Appearing on the How Did This Get Made? podcast with Jason Mantzoukas, Paul Scheer and Nicole Byer, Jackass: Best and Last‘s Johnny Knoxville had a bizarre Steven Seagal to tell (as are all Steven Seagal stories, of course).
Somewhere in an office at Paramount, most probably in the early ‘90s (during a time when slick ponytails and roundhouse kicks ruled Hollywood), the martial arts legend and action star sat behind a desk with a gun beside him. No, that’s not a scene from a movie. That’s real-life Seagal just casually working in an office in Tinseltown.
According to Knoxville, a producer walked in and found Seagal weeping. “The producer’s like, what’s going on? Are you okay?” Knoxville tells. Then, Seagal looked up and said he had just read the most beautiful script of his life. Naturally, the producer is taken aback and asks who wrote it.
“He goes, I did,” Knoxville finishes the story, with the room bursting into laughter.
The even funnier part is that this story isn’t too hard to believe. It’s the kind of Steven Seagal you’d expect to be completely true, especially given all the past stories we’ve heard over the years.
Of course, Jason Mantzouka piled on to the moment, calling the actor, “Russian citizen Steven Seagal”, with Paul Scheer correcting him, “I meant a blues artist, Steven Seagal.”
Nicole Byer, on the other hand, admits that she’s never actually seen a Seagal movie, which, according to the rest of the group, is a shame.
Because here’s the thing. Seagal’s career is actually like two completely different movies edited together really badly. In the first act, he’s a legit action star and 7th-dan black belt and shihan in Aikikai aikido, who made films like Under Siege, a ’90s classic. But somewhere in the middle of his career, things spiralled in the wrong direction… very fast. By 2016, Seagal was releasing like six films a year – and none of them were any good. The cream of the crappy crop has to be Code of Honor, though. It’s a film so bad that audiences mostly watch it for laughs. Except it isn’t a comedy, in any way.
Over the years, even his aikido moves have gotten lazy and predictable. As Knoxville even joked on the podcast, later-era Seagal probably won’t even get up for fights. “When he gets older, he won’t even get out of his chair for a fight scene. He’ll just sit in his chair and kick,” he joked.
But even off-screen, Seagal, now a Russian citizen with ties to Vladimir Putin, is a controversial figure. Just recently, he made headlines again. This time, he is part of an ongoing Ukrainian investigation into alleged arms distribution networks.
And again, that isn’t a plot to an upcoming film, that’s Seagal’s real-life.
And yes, this is the same guy who once cried over his own script and called it the most beautiful thing he has ever read. And yes, the same guy who made a career out of whispering through action scenes, feuded with Van Damme for decades, then randomly patched things up in recent years.
Someone has got to turn Steven Seagal’s story into a feature film. This is the type of content you just can’t make up. Watch the clip:
