Letting Them Talk with Will Harris - Ep. 22 - C. Thomas Howell (One Mile / The Outsiders / Criminal Minds)

Today, I’m letting C. Thomas Howell talk.

I’ve been watching this man’s work since I was 11 years old and went to see “E.T.” with my family. A line like that might make some actors feel old, but given that Tommy – and I’m not being overly familiar here, this is actually how he’s listed on his official Facebook page –  was only 12 years old himself when he was hired for that particular film, I think he’ll probably be cool with it.

I first interviewed this gentleman when he was in the midst of his run on the cop drama Southland, and we did a lengthy Random Roles that, if I’m being honest, included a discussion of decidedly more projects that we managed to hit in this particular conversation. By which I mean to say that if you’re looking for tidbits about Kindred: The Embraced or Soul Man, you’ll want to head over to the A.V. Club and read that piece after you’ve listened to this episode. And, yes, there were a couple of encore stories that I knew from that interview that I pointedly asked him to tell in this interview because I knew listeners would enjoy actually hearing them straight from the horse’s mouth, as it were. But what we had was, for the most part, an extremely organic conversation where I was able to easily jump from one topic to the next…and that’s on the occasions when he didn’t do that himself. He’s done more than a few interviews at this point in his career, and given that the name of this podcast is “Letting Them Talk,” well, you know exactly what I opted to let him do.

We started our chat by talking about his latest project, “One Mile,” which is available for your digital purchasing pleasure as of this recording, and since it’s a villainous role, that led into talking about “The Hitcher” and “Criminal Minds.” A question about how he’d considered following in his father’s footsteps and becoming a stuntman led into talking about “E.T.,” which in turn led to talking about “The Outsiders.” But talking about his dad also led to some great stories about how he got to visit some of the film sets that he worked on, including one of the “Planet of the Apes” films.

Oh, sure, we talked about other stuff, too. But that’s probably enough to keep you listening for the long haul.

It’s time to let C. Thomas Howell talk.