Letting Them Talk with Will Harris - Ep. 30 - Jay O. Sanders (JFK / Law & Order: Criminal Intent / The Day After Tomorrow / True Detective) /

This time I’m letting Jay O. Sanders talk.

Jay started in the theater, quickly found his way in front of the camera, and has successfully forged an extremely substantial career as a character actor. Before that, though, he made his New York theater debut in a “Shakespeare in the Park” performance of Henry V alongside such fellow cast members as William Hurt, Meryl Streep, Michael Moriarty, and Bruce McGill, which – all things considered – is a pretty amazing way to kick off a career. Thankfully, he didn’t stop there, but since it’s statistically unlikely that most listeners have had the opportunity to catch Jay in his various theater performances, don’t worry, you’ll almost certainly recognize him from any number of TV or film appearances.

For me, as I mention in the course of our conversation, he’s instantly Kevin Costner’s right-hand man in JFK. If you’re a fan of Law & Order: Criminal Intent, you might recognize him either from his first appearance, which was as a bad guy working alongside a funeral home owner played by Jim Gaffigan, or you might remember him when he stepped in to keep Goren and Eames in line for the series’ final season. More recently, you might’ve seen him on NBC’s Blindspot, Prime Video’s Sneaky Pete, USA’s The Sinner, or Discovery’s Manhunt: Deadly Games, i.e. the season about the Unabomber.

But Jay’s done so much stuff that there’s really no telling where you might’ve seen him. AfterMASH? Crime Story? Roseanne? Eddie Macon’s Run? Okay, that’s kind of an outlier, but if you’re from my generation, they played that thing incessantly on HBO back in the day. He’s also in The Young Riders, Angels in the Outfield, The Big Green, Kiss the Girls and Along Came a Spider, The Day After Tomorrow… He’s definitely an actor where you can comfortably use the phrase, “And the list goes on…” And suffice it to say that he’s got at least as many stories as he’s got roles in his back catalog.

That feels like a more than sufficient intro. It’s time to let Jay O. Sanders talk.