go. Oh, look at all this old stuff. I know there a place somewhere and someone will enjoy it and someone will pass it on in some way. That will have its own life, its own journey. That's really cool.
Speaker 3I'm glad you did that. It doesn't mean something. Dury talks about it all the time.
Speaker 4Yeah, I do and I brought it with today. I haven't shown it to anyone.
Speaker 3Anyone? Oh, we haven't seen it yet.
Speaker 4I've never, ever, ever ever shown it to anyone because that sounds special at Westmead, but I brought it today and I'm gonna show it to my co-host and Dane. You can see it next time you're in the studio.
Speaker 2Yeah, okay. Well, I do have another quick question that I forgot to ask earlier. Can you share your lunch with Alfred Hitchcock with us, your lunch?
Speaker 3What'd you have for lunch?
Speaker 2Well, he had lunch with Alfred, yeah, yeah. So I was just wondering if you could.
Memories, Acting, and Mentorship
Speaker 1I don't know why. There's a regular commissary. You could go for lunch at the University of the studio that the ruin would go to, and then there was the executive lunchroom commissary, that was a special place, and that was the head of the studio, wasserman, and Sid Schineberg, and all these guys the heads of the studio then, and all the top producers and people like Hitchcock would be there and I don't know why, but they would include Sean and I in those lunches and we're kids I mean, we're really kids and somehow it would end up that Sean and I would be on either side of Hitchcock. Wow, my first. The memory that really stuck with me was after I sat down. Hitchcock was there and I'm sitting looking at him on this table, going whoa, whoa. Why am I here?
Speaker 1You're taking all the idiot. Yeah. And he turned to me and in his Hitchcock condescending way said and who are you? I can imagine that.
Speaker 3I would have slid under the table.
Speaker 4I think it would have scared me Very intimidating.
Speaker 1Yeah, totally, and it summed up everything. It summed up everything and I didn't have an answer for it.
Speaker 3I was gonna say what's your answer? Did you get your name out or you couldn't say anything? No, you could have been either. I don't know.
Speaker 1I think I asked him if something like if the food was any good. I don't know.
Speaker 2I don't know. I think at that point I would have been confused and said I'm Frank Stevenson or something.
Speaker 1You're Frank Hardy and Parker Stevenson.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 1Yeah, I'm just a fan, Mr Hitchcock. That's why I'm here.
Speaker 2Yeah, I snuck into the back door with my fake ID, my fake pass, yeah.
Speaker 1Yeah, I mean I definitely felt like I didn't belong there most of the time, but that was the fun of it, Cause it was the. You know there were 40 shows being filmed there. It was really busy. The tour was just starting. Those trams are just beginning to go through the studios. While we were making the Hardy Boys, the announcement came down that from now on, all filming would stop when the trams came through Before they would stop for filming, to not disrupt filming. Then it was changed that when the trams came through you had to stop filming to not disrupt the trams, because the trams were bringing in more money than all studio production combined.
Speaker 2Really Wow, wow, yeah, interesting fun thing.
Speaker 1Yeah, everything was changing. You know it was all shifting and changing. Cause they say, sean, I were blessed that we really got to kind of run around the set and be in that studio during that time. I can't imagine.
Speaker 2Yeah, that was pretty cool. But in our first season we did an episode on the characters of Sean and you know, in the more research we did, I was just in awe of, like, the stars you know.
Speaker 2I just kept saying star studded and you know, and the Hardy Boys, yeah, well, not just the Hardy Boys, but everything that Sean you know played a character in, and especially what once upon a Texas train. But then when I'm looking through your stuff, you like just blew Sean out of the water. I mean the actors that you were with, you know, sam Elliott and Bert Reynolds, and I mean I can go on and on, but these guys are telling me to move on. No, I'm kidding. But I mean how fortunate, like you said, with you know your launches and the people you were around. But I mean all the other actors that you got to you know be with every day or you know, during the time of you know performing the shows. And what did you do with Sam Elliott? Wasn't that the lifeguard? Yeah, the lifeguard, and stuff.
Speaker 2I mean how cool you know, and then, with Bert Reynolds? No, but Bert Reynolds directed the Alfred Hitchcock episode didn't he?
Speaker 1Yeah, he did, and that Martin Sheen and Robbie.
Speaker 2Benson yeah, Martin Sheen, yeah, and Robbie Benson. That was hilarious.
Speaker 5Well, speaking of lifeguard, I think that's one reason they tried you out for Baywatch, because you had been on that show with Sam Elliott.
Speaker 1Yeah, yeah, and that's funny. They said you know, we just, we, just you just seemed like you could play a lifeguard and I know they've seen lifeguard.
Speaker 2Oh, down here.
Speaker 1Yeah. So it was sort of like, you know, I mean, I was an East Coast preppy kid and that was fine, but I'm not, I am still not, you know, a California kind of beach guy. And so when they announced, well, we just think you could, you know, be so credible as a lifeguard, I'm thinking, okay, you saw a lifeguard, you saw me in Red. Trunks standing to Sam. Yeah, okay, that's fine One thing leads to another.
Speaker 4I love Sam Elliott, I mean all my life. And, oh my God, who doesn't?
Speaker 2love.
Speaker 4Who doesn't love?
Speaker 2Who doesn't love Sam Elliott? Oh, but when I was little.
Speaker 4I remember I didn't see that movie and then I was just doing more research and it was like, oh yeah, I remember now I wanted to see lifeguard because the guy from the shower and Sam Elliott yeah.
Speaker 3But, Connected one to another. Right it's always a connection.
Speaker 4We do this thing where we connect everything and it seems like every week, when we record our podcast, somebody we're talking about was on Alfred Hitchcock. So who did Alfred? Sean did Alfred? Did David?
Speaker 3Listen to me.
Speaker 4Yeah, David did David did an episode on Sean and David together and we found out that David did it, so that is so cool to me that that's a connection.
Speaker 2And not just Alfred Hitchcock, werterschee, rowe, metlock, yeah.
Speaker 3Those were the shows going around those days. That was the shows to be on.
Speaker 2And then I think you and David both did Gunsmoke and yeah, so there's always a connection with a lot of these shows. But when I started looking at everything, I'm like I did see him on bull, I did see him on Judging Amy, I did and so I tried to go back just to like re-familiarize myself to some of them and then listen to a lot of your interviews. But, like I said, I just got. What was I going to say? Just like in all of the actors that you have been around?
Speaker 1Yeah, it sounds like you were on too.
Speaker 2Yeah, yeah, well, I was.
Speaker 1Yeah, I really was. I mean, even on that Alfred Hitchcock episode, sitting around and hanging with Martin Sheen and Martin was telling me about when he had his heart attack in the Philippines, doing Apocalypse Now, and they pulled him off the bus and he was laying in the grass holding on to the grass looking up at the sky. You know, wondering am I going to make it? Am I going to make it? I'm going to make it, you know, and I mean so.
Speaker 1There's something about when you're working together, especially with interesting kind of people that really care about the work, you get close really quickly. It's almost an instant mutuality. You know how it turns out will affect everybody. So everybody really puts their heart into it and you get the chance. You get the chance to kind of get a sense of what is this journey going to be like. You go to acting classes and they're helping you learn how to, you know, hit your mark and find interesting ways to do the character. But no one's saying you're going to hit this trial. You're going to hit this challenge or this question how far are you willing to go? You know, how much are you going to play politics and what happens when it gets dark and what happens. You know I mean no one helps you deal with, like you know, david and his fame dealing no one's saying let me talk to you about what fame's going to be like, right?
Speaker 1But when I worked with Bert, I talked with Bert a lot about stuff like that and he was remarkable that he would say. I once said to him you know, you've had a career like like, like Carrie Grant, you've been number one box office for 11 years I think it was 11 years in a row and how have you done this? How have you maintained that? And he said there are a lot of guys that better looking, more talented than you or I. But they didn't hang in there and basically what he was saying is this is a marathon, it's not a sprint, so do your work, hang in there. You're going to get breaks and you're going to have disappointments and you're going to have to do something.
Speaker 1But he helped lay out what a lot of people did with me. They weren't trying to be a mentor and I guess that's what I did on greenhouse. I just wanted to help. I wanted to help ease people's way in the part that no one else is going to share with them. Really invaluable that those those, those war horses that we got to work with, would drop information to us kindly and gently about what we might run into and how we might deal with that.
Speaker 2Yeah, that's great. Well, I think you and Dame have that in common, because she's been a teacher for 30 years now, I believe, and I think she has some questions for you as well, sure.
Speaker 5Yeah, you started out studying for you know architecture in Princeton, but I realized that your mom was very supportive and at first your dad was kind of reluctant. But my my question goes into photography because that's one of your hobbies and something that you love to do. I know that you're talented that way. I know at an early age that I started at the same age as you and I would start taking, you know, photos for weddings. I mean, for people to trust me at such a young age, was was amazing and we both like taking pictures of weddings and something that we see that is beautiful because life's so hard. But photography will catch something extra special for us.
Speaker 5I read that you love Italy because of the food, but also because of the photography that you could do when you were there. You like that, you could grab those type of pictures and you said that if someone is moved in any way by your images or your photographs, then it worked. And one of the pictures that I just loved that you took it's the cross and the rain and it's under landscape and that cross is an example of wanting to go on a road trip and seeing something and catching that, and for that one instant you felt like you saw something special. So something special by taking that out in photography is amazing. And you even have the 10 Commandments for the great travel photos and I really look closely into those and you're right. So if I go on trips, I need to travel light, I need to shoot quickly for something, because now with digital cameras we can take as many as we want and we can also erase as many as we want. Well, on my phone I have 300,000, because it is kind of an addiction.
Speaker 1Wow.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 1Good for you.
Speaker 2Yeah, and I actually printed out your 10 Commandments.
Speaker 5Yeah, I have those too, and I have those to look at because I'm a photographer, besides just being a teacher. There's something in photography that is special to us, so my question is can you let others know why photography is something that you love, especially if I missed a point, I know you have something online called Shadow Works, am I correct?
Speaker 1Yeah, yeah, shadow Works. Yeah, I put that up years ago, maybe seven, eight years ago. And that's a good kind of representation of more of the studio stuff I was doing, but it also, as you mentioned, it had some landscape and some architecture and some portraits and I was doing some headshots for people. But I don't really shoot headshots, because headshots are usually is. Actually we just want something that makes us look good.
Speaker 3Yeah.
Speaker 1We just want to look good. We don't care if it's interesting, we just want to look good, and that's not what interests me. What interests me is hopefully is a flattering presentation of someone, because we all deserve that. There are enough hard shots. We get More than just something flattering, something meaningful.
Speaker 5Yes so.
Speaker 1So the shadow works is a mixture of stuff. My Instagram, which started, is only photography, quickly morphed into lots of other things just because of life. But there's a lot of stuff on my Instagram that's much more current and more what I'm shooting now, specifically because of what you just described to carry around a 35 millimeter Nikon or a Hasselblad or whatever Whatever you're shooting, and you got to turn it on, you got to lift it up, you got to, you got to make sure the lights right and get the focus going, even if it's all by the time you go to take that shot, which is fine in the studio when everything's being pre-lit and organ organized and controlled. But once you step out into kind of a more of a street photography setup where you're just kind of architecture.
Speaker 1Yeah, yeah, the architecture is a matter of light really.
Photography and the Power of Images
Speaker 1Yeah and so you can wait for the light or look for the light. But I shoot just by default most of the time now with my phone, like you described, because I can raise it and shoot. I see something, I can shoot it. I don't even need to look, look, I just I can catch it right away. And I did the Second-line event for Princess funeral in New Orleans a couple years ago With a small handheld camera and those became a show in New Orleans that that sold out and was really rewarding for me.
Speaker 1They were big images, four feet by six feet, and they were had all the energy and grief and celebration and ethnic mix, cultural, financial mix of all those people. For that, you know, six-hour march, and that's where the photography becomes something else. It's not a pretty picture anymore, it's if you walk in a room and I have this when I go to museums I can walk through the museum nice, nice, nice and I'll turn the corner. Oh, and it takes my breath away. Something takes my breath away and it's a combination of composition and color and format and and it stops you, it moves you because it connects to you and that's what I look for, that's what I, that's what I hunt for. When I shoot, I'm always looking for something that will that cross you mentioned.
Speaker 1A Lot of people respond to that and more than I ever thought that happened because I was driving across Oklahoma and a storm came and and and it was bad. It was really dark and the rain was overwhelming and then it turned to hail and all the cars kind of dove in under the Overpasses, which I didn't notice what people did, but it was just me and and and as it started to lighten a little bit, I kind of pulled the car out and there was a quick kind of clearing and there in that little clearing through that, the hail, clouds and everything's coming down was that cross and that shot is to my windshield. The windshield wipers are the bottom of that train and that was that was. That's the first thing I saw after hiding under that overpass, thinking it was gonna shatter my windshield.
Speaker 1He was protecting you well, it says all kinds of things and I'm not Particularly. I'm spiritual but not particularly religious. I was raised at Biscopelian but I, I don't go to church every day. I my focus is kind of Shifted into other other things. But yeah but that does say something. That's the moments happen, and those moments can be miraculous and and bad things can happen out of nowhere that are yeah. You know devastating. But those, those, those surprises are kind of often what I find my photography now so well, it's that a portraits.
Speaker 5Yeah, and it. What's really neat is when somebody looks at a picture it's different. What they see is different than somebody. Mm-hmm what I took from it may be different than what you took from it, so it's neat to actually be talking to you right now and knowing what you saw.
Speaker 1Yeah, yeah, and I don't you know, I don't title most of my pictures what it was practically. I want it. I want people to have their own experience of that, whatever they see and if it moves them for whatever reason. That's what I'm after.
Speaker 5That's awesome.
Speaker 2Yeah, that was definitely an eyecatcher when I was looking at your yeah photos.
Speaker 1I'm so glad, I'm so glad beautiful.
Speaker 2Yeah, like I said, I knew dame was gonna be talking more about your photography, so I I saved all that for her, but it is very common that we pull over in the in the Overpasses when it's pouring rain or tornado to tornadoes.
Speaker 1I live in yeah, yeah, this is my home.
Speaker 3Oklahoma, you know so you're in tornado, alley?
Speaker 5Yes, yeah, I actually have another question for you when we get done talking about charge.
Speaker 3Oh yeah, parker, I was gonna tell you I I do photography too on the side, and there were a couple pictures that I really Love that I took. I like to take sunset pictures for some reason, and I was in high school and I was at the amusement park one day and all of a sudden this beautiful sunset was there, but silhouette of the roller coaster in front of it was so cool.
Speaker 3I took this picture and I just love it. And you don't know at the time when you take it, because some pictures you take and you like and you don't like, but this picture just turned out great of this sunset at the park. It just got that roller coaster silhouette and I don't know. I just loved that picture ever since I took that. And then my second favorite picture was when I was in Hawaii and of course many people have taken that picture of the Waikiki coastline with diamond head in the background and I just took a great picture of that one day and I just love that one.
Speaker 3So photography I love also, but just kind of a side Thing I will try to capture once in a while, but I love it I think everybody has a little bit of loving photography in them.
Speaker 4I grew up really wanting to be a photographer and I remember buying my first 35 millimeter when I was in high school and I joined the film and camera club and I never got it extremely good at it, but I Was that person to you take that picture, and that really good one, and you know that it means something and it stands out and, like you guys are saying now with this, with the cell phones, oh, these are now so your heart's content.
Speaker 4And I remember sharing some pictures and people like oh, are you a photographer? No, I got lucky. No, because I know Sometimes I can see something in the littlest caterpillar or something.
Speaker 3And back then was all right. We had to get our film developed, so we had to wait for this picture to show up.
Speaker 5Yeah, and there's like a present coming in.
Photography, Friendship, and Food
Speaker 4Yeah, yeah, we can wait to open our present go to the photo mark, but I wanted to ask you a question real quick. Actually, it's not a question, it's more of a comment. The, the jetty, the book you Photograph the cover for I think y'all this just beautiful.
Speaker 4It's a, it's a beach scene and here I'll read it real quick. It says Parker Stevenson photographs Kristy Lee Rogers for the book cover of the jetty and it's just a very Beautiful oceans and a lady walking out into the ocean and then there's like a Kind of a cloudy sky and I just I don't know if you remember it, but I wanted to compliment you and tell you I really love that Photograph.
Speaker 1Oh, thanks. Well, I really appreciate that because Kristy Herself is an astounding photographer. I first met her because I saw her work up in a Printing lab in LA and I wanted to get a headshot from her. And and she's, no, I don't do headshots. But she said but if you go underwater and pose underwater for me, I'll do your head, because her, a lot of her work, is underwater, she's above water but she shoots figures and people with, with one light, very dramatically, where it's very Caravaggio, like the mid, like you know, the Renaissance. So they're super dramatic images and so I did that for her.
Speaker 1But by the time we got done after three hours at the bottom of my swimming pool, I didn't feel like doing a headshot, so I then. I then called the favor back in when I was shooting that book cover, and she originally grew up in Hawaii, she's, she's comfortable with water and she's out on this walk jetty, and there were big waves and at one point she even got knocked off. The jetty Got back up then in this wet long gown with that sunlight sitting behind her and that became a series of maybe 20 images from which that one shot was chosen for the book cover. The editor, publisher finally chose that one image. I had others that actually like better, but they're all really beautiful. That one is really the most traditional. We're really good friends, we stay in touch and and you should look up her work online and the people in your in your audience Chris Lee Rogers amazing stuff at CHR STY, you'll see your work and it you'll be spellbound.
Speaker 5Yeah, what nice words you have to say. For Well, my second question. It's been mentioned that you and Shawn had chemistry from the beginning. In a different interview you said that you liked his dry humor. Do you have any funny stories or memories of being on the set together? You mentioned one before, but anything funny yeah.
Speaker 1I mean Right from the beginning. I mean, you know, shawn and I were from different universes when we, when we first met, like we came together, but what we did have was they was just Me. It's. It's an appreciation for the absurd or the unusual or the silly, or I don't know what it is, but we really enjoy each other's company. We just enjoy the way we we talk to each other and the things we say. And just from the beginning, that's what made us like brothers. We had connection and I think that's that's why we were both cast and cast together and I think it was probably an addition for the show that we had a comfortable, fun relationship always and that's why we're still really close. I consider him a brother.
Speaker 3Really close and what you kind of a stability for him also while he was doing his touring and singing and all that. I read somewhere that you were kind of grounding for him.
Speaker 1That's a nice. I thought. I don't think that's probably true. You know he would. He would work his five days on the show and we finish off at 10, 11, 12, whatever, and he'd run out of there and he fly off to two cities over the weekend and do his big concerts and fly back In the middle, you know, three in the morning, monday, and go to work on the Hardy boys. So I wasn't really there is a mentor for him. You know, on the set I was with him all the time for three years, you know, five days a week, but once weekends came, you know he had his managers and his mom and his brother and other people to kind of, you know, guide him through all that. I think that's probably not but I think he did.
Speaker 4They wrote but didn't really have a lot of Validity during the week with the filming. Yeah.
Speaker 1Yeah, yeah yeah, I mean, you know, I mean I think he probably looked up to me just because I was older. I think I'm just six. Wow, it's more than I realized. Okay, but because of that, you know, I think he probably was was glad that I was there because maybe I'd be a little more solid. You know that someone else that might have been running around all the time I was crazy girl screaming yes.
Speaker 2Hey we didn't just scream over Sean we. Hey, parker, you were on my wall as well.
Speaker 5I have four of your dolls. Yeah, I actually read that both of you guys were romantics, but in a different way, is that Parker is a little more private than Sean. He believes in keeping his personal life personal and he's not very affectionate in public, but Sean's affectionate all the time and he doesn't mind letting the world know how he feels about someone special.
Speaker 4Of course, are you reading from Tiger beat.
Speaker 2That's what I was gonna say. To be back in 78 or 79. Yep, I know, but I thought that was so cute.
Speaker 1I think that's kind of cute too, yeah well, I was just thinking along that note.
Speaker 5I was just thinking about how he fell in love with his wife, and it was because of her cooking. It was chicken noodle soup and that really drew you in. So so she even has a show speaking of no man.
Speaker 1Yes, and that is true, that was not in Tiger beat. She borrowed a giant cooking pot for me and so I loaned a tour and two days later she came back with a huge thing of soup and I tasted the soup and I didn't know anything about her, but I tasted the soup and I had never tasted anything like that, and that that is my experience with her food. And she's been, you know, amazing chef for I don't know well, over 30 years. She's worked the network. For 15 years she was head chef at Saturday Night Live, morgan Stanley. She's a corporate. She's had restaurants. She's worked for major celebs and sports figures, for she was, like Derek Jeter, chef for seven years, the captain Yankees. I mean, she really loves what she does and and she doesn't make a big fuss out of it when she does it, but when what comes out is more than the sum of its parts. Videos all the time.
Speaker 1Oh, you did okay.
Speaker 2Well, I hope my turkey club sandwich comes out as good as the one she made.
Speaker 4We're going on and on about her, but you haven't said her name her name.
Speaker 1Her name is Lisa shown. She goes by chef, chef, by day on Instagram and Facebook and and, and the tick tock and all that stuff, and we did videos, I think, which was being referred to us during the pandemic.
Speaker 3Yes, we've watched.
Speaker 1She was still working for her clients and during the the quarantine period we moved in with them and I was really bored out of my mind and so I started filming her with my phone Just cuz. And then that you start, turn into a thing, and then it turned into more of a thing and we did over 200 videos.
Speaker 3And you would taste.
Speaker 1Test I would taste it reminded me of years ago, when I was a kid, I would watch a show called the soupy sales show. Yeah, and remember that, yes, arm of the puppet would come into the camera and it would be white bang or black tooth or whatever it was, and and then he would talk to it and then the hand would go back. Well, I became that hand. They would take the food and eat it, and Then and then, after doing that for a while, that she got frustrated that I was never on camera. So then she would make me come around and eat it. Yes, and then, and it just kind of became and Over the pandemic, doing this.
Speaker 1Yeah, it was challenging.
Speaker 2This kind of reminds me of Rachel Ray and her husband, you know, because during the pandemic they ended up working together and Really, I didn't know that, yeah. Yeah, he actually produced her show and then was like helping out a lot and taste testing, and then it got to the point where he was making cocktails to go with her entrees and yeah, so it was pretty fun yeah and I didn't know he was like an attorney and a rock star and you know the stuff you learn from. You know cooking shows. I'd say yeah.
Transition From Architecture to Acting
Speaker 1Yeah, yeah. No, that was really. That was a nice experience for us. I mean, look, these have been really hard years for everybody right. But that was, that was a plus for me. I mean, I really, you know, with Lisa all that time and we were she. She deals with lupus, so she had to be careful and that's why we kept our quarantine really strict and but I got all that time with her and it was wonderful. Yeah, yeah, it was really nice.
Speaker 3Yes, I just want to switch gears real quick and focus back on Architecture, which we haven't asked you yet. You went to school for that so.
Speaker 2Mm-hmm, what was?
Speaker 3the. How did you get into it? How did you get out of it? What was that story with the architecture?
Speaker 1The architecture thing. Just from the time I could think I was fascinated by building and by spaces, architectural spaces, you know. But it's Lego, sir, oh, or there are other blocks that I had going up as a kid. I was just always building stuff and I liked the concept of how do you create a space, and even in architecture school, the highlight for me was when you build a model of something and then I get down at the level of the table and look into that model and try to imagine, okay, what's this experience going to be like? Going in, like coming from this side ceiling being that height and going from that space to that space, all of that spatial awareness and what that can be, which is the same thing in photography it's light and composition and its angles and its color, and that's architecture. And so I was sure I was always going to be an architect. I was only acting to get independence and have some money and hopefully, you know you get some.
Speaker 5Your dad wanted you to do that, yeah.
Speaker 1Yeah, my dad said to me yeah, you're getting the false sense of the value of the dollar when I started to work, because he was concerned that money was coming in and I was booking jobs and I wasn't appreciating how hard it is to actually make a living. So I was always sure I was going to be an architect and it was only lifeguard which I left school for three weeks for to go out and do just to pick up some bucks. That director, Daniel Petruy, who had gotten an Academy Award for Raising in the Sun with Sidney Pochette oh, I love that movie, he has a beautiful movie and that director had such a gentle touch as a director I'd never experienced that and that just made everything easy and natural. And suddenly I went back to school and that sat with me for the next year and a half. What was that?
Speaker 1That's not what I thought acting was. What was that whole experience? And by the time I then graduated, I didn't want to do architecture anymore because a lot of my friends had had graduated and then go on to finish graduate school couldn't get work Because the whole market was a disaster, and so I had enrolled at NYU in the business program when the Hardy Pooch came up and I thought well, do I learn about money and business or do I go to work? And I still go to work. And that's when I made that choice to act and not do something else, whatever that was going to be.
Speaker 3Yeah, do you still think about architecture, or? I know it's not a career anymore.
Speaker 1It's still not as a career, but it's very much you know like. I was invited to go shoot Richard Meyers City Hall, public Library, law Court complex it's like a full square by block by two block complex in the Netherlands and that's. He did the Getty here in Los Angeles, his famous American architect, and I studied with him at Princeton. I did my independent work as a senior on him. So it's always that those ideas and those experiences are in everything I do. They're my photography, they're my acting. I'm directing for sure, looking through a camera. That's all about how it feels right, what feels right.
Speaker 3What looks right, yeah. What looks right feels right yeah.
Speaker 5The image. Yeah, education is never wasted.
Speaker 1It's not. It's not and as people I hear people question you know the value of you know going to college and the cost of it and it is exorbitant and it's time consuming, but it's about being exposed to different things. That might be something you click with and if you click with it and then you go that direction, you still might not quite click with that but it will tip you somewhere else and at some point all those things you're experiencing will be valuable in whatever you do and specifically in what your experience of life and the day-to-day basis is. What do you see, what do you experience, what do you open to, what do you understand All those ideas?
Speaker 3So I got six degrees.
Speaker 1And there's your six degrees. Back to teaching and school.
Speaker 5Yeah, that's what I do also Teaching and photography.
Speaker 1Good, I hope, I hope. I mean I feel like if people want to know me, if they want to understand at all what I'm about, it's my photography, not my acting and not even my directing, because my directing I'm directing someone else's script, someone else's project. I had one project that really was from me. It was called Avalon Adventures of the Abyss, which was a two-hour movie backdoor pilot, and that was born out of me and something I wanted to do and the ideas of it, and it wasn't exactly what I'd had in mind. It got a little shifted over by the studio, but there's a lot in that that was me and that's really the only project I think that I've been involved in that represents me as much as my photography does.
Speaker 5Photography, that's wonderful.
Speaker 3Yeah, we want to share something fun with you before we let you go. Though. This goes this is retro. This is retro. Back to Tiger Beat, how you have these things, these articles and these questionnaires and Tiger Beat and things and we came across an article about your three wishes you had back then. Oh, so we just wanted to check in with you and now that it's the future, what happened with these three wishes? Do you remember what they were?
Speaker 1first of all, no, this is a very funny question. I'm enjoying this because I can't imagine what I would have said then, or what they were, and I probably did say it. I probably said other things too, but they selected this would be fun.
Dream Homes, Flying, and Travel Desires
Speaker 3Okay, well, I'll say the first one, and then the other girls can take one. And the first one. You said I'd like to own two homes an apartment in New York City and a fabulous house on the beach in California. Oh, now I think you have a house in California on the beach.
Speaker 1Yeah, yeah, and it sort of fell into I've been here forever. I never moved here, I just never left my vacation, I stayed or something. But it's so great about Los Angeles that there aren't many cities that you can actually be at, that are amazing, wonderful, cosmopolitan cities, and you're also at the ocean. Rio you can go to Rio, Rio is fun. Los Angeles. San Francisco is not quite the same. New Orleans is not quite the same, it's not really on the ocean. Miami, I guess Hawaii.
Speaker 1But it took me for Hawaii, yeah for sure. It took me decades to realize, oh, I can be at the beach. It was like it never cared to me, so that my answer there pre-says that that actually is what really makes this work for me, that I'm still here and I really miss having a place in Manhattan or at least near Manhattan or out on Long Island somewhere. I really miss the East Coast. I had a place in Maine for years that I thought I would just retire at and disappear at and spend the rest of my life at. That didn't quite work out that way. But I love New England, I love the East Coast and the architecture and the values and the art and music and just what that experience is there.
Speaker 1So, that was a really smart thing, I said, and I hadn't quite.
Speaker 3You didn't have a bit.
Speaker 1I'm not done yet. I'm not done yet.
Speaker 4So yeah, the second one, parker, you said is I wish I could fly, not in an airplane, but free like a bird. It will be beautiful to look down on the countryside. Well, we kind of figure you have a grown wings to start a flying, but have you done sailing or? Something like that.
Speaker 1I did in college. I did take soaring lessons, you know, and playing with that mention. Oh oh, they told you, one plane tows you up in the glider and then get up you know 10,000 feet or whatever, and then there's a knob, big red knob, on the dashboard and you pull that knob and it releases the cable and you're alone.
Speaker 3And I did that for about six months.
Speaker 1Yeah, it was scary but pretty amazing and I did that for about six months and that's probably about as close as I ever got to actually flying Although being underwater scuba diving simply feels like you're flying a lot of the time. You know you kind of swoop around and you're weightless. So that's probably the closest I've gotten.
Speaker 3But a follow up question too Did you ever want to go to space?
Speaker 1I did. I was a kid, I wanted to be an astronaut. Oh really, you know, during John Glenn and the Mercury missions and all of that, that's what I just kind of what I grew up on, watching those launches. Yeah, I love that Now now I don't want to go.
Speaker 3Not even those temporary 30 second up and down.
Speaker 4I don't want to go with jumpers. So, whoever it is, it's flying every time. No, I don't.
Speaker 1I've got bless them.
Speaker 4That's change.
Speaker 1Good for them. I'm glad someone's doing it. It's not for me, no not for me either.
Speaker 2For last wish, oh says, I love to go to China. The Orient has always intrigued me. It's just so fascinating, Did you?
Speaker 4make it to, as they called it in the 70s, the Orient.
Speaker 1Yeah, that is kind of funny, isn't it? No, I actually I haven't. I've been to Australia a couple of times and New Zealand a couple of times, but I've never, I've never been to Japan or like no, I've never. I've never gone east like that, and for no particular reason. I mean, I actually would have loved it if a project had taken me there, because you then you go in with people that are actually making sure your housing's okay and how you get around and you meet people right away because they're with you and that's a wonderful way to kind of discover a new place. But I've never sort of taken that on myself to do. I'm so comfortable in Europe because of all those aesthetics, the art, painting, sculpture, architecture, it's just, you know it's, it's for me, it's Nirvana. Yeah, it's just wonderful. So I, when I have an ability to go somewhere, I tend to go to Europe.
Speaker 2Oh, okay, cool. Well, you know that's funny because some of your photos I looked at kind of looked like they were from the Orient.
Speaker 1Huh.
Speaker 3Yeah the photography, yeah, the photography.
Speaker 1You know, I do believe that there are certain aesthetic values that translate cultures, whether it's Asian or European, western, that you know we tend to think of. You know Japanese prints is really being different, but you know Matisse was using them. You know they got was using them. I mean they were pulling all those aesthetics and compositions. I think when proportions and composition are right, it transcends all cultures. It doesn't matter what culture you're experiencing it from. It can affect you if it's correct and correct on some very primal, basic way that that humans respond to visuals and what we see. So I don't know what would have been Asian in my pictures, but I'm sure those values are in there, just cause.
Speaker 2Yeah, it was one particular picture, but you know, it's like a tree on a rock or something. Oh, that's there's, trees on rocks in the Orient. Yeah, do you know which one I'm talking about?
Speaker 1Yeah, no, that that that I know exactly. That tree is almost like a giant bonsai tree or something that's. That's, that's, carmel. Oh, by the sea.
Speaker 2Oh how beautiful.
Speaker 1They call it the lone pine. It's a known. It's a really kind of a well-known spot, but hitting the light at just the right moment which is what that was for me Made it kind of become something else yeah.
Speaker 2Well, it was absolutely beautiful.
Speaker 5Well, speaking of places you love to visit, you like go back to Maine because you have good memories here.
Speaker 1I do. I spent all my summers up there on Mount Deser, which is where Kate in National Park is. My family had been going there for a couple of generations and every summer was up there and then and my dad, you know, and mom spent summers up there as kids and generations going back, and then I ended up with a place on an island in Penobscot Bay that I had for maybe 20 years and I just love.
Speaker 1I love going up there and you take a ferry to get to it and that's all magical and I miss that. I miss those. I miss my friends up there. I miss the experience being on the island. We'll get back.
Speaker 2We have one here called the Sean and Parker answers to 40 intimate questions, but I am not going to ask you 39 of the 40.
Speaker 1Okay, Okay, god bless you, I owe you. I owe you 39 times.
Reflections on Seeing Yourself on TV
Speaker 2Oh well, I'm going to take you up on that, and chicken noodle soup for everybody. But I mean, I'm just glancing at this and there's. It's hard to pick, but I'm just going to go with. How does that feel to see yourself on TV?
Speaker 3Oh, that's intimate. That's a tiny question.
Speaker 2Well, I guess we're a 15 year old girl there's like there's that one or Parker, how come you never sang?
Speaker 4I mean, so Sean did that before you answer, parker, I just want to say real quick you know the way magazines were written back then. They were so innocent, tiger beat and all that. We've had many discussion on previous episodes and today I don't know if they had a team magazine and they were asking the intimate question it would be how did you see yourself on TV? So I just wanted to say that real quick. I think the way kids are, it's a little different than how we were as 15 year old, 13 year old girls.
Speaker 2Yeah, I know I was like trying to look through there and I'm like, well, nothing really here is really intimate, so I just kind of randomly just chose the intrigue, right.
Speaker 1I'll answer them backwards. So, why don't I sing? Because I don't. That's very simple, you don't want me singing.
Speaker 3You don't want me singing either. You don't want me singing, so that's why I don't sing.
Speaker 1I'm doing everyone a big favor. And the other one, you know it's seeing yourself, is very bizarre and doesn't usually connect. It's unreal, it doesn't really connect. You know, and when I first saw myself, you know, in commercials or something, I didn't make any sense. I was just, you know, getting a job. And then when I did films, my first films in New York, I'd go and I wouldn't go into the theater to watch, but I'd be across the street Watching people come out to try to get a sense of. Did they like? It was the movie, okay, what are they saying? You know, but to see a film and your face is 40 feet tall is just, it's not you, it's something else up there. Because it's not you, because you're sitting in the seat, you feel the armrests and chair on your back. It's not you, it's something else. And television falls somewhere in the middle.
Speaker 3You know it's, it's very sweet Talks about that with his kids, like his kids won't understand.
Speaker 2Well, that's interesting though you know, like, like he said, like it's it's not you, but in Sense I guess it isn't you, it's a character.
Speaker 1Yeah, it isn't you, and and it's the product of you know A hundred or two hundred or five hundred other people's work right, yeah.
Speaker 1Everyone's in there. Everyone's in there the cinematographers, the prop people, the makeup people, the directors, the writers, the editors, the Studio, the marketing people. Everyone's shifting and making this thing and we participate in that. Obviously We've a part in that. But you know, without the sound guy, where you'd be back in silent films. I mean, if the whole thing is, it is a group effort, so it's not us. Everybody sees you Creating this, right. Well, everyone sees you.
Speaker 1Yes, that's, that's the you know and I read that you on the other yeah, on the other side of it that you were a director, like for Baywatch to yeah, yeah, baywatch and Melrose place and models Inc and Savannah and I did a bunch of spelling shows for a while and and Baywatch was just so fun because I knew everybody, I knew the crew so well, I knew. I just knew how, how that all worked, how you go out in boats and shoot in the water and get it done quickly, how do you? You know, how do you deal with hauling equipment across the beach? You know, and you got all that stuff to get out there quickly.
Speaker 5Just all of that was Were you scared of the sharks out there?
Speaker 1I wasn't. No, I wasn't no, no, no, that's never bothered me, I don't know. There are a lot of ways I could go, but I don't think that's one of it.
Speaker 4When I you were saying surreal, like you, can you watch it? But it's not really you and I wanted to just say real quick, I think we're gonna all feel that next week when we play this back and edit and listen, because we we are here right now doing this and we have never done a podcast before. None of us and I had some Experience just playing around in radio, but I never been a host of a radio show or anything. So it's gonna be surreal listening back, knowing that all well Holy's people are listening, and it's gonna feel surreal that we have Someone we grew up watching on TV and hung that eight by ten glossy on our wall and to this day I still carry.
Speaker 4I told these ladies before I have my Hardy boys Fan club membership card in the original wallet that it was in wow day that I was in high school and got it and it's in the nightstand and it's been at every nightstand I've ever had since I was that age, so no matter where.
Speaker 3I move what.
Speaker 4I do. I take that with me wait.
Speaker 3The question is, is this still active? My Hardy boys stuff to that we got, everything was in all the pictures.
Speaker 2Everything was kind of like driving here today. I was just like we're going to interview Parker, yeah you know, and then I text my sister going I'm going to interview.
Speaker 3It's kind of full circle, you know you have this you have this experience when you're younger, right, and then you get older, you learn things and you grow and everything, and to come back to it and to reminisce and Really see how special it was back right.
Speaker 4I love that. Yeah, it's surreal when I have all my friends with you listening, they're gonna say that's you, it does stay with you.
Speaker 3You know the experiences back then. You just keep to heart Well, yeah, I remember every bit.
Speaker 2You know the Hardy boys and yeah, like I said, everything you've been in and I don't remember having an 8 by 10 glossy as much as the centerfolds on my wall. Yeah but back to that. You didn't go watch yourself like on the screen and and things, but you would stand outside to watch the people come out. Did you ever get recognized?
Speaker 1Not usually in those moments, because I'd be across the street and I'd kind of, you know, be turned sideways and and I could see where people were going and I just, you know, I was far enough away, yeah, that I wouldn't get up there. But walking around New York I'd get stopped because you're walking around New York and I. I've never been comfortable in the subways or buses, so I just walk. I love walking in New York.
Speaker 1Oh yeah, you know it's really nothing it's about. It's about a minute of blocks. You have to go 40 blocks. Well, well, a little over half an hour right.
Speaker 2Yeah, everything's right there.
Speaker 1So people would sometimes stop me. But but people in New York, people in LA, people in most places are very chill. They're very cool and they say something. It's usually really sweet, it's quick and they just say thank you, love your work or something that's nice. So on you go Question. The question I'd like to hear from you guys is how you guys all got together.
Speaker 3Yes, very interesting. We tried to summarize this as best we could. Shawn so, yes, we're strong, of course came out with shows again, so we decided to go. We live in this shaggo area, so we all went to the same show and we met there. And then we did go see a show in Nashville Also, and that's where we met Daymat and we had a great time and we hung out and we were just having discussions and we decided one day you know what? There's not really a podcast out there about Shawn.
Comfortable Connection and Social Media Promotion
Speaker 4Hopefully we'll, have you on again one day and we can continue our little discussion and figure out what was next on the Parker Stevenson list of adventures. It's like you're. You're like a friend, like an old buddy. It feels like we sat down and connected with someone we knew from high school or us. Yeah, yeah, and we're just catching up again. That's how comfortable you're making us feel.
Speaker 1Yeah, well, and you always me.
Speaker 2Hey Parker before you go make sure to tell our listeners where they can find you.
Speaker 1They can find me. You can find me on Instagram, on Facebook, or you can even write me on shadow works, parker Stevenson. Shadow works calm. Like this link.
Speaker 2You can write me there and where can they follow your wife?
Speaker 1Shea Lisa shown as C H O E N Chef by day and she's on Facebook, okay. Instagram and tiktok.
Speaker 2Thank you from the bottom of our teen dream hearts. Keep on crushing always believe the magic and have a peaceful, fantastic week, and don't forget to follow us on Facebook, instagram and threads and make sure to keep in touch with us on our email.
Speaker 2Sean squad society at gmailcom the Sean squad society podcast, including past, present and future versions, and its contents are owned and controlled by the Sean squad society. The views and opinions are solely those of the Sean squad society podcast. The Sean squad society is written and produced and recorded at the board and studios. We may think we are always right, but we will get something wrong from time to time, so we assume no responsibilities or ears of submissions of content.