The actor behind Four-Star General Vidrine joins Dial the Gate to talk about his life, career and appearances in two seasons of Stargate SG-1!

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TRANSCRIPT
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David Read:
And my thingy is broken, I don’t know why. Welcome everyone to Episode 345 of Dial the Gate: the Stargate Oral History Project. My name is David Read. I really appreciate you joining me here for this episode, because I have a terrific actor on the phone with me here. On the phone? That’s so old. Steven, I’m showing my age. Welcome to Dial the Gate.

Steven Williams:
Aren’t we all?

David Read:
It is such a pleasure to have you, sir. How are you doing?

Steven Williams:
I’m better than most, not as good as some. I’m living my best life, Dave.

David Read:
There you go.

Steven Williams:
I’m living my best life, ain’t that enough?

David Read:
And staying busy.

Steven Williams:
Say what, again?

David Read:
And staying busy.

Steven Williams:
I am staying busy.

David Read:
You’ve been in some really good television.

Steven Williams:
That’s a blessing.

David Read:
It is. Absolutely, it is.

Steven Williams:
I’m probably one of the oldest still working actors in the business, in Hollywood. And again, it’s an absolute joy. I can still memorize lines, so I’m good to go.

David Read:
Do you ever plan on stopping?

Steven Williams:
No. Actors don’t ever quit.

David Read:
Jack Nicholson would disagree, but I’m glad to hear it.

Steven Williams:
We go until, literally, until immobility sets in. Or we start to get to the point where we can’t memorize lines. That’s when the hiring will certainly become limited. Who wants to hire an immobile actor or an actor who can’t remember his lines. We go and go. Especially guys like me, or actors like me, ’cause I’ve got nothing else going on. This is it. Other actors have businesses or families, or a whole bunch of other stuff. They have a regular life. Acting is practically my whole existence. Without that, I’d just be laying around drinking.

David Read:
What is your earliest memory of wanting to do this? How far does this dream go back? Is it one of your earliest childhood dreams to do this, or did this come to you later in life?

Steven Williams:
Here’s the thing, there is no such moment. I never, quote, unquote… Can you see me making quotes? I never, quote, unquote, “wanted” to do this. This is a God-given, or whoever you believe your maker is. This was dropped in my lap.

David Read:
Tell me more.

Steven Williams:
Early on, probably around the age of 13, I realized I could sound like Johnny Mathis. I realized I had a good singing voice, all right, a good voice, and I sounded like Johnny Mathis, and he was one of my favorites, and so I had a lot of fun just, as they say, in the shower, in the bathroom, in the blah de blah, singing. And I had little dreams, my little fantasy was to be a singer. But I never wanted to be an actor, so that was my little fantasy. I’m one of those rare people– I don’t know if it’s rare or not, who realize that they never really wanted to be anything. Like doctor, lawyer, electrician, veterinarian, whatever. I didn’t have dreams or aspirations to be anything. I’ve always just lived. I’ve just lived, and some people live life. Some people let life live them or let life happen to them, and some go out and try to grab life by the balls, so to speak. Live life. Again, I’ve just been one of those who’ve let life happen to me, and it’s worked out. It’s worked out. So, if you’ll ask the right question and I’ll answer it, at some point you’ll learn how I got into this. It started with modeling in Chicago, late, late modeling. I didn’t start modeling until I was around 27 years old. That’s real late.

David Read:
What brought that on? I’m curious how that happened.

Steven Williams:
I worked in– Excuse me, but I don’t know how many people have watched interviews with me, but I worked in retail at the time. I’m trying to fasten this up. I worked in retail at the time, clothing. I sold ladies clothing. It was one of my jobs, one of my last jobs, before I got into acting full-time. So, I was always dressed neat. I worked at one of the premier boutiques in Chicago on Michigan Avenue.

David Read:
Yep, know it well.

Steven Williams:
Then it’s like the equivalent of what? Of Rodeo Drive. And a lot of my clients, I sold ladies apparel. I worked in a ladies shoe shop/apparel. And a lot of my clients were models ’cause, during those days too, the models would make their rounds with their portfolios, to go see the photographers, the studios, et cetera. And a lot of them were female ad agency executives, and they were hot. And this is what? The ’60s, ’70s? This is the ’70s. I got out of the Army in ’68. So, this is the ’70s. It’s a very, very alive time. We talk about the ’60s and shit. That was alive too. But the ’70s were really the years. Sexual freedom and drugs.

David Read:
Free love.

Steven Williams:
Free love, blah-de-blah. So, all these hot women were my clients. Long story short, too late, and–

David Read:
All I’m thinking is I’m so sorry for you that the hot women were your clients.

Steven Williams:
Yeah, and I actually said this in, remember when we used to put out the biographs, biographies with our headshots? In mine, it actually said I got into the business to get laid. I actually put that in my biography.

David Read:
Honesty, check.

Steven Williams:
Honesty. It’s true. It’s true. It was all these hot women, these models, these beautiful ad agency execs, and I’m in suit and tie every day and at my charming best, et cetera. And I thought, “Wow.” From the models, I thought maybe if I got into this modeling thing, I could get into that circle, that little social circle, and quote, unquote, “get laid.” And my best buddy at the time was a photographer at Playboy Magazine. As a matter of fact, he was one of the first African Americans on staff as a staffer at Playboy Magazine in Chicago. So, we shot a portfolio, shot a bunch of pictures. I put together a portfolio, and in my spare time, would model while I was working at this retail store. And I started to make a living at it. And it was so cool. And at some point, I remember at one point, a guy came in, looked at me, and said, “Oh my God, you look like a character in my play.” It was the Deerfield Players down in Deerfield, Illinois. I remember that. It was a play called Slow Dance on the Killing Ground. And that’s a three-character, three-hour play. One of the actors had fallen out, the male actor. He had fallen, and the guy said, “You just look so much– Do you act?” And I went, “Yeah, sure.” I had never acted a day in my life. Yeah, I had done one play in school.

David Read:
So, you’d had a taste of it.

Steven Williams:
And I step in, and I do this play with two weeks of rehearsal. Again, a three-character, three-hour play that was truncated to about two and a half hours, two hours 15 minutes, but still with two weeks of rehearsal. I did this play. It was a wonderful experience, and I got good reviews. And that’s when I learned– Let me get this centered again. Dammit. Ah, there I am.

David Read:
Yes, it’s not mirrored. There you go.

Steven Williams:
Sorry. And I learned that I could act. Simple as that. I learned that I had chops.

David Read:
So, you’re 27?

Steven Williams:
Yeah, I’m around 30-ish then.

David Read:
Around 30s, OK.

Steven Williams:
This was 19– What was this? ’70, I don’t know, 2 or something? I don’t know. I’d have to look it up in some paperwork. But that was my first experience in Chicago. And Chicago is a wonderful theater town. You’ve got some wonderful people that have come out of there. Malkovich and–

David Read:
Sinise.

Steven Williams:
Sinise, and Mantegna and–

David Read:
Yep, that’s right.

Steven Williams:
All that shit. Me. Cusack, John Cusack. Lonnie Smith, Meshach Taylor. Just a wonderful theater town, and that was my experience. I started acting. I started getting roles in plays in Chicago. And it kept snowballing and snowballing, and then Cooley High came to Chicago. I got a role in that, and then Blues Brothers came to Chicago. And I got a role in that, and that’s what brought me to Hollywood. And by this time, I am now making a living as an actor/model. And I remember now the years ’cause ’82 was when I moved to LA. I was going from ’80– What was it that took me there in ’80? Something took me there in ’80. Got a job, was going back and forth. Met Stephen J. Cannell. And worked in a few of his shows, and Blues Brothers brought me back to LA. We shot it mostly in Chicago. We had one scene left for me to do, and they said, “Nah, we’re not gonna get it in Chicago. We’ll fly you out to LA.” And it was a night scene, and I was there for– I was hired for two weeks on Blues Brothers. It turned into about a three-month gig. They brought me to LA, put me up at the Sheridan Universal, and every day, they would come get me at sunset, figuring we’re gonna get the shot ’cause it’s a night shot. The sun would rise. We didn’t get the shot. They’d say, “OK, Steve, you’re wrapped. You can back up to the hotel.” And this went on for three months, man. Good pay, good per diem, great living quarters. And meeting people in Hollywood.

David Read:
But no Portillos, Steve.

Steven Williams:
Huh?

David Read:
No Portillos.

Steven Williams:
No?

David Read:
Portillos.

Steven Williams:
Portillo’s?

David Read:
The hot dogs. The Chicago hot dogs. Come on. Portillo’s.

Steven Williams:
Chicago hot dogs.

David Read:
Sorry.

Steven Williams:
It was a great time. It was my introduction to Hollywood. And I did that back and forth from 1980 to ’82, and in ’82 I moved here, and started working. Now let’s talk about– Again, dropped in my lap. It dropped in my lap and–

David Read:
Was there–

Steven Williams:
Slow down. You’re fucking with me now, aren’t you?

David Read:
No, I’m just trying to come up–

Steven Williams:
I could see your lips moving, but I couldn’t hear what you were saying.

David Read:
That’s David’s face of trying to articulate himself. With a lot of actors, it’s feast or famine. Were there ever any periods of famine, or was it every time you turned around there was something else to walk into? Because that’s actually the story that led you to 21 Jump Street, where something dropped and then all of a sudden, the door opened up. I’m sure we’re gonna get to that in a moment here, but was that the case for you, or were there periods of famine as an actor, for you specifically?

Steven Williams:
Again, I am probably one of the most blessed actors on the planet, and I’m angry. I’m mad that I’m not Denzel or Brad Pitt. I’m really mad about that. But at the same time, I never had– I never did anything but act and model from the moment I started. From the moment I started acting and modeling, that was it. I always had a job. There was never that famine period for me. I never worked as a waiter or blahdy blah on the side while I was trying to get a job. Either I was getting modeling work or acting work. And no, never that– I had a period later on, much later on in life, after Jump Street, after X-Files, after Supernatural, where I didn’t work for a while. I went through my period of the socially unacceptable stuff, the drugs, the alcohol, the blahdy blah. I’ve gone through that, but I kept the shit quiet. You didn’t read about it, or I didn’t have a good publicist. They didn’t give me any–

David Read:
Count your blessings.

Steven Williams:
At some point. That whole thing has made a lot of people rich and famous, too. Whole idea’s that they …

David Read:
Or infamous.

Steven Williams:
… were a drug addict, they were an alcoholic, they were this and that, they did have– That story has made them rich and famous. But mine was kept very, very quiet. I did my shit at home. I wasn’t out in the streets, wasn’t out in public. I didn’t have paparazzi following me or I wasn’t important enough for them to pay that kind of attention to. I didn’t get scrutinized that way, so I had that period. But coming up, it was feast practically all the way. Straight feast. Wasn’t a humongous feast, but for me, it was feast for a small town, for an actor from Chicago with no background. I’ve never had an acting lesson in my life, didn’t go to Juilliard, blahdy blah. Again, blessing, thank God, I’m a what I guess you would call a natural.

David Read:
Do you mind if I ask you a personal question?

Steven Williams:
This is what these interviews are all about. If you don’t get interested in me then it’s useless.

David Read:
What’s your blood type then?

Steven Williams:
What?

David Read:
Did you find– Was your descent into substance abuse a result of finding yourself in a void as an actor, or was it related to other things in your life? I’m curious if that was the impetus for it.

Steven Williams:
It was related to the– Do I wanna answer that off the top without getting too deep? ‘Cause I’ve never been asked that question before.

David Read:
I’m sorry.

Steven Williams:
But the immediate answer would be, it was the pleasure I got out of it. That feeling from alcohol, that feeling from the drug, and all that was involved with it. Drugs were– It was a very sexual thing too. There was a certain, you know, when they tell you that your libido rises with certain drugs, your inhibitions go away with certain drugs. So, it was about that initially.

David Read:
OK. So, it wasn’t so much an escape initially.

Steven Williams:
No, it wasn’t any depression.

David Read:
It was more sensory.

Steven Williams:
I wasn’t in a slump. I threw myself into a slump with the act of doing that. But I wasn’t in a slump, I wasn’t depressed, I wasn’t angry. There was nothing negative happening in my life at that time that would have driven me to the usage of those substances. It was just the pleasure derived from it. A great deal of them were sexual kicks, man. And you had people around you that enjoyed the same thing. So, you get into it.

David Read:
And you’re in an industry where there are some …

Steven Williams:
They’re into it.

David Read:
… very beautiful people.

Steven Williams:
Say what?

David Read:
You’re in an industry where there are some very beautiful women. And you can get pretty much anything you want if you know the right people.

Steven Williams:
And if you keep asking.

David Read:
That’s true too.

Steven Williams:
You walk into a room and there’s 100 people in there and you need a dollar. You ask each one of ’em for a dollar. Odds are you will get your dollar before you leave that room. And that’s how it was back then. Keep throwing shit against the wall, something is bound to stick. I stayed too long at the fair. That would be the end of that, I’m caught up. I stayed too long at the fair. I got caught up in it and now I’m a little bit trapped.

David Read:
What was your wake-up call then? What turned the carnival lights off?

Steven Williams:
It got to be a hassle. I realized too that I have vanity. A little vanity and a little ego. And you can only look at yourself in the mirror so many times and watch yourself deteriorating before you come to your senses, so to speak. I’m that vain. I have that much of an ego, “You don’t look good, pal. You look like shit, OK?”

David Read:
But you’re an actor.

Steven Williams:
“Look good on camera. Your job is to look good on camera. That’s your gig.”

David Read:
This is your brand and …

Steven Williams:
Right now, you are fucking it all up.

David Read:
… your voice. Your voice, especially, is your brand.

Steven Williams:
No, yeah. And right now, you are messing it up. And then you get into there’s some financial stuff that’s involved. Your mortgage is $5,700 a month, and you don’t have a job. Your job’s not coming quick enough. Stuff like that, and you wake up. And a lot of it had to do with how you want to be looked at and your social life. Again, women weren’t looking at me the same way. You make public appearances and you look a certain way. You have to work really hard at looking decent to go out. You find things start to get a little bit more difficult. There were a lot of factors, a lot of wake-up factors. And wanting to stay– Taking pride in– Because for a long time I thought I looked younger than I am. I don’t think most people would guess me at 80.

David Read:
Can I share something very personal with you?

Steven Williams:
What?

David Read:
About two months ago, my last living uncle shot himself.

Steven Williams:
Say again?

David Read:
About two months ago, my last living uncle shot himself. And he lived in Villa Park, and his oldest daughter, who’s lived on the streets all of her life, she’s in her 60s, overdosed and killed herself last week. So, I’ve had quite the summer, and to hear your story, where you were able to pull yourself up by your bootstraps and out of this because you realized that you had no choice if you were gonna go in a new direction and to find your true north is no trivial thing, sir. Many people don’t pull themselves out of it. So, the fact that you did is all the more testament to you and your constitution as a man. So, I appreciate you sharing that with me.

Steven Williams:
All right. And you just lost half your fucking audience, man. We just did a downer segment like you wouldn’t believe.

David Read:
These are the …

Steven Williams:
But thank you for that, man.

David Read:
… stones that we step across to lead us on the path that we’re on. It’s not a straight line, and it’s not a rainbow road. There are some periods that are tough.

Steven Williams:
Such is life. It’s regular. There is this image thing that I think a lot of actors have, whether they want to or not. There’s this image thing, and it’s a matter of what kind of image you wanna create and do you wanna create a false image as opposed to living a life, a real life. There’s no sense, to me, there’s no sense in being alive if it’s a lie. If everything you do is unreal and a lie and made up and pretending. We are all pretending in a sense any damn way, ’cause I’m sure most of us would rather be doing something else. Like nothing works real good for me. If I could do nothing and still make a living.

David Read:
But as an actor, you are saying someone else’s words. So, I have actor friends who are like, “Yeah, I lie for a living.” But also at the same time, aren’t you as a performer in your process trying to find a kernel of truth in what it is that you’re saying? At least a kernel of it?

Steven Williams:
There’s one thing I say– A lot of people have said to me, “Well, actors must be good liars, you know, because y’all are pretending and blah de blah.” And that’s the farthest thing from the truth, for me, and I think for most actors, is what we’re doing is trying to find the truth in someone else’s words. That’s what we really do. It’s not telling a lie. It’s not trying to fool anybody. It’s telling someone’s story and finding the truth in that story. I like to ask writers, too, if I can find them, if they’re in the room, if they’re anywhere nearby, “What were they thinking when they wrote those words that I’m getting ready to say? What was your thought process? Where was your head? What space were you in when you wrote these words?” And if they can give me that, if they can accurately articulate that in a manner that I understand, I have a much better chance of giving it back to them and to the audience the way they perceived it when they wrote it. So, what was the damn question? What the hell did you ask me?

David Read:
Finding truth in a performance.

Steven Williams:
Finding truth in a performance. That’s what we do. And there’s a part of ourselves, there’s a lot of ourselves that we throw into it. If we’ve had anywhere near the experience that we’re talking about, it helps the process, helps the progress quite a bit.

David Read:
Did you ever think you’d–

Steven Williams:
Can relate. I’ve always said, if I can relate to those words, and mostly I know immediately, most actors know immediately when they read, whether their whole being is relating to what they’re reading.
And if I can relate to it, I’ve got a head start on bringing that truth to the forefront.

David Read:
Did you ever think that you’d be moving to Vancouver? Cold, rainy. Did you ever think that you’d spend–

Steven Williams:
Did I ever what?

David Read:
Did you ever think that you’d be moving to Vancouver? Did you ever think that you’d spend a chapter of your life there?

Steven Williams:
Literally, I lived in Vancouver for probably a total of about 10 years. ‘Cause we did Jump Street there. And that was a five-year run. All right? So, I literally lived in Vancouver, literally, nine months out of the year.

David Read:
Let me back up. Was Jump Street the reason you moved up to Vancouver?

Steven Williams:
Yeah. That was the reason I was moved up to– It was 21 Jump Street. That was the reason everybody was up there. Stargate, Jump Street–

David Read:
MacGyver.

Steven Williams:
What else was there? Stephen Cannell had, Men in the Hat.

David Read:
MacGyver.

Steven Williams:
The Hat. The one about the music with Ken Wahl.

David Read:
MacGyver.

Steven Williams:
What was… What?

David Read:
MacGyver. MacGyver.

Steven Williams:
MacGyver was there. We were all there for the work. It was Hollywood North. It became Hollywood North. That’s where we shot everything.

David Read:
Captain Fuller. I’m sitting here across from Captain Fuller. And I watched an interview you did where you talked about your time with that cast and crew of 21 Jump Street, and you said– This is a mutual friend of ours, by the way. You said, “Peter DeLuise is the most talented man in this cast.” Do you still stand by that?

Steven Williams:
Oh, absolutely. In my opinion, he was by far the most talented, the most experienced. And I’ve said it, he comes from a Hollywood, an entertainment family. And you can see by his work, after he left Jump Street, and he’s a fine actor, fine actor. You get caught up in a lot of these B-shows or popular shows, and you realize there’s some good acting going on. The show itself doesn’t get the accolades of an award-winning show, the way we look at shows. But he’s a fine actor, turned out to be one hell of a director, a damn good writer, and a producer. I mean, he did the whole kit and caboodle on Stargate. He moved over to Stargate after Jump Street, as an actor, producer, writer, director. He covers the whole spectrum. He’s a quadruple, whole bunch of threats. When they talk about that triple threat thing. Peter was very, very talented. And a good-looking man.

David Read:
Yes, he is.

Steven Williams:
You should see this boy when he lost weight. He was on the heavier side. But when he lost weight, he was literally chiseled.

David Read:
He looks good now.

Steven Williams:
I think, in fact, to me, he was handsomer than Johnny. He was, or at least as handsome as Johnny at his prime. We had one season where he really looked great as the male species. I don’t know if people got that looking at him. ‘Cause everybody was so hung up on Johnny and Grieco. Johnny and Richard Grieco were the glamour boys back then, which I think Johnny hated, by the way. I think he hated the fact that that’s the way he was looked at.

David Read:
Johnny Depp? Yeah.

Steven Williams:
‘Cause he’s a pretty damn good actor himself. All these kids came into their own.

David Read:
What was it like working with Peter day-to-day? I can only imagine …

Steven Williams:
On a day-to-day basis?

David Read:
… with that energy and that creative mind, you never know what he’s gonna say next. He says something, it’s like, “Where did that come from?”

Steven Williams:
Number one, I think the age difference too, people don’t realize. I think Johnny was something like 26 and Peter was 19 or 20 or something.

David Read:
He was a kid.

Steven Williams:
They were pretty much kids. Holly, Peter, Dustin were pretty much kids. Dustin was a little older. I think he was just a little bit younger than Johnny. I really don’t know the order, but I think Johnny was the oldest, and then Dustin, and then Peter and Holly. At least two of them were teenagers when we started. But working with him on a day-to-day basis, you remember now, look at what the roles were. I would normally come in– I worked no more than three days out of the week, four days out of the week, short days, ’cause I’d come in, do my Captain Fuller thing, give them instructions, and they would go and carry out the story. The way the show was structured. So, even though I’m in the same episode every episode, we’re not necessarily working directly together. Working with him was like with any other actor on the planet. There’s never been any different for me, working with anybody. From De Niro to the scene enhancement personnel, what we used to call extras back then.

David Read:
I like that.

Steven Williams:
But from De Niro to a scene enhancement personnel, they’re all the same to me. We’re all there doing the same damn job. Nobody’s that damn special.

David Read:
There are no small parts.

Steven Williams:
The specialness comes from working off of each other and the words themselves. So, working with him on a daily basis was like, when I had scenes with him, I had scenes with him. But generally on set, he and Johnny were fun. They were practical jokers, and like I said, he comes from a family that reaches for comedy, too. Peter comes from the “when all fails, drop your pants” school. If everything else fails, you pull your pants down. You’re bound to get a laugh with that. So, you combine all of that with all the rest of his talents, and like you said, he was spontaneous. Young, living life. So, it was, in a word, it was fun. I never had an unpleasant day working with any of those people. It was always fun. ‘Cause I was also doing the same thing. In my mind, this was a dream come true. A dream that I never had, ’cause it was dropped in my lap. But this was a fun job. You look up and you find yourself doing something that’s a lot of fucking fun and you’re getting paid for it. And paid and more. I mean, we were, quote, unquote, “stars.” We were stars. We owned that city, so to speak, especially from the male point of view.

David Read:
You were very much the father figure of that team, like Don S. Davis was as General Hammond of SG-1. And you were in three episodes of SG-1.

Steven Williams:
Two, I think. Was it three?

David Read:
It was three, but one of them was in a video monitor. Yes.

Steven Williams:
OK, that’s what I thought. ‘Cause I know– And Peter wrote all 12 of them. He wrote–

David Read:
He wrote the last– The first one was written by Michael Cassutt. All three were directed by Peter, yes.

Steven Williams:
Peter directed me in all of them.

David Read:
Can you tell us anything about your experience on Stargate? Can you tell us anything about General Vidrine? This character may not have been around very often, but I loved this character. I come from an Army family as well. I just have an innate respect for authority. General Vidrine comes in the room, you stand up a little taller. There was an authority and a demand for seniority and respect that you projected out from that character, as you have with many of these types of roles.

Steven Williams:
Yes and no, because they come on a different plane. I’m normally the bad guy with that kind of authority. So, you’re absolutely correct. There’s military legitimate, legal, moral guy with the same strengths as the immoral, illegal, criminal mind. It was a nice balancing. I liked playing that. I liked walking in the room and what the atmosphere was supposed to be theatrically was respect as opposed to fear. The bad guy walks in, everybody’s scared to death, so they straighten up. The good guy walks in and everybody respects their power and their knowledge, and they give it. So, yeah. Playing him was quite interesting. It’s always interesting to play bad guys or power figures. Or bad guys with power, or power figures with power. It’s cool to be the badass in the room.

David Read:
Certainly the badass. That’s certainly the case.

Steven Williams:
It is. And it was nice to watch Peter work. Peter’s the kinda guy to, as an actor, and like I said, very talented. Lot of directors only know how to direct traffic. They know their camera shit. They know how to move you, how to make it look interesting. But to be able to communicate with an actor and get a feeling, to be able to make an actor understand what emotion you want back from him, Peter knew how to do that. As an actor, he knew how to talk to an actor, to tell an actor, “This is how I want you to perform this to get X reaction from the audience.” When I directed, I found out, for me anyway, that directors haven’t met what response they want to elicit from the audience. They’ll know, “From this scene, I want the audience to laugh. From this scene, I want the audience to cry. From this scene, I want the audience to be angry.” You’re always looking for a certain response when you do a scene. I think, for directors and actors, that’s what they want. We come to a project, we must be in the same book, on the same page, telling the same story, but we each add our own little thing. Like, my story may be in bold type, the director’s story may be in parentheses, the writer’s story could be in question marks, but we’re still headed for the same answer. We still wanna get to the same destination and we all add our little shit to make that journey interesting along the way. We make the scenery interesting along the way, so to speak. We’re seeing trees and rivers and mountains and stuff instead of a flat roadway,

David Read:
You’re playing an Air Force general, a three-star lieutenant general the first time we saw him, and the next time we saw him he was a four-star general. Was any of your, or have any of your, military roles been informed in any way by your own personal experience in the Army? Or have they been very separate experiences?

Steven Williams:
My experience in the Army, in real life, I found out there were some things that happened that I found out afterwards, that I knew what I knew going in, by the time I got out, would have been a different journey. Mine was very wild because I expected to go to Vietnam, I was drafted in ’66, at the height of Vietnam. My entire company went to Vietnam. I was not so much politically motivated as scared to death. I had made up in my mind I was not gonna go to Vietnam. I did not know whether I was gonna go to jail or run away to Canada, but I wasn’t gonna go to Vietnam. I have no argument with those people. I’ll never understand that war. So, that was my mindset going in, and as it turned out, like I said, my entire company went to Vietnam, but me and four other guys went to Germany.

David Read:
That just how it happens.

Steven Williams:
I was with outdated MOSs, all this I learned. MOS is your job description, and we were code specialists, communication specialists, code specialists, teletype specialists. This was just before the onset of our computer world now. So, we were given jobs that were even gonna be obsolete. Nobody practices Morse code in the army. And we were sent to Germany. I’m trying to shorten this story again. When I got out, I found out the reason why. We were all only sons, and the United States Army government military does not send only sons to war zones, and that’s why we were not sent to Vietnam. So, my experience in the army relative to General Vidrine, I think we were talking about. ‘Cause General Vidrine would have been a guy who was a lifer. That was his career, his life, he re-upped–

David Read:
He was a pilot. He would have flown.

Steven Williams:
And I remember too, when it came time to muster out and re-up, the enlistment sergeant, when it was my turn and one other soldier with me, when it was our turn to go in and sit there and start, we walked in, we said we were gonna walk in together, we walked in together and sat down, and the enlistment guy just looked at us, and we all started laughing because we knew damn well the two of us were so happy to get the fuck out of the Army, we were not going to re-up, OK? But you gotta remember that a general like that gets reached his level, he has re-upped time and time and time and time again.

David Read:
It’s his life.

Steven Williams:
It made it his life. So, you can imagine what I brought to him as a character compared to who I was as a soldier. I think that was the original person. When you compare my military experience with– Matter of fact, I was so loud and gregarious and out of hand, they made me go to an infantry company. At one point I was assigned to what we call headquarters company. And my job, I worked directly with the colonel. His personnel carrier, me, two other guys, the driver/teletype operator, gunner, weapon/teletype operator/Morse code specialist, me. We were the three guys who set up– Anytime we went into the field, or if we were to go to war, we would have been the center of communication. It’s the colonel’s personnel carrier; from there is where he would have given all his orders and, you know, fought his portion of the war. That was my job in Germany. And we would get up, they–

David Read:
Were you at Ramstein? Where were you stationed?

Steven Williams:
We were stationed in the, and this was funny too, ’cause for a long time we were stationed at a fort called Gelnhausen. For a long time I thought Gelnhausen was a city. We were about 90 miles outside of Frankfurt. And I thought Gelnhausen was a city. It wasn’t till I got out that I learned that Gelnhausen was the name of the fort that we were assigned to. But that’s where I was, and our job was to get up every day and set up the communication process, test it out and make sure it was working so if anything broke out, it would happen. But we were assigned to a headquarters company, which is a breezy kind of company. When I got there, I ran into a guy from Chicago, a guy from Tennessee, where I’m born and grew up on a farm there, and we were hellraisers. And we had women in the barracks, we had alcohol, we had music going. We had all kinds of shit that you see almost in a sitcom. And they were so frustrated with it, and they thought, “All this shit didn’t happen until Williams got here.” It was like our personalities just clicked, you know what I’m saying? They said, “All this shit didn’t happen till he got here, so the way to stop this shit is to get Williams outta here.” And they literally, as punishment, shipped me to an infantry company, where my duties doubled. Gave me a bazooka as my field weapon. I had an anti-aircraft goddamn gun on my shoulders as my field weapon. And they made it a point to put me on guard duty or KP, kitchen patrol or something, all the time. And watch this, watch this. I can do this. I love this kind of stuff. I love this casual stuff. Hey, Newton. I’m doing a podcast right now, David Read’s podcast right now. Can you hear me?

David Read:
Can’t get that.

Steven Williams:
I’m gonna call you back, but you are on the air right now. I love it. Take care. I’ll call you back. Bye. That was an actor named Newton Mayenge. He was just in, what’s the telefilm they just did about the Lakers?

David Read:
Let me see here.

Steven Williams:
Winning Time, that miniseries, Winning Time. Anyway, he’s one of the stars of that. Anyway, so they ship me out to this infantry company, and they start to punish me in every way they can. So, I was a big boxing fan. I’ve always been a big boxing fan, and I would go to the gym, hang out with the boxers. And at one point I thought, “Hey, these guys are duty exempt.” And so, I joined the boxing team.

David Read:
You boxed?

Steven Williams:
Yeah. I boxed my way through Germany. I joined the boxing team, which made me duty exempt, so they could no longer put me on KP, they could no longer put me on guard duty. I was in training, you know? And my record turned out to be 18 and 1, so–

David Read:
That’s pretty good.

Steven Williams:
I was a favorite of the colonel. In that world, I made the company look good. We had the second-best boxing team in USAREUR. USAREUR was an acronym for, what the hell were we? U something, something, something in Germany, the forces in Germany. So, yeah, that was–

David Read:
How long did you box?

Steven Williams:
I boxed for the full time I was there. It didn’t take me no time to figure out they were fucking with me, and so I joined the team. So, for 18 months, almost. About 16 months actually. Yeah, so 16 months in Germany. That’s what I did in the army. So, I never made any rank. I was a private for the entire time I was there. But I was also, as I said, duty exempt and had an 18 and 1 record, and it was a lot of fun. That was probably one of my most fun things to do in the army. And you said something earlier about a healthy respect for the military, and I think every young man, even now, should be required to spend a couple of years in the army. I don’t mind the draft. If the draft was still here, it would not be a bad thing, in my opinion. To have young men go in and serve their country that way and get a sense of discipline and order. That’s the one thing that I really got from that time in the army, is a sense of discipline and order, a respect for authority, a big difference between right and wrong, and the racial thing. One of my best little buddies became a little white guy from Kentucky. This is 1966 to ’68 now, and he’s from Kentucky, and he still didn’t really grasp the affront or the insult that calling a Black man a boy was. He was still that naive. He grew up in a place that was racially segregated, and he still had those kind of things going–

David Read:
He wasn’t taught any better.

Steven Williams:
Exactly. He was not a racist individual. He was not taught any better. That’s my point that I’m getting at, is that you’re now 18, 19, 20 years old, and for a lot of those guys, they live in a world they’ve never lived. They are mixing with people they’ve never even come in contact with before. A Mexican here, an Asian here, a Black here, a white here, and a lot of those people were coming together for the very first time. That army experience is a bonding experience also, and it’s an enlightening experience about these things that we believe about another race or another religion, or “Dadada.” A lot of those were dispelled for a lot of young men. It’s another good thing.

David Read:
One of my favorite books is Starship Troopers, and one of its central themes, and it’s in the movie as well, is service guarantees citizenship. You don’t have the right to vote unless you have taken on a civil service of one form or another. And I think that there is a lot to be said to the notion of if you’re going to participate in your community, it doesn’t necessarily mean putting a gun in your hand and being required to shoot at somebody else, so much as it is, in order to become an adult, you must take on the responsibility of being a servant unto others. And that’s the attitude that I was raised with. When 9/11 happened, I was still in high school and there were two or three days where I gave serious consideration to enlisting, and it was my dad who actually said, “Finish school.” And I could have gone down– I didn’t give it a great deal of consideration, but I did for a few hours there, and I think that there is something to be said for leaving your comfort zone and going into a situation where you have all of self ripped away, and all that’s left of you is duty and responsibility and a schedule and expectation, and you’re taller as a result. You stand a little taller. You find self-respect that not all of us find when we’re growing up as young people and teenagers and into adults. I think there’s something to be said for a mandatory civil service. It will never happen, but I think a civil mindset that you are more than just yourself is very important, and I think it’s something that we’ve lost, that we lose more and more.

Steven Williams:
I could not agree with you more. It might happen again.

David Read:
That’s true.

Steven Williams:
And remember, it did happen. Can’t say it never happened.

David Read:
The draft. You’re right.

Steven Williams:
There’s a very, very distinct possibility that it might happen again. You mentioned 9/11. There was one moment in my life where, David, I really said, “I wish it could be like this all the time. Why can’t it be like this all the time?”

David Read:
When we came together.

Steven Williams:
There was a pulling together, weeks, months, blah-de-blah, after that incident that was really beautiful to see and look at, when we became-

David Read:
The whole world were Americans.

Steven Williams:
Exactly.

David Read:
I can’t remember. Was it the French …

Steven Williams:
We are together–

David Read:
… who were saying we are all Americans today?

Steven Williams:
It was a beautiful moment. I looked at it and went, “Wow, this is a beautiful moment. This is a beautiful time.” Why can’t we just, why can’t we see that and keep it like this all the time? What the fuck is wrong with people, that they can’t see it? It’s like today, there are people who wanted change, and my question will always be, “Change to what?” To what would you trade democracy for right now?

David Read:
You have to answer that question.

Steven Williams:
You want monarchy? You want communism? You want dictatorship? I don’t even know what words like ‘fascism’ and ‘socialism’ and shit mean. I really don’t. I cannot define for you ‘fascist.’ What the hell would you change it to? All you people who are clamoring, clamoring for this change, don’t you realize that there’s certain things that are such non-brainers that you wouldn’t– How did this happen? How does somebody really agree with a man removing some equipment and taking a couple of shots and then being OK with them competing with women? How the hell can you fix your mind to think that that’s OK under any circumstances? That’s insane.

David Read:
We get sucked into these.

Steven Williams:
Or where do you get the notion that a bunch of non-medical men have control over what a woman can do with her body depending on– I think I got solutions for this shit too. I think if you’re an anti-abortionist, then you should be required to take care of that woman throughout her pregnancy and adopt the child, OK? If you really are that adamant about it and think it’s so immoral, then put your money where your mouth is. You are now legally required to take care of that woman during her pregnancy and when she delivers that baby, that baby is now yours, OK? Mr. or Mrs. Concerned. It’s all right. There’s this, some of this shit’s just downright ridiculous.

David Read:
The way that we treat each other, I would agree. In the short scenes that you had, there was a spark that I thought was fantastic. One of your first scenes is across from Richard Dean Anderson–

Steven Williams:
Hey, I brought water. You got a bottle of water? Please and thank you.

David Read:
Are you doing OK?

Steven Williams:
Yeah, go ahead, David.

David Read:
Are you doing OK?

Steven Williams:
Yeah, I’m good. Go ahead.

David Read:
You have a scene on that runway across from Richard Dean Anderson. Don S. Davis is there, and you say to Rick, “Colonel O’Neill, it’s a pleasure to meet you. General Hammond has told me nothing but good things.” And Rick goes and says, “Did he, sir? Well, he must have left something out,” and you say, “Such as?” And he goes on and on about being so excited about the plane working and everything else. And you say, “In all seriousness, if that’s OK with you, Colonel,” so on and so– There was this undercurrent of this guy has totally got a sense of humor. There’s a time and place for it, but this dry sense of humor is fantastic. And that undercurrent was played through your entire performance. You would dial it around, but he wasn’t just a flat character with no personality. There was a human being underneath this. And I loved your portrayal of the character for the handful of scenes that you were in that show. You brought him to life. And I would imagine it can be frustrating when you only have so much to work with on the page and only a handful of scenes to bring that out of a character.

Steven Williams:
You’ve got much too much time on your hands.

David Read:
Unfortunately, this is true.

Steven Williams:
You really dug in to– And I found what you just said amazing. And I found what some people say about my work a little amazing, because they say some of the same things you just said, that there’s an underneath thing, and I learned a little bit. I jump all over the place.

David Read:
No, you’re OK. I’m with you.

Steven Williams:
About that very thing from doing The Equalizer. Edward Woodward, they used to say, you could see him thinking. And somebody said that, and I– ‘Cause he was given a great deal of accolades as an actor, especially as this British actor, stage and blah-de-blah. But I started to watch him after that statement was said, and I get it now. So, I think every actor tries to put something underneath. I particularly try to do comedy underneath, because I find life to be ironic and funny, period, no matter what job you’re in. Doing ride-alongs with cops and understanding they’re looking at a dead mutilated body and they’re making jokes, there’s always something that you need to do for your job underneath what your outward thing is in order to keep you cool with it. So, I’m always trying to find the humor in a character, no matter how serious the character is. That’s something I was reaching for. And the fact that you saw that …

David Read:
Oh, clear as day. Clear as day.

Steven Williams:
… is impressive. It’s impressive to me and flattering.

David Read:
Rick is playing a colonel who is a smart-ass, and you can see just under the hood, you’re going, “Oh, man, this guy’s a smart-ass.” And he says it in the way that he can, with his authority and with the respect that he carries. It’s rare. Not anyone can do that, Steven. Not anyone can take a character and have us as an audience go, “Wow, that– I was left with an impression of someone that even though he was there for five or six minutes, I want him back. I want to find out a little bit more.” And Peter DeLuise, God bless him, kept bringing you back.

Steven Williams:
Hang on for a minute, Dave. What am I subjecting to have to hit if something goes awry? Everything should be smooth as long as I don’t touch shit, but–

Unidentified woman:
But you shouldn’t have to do anything. Just call me. I’m gonna be at the bar.

Steven Williams:
OK, dynamite. Will do.

David Read:
Thank you, mam. Appreciate you very much.

Steven Williams:
I gotta find out what to do in case something, in case I hit something and we go. OK, dynamite. Would you say that again, what you said?

David Read:
Thank God for Peter DeLuise bringing you back two or three more times, even if one was only on a video screen. Peter, I think he caught lightning in a bottle when he joined that production team, and I really appreciate him making you a part of the ongoing canon of the show. General Vidrine was responsible for Earth’s battle fleet. This ship right here and those like her were his responsibility. You may not have known this, but this was a thread that was weaving throughout the show, that those were your babies. You were responsible for making sure that they had what they needed to get off the ground. And it’s folks like DeLuise who were interested in the canon of the show and in the continuity, because even in the Air Force, only so many people have been aware of this program. So, it made sense to bring familiar faces back because those were the people who would have recognized the importance of the program and would have continued to stay involved.

Steven Williams:
It is so cool when a storyline is thought through like that, and when you have an audience that can see it, knows it, and follows that storyline. It makes me understand fans more ’cause they’re deep into the story. Nine times out of ten for a guest star recurring, it’s, you go in and do your job. Our main concern is, “Can I memorize these lines and impress people with a couple of moves, so I can maybe get hired again by them?” We don’t think about the overall picture. One of the things that disappoints me about characters that I’ve done is that it’s the incompletion of the character. I don’t get to live the history of the character a lot. When I can see stuff, I go, “Wow, this guy came from this, bang, and went through this and blah-dee-blah.” I wonder what would happen if blah-dee-blah and if this continues. It’s like Vidrine, a great deal of my characters have had that.

David Read:
You get to embody them for a little bit of time, and then you have to let them go, and it’s like, who was that person?

Steven Williams:
Mr. X in the X-Files was one of the most disappointing things I’ve ever done. Tell me, you don’t know still who this man was, who he worked for. Was he a good guy or a bad guy? Was he the boss, or the cigarette-smoking man the boss? That was so much, he was so rich and so much more to learn about him. And it was disappointing as an actor, heartbreaking as an actor, to not have been able to reveal that to an audience. ‘Cause when I played him, one of the things I said about X is I tried not to give it anything, except for the few anger flare-ups, or the intense thing. Just say the words. I used to say about the character, “I want this character to be as ambiguous as I can possibly make him. Let the audience figure out who he was,” and a whole bunch of other stuff. And they never wrote it, they never got a chance to write it. Yellowstone was another character like that.

David Read:
I’m looking forward to watching Yellowstone.

Steven Williams:
The strange thing I did in Yellowstone, “Why the fuck was he there?” What was Cowboy about? We never learned anything about Cowboy, except that he knew when to get out. He knew when he was surrounded by crazies. You’re familiar with what I’m talking about.

David Read:
My parents love the show. It is a few shows down on my list, but I am really looking forward to seeing you in it.

Steven Williams:
You gotta watch that show. That’s …

David Read:
I’ve heard it’s great. They loved it.

Steven Williams:
… one of the better things that was ever on the air. And it’s happening, it’s in real time, actually. That was the fascinating thing I’m finding. That show was actually in real time. Even right now as you and I are speaking, there are entities trying to take away– There are people who own what looks like a whole state, but there are also entities who are trying to take that away from them. Land that has been in the family for generations and generations. But there’s corporate concerns that wanna make golf courses and airports and malls and parking lots and shit out of it.

David Read:
I’ve heard it’s very real.

Steven Williams:
And that’s a whole thing. It’s very real even right now. Again, that incompleteness of characters is something that actors don’t like. We wanna flush it all out.

David Read:
I think when you really get a chance to sit down and meditate on one and explore it is, as you say, it’s a blessing. I’ve got some fan questions for you if you have a little bit more time with me.

Steven Williams:
Oh, hell yeah.

David Read:
OK. Steven, this–

Steven Williams:
Another thing I like about Vidrine is the uniform.

David Read:
You look great in an Air Force uniform.

Steven Williams:
It’s a great-looking uniform, isn’t it? I felt like Top Gun.

David Read:
Those four-star epaulets, they don’t wear you. You wear them, sir. Absolutely.

Steven Williams:
All right. Let’s see what this fan has to ask.

David Read:
Jakub wants to know, did you get to meet any of the music icons that were in The Blues Brothers while you worked there?

Steven Williams:
Yes. Absolutely. First of all, I knew John Belushi before we ever did the movie. In Chicago, I lived three blocks from Second City. So, we drank at the same bar. A little bar called Old Town Ale House, and all the people from Second City, those who were drinkers and bar-goers, would come to this little bar. It was an absolutely, especially the entire– See, I hit the damn thing.

David Read:
You’re good. You’re good. We’re good.

Steven Williams:
Sorry. Especially the band. I got to hang out with the band man and John Candy, but the band itself. We’d hang out. I got to meet them. I did meet, real briefly, James and Aretha. That was, “Hello, I’m Steven.” Wasn’t no intricate conversation. That movie was awesome ’cause we’d get celebrities visiting celebrities. Muhammad Ali used to love to come to the set. It was insane. I bet you they would have no recollection. But they had to keep me and Carrie Fisher away from each other.

David Read:
OK, please, tell me more.

Steven Williams:
I got a story about that ’cause we …

David Read:
Tell me more right now.

Steven Williams:
… we laughed. It was something humorous. We found each other funny somehow. And it was during a time period that drugs abounded. So, there was some good marijuana around.

David Read:
Carrie went through her fair share.

Steven Williams:
So, it was just laughter. It was, “You two don’t know– Keep them two apart.” It was us a couple times when she was on set. It was a fun thing. It was amazing ’cause it was so new. I’d never been around that many celebrities on a daily basis.

David Read:
I would’ve been so sore from pinching myself.

Steven Williams:
There was always somebody that showed up, and it was a very interesting time to learn the truth, also. You know, the tragedy of John. You look at the pictures sometimes and a lot of negative is what you see. But I saw two total professionals, him and Aykroyd. Everybody, but in particular, I saw two total professionals doing their job from different aspects. John worked as hard and as diligently as he played. You know what I’m saying? This was the consummate professional. When somebody said, “Action,” blam. That’s what they say about me. They say I’m wild and crazy and gregarious and blah de blah, but when the director says, “Action,” I am prepared, I’m ready, I get in there and do my job. I found that with John and Dan. It was an interesting thing to watch.

David Read:
Professionals, they can strike the balance.

Steven Williams:
You just see crazy person turn on the professionalism. Bam, do what he’s supposed to do. So, that everyday trip of all the celebrities was cool.

David Read:
Marcia says, “Steven, I’m putting a coin in the way-back machine. One of your first film roles was as Jimmy in the iconic film Cooley High. I grew up in a New York City housing project and I’m seasoned enough to remember when it first came out. We all saw it and talked about it so much. Can you tell us something you may remember about being part of Cooley High?” Marcia and I go way back. She’s an incredible human being.

Steven Williams:
And I think that was my second. I forget what came first. Cooley High or Blues Brothers? I think Cooley High came first. Yeah, it had to come first. First of all, Jimmy Lee was the character. And he was a real person. Michael Schultz used a lot of real people in that movie itself. The two gangsters, Stone and I forget the other name, were real gangsters in Cabrini-Green. But Jimmy Lee was a real person, and I got to meet his parents. And he was simply this guy, this hustler. I mean, he’d hustle anything. He was a jack of all trades, a con man. And it was interesting meeting his parents. To this day, congratulations to Glynn Turman, who just got his star on the Walk of Fame. Him and Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs are good buddies to this very day. We’re good friends. We socialize as much as possible, especially on the special occasions. Larry does a wonderful thing, Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs, he does a dinner every year. He can cook and his family, all the men learn how to cook. He’s from the island some damn where. Trinidad is his roots. One of those places, not necessarily it. But for all the people who don’t have family here, the actors that don’t have family in LA or don’t want to go home, every year, Larry gives this Thanksgiving dinner. He and Jackie Taylor, I don’t know if she remembers. Jackie Taylor, she was the one who gave the party in the movie and her credenza got knocked over and blah de blah. She’s a wonderful actress who now has a street named after her in Chicago. She has a company called The Black Ensemble Theatre, got three theaters: a 299-seater, a 300-seat seater, the smaller one, a 100-seater. Again, a street named after her, et cetera. Doing well. One of the gangsters from that movie, I forget which one was which, but the darker skinned one, he still works with Jackie today in all of her theatrical projects. He got out of the gang, I guess. I don’t know. He might be in those gangs forever. They let him go off and do something else. I don’t know how that works. But he still works with her to this day. They work together.

David Read:
There are people who fall into our orbits, who get tangled up in our gravity, who just become a part of us through the rest of our lives. These people that you’re referring to, I mean, you can always count on them for Thanksgiving or sooner or later, they’re gonna give you a call and ask you how you’re doing. I’m 42 now. I’m always surprised at the people who continually stay in my orbit and are a part of my life that I didn’t necessarily expect. I may have worked with them on a project for something and here they are. They’re still with me.

Steven Williams:
They’re there.

David Read:
And we, we’ve been talking a lot about blessings. I consider that one of the greatest of all is unexpected friends.

Steven Williams:
Yeah, Cooley High is probably the movie that I continue to have the most contact with the most cast. Garrett Morris, we still see from time to time. Like I said, Larry and Glynn, Jackie Taylor, it’s interesting. Michael Schultz, he directed me in a couple episodes of Jump Street. So, it was, it was, “Cool, man.” And one of the guys is your director from one of the most iconic movies ends up directing you in an iconic TV series. So, yeah, it is. And that’s very special. It is very special that those people are still there and they are there for a reason. Those are special people. They play a special role in your life. You just don’t know what that is until it happens. But you know when it happens, why they were there.

David Read:
That’s right. And you’re never promised tomorrow and neither are they.

Steven Williams:
And for a lot of us, it’s already happened. Some incident that has been life-affirming, life-saving, life-giving. If there’s been a need, that was fulfilled at the time it needed fulfilling.

David Read:
In MacGyver, Peace Rider says– I’ve got a couple more for you, and then I’m gonna let you go. In MacGyver, you played an old friend with explosives expertise and a great sense of humor in this character, Peace Rider says. “Do, you remember anything about your time on MacGyver as this explosives expert?”

Steven Williams:
What I remember most is that that was so ripe, so ripe, and I thought it was going to happen as they put it in the air. There was actually something sad about it, of me becoming a part of the cast. I thought, “This is gonna be a great matchup.” That Richard and I are gonna be a team now. It’s gonna become a buddy flick. I really thought that was gonna happen, and then I saw the line, “It’s a [inaudible]! Boom.” I said, “Damn.”

David Read:
Oh, no.

Steven Williams:
There goes that dream. But I really thought that was gonna happen ’cause I thought we made a great team. I had a damn good time playing–

David Read:
All right, Steven, it’s been great. You’re done. You can exit stage left.

Steven Williams:
Richard is such a class act. And I loved that. That’s another thing I’ve loved about that era, that time. I met some classy people, man. And it’s good to meet the real people instead of listening to the rumors. ‘Cause with every setback, then there was always some rumor about that person. “They’re an asshole. They’re a this, they’re a that.” Da, da, da. Something you were warned about. And to a man and woman, they’ve all been wrong. Anything negative ever said about any of the people has been wrong relative to my experience with them. So, yeah. I loved playing with Richard. And again, like I said, I thought we were gonna be a buddy. Thought it was gonna now be a buddy movie. Didn’t turn out that way. Matter of fact, who was it? Was me and Richard Lawson were gonna play– There was some connection between me and Richard Lawson and Richard Dean Anderson, too, and I forget what it was. Some show. I don’t know. But yeah, that was fun. I’ve had fun almost with every show I’ve ever done. I can’t think of a show that, in the end, I didn’t like doing.

David Read:
Steven, that’s a huge blessing.

Steven Williams:
I have never had any miserable– people talk about their miserable experiences on a show? I’ve never had one of those.

David Read:
You go in, and I’m talking about you. I’m not talking about general you. I’ve watched you in a couple of interviews getting ready for this. You go in ready to have a good time, and when you go in with that attitude, a good time finds you. And people who don’t have that mindset get repelled by that energy like scurrying rats, or they keep themselves to themselves. And it’s like, as far as I’m concerned, good. Because the hours are long. They’re hard. They’re tedious. “OK, we’re gonna hurry up, and now we get to wait.” We’re going to have a damn good time doing it while we can do it because we are blessed to be here. We’re not in an assembly line. We are kind of in an assembly line, but we’re in the production phase of an assembly line. But we’re going to have a good time, and you carry that with you into the character, and you carry that with you into the show, and it’s why you’ve been as successful as you have, sir. That, and you’re kind of a good actor.

Steven Williams:
Again, I say you have insight into me that is surprising. It’s a little bit disturbing.

David Read:
Well, I have, I have a friend who is the–

Steven Williams:
It’s a little bit disturbing, man, that you know that much about my inner workings, because I insist on having a good time when I go to– I do insist and everyone– Like they say, “He’s loud, gregarious. I’ve been asked to leave a lot of places ’cause I was having too good of a time while everybody else was working.

David Read:
But that’s their loss. Is the work getting done?

Steven Williams:
It makes no sense to go to work and be miserable.

David Read:
If the work is not getting done, that’s one thing. If the work is getting done, loosen up. And that’s how Peter DeLuise, the guy who has spoken of you, has helped me learn a little bit more about you, has said that. The last thought that I wanna leave you with is one that William Arends has submitted. He says he was surprised to learn about your rank of private because he always saw you as a perfect model of an officer in SG-1 and thought you actually were one. I think that that is a great compliment because you’ve taken the lessons that you have learned in life, and you have folded them into the various characters that you have woven along the way. And it’s been a privilege to share so many of your stories with you here today, sir, and making them a part of my archive, but also getting a little bit into what made this general tick. Even though we saw him really, really briefly, you established a guy who was not just a two-dimensional figure delivering exposition in three episodes. You delivered someone that fans looked up to and admired, and it means so much that you spent so much of your afternoon with me here today.

Steven Williams:
Hey, I’m humbled, but thank you. And thank all the fans out there. I’m doing a little bit of these comic cons now because I have been a part of two of the best genres of entertainment, and that’s horror film and sci-fi. And the fans always say, there’s a line they use, “Thank you. Thank you for coming. Glad you could get here this weekend.” And I always marvel at that because I’m thinking, “You are the reason. I’m thinking I should thank you. You are the reason I’m here.” I have no reason to be in Michigan this weekend other than, I’m here for– So, I want to thank all the fans for being fans, for watching, for investing in the things that I have invested time in, for investing your time to watch and listen to what we have done, have created as actors, directors, writers, producers, et cetera. Thank you for watching. And we certainly appreciate that you like it, that you indicated you like it. So, it means we’ve done our jobs. So, thank you right back. I’m happy to–

David Read:
I have reached out to people who are like, “No, I don’t wanna do the show. That’s the part of my life that’s over.” So, people who are willing to come on and to share, it means the world to me. ‘Cause you don’t have to. You don’t have to go to Michigan and visit fans. You really don’t have to do it. But the fact that you recognize where your success continues to stem from. If there’s no one watching, what have you got?

Steven Williams:
You got nothing.

David Read:
You got nothing.

Steven Williams:
You got absolutely nothing. There’s no reason to do it. It’s just an amazing– And we get the best job on the planet. Let me put it that way.

David Read:
You get to entertain.

Steven Williams:
I couldn’t have asked for a better job.

David Read:
You get to entertain and you get to lie a little bit.

Steven Williams:
And we get to continue our immortality.

David Read:
That’s true.

Steven Williams:
I’d like for the young people in my world, like, “Granddad is immortal now.” I’m on celluloid. I’ve been recorded, a visual image. Jump Street, Stargate, X-Files, blah-de-blah. Those things, 50, 60 years from now, will be shown on film.

David Read:
They’ll still be around. That’s right.

Steven Williams:
They’ll be there. So, in a sense, I’m immortal.

David Read:
In many ways.

Steven Williams:
And that’s a great feeling.

David Read:
And not just for villains, but for some darn good guys too. Steven, thank you very much.

Steven Williams:
David, thank you. Thank you for having me on. And again, all the fans out there, the viewers, thank you from the bottom, middle, top of my heart. Thanks.

David Read:
We got 60 people watching right now. It means a lot to me to have you. I’m gonna go ahead and wrap up the show on this end. You don’t have to push anything.

Steven Williams:
If I can just close my top and I’ll be good to go.

David Read:
That’s right. I appreciate your time.

Steven Williams:
All right. Much love. Stay healthy, man.

David Read:
Thank you, sir.

Steven Williams:
All right.

David Read:
Steven Williams, everyone. General Vidrine in Stargate SG-1. I shared more than I expected to today. I don’t often share pieces of myself, but when you have a person who comes along who is so willing to be open, and you perceive a certain reception of a person, and Steven was definitely that. I have wanted to have him on for quite some time, and that was just special across the board. I really want to thank everyone who took time to submit questions today. Jakub, Marcia, Lockwatcher, Raj, Brian ONeal Singleton, Matt T., Kevin, Homo Erpel, William Arends, and Peace Rider. I wasn’t able to get to all of them. I was way too selfish with him, took up a lot of time. But I hope you guys enjoyed the getting to know Steven and all of his wonderful stories. You’re watching Dial the Gate: the Stargate Oral History Project. If you enjoy Stargate and you wanna see more content like this, please click the Like button. It does make a difference with the show and will continue to help us grow. Please also consider sharing the show with a Stargate friend, or a 21 Jump Street friend. And if you wanna get notified about future episodes, click the Subscribe button. And clips from this live stream will be released over the course of the next few weeks on both the Dial the Gate and GateWorld.net YouTube channels. I have a number of guests heading your way fairly soon here. Ian Buchanan, whom I know best from Twin Peaks, along with Don S. Davis. He played First in Stargate SG-1 in “Unnatural Selection.” We’re gonna be bringing him on fairly soon here. Clayton Landey, Dylan Everett in Stargate Atlantis: “Siege Parts 2 and 3.” Kira Clavell had to step away. She’s going to be rescheduled for later this year. Amaterasu in Stargate SG-1. And I’ve got a few more in the hopper as well, including an episode with German Stargate fans that I’ve got in my back pocket that’s going to be heading your way really soon here. I appreciate you tuning in. Thanks so much to my mod team. These people really went above and beyond this episode. Antony, Jeremy, Kevin, Lockwatcher, Marcia, Raj, and Jakub. You guys are the best. Couldn’t do this show without you. My production team, Antony Rawling, Kevin Weaver, Linda “GateGabber” Furey, Frederick Marcoux over at ConceptsWeb keeping DialtheGates.com going, Jakub Olejarz. Finally got it right, Jakub. I’ve been practicing it in the shower. You’ve really stepped up lately, and it’s been a pleasure to have you as part of the team, basically a pseudo-producer at this point. That’s what I have for you here. Wormhole X-Tremists, we had our episode, our Stargate Atlantis debut of “Rising” earlier today, and if you wanna go and watch the pilot with us, that’s available now at our sister channel. The link is below for Wormhole X-Tremists, and we’ve got a lot more heading your way. My name is David Read for Dial the Gate. I appreciate you tuning in, and I’ll see you on the other side.