Latest / The Joe Rogan Recap / Taylor Kitsch (2025) - Acting, SEAL Training and Life Stories

Transcript

Taylor Kitsch (2025) - Acting, SEAL Training and Life Stories · The Joe Rogan Recap

• 0:00
  Welcome to the Joe Rogan recap. Today we're doing a deep dive
• 0:03
  into, well, the kind of mindset you need for really extreme
• 0:07
  preparation. Yeah, we're talking about the
• 0:09
  level that basically dissolves the line between being an actor
• 0:12
  and the person or the role they're playing.
• 0:14
  Right. And also between being, you
• 0:16
  know, a regular civilian and someone like a warrior.
• 0:19
  Exactly. And our source material today,
• 0:21
  it's this really fascinating journey looking at an actor who
• 0:25
  balances this intense professional life, preparing for
• 0:29
  these incredibly physical roles with at the same time, this very
• 0:33
  authentic, almost brutal Montana lifestyle and dealing with some
• 0:38
  deep personal trauma too. It's a pretty stark contrast,
• 0:41
  isn't it? But commitment is the thread
• 0:44
  running through it all. You've got this guy living way
• 0:46
  out in the Montana Backcountry for, what, over five years?
• 0:48
  Yeah, totally into bow hunting, tracking that takes serious
• 0:52
  discipline, you know, for sure. And then he channels that exact
• 0:55
  same focus into playing, say, legendary Navy Seals.
• 0:59
  Or, on the flip side, someone truly reprehensible, like a cult
• 1:03
  leader. And the thing that ties it
• 1:05
  together, which we'll probably keep coming back to, is this
• 1:09
  absolute rejection of comfort. He seems to actively avoid it.
• 1:13
  OK, let's dig into that idea. Conquering comfort, starting
• 1:16
  with Montana because bow hunting.
• 1:20
  The precision needed there. That sounds like prep in itself.
• 1:24
  Oh absolutely, he mentions training to shoot at like 90 or
• 1:28
  even 100 yards like so far. Well, his reasoning was if you
• 1:32
  can handle that, then when you're actually hunting a 40
• 1:34
  yard shot feels quote easy, relatively Speaking of.
• 1:38
  Course right, setting the bar incredibly high.
• 1:40
  And you need that edge because time is working against you.
• 1:43
  It's interesting. He contrasts it with rifle
• 1:45
  hunting, also says a rifle hunt could be over in, I don't know,
• 1:48
  less than an hour sometimes. But bow hunting, you're talking
• 1:51
  days of tracking, constantly checking the wind, trying to get
• 1:54
  within maybe 50 yards of an animal without them knowing
• 1:57
  you're there. It's a it demands this
• 2:00
  relentless, quiet dedication. It's like you have to earn the
• 2:04
  shot. Earning the right time.
• 2:06
  That focus seems to translate directly into how he prepared
• 2:10
  for Michael Murphy in Lone Survivor.
• 2:12
  This wasn't just hitting the gym.
• 2:14
  Not even close. It was about getting into a
• 2:16
  certain psychological space. The physical training was for
• 2:20
  him about honoring a fallen soldier.
• 2:23
  He was running Town Lake doing the Murph workout.
• 2:26
  The Murph? That's brutal.
• 2:27
  Yeah, a mile run, 100 pull ups, 200 push ups, 300 squats, then
• 2:31
  another mile run. And he did that.
• 2:33
  How often? Three times a week.
• 2:34
  Oh, and with a weighted vest on. Wow.
• 2:37
  But the point wasn't just fitness, right?
• 2:38
  It was about hitting physical failure and pushing past it,
• 2:41
  trying to mirror, even in a small way, the kind of life or
• 2:45
  death intensity the Seals operate under.
• 2:47
  And the crazy part is, he's Canadian.
• 2:49
  Yeah, he'd apparently never even fired a real gun before this
• 2:52
  movie. Can you imagine?
• 2:54
  First time shooting is live fire training for a SEAL movie.
• 2:58
  Talk about being thrown in the deep end.
• 3:00
  He got mentored straight away by Chris Karak who he calls a thing
• 3:03
  Legend SEAL, so that first day with live ammo, it immediately
• 3:07
  hammers home how serious this stuff is.
• 3:09
  But the real wake up call wasn't even the live fire, was it?
• 3:13
  It was the simunitions. Exactly the SIM training.
• 3:16
  They use these hard plastic rounds.
• 3:18
  Apparently they can break the skin.
• 3:20
  Ouch, sounds intense. Yeah, so they're running this
• 3:23
  ambush scenario and Marcus Luttrell himself, the guy whose
• 3:26
  story it is, he stops everything.
• 3:28
  Why? What happened?
• 3:29
  He saw one of the actors getting a bit too relaxed between takes,
• 3:33
  grabbing a banana shake or something, and Luttrell just
• 3:36
  laid into them, told them straight everyone of you are
• 3:39
  filling dead because they weren't treating the ambush with
• 3:41
  the gravity it deserved. Wow.
• 3:44
  That must have been hard. It was that moment, you know,
• 3:46
  where the gap between just acting and really understanding
• 3:49
  the stakes became crystal clear. Prep isn't just physical, it's
• 3:52
  internalizing what's real. And that weight, that
• 3:56
  psychological pressure, it clearly stuck with him.
• 3:58
  He talked about like throwing up from nerves before he met
• 4:02
  Michael Murphy's dad, Dan Murphy.
• 4:05
  Yeah, asking himself, am I worthy?
• 4:07
  You know, all that grueling prep, the pain, the physical
• 4:11
  toll? That was his way of trying to
• 4:13
  silence that doubt, to feel like he had earned the right to tell
• 4:16
  this story. And the production seemed to
• 4:18
  respect that level of commitment too, definitely.
• 4:21
  Luttrell had one specific request for the death scene.
• 4:24
  He wanted it shown that Murphy used his rifle as a crutch to
• 4:28
  try and push himself up. A small detail, but powerful.
• 4:31
  Hugely powerful and the director, Peter Berg, he
• 4:34
  actually moved filming that scene to a parking lot just so
• 4:38
  they could have perfect control over the light.
• 4:40
  They used a phantom camera, high speed to capture every single
• 4:44
  detail. It was all about respect.
• 4:46
  That need to honor heroes. It kind of shifts then to a
• 4:49
  different kind of honoring right, honoring culture and
• 4:51
  history in American primeval playing Isaac.
• 4:54
  Yeah, it's a fascinating shift, but the level of commitment is
• 4:57
  the same. Instead of military drills,
• 4:59
  though, he's out near Livingston and working with a shaman.
• 5:02
  A shaman? Yeah.
• 5:03
  Doing things like 2 hour sweat lodges, using river rocks from
• 5:06
  the Yellowstone, fasting. The whole point was to ground
• 5:10
  the character, make him feel, as he put it, more Shoshone than he
• 5:13
  is white. And part of that involved
• 5:16
  intention ties. What are those?
• 5:18
  It sounds like a really powerful practice.
• 5:20
  You set intentions, tie them physically onto something, but
• 5:23
  not just for yourself. Wow.
• 5:25
  You could set one for a friend struggling with something like
• 5:28
  addiction maybe, or dealing with trauma.
• 5:30
  So the spiritual prep becomes about service, about healing
• 5:33
  others too. That's deep.
• 5:35
  And he also spent time with Shoshone elders asking really
• 5:38
  heavy, sensitive cultural questions, even about burial
• 5:41
  customs. That requires building serious
• 5:43
  trust. And even in this more spiritual
• 5:45
  prep phase, the physical commitment didn't let up.
• 5:48
  He got injured on that set, didn't he?
• 5:50
  Yeah, broke a bone in his foot during a fight scene.
• 5:53
  Ouch. Production stops.
• 5:55
  You'd think so, but no. This is maybe one of the
• 5:57
  craziest details. He had the small bone fragment
• 6:01
  cut out and the space filled with something called bone wax.
• 6:04
  Bone wax? What is that?
• 6:06
  Like a surgical putty or sealant, I guess just so he
• 6:09
  could basically keep shooting almost immediately.
• 6:11
  That's. That's an insane level of
• 6:13
  dedication. Or maybe just insane.
• 6:15
  It definitely highlights a commitment that's way beyond
• 6:17
  what most people could even imagine.
• 6:19
  OK, let's switch gears again to maybe the touches character
• 6:23
  study David Koresh in Waco, He almost didn't even take the
• 6:28
  role. Yeah, he found Koresh
• 6:30
  reprehensible, which is understandable.
• 6:32
  He nearly pulled out. So what changed his mind?
• 6:34
  How do you prepare for someone like?
• 6:36
  That you The breakthrough, he said, was realizing you can't
• 6:39
  judge the character. You have to find the root cause.
• 6:42
  For Koresh, he anchored it in this profound trauma from
• 6:45
  childhood. Right.
• 6:46
  He had an incredibly abusive upbringing.
• 6:48
  Exactly. And that led him to escape into
• 6:50
  the Bible, memorizing the whole thing by the time he was like
• 6:52
  15. That intense study, that
• 6:55
  immersion, it became his defense mechanism, his psychological
• 6:59
  armor. For life and eventually his
• 7:01
  weapon. Totally.
• 7:02
  It became his ultimate rhetorical tool.
• 7:04
  If theologians or, you know, Child Protective Services tried
• 7:07
  to argue logically with him, Koresh would just counter with
• 7:11
  some obscure Bible speak, you know, quoting passages about a
• 7:15
  dragon with one eye or some complex prophecy.
• 7:19
  It wasn't about faith. It was about shutting down
• 7:22
  rational debate. Using scripture as a trump card
• 7:25
  against reason. Pretty much it was manipulation
• 7:27
  born from deep seated insecurity.
• 7:30
  Basically he built the perfect defense against logic.
• 7:34
  And some of the details from the actual standoff that are
• 7:37
  mentioned, they're just surreal. Like Koresh apparently hiding
• 7:41
  inside a piano that was blocking the door when his own lawyer
• 7:44
  came to see him. The lawyer had been brought in
• 7:46
  by the FBI in a tank. Wow, that's bizarre.
• 7:50
  And then the reports that the ATF were playing recordings of
• 7:53
  mutilated animals outside the compound and flying their own
• 7:55
  flag while the place burned. It's just it's heavy history.
• 7:59
  Hard to engage with that and not have it affect.
• 8:01
  You, which leads right into the cost right?
• 8:03
  The toll this kind of immersion takes.
• 8:05
  Oh absolutely. It's clear there were real
• 8:07
  physical and psychological consequences like the.
• 8:09
  Bang Bang Club playing Kevin Carter.
• 8:12
  Yeah, the photojournalist, he needed to lose a lot of weight
• 8:16
  fast. 35 lbs in 30 days. Basically lived on coffee and
• 8:21
  salted broth, he said. It can't be healthy.
• 8:23
  No, it ended up causing a thyroid problem and Carter
• 8:26
  himself used Mandrax, a sedative.
• 8:29
  The actor found it incredibly hard to shake that character off
• 8:32
  afterwards. Had nightmares for a long time.
• 8:34
  The lines really blur. They definitely seem to.
• 8:36
  He mentioned during True Detective he started drinking
• 8:39
  until he blacked out and became, in his words, oddly an asshole.
• 8:43
  Just completely mirroring the character's self destruction.
• 8:46
  That's intense. And this is where it gets really
• 8:48
  interesting how the professional stuff overlaps with his personal
• 8:51
  life, particularly with trauma and service.
• 8:54
  He shared a really harrowing story about his sister.
• 8:57
  About her addiction struggles. Yeah, a long, difficult battle.
• 9:00
  Multiple relapses, exposure to fentanyl.
• 9:03
  He talked about the sheer cost, the financial drain, losing
• 9:06
  something like $65,000 in just three days, trying to navigate
• 9:09
  detox centers and sober living facilities.
• 9:12
  That's rough. The system can be brutal.
• 9:14
  And he described the shock of finding one place that wouldn't
• 9:17
  use methadone for detox. Just offered Gatorade and muscle
• 9:21
  relaxers and basically told her to sweat it out.
• 9:23
  That sounds negligent. It highlights the desperation
• 9:26
  families face, doesn't it, Just trying to find effective help.
• 9:29
  So what was the turning point for her?
• 9:32
  Tragically, it was hitting rock bottom.
• 9:34
  A near fatal overdose on sleeping pills.
• 9:38
  Like 60 of them. Oh.
• 9:39
  My God. Apparently they were time
• 9:41
  release, which is likely what saved her life.
• 9:44
  That and witnessing something deeply traumatic, a sexual
• 9:46
  assault, those two things together, finally, as he put it,
• 9:51
  scared her straight. And she's doing OK now.
• 9:53
  Yeah, that led to nine months of sobriety, and now she's actually
• 9:56
  pursuing a career as a nurse, a real journey from trauma to
• 10:00
  service. And that experience directly
• 10:02
  inspired his nonprofit, Howard's Ridge.
• 10:04
  Exactly. Howard's Ridge is designed to
• 10:06
  provide the kind of long term holistic support his sister
• 10:09
  needed but struggled to find. It focuses on the sober side of
• 10:13
  addiction, offering things like wilderness retreats, community
• 10:16
  support. Using that Montana environment.
• 10:18
  Right. And focusing especially on
• 10:20
  veterans and others in recovery, it's taking that personal pain
• 10:25
  and channeling it into something genuinely constructive purpose
• 10:29
  from pain. And then there's that final,
• 10:31
  almost uncanny overlap, laying Isaac in American Primeval, a
• 10:35
  character deep in grief. Right when his own father passed
• 10:38
  away. Yeah.
• 10:39
  His dad, who he called Gooey, Yeah, died on Father's Day.
• 10:44
  Talk about life imitating art or art reflecting life.
• 10:48
  He even mentioned the dark humor needed sometimes to cope, like a
• 10:51
  Weekend at Bernie's moment, trying to get his dad's hospital
• 10:54
  bed through a tight corner with his brothers.
• 10:56
  Got to find humor where you can I guess.
• 10:58
  But there were deeply cathartic moments, too.
• 11:00
  Remember the shaman he worked with?
• 11:02
  The shaman had apparently warned him his father might not
• 11:04
  crossover easily. But then at the funeral, they
• 11:07
  played bagpipes, one of his dad's favorite things.
• 11:09
  And somehow that moment, that sound, it acted as a catalyst.
• 11:13
  It brought him and his two brothers, who hadn't and really
• 11:15
  connected in 25 years, back together.
• 11:17
  Wow, powerful stuff. Really powerful.
• 11:20
  So looking at this whole spectrum, the seal training, the
• 11:24
  cultural immersion, the deep dives into dark characters
• 11:28
  navigating profound personal loss and addiction, what's the
• 11:33
  big take away? I think it circles back to that
• 11:35
  initial idea conquering comfort. Rejecting complacency.
• 11:39
  Exactly, the source puts it bluntly.
• 11:42
  Comfort can kill you, whether you're facing a tough bow hunt
• 11:45
  or embodying a difficult character or battling addiction
• 11:49
  in your family. Intense preparation being all
• 11:51
  in. That seems to be the only way he
• 11:53
  found to eliminate self doubt to.
• 11:55
  Feel worthy of whatever the task is.
• 11:57
  Right, you have to earn it. Reject the easy path.
• 12:00
  And we've seen how that intense pressure, that weight can lead
• 12:03
  down darkly different roads, haven't we?
• 12:05
  Yeah, it's striking. Both paths seem rooted in
• 12:08
  grappling with overwhelming stress or trauma.
• 12:10
  One leads to, you know, extreme manipulation, destructive power
• 12:14
  like Koresh and the other. The other leads towards deep
• 12:17
  authenticity, towards service like the Seals he portrayed or
• 12:20
  like his own nonprofit work born from his family's struggle.
• 12:23
  So that leaves us with a pretty big question, maybe for you, the
• 12:26
  listener to think about. Yeah.
• 12:28
  What is it that actually dictates which path someone
• 12:30
  takes when they're carrying that kind of immense emotional
• 12:33
  weight? Is it all just down to childhood
• 12:35
  trauma? Sort of predetermined?
• 12:37
  For conscious choice involved, a decision may be forged through
• 12:40
  that same intense preparation to aim for service and truth, or to
• 12:46
  go the other way towards self aggrandizement and ultimately
• 12:49
  destruction. It's a heavy question, no easy
• 12:52
  answers there. Definitely something to chew on
• 12:53
  after this deep dive. That's all the time we have for
• 12:56
  today. Thanks for joining us on the Joe
• 12:58
  Rogan Recap.