Behind the Bastards - Part One: Steven Seagal Is So Much Worse Than You'd Ever Imagine
Aired: 2018-10-16
Duration: 01:14:28


=== Trust Your Girlfriends (02:51) ===

[00:00:00]  This is an iHeart podcast.
[00:00:02]  Guaranteed human.
[00:00:04]  When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands.
[00:00:13]  I vowed I will be his last target.
[00:00:15]  He is not going to get away with this.
[00:00:17]  He's going to get what he deserves.
[00:00:19]  We always say that, trust your girlfriends.
[00:00:24]  Listen to the girlfriends.
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[00:00:38]  My next guest, it's Will Farrell.
[00:00:40]  Woo, My dad gave me the best advice ever.
[00:00:45]  He goes, just give it a shot.
[00:00:46]  But if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit.
[00:00:53]  If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
[00:00:56]  It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hang in there.
[00:01:03]  Yeah, it would not be.
[00:01:05]  Right, it wouldn't be that.
[00:01:06]  There's a lot of life.
[00:01:08]  Listen to Thanksgiving on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:01:15]  In 2023, bachelor star Clayton Eckard was accused of fathering twins, but the pregnancy appeared to be a hoax.
[00:01:22]  You doctored this particular test twice, Miss Owens, correct?
[00:01:26]  I doctored the test once.
[00:01:27]  It took an army of internet detectives to uncover a disturbing pattern.
[00:01:32]  Two more men who'd been through the same thing.
[00:01:34]  Greg Gillespie and Michael Mancini.
[00:01:37]  My mind was blown.
[00:01:38]  I'm Stephanie Young.
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[00:01:43]  As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences.
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[00:01:55]  10-10 shots five, City Hall building.
[00:01:58]  How did this ever happen in City Hall?
[00:01:59]  Somebody tell me that.
[00:02:01]  A shocking public murder.
[00:02:03]  This is one of the most dramatic events that really ever happened in New York City politics.
[00:02:09]  They screamed, get down, get down.
[00:02:11]  Those are shots.
[00:02:13]  A tragedy that's now forgotten.
[00:02:15]  And a mystery that may or may not have been political, that may have been about sex.
[00:02:19]  Listen to Rorschach, Murder at City Hall on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:02:34]  Hey, everybody, I'm Robert Evans, and this is once again, Behind the Bastards, the show where we tell you everything you don't know about the very worst people in all of history.
[00:02:41]  And with me today in this special San Francisco City by the Bay episode of Behind the Bastards is Sean Riley, also known as Sean Baby.

=== The Stephen Seagal Tale (14:57) ===

[00:02:51]  It's a pleasure to be here.
[00:02:52]  I had to check up on your last name because I've only ever known you as Sean Baby.
[00:02:55]  It is Riley, yeah.
[00:02:56]  Sean Patrick Riley.
[00:02:57]  Gotcha.
[00:02:58]  Because, you know, my dad, it was his turn to name the kids and he really wanted an Irish name.
[00:03:03]  So he said triple the Irish.
[00:03:05]  Sean Riley is very Irish.
[00:03:08]  Adding a Patrick in there is too much.
[00:03:09]  Exceptionally so.
[00:03:10]  It's too much.
[00:03:11]  Well, we are talking about the opposite of an Irish person today, Stephen Seagal.
[00:03:16]  We have cans of wine.
[00:03:17]  Is that not normal?
[00:03:18]  Not normal.
[00:03:19]  Normally, I'm sober other than the natural haya Doritos gives me.
[00:03:23]  I'm going to be your first drunken Irish guest.
[00:03:25]  Drunken Irish, yeah.
[00:03:27]  We did a really drunk one at Unite the Right 2.
[00:03:29]  But anyway, we're just going to dive right in here to our story about Stephen Seagal.
[00:03:34]  Oh, God, I can't wait.
[00:03:35]  Now, if you all remember, Stephen Seagal, kind of mediocre, bordering on decent sometimes action stars of such films as Under Siege on Deadly Ground.
[00:03:43]  Yeah.
[00:03:44]  What?
[00:03:45]  On Deadly Ground's not so great.
[00:03:46]  No, no, no, no.
[00:03:47]  Under Siege is all right.
[00:03:48]  We're talking Hard to Kill.
[00:03:50]  Yeah, Hard to Kill.
[00:03:51]  Above the Law.
[00:03:52]  Above the Law.
[00:03:54]  Hard Target was a Jean-Claude Vandeth movie, which was better than all of these.
[00:03:57]  You know, we should talk about Jean-Claude Mandam for three hours.
[00:04:00]  Well, the thing about Steven Seagal, I suspect a lot of people listening to this might be surprised that Stephen Seagal has been picked as a subject for this.
[00:04:07]  And I want to ensure everyone up front, he's a monster.
[00:04:10]  And that's part of what's so important to talk about him today.
[00:04:12]  Honestly, you can tell from his movies.
[00:04:14]  Like, they seem to be made by a very insecure man.
[00:04:17]  Like, I don't know if you've watched a lot of his films, but he has never taken a shot.
[00:04:21]  Steven Seagal movies are just him, like, just walking through his enemies.
[00:04:24]  Oh, yeah, yeah.
[00:04:25]  No, he's not, it's not like a Bruce Willis thing where he's going to get shot and choked and beat up and stuff.
[00:04:29]  No, it's just, I'm the toughest guy that's ever been.
[00:04:32]  Yeah.
[00:04:32]  And even when he made the Glimmer Man and like Keenan Ivory Wayne's had all these funny lines, he's like, you know what?
[00:04:36]  I should have all these funny lines too.
[00:04:38]  And so, like, there's two funny men.
[00:04:40]  There's no straight guy in that movie, except Steven Seagal, you know, has no comic timing and he sort of sucks, but like, again, walks through everybody.
[00:04:47]  And you have a knife, Steven Seagal has nothing.
[00:04:50]  You're so dead.
[00:04:51]  Like, 10 seconds into that fight, you're dead.
[00:04:53]  Oh, yeah.
[00:04:53]  He's going to break your arm so the knife goes back towards you, and then he's going to stab you with your own knife.
[00:04:57]  That's the kind of action hero.
[00:04:58]  John Claude Mandam, he'd get stabbed like 75 times and make a heroic comeback.
[00:05:02]  Like, that's a story.
[00:05:03]  Yeah.
[00:05:04]  Yeah, that's an arc.
[00:05:04]  There's no arcs in Stephen Seagal movies.
[00:05:06]  The arc is just Stephen Seagal is a badass.
[00:05:09]  There are people opposed to him, and then they're dead.
[00:05:11]  Yes.
[00:05:11]  Yeah.
[00:05:13]  So, Stephen Frederick Seagal, or well, Stephen Frederick Siegel is the original pronunciation of his name.
[00:05:18]  So we'll get to that in a second.
[00:05:20]  Was born on April 10th, 1952.
[00:05:22]  On his personal website, stephenseagal.com.
[00:05:24]  He describes his early life thusly: A son of a math teacher and a medical technician, Stephen's humble childhood was underscored by a fascination with the martial arts and the blues.
[00:05:35]  Some would say that this is a strange combination, but ask any martial arts expert or blues legend, and they will both tell you that it is the spirit that reaches deep within your soul that drives the artistry.
[00:05:46]  You know where I learned the blues?
[00:05:48]  I learned it on an ancient mountaintop.
[00:05:50]  Pax in karate.
[00:05:52]  It's actually freaky how accurate that is to what he claims about his training in the blues.
[00:05:57]  I like how every stupid thing I make up, you're like, oh, yeah, that's actually Steven Seagal's.
[00:06:01]  You can't think this is dumber than it is.
[00:06:03]  And then it gets really sinister.
[00:06:05]  So that's the Stephen Seagal tale.
[00:06:07]  So according to The Guardian, Stephen began studying aikido when he was seven years old, and soon thereafter, quote, professed to his parents that he was not of this cosmic realm.
[00:06:17]  I learned from karate class that I came from space.
[00:06:22]  Yeah.
[00:06:23]  It's possible that this was because young Stephen Siegel was actually the reincarnation of a 17th century Buddhist llama.
[00:06:28]  But again, more on that later.
[00:06:31]  Probably the best source I've been able to find on Segal's early life was a November 1990 article in People magazine written at the height of his popularity.
[00:06:38]  The author actually got to interview his mom, Pat, and get some presumably accurate information about the star's early life.
[00:06:44]  The article notes that while Segal claimed that, quote, a lot of my youth was spent in Brooklyn, his mom says that he was born in Lansing, Michigan, and lived near Detroit until the family moved to Fullerton, California when he was five.
[00:06:54]  Here's a quote from that article: Although Seagal likes to paint himself as an urban street kid, whom the Fullerton youth saw as some kind of crazy gangster, Pat says her son was frail and suffered from asthma.
[00:07:04]  He was a party kid back then, she says, but he really thrived after the move from Michigan.
[00:07:11]  Good for him.
[00:07:12]  Yeah.
[00:07:12]  No, moving to Fullerton was great.
[00:07:15]  A weird thing to lie about.
[00:07:16]  Yeah, wanting people to think that you were a gangster at five.
[00:07:19]  I just, I wouldn't have bought it anyway, but like, you ask his mom, and his mom sells him out immediately.
[00:07:24]  He doesn't even say, like, mom, I told everyone I come from the karate streets.
[00:07:27]  You gotta do, you gotta cover for me.
[00:07:28]  She's like, I'm not doing that, sweetheart.
[00:07:31]  People magazine calls him telling them the truth.
[00:07:34]  You are fat and asthmatic, and you're not from space.
[00:07:38]  You know, you know, that kid in like elementary school who always has all these bold lies about his uncle, who is a Navy SEAL or whatever, like that.
[00:07:46]  Stephen Seagal is that, but never growing up or learning anything.
[00:07:50]  Yeah.
[00:07:50]  That's a great way to describe him.
[00:07:52]  So, Steven's mom says that he spent most of his youth playing rock music rather than the blues, but confirms that he was obsessed with Aikido from an early age.
[00:07:59]  So, that does seem to be true.
[00:08:00]  Well, it's a perfect sport for a seven-year-old.
[00:08:03]  Some shade on Aikido being thrown will not be the last.
[00:08:07]  Probably not.
[00:08:08]  She says, He worked with this nice old Japanese man at a dojo in Garden Grove.
[00:08:12]  He encouraged Stephen to go to Japan.
[00:08:14]  We don't know when Stephen first went to Japan because he is a habitual liar, but in sundry interviews, he's claimed to have first gone there at various years from between 1963 to 1973.
[00:08:24]  So, somewhere in that period.
[00:08:25]  Fullerton College enrollment records note that he was enrolled there from 1970 to 71, which suggests he would have been at least 19 before leaving.
[00:08:31]  This is meaningful because one of Steven's claims to fame is that he studied under Morihai Uyashiba, the founder of Aikido.
[00:08:38]  Since Mr. Uyashiba died in 1969, it's likely that Steven's lying about that too.
[00:08:44]  It's ridiculous.
[00:08:45]  Yes.
[00:08:48]  It won't stop being that.
[00:08:49]  So Siegel moved back to California in 1974, where he met Miyaku Fujitani, a second-degree black belt and daughter of an Aikido master from Osaka, Japan.
[00:08:57]  They met in LA at a dojo where she worked, and Stephen pursued her, quote, aggressively.
[00:09:02]  I don't like the sound of that.
[00:09:03]  No, no, it will be creepy later.
[00:09:05]  At this point, he was really good-looking in his youth.
[00:09:07]  Like, he is legitimately swole, like a handsome guy, like in his early 20s, and she was charmed by it.
[00:09:13]  She says he somehow lost all that by the time he made his first movie.
[00:09:16]  Oh, yeah.
[00:09:17]  No, he went downhill from like age 18 on.
[00:09:20]  It has been a steady slide.
[00:09:22]  To be honest, I think he might have peaked at five.
[00:09:26]  So Miyako eventually went home to Osaka, and Steven went with her.
[00:09:29]  So he went back to Japan a second time.
[00:09:31]  They got married there.
[00:09:32]  According to Robert Strickland, a former CIA consultant who knew Seagal in Japan, Seagal claimed to have married Miyako and moved there in order to, quote, avoid the draft.
[00:09:41]  Marrying a Japanese national would make him less likely to be sent back to the United States.
[00:09:45]  So he doesn't talk about that so much anymore now that he's Steven Seagal lawman.
[00:09:49]  But yeah, that's apparently why he moved to Japan in the first place, to avoid the draft.
[00:09:52]  Okay.
[00:09:53]  Yeah.
[00:09:53]  To this day, Seagal claims that he was the first and at the time only white man to open a dojo in Japan.
[00:09:58]  If true, that would be impressive.
[00:10:00]  Spy Magazine says that that's bullshit, however.
[00:10:03]  Spy Magazine.
[00:10:04]  Spy Magazine.
[00:10:05]  Spy Magazine is calling you on your bullshit.
[00:10:06]  I bet that's some serious bullshit.
[00:10:08]  I really like every article of Spy I read because they had a great one about Paul Manafort.
[00:10:12]  Like, this one, they spent six months studying Steven Seagal and like talking to people who knew him as a kid and like really getting into his backstory.
[00:10:19]  It's a fun journey into the youth of Steven Seagal.
[00:10:22]  Yeah.
[00:10:23]  Spy Magazine.
[00:10:24]  Spy Magazine, baby.
[00:10:26]  Quote, in fact, the dojo, which was founded by Fujitani's father, a noted Aikido black belt, was owned by his mother-in-law and managed by his wife, herself a black belt.
[00:10:33]  Seagal has also boasted of his courage in battling criminals.
[00:10:36]  Sometimes they are thugs of the Yakuza, the Japanese mafia, other times they are mere garden variety criminals.
[00:10:41]  I jumped right in front of their faces, Seagal told Movie Line.
[00:10:44]  I was a tenacious motherfucker man, and I was fearless.
[00:10:47]  Miyaku, his ex-wife, says Seagal was not exactly telling the truth about fighting the Yakuza.
[00:10:51]  Aw, man.
[00:10:52]  Quote, it is a lie.
[00:10:52]  He once chased a few drunks away from the dojo, but was never involved with a Yakuza.
[00:10:56]  So that's shit.
[00:10:58]  It could have been Yakuza.
[00:11:00]  You don't know.
[00:11:01]  You don't know, man.
[00:11:02]  Could have been drunk Yakuza.
[00:11:04]  Another major Seagal claim to fame is that he was the first Westerner to receive a black belt in Aikido.
[00:11:09]  His ex-wife doesn't challenge this exactly, but she did tell Spy, quote, the only reason Stephen was awarded the black belt was because the judge, who was famous for his laziness, fell asleep during Steven's presentation.
[00:11:19]  The judge just gave him the black belt.
[00:11:21]  He's like, where am I?
[00:11:23]  Who is this guy?
[00:11:24]  You know what?
[00:11:25]  Here's a black belt.
[00:11:26]  Normally, we only give these to nine-year-olds at the YMCA, but you seem like a good guy.
[00:11:30]  Like a yakuza fighting good guy.
[00:11:33]  This is a ridiculous story.
[00:11:35]  It's a really ridiculous story.
[00:11:36]  And like such dubious honors to lie about.
[00:11:38]  Like, I was the first black belt.
[00:11:39]  Like, okay, dude.
[00:11:41]  That is, black belt is one of those phrases that's like a shortcut to me just cutting, closing my ears to somebody.
[00:11:47]  Like, okay, you're bragging about being a black belt.
[00:11:49]  So, yeah.
[00:11:51]  Unless the question is, can you teach me Taekwondo?
[00:11:54]  In which case, absolutely drop your credentials.
[00:11:57]  Why not?
[00:11:58]  Yeah.
[00:11:59]  So, Stephen spent a sizable chunk of the late 70s teaching martial arts in Japan.
[00:12:03]  And according to him, this is when he first attracted the attention of the CIA.
[00:12:06]  Here's how Stephen put it in a 1988 interview with the LA Times.
[00:12:10]  These guys were my students.
[00:12:11]  They saw my abilities, both with martial arts and with the language.
[00:12:14]  You can say that I became an advisor to several CIA agents in the field.
[00:12:18]  Through my friends in the CIA, I met many powerful people and did special works and special favors.
[00:12:22]  Special works, special favors.
[00:12:24]  I had the largest kung fu trophy in all of Minnesota.
[00:12:28]  Stephen claims that during this period, well, Lansing, Michigan.
[00:12:33]  There too.
[00:12:34]  Stephen claims that during this period, he did security work for Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa, the Shah of Iran, and Egyptian president Anwar Sadat.
[00:12:42]  I'm going to guess none of those probably.
[00:12:45]  Probably not true.
[00:12:46]  Probably not.
[00:12:46]  I don't buy it.
[00:12:47]  Anwar Sadat.
[00:12:48]  I mean, clearly his security team wasn't great because he got assassinated.
[00:12:53]  So maybe Seagal was one of the things that I was doing.
[00:12:54]  Maybe that was because they tried Aikido.
[00:12:57]  They tried Aikido against the sniper.
[00:13:00]  It's not working.
[00:13:02]  Oh.
[00:13:03]  Sorry, Anwar.
[00:13:04]  That was unfair.
[00:13:06]  For a time, it was hard to refute or confirm Stephen's claims of badassery.
[00:13:09]  His ex-wife, Miyako, did admit that he would regularly go away for long chunks of time during their 10 years together, saying, My children don't have any memory of him as a father.
[00:13:17]  Oh my God.
[00:13:19]  So he must be a ninja or something.
[00:13:22]  The first thing to pierce the illusion of Steven Seagal, actual action hero, turned movie action hero, was that wonderful 1993 spy article, Man of Dishonor, by John Connolly.
[00:13:30]  Now, like I said, this article was the result of a six-month investigation, and it was the first place to point out that Stephen Seagal's last name was originally pronounced Segal, not Seagal.
[00:13:39]  Are you going to guess how that came about?
[00:13:41]  I'm going to say it definitely had to do with ninjas.
[00:13:45]  He had to have been defending some kind of a dojo.
[00:13:48]  No, this is actually the only believable story he's ever told.
[00:13:50]  He apparently went to a Chagal exhibit at a museum and liked the pronunciation.
[00:13:55]  Never would have guessed that.
[00:13:56]  Never would have guessed that.
[00:13:57]  I believe that's true.
[00:13:58]  No one would lie about that.
[00:14:00]  No, Atlanta.
[00:14:03]  So when Segal came back from Japan in 1980, he opened two dojos, one of them in Taos, New Mexico, and one of them in Los Angeles.
[00:14:09]  Taos is an odd choice, kind of a small town to open an Aikido dojo.
[00:14:13]  I'm not familiar, but it must be a great Aikido town.
[00:14:16]  It's a beautiful town.
[00:14:17]  I didn't notice any Aikido going on there, so I think it failed to take on.
[00:14:21]  Miyako says that her then-husband told her that he wanted to go to the U.S. to either get rich in Hollywood or by running restaurants, which he doesn't seem to have ever done.
[00:14:29]  She supported him in his dreams, though, and spent years saving up money and living like a pauper to fund his trip back and his attempts to start a business.
[00:14:35]  So that's sweet.
[00:14:36]  That is sweet.
[00:14:37]  I'm going to guess he does right by her.
[00:14:39]  Let's read the next paragraph.
[00:14:41]  Before he left her, he told her, quote, I will always do the right thing.
[00:14:44]  I will never betray you.
[00:14:46]  Then he took her savings, went to America, and married another woman, Adrian LaRusa, in 1984.
[00:14:51]  Shortly thereafter, he met another woman, actress Kelly LeBrock.
[00:14:54]  According to Joe Hyams, then Warner Brothers VP of Publicity, Seagal saw LeBrock in the film Woman in Red and said, She is my destiny.
[00:15:01]  So Hyams and Segal wound up having dinner with Jerry Pam, LeBrock's former agent, and during dinner, Seagal asked Pam what the best way to get publicity was.
[00:15:08]  Pam told him it was to be seen in the company of famous people.
[00:15:11]  So Segal asked him if he could help him meet Kelly LeBrock.
[00:15:14]  Pam told Segal that Kelly was currently in Japan.
[00:15:16]  So Steven Seagal, who was still married to Miyako and illegally married to a second woman, flew to his first wife's home country to try to pick up a third woman because she was famous.
[00:15:27]  Which is...
[00:15:28]  That's how all great love stories start.
[00:15:31]  It's almost a work of art as far as being a shitty person is.
[00:15:34]  It's like the being a garbage husband version of the Mona Lisa.
[00:15:38]  If you're in a writer's room and you're like, okay, we got to have this piece of shit, do some stuff to let the viewers know he's a piece of shit.
[00:15:43]  You'd be like, dude, pump the brakes on all this.
[00:15:45]  This is way too much.
[00:15:47]  And it is way too much.
[00:15:50]  And yet, that does seem to be what happened.
[00:15:52]  So, he did meet Kelly LeBrock in Japan, and within two weeks, they were lovers.
[00:15:55]  Within a year, she was pregnant.
[00:15:57]  By this time, Adrian Larusa had decided to file for an annulment, so that's good.
[00:16:01]  Seagal granted her an annulment.
[00:16:03]  She didn't seek any financial support, and in an interview later, stated that, in fact, quote, I gave him money for months afterward just to get him out of my life.
[00:16:11]  I can't say very much because I'm afraid of Steven and his friends.
[00:16:14]  We'll talk about who Stephen and his friends could be here, but yeah.
[00:16:17]  Yeah, it's sad for this girl.
[00:16:19]  Like, a lot of women left for Kelly LeBrock.
[00:16:22]  I mean, there's not a whole lot of shame in that.
[00:16:23]  Like, that's got to be most women's fears.
[00:16:25]  Kelly LeBrock is, yeah.
[00:16:27]  But, like, tend to still pay the guy money.
[00:16:30]  Yeah.
[00:16:30]  And he's also got another wife.
[00:16:32]  Oh.
[00:16:33]  Feels so bad.
[00:16:34]  Yeah.
[00:16:34]  I bet she didn't even get those karate trophies.
[00:16:36]  No, I guess not.
[00:16:38]  Miyaku divorced Segal right around this time.
[00:16:40]  Keen LeBrock headed back to Hollywood in her Beverly Hills mansion.
[00:16:43]  Now, he wasn't a movie star at this point.
[00:16:44]  He was just sort of living with a movie star as part of his quest to get famous.
[00:16:48]  His Taos dojo failed in the late 1980s, leaving him desperate for cash, in the words of Robert Strickland.
[00:16:53]  According to Strickland, Stephen arranged for a mercenary he knew to steal LeBrock's Porsche Carrera for the insurance money.
[00:16:58]  Mercenary he knew.
[00:16:59]  A mercenary he knew.
[00:17:00]  He knows a lot of mercenaries.
[00:17:02]  In interviews at the time, Seagal claimed to be actively searching for the monster who'd stolen his wife's car.
[00:17:08]  Jesus Christ.
[00:17:12]  It's pretty remarkable, right?
[00:17:13]  It just keeps going.
[00:17:15]  I love it.
[00:17:15]  I went in this hating Steven Seagal.
[00:17:17]  Now I'm like, no, okay, he's coming around.
[00:17:20]  Now you're coming around.
[00:17:21]  This really wiped the stain of hard to kill out.
[00:17:24]  Yeah.
[00:17:25]  Money problems were common with pre-movies Steven Seagal.
[00:17:28]  Multiple sources who knew him for years alleged to spy that he seemed to have mysterious backers who would regularly help him out of his pickles and presumably helped him start his dojos in the first place.
[00:17:37]  Two of his friends recalled a time when he left for around a week and returned with a new car and, quote, a stack of $100 bills six inches high.
[00:17:45]  Yeah.
[00:17:46]  I bet he aikidoed someone for money.
[00:17:48]  Well, that is what he claimed.

=== Luck and Hard to Kill (06:10) ===

[00:17:49]  Segal bragged that he'd gotten the money for pulling off a hit for the mob.
[00:17:52]  A hit?
[00:17:52]  Like, he confessed to murder to his friends.
[00:17:55]  No, his friends later told Spy Magazine.
[00:17:58]  Spoiler alert about Segal, none of his friends stay his friends.
[00:18:01]  It seems that way.
[00:18:03]  Maybe because he's a giant piece of shit.
[00:18:05]  That might have an effect.
[00:18:07]  Whether or not he actually carried out a hit for the mob, Segal spent years telling lies like this in order to craft an aura of danger.
[00:18:14]  Spy reported in 1993 that Segal packs a 45 in his belt, not just loaded, but cocked and chambered.
[00:18:19]  Some might think this tough, others merely cretiness, since he's just as likely to shoot himself in the testicles as to drop an attacker.
[00:18:26]  Now, in fairness to Segal, cocked and chambered or cocked and locked is a common way to carry a single action Colt 1911, which sounds like the gun he was carrying.
[00:18:33]  Okay.
[00:18:34]  In more fairness and in more accuracy, if you carry a cocked and loaded pistol of any kind in a belt without a holster, you are asking to get yourself shot in the crotch.
[00:18:43]  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:18:44]  It's dumb.
[00:18:44]  It's a dumb thing to do.
[00:18:45]  I'm wearing one right now.
[00:18:47]  And I mean, I've got shot in the dick four times today.
[00:18:49]  Five times?
[00:18:50]  You lose track after a few.
[00:18:52]  You know, but you save a lot of money on birth control.
[00:18:54]  That's a great point.
[00:18:55]  Male birth control is here, and it is called Dangerously Carrying a Loaded Handgun in Your Pants.
[00:19:00]  So Steven's supposed history as a badass was not invented out of whole cloth.
[00:19:04]  Throughout his life, he's had numerous friendships with former CIA operatives, mercenaries, and soldiers.
[00:19:08]  Spy suggests that this is because he basically just steals these people's stories and relates them during interviews to seem like a badass.
[00:19:15]  Quote, on one occasion, one of Segal's students, a former Green Beret, was talking about his time in Laos.
[00:19:20]  Later, Seagal told the same story to another group, only now he had become the protagonist.
[00:19:24]  Unfortunately, the Green Beret was in this group.
[00:19:26]  Makita remembers the soldier saying, Hey, idiot, that's my story.
[00:19:30]  Busted.
[00:19:31]  Yeah.
[00:19:32]  And that man died after three quick chops of Aikido.
[00:19:36]  Speaking of Aikido, you know what flips and throws hunger.
[00:19:44]  This is a Doritos blood.
[00:19:45]  But it actually is time for us to have a normal ad break.
[00:19:48]  Imagine that I made a comment that tied Aikido in to whatever ads come up next.
[00:19:58]  There's two golden rules that any man should live by.
[00:20:02]  Rule one, never mess with a country girl.
[00:20:06]  You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes.
[00:20:08]  And rule two, never mess with her friends either.
[00:20:12]  We always say, trust your girlfriends.
[00:20:16]  I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of The Girlfriends.
[00:20:19]  Oh my God, this is the same man.
[00:20:22]  A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist.
[00:20:26]  I felt like I got hit by a truck.
[00:20:28]  I thought, how could this happen to me?
[00:20:30]  The cops didn't seem to care.
[00:20:32]  So they take matters into their own hands.
[00:20:35]  I said, oh, hell no.
[00:20:37]  I vowed I will be his last target.
[00:20:39]  He's going to get what he deserves.
[00:20:44]  Listen to the girlfriends.
[00:20:45]  Trust me, babe.
[00:20:46]  On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:20:56]  What's up, everyone?
[00:20:57]  I'm Ago Monument.
[00:20:58]  My next guest, you know, from Step Brothers, Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and the Big Money Players Network, it's Will Farrell.
[00:21:09]  My dad gave me the best advice ever.
[00:21:12]  I went and had lunch with him one day, and I was like, and dad, I think I want to really give this a shot.
[00:21:17]  I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings.
[00:21:20]  I'm working my way up through and I know it's a place they come.
[00:21:22]  Look for up and coming talent.
[00:21:24]  He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet.
[00:21:29]  Yeah.
[00:21:29]  He goes, but there's so much luck involved.
[00:21:32]  And he's like, just give it a shot.
[00:21:34]  He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit.
[00:21:42]  If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
[00:21:44]  It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hang in there.
[00:21:52]  Yeah, it would not be.
[00:21:54]  Right, it wouldn't be that.
[00:21:55]  There's a lot of luck.
[00:21:56]  Listen to Thanks Dad on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:22:05]  In 2023, former bachelor star Clayton Eckard found himself at the center of a paternity scandal.
[00:22:11]  The family court hearings that followed revealed glaring inconsistencies in her story.
[00:22:16]  This began a years-long court battle to prove the truth.
[00:22:20]  You doctored this particular test twice, Ms. Owens, correct?
[00:22:23]  I doctored the test once.
[00:22:25]  It took an army of internet detectives to crack the case.
[00:22:28]  I wanted people to be able to see what their tax dollars were being used for.
[00:22:32]  Sunlight's the greatest disinfectant.
[00:22:35]  They would uncover a disturbing pattern.
[00:22:37]  Two more men who'd been through the same thing.
[00:22:39]  Greg Goespie and Michael Maracini.
[00:22:41]  My mind was blown.
[00:22:43]  I'm Stephanie Young.
[00:22:45]  This is Love Trap.
[00:22:47]  Laura, Scottsdale Police.
[00:22:49]  As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences.
[00:22:53]  Ladies and gentlemen, breaking news at Americopa County as Laura Owens has been indicted on fraud charges.
[00:23:00]  This isn't over until justice is served in Arizona.
[00:23:04]  Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:23:14]  10-10 shots fired, City Hall building.
[00:23:17]  A silver .40 caliber handgun was recovered at the scene.
[00:23:21]  From iHeart Podcasts and Best Case Studios, this is Rorschach, murder at City Hall.
[00:23:27]  How could this have happened in City Hall?
[00:23:29]  Somebody tell me that!
[00:23:30]  Jeffrey Hood did.
[00:23:32]  July 2003, Councilman James E. Davis arrives at New York City Hall with a guest.
[00:23:38]  Both men are carrying concealed weapons.
[00:23:41]  And in less than 30 minutes, both of them will be dead.
[00:23:50]  Everybody in the chamber ducks.
[00:23:52]  A shocking public murder.
[00:23:54]  I scream, get down, get down.
[00:23:56]  Those are shots.
[00:23:57]  Those are shots.
[00:23:58]  Get down.
[00:23:58]  A charismatic politician.

=== Councilman Davis Murder Mystery (14:40) ===

[00:23:59]  You know, he just bent the rules all the time.
[00:24:02]  I still have a weapon.
[00:24:04]  And I could shoot you.
[00:24:07]  And an outsider with a secret.
[00:24:09]  He alleged you.
[00:24:12]  That may or may not have been political.
[00:24:14]  That may have been about sex.
[00:24:16]  Listen to Rorschach, murder at City Hall on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:24:28]  We're back and we're talking about Steven Seagal.
[00:24:31]  I'm going to read another quote from his website.
[00:24:33]  It gets into how he describes the start of his film career.
[00:24:36]  Most of us know Steven for his roles as an action hero with an acting career that was launched at his Los Angeles dojo in the late 80s, where he taught martial arts to the likes of Sean Connery, James Coburn, and the famed talent agent, Michael Ovitz.
[00:24:50]  Fun fact, he broke Sean Connery's wrist.
[00:24:52]  Oh.
[00:24:52]  Yeah, when they were sparring.
[00:24:53]  Not too bad.
[00:24:54]  Well, I mean, yeah, I guess.
[00:24:56]  I mean, it's a sign of clumsiness.
[00:24:58]  You probably shouldn't break a student's wrist.
[00:25:00]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:25:01]  But, I mean, at least he didn't shoot his dick off.
[00:25:03]  He didn't shoot Sean Connery's dick off, which I'm sure a lot of people are grateful for.
[00:25:07]  So that's an eight out of 10 day for Steven Seagal already.
[00:25:10]  This is a better day than most.
[00:25:12]  Quote, it was Mr. Ovitz who paved the way for Steven to co-write and star in his first and hugely successful action film, Above the Law, in 1988.
[00:25:19]  Yeah, it's a good movie.
[00:25:20]  It's a good movie.
[00:25:21]  It's a good movie.
[00:25:21]  The story for how he came to be in it is a little bit more complicated than Steven Seagal's website gives and involves a lot more of the mob.
[00:25:29]  Of course it does.
[00:25:30]  Would you have guessed before this that Stephen Seagal's career was bankrolled at the start by the mafia?
[00:25:35]  Yes.
[00:25:35]  Or the Yakuza.
[00:25:36]  Or the Yakuza.
[00:25:37]  I guess, yeah, the Japanese mafia.
[00:25:39]  Whatever.
[00:25:39]  Yeah.
[00:25:39]  No, the American mafia.
[00:25:40]  No good has ever led to Steven Seagal doing anything.
[00:25:43]  No, I would say that's probably fair.
[00:25:46]  So let's hear about how we got into Above the Law.
[00:25:48]  We're talking above the law.
[00:25:49]  We're talking above the law.
[00:25:50]  Yes, we are definitely talking about the law.
[00:25:52]  I'll take it to the bank.
[00:25:54]  The blood bank.
[00:25:55]  Wait, is that a real line thing?
[00:25:56]  Yeah, that's from the movie.
[00:25:57]  Fantastic.
[00:25:59]  Okay.
[00:26:00]  It is almost certainly true that Michael Ovitz arranged for Seagal to meet with a group of Warner Brothers executives to show off his Aikido skills.
[00:26:06]  He was apparently quite impressive.
[00:26:08]  Warner Brothers president Terry Simmel recalled, with just a toss of his hand, Stephen would send the other guy flying.
[00:26:13]  It was pretty astounding.
[00:26:14]  Mark Makita participated in this demonstration.
[00:26:16]  He ran a dojo in Los Angeles and basically agreed to be tossed around with the help of his friend.
[00:26:20]  He said later in an interview, quote, I still can't believe those guys at Warner's didn't know it was a rehearsed demonstration, which shouldn't have fooled anybody.
[00:26:27]  Seagal could not toss me or anyone else in the air unless we were in on it.
[00:26:31]  If I can interrupt here for a second.
[00:26:32]  Sure.
[00:26:33]  If you watch an Aikido demonstration, it usually is one dude in the center of like a crowd and they run at him one at a time and he'll like do a little thing with their wrist and they'll go flying and do a front flip.
[00:26:42]  It's clearly bullshit.
[00:26:44]  Yeah.
[00:26:44]  And we've now had you know three decades of MMA in our country and many more in Brazil and Japan.
[00:26:50]  And no one has ever gone in there as a Nikito expert and said like, this is me.
[00:26:55]  I'm going to Akido a guy.
[00:26:56]  And they come in and he flips them all around.
[00:26:58]  It just simply doesn't work.
[00:27:00]  There's no record of Aikido working on someone who doesn't want Aikido to work on them.
[00:27:04]  Yeah, the way I've heard it described, and you know, in case our listeners don't know who you are, you have a lot of experience in this world.
[00:27:11]  I wrote a few UFC games.
[00:27:13]  I, you know, big fan of the sport, trained in jiu-jitsu and Muay Thai.
[00:27:17]  You know, I like this stuff a lot.
[00:27:19]  I think about this stuff a lot.
[00:27:21]  And like everyone else in 1993, when UFC first came, I kept expecting some magic Tai Chi guy to come down out of the mountains or an Aikido guy to come out or a Jeet Kune Do guy to lock everybody's hands up and beat them with combos.
[00:27:34]  And it just, it never happens.
[00:27:35]  Like these traditional martial arts have sort of been proven bullshit.
[00:27:40]  They're great ways to stay fit and have fun with your family.
[00:27:43]  But that doesn't explain the size of Steven Seagal.
[00:27:46]  No.
[00:27:47]  I'm not even sure that's true.
[00:27:50]  I think it's a good place to leave a kid for an hour.
[00:27:53]  Yeah, absolutely.
[00:27:54]  Anyway, my point is, stories of Aikido devastating Yakuza members, it's unlikely.
[00:27:59]  Yeah.
[00:27:59]  And if you grab a guy by the wrist and he does a front flip, he probably didn't mind doing that front flip so much.
[00:28:05]  He's helping you out.
[00:28:06]  It was a consensual flip.
[00:28:07]  Right.
[00:28:07]  Yeah, as opposed to the non-consensual flips, which I think are more useful in a fight.
[00:28:11]  I'm not an expert.
[00:28:12]  I would say so.
[00:28:13]  Okay, all this, you know, Steven Seagal's a big fraudulent sort of exhibition where he tossed around his friend was enough to convince the WB executives to drop $50,000 on a screen test, which shows you what money means in Hollywood.
[00:28:26]  The screen test was apparently an absolute disaster.
[00:28:29]  Seagal had no charisma, talked like whispering ghosts.
[00:28:34]  That sounds like him, yeah.
[00:28:35]  Yeah, that sounds like Stephen Seagal.
[00:28:36]  That's how you would describe him in like dating profile.
[00:28:39]  Yeah.
[00:28:39]  I'm a whispering ghost.
[00:28:41]  I have no charisma.
[00:28:43]  My head stores one triangle.
[00:28:46]  He does have a weird shakehead.
[00:28:50]  Ovitz appeared to really love Steven, though, because he continued to vouch for this kid that he just met.
[00:28:55]  So Warner Brothers was like, this kid's no good.
[00:28:57]  We're not going to put him in a movie.
[00:28:58]  We already wasted 50 grand on him.
[00:29:00]  So Ovitz's last job before starting to work with Seagal is he had done like the casting for Lethal Weapon, which obviously gigantic hit.
[00:29:06]  So they wanted him back for a lethal weapon too.
[00:29:08]  Clearly he's good at casting.
[00:29:10]  And he agreed not to take a pay bump, which you're guaranteed for a job like that.
[00:29:14]  A sizable paid bump if you're working in the sequel.
[00:29:17]  He agreed to work for what he'd gotten paid to make the first one if they would give Stephen Seagal a job.
[00:29:23]  Okay.
[00:29:23]  So Michael Ovitz really fucking believed in Steven Seagal.
[00:29:27]  Or at least that's one possibility here.
[00:29:31]  It's possible that Ovitz just saw something in Steven Seagal.
[00:29:34]  It's also possible that Seagal's career was bankrolled by the mafia from day one and that Ovitz was maybe bribed.
[00:29:40]  I don't know.
[00:29:40]  I've never heard any allegations that Ovitz was bribed.
[00:29:43]  Maybe he just loved him.
[00:29:44]  But there are credible allegations that Steven Seagal started his career in the mafia.
[00:29:48]  People do get like a sort of a cult-like love for their martial arts instructor.
[00:29:52]  Like if you go in cold as an adult, especially, and like start taking like karate classes, you'd be like, oh my God, my karate instructor can levitate.
[00:29:59]  You don't even know.
[00:30:00]  With one finger, he can knock you out.
[00:30:01]  And like that's just sort of becomes normal.
[00:30:04]  He's just staying at this strip mall because he's too enlightened to work somewhere better.
[00:30:07]  Right, so this guy might have just thought that Stephen Seagal truly was magical.
[00:30:10]  Then that is entirely possible.
[00:30:12]  I'm glad you brought that up because I wouldn't have thought about that.
[00:30:15]  We do know that in 1990, Steven Seagal formed Steamroller Entertainment with a guy named Julius Nasso.
[00:30:20]  Now, Nasso's main business was providing pharmaceuticals to merchant boats, but he broken pharmaceuticals to merchant boats.
[00:30:28]  Yeah, he sold drugs to sailors.
[00:30:29]  Yeah, I love it.
[00:30:32]  In 1984, though, Julius got into filmmaking, and he claimed to spy that he'd been introduced to Seagal via Tony Danza.
[00:30:39]  Danza denied this.
[00:30:41]  Danza knew who Nassos was and basically said, he's no fucking friend of mine.
[00:30:44]  Wow.
[00:30:45]  Don't talk to me about that guy.
[00:30:47]  So Seagal told people that Nasso and he were related, although neither he or NASO ever gave any detail as to how.
[00:30:53]  Stephen's mother denied any relation between them.
[00:30:55]  Whatever the truth, Julius' uncle, also named Julius Nasso, owned a concrete company in New York.
[00:31:00]  In 1985, it was revealed that Nasso's concrete firm had participated in a bid-rigging scheme with Anthony Salerno, the original Fat Tony.
[00:31:08]  That's where the name comes from on The Simpsons.
[00:31:10]  Fat Tony Salerno.
[00:31:12]  Several employees testified against him.
[00:31:14]  Nasso the Younger and Seagal were good friends for about a decade.
[00:31:17]  NASA was the best man at Seagal's second wedding.
[00:31:19]  He was also the co-owner of Seagal's $560,000 Staten Island home.
[00:31:23]  It's worth noting that several other mob guys connected to the Gambino family wound up having roles in Seagal's early films.
[00:31:29]  Quote from that spy article.
[00:31:31]  One of the technical advisors on the set of Under Siege was Robert Booth Nichols, who has been identified in federal wiretaps as associating with the Gambino crime family.
[00:31:39]  A retired Navy captain named Joseph John, who was a technical advisor in the same movie responsible for securing the use of the USS Missouri, described Seagal and Nichols as asshole buddies, which I think means butt buddies and not both assholes who are friends, but I can't tell.
[00:31:52]  Yeah, I've never heard the term.
[00:31:53]  It doesn't mean they have sex with each other.
[00:31:56]  It might.
[00:31:56]  I don't know.
[00:31:57]  I don't know.
[00:31:58]  This guy.
[00:31:58]  You just have martinis and get all loud together.
[00:32:00]  Like, oh, asshole buddies.
[00:32:03]  So another performer in a Seagal film, Jerry Ciari, is the stepson of a mafia capo, Robert Zimbardi, who reportedly got Seagal to give his stepson a part in Out for Justice.
[00:32:11]  Seagal hired Ciari, who has ambitions to be a movie star, to play a bookmaker.
[00:32:15]  In a key scene, Seagal beats up a number of bad guys in the bar.
[00:32:17]  The one varmint who never takes a punch is Ciari.
[00:32:20]  No way Seagal was going to take a swing at Bobby Zam's kid, Spy was told.
[00:32:24]  That is suspicious.
[00:32:25]  If you're a bad guy in a Steven Seagal's scene and you didn't get punched in the face, the mob involved.
[00:32:31]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:32:32]  Even weirder than all this is the fact that during a 1993 deposition for a civil assault case, which I could not find more detail about, but I don't think he was the one being charged, but he was deposed in a civil assault case.
[00:32:42]  Seagal, under oath, claimed not to know how much money he had, what he actually owned, or what he was paid per movie.
[00:32:48]  His attorney explained that Seagal did not have an individual contract with Warner Brothers.
[00:32:52]  Instead, Warner Brothers had a contract with Seagal and his friend Nasso.
[00:32:56]  At times, some of the money paid to Seagal went directly to NASA.
[00:33:00]  That is a little weird.
[00:33:01]  That's a little weird.
[00:33:02]  Your movie deal is with another guy who has mob ties and he gets some of your money.
[00:33:06]  Yeah.
[00:33:07]  And no one seems to know quite why.
[00:33:08]  Is he his agent?
[00:33:10]  No.
[00:33:11]  No.
[00:33:11]  They owned a production company together.
[00:33:13]  His asshole buddy.
[00:33:14]  His asshole buddy.
[00:33:15]  He was his asshole buddy.
[00:33:16]  Yeah.
[00:33:16]  So in the early 1990s, Julius Nasso started walking around LA with a card saying he was a Warner Brothers producer.
[00:33:22]  So it seems like Warner Brothers might have given him some title on some, but it's also like they refused to talk about this at all.
[00:33:29]  So who knows what happened?
[00:33:31]  Spy interviewed him and he claimed that he would be handling foreign distribution for the movie, I think, for Under Siege.
[00:33:36]  Great movie.
[00:33:36]  Yeah, great movie.
[00:33:37]  The interviewers at SPY thought this was odd since WB at the time had the largest foreign distribution system of any Hollywood studio.
[00:33:43]  Warner Brothers refused to comment, so Nasso explained, because of my experience in the drug business, I had contacts all over the world.
[00:33:49]  Which is why he was the right man to help sell this movie overseas.
[00:33:52]  Of course.
[00:33:52]  Yeah.
[00:33:53]  Oh, boy.
[00:33:54]  Look at those high sailors, man.
[00:33:56]  They really like Under Siege.
[00:33:57]  Hey, I've always said, if you can get sailors high, you can sell movies overseas.
[00:34:01]  Yeah, especially about a Navy chef that kicks ass.
[00:34:04]  Yeah.
[00:34:07]  Okay, so at the time, in 1993, this is about all that SPY knew.
[00:34:10]  But in the decades since 1993, a lot more information has come out.
[00:34:13]  It turns out that NASA was an associate of the Gambino crime family, and he loaned Segal at least half a million dollars of their money.
[00:34:19]  Segal claims it was for taxes.
[00:34:20]  When Segal and NASA had a falling out around 2000, Segal was forced into a meeting with several mobsters where they demanded $150,000 per movie he'd made.
[00:34:29]  So, here's a quote from a 2002 New York Times article on the matter.
[00:34:34]  Stephen Seagal, the action film star cited as a mafia extortion target, has told investigators that after he stopped working with his longtime producer, he was ordered into a car in Brooklyn last year and shuttled to a landmark restaurant where he was threatened by mobsters, according to officials and lawyers involved in the case.
[00:34:47]  He was so intimidated, he recounted, that he agreed to turn over $700,000, although investigators are still trying to trace the money.
[00:34:53]  Do you know what I would do if I was in a car with all those mobsters and I knew Aikido?
[00:34:57]  Fucking Aikido, everybody.
[00:34:59]  In the car?
[00:35:00]  You can't throw someone in a car, Sean.
[00:35:01]  No, I think it'd work really well in those close quarters.
[00:35:04]  They try to punch and you're like, snap, slap, slap, karate, chop.
[00:35:07]  Fucking boat.
[00:35:08]  Movies have taught me that that's.
[00:35:09]  Just liquid human all over the car.
[00:35:11]  Just bloody pieces of money.
[00:35:13]  Drive that shit into the river.
[00:35:14]  Well, my favorite.
[00:35:20]  That whole time.
[00:35:21]  Fucking Aikido.
[00:35:23]  You should direct a Steven Seagal movie.
[00:35:26]  My favorite thing about this is that some of these guys who were doing the meeting were tapped, and so the FBI listened into them laughing about intimidating Steven Seagal.
[00:35:34]  And the thing they thought was funniest is that he had a gun, but was too scared to do anything.
[00:35:39]  Oh, Steven.
[00:35:40]  They're just laughing at him.
[00:35:41]  They just think it's hilarious how sad he was.
[00:35:44]  The thing about Steven Seagal is you really get the idea he buys into his own bullshit.
[00:35:47]  Yeah.
[00:35:48]  And after something like that, he's got to rethink three decades worth of that bullshit he's living under.
[00:35:53]  Like, am I really a pussy?
[00:35:54]  I'm going to correct you there.
[00:35:55]  I don't think Steven Seagal has ever rethought anything in his life.
[00:35:58]  He's out of that situation.
[00:35:59]  Like, oh, yeah, they're lucky I didn't do my Aikido or pull my gun.
[00:36:02]  Takes a real badass to get out of a situation like that with only $700,000 in spending.
[00:36:07]  No one expects me to pee my pants for eight straight minutes.
[00:36:13]  Oh.
[00:36:14]  So Steven Seagal in court claimed that these guys were basically just his business partners and then the mob extorted him.
[00:36:20]  It sure seems like what really happened is that the Gambino crime family through NASA invested in Segal in the hopes that they could cash in on a long and successful action movie career, which the joke was a little bit off run there.
[00:36:30]  Caught him a little too late there.
[00:36:32]  Whatever the truth behind his start, 1988, Seagal became the hottest new action hero on the block and was on his way to becoming a massive star.
[00:36:39]  Gary Goldman, an ex-mercenary, was one of the badasses Segal liked to surround himself with.
[00:36:43]  For a while, they were working on a script together, and Seagal had Goldman vouch for him in interviews.
[00:36:48]  In one interview with the LA Times, Goldman claimed that Seagal had gone with him, quote, on several missions and that he has a high level of skill that you don't just pick up reading fantasy magazines.
[00:36:57]  I don't think anyone would question his capabilities.
[00:37:01]  A lot of mercenaries, they take dudes who just read fantasy magazines with them, and they're like, damn it, another one of these fantasy magazines.
[00:37:07]  Guys, I really should have learned not to bring random people on my mercenary missions.
[00:37:12]  Well, we've been getting magic spells on this mission.
[00:37:15]  No, this is a real life.
[00:37:17]  Not a fantasy magazine.
[00:37:18]  Well, my only expertise is fantasy magazines.
[00:37:21]  I've cut out these little lightning bolt things.
[00:37:23]  Damn it, we got to get that Steven Seagal guy back.
[00:37:26]  He knows what he's doing.
[00:37:27]  Well, okay, so.
[00:37:29]  So stupid.
[00:37:30]  Full disclosure.
[00:37:31]  About a year after this point, Seagal and Goldman had a falling out, and Seagal backed out of their plan to write a movie.
[00:37:37]  So Goldman wrote a letter to the same journalist at the LA Times he'd lied to a year earlier and recanted.
[00:37:42]  He said, quote, the plain truth of the matter is that Seagal was and is a gutless coward who was trying to convert the heroic deeds of those brave men into a personal history for himself.
[00:37:51]  Damn.
[00:37:51]  Yeah.
[00:37:52]  Among other things, Goldman's letter claimed that in 1988, he and Seagal had gone treasure hunting near Barbados with Randy Widner.
[00:37:59]  While they were all hanging out on a boat, Seagal bragged repeatedly about his time as a Navy SEAL.
[00:38:04]  Which, do I even need to say that he was never a Navy SEAL?
[00:38:07]  He wasn't a Navy SEAL.
[00:38:08]  Absolutely not.
[00:38:10]  At one point, Stephen and Goldman had to wade into the water to deliver equipment to a Zodiac boat, which is like a real badass cool thing that like a real cool person might have been able to handle.
[00:38:20]  Steven Seagal was not.
[00:38:21]  Here's how Goldman said it went: Quote, the surf was unbelievable, really tough.
[00:38:25]  He started screaming and panicking and was sure he was going to die and all that crap.
[00:38:28]  Goldman claims that Randy Widner had to pull Seagal up by his hair while Goldman, quote, pushed his ass onto the boat with my shoulder.
[00:38:36]  Well, the one thing I know about Navy SEALs is when you get them like in rough water, they just freak the fuck out.

=== Navy SEAL Lies Exposed (04:28) ===

[00:38:40]  Oh, yeah.
[00:38:41]  No, their training is to panic when water is rough.
[00:38:44]  That's what makes it.
[00:38:44]  You go down to beautiful Corona Beach.
[00:38:46]  But it's like lovely and you can watch the planes land, but there's the sound of all those Navy SEALs screaming.
[00:38:53]  Just panicking.
[00:38:55]  They're like, you're doing good work, Seals.
[00:38:57]  Panic a little harder.
[00:38:59]  You'll be the best.
[00:39:00]  You really want to lose your mind?
[00:39:01]  This young recruit, Steven Segal.
[00:39:05]  The best we ever saw.
[00:39:06]  We're going to send you to the desert, so we want you scared of the sea.
[00:39:14]  I love that they have special circumstances just to say, oh, you're a Navy SEAL?
[00:39:17]  Well, here's the water.
[00:39:18]  And he just fucks it up so badly.
[00:39:20]  It doesn't even end there.
[00:39:22]  Because later it became clear that Seagal could not read a compass or a map.
[00:39:26]  Both things the Navy SEALs sort of stressed.
[00:39:29]  Kind of important.
[00:39:31]  In his letter to the LA Times, Goldman said Seagal, quote, would surely die of starvation if he was given a compass and a map that led to a restaurant five miles away.
[00:39:41]  That's some good, like, badass way to call someone a pussy.
[00:39:43]  Yeah, that's some solid mercenary ragging.
[00:39:46]  Yeah.
[00:39:48]  Goldman's smack talking prompted Seagal to take action.
[00:39:51]  He called up his friend Robert Strickland, the former contract employee with the CIA, and had him meet on the set of a movie he was filming, I think on Deadly Ground.
[00:39:59]  As they sat in his trailer.
[00:40:02]  As they sat in his trailer, Seagal handed Strickland a dossier he'd had compiled on Goldman and then showed him a briefcase with $50,000 in it.
[00:40:09]  According to Strickland, he said this, I'd like you to do me a favor.
[00:40:12]  I'd like you to kill Gary Goldman.
[00:40:15]  Now, I should note, Mr. Seagal was 38 years old at this point and in the prime of his career.
[00:40:20]  Robert Strickland was a 68-year-old retiree who was a good foot shorter than him.
[00:40:25]  Strickland claims his first response was, You're crazy, to which Seagal responded, If you won't do it, get someone who will.
[00:40:31]  Pay him what you want and keep the rest.
[00:40:34]  This would not be the last time Steven Seagal tried to pay to have somebody hurt.
[00:40:37]  Well, what you want is a long paper trail when you want to assassinate someone.
[00:40:41]  You want to outsource it and then have them outsource it.
[00:40:44]  That way it's easier to get away with when lots of people know about it.
[00:40:47]  The more documentation you have for your crimes, absolutely better.
[00:40:51]  No, I think most criminals would agree with that.
[00:40:53]  In the summer of 1991, a writer named Alan Rickman, not the actor, that kind of messed me up for a second, too, wrote an article about Seagal for Gentleman's Quarterly.
[00:41:00]  It was not complimentary.
[00:41:02]  Seagal flew an intelligence analyst to his Staten Island home to help him dig up dirt on the writer.
[00:41:07]  Quote from Spy.
[00:41:08]  Segal tells the consultant that Rickman is gay, a fag in the actor's words.
[00:41:11]  He wants Rickman set up with a homosexual, quote, to get pictures of Rickman going down on the man.
[00:41:16]  When the security consultant refused, Seagal asked what it would cost to have a hypothetical man whacked.
[00:41:21]  When the consultant replied, whacked dead, Seagal said, Of course, you people do that all the time.
[00:41:26]  What if you wear a Rickman mask and I suck your dick?
[00:41:30]  Is that gonna work?
[00:41:31]  My favorite part about this is that, like, in a television interview, he lied about the other man's height and he called him a pansy, even though Rickman was an army captain, who was also taller than Stephen Seagal.
[00:41:42]  Jesus Christ, Steven.
[00:41:46]  He's just incapable of telling the truth.
[00:41:51]  It's really hard to say.
[00:41:52]  Bob Strickland, that former CIA contractor, seems to have been one of the people who put up with Seagal's bullshit for the longest amount of time.
[00:41:58]  Seagal actually paid Strickland $50,000 of a $250,000 deal for his life story.
[00:42:04]  Strickland thought this meant that Seagal was going to make a movie about him, but it actually just meant that Seagal wanted the right to lie about his own life and tell stories from Strickland's life when he was interviewed.
[00:42:12]  So one night, Strickland was watching the Arsinio Hall show and saw Steven Seagal telling a story from Strickland's own life.
[00:42:20]  That's an amazing interview, too, by the way.
[00:42:22]  Yeah.
[00:42:22]  Oh, yeah.
[00:42:23]  He gets all dark for her.
[00:42:24]  He's like, I think he's talking about Kelly LeBrock and how she was misbehaving.
[00:42:28]  And he's like, my house, my rules.
[00:42:30]  Like, it's a real window into the darkness that is inside that man.
[00:42:34]  Well, if I was not a hack and a fraud, I would have seen that one, but I was too busy reading about Steven Seagal.
[00:42:39]  So, Strickland got really angry when he heard his own stories being told by Steven Seagal.
[00:42:44]  So, yeah, he called Steven a bunch of times, left a bunch of angry messages, and Steven's response was essentially to threaten Strickland, which prompted the former CIA contractor to file a sworn affidavit in the Burbank Superior Court.
[00:42:55]  Quote, on December 11th, 1991, Stephen Seagal said to me in my attorney's presence, if anybody from the CIA fucks with me, they will be hurt.
[00:43:02]  He claimed he was backed by very powerful people.
[00:43:05]  More powerful than the CIA.
[00:43:06]  More powerful than the CIA.
[00:43:07]  The CIA is shit in their pants.
[00:43:08]  No, yeah, yeah.

=== CIA Threats and Affidavits (04:18) ===

[00:43:09]  I mean, he doesn't even know my friends.
[00:43:10]  CIA.
[00:43:11]  He's one of those non-swimming Navy SEALs.
[00:43:13]  Those are the deadliest kind.
[00:43:15]  And if you want to hear something that's even better than a Navy SEAL who can't swim, he's sponsors?
[00:43:20]  It's an ad break.
[00:43:20]  Yeah, it's the sponsors.
[00:43:27]  There's two golden rules that any man should live by.
[00:43:31]  Rule one, never mess with a country girl.
[00:43:34]  You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes.
[00:43:37]  And rule two, never mess with her friends either.
[00:43:41]  We always say, trust your girlfriends.
[00:43:44]  I'm Anna Sinfield.
[00:43:46]  And in this new season of The Girlfriends.
[00:43:48]  Oh my God, this is the same man.
[00:43:50]  A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist.
[00:43:55]  I felt like I got hit by a truck.
[00:43:57]  I thought, how could this happen to me?
[00:43:59]  The cops didn't seem to care.
[00:44:01]  So they take matters into their own hands.
[00:44:04]  I said, oh, hell no.
[00:44:05]  I vowed I will be his last target.
[00:44:08]  He's going to get what he deserves.
[00:44:12]  Listen to the girlfriends.
[00:44:14]  Trust me, babe.
[00:44:15]  On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:44:25]  What's up, everyone?
[00:44:26]  I'm Ago Modern.
[00:44:27]  My next guest, you know, from Step Brothers, Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and the Big Money Players Network, it's Will Farrell.
[00:44:38]  My dad gave me the best advice ever.
[00:44:41]  I went and had lunch with him one day, and I was like, and dad, I think I want to really give this a shot.
[00:44:46]  I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings.
[00:44:49]  I'm working my way up through and I know it's a place to come look for up and coming talent.
[00:44:53]  He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet.
[00:44:58]  Yeah.
[00:44:58]  He goes, but there's so much luck involved.
[00:45:01]  And he's like, just give it a shot.
[00:45:02]  He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit.
[00:45:11]  If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
[00:45:13]  It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hang in there.
[00:45:20]  Yeah, it would not be.
[00:45:22]  Right, it wouldn't be that.
[00:45:24]  There's a lot of luck.
[00:45:25]  Listen to Thanks Dad on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:45:34]  In 2023, former bachelor star Clayton Eckard found himself at the center of a paternity scandal.
[00:45:40]  The family court hearings that followed revealed glaring inconsistencies in her story.
[00:45:45]  This began a years-long court battle to prove the truth.
[00:45:49]  You doctored this particular test twice, Miss Owens, correct?
[00:45:52]  I doctored the test once.
[00:45:54]  It took an army of internet detectives to crack the case.
[00:45:57]  I wanted people to be able to see what their tax dollars were being used for.
[00:46:01]  Sunlight's the greatest disinfectant.
[00:46:04]  They would uncover a disturbing pattern.
[00:46:06]  Two more men who'd been through the same thing.
[00:46:08]  Greg Olespi and Michael Marancini.
[00:46:10]  My mind was blown.
[00:46:12]  I'm Stephanie Young.
[00:46:14]  This is Love Trap.
[00:46:15]  Laura, Scottsdale Police.
[00:46:17]  As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences.
[00:46:22]  Ladies and gentlemen, breaking news at Americopa County as Laura Owens has been indicted on fraud charges.
[00:46:28]  This isn't over until justice is served in Arizona.
[00:46:33]  Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:46:43]  10-10 shots fired.
[00:46:44]  City hall building.
[00:46:46]  A silver .40 caliber handgun was recovered at the scene.
[00:46:50]  From iHeart Podcasts and Best Case Studios, this is Rorschach, murder at City Hall.
[00:46:56]  How could this have happened in City Hall?
[00:46:58]  Somebody tell me that!
[00:46:59]  Jeffrey Hood did.
[00:47:01]  July 2003, Councilman James E. Davis arrives at New York City Hall with a guest.
[00:47:07]  Both men are carrying concealed weapons.
[00:47:10]  And in less than 30 minutes, both of them will be dead.
[00:47:19]  Everybody in the chamber's ducks.
[00:47:21]  A shocking public murder.
[00:47:23]  I scream, get down, get down.
[00:47:25]  Those are shots.
[00:47:26]  Those are shots.

=== City Hall Shooting Chaos (14:55) ===

[00:47:27]  A charismatic politician.
[00:47:28]  You know, he just bent the rules all the time.
[00:47:31]  I still have a weapon, and I could shoot you.
[00:47:36]  And an house hider with a secret.
[00:47:38]  He allegedly a victim of flat down.
[00:47:41]  That may or may not have been political.
[00:47:42]  That may have been about sex.
[00:47:44]  Listening to Rorschach, murder at City Hall on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:47:58]  And we're back.
[00:47:58]  We're talking about Steven Seagal, who has just ruined probably the longest friendship he ever had with a former CIA man by lying and stealing his life, becoming an experienced vampire on national television.
[00:48:11]  God, that's so embarrassing.
[00:48:12]  Yeah, it's a really shameful thing to do.
[00:48:14]  So in the affidavit Strickland filed, he claimed that a mutual friend of he and Segal had, quote, called me from New York and advised me to watch my ass.
[00:48:20]  He stated that my safety could be in jeopardy because Steven Seagal is backed by powerful people who have a vested interest in preserving his image and reputation, which might have been true at that point.
[00:48:28]  To be entirely honest, like he may not have been lying about that.
[00:48:31]  Seagal quickly followed the success of 1988's Above the Law, which was his first film, with three more action hits, Hard to Kill, Marked for Death, and Op for Justice.
[00:48:40]  Yeah, all those are great.
[00:48:41]  Yeah.
[00:48:42]  Yeah.
[00:48:42]  His career peaked in 1992 with Under Siege, or I think 93 with Under Siege.
[00:48:46]  I may have fucked that up.
[00:48:47]  But he was a pretty big star in 1991 when he was invited to host an episode of Saturday Night Live.
[00:48:54]  Not the greatest success in the history of that show.
[00:48:57]  In a way, it might be.
[00:48:58]  Maybe.
[00:48:59]  In a way, it might be.
[00:48:59]  It depends on how much enjoyment you get out of this next anecdote.
[00:49:02]  So in the book Life from New York, which is a history of the show, several cast members chimed in about the week Steven Seagal was the host.
[00:49:10]  Tim Meadows.
[00:49:11]  The biggest problem with Steven Seagal was that he would complain about jokes that he didn't get.
[00:49:15]  So it was like you can't explain something to somebody in German if they don't speak German.
[00:49:18]  He just wasn't funny and he was very critical of the cast and the writing staff.
[00:49:22]  He didn't realize that you can't tell somebody they're stupid on Wednesday and expect them to continue writing for you on Saturday.
[00:49:28]  So people like gave him intentionally bad shit because they hated him?
[00:49:32]  I think so.
[00:49:32]  I think that's part of the explanation.
[00:49:34]  David Spade said, quote, he didn't want to go along with what the plan was that week.
[00:49:37]  And as a result, I think that was the first week that I heard talk about replacing the host and just doing a cast show.
[00:49:42]  Wow.
[00:49:43]  Yeah.
[00:49:44]  And then Julia Sweeney, when we pitched our ideas for Seagal at our Monday meeting, he gave us some of his own sketch ideas.
[00:49:49]  And some of his sketch ideas were so heinous, so hilariously awful, it was like we were on candid camera.
[00:49:55]  He had this idea that he's a therapist and he wanted Victoria Jackson to be his patient who's just been raped.
[00:50:00]  And the therapist says, you're going to have to come to me twice a week for like three years because he said that's how therapists fucking are.
[00:50:07]  They're just trying to get your money.
[00:50:08]  And then he says that the psychiatrist tries to have sex with her.
[00:50:11]  Whoa!
[00:50:12]  That's Steven Seagal's idea of comedy.
[00:50:14]  That's so weird.
[00:50:16]  It will not be weird later in this story.
[00:50:18]  It will actually make total sense in about 30 minutes.
[00:50:20]  I've been a comedy writer for many, many years now, and I'm seriously racking my brain how to get to a place of comedy from such a dark premise.
[00:50:29]  No, there's no punchline anywhere in that description, and I don't think there was a punchline in the show.
[00:50:34]  I can't.
[00:50:34]  I don't even...
[00:50:35]  If you had nine hours to build the context for this, I don't think you could make that like funny funny.
[00:50:40]  No, and I do think it's important to know that.
[00:50:42]  What a nightmare.
[00:50:43]  I suspect that for Seagal, the punchline was, the psychiatrist tries to rape his patient.
[00:50:47]  I think that was his idea.
[00:50:49]  That was the joke.
[00:50:50]  The ending's great.
[00:50:51]  You ready for this?
[00:50:52]  It's assault.
[00:50:53]  It's a horrible, gruesome assault.
[00:50:55]  It's a sexual assault victim.
[00:50:57]  Oh, see it all.
[00:50:58]  It's like poetry.
[00:50:58]  It ties back to the beginning.
[00:51:01]  Oh, God, he would have said that.
[00:51:02]  He would have compared it to the family.
[00:51:03]  You know, absolutely.
[00:51:04]  He would have compared it to poetry.
[00:51:06]  And then he fucking karate chopped through the table.
[00:51:09]  Fucking vanished in a puff of flower cloud.
[00:51:13]  In 2014, when guest Nicholas Cage expressed a worry to Lorne Michaels that he would be, quote, the worst host ever, Lorne Michaels reportedly said, no, that would be Steven Seagal.
[00:51:24]  Yeah.
[00:51:24]  He's one of the only people ever banned from being on Saturday Night Live ever, ever, ever, ever again.
[00:51:30]  They did that joke on Saturday Night Live.
[00:51:32]  I remember Lauren Michaels coming out and saying, like, no, no, no, the worst dose was Steven Seagal.
[00:51:36]  There was something real about it.
[00:51:38]  Yeah, no, I mean, it sounds like he was terrible.
[00:51:40]  There's another story.
[00:51:41]  I think it was Rob Schneider who saw Steven Seagal, like, walked up to him and said, I just finished reading the best screenplay of my life.
[00:51:47]  And Schneider was like, oh, yeah, who wrote it?
[00:51:49]  And he was like, me.
[00:51:50]  And it was not a joke.
[00:51:52]  Oh, my God.
[00:51:53]  Steven Seagal.
[00:51:55]  What a dream setup for that answer, though.
[00:51:57]  Because if you said, oh, I made the best screenplay, most people are like, oh, what's it about?
[00:52:02]  Yeah.
[00:52:02]  But he asked who the writer was to perfectly set up Steven Seagal to say, oh, me.
[00:52:07]  Fucking.
[00:52:08]  I'm going to guess he knew.
[00:52:10]  That should be the team.
[00:52:11]  Schneider.
[00:52:12]  Judge Dredd should have been Schneider.
[00:52:14]  Oh, my God.
[00:52:15]  Oh, my God.
[00:52:16]  I would throw my own money into the production of that film.
[00:52:20]  Yeah.
[00:52:20]  Especially if all of the bad guys are Seagal and Snyder.
[00:52:23]  Oh, I love it.
[00:52:24]  Like, some sort of a time loop made it so every person in that universe was Segal and Schneider.
[00:52:30]  I'm not saying they're in makeup.
[00:52:31]  It's like really them.
[00:52:32]  It's really them.
[00:52:32]  Yeah.
[00:52:33]  You commit to the premise.
[00:52:34]  Yeah.
[00:52:35]  Hollywood.
[00:52:36]  See, this is the phone.
[00:52:38]  This is an inspiring idea.
[00:52:39]  That idea of the sex assault victim as the therapist, that's a dead end.
[00:52:43]  That's a dead end.
[00:52:44]  Don't pursue that.
[00:52:45]  But Schneider and Seagal.
[00:52:46]  That's at least a skit.
[00:52:48]  Let's do another podcast after this.
[00:52:49]  We'll save it for that, but let's storyboard the whole thing.
[00:52:52]  Yeah, the whole thing.
[00:52:53]  Yeah.
[00:52:53]  Gotta break it.
[00:52:54]  Okay.
[00:52:54]  So you remember, like, actually, way less than 20 minutes ago when I said that him wanting to make the joke be entirely about sexual assault would make sense very soon?
[00:53:03]  Yeah.
[00:53:03]  It's about to make sense.
[00:53:04]  Oh, thank God.
[00:53:05]  Yeah.
[00:53:05]  So the early 90s were a time of great professional success for Steven Seagal, and they were also when he began his career as a sexual predator.
[00:53:11]  I mean, maybe he began it earlier, but we certainly know about assaults dating back to the early 90s.
[00:53:16]  The signs were already present as early as 1990 when Robert Strickland watched Seagal harass one of his personal assistants.
[00:53:21]  She was brushing her teeth in his trailer when, according to Strickland, Seagal told her that she needed to get over there immediately.
[00:53:26]  When she came out still brushing her teeth, he said, gee, Rhiann, you look like that when I come in your mouth.
[00:53:31]  Oh.
[00:53:31]  Some more Steven Seagal humor there.
[00:53:33]  That is the absence of...
[00:53:34]  Did they have a romantic relationship before that?
[00:53:37]  No.
[00:53:37]  Strickland, the former CIA guy, who I'm going to guess was a pretty coarse fellow, thought this was gross.
[00:53:43]  I think profoundly gross.
[00:53:47]  Yeah.
[00:53:47]  So, earlier this year, Juliana Margulis of The Good Wife was a guest on the Katie Corix podcast.
[00:53:53]  They talked about the Me Too movement, and Margulis recalled an unsettling encounter with Seagal in the early 1990s.
[00:53:59]  He was a big action star at that point, and she was still quite new when a casting director told her that Steven wanted to do a scene with her in his room.
[00:54:06]  Quote, I walked in and I sat down and I jumped right back up because there was something very uncomfortable and hard in the couch.
[00:54:12]  He laughed and said, oh, sorry, that must have been my gun, Margulis recalled.
[00:54:16]  He lifted up the cushion and he took out his gun.
[00:54:18]  When Margulis grew noticeably nervous, Segal explained that he casually packed to protect himself from, quote, all the crazies that are out there.
[00:54:25]  Yeah.
[00:54:25]  If your gun's in the couch, you're the crazy person.
[00:54:28]  I think he might be right.
[00:54:30]  Yeah, that's not where the gun goes.
[00:54:31]  Not in the couch.
[00:54:33]  What the fuck?
[00:54:34]  So next.
[00:54:34]  If you got company coming over, why you leave your gun in the couch?
[00:54:37]  He wanted her to find it.
[00:54:38]  Yeah, but he wanted her to find it.
[00:54:40]  What kind of a person thinks, like, oh, this will turn the girl on?
[00:54:43]  Almost dying.
[00:54:44]  I don't think turning her on was his goal.
[00:54:46]  Maybe it was.
[00:54:47]  Was he trying to like terrify her?
[00:54:49]  Maybe.
[00:54:50]  The thing that he did next in this interaction was tell her that he was a healer and that he wanted to read her palms.
[00:54:55]  So maybe he was trying to feel a shitty game.
[00:54:58]  Yeah.
[00:54:58]  Quote, he told me I had really weak kidneys.
[00:55:00]  At that point, to be honest, as a New York girl, I kind of started laughing inside.
[00:55:04]  Shortly thereafter, Margulis said she squirmed out of the room, but then realized that she hadn't received the cab fare she'd been promised, so she went back and asked for it.
[00:55:11]  Oh, what?
[00:55:11]  She got the cash as well as the part and out for justice, although she demanded she never be alone with Seagal on set.
[00:55:16]  So not to diminish it, but this is a rather tame story to compare to the stories of many of the other womans who have reported their interactions with Steven Seagull.
[00:55:23]  Be real pretty if you had better kidneys.
[00:55:26]  Steven Seagal is out for kidneys.
[00:55:30]  In 1996, John Connolly, the author of that spy article, wrote another article about Seagal, this time for Penthouse.
[00:55:35]  In it, he alleged that four female staffers had resigned from the production of his film Out for Justice in protest of his constant sexual harassment and, quote, a sexual attack on one of them.
[00:55:45]  They claim Seagal tried to undress them during casting interviews.
[00:55:47]  One stated, when I was finally able to get him to stop, he told me I had the part.
[00:55:52]  So that does seem to be modus operandi.
[00:55:56]  Another woman claims Seagal would constantly brush past women in his office and touch them.
[00:56:00]  His former housekeeper, Leah Bumgarner, claimed Seagal sexually attacked her while she was working at his house.
[00:56:06]  She did plead guilty to stealing from him later.
[00:56:08]  Maybe.
[00:56:09]  I mean, I could also see Steven Seagal's.
[00:56:11]  Between the two crimes, I think hers is way more minor.
[00:56:15]  Yeah, yeah, a little more minor.
[00:56:16]  In fact, stealing from a rich guy barely qualifies as a crime.
[00:56:20]  Barely a crime.
[00:56:21]  Barely qualifies as a crime.
[00:56:23]  Connolly talked to six women in total who accused Seagal of harassment.
[00:56:27]  They would not be the last.
[00:56:28]  He stated at the end of his article that the code of silence around Seagal's thuggish behavior is starting to crack.
[00:56:33]  Shatter would be a more apt term.
[00:56:35]  In 1998, Ginny McCarthy talked to Movie Line about her audition for the classic film Under Siege 2, a sequel to Seagal's biggest hit and one of the first real clear signs that his career was already past.
[00:56:44]  It's a fun fact, he outruns an explosion in that movie, which is impossible because Stephen Seagal actually runs like a fat woman waking up in a bathtub covered in snakes.
[00:56:57]  That's a good description of Steven Seagal running.
[00:57:00]  I've written a lot of Steven Seagal runs like jokes in my career, and I think that might be the most evocative.
[00:57:05]  He is.
[00:57:06]  You owe it to yourself to look up Steven Seagal running on YouTube because he has never managed to run like a normal person.
[00:57:13]  He like tucks his elbows in and he kind of has like limp wrists and he keeps the elbows tucked in tight and he just sort of wiggles through the air and it's like a scurry.
[00:57:22]  Yeah.
[00:57:23]  But there's like a scurry.
[00:57:24]  In these movies, and you look at Tom Cruise and he's just got beautiful form.
[00:57:27]  Oh, no, because he's until he spent hours.
[00:57:29]  He rides it out.
[00:57:30]  He's a 20-foot long jump when he ends that run.
[00:57:33]  And then Stephen Seagal, it's like a hamster getting electrified.
[00:57:37]  Well, and it's one of those things you talk to people.
[00:57:39]  I've talked to someone who does firearms training for movies.
[00:57:42]  Like his job is helping movie stars learn how to use weapons and like do shooting and like choreograph gunfights and stuff.
[00:57:49]  And he says, and you can find this in other articles, like Tom Cruise is really good with a gun, with all the physical stuff he's done.
[00:57:54]  He's very, really good at everything.
[00:57:57]  Nobody says that about Steven Seagal.
[00:57:59]  No.
[00:58:00]  Nobody praises his ability to do stunts.
[00:58:05]  So in 1998, Ginny McCarthy talked to Movie Line about her audition for the classic film Understage 2, in which Stephen Seagal outruns an explosion.
[00:58:13]  Here's what she said happened.
[00:58:14]  I was wearing this very baggy dress, which I always wear to auditions with my hair pulled back.
[00:58:17]  I'm listening to Seagal go on and on about how he found a soul in Asia and it was one with himself or whatever.
[00:58:22]  When I said, well, I'm ready to read, he said, stand up.
[00:58:24]  You have to be kind of sexy in the movie.
[00:58:26]  And in that dress, I can't tell.
[00:58:28]  I stand up and he goes, take off your dress.
[00:58:30]  I said, what?
[00:58:31]  And he said, there's nudity.
[00:58:32]  I said, no, there's not, or I wouldn't be here right now.
[00:58:35]  He said, again, there's nudity.
[00:58:36]  And I said, Cindy McCarthy, notable, fully clothed woman.
[00:58:40]  Well, she said, the pages are right in front of me, and there's no nudity.
[00:58:43]  She's right to make this objection.
[00:58:45]  I just.
[00:58:45]  Oh, I'm getting to it.
[00:58:47]  He goes, take off your dress.
[00:58:48]  I just started crying and said, rent my Playboy video, you asshole.
[00:58:51]  And ran out to the film.
[00:58:52]  Fair enough.
[00:58:53]  Yeah, fair enough.
[00:58:54]  I always thought she was very funny on Single Dot.
[00:58:56]  I always thought, like, that hot girl's way funnier than the hot girl.
[00:58:59]  I would like to.
[00:59:00]  Jimmy McCarthy a lot if it wasn't for advocating she could not get vaccinated.
[00:59:04]  She's got a lot of bad for the world.
[00:59:06]  And she's certainly in the right here.
[00:59:07]  I think that she has more wit than you'd expect.
[00:59:09]  No, she's a funny person.
[00:59:10]  And that's a funny thing to say is rent my Playboy video.
[00:59:12]  You absolutely.
[00:59:13]  Yeah, no, she's got a great response.
[00:59:15]  Her recollection of the events is really good.
[00:59:17]  When the Daily Beast questioned Seagal's spokesman about this, he said the claim was completely false.
[00:59:21]  And I should note several times so we don't get sued, Steven Seagal denies any of the many, The Washington Post says there are too many allegations of assault and harassment to count.
[00:59:34]  Oh.
[00:59:35]  Too many to count.
[00:59:36]  The Washington Post.
[00:59:37]  They have great counters on staff.
[00:59:39]  And they have whole people to do that.
[00:59:40]  Top-notch math scientists.
[00:59:42]  Yeah.
[00:59:42]  So, there's no nice segue here.
[00:59:44]  It's about to get really dark.
[00:59:46]  So, buggle up.
[00:59:48]  Like the delicious flavor of...
[00:59:50]  No, no, no, no.
[00:59:51]  This is not the time for that.
[00:59:53]  In 1993, when Stephen Seagal was filming one of his most popular movies, On Deadly Ground, he met an 18-year-old extra named Regina Simmons.
[01:00:00]  He invited her to a rap party at his house.
[01:00:02]  When she showed up, no one else was there.
[01:00:04]  Stephen.
[01:00:04]  Yeah, regular listeners will remember this as the same basic strategy used by Bill Cosby on several occasions.
[01:00:09]  Tell him there's a party.
[01:00:12]  It seems to be a pretty common Hollywood creep strategy.
[01:00:14]  Yeah.
[01:00:14]  Regina says he told her everyone else had already left, and then he took her into his bedroom.
[01:00:19]  Quote, he closed the door and approached me from behind.
[01:00:21]  He started kissing my neck and taking off my clothes.
[01:00:24]  I was in shock.
[01:00:24]  I was completely caught off guard.
[01:00:26]  Segal was more than twice my size and twice my age.
[01:00:28]  I was not sexually active, nor had I ever been naked in front of a man before.
[01:00:32]  I froze.
[01:00:33]  She alleges that Seagal then raped her.
[01:00:35]  She says, there was nothing consensual about this.
[01:00:37]  I couldn't move, and I felt as if I was watching my body from above.
[01:00:40]  I felt tears coming down my face.
[01:00:41]  Poor girl.
[01:00:42]  Yeah.
[01:00:42]  When Segal was done, he asked her if she needed any money and then allowed her to leave.
[01:00:46]  He called her the next day.
[01:00:47]  Money?
[01:00:49]  I don't know what actually is going on.
[01:00:51]  It is a good question, what is going on in Steven Seagal's head?
[01:00:53]  Because I seriously think he probably doesn't think of himself.
[01:00:56]  He kept calling this woman.
[01:00:57]  I don't think he thinks of himself as a rapist.
[01:00:59]  Yeah, it went really well.
[01:01:01]  Yeah, I don't know.
[01:01:02]  Not that that mitigates it at all, because he seems to be a monster.
[01:01:06]  But I think that is part of his psychology in this.
[01:01:09]  Now, this story came out in March of last year after several women, among them Porchia De La Rossi from Arrested Development, alleged Stephen Seagal being a creepy sexual harasser.
[01:01:19]  There was a whole press conference when Regina came out and another woman was there to support her, Faviola Daddis.
[01:01:25]  She auditioned for a part in an as-of-yet unproduced vanity project with Stephen Seagal about Genghis Khan, which Seagal was supposed to write, direct, and star in.
[01:01:32]  Tell me he was Genghis Khan.
[01:01:34]  He was.
[01:01:34]  Oh my god, that's amazing.
[01:01:35]  Yeah.
[01:01:36]  It's a dark story, so I don't want to get lost in this, but that may be the only unproduced vanity project I do kind of want to say.
[01:01:43]  Daddis said her initial meetings with Seagal took place in public and didn't give her any cause for concern.
[01:01:48]  The two bonded over shared interests like Buddhism and martial arts, she said, and, quote, soon developed a friendly relationship via text and phone calls.
[01:01:55]  At one point, Seagal invited Daddis for a private audition.
[01:01:58]  She said, he explained to me that he would like to evaluate my figure and see if I would be suitable for the role.
[01:02:02]  His assistant told me to arrive wearing a bikini or a bra and panties under my clothing.
[01:02:06]  As this is quite standard in the modeling industry, I agreed to do so.
[01:02:10]  Now, Daddis noticed some strange things right off the bat.
[01:02:12]  For one, Segal had asked her to meet in the evening at a hotel that he had booked.
[01:02:16]  Quote, I was taken up to Seagal's room by his assistant, who repeated to me multiple times in the elevator, Stephen's word is as good as gold.

=== Creepy Modeling Allegations (08:40) ===

[01:02:22]  I thought this was a bit strange, but I did not comment.
[01:02:24]  When she arrived, only Stephen and his bodyguard were in the room.
[01:02:27]  The assistant who'd led her there immediately left.
[01:02:30]  Stephen asked me to take off my clothes, which I did, although I was nervous, considering there were no other individuals present, and do a cat walk through the room for him.
[01:02:36]  I did so, and Stephen approached me and said that he would like to act out a romantic scene to get a sense of our chemistry.
[01:02:41]  Oh my god, Stephen.
[01:02:42]  Daddis told him that she was uncomfortable with this and said, no.
[01:02:45]  That's when she alleges Seagal reached under her bikini top and groped her while fondling her vagina with his other hand.
[01:02:50]  She yelled that the audition was over.
[01:02:52]  Stephen sat there calmly as if nothing had happened, and while I was noticeably upset and terrified by the experience, Stephen's security guard stood blocking the doorway and only moved when Stephen motioned for him to do so.
[01:03:02]  I left feeling horrified and totally violated.
[01:03:04]  Steven Segal, through his lawyer, denies both of these allegations.
[01:03:09]  Dude, it's so gross, but then to have like a security guard there, too.
[01:03:13]  Yeah, but that is the creepiest thing.
[01:03:20]  Yeah, what if there's a giant guy standing in the back of the room?
[01:03:22]  Yeah, well, I like Groper.
[01:03:24]  I'm going to move fast.
[01:03:25]  So like, I just want you to stand there and be weird.
[01:03:29]  Which it's one of those things.
[01:03:31]  There's always in these stories of Hollywood sexual predators so many people complicit.
[01:03:34]  You know, the assistant has to know what's going on.
[01:03:36]  This is not Stephen Seagal in his prime when someone might think, yeah, maybe a young actress wants to meet this handsome guy.
[01:03:42]  Like, this is someone knowing something creepy is going to go on, but this is my paycheck, so I'm just going to soldier on.
[01:03:48]  There's other jobs you can take where people don't rape.
[01:03:50]  Yeah.
[01:03:51]  You know what I mean?
[01:03:52]  Yes.
[01:03:53]  I have never worked at a place where someone's just trying some rape out near me.
[01:03:57]  Yeah.
[01:03:59]  You work here, right?
[01:03:59]  So like you're cool with this rape.
[01:04:01]  Yeah.
[01:04:01]  You understand this is just how Kinko's works.
[01:04:05]  Well, I sure need this job, boss.
[01:04:07]  I'll just block the door in case anyone tries to make a run for it.
[01:04:10]  This is a really bad time for an ad segue.
[01:04:14]  Tremendously disastrous.
[01:04:16]  Stop at Kinko's.
[01:04:19]  Kinko's is not a supporter of the podcast, so I really don't care what you do to them.
[01:04:24]  How you feeling about Steven Seagal?
[01:04:26]  Seuss, it's a little grosser.
[01:04:30]  Like, these intimate details of this type of interaction is what's like, it's easy to say, like, oh, this guy, he's an attempted rapist.
[01:04:39]  Fuck that guy.
[01:04:39]  But then when you like learn these little details, it's so gross that some woman had to like explain that this is exactly what happened.
[01:04:47]  Yeah.
[01:04:49]  I should say we're back, but I think we've been back since the start of this conversation.
[01:04:53]  Okay.
[01:04:54]  It's remarkable to me.
[01:04:56]  I guess one of the things I can never stop thinking about, because I like watching old movies, is like you look at Humphrey Bogart on screen and you're like, did you assault somebody, Bogey?
[01:05:04]  Yeah.
[01:05:05]  Probably right.
[01:05:05]  Yeah.
[01:05:06]  Probably.
[01:05:07]  Yeah.
[01:05:08]  I don't know.
[01:05:08]  I've never heard anything about that, but you just see how many of these guys did something fucked up.
[01:05:13]  Even Bowie has some dark stuff in his background.
[01:05:15]  And it's like, not like this, nothing like this, but like some stuff that's questionable.
[01:05:20]  Anyway, it's a bummer.
[01:05:22]  It is a bummer.
[01:05:23]  And there is something about like celebrity that I think jacks your game up.
[01:05:28]  Yeah.
[01:05:28]  One of the things that's confusing about this to me is I've read a lot of allegations from various.
[01:05:32]  We're not going to cover every allegation spinning at Steven Seagal.
[01:05:35]  Again, as the Washington Post said, there are too many to count.
[01:05:38]  God's so fucked up.
[01:05:40]  There are a number of allegations where he will do creepy stuff.
[01:05:43]  He will grope someone clearly against their will, but they will say no that they don't want sex and he will let them leave.
[01:05:50]  Which makes me think in his head, Stephen Seagal, I don't know.
[01:05:55]  He thinks he's just like going for it.
[01:05:57]  Yeah, I don't want to mitigate it, but I'm certain he doesn't think of himself as a rapist.
[01:06:01]  Which again, I believe the women in this case, because for one thing, there are too many allegations to count, which is usually the first sign that it's true.
[01:06:12]  So yeah, back in March is when those two latest allegations, including one of straight-up rape, were filed against Steven Seagal.
[01:06:19]  Not the first time allegations have been made, but the first time in the Me Too era, for sure.
[01:06:22]  There were allegations against Stephen Seagal starting back in the 90s in the early 2000s.
[01:06:26]  And then right after Me Too kicked up, people started talking about them again.
[01:06:29]  And of course, these two women came forward in March.
[01:06:32]  But in January, Stephen Seagal decided that he wanted to get ahead of these sexual assault rumors and really deal with the problem in a proactive manner.
[01:06:41]  Can you guess what media outlet he chose to talk to?
[01:06:45]  I bet it was like an InfoWars.
[01:06:48]  Oh, yeah.
[01:06:50]  Yeah.
[01:06:50]  Yeah.
[01:06:50]  Steven Seagal showed up on InfoWars in January of 2018.
[01:06:54]  He told Alex Jones that the many, many, many, women who'd made claims against him were paid liars.
[01:07:03]  Oh, of course.
[01:07:04]  Someone has some deep pockets.
[01:07:06]  Quote, this isn't just about me, because hundreds of people in Hollywood have been attacked and hundreds of people have been, in my opinion, falsely accused.
[01:07:12]  My opinion is that 60% of these people are completely innocent, and that includes me.
[01:07:16]  In most of these cases, the accusations are 20, 25, 30 years old.
[01:07:19]  They're not providing evidence or proof of witnesses.
[01:07:21]  They're just throwing it out, and all of a sudden, somebody's life is ruined.
[01:07:24]  I bet he really thinks this.
[01:07:25]  Yeah.
[01:07:26]  When people say it's a witch hunt, it's worse than any other witch hunt that America's ever seen.
[01:07:30]  This is ruining our country.
[01:07:32]  This is worse than the time we burned people to death.
[01:07:34]  Worse than the time we burned witches.
[01:07:38]  He's the real victim here.
[01:07:39]  He is the real victim.
[01:07:40]  And I'm never not excited by how many times terrible people's lives intersect.
[01:07:46]  Alex Jones and Steve.
[01:07:47]  Of course.
[01:07:48]  Of course they wound up talking to each other.
[01:07:50]  How could they have not?
[01:07:52]  How could the world have allowed that to me?
[01:07:54]  I always wonder, like, when say you buy your own bullshit, like, and you meet someone like Alex Jones, who's also full of shit, like, do they completely believe all of the other guys' bullshit?
[01:08:03]  Does that like start to create like this bullshit spiral where like they start just like, I'm gonna just say some crazy shit and Steven Seagal believes it.
[01:08:10]  It may just be a matter of like Alex Jones knows that, oh, Steven Seagal's gonna talk about his time as a Navy SEAL that didn't.
[01:08:16]  I can talk about like all the badass stuff I've done and like the globalists trying to kill me and stuff.
[01:08:21]  Yeah.
[01:08:21]  And so like if Alex Jones is being like, I used to win fights against men when I was a child.
[01:08:25]  Like is Steven Seagal allowed to be like, I know you're full of shit or is he like, I can't pretend like I know you're full of shit because that would admit that I understand the limits of this absurdity.
[01:08:36]  It's mutually assured destruction is applied to lies.
[01:08:39]  I love it.
[01:08:39]  Shameless lies.
[01:08:42]  It is remarkable.
[01:08:45]  So Steven Seagal's career peaked around 1993, 1994.
[01:08:50]  By the year 2000, he'd had a string of flops and was no longer considered in the same tier of action star as Bruce Willis, if that was ever a fair thing to say.
[01:08:58]  Yeah, no, he was like of a Jean-Claude Van Damme contemporary, but his films were like, didn't have as much joy or fun, and they weren't as like adventurous, I guess.
[01:09:11]  Yeah.
[01:09:11]  If you've seen two Steven Seagal movies, you've seen all of them.
[01:09:14]  Every Steven Seagal movie.
[01:09:15]  It was one of those things when John Clyde Van Damm came back and did JCVD a couple of years ago.
[01:09:20]  Everyone was like, oh, yeah, you know, I'd like to watch John Clyde Van Damme again.
[01:09:23]  Sure, nobody feels that way about Steven Seagall.
[01:09:25]  Yeah, there's nothing lovable about Steven Seagal.
[01:09:28]  But John Claude Van Damme is a classic movie star.
[01:09:30]  Yeah, and the early 2000s began the start of a long, sharp decline for Steven Seagal from movie theater releases to direct-to-video releases to eventually direct-to-digital productions, which is kind of where he is now.
[01:09:42]  And if you've seen a recent Steven Seagal movie, it's a heavyset elderly man pulling guns out of people's hands and trying not to move too much.
[01:09:51]  Right.
[01:09:52]  Just a bunch of catwalks and Eastern European really dark lighting.
[01:09:56]  Yeah.
[01:09:59]  So, yeah, the early 2000s definitely marked the end of Steven Seagal's career as a serious action movie star, but they also marked the start of something else.
[01:10:07]  Something we're going to get into in part two of this podcast.
[01:10:10]  Steven Seagal's twin careers as a blues musician, a cop.
[01:10:15]  Well, I should say three careers, because in addition to being a blues musician and a cop, he's an alleged human trafficker.
[01:10:20]  So all that and more in part two.
[01:10:24]  Woo!
[01:10:26]  Sean, do you have any pluggables that you would like to plug?
[01:10:29]  I'm easy to find on Twitter.
[01:10:31]  Search for Sean Baby.
[01:10:33]  I still write jokes at Cracked.
[01:10:36]  Play Calcu Lords on your mobile devices.
[01:10:39]  Yes, play Calculords on your mobile devices.
[01:10:41]  You will get some of Sean Baby's signature humor.
[01:10:44]  Great jokes.
[01:10:45]  Great way to teach math.
[01:10:48]  Listeners should know Sean Baby essentially invented comedy on the internet and was that might legally be true.
[01:10:53]  Yeah, was one of like the three or four people that is a big part of why I got into this industry.
[01:10:58]  So I didn't tell you that until now because I wanted this to have emotional resonance.

=== Human Trafficker Accusations (02:48) ===

[01:11:02]  Yeah.
[01:11:03]  Unlike a Steven Seagal movie.
[01:11:04]  I just wanted to prove we could do it better.
[01:11:08]  What a perfect button on a perfect episode.
[01:11:11]  You can find me on Twitter at iWriteOK.
[01:11:14]  You can find us on Instagram and on Twitter, this podcast at BastardsPod.
[01:11:18]  You can find us online along with some really sad pictures of Steven Seagal at behindthebastards.com and all of the mini sources for this episode.
[01:11:25]  If you've been wondering, what would it be like if I spent 16 hours reading about Steven Seagal's life and times?
[01:11:32]  Extraordinary day for me.
[01:11:35]  So, we will be back on Thursday talking about way more Steven Seagal and really getting into his intersections with like three other people we've done podcasts on because he is just the worst person and intersects with all of the other worst people.
[01:11:47]  But until then, I'm Robert Evans.
[01:11:49]  This is Behind the Bastards, and I love about 40% of you.
[01:12:00]  When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands.
[01:12:08]  I vowed I will be his last target.
[01:12:11]  He is not going to get away with this.
[01:12:13]  He's going to get what he deserves.
[01:12:15]  We always say that: trust your girlfriends.
[01:12:20]  Listen to the girlfriends.
[01:12:21]  Trust me, babe.
[01:12:22]  On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[01:12:31]  What's up, everyone?
[01:12:32]  I'm Ago Modern.
[01:12:34]  My next guest, it's Will Farrell.
[01:12:38]  My dad gave me the best advice ever.
[01:12:41]  He goes, just give it a shot.
[01:12:42]  But if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit.
[01:12:49]  If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
[01:12:51]  It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hang in there.
[01:12:59]  Yeah, it would not be.
[01:13:01]  Right, it wouldn't be that.
[01:13:02]  There's a lot of life.
[01:13:03]  Listen to Thanksgiving on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[01:13:11]  In 2023, bachelor star Clayton Eckard was accused of fathering twins, but the pregnancy appeared to be a hoax.
[01:13:18]  You doctored this particular test twice, Miss Owens, correct?
[01:13:21]  I doctored the test once.
[01:13:23]  It took an army of internet detectives to uncover a disturbing pattern.
[01:13:28]  Two more men who'd been through the same thing.
[01:13:30]  Greg Gillespie and Michael Mancini.
[01:13:32]  My mind was blown.
[01:13:34]  I'm Stephanie Young.
[01:13:35]  This is Love Trapped.
[01:13:37]  Laura, Scottsdale Police.
[01:13:39]  As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences.
[01:13:43]  Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

=== Shocking NYC Political Tragedy (00:37) ===

[01:13:50]  10-10 shots fired in the City Hall building.
[01:13:53]  How did this ever happen in City Hall?
[01:13:55]  Somebody tell me that.
[01:13:57]  A shocking public murder.
[01:13:58]  This is one of the most dramatic events that really ever happened in New York City politics.
[01:14:05]  They screamed, get down, get down.
[01:14:07]  Those are shots.
[01:14:08]  A tragedy that's now forgotten.
[01:14:11]  And a mystery that may or may not have been political.
[01:14:14]  That may have been about sex.
[01:14:15]  Listen to Rorschach, murder at City Hall on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[01:14:24]  This is an iHeart podcast.
[01:14:27]  Guaranteed human.