Joe Manganiello On Getting Sober, The Mystery Illness That Almost Killed Him & The Trauma We Inherit

Joe Manganiello is an actor (True Blood, Magic Mike, One Piece) and author of Bloodlines. This conversation explores his odyssey of pain and suffering, self-discovery, and ultimately spiritual transformation – from a near-fatal illness to a family history that upended what he thought he knew. Learning that this podcast helped him make sense of his healing was a reminder of why I do this. Joe's journey is unreal. And he tells it beautifully. Enjoy! Show notes + MORE Watch on YouTube Newsletter Sign-Up Today’s Sponsors: Squarespace: Use code RichRoll to save 50% off your first order of a website or domain👉🏼https://www.squarespace.com/RichRoll WHOOP: Join now and get one month free👉🏼https://www.join.whoop.com/Roll Airbnb: Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much👉🏼https://www.airbnb.com/host Momentous: Get up to 35% off your first order👉🏼https://www.livemomentous.com/richroll Check out all of the amazing discounts from our Sponsors👉🏼https://www.richroll.com/sponsors Find out more about Voicing Change Media at https://www.voicingchange.media and follow us @voicingchange Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  I thought, you're not gonna make it one more day. Like, look at all this blood. Like, you don't have more. Like, I knew I was gonna die.

• 0:07Rich Roll?

  For the last 14 years, I've hosted over 1,000 conversations of this podcast. Today's stands out. It's very special, perhaps among my all-time favorites, because it's a beautiful, powerful, and emotional illustration of the central themes of this show. The power and potential of the human spirit to face and overcome obstacles. What happens when you embark upon a mind, body, and spirit journey of personal transformation? And the transcendent healing that transpires when you make peace with your past. My partner in this exploration is Joe Manganiello, a longtime sober artist,

• 0:48Rich Roll?

  actor, filmmaker, and action star, best known for his roles in Spider-Man, True Blood, Magic Mike, Justice League, and for sporting perhaps the best physique in Hollywood. What you likely don't know is that just as his career was about to go stratospheric, Joe began to secretly suffer from a mysterious, seemingly undiagnosable autoimmune disorder that on more than one occasion, very nearly took his life. What he survived is truly superhuman.

• 1:21Speaker 00

  I'm bleeding all night long in the bathroom, in massive amounts of pain. They brought me into an emergency surgery. Whatever you thought your life was, it's over.

• 1:32Rich Roll?

  Even more impressive is how he survived it. How he turned a healing journey I wouldn't wish on anyone into this powerful new why that has birthed a more meaningful relationship with living. All of which he illustrates with tremendous vulnerability in Bloodlines, his rather gripping newly released memoir now available everywhere. This one hits, I can't stop thinking about it, and the life lessons he generously shares, and I have a sneaking suspicion you will feel the same.

• 2:12Rich Roll?

  So, Joe, typically when I have a sober person on the show,

• 2:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:16Rich Roll?

  I try to do some version or rendition of what it was like, what happened, and what it's like now. In your case, I want to do that, but there's a ripple to your version of this story that is sort of turbocharged in the what it's like now, like, third act part.

• 2:36Rich Roll?

  That is almost something like, who came before me? How did that influence me and my life? What did I do with that? And what it's like in the now after the what it's like now?

• 2:52Rich Roll?

  You know what I mean?

• 2:52Speaker 00

  Yes. Yeah, and sobriety is a huge part of my life, obviously, but

• 3:00Speaker 00

  the process of getting sober turned me into version 2.0.

• 3:06Speaker 00

  But it was somewhat a warm-up for the fight that I then had heading into version 3.0, which I wasn't sure if I was gonna make it to.

• 3:18Rich Roll?

  Yeah. It's almost as if, like, I did all this work, I've arrived in this place, I've rebuilt my life, I've created this amazing abundant life, and now this. Like, I didn't bank on this, I didn't have this on my whiteboard. Haven't I suffered enough? And here comes this freight train in your direction, asking you to deepen your surrender and undergo, like, truly this odyssey

• 3:51Rich Roll?

  of pain and suffering, self-discovery, and ultimately spiritual transformation.

• 3:59Speaker 00

  Yeah, it was, but looking back, I can see that even into sobriety, there were things that weren't quite lining up. You know, in the book, I start a chapter with this phrase that an old manager of mine used to say to me, and she used to say, you know, Joe, for a lucky guy, you're pretty fucking unlucky. There was something that just wasn't quite lining up all the time. And I think what she was commenting on was the fact, or from her vantage point, that somebody who had been given seemingly endless amounts of advantages in life,

• 4:42Speaker 00

  things were still out of focus for me. And then, of course, the symptoms start rearing in their heads, and that freight train, I can see the lights of the freight train, and I understand, shit, I'm on the tracks, and how do I get off these tracks? Why am I on these tracks? Have I always been on these tracks? And then that spurred, yes, like you said, the odyssey, which was basically 10 years at sea, trying to find my way back home, or trying to understand if I was gonna survive this thing at all, or what the hell was happening to me? And where there were no answers. And so it started this, this journey through,

• 5:26Speaker 00

  journey across the globe for answers that also took me backwards in time. And what I realized was that there was a series of knots that were tied, just a series of knots. And sobriety was a part of it, and thank God I was sober. I think that really was a warm-up and a practice, because the act of getting sober and staying sober, the act of healing spiritually, of growing spiritually,

• 5:56Speaker 00

  then provided for me a framework or a foundation, or an openness to other answers.

• 6:06Speaker 00

  Because I think, you know, in that initial period of my life, prior to getting sober,

• 6:13Speaker 00

  I was given, you know,

• 6:17Speaker 00

  I was given certain answers. You know, you grow up in a certain time, a certain place, the people you're around believe a certain thing, you're taught right from wrong, or not. I mean, in my case, I was taught right from wrong with a certain system and place. And at some point, you let go of that, or realize, maybe that isn't for me, or I don't believe all of this, or, you know, I'm talking about like, you know, kind of a spiritual, you know, foundation, and then, you know, when you sink into addiction, I think there's a

• 6:53Speaker 00

  there's a godlessness that happens, because you're up to things that you're hoping, if there is a God, they're not watching you do. And so I think you then start thinking, you know, if God is everything, or God is nothing, then God has to be nothing. And so there's this kind of atheism, I think, that starts to happen. And then the process of getting sober, I think a lot of people trip up over the God thing, but if you go to any AA meeting, it's just like a bunch of people who look like maniacs, or like, you know, like, people who are not at church, you know? That's the reason why, you know, AA, they're in the basement, they're in the basement of the church, you know?

• 7:32Speaker 00

  So it's a lot of people that aren't your typical church-going fare, searching for some sort of spirituality, or some sort of healing. And so they ask you to, you know, kind of 12 steps, ask you famously, just choose a God of your understanding, there's something bigger than you. And that started all that questioning that then helped me, because I really do feel like this version 3.0, or battling the battle that would come, that freight train that was heading towards me,

• 8:07Speaker 00

  would force me into a life or death situation where I had to find something, something to believe. Or I was at least shown what to believe.

• 8:18Rich Roll?

  I'm of the opinion that many an addict, if not all addicts, become addicts on some level because they're seeking something, they're seeking some kind of connection. They're doing it in an errant way that, like, derails their lives. But fundamentally, it's a, it's a search for answers down, you know, dark alleys and in wrong directions. And then when you're in the throes of it, yeah, it's a, it's a spiritual bleakness.

• 8:43Speaker 00

  Well, spirits, right?

• 8:45Rich Roll?

  Yeah, spirits, and so, yeah, you are possessed, basically.

• 8:48Speaker 00

  Yeah, or like the, you know, like Trent Reznor used to talk about a lot of that, and a lot of the early Ninety-Snail stuff, like, you know, trying to get closer to God, or find things that will get you there, get you there, you know?

• 8:59Rich Roll?

  Get you to feel something beyond, like, the three-dimensional realm. And then sobriety, of course, is a, is a sort of spiritual rebirth, and an opportunity to, like, re-establish or reframe your relationship with the ineffable. And, you know, that's fundamentally the solution. But one thing about AA that's interesting is that as capacious as the steps are for a spiritual transformation, they are as deep as you want to go. Like, I think they are, you know, the source code for, you know, just ultimate change. And, you know, we've all borne witness to many a miracle with, like, you know, our friends and our colleagues, et cetera.

• 9:38Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 9:39Rich Roll?

  You know, I'm thoroughly convinced that, you know, this is just a divinely inspired program, and just it changed my life, I know it changed yours. But within the framework of that program of recovery, there's not a lot of emphasis on, you make your amends for your past wrongs, et cetera, but, but there's sort of an implicit discouragement of trying to understand, like, why you became an alcoholic in the first place? Because it's a program of, like, action and moving forward.

• 10:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's not alcoholics analysis.

• 10:10Rich Roll?

  It's like, who cares why you are, you just are, right? And here's how to fix it, and move forward, take these steps, and your life will change. And indeed, it will. But what took you from Joe 2.0 to Joe 3.0 is tackling that very problem. You know, like, looking in the rearview mirror and trying to understand, like, everything that led up to making, making these decisions that you've made

• 10:38Rich Roll?

  was informed by the people that came before you and the experiences that they had. And, you know, there's a, there's a kind of, you know, spirituality and mysticism in that as well, with the epigenetics of it, and the inherited cycle of generational trauma. And fundamentally, I think that's a, that's a source of,

• 10:59Rich Roll?

  to use the word again, like, turbocharged healing. Like, if you fundamentally want to heal this thing, you are going to have to venture backwards.

• 11:07Speaker 00

  You have to dig the roots up. I mean, I was, for me, and I'm not saying for everybody, but...

• 11:14Speaker 00

  You know, for me, you know, I wasn't randomly selected for all of this. I think there's a, there's a, there's an initial, there was an initial phase of why me? Why me? Why is this happening to me? Or what the hell is going on? Or,

• 11:30Speaker 00

  and, and then you really do start doing some digging and, and you realize that this stuff goes deep. I think I have a, an understanding of what happened to me, but I think that,

• 11:47Speaker 00

  especially when I would try to talk to Western doctors about it, I was looked upon as being pseudo-scientific for the things that I was thinking. And, and, but I, I know that there also is scientific precedence for generational trauma. And, you know, I talk in the book about the 2013 Emory University study where rats were introduced to a chemical that gives off the scent of cherry blossoms. And as they were, they were being given the scent of cherry blossoms, their feet would be electrically shocked.

• 12:30Speaker 00

  And over time, and this repeated conditioning, they then took those rats and mated them with unconditioned females that were not driven to be afraid of the, the smell of cherry blossoms through electric shocks, unconditioned. So you have conditioned males mating with unconditioned females and the result were offspring that when given the scent of cherry blossoms were terrified and would run the other way. So they had understood that if they can traumatize the males, they will pass this genetic information on to their offspring, even if the females weren't.

• 13:11Speaker 00

  Another study, you know, I'm, I'm on the board of a company called Colossal Biosciences, which brought back the dire wolf and

• 13:18Rich Roll?

  Oh, that same company. Yeah.

• 13:20Speaker 00

  Willie mice and all of this.

• 13:21Rich Roll?

  That seems like something you would sink your teeth into.

• 13:24Speaker 00

  Kind of randomly, randomly came my way, but like little did they know, they were like, oh yeah, you were like that werewolf guy and dire wolves are in Dungeons and Dragons. And I'm like, no, no, no, no, you don't understand. Like I'm obsessed with all of this and I have a vested interest in epigenetics and I need to ask you some questions about where we're at right now because I'm trying to unlock this thing within my life and I want to understand, you know,

• 13:49Speaker 00

  you know, if there are other spiritual belief systems that could, or, you know, I wanted to know what science said about what I was going through. And there's a Tasmanian tiger, which was made extinct by human hunters like little under a century ago, about 90 years ago. And they were all wiped out. It's this marsupial wolf with tiger stripes. Super cool. The thylacine is, is the, you know, the, the name. So they're bringing back the thylacine.

• 14:20Speaker 00

  And prior to them reintroducing them to their old hunting grounds in Tasmania, they went and made perfect full color cutouts of the animal and stuck them in their old hunting grounds. And the animals, the, the descendants of the animals that were hunted by the Tasmanian tiger would see the cutouts and run away. They had a, a fear of just the sight of the cutouts. And they've been extinct for almost a century. So that then spurred a conversation about, well,

• 15:04Speaker 00

  where's, where do they think generational trauma or that type of trauma, where's that stored in the body? I said, no, no, no. Mitochondria. I said, okay, it's, well, why did you say, no, no, no? I said, well, the new theory is that the mitochondria is actually a separate organism that we're carrying around, or I'm, I was carrying around a dark passenger and which would explain why, when Western medicine was pumping me full of all of these rheumatoid arthritis drugs or anti-cancer pills and combination and massive doses that were having really serious side effects on me.

• 15:41Speaker 00

  They were, they were shutting my body down without targeting where the trauma was actually kept. It was like another organism. So they're shutting my body down, but this thing is still, still riding unscathed, which blew my mind and also opened up, you know, my mind of the positive, to the understanding of why maybe that wasn't working. But there is scientific precedence for this. It's not pseudoscience. But

• 16:12Speaker 00

  I can get into the metaphysics of it all day, you know, kind of the Jungian, red booky side of it where, uh, which, which is definitely where, where my story took me. I went to some, you know, if it's an, we're using the Odyssey metaphor.

• 16:27Rich Roll?

  Quite a, yeah.

• 16:27Speaker 00

  I went to some weird islands, man. And I saw some weird things on those islands.

• 16:31Rich Roll?

  Your own Scylla and Charybdis and, you know, like the whole thing, you know what I mean? All the way to Odysseus, Matt Damon lying, lying down on the raft and just saying, God take me, you know, either I'm going to die or I'm going to make it home. You know, and home being in your case, like this, this spiritual transformation. But let me just say, for the sake of the audience who's listening or watching, like, what are we talking about? Uh, Joe, I mean, essentially, I don't know if it was the peak of your career, but like your career is going really well. You're like doing Justice League reshoots and there's the whole Batman thing that's kind of like percolating. Like there's a lot of opportunities swirling around you. And you get blindsided by this autoimmune, uh, disease that is mystifying

• 17:15Rich Roll?

  Western, the Western medicine doctors that, that, that you're, you know, visiting with and leads you into this, you know, to the depths of despair, to like, just, you know, horrific near death experiences and just this, you know, ongoing battle with this condition. Nobody could really figure out what to do about or what it is. Um, and this is the essence of Bloodline, your book, like it's a memoir, but it's really this Odyssey-like experience of navigating this disease and trying to find a way to heal yourself, not just in body, but in mind and spirit.

• 17:55Speaker 00

  Yes. Yeah. Trying to understand what happened. Um, why?

• 18:00Rich Roll?

  So walk us up to the point where you get this diagnosis, like what was going on and what happened?

• 18:07Speaker 00

  Yeah. So,

• 18:12Speaker 00

  I'm, you know, I'm, I'm for better or for worse, you know, I am, I'm a theater actor who becomes known for his physicality.

• 18:23Rich Roll?

  Carnegie Mellon.

• 18:24Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 18:25Rich Roll?

  You did a ton of theater.

• 18:26Speaker 00

  Yes. Yeah.

• 18:28Rich Roll?

  Like mostly theater.

• 18:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:29Rich Roll?

  You've got all these big credits, Magic Mike and True Blood, you know, blah, blah, blah, all this sort of stuff. But like thespian artist,

• 18:39Rich Roll?

  you know, in this like, you know, alpha male, uh, high performing athletic body.

• 18:45Speaker 00

  Right. Yes. Yeah. Um, you know, I, I, you know, went to this great drama school, started off in theater. Uh, I have that career. I, I kind of get skyrocketed. I get rocketed at the beginning. I, I get the first thing I auditioned for.

• 19:01Rich Roll?

  You like, you, within like three days of signing with an agent right after college, you get this Spider-Man audition.

• 19:09Speaker 00

  That turns into a screen test.

• 19:10Rich Roll?

  For Peter Parker initially, right? Like, like this is like happening overnight.

• 19:13Speaker 00

  Yes. Yeah. And I know that I'm wrong for Peter Parker. So I wear a different outfit underneath and memorize the other sides that I am correct for. So when they say you're not right for Peter Parker, you might be right for this other part. I say, right, take the shirt off, take the glasses off and go straight into the other audition without needing the script. And the casting director said, okay, I want you to meet Sam Raimi. How long are you in town? I was visiting from college. I hadn't even graduated yet.

• 19:39Rich Roll?

  You hadn't graduated yet. I mean, there's a lot of life lessons just in that story right there about how to be prepared for moments.

• 19:45Speaker 00

  Be prepared. Hey, I'll get you the sides. I don't need them. What do you mean? I don't need them. I'm already off book. You're off book on the other part? Yeah. I was hoping that you were going to say, I was right for this, so I'm ready. Cause all I've got is a resume full of theater credits and I have to compete with people who have been doing it a long time and I have to get them to trust me. So, okay, I'm ready. So I auditioned. She goes, okay, how long are you in town? I go, I'll stay as long as you need me. She goes, stay in town, stay by your phone. I'm going to call you. She called Sam Raimi. They were getting ready to screen test all the Spider-Man candidates the following week. And, um, she got me a gig for 500 bucks to play the Flash Thompson, the part I eventually got cast in against all of the Spider-Man candidates and screen tests.

• 20:30Speaker 00

  So each one would come in and I'd keep doing the scene with them and keep bullying them and, you know, whatever. And I got to meet Sam Raimi. And Sam liked me. And then Sam called me back in for a, for a specific screen test for me only. And, um, you know, said, here's our executive producer, Grant Curtis, bully him, bully him. And I was like, get on your knees, you know, he got his knee. I started slapping him. I made him pluck like a chicken. They thought it was hilarious. And they were like, here's the casting director, Francie, pretend she's your girlfriend. Pretend she's Mary Jane. I'm like, ah, you know, I'm like hitting on the cast and doing, doing all this funny stuff. And, uh, Sam looked at my resume afterwards and he said, uh,

• 21:09Speaker 00

  Okay, but you you did go to Carnegie Mellon.

• 21:12Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 21:13Speaker 00

  Like, please, can I trust you?

• 21:15Rich Roll?

  And you're all of what, like 21?

• 21:17Speaker 00

  Twenty three. No, twenty three. And but then, of course, you know, going back to that for a lucky guy, you're you're you're pretty unlucky comment. You know, two weeks after Sam Raimi sends his congratulations that I was cast, my roommate comes home and says, I think my friend auditioned for your part today. I was like, that's impossible. But it was true. The head of the studio didn't think I was all American enough looking. Took it away unbeknownst to me and started auditioning other people. And that went on for like two months. And

• 21:53Speaker 00

  so like Christmas Eve, my agent called me back and was like, hey, you know, they didn't find anybody else.

• 22:01Speaker 00

  You excited?

• 22:01Rich Roll?

  You're getting it by default.

• 22:04Speaker 00

  Cool. So, you know, it was like, you're lucky because you're gonna be in like the biggest movie ever attempted. And it's Spider-Man. But you're unlucky because you had to go through all this in order to get it. So anyway, that was like kind of my welcome to Hollywood deal. And then shortly after that, you know, by the time Spider-Man was premiering in theaters, I was like completely bottoming out.

• 22:30Speaker 00

  So

• 22:30Rich Roll?

  Drugs and alcohol.

• 22:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 22:34Speaker 00

  And it was that summer of 2002 that Spider-Man came out in theaters in May. That whole summer I was like just skidding. As I was like, I'd get 28 days and go back out, get 29 days, get 30 days, go out. And then it took me until August 26, where of 2002, where that was day one.

• 22:52Rich Roll?

  Where did, when did that start?

• 22:55Speaker 00

  Um, the the the bottoming or?

• 22:57Rich Roll?

  No, the the just the the drinking and the drugs and, you know, just the using.

• 23:02Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think, um, you know, I I always felt growing up like I was born without skin. I was very empathetic and and I don't mean that in like a fucking, you know, sissy way. I mean, that when I played cards as a little kid, I could tell what the adults had in their hands. I could know how they were playing. And I would beat the adults. I'd know, don't put that card down because they're gonna take it because they need, that's the one they need, the way they're playing. I could sense all the, you know, I I could tell what, you know, adults were feeling.

• 23:37Speaker 00

  And and I think that was all a little too much for me. And I always looked at,

• 23:46Speaker 00

  I looked at the other kids, I looked at beer commercials. I went, how come everybody else has it so easy? And I feel so complicated.

• 23:57Speaker 00

  I had so much like, so many storms inside me that were rumbling that I just couldn't get out. And they would always sabotage me in those great moments, you know, like the girl who's cheerleader who I really liked and her parents are out of town and she's having a party and let's go to my room and talk and

• 24:18Speaker 00

  I just want to talk about how, you know, how depressed I'm.

• 24:24Speaker 00

  Like in those moments where you're like, dude, just shut up and, you know,

• 24:30Rich Roll?

  It's all right there for you.

• 24:31Speaker 00

  I couldn't ever get there, you know, and until, you know, a friend of mine, I was 16 years old. And I'd gotten contact lenses and it started working out and my mom was a model. So I I I said to her, could you introduce me to somebody at the local talent agency? And she said, oh, okay. And so she did. And I got hired for this job. It was for Versace at the Ross Park Mall where it was me and the department store on a motorcycle with like a model hanging over me. And they paid me, you know what I mean? It was like, this is great. Like, how do I do this?

• 25:10Speaker 00

  And and then that led to one night when I was 16, a friend of mine, she'd be my my agent, you know, called and said, said, hey, somebody canceled on us last minute. Could you fill in? I don't I don't know who asked the call. I said, sure, sure. And she said, well, you know, how'd you like to make 30 bucks an hour? Oh, yeah, great. Sure. We'll just come down to the office. If anybody asks, just say you're 21.

• 25:39Speaker 00

  Okay, great. So I had my mom drop me off. I didn't have my license yet, you know, and I walk into this room and there's all these adults. And I'd walk into the room and they all turn like unison. And they say, you're the guy? And I went, yep. And they went, how old are you?

• 25:56Speaker 00

  21. Great, put this on. And they hand me this pirate suit. And it's like the ruffles, the jacket, the wig, the eye patch, the hat, the booties that go over your shoes and make them look like pirate boots. And a plastic sword, a little pistola, and I'm gonna be Captain Morgan at a bunch of bars. So and they're like, these are your wenches. And they were like these two hot college girls and like skimpy pirate girl outfits. Load us into a minivan. Drive us to a bar. I get out, pull my cape, you know, got caught in the door, whatever, get out and they go, oh, you put on your backpack. They put this big tank backpack on me, fill it with rum, has a tap on it. They're like, go get everybody drunk and give them T-shirts.

• 26:42Speaker 00

  So we go in the bar, the two pirate girls pull me into the corner and they're like, let's let's drink this. Let's go, come on. So we're all, you know,

• 26:54Speaker 00

  I mean, I like by the third bar, I get that cherubie warm feeling in my cheeks. And we get out of the minivan at the third bar and they remember they had the cowboy doors, those saloon doors. 16 years old. I walk up. Something overtakes me, boot the doors in. The whole bar looks at me and I go again, the whole bar goes, again, it was on. I had people laying on the bar. I'm squirting on their mouths. All these people lined up, singing Marilyn Manson covers with the band. There were like girls flashing for T-shirts and I'm taking pictures on Seagram's camera. They gave me, I mean, it was like mayhem.

• 27:40Speaker 00

  I sell the knife, I sell the gun. People offer me money. I'm selling, I'm putting the cash in my, you know, my sock. I sold the eye patch, you know, I mean, and they're like, where's your stuff? And I'm like, somebody stole it, you know, I get this sock full of cash.

• 27:57Speaker 00

  The promotion ends, they drop me off in my mom's lawn, 2:30 in the morning, I trundle in hammered. Next morning I wake up and that agent calls and says, how'd it go? And I went, what? It went great. I thought we I thought we did some some great work. I thought we reached a lot of people. She's like, well, there's a huge problem.

• 28:17Speaker 00

  Shit, we're all going to jail. He goes, I don't know what you did, but Seagram's doesn't want to do this promotion unless you're Captain Morgan. So we got to figure out a way to get you a fake ID.

• 28:26Rich Roll?

  So this is, this is the inception point for not only, you know, your alcoholism, but also your acting career. You're like, not only did you sell all that stuff, like, and you you you sold the brand and you sold Captain Morgan, like you inhabited Captain Morgan, you became him and it was well received.

• 28:47Speaker 00

  Yeah. And then, you know, but also on the way home from the promotion, they're like, hey, where do you live? We'll drop you off. Because I was telling the girls like, yeah, I go to I go to Pitt, I go to the University of Pittsburgh. I'm in high school, you know, like a sophomore. And then they're like, all right, well, we'll drop you off first. We're gonna head past Oakland. I go, no, no, drop me off last. Because I don't want them to see me getting dropped off at my mom's house in suburbia. So it was like this whole complex web of stories and then Captain Morgan. And then I wound up getting, uh, there was a guy at the agency who was 10 years older than me who looked like me and he he gave me his ID and I was Captain Morgan from 16 through 21 in Pittsburgh. And then I got a job working for Finlandia vodka, but instead of the pirate suit, I'm wearing a tuxedo and the girls were wearing evening gowns.

• 29:31Speaker 00

  And we traveled the world on U2's old tour bus full of vodka, drunk, smoking Marlboro Reds. I get a lung infection from the Marlboro Reds and drinking all day. So I have to leave the tour early, get rid of the lung infection, get a job working for Camel, passing out cigarettes at all the bars, which made all of Pittsburgh a giant open bar. Like, I just figured out how to monetize my favorite things to do.

• 29:55Rich Roll?

  Yeah, the pitchman, the Pittsburgh pitchman for everything addictive and and not good for you. And you're what? You must have been like a man child, though. Were you like huge when you were 16? How are you passing for 20?

• 30:06Speaker 00

  I mean, I'm heavier now, but I was 6'5" when I was 16 years old. So I was always taller than the other kids, but I topped off at 16. So yeah, I mean, I looked, I looked the part. I could pass. Nobody questioned me. And

• 30:19Rich Roll?

  And you're a three sport athlete.

• 30:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 30:21Rich Roll?

  At the time.

• 30:22Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 30:22Rich Roll?

  Football, basketball, volleyball. You're doing it all. That's like, that's like an ego thing, too. Like, oh, I can go do all this other stuff and be this athlete.

• 30:31Speaker 00

  Well, I had this

• 30:32Rich Roll?

  An honor student?

• 30:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 30:33Rich Roll?

  Not for nothing?

• 30:34Speaker 00

  Yeah. Well, and then I made my own movies.

• 30:37Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 30:37Speaker 00

  So that that started happening. But but yeah, no, I I I was living a secret life away from high school, you know, which made high school really boring. Because on the weekends, I'm Captain Morgan with college girls. And now I have to come back and go to my, you know, stupid classes.

• 31:00Speaker 00

  But I started making my own movies and that became interesting and AP physics became less interesting. And and then I just started figuring out like, okay, like through the movies, through the, you know, assorted promotional jobs and and things like, I just was like, I can do this. I I know that I could be an actor. I know my friends who I've shooting movies with, they they keep pushing me that way. And so I finally started taking theater classes my senior year and right away, the the theater teacher was like, will you please try out for the musical? Like, do I have to sing and dance? She's like, yes, you do. But you're gonna be fine. I was like, okay. And so I did. And then tried out for Carnegie Mellon right out of out of high school

• 31:42Speaker 00

  with all the other theater kids who had been doing it their whole lives. And I didn't get in, but I didn't know what I was doing. And so I spent a year, I didn't apply anywhere else. And I late applied to the University of Pittsburgh, went there, spent a year just busting my ass. And then a year, a year later, to the date, walked across the street on a snowy morning and tried out again. And that time I was one of 16 actors that got in. So the the the part that broke my heart was

• 32:16Speaker 00

  All of that fight, all of that threading the needle at 100 yards that it took for me to jump those tracks, give up everything that sports and academics were going to provide for me, that straight and narrow path, I made it somehow. I jumped and grabbed the other side. And then alcoholism just neutralized all that. And, you know, um, three, heading into three years of sobriety, I'm working on the back of a construction truck. I have no agent, no manager, no one will return my phone calls. I have nothing. And I'm shoveling sand and gravel from seven to four every day with a bunch of guys that don't speak English and hauling cement bags and, and, um, in the LA sun, wondering like, am I

• 32:58Speaker 00

  going back to school? Or, or what am I doing? Like, it took away all my dreams. And I never thought I was going to get that back at that point. And I thought, I'm just going to be Joe and I'm going to be sober and I'm going to figure this out. Um, and I thought maybe, maybe this was punishment for my ego being involved with being an actor, whatever all that was. But there were enough people who were fans of my work and knew what I was capable of, they kept calling. And then I started getting traction and jobs started happening. And then I got off the construction truck and never went back. So by the time we hit True Blood, I'm in a position where I've now gotten the break. Like True Blood

• 33:39Speaker 00

  was a break. True Blood was a pocket ace's hand job. It was the hottest show in the world. It was a star making type of show that the industry watched, like all the directors, everybody watched True Blood when, when, you know, those first few seasons. And I was going to be the hot, big, new character on the show. And I knew it. And so, um, that really took away all the pain of sobriety, all the things that I thought I was going to, that I thought would never come back to me, came back. It's like all of a sudden I'm getting calls to be in movies. I'm getting calls, you know, Superman, Hercules, I'm getting, you know, all the big parts. I can't do them all because I'm shooting True Blood,

• 34:22Speaker 00

  but I have gainful employment. It's still great artistically, and I can start figuring out what I want to do once I get off. And as I'm in that process of wrapping up True Blood, um, I become engaged, start dating, become engaged to and get married to, I think one year there was like, I was the hottest guy on TV. She was the hottest girl on TV. So it was like, oh, this makes total sense. And, um, you know, everything was on the up and up. There was going to be a Magic Mike sequel. They were centering more of the plot around me. I was getting calls for action movies, like all of these things,

• 35:04Speaker 00

  like huge showrunners were calling me, telling me they were going to develop shows for me, like award worthy material. And all of this is happening. And then all of a sudden, I start not feeling right. My skin, there's something going on. I have like multiple rashes. I just chalk it up to maybe not doing my laundry quick enough, or, or, you know, taking my workout gear off when I get out. I don't know what's going on. And then all of a sudden, the blood starts. And once the blood starts, something's wrong. But I'm also like, two months away from getting married. So are we calling this off?

• 35:46Speaker 00

  No, no, no, no, no, no, we're not calling. No, no, no. Keep moving, keep moving, keep moving forward. And, um, by the time we got back from the honeymoon, I didn't feel great. And by the time we got back, um, I had to go in and have a procedure done and I was misdiagnosed. And it was, it was the wrong procedure. And then after that, I didn't heal from it. And I laid on my side for about a month and a half. And during that time, Harvey Weinstein pitched me a TV series at my wedding to star in the show. And he said he was going to run Miami campaign for me and you're the next thing and this and

• 36:26Speaker 00

  that, you know, and when, before his incarceration at Rikers Island for sexual assault and rape, having Harvey Weinstein in your corner, that's it. You're made, you're made man. And I go off to shoot that show. And, um, my body starts being overtaken by bulbous weeping hives, like something's wrong. Like, the makeup team had to start like spray painting over these open weeping, like all over me. I'm waking up in pools of sweat. I'm bleeding

• 37:07Speaker 00

  all night long in the bathroom. I'm getting up like every 20 minutes, bleeding in, in massive amounts of pain. And, uh, and finally, one day on set, I couldn't do it anymore. And I, I, I laid down in the fetal position in the dirt and I locked up and I couldn't move. And, um, I couldn't come, like, I got back to my trailer and I kept saying, you know, shoot the other scene, shoot the other scene. And they started shooting, they said, we're done with the other scene hours later. And I couldn't move. And they finally, they called an ambulance and, uh, and then that kicked off, uh, you know, an eight week, eight week hospital stay in which, um, all of it just exploded.

• 37:50Rich Roll?

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• 39:19Rich Roll?

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• 40:03Rich Roll?

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• 40:46Rich Roll?

  That's so intense, man. And not knowing what it is. Like the fear of like, not even being able to put your hands around like, what exactly is happening so that you can get it treated properly. And masking it, like, there's so much to lose. Like, I gotta get through this shoot, or like, nobody can know, you know, if they find out, I'm going to lose this job, or the show's going to fall apart.

• 41:08Speaker 00

  Yeah. And my tendency is just, you just, you know, you just fight through it.

• 41:12Rich Roll?

  Warrior mode.

• 41:13Speaker 00

  Yeah, I've worked with the flu before, you know, I've worked with 104 degree temperature. Like you just, you power through it. Um, and, uh, yeah, those first two weeks in the hospital in North Carolina.

• 41:28Speaker 00

  I mean, there was a parade of like doctors and interns and like they were bringing into the room because I was, I was like John Merrick, I'm like the elephant man to them like, we can't figure out, nothing's showing up in any of the scans, look it up, you know, and like, pull your pants down, show up, like, I mean, it was like that, where you're just like, you feel like you're some kind of lab experiment with this parade of people. And finally, it was like, get out of my room, like, leave me alone, you know, and, and it was at that point that I had to airlift, I had to, you know, airlift back to, to Cedars in LA, because I knew I'm not getting

• 42:07Speaker 00

  out here anytime soon. And paparazzi were swarming. It had broken that I had shut down the production. They had to recast the role. They were trying to figure out where I was. There were people sitting vigil outside of our house in LA, waiting to try to get pictures of me. And then,

• 42:28Speaker 00

  you know, like, had to say something to get these people off of me. And so we said that my appendix ruptured, or I had to have my appendix out, which technically wound up not being completely untrue.

• 42:41Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 42:42Speaker 00

  They took everything else out?

• 42:44Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, it's, it's down there, it's infected, it's gotta go.

• 42:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, just say, hey, my appendix exploded, until we could figure out what was going on.

• 42:51Rich Roll?

  Just get them off your back. It's the tour canceled due to dehydration or exhaustion.

• 42:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, exhaustion, yeah, I had to go in some facility for re- yeah.

• 43:02Rich Roll?

  Right, just like, you know, kind of coded language.

• 43:05Speaker 00

  Yes. And so, came back to LA, and then that's when the tests really ramped up, because they couldn't figure out what was going on. And by, at this point also too, you know, thirteen and a half years sober, and I'm completely dependent upon liquid Dilaudid, which, for anybody out there who has done liquid Dilaudid, if you ever want to put on VR goggles and pretend that you're in a Simpsons episode, this is for you, this is the drug for you.

• 43:39Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, you know, hence ensues this relationship with this disease and all the pharmaceuticals that are being thrown at you, that, you know, you've got to figure out how to take or not take, and the threat that that poses to your sobriety and the fear that you have about it activating your inner addict and, and, you know, all of the kind of internal conflict and turmoil that goes on with that, like, what does this mean for my sobriety?

• 44:08Speaker 00

  Is it gonna wake the beast up, and I'm not gonna get it back, and it's gonna, I know that destroyed my life. And it was so difficult to get it in the cage. And now this thing's gonna come out, again. And, and immediately, your brain starts wrestling with, not wrestling, but you start having those thoughts of like, you know, kind of developing a tolerance to this, and you start trying to negotiate with the nurses. You're like, you know.

• 44:32Rich Roll?

  What's your, what's your pain level, Joe, today?

• 44:35Speaker 00

  I'm sure you, I'm sure you, this was prescribed for an eighty year old, eighty pound woman, I'm sure it was, but I am giant, I need more, can you give me, you know, you start doing that talk, and that's the thing. It's the thing, trying to get out, trying to get more, trying to get, what's Dilaudid, like, they gave me morphine at one point, I couldn't even feel it, it was like nothing, it was like, you give me an aspirin, it didn't matter.

• 45:01Rich Roll?

  Yeah, Dilaudid is a good shit.

• 45:02Speaker 00

  Crazy. And

• 45:04Rich Roll?

  I had to, in my spine surgery, I was on that for a minute.

• 45:09Speaker 00

  It's also completely brutal staring at the clock, because the clock becomes that thing, where you know,

• 45:17Rich Roll?

  How long until?

• 45:18Speaker 00

  They won't give it to you for four hours.

• 45:20Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 45:20Speaker 00

  So right around hour three, you're like, okay, I just keep, don't miss it, okay. And then it's like, right at the four hour mark. Or you, or then you go, no, it usually takes them fifteen minutes to get in here, so, all right, I'm gonna hit it at three forty-five. And then, and then, you know, soon enough, it's like, an hour in, and you're like, staring at the clock for the next three hours. And that went on for another six weeks in the hospital in LA, as they ran me through every gamut of tests. And, you know, there's, there's a moment where,

• 46:00Speaker 00

  like, I know it's over, like, I can't do it another night, like, I know it, like, my, my stomach, I would feel it swell up, and I know it was filling with blood. Like, I would just feel mad, and then swell, and I would get my stand, and try to get into the bathroom in time.

• 46:19Speaker 00

  And sometimes successfully, sometimes not. And it was usually in the middle of the night, and it was just an explo- I mean, imagine, middle of the night.

• 46:28Rich Roll?

  Explosion of blood in your stool, yeah.

• 46:30Speaker 00

  Just, just blood, nothing, nothing but blood, it's just blood. And, and you're in there trying to be quiet, because your wife, that you just got married to, you're supposed to be on a, you know, in the honeymoon phase with, is out there trying to get some sleep on a cot. And so you're in there, you know, silently, like, you wanna scream at the top of your lungs, but you have to get down and start scrubbing this blood up, so that she doesn't walk in there and see a murder scene and lose her mind. And so there's a part of you that you're the one this is happening to, but you have to leave, well, a large part of yourself

• 47:12Speaker 00

  to try to manage somebody else's potential trauma, while it's happening to you. There's a part of me that still has to care for everybody else who has to, I have to go through it, but they have to watch me go through it, and they're powerless. And so, you know, there was a night where I was in there, that happened, and I was in there, cleaning the blood up out of the tile grout, you know. And I stood up, had to hold on to the sink to stand up, because I was starting to drop weight at this point. And my skin looked like it was paper, like it was see-through, it was like, the veins, like, it was like a gray blue, my lips were blue, and it was like I was see-through.

• 47:55Speaker 00

  And, and, you know, I, I just, I looked in the mirror, and I looked like, you know, I, I was so amazed, you had to look like a zombie. And I thought, you're not gonna make it one more day, like, look at all this blood, like, you don't have more, like, I knew I was gonna die, like, this is it, it's over, I don't know what's going on, they can't figure it out. I don't remember the, the next series of events, but, you know, I went back out to bed and, and tried to lay down, and the next thing I remember is waking up, and

• 48:32Speaker 00

  Sophia was at the foot of the bed, and she had to tell me that they brought me into an emergency surgery that morning, like, my, my, my, you know, my vitals were just crazy. And so they, they went in and they, they had to split me open. And they found that my large intestine was pus, the whole, it was a bag of pus, it was ready to explode, and that's what I was feeling. And that's swelling up, it was like the first stages of, of, of, you know, I mean, it was, it was like, I would have gone septic, and then that's it. And they had to call her while I was out, and present her with the choices of what she thought I would want.

• 49:13Speaker 00

  And as my, you know, next of kin, she had to decide, and

• 49:19Rich Roll?

  And the choice was between what and what?

• 49:23Speaker 00

  Leave it in there.

• 49:27Speaker 00

  I don't know what the second choice was, but the third choice was

• 49:33Speaker 00

  to remove the large intestine entirely, and leave me with potentially a permanent ostomy bag, which I then lived with after that. And, and so, you know, I wake up in that bed, and she had to inform me that they had to split you open, your large intestine's gone, and you have an ostomy bag. And I mean, I was so drugged out, I'm waking up, and I had to, you know, I remember putting my hand down and feeling this plastic ring in this bag. And it was like, whatever you thought your life was, it's over. Like, it's over, man, like.

• 50:15Speaker 00

  Thank God they found out what was wrong. But God knows what this all means now, because they also didn't figure out what was wrong. Because there was still ulceration all the way down. My skin had another autoimmune condition, like a really serious one that was causing all those open weeping sores. My lungs and my eyes were starting to go through it. And then my thyroid had stopped working properly. So it was like.

• 50:45Rich Roll?

  Yeah, they didn't. They didn't discover what was wrong. They basically dealt with the acute downstream impact of this mysterious thing that was happening to you.

• 50:53Speaker 00

  They bought me time. They just, they bought time. Like when the Germans are moving into Russia and Russia is dismantling the factories that make weapons and ammunition. Because the Germans are taking them over and they're putting them on the trains and they just keep moving them east as the German front keeps moving. And now they're assembling these weapons in snowstorms because they don't have roofs over their heads. And then the Germans keep moving and they keep moving it to just try to buy time. That's what happened. It was the removing of the, of the intestine didn't stop the Germans. It didn't stop the war. It didn't stop the moving forward. It just kept.

• 51:35Speaker 00

  It's like we, I had to give it up in order to buy time to, to, to hopefully maybe figure this out.

• 51:41Rich Roll?

  I didn't know that you could live without a large intestine.

• 51:45Speaker 00

  Me neither.

• 51:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 51:47Rich Roll?

  And just for, for context, like the extreme nature of this situation, in addition to the extreme nature of the acute condition. You being this, you know, handsome, leading man, marries this beautiful woman, you're beginning your marriage.

• 52:03Speaker 00

  And we're trying to have a family also.

• 52:05Rich Roll?

  Yeah, like you're trying.

• 52:06Speaker 00

  I mean, we're, we're working on having kids before we were even engaged. Like that was why we got married. It was like, we're gonna have kids, we're gonna have a family. That was the whole talk from the beginning. And now it's like, I don't know if I'm gonna be alive the next week.

• 52:19Rich Roll?

  And the ultimate expression of like male virility and strength and health and vitality, right? Like this sort of public perception of you, you know, like best physique in Hollywood, like all of that at the same time, like the juxtaposition of the reality that you were facing. Versus like, you know, how kind of the public knew of you.

• 52:42Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, regardless of, you know, whatever marginalization I felt about being looked upon by, you know, he's the dumb hunky guy or whatever it is.

• 52:54Rich Roll?

  Yeah, annoying, but like, I'll take that over what I'm dealing with right now.

• 52:59Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, I mean, in that moment, you, you, it all comes rushing in that, you know, Arnold Schwarzenegger used to say, you know, your abs are fantastic. They're better than mine never were. And you have incredible abs and look at this guy and he pulled my shirt up. Look at this, you know. It's over, like it's done. There's a, there's a 50 cent sized piece hole in your abdomen and your small intestine is pointing out of it now. And you have a giant scar up the front with Frankenstein staples. Like, that's over, man. And there is a fear about that when you know that's, that's how you made a living. So your brain is now trying to go into, trying to process the new information and find this new center of gravity.

• 53:45Speaker 00

  Or, or, you know, but it's like, you just want a future trip.

• 53:51Speaker 00

  So,

• 53:53Speaker 00

  I mean, I don't want to say, I don't want to say thank God for Delighted, but I mean, there was, there was a bit of it where it was just like, I was so drugged out of my mind that I couldn't even really fully grasp what was happening to me.

• 54:06Rich Roll?

  And that bought you time to adapt emotionally.

• 54:09Speaker 00

  Well, but I didn't really adapt emotionally until, until the reconnection attempt. Which is, you know, we're kind of skipping a chunk of the story where, you know, the first chapter of the book, the first chapter of the book starts out with me in Monaco. I wind up after all of these surgeries and all these catheters and, and, um, you know, a tube snaked up my nose down to pump shit in a bucket next to the bed because my body would stop produce, processing food. And I, I, I lost the ability to walk. I went cross eyed, I, I, because my, my muscles in my eyes couldn't hold my eyes in place. I was that weak. I had bed sores. I was sticking, I was having seizures. I mean, it was just

• 54:52Speaker 00

  mayhem, chaos. And, um, but I get out of the hospital. I get two good days together after eight, eight weeks and they let me out. And, um, I start trying to gain the weight back. I start trying to learn how to like tell my brain to stand up and sit down because it won't. There's something blocking the mind connection and I have to start really working hard on walking and sitting up and standing down. And, um, I get a call that Ben Affleck wants to meet me to stars the villain in Batman.

• 55:28Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 55:29Speaker 00

  And I'm like, why is this happening now? Why couldn't this have been?

• 55:34Rich Roll?

  The call you've been waiting for.

• 55:36Speaker 00

  Your whole life. It's like James Bond, Batman, Batman villain, and they're never gonna let an American be Bond. So it's like, you're the Batman or a Batman villain or something. To me, Batman villain is almost more interesting. And it's like, this is, this is the role of my life. And I'm on liquid, I'm on Delighted. Well, at the time I'm at home now, I'm on pill Delighted. I'm on Delighted. I can hardly stand up and sit down. I'm trying to gain weight back. And here's the biggest job of your life. Can you work one day next month and then six months next year?

• 56:12Speaker 00

  Okay. Cause what do I do? I say yes. Show up. So

• 56:20Speaker 00

  I put on long sleeves. I spend six days detoxing from the Delighted pills, which was six days of sleeplessness, suicidal ideation, crying out of nowhere, sweating uncontrollably. But I knew the deal. I knew, I knew what that was gonna be like. So that I could drive a car

• 56:41Speaker 00

  under my own power and go meet Ben. And, um, week later, email from my agents late at night, like London time, you got the part, they want you for this villain role and you need to get to Heathrow, to London next week.

• 57:02Speaker 00

  So I fly by myself to Heathrow, to, to London. And, uh, on the week, on the way, my, I had a bag leak on the plane in the dark.

• 57:15Speaker 00

  Which I describe in the book. And, um, and then I land and I have to go into a costume fitting that I know about.

• 57:23Rich Roll?

  What's your pain level at this time?

• 57:25Speaker 00

  It's not, I'm not in pain so much at this point because they've diverted my entire system.

• 57:36Speaker 00

  Like, you know,

• 57:40Speaker 00

  I, I have a bag on my, on the front of my abdomen. So it's like they're diverting through that, that, that's part of the system that was severely ulcerated.

• 57:53Speaker 00

  I'm very uncomfortable. I have multiple skin issues going on at once.

• 58:01Rich Roll?

  You must have lost a ton of weight at this point.

• 58:04Speaker 00

  Well, I gained 40 pounds of it back in the first month I was home.

• 58:07Rich Roll?

  How do you do that without a large intestine?

• 58:10Speaker 00

  Cause I'm a maniac.

• 58:11Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 58:11Speaker 00

  No, I mean, I know how to be uncomfortable from being an addict.

• 58:17Rich Roll?

  And you know how to try to get one over on other people.

• 58:20Speaker 00

  I know how to.

• 58:21Rich Roll?

  Kind of what you gotta do with Ben. And Ben doesn't strike me as somebody who suffers fools lightly. Like he's a, he's a very smart guy. Like so when you're sitting across from him.

• 58:31Speaker 00

  Well.

• 58:32Rich Roll?

  How are you convincing him that you're up to the job?

• 58:35Speaker 00

  Well, uh, I'm also very disciplined, you know, um, my father was a very disciplined guy and I got all of that. And, um, and so I knew how to get home. You're not gonna ask, why me?

• 58:53Speaker 00

  You're gonna hire a chef and you're gonna tell this guy to feed you every 60 to 90 minutes, 30 to 40 grams of protein, the way you know how your body can process that much. You're not gonna miss one input. You're gonna put your head down, you're gonna eat boxes full of

• 59:11Speaker 00

  gluten free donuts because I didn't know gluten was gonna hurt me. So I'm just crushing these boxes, shakes, everything that I could get in. Which meant that the bag is outputting like 24 hours a day, which is a lot of work and a pain. Cause you gotta keep getting up and getting up and getting up and getting up as, because your body's just processing. But what, and then I would practice. When I had to take my pain pills, I would take my pain pills and, and work out.

• 59:38Speaker 00

  So that I could try to shock my muscles into putting weight on to, to just grow some kind of weight back.

• 59:47Rich Roll?

  Just sheer force of self-will to like make this happen.

• 59:51Speaker 00

  After a month, I gained back 40 of the 60 pounds. And then I had another, so when I went to go meet Ben, I wore a long sleeve shirt to hide that I lost weight and, uh, to hide the other 20 pounds. Which, okay, we're, we're kind of ballpark. And, um, and then in the next month or so, a month and a half, I put on the, the other 20 to get back up to somewhat normal, but I would keep battling that for, for years. It would just, I mean, I would, I would, I, I was, I was getting strong just for the next attack. That would just drill me to the ground and then would have to get back up and get strong again enough to go back down again. And, um,

• 1:00:37Speaker 00

  but you know, I, I, I land in Heathrow and, and I go to my hotel outside of London near the studio and, uh, and I know I have a costume fitting tomorrow, so I have to stop eating. Or else the bag is gonna output because I know they're gonna put the super suit on me, which is skin tight and multiple layers. And if I eat anything.

• 1:00:59Rich Roll?

  Going in the suit.

• 1:01:00Speaker 00

  It's gonna pop.

• 1:01:02Speaker 00

  Can't. So I stopped eating 18 hours before.

• 1:01:11Speaker 00

  It's planned out like a

• 1:01:12Rich Roll?

  This is gonna go well. Yeah, alright.

• 1:01:14Speaker 00

  You know, it's like I'm planning a heist.

• 1:01:16Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 1:01:16Speaker 00

  Okay, you're gonna stop. Yeah, okay, great. Alright, so we get in there. And, uh, you know, they hand me the first spandex layer and I kinda, they all, they're all standing there as I'm holding this layer and I just went.

• 1:01:28Speaker 00

  Like, hey, you all gonna stand there? Kinda, I'm playing demure, you know? Naked werewolf is, you know, Big Dick Richie from Magic Mike. I'm, I'm shy about getting undressed, you know, like. But what are you gonna do? You know what I mean? I was like, kinda basing this on what I thought people, pushing people into a position that, you know, they left me alone. Oh, oh, sorry, sorry, sorry. So they all left.

• 1:01:53Speaker 00

  Put the base layer on. Okay, everybody, come on in. Okay, good. Now that first layer's on. Bag's kinda hidden underneath there. Now we'll put the armor on. Now we'll get the layer, next layer on. We'll start putting the pieces on. Great. Get the costume fitting done. Okay, good. Okay, great. Now you need to go over, cause we're gonna do a full body 3D scan to make the mannequin, so we can work on your armor while you're gone. So you need to go and you're gonna get shot in the round by 256 cameras. What? Yeah, and it's in your underwear. We noticed you wearing black underwear and, uh, the cameras don't like black. So why don't you put these on? And they hand me these tiny little like banana hammock, blue, baby blue briefs that like,

• 1:02:36Speaker 00

  look like they wouldn't have fit a child, let alone me. And they're not gonna cover the bag. I mean, it's the whole, it was like, but this is your penalty for wearing the wrong underwear. Now you have to wear our weird, you know?

• 1:02:50Speaker 00

  And I start panicking, but I had had, I'd gone to the CrossFit Games. Like, um, somewhere during that summer, I'd, you know, made somebody else drive and went to the CrossFit Games.

• 1:03:05Speaker 00

  With the bag, on painkillers, to, to be a spectator. And I had a leak while I was there. But I had brought an extra pair of shorts. So I was in the habit of bringing extra shorts with me and I had an extra pair in my bag. And I was like, these are gray. Can I wear these? These are mine? And they said, yeah, gray's fine.

• 1:03:33Speaker 00

  So, put the gray ones on. I go, I have to get up on this platform. In the middle of 256 cameras, there's a guy up in the booth and he's like,

• 1:03:42Speaker 00

  uh, your underwear line is a little high. Can you pull it down?

• 1:03:51Rich Roll?

  You're just not gonna get out of this.

• 1:03:54Speaker 00

  So I do the old pull them up super high and then put them right back to the same spot.

• 1:04:01Speaker 00

  And he's, you know, there's a grown man who's not gonna argue with me about how high I like to hold my underwear line. So he's like, okay, fine. Like, let's it go.

• 1:04:13Speaker 00

  Okay. Take all the pictures. Great. Okay, great. There's a car outside. It's gonna take you to your physical.

• 1:04:24Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Just the volume, like the burner is just getting turned up on you, you know?

• 1:04:30Speaker 00

  Physical.

• 1:04:30Rich Roll?

  The heat.

• 1:04:31Speaker 00

  Right, the physical, we haven't had the physical yet. To get bonded, of course.

• 1:04:35Rich Roll?

  I mean, what made you think that ultimately, if even you got away with all these things, that this wasn't gonna come out and explode in your face at some point anyway? But it's just like, what are you gonna do? You gotta go for it, right?

• 1:04:45Speaker 00

  In my mind, I thought, if I work one day next month, all I have to do is get to the one day. And then I'll figure out what's gonna happen next. I'm gonna get reconnected. This thing's gonna leave me. I'm gonna be okay. This wouldn't have come my way. If it wasn't meant to be, or it wasn't a sign that fate was knocking and saying, this is the next step. I mean, mind you, my wife is like livid that I said yes and took this thing. You know, but, I needed it.

• 1:05:20Speaker 00

  Not because I need to be a, a movie star, so, you know what I mean? Or all of that career stuff. I need it. I need something to force me into fighting with everything that I have. You know, I have a friend of mine who, um, Ryan Shadziri, played for the Steelers and, uh, you know, he got, he got paralyzed in a, in a football game against the Bengals and, um, we used to talk after every game and he was a friend of mine, you know, and I watched this happen to him and coming out of that, he would say things like, I'm gonna play again. And the doctors are like, you're not gonna walk again. He's like, no, I'm gonna play. You watch, I'm gonna play.

• 1:06:00Speaker 00

  There's a period of time when, after he has, you know, after, after a serious, you know, you probably know, you know, it's a serious spinal injury where, you know, for him, where it was, the severity of it, that there was a crucial period of development for him, right from the time of the impact or past, past surgery to where if he was ever gonna walk again,

• 1:06:26Speaker 00

  then he was going to have to work during this period. So, setting a goal beyond what you think or what everybody else is telling you you're capable of is necessary for people like me, people like him that are going through some sort of traumatic occurrence like that. You have to put the finish line way further beyond what you think you're capable of, or what everybody else around you is telling you you're capable of. And he's had to say to himself, I'm gonna, I'm not only gonna walk again, I'm gonna play football again. Which we were all like, don't. Like, just, why, you know? The point is, I went to his wedding and watched him walk down the island, dance all night.

• 1:07:08Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 1:07:09Speaker 00

  And he could play with his kids. He didn't ever play again. Of course.

• 1:07:13Rich Roll?

  Yeah. But that outrageous, you know, it's part, it's part denial, but it's self-preservation, like hanging your hat on like some audacious goal to anchor you and get you out of bed every morning and give you direction and purpose and something to work towards.

• 1:07:28Speaker 00

  My job isn't questioning this, or why it's come my way. My job is just to grab onto it and go. Grab the train and go. This train is coming. It's not gonna come again. Go. Because it's gonna take you, it might not take you where you hope it's gonna take you.

• 1:07:45Speaker 00

  But that's not your job to think about that. Your job is just to put every ounce that you have into your rehabilitation process, gaining that weight back, getting strong enough, lowering your inflammation enough, so that when they attempt to reconnect, it's the best situation possible, because those things all, don't always work. But I'm not thinking about all that. I'm just thinking about what I need to do to get as healthy as possible to shoot this giant six-month action movie in a year from now. And I needed that. Everybody knows what happened. Batman got canceled.

• 1:08:22Speaker 00

  And I never, I mean, I got to play the character again for like, two minutes in the reshoots. And for the next six years, they were just project after project and call for my agent after call for my agent about, oh yeah, they're gonna use your character in this. You're gonna be in this. You're gonna be the villain in Aquaman 2. You're gonna be Suicide Squad 2 with this director. No, now this director. No, now you versus Will Smith. Oh, it's gonna be a standalone. Oh, it's gonna be.

• 1:08:49Speaker 00

  It was there. Again, am I lucky or unlucky?

• 1:08:55Speaker 00

  I'm lucky that I got that part, but at the time I felt like I was unlucky, because I got this thing that then got canceled and went away. So I'm like, how unlucky am I? I feel like I'm cursed. I get this thing, it gives me hope and now it's gone. And then all these other projects are now gone. But looking back, I was lucky that that thing came my way. That thing, like, if it wasn't for that, that role,

• 1:09:21Speaker 00

  I don't, I don't know that the reconnection works. I don't know that I'm healthy enough. I don't know that I gained that weight back. I don't know that I can walk. I don't know that I can function the way that I do now. I don't know that mentally I'm in as good of a place as I am now. That role, I have the helmet in my office and it's,

• 1:09:43Speaker 00

  it's the greatest accomplishment of my life. This bank heist that I'm describing. And, and, and, and what I had to do to try to shoot that one day in Monaco, which I did. And mind you, the morning of the shoot in Monaco, I mean, I'm covered in hives. Covered, like I was when I was shooting that Harvey Weinstein show. And everything but my face. And it's the only thing you need to see in the shot. And I go and I, and I do my don't eat for 18 hours, cause you're gonna put the suit back on. And I go and I shoot in like 90 degree weather with this, you know, four layers on and and as soon as I get back to my hotel,

• 1:10:26Speaker 00

  my whole face is covered. And I started having to wear like a wide brim hat after that for months because of, it's like my, my body was holding off this allergic reaction to this drug. This, this, you know, biologic drug just long enough. It held it off long enough for me to shoot the scene and then took over.

• 1:10:47Rich Roll?

  This episode is brought to you by Airbnb. Travel is my favorite thing. I've been doing a lot of it lately. Las Vegas, Bodega Bay in NorCal, South Florida, Austin, New Mexico. And my favorite thing about my favorite thing is ditching the map and the GPS and just discovering cool, off the beaten path spots on my morning runs. Coffee bars, independent book and record stores, vintage shops. And as always, I stayed and will stay in someone's home. Because my non-negotiables travel with me. A real kitchen for my nutrition, proximity to a legitimate gym, and a place with some actual personality. And every time I stay in somebody's place, the same thought lands. While I'm here, my home is sitting there empty, doing nothing.

• 1:11:30Rich Roll?

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• 1:11:58Rich Roll?

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• 1:12:42Rich Roll?

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• 1:13:20Rich Roll?

  In terms of perspective, you know, were you lucky? Were you unlucky? You know, was it a good thing that the movie was canceled? Was it not?

• 1:13:30Speaker 00

  I wouldn't have been able to shoot it.

• 1:13:31Rich Roll?

  But in truth, like, yeah, you wouldn't have been able to do it. It would have been a disaster because something would have happened. You would have had an outbreak and, you know, you would have destroyed trust with everybody in the industry. They would have had to recast you in the middle. Like, there were all these other people involved in this. So on some level, it's a very selfish and, you know, like, you're going to put yourself in this situation where you're creating risk for, and, you know, there could, there's a lot of dollars on the line and jobs and all that kind of stuff. So you were spared that situation. You were given this new lease on life, this sense of agency, purpose, direction. And then you had that year to like, build upon that and, and, and try to figure out what was wrong with you and set yourself up for this reconnection.

• 1:14:13Speaker 00

  Yes, and, and the point I was kind of getting to, uh, which I'm glad you, you know, you kind of wrote it back in was, um, you know, I, I really started dealing with the emotional fallout after the reconnection. Because up until the reconnection, I had Batman. I had, I had something to look forward to, something to fight for. And I had enough, enough going for me in my life or enough hope that I could live in this veil of denial. I had enough denial. And once I got reconnected, it was like, all of a sudden, it hit me, what happened to me? Like, all of a sudden, all of the, the trash in the back of the station wagon,

• 1:14:56Speaker 00

  I, you know, that I'd been throwing, I'd just been, just doggedly fighting. Now it's like you hit the brakes and it's wham, slams into the windshield. It was all of a sudden, I started having like, real emotional issues because I started realizing this is happening. This is happening to you. This happened to you. This didn't happen to somebody else. And then when Batman got canceled, it's over. Like, it's over, it's done. And now you just have you, and you don't even have that to look forward to. And you have to start taking down the scaffolding for that building you were building, where you were going to go off and be the Batman villain. And even though you're going through all of this, you were going to have your thing to hang your hat on and your life is going to move forward.

• 1:15:38Speaker 00

  Now it's like, it's over and you've got nothing except to sit here and think about what's next. And none of the drugs were working. I mean, it was like, that was brutal. That was a brutal, brutal period.

• 1:15:50Rich Roll?

  It's a, it's a limited series with a lot of episodes.

• 1:15:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, first episode, second, yeah, for sure. I mean, it just keeps going. I mean, that's, and that's the first, we're now hitting the end of the first chapter of the book.

• 1:16:01Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:02Speaker 00

  That's, that's, all of that is encapsulated.

• 1:16:04Rich Roll?

  This is, but this is the catalyst and the setup for like, this exploration. Like, this is where the odyssey really begins.

• 1:16:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:16:11Rich Roll?

  In terms of like, you're on this search to figure out what's wrong with you, how to fix it, and it takes you to some pretty crazy places.

• 1:16:19Speaker 00

  You know, it's, um, it's like a fucking, like a coming out party. Yeah. Putting the book out. Cause I lived for, for 10 years afraid to talk about all that stuff that went on. You know, um, you know, I, uh, you know, once I tried to make Deathstroke happen, I'm, I'm in a very shaky moral high ground. Or I wouldn't even call it high ground. I'm in, I'm in shaky moral territory because I'm, I'm trying to show up for work again.

• 1:16:49Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:16:50Speaker 00

  I don't know if I'm tricking myself into thinking that I could do all of those things that I tried to do. Certainly, everybody else in my life thought I had no business attempting to try to make Batman work. But I don't, there's no way I was going to say no. There's no way.

• 1:17:09Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's, it's an interesting conundrum because in sobriety, it's all about bursting the veil of denial. It's all about like, how do you transcend denial? And in your situation, and in moments of crisis, like, we have this denial mechanism for a reason. There's a survival aspect to it.

• 1:17:28Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:17:29Rich Roll?

  And so in your case, like, denial served a very important purpose in keeping you directional, keeping you alive, giving you a reason to get out of bed. So it's not as binary or as simple. And, you know, in the context of, of you being a sober person, we get sober, we work the steps, we go to meetings, we're of service to, you know, the newcomer, all of it, right? And it's all about transcending fear. It's about, uh, having a healthy relationship with your past. So you're not haunted by it. You're not like, you know, a victim of, of guilt and shame and all of these things that take us back to drinking and using.

• 1:18:14Rich Roll?

  Uh, it's about unveiling, like, like taking the mask off, right? And here you are in a situation where in order to survive, you're adopting, you're, you're stepping back into a double life. You have to put this mask on and you, you have to be duplicitous in some regard, which is antithetical to the principles of sobriety, you know? And you're trying to stay sober. Like, are you bringing this to your guy? Like, are you sharing about this in meetings? Are you keeping locked up about this? Is this even something you don't even feel comfortable, comfortable talking about with your, with your people?

• 1:18:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, no.

• 1:18:50Rich Roll?

  And like, what's going on with your marriage? Like, you know, this is threatening your sobriety and just your whole way of life.

• 1:18:56Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:18:57Rich Roll?

  But you're, you're needing to do it because this is the only way that you can see a way forward for yourself. And so that has to, you know, like, that burden, like, on some level, even if somewhat unconscious, has to be like, weighing on you at the same time. All of this is going on.

• 1:19:11Speaker 00

  No, it's like, yeah, you nailed it. Like, all of it. Like, I mean, you're supposed to be rigorously honest. But.

• 1:19:19Rich Roll?

  There's a limit.

• 1:19:20Speaker 00

  Well.

• 1:19:21Rich Roll?

  Yeah. It's, if you're being tested, you know, in such a profound way.

• 1:19:25Speaker 00

  But, but in, in a way, when I got sober and was about three or so years sober, I remember going to fill out an apartment application. And there was a question, have you ever been evicted? And I knew that if I wrote yes, I'm never going to get it. And furthermore, I'm never going to get anything. And I'm just going to be in a situation where I have to be like, the third roommate, you know, in some apartment where there's a bong on the coffee table. I know because I had been looking endlessly for months, you know, in trying to find the right place. And I remember talking to a buddy of mine in AA. I was like, dude, am I mining yes?

• 1:20:10Rich Roll?

  Can I get a pass on this one?

• 1:20:11Speaker 00

  And he said, you're not that person anymore. And I wrote no. And I got it. And that landlord made a smart decision, letting me rent that apartment because I was the perfect tenant. And I have always been the perfect tenant since then. So there's a point where.

• 1:20:32Speaker 00

  Is there a different way to look at it? And, and, and

• 1:20:37Speaker 00

  there's also,

• 1:20:40Speaker 00

  you know, I've also spent eight months in a hospital, or eight, sorry, eight weeks in a hospital. I spent eight weeks, not two months, eight weeks in a hospital.

• 1:20:50Speaker 00

  Like, I was dead. Like, I mean, as close to death as you can get. And now I'm back on this side of the line. And, you know, I remember my mother saying to me, you know, when I was in the hospital with, with the tube snake down my throat to pump the shit into the bucket and I couldn't walk. And she said, you know, pray to God to get you out of this. God, God, God will help you out of this. And I said, you know, with this tube, you know, the same God that gave this to me.

• 1:21:24Speaker 00

  And I stopped praying. I didn't, I didn't want to hear answers. I, I wasn't meditating. I wasn't doing any of it. I wasn't journaling. I wasn't writing. I didn't want to like, it was like Old Testament God.

• 1:21:37Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I was gonna say this is biblical.

• 1:21:38Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm getting hit by a plague, you know, like, and so I'm not saying that that's an excuse for what I was, I just was in my own mind.

• 1:21:53Speaker 00

  Why would this come my way if I couldn't do it?

• 1:21:56Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And then adage in the rooms is like, God doesn't give you anything you can't handle.

• 1:22:01Speaker 00

  One day, I need to shoot one day next month.

• 1:22:05Speaker 00

  Let's go. Let's go. Um, like, like having the faith that it'll, it's all gonna work out. And

• 1:22:17Rich Roll?

  Well, it's one day at a time. Like, I just have to do this one thing today.

• 1:22:21Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:22:22Rich Roll?

  Whatever happens tomorrow, I'll deal with that tomorrow and I'll be prepared for whatever comes in my direction.

• 1:22:28Speaker 00

  Once, you know, once, once, once I had the reconnection surgery and then Batman got canceled, it was like, no, no, no, no, no. Oh, no.

• 1:22:40Speaker 00

  This isn't going anywhere. Like, it was when that hit me. That I went through all that for nothing, but it wasn't for nothing. It just, I couldn't see, I couldn't see it at the time. I was too close to it. I was still in the middle of it all. I just, it was that process. It's, that was really when the process, well, when the process really kicked up to, to another notch of, of,

• 1:23:09Speaker 00

  what was it going to take to get me to surrender everything? Everything I'd worked for my entire life up to that point. And, uh, so I just, you know, anything I touched started turning to dust in my hands. That, that's when it got hard. Because that's when I had been trying to ignore God or ignore the greater reasoning of why this was happening. And, um, and that started the process of like, it started pulling my fingers off. Let go, let go. The job isn't gonna, you're not gonna get this job and spring back. There's something else going. There's something deeper. There's, you, you aren't there yet. You haven't seen it for what it is yet. I was just trying to hang on to my old life.

• 1:23:54Rich Roll?

  This, this sort of in the biblical analogy, like wailing at God, like, haven't I surrendered enough? Like sobriety is about surrender and it's this process of realizing like there's layers to surrender. Like you think you have, but you're still holding on to this identity or, you know, and, and it's that Buddhist idea of like, you know, whatever you have an attachment to is going to create suffering. And, you know, if you want to make God laugh, like tell him your plans and like you, despite all of the surrender that had preceded that with, you know, your sobriety journey and all these, you know, like reckoning with this disease, realizing like you're still holding on to something and you're being asked to let go of fucking everything.

• 1:24:35Speaker 00

  I'm still holding on to a lot.

• 1:24:35Rich Roll?

  And that's where it brings us back to like Odysseus, you know, like this is like, you know, archetypal storytelling shit.

• 1:24:43Speaker 00

  Well, that's the thing. It's like, okay, so Batman gets canceled. Uh, there's, there's, there's a, there's a

• 1:24:48Rich Roll?

  And it's literally about wearing masks.

• 1:24:50Speaker 00

  Totally. Well, that's the other thing too. Yeah. I mean, I, I am wearing a mask, but

• 1:24:54Rich Roll?

  And protective armor.

• 1:24:56Speaker 00

  Yes. And, but I, I am, I'm living a compound lie. I'm, I'm not sharing about it fully. I mean, you know, there's an AA meeting at my house on Saturdays where I invite my sponsees because I, I couldn't leave the house. And so other people started coming and kind of trusted people and, and I started trying to share as honestly as, as I can in those meetings, but I still, I'm so confused about what's going on.

• 1:25:26Speaker 00

  I'm not talking about it in the press.

• 1:25:28Rich Roll?

  Are you seeing a therapist or anybody that you're opening up to? Are you being honest with your wife?

• 1:25:33Speaker 00

  Well, she knew, but, but her stance was to play a character like,

• 1:25:42Speaker 00

  she didn't tell all these people in her family. So we go on family vacation,

• 1:25:49Speaker 00

  which I was trying to do. I was trying to keep up like appearances, but I'm getting skinnier and people are starting to comment on that like in nasty ways. And, um, the job's falling through my fingers. The entertainment industry starts referring to me as her husband, not by my name. So like things, again, like chipping away at the ego, letting go of the identity of like, you're not, you're not your own person anymore. You're just this sick patient. I mean, in my mind, sick patient. But we're going on vacation. I go out in the sun for 30 minutes. And because of the drugs I'm on, my skin fries off and then I can't go out for the rest of the vacation. You know, it was like,

• 1:26:26Rich Roll?

  You're just being fully dismantled.

• 1:26:28Speaker 00

  Well, and then, and then family members are like, you know, trying to give me tips on tanning. You know what I mean?

• 1:26:37Speaker 00

  I'm a 40 year old man, like I know, and I'm Sicilian.

• 1:26:40Rich Roll?

  Sicilian, yeah.

• 1:26:41Speaker 00

  I know how to tan. We invented tanning, man. You know what I mean? Like, what are you talking about?

• 1:26:45Rich Roll?

  We invented tanning.

• 1:26:46Speaker 00

  Yeah. You know, and so it's like, but they don't know the full story. And, and, and like, because when I was in the hospital, everything was on lockdown. Everybody was instructed, do not say a thing. Do not say a word. People weren't coming to visit me. It was like only a handful of people came to visit me. You know, Arnold wanted to come visit me in the hospital once and I said, no. Because I was like, if he comes in, they're gonna know I'm here and they're gonna know where I am.

• 1:27:09Rich Roll?

  And you had done this movie with him and he had become a friend and kind of a mentor to you.

• 1:27:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. He was, he was a good friend. And, um, and so, you know, I'm in this situation where family, friends don't know.

• 1:27:25Speaker 00

  The press doesn't know. I don't know who to trust. I'm worried about shutting down another production. I'm trying to get clear of this thing or get enough. I'm trying to get well. So that I can say this was just a bump in the road.

• 1:27:37Rich Roll?

  All that dissonance is contributing to, you know, making the problem, the disease worse, right?

• 1:27:43Speaker 00

  Yeah. It's brutal because now I'm repressing how I feel. I'm not truly talking. And, and at the time, so yes, you know, am I talking to my guy? Talking to my guy, but my,

• 1:27:58Speaker 00

  my guy doesn't have the capacity to understand and have a conversation with me where I think sobriety for me was like a bachelor's degree. And I think going to Al-Anon and like quantum physics relationship seminars afterwards were kind of master's degree, like you're sober. Now, how do you get emotionally sober? How do you, how can you be in a relationship with somebody else? And I didn't get a great model of like what a healthy relationship looks like, which put me into a difficult position where

• 1:28:30Speaker 00

  I always did well in that department. I knew how to get her, but I didn't know how to be in a, a healthy rela-, I didn't have a model for a healthy relationship. My parents never got along. From the time I was little, I never saw them hug, kiss, say I love you. But then you think, oh, because I'm, I can go out to a club or a bar and I know how to talk or, you know, I know what I'm doing. And it's like, you don't know what you're doing.

• 1:28:58Rich Roll?

  You bait the hook and land the fish, but then, uh, you know, then what do you do?

• 1:29:02Speaker 00

  Then what do you do?

• 1:29:03Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:03Speaker 00

  Yeah. And, and that was a hard thing to admit, I think, as a man, because so much of your self-worth is wrapped up in your prowess in that department. So it was like, eh, but I was so terrified that they would find out

• 1:29:19Speaker 00

  that I wasn't who they thought that I was. And, and so you weren't shoving people away

• 1:29:25Speaker 00

  before they find out or, you know what I mean? It was that game, that shove away, that neon sign saying, leave me alone, or, you know, come here, leave, come here, go away, come here, go away. So, you know,

• 1:29:42Speaker 00

  this illness

• 1:29:43Rich Roll?

  This is called an avoidant, an avoidant, uh, attachment disorder.

• 1:29:47Speaker 00

  Right. Yeah. Like, well, and also

• 1:29:48Rich Roll?

  Now we're talking my language.

• 1:29:50Speaker 00

  Well, now you know, you can honeymoon for the rest of your life. But you don't want that. You don't need that.

• 1:29:55Rich Roll?

  You can keep it on a low boil, but you can't go all in.

• 1:29:58Speaker 00

  Well, and I would go all in every time. I mean, I was just like, right to the edge of the cliff. What happened last time? Let's see if we can fix it now. And it's like, you're in the same spot.

• 1:30:08Rich Roll?

  But there's a difference between the fix it mentality and like true intimacy, like allowing yourself to be vulnerable to the core with the, with your life partner.

• 1:30:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:30:18Rich Roll?

  Or with your sober brethren.

• 1:30:20Speaker 00

  Well, and just learning how to stay no matter what, until you can't anymore. And, um, learning how to detach with love. And if you can't detach with love, then you detach with a fucking machete. But you get out of there before you say something that's gonna rattle around and somebody's head forever. You know, you just stop. Don't do more damage. Get out of the room for everybody's sake before a fight starts. Like if you feel that, just don't, don't go there. You have to learn how to like cohabit it. You have to learn how to, how to put other people's needs ahead of yours. You know, I would, I've, once I got sober, I, I was never in a relationship with somebody where I tried to get them to do something that I wanted to do. If it's like, here's the offer.

• 1:31:05Speaker 00

  You are free to say no to any of that. And then you can slide it back across the table and, you know, but it was like, you know, I always knew I wanted kids. And, um, I want a family because I wanted to write the things that I didn't get growing up. And I want to be a great dad.

• 1:31:30Speaker 00

  And uh, so if I was ever with somebody, even casually, who I knew wanted a relationship and I didn't,

• 1:31:39Speaker 00

  then I would have that talk with them and, and go the other way, or at least give them the option of not having to be with me if I, you know, and, and that was certainly true with my marriage. I mean, all the conversations in the beginning were about having children, having a family. And if she wasn't okay with that, or, or she, she was done, she had an older kid, if she was done and then, you know, been there, done that, then that's cool. We can hang out, but like, at least I know what it is. And I know that this isn't ultimately going to be for me because there's somebody else out there who wants children and wants to be the mother to my children and wants to do that and, and travel with me and, and be a unit with me and do this thing with me. I think I wanted that experience and um, and she was completely down with it.

• 1:32:23Speaker 00

  But I put that on the table right out of the gate, like, you know, like, if you're not cool with this, then, then that's okay. You know, like, there was a level of, of, of, of um, you know, emotional sobriety that I got to because of the sponsor that I had. That guy was instrumental in me learning how to be that guy. But when I got sick, he didn't know what to say. It was like, snap out of it. You're ready to get out of it? Let's go. All right, buddy. It's a great day out there. It's like, I'm going to blow my brains out and I need you to stop telling me

• 1:32:55Speaker 00

  to shake it off. Like, I, I, I need to have a conversation. And so

• 1:33:00Speaker 00

  then that also led to me feeling like even more alone. Because now I'm in this paradigm shift where the guy who's been my guy for a long time, isn't the guy for me moving forward. And it wasn't until I found a sober old timer who'd been through cancer four times. And we started talking and I just broke down and it was like, I don't know what to do and I don't feel like I should say I'm sober. I'm on all these drugs. I'm in so much pain. I, I, you know, what am I doing? And he was like, don't let anybody tell you, you don't belong or that you can't show up. You know, you've brought drunk people to AA meetings, right? I go, yeah. And you go, what happened after that?

• 1:33:44Speaker 00

  They stayed sober. They actually got sober. Anytime I brought a drunk or high person to an AA meeting, they want to get, you know, get in the stuff. He's like, you tell me, you tell God, you don't need to tell anybody else. And so that-

• 1:33:56Rich Roll?

  There is a, there is a, a sort of ego component to being somebody in the rooms who has time. And the identity that you craft around like being kind of someone who can like, talk the talk and all of that. And, and, you know, in your case, or in an analogous case where, you know, like, it's very binary. You're using or you're not. And like, this is how much time you have and blah, blah, blah. And it doesn't account for like a situation like that. It creates all this confusion about your standing and what it means to be sober. And how that's going to be interpreted by your sober community. That isn't conducive to being open. Like you start to close down because you don't want to lose

• 1:34:38Rich Roll?

  like your status or how you're perceived within the community or, or, or have to reckon with the idea of not being sober or like resetting the clock and all of that. Like, all of that is like kind of coming into play a little bit. I mean, I don't want to project on you, but like, I went through a version of that.

• 1:34:55Speaker 00

  That is going on. And then also there was a point where it got bad enough that I had, I had, I just had a full on meltdown. And it's because also we're now, by this time, we're now entering into COVID. So we're doing Zoom meetings. So there was a moment where I had like a full on breakdown, like a breakdown. I was losing my mind. And um,

• 1:35:17Rich Roll?

  Hurricane in your consciousness and a hurricane in your body.

• 1:35:20Speaker 00

  Yeah. And I uh,

• 1:35:23Speaker 00

  you know, I, I had this meltdown and it's almost like I could feel those people in AA who, you know, came to my meeting because they thought I was going to produce their screenplay. Recoiling and going, oh,

• 1:35:39Speaker 00

  not who I thought he was. And I was totally fine with it. It was like shaking the tree. It was like, everybody out. I don't care to be the president of AA. I mean, even we're sitting here right now and I'm breaking the tradition of anonymity at the level of press, radio, film. I mean, I'm, I broke that in my book and I was conscious that I had never said AA in an interview prior to the book and, and now here.

• 1:36:09Speaker 00

  And

• 1:36:11Speaker 00

  I have to tell the, it's, the story's too raw and too vulnerable for me to not speak about AA. But the last thing I would ever want is to get, you know, pulled over drunk on the PCH and then AA gets blamed because I said I was a member of AA, which is what happens. And then the person who needs to get sober and go to a meeting doesn't go because they're like, see, it doesn't work. AA does work. It work, it, it works. Like, I was, I was at, I was at a point where I had no other choice. Like I had no other choice. And um, and I want to be very, very clear about that. And, and I thank that friend of mine, a friend of mine, uh, Ken, for talking me off the ledge and keeping me going to meetings.

• 1:36:57Speaker 00

  I mean, there were times when I was nodding out in meetings because of all the drugs I was on. And um, and it just kept me anchored to the place that I could come back to when I was done with the drugs. And I'm, I've completely gotten off everything. So all the, all the painkillers, all the spinal nerve medication, all of that stuff. I just, I weaned off of all of it. And um, you know, and I'm full hundred percent like, you know, whatever you would consider sober. But I understand that that's um, it's controversial and I don't want somebody else out there who thinks, well, you know, I'm going to go to AA and I'll just quit drinking and smoke some pot and be California sober, man. It's like, that's not what I did at all, at all. Sober, sober.

• 1:37:42Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you're, you're old school.

• 1:37:44Speaker 00

  Working staffs, man.

• 1:37:44Rich Roll?

  Hardliner.

• 1:37:45Speaker 00

  But it's like, it's there when you need it and it needs to be there for the people that need it. And for me, at the time, everything in my life is falling apart. So I'm looking for that place where I can be the leader and be okay. And, and it's like, in that moment, it was like, you know, you're going to save your ass or you're going to save your face. And I, I had a meltdown in the, in, in the meeting, but also realized AA is not the place for me to be melting down about my health. This is, and, and having the same share every time about the pain I'm in and all this stuff. And um, and I need to figure this out and I need to start surrendering to that.

• 1:38:28Speaker 00

  And I need to find people that can help me re-center. And that's when a guy in AA was talking about his therapist. It was a very woo woo, red booky, Jungian,

• 1:38:43Speaker 00

  you know, um, type of, of, of therapist. And uh, and then I started going to support groups for people that had raging autoimmune issues. And uh, and those were really interesting. Because as a member of AA, it's almost like I was coming out of, especially the meetings that I went to. I went to all men's stags with guys that were like serious about sobriety. They didn't cheat on their wives. They were great fathers, great businessmen. It's like, you'd think everybody drove a Mercedes in AA. You know, um, they were just like, had their stuff together and never moved from that seat in those meetings. Super reliable. You needed a ride to the airport, 4am, they're there. You need help moving?

• 1:39:25Speaker 00

  No problem. Like anything, most generous, great people I've ever met were those guys in AA. Now, the worst people I've ever met in my life were some of the people at AA who weren't working the program. But the point of it is, is like, I came from and I was molded by those men. And I could, and I understood the magic of, I understood the alchemy of the magic of Alcoholics Anonymous and how,

• 1:39:48Speaker 00

  how it could save your life and how it could change your life and how it could turn a San Francisco shooting gallery heroin addict into the nicest, sweetest old man you've ever met in your life. I've seen it. And I took that into support groups for autoimmune.

• 1:40:03Speaker 00

  And what was happening there was-

• 1:40:09Speaker 00

  Infighting.

• 1:40:11Speaker 00

  People trying to cancel the leaders of the meeting.

• 1:40:17Speaker 00

  For various reasons.

• 1:40:21Speaker 00

  Everyone was on drugs. So all the shares were just about all the drugs that people were taking.

• 1:40:28Speaker 00

  But I want to say. It was incredibly helpful to me in a way that that even with all that going on. I started letting go and accepting. Maybe this is as good as it gets for you, and maybe this is what it's going to be, you know? And I could see how the trauma was affecting other people and wasn't processing. Like, I could kind of see the issues and see.

• 1:40:55Rich Roll?

  You're seeing the patterns of like how trauma is related to.

• 1:41:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:41:00Rich Roll?

  There's a strain of that that's like running through all of these people who are struggling in a similar way to you.

• 1:41:06Speaker 00

  And so what I did was what I know how to do, which is kind of leave the big group meetings. Pull a couple of the guys out. Who.

• 1:41:16Speaker 00

  Seem like they were a solution oriented. And started meeting with one of the guys we would meet in my backyard or his backyard. Every week, sometimes twice a week. And we just have a one on one meeting because I know that there's a magic that can happen between two people when they start talking about their similar struggles. And and then we added a few more guys. And then we started trying to, I started trying to like, we need to meet. Even if we don't feel like it. We got to stay strong. We got to get the reps in, we got to do this one at least once a week.

• 1:41:48Rich Roll?

  You're laying an AA template over like a different situation, but like, like bringing these guys, you know?

• 1:41:55Speaker 00

  That's it.

• 1:41:55Rich Roll?

  Educating these.

• 1:41:57Speaker 00

  Kind of, I'm taking what I learned in the SEAL Teams to, you know, to like, you know, to my calisthenics class or, you know, my yoga class, you know? And and that was incredibly helpful for me. As I was, I started trying to accept what was happening to me. And then that therapist was just laying into me about letting go.

• 1:42:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah, like transcending this avatar of being this certain person.

• 1:42:26Speaker 00

  Why do you care about working out so much?

• 1:42:28Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:29Speaker 00

  Why do you care about superheroes? These superhero movies are horrible. Why do you care? You know, like, that was her thing. And I needed to hear it. Why do you care so much? Why?

• 1:42:42Speaker 00

  Because I think it's going to fix me. I think it's going to be that thing that's going to make me feel okay again or whole. You're smarter than that. What do you care what these people think? Why aren't you writing? I want to know how you feel about all this, how you process it. You just rattled off.

• 1:43:00Speaker 00

  Five pages of Jungian philosophy, like, why aren't you writing about this stuff? Why aren't you thinking, you know, she was forcing me also back into.

• 1:43:09Speaker 00

  God. Or or some sort of.

• 1:43:14Speaker 00

  Thoughts about maybe this is all just part of the process. And. And so that mythological part of my brain started clicking on and I started calling her the lady of the lake. Because I'm like, every time I throw that fucking sword back into the water. Your hand comes up and hands it back to me and I don't want it. I don't want the sword you have, you know, I don't care. I just want people to leave me alone. And she's like, no, no, no, no, no. She's like.

• 1:43:42Speaker 00

  You're meant for something.

• 1:43:44Rich Roll?

  Yeah. The Jungian idea that this obstacle that's been put in your path is actually an opportunity for growth and evolution. If you can shift your perspective and perceive it as such.

• 1:43:58Speaker 00

  So tough. And I had more things that I had to let go of. I just had to keep letting go.

• 1:44:05Speaker 00

  And that opened me up to all sorts of strange adventures.

• 1:44:09Rich Roll?

  Like, enter Santeria.

• 1:44:12Rich Roll?

  Okay.

• 1:44:15Rich Roll?

  I mean, come on, you got to tell this story.

• 1:44:17Speaker 00

  So, you know, when I was recording my audio book. One of, one during this week, I was recording my producer got on remotely and said, hey. I want to say something to you. I was out at a dinner party and I mentioned that I was recording your audio book. And someone at the dinner party said, oh, he's really big into Santeria.

• 1:44:46Rich Roll?

  Stories get like, you know.

• 1:44:49Speaker 00

  Like wide eyed was like. He's really not. I know, trust me.

• 1:44:58Speaker 00

  With that said, like, God bless Santeria. And Santeria also holds. I won't say I'm into it, like, not a practicing.

• 1:45:11Speaker 00

  But. Santeria holds a very interesting place. For me specifically. That I think a lot of people wouldn't connect the dots to that at the time I was experiencing these things and early into my illness. I wind up in Ecuador and I wind up in Cuba with a Santeria Babalao because I think I'm cursed. And I'm married to a Latin woman and that's the thing. Not in Roman Catholic elementary school in Mount Lebanon, Pennsylvania, but. In countries where.

• 1:45:47Speaker 00

  The transatlantic slave trade was very, very active. You have. Western Africans who brought their gods with them on these boats to the new world, but then were forced baptized by. The Spanish masters.

• 1:46:09Speaker 00

  And and forced to believe in Catholic saints. And. These, the Africans found a workaround. Which was Santeria worship of the saints. Ha, ha, ha. Which was basically for every Catholic icon. There is an avatar. It's an avatar for one of their. Their African gods. So when you pray to Santa Barbara, you're praying to Chango. The axe wielding leopard wearing, you know, warrior god, you know? And. So I wind up there and. I am.

• 1:46:51Speaker 00

  It's a lot of animal sacrifice.

• 1:46:56Speaker 00

  I'm saying this out of context right now. So I feel like I need to say that all of the animals were consumed. They were all eaten. So PETA, I know you got mad at me for killing a snake with a.

• 1:47:09Speaker 00

  Tomahawk in my driveway before a children's barbecue in my backyard. I know that that was a call that came into my managers at one point that they were disappointed that I. I killed a snake with an axe when I had children coming over in my yard.

• 1:47:22Speaker 00

  Okay, fine, I'll give you that, but this was a whole different situation. But but yeah, there were. Ancient African rituals that were performed on me in case I was cursed. This Babalao became mounted by an African spirit on multiple occasions around me. And things came out of his mouth that he could never have known. So there is, there's something to it. There was something. To all of this. I had a flu, a horrible flu when I flew to Ecuador first to meet him. And after the first ritual, I woke up and it was gone.

• 1:48:07Speaker 00

  I had a. You know, vivid, vivid hallucinatory dream. In which I was walking around in my former life. And there were all these things that were waiting for me in my yard, packages that were unopened, that were addressed to me that I couldn't get. They were being mailed to the wrong place. And then I found a box of cigars on my table. Which I was informed, which is how the gods are trying to communicate with you. And they're trying to get you what's waiting for you. And I had an office full of like movie memorabilia for all these projects I hadn't been in. But it was all being suspended by the fact that through this illness, this curse. And.

• 1:48:50Speaker 00

  After two days in Ecuador, I wound up in Cuba for a week, about six months later. And I was there for like a week long ritual. A protection ritual and where I became the physical embodiment of of my my god, Chango.

• 1:49:07Speaker 00

  We can go into more detail about, I certainly do in the book. That's one of the, one of the wilder chapters.

• 1:49:13Rich Roll?

  There's a lot, like in your defense, there's a lot of context here. And like, I see this as.

• 1:49:19Rich Roll?

  You know, like a desperation and a curiosity born out of frustration with the Western medical system that was just incapacitated when it comes to like diagnosing and dealing with this illness. So you're forced to look elsewhere. And in that state of desperation, like I'll do anything like Santeria. Okay, like, well, I'll do what else like Jungian therapy. Okay, like

• 1:49:44Speaker 00

  What are we doing?

• 1:49:45Rich Roll?

  Let's, let's, let's go.

• 1:49:46Speaker 00

  Which then enter, enter Joseph Campbell. Because now what happened is, and this is kind of jumping

• 1:49:53Rich Roll?

  Which is kind of superhero-y also when the Jungian therapist is like, why do you care about superheroes? Like, that's the whole bag with, with, like, it's all about like, the, the hero's journey and the, you know, how are you, how are you the protagonist in this?

• 1:50:08Speaker 00

  But I think what she was saying was, you can have more agency over your artistry as a writer, as a storyteller.

• 1:50:16Rich Roll?

  Right, right.

• 1:50:16Speaker 00

  Where you're not so reliant on these people calling you to go do

• 1:50:19Rich Roll?

  Whether they decide or not, that you get to be this person.

• 1:50:22Speaker 00

  You can, you know, you can do it. And so, you know, jumping ahead a little bit,

• 1:50:28Speaker 00

  just momentarily, but, but, you know, at the time, I don't realize it, but I'm being initiated into a religion of my ancestors on my father's side, which I don't know it at the time. And that to me is, is really mind blowing to think about that it wasn't random. It wasn't, I wasn't in some other culture. I'm not connected to, you know, I find out that I have a long lineage of African slaves taken from Western Africa. Like I had, like, it's, it's on, it's there. It's not only there genetically, it's their paper trail. Like, I know who these people are. My ancestors on that side, and these were their gods that they were forced

• 1:51:11Speaker 00

  into not believing in, or at least subverting their, their belief in. And this starts kind of without, you know, without me knowing it at the time, it's starting to kickstart

• 1:51:25Speaker 00

  the, the real spiritual journey starts getting into full gear because now I'm, I'm being put in front of, I'm being introduced to, to, to forms of spirituality that my ancestors who went through very, very difficult times, put their beliefs in things that they were praying to. So my mother said, why don't you pray to God, the one that gave it to me? Well, I'm starting to meet the gods that my ancestors were praying to when they went through some of the most difficult trying moments in human history. And I find out that that's in my family tree.

• 1:51:57Rich Roll?

  Everything that we've talked about up to now is prelude to this, which is really the heart of the book and the story that you want to tell, which is your connection, your relationship with your ancestry and the impact of that on your present circumstances. And, and, you know, the impact that, that is weathered by all of us by our predecessors. I mean, you were somebody who was always interested in your lineage to one degree or another. Didn't you like always want to get on that?

• 1:52:28Speaker 00

  I was trying to get

• 1:52:28Rich Roll?

  Henry Louis Gates show where they like, you know, like, like this was, this was sort of percolating in the back of your mind all the time. Like, where do I come from?

• 1:52:35Speaker 00

  Because of being Armenian.

• 1:52:37Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:37Speaker 00

  And

• 1:52:37Rich Roll?

  On the Armenian side, like, which is

• 1:52:39Speaker 00

  Armenian and German. I knew that I was descended from a German soldier or officer in World War One who was stationed in Ottoman Turkey. My great grandmother is an Armenian genocide survivor who lost nine of her children. Eight of them were killed in front of her.

• 1:52:55Rich Roll?

  It's the most horrific thing.

• 1:52:56Speaker 00

  It's horrible. Yeah.

• 1:52:57Rich Roll?

  Like what she survived.

• 1:52:59Speaker 00

  It's horrible.

• 1:53:00Rich Roll?

  Managed.

• 1:53:01Speaker 00

  Yeah. And so she suffered and, and then wound up at some point in a relocation camp for survivors of the genocide, pregnant by a German officer whose house she was working in. And he went back to Germany and we never knew who he was. And my grandmother, that half German, half Armenian, grew up not knowing the identity of her father. And she was never allowed to know who that was. I was always interested. I mean, if you go poking around your, your German, unknown German family tree, you better get ready for something.

• 1:53:39Rich Roll?

  But that guy's son was an SS officer, I think. Right?

• 1:53:43Speaker 00

  Yeah. So my, as it turns out, my great grandfather, who served under the Kaiser in World War One in the Ottoman Empire, he has a son who grows up to become an SS officer carrying out the Jewish Holocaust, not knowing that he has a half sister who was born in a relocation camp in the wake of the Armenian genocide, that first big genocide of the 20th century. So I talk about it in the book, the idea of the swastika, which is a symbol, like a symbol for, for, for, uh, good luck, prosperity, was then flipped to the other

• 1:54:26Speaker 00

  direction and co-opted by the Nazi, German and Austrian, and then stood for hate. But the idea that you have this SS officer whose half sister is, is, if you see old Armenian rugs, they have the swastika flipped the other way. So it's so wild to think that there is this, this kind of looking glass between the two of them. They don't know each one exists and they both stand for the swastika pointed each direction.

• 1:54:56Rich Roll?

  Right. Mirror images.

• 1:54:57Speaker 00

  And, and that's all in one side of my bloodline.

• 1:55:00Rich Roll?

  This is on the maternal

• 1:55:02Speaker 00

  My mom's

• 1:55:02Rich Roll?

  Side of your family.

• 1:55:03Speaker 00

  Which now you're getting into

• 1:55:07Speaker 00

  life on earth as a human being and being born in a certain place at a certain time, certain parents, a certain means during certain world events. And it's like, you come out of the chute, go, here you go.

• 1:55:24Rich Roll?

  So there's that side. We opened the conversation talking about epigenetics and the inheritance of just unimaginable trauma from your forbears.

• 1:55:36Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:55:37Rich Roll?

  And then there's your paternal side. How did you come into this awareness that you weren't actually a Manganiello?

• 1:55:47Speaker 00

  So in trying to, trying to get accepted onto finding your roots, once they had the, you know, the access to these various genetic pools and databases, they, they accepted me. It was about like 10 years of trying and they finally got me on.

• 1:56:07Rich Roll?

  And what do you think was underneath that desire to get on that show?

• 1:56:11Speaker 00

  I don't know. I think it was from my mother and her sister. I think they'd always wondered who the German was. They knew there was a photo of the German and it was in my Armenian great grandmother's carpet bag after the war. And my grandmother went into her carpet bag at one point and found the photo. And my great grandmother snatched it back and wouldn't tell her who. And then my aunt had the photo and then somehow got lost. And I was like, oh, if there's one photo, it's like, there's one watch. It's like the Pulp Fiction watch. It's like the one picture that, you know, but it got lost. I don't know.

• 1:56:51Speaker 00

  I guess there's, there's also, there's a curiosity that was sparked by, by the, by knowing that I was Armenian and not understanding what that fully meant until I was an adult. Because when you're a kid, nobody's going to tell you what it means to be Armenian.

• 1:57:06Rich Roll?

  This is not taught in schools.

• 1:57:08Speaker 00

  No, it's not. The United States didn't call it officially a genocide until 2019. And even then there were, there were, there were attempts to try to walk that back. And it's not taught in school. And, you know, MGM was going to make a movie called The Forty Days of Musa Dogg, based on this German Jewish reporter's account of his wandering through the land that belonged to the Armenians after the genocide and the atrocity. And MGM was going to make a movie of it. And the Turkish government threatened to boycott American products if MGM put that film out. And so they were squashed and there wasn't another

• 1:57:51Speaker 00

  one again until I think like, like Ara Rat or something, you know, which was like 90s, like it just, you know, and, and even then it's been completely underrepresented. I have a lot of, you know, Jewish friends who had no idea that there was a Holocaust before, you know, a genocide before the Jewish Holocaust. And so it's not taught. And, you know, and, and certainly when you're a little kid and the adults get together and start talking, you're picking up on little things, but it's not until you're older that you start asking those questions. And, you know, I know I have a long, crazy, you know, Italian last name, but my mother, I think is more culturally Armenian than anything. She's half Croatian,

• 1:58:35Speaker 00

  but she's Armenian because her mother was the one making the food for her. And her grandmother was the one coming over to take care of her and, and visit. And so there was a lot of Armenian culture and culturally, I grew up with, with a mother who was more, who was Armenian. And so, um, once you start asking all of those questions, then you start doing the research. Then you find Peter Belikian's books, The Burning Tigress, which is like a textbook. And then you find The Black Dog of Fate, which is a memoir about his memories of his grandmother that survived the genocide. And that was a big influence on me. That's probably my favorite memoir is Black Dog of Fate. And it always stuck with me after I read it. And

• 1:59:23Speaker 00

  And he was instrumental in, in me writing that chapter about the genocide that appears in the book. And he would, you know, proofread, give me notes and things like that and making sure that I was historically accurate because at the time there were only those two books. Now, since like Eric Bogosian, who's another, you know, hero of mine, wrote, took seven years to write Operation Nemesis, which was about the attempts by the Armenians after the war to kill all of the Turkish government officials who were responsible for the genocide, who were freed because of the oil contracts and military interests in Turkey. They were all freed. And so this wealthy Armenian, it was about like the Armenian Munich. And so he wrote this book, Operation Nemesis, which, so once you start reading those and

• 2:00:07Speaker 00

  getting into those, you start asking questions and then you go, who's this German guy? And I kept trying to get on the show to see if I could figure it out. And in getting those answers, the show said, the show called to say, we can't go any forward with the filming of the episode until we talk to you. And when we got on the phone, they said, your father, his father wasn't his father. So your paternal grandfather, Emilio John Manganiello, it's not your father's father, it's somebody else. It's like, wait, so, okay, wait, did

• 2:00:51Speaker 00

  you find the German? Okay, forget about that. You know, if you do the show, we'll tell you.

• 2:00:56Rich Roll?

  You thought you understood the paternal side of your ancestry and this gets upended.

• 2:01:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, my dad is a full-blooded Italian man, FBI, you know, and we'd watch Goodfellas and he'd say, see, oh, Henry Hill, he can't get made because he's half Irish. You kids can't get made because of your mom. I'm, I'm full-blooded Italian. You know, that was a very, a source of pride. And also, you know, these are very, you know, territorial days in Boston. So you have neighborhoods in anywhere, you know, any big city, you have neighborhoods sectioned off by ethnicity. Everybody fights because they used to fight in the old world. And you better not bring home some guy from another neighborhood to meet your dad because we've been fighting for centuries and how dare you? And, you know, it's just different, you know, like all that colloquialism and, and kind of like

• 2:01:44Speaker 00

  nationalism, sort of like, you know, once you start getting into the mixing part, you have to start rethinking all of that, especially when like, you're not an ocean away, you're two blocks away, you know, and but that's how Boston was at the time. So you were what your ethnicity was. Your last name, that's who you were. My dad is full-blooded Italian. So to find out that, that half of him wasn't what, what we thought. And in fact, half of them were basically like the other two neighborhoods you grew up fighting against.

• 2:02:12Speaker 00

  And made sense to me.

• 2:02:17Rich Roll?

  How'd he take it?

• 2:02:19Speaker 00

  Not great. But I think it's 72 years old to, I mean, identity is such a, such a strange thing. I mean, to a certain degree, I mean, and a fragile thing, I think. But yeah, no, I can't speak for him and I don't want to speak for him. But, but I, I can't imagine going through 72 years of life and then having someone say, you know, I, I just, I just, I hope that it made sense the way that it did for me. Because it, it felt for me like, like my eyes were out of focus when I looked in the mirror my whole life. I didn't

• 2:03:04Speaker 00

  know what I was looking at. Like, what am I? Like, you can't put me on The Sopranos because I don't look like those, I don't fully look like those guys. You can tell I'm mixed with something. I'm like part Viking. I don't have any body hair. So that's, I don't know where that came from. You know, people in Europe think I'm German when I'm there. And they don't know me, who I am. They, you know, and so I was like, oh yeah, this makes total sense. Like, oh my gosh, like, okay, I know why, now it's focused for me. But also, you know, I think that, I think that when you, if, you know, if

• 2:03:46Speaker 00

  you're sick and you start asking why, and then you start looking at, you know, what went on with your parents, you start looking at what went on with your parents' parents, and you really start walking this stuff back, you, you can see what, what slides downhill.

• 2:04:00Rich Roll?

  For me, the, the meaning and the impact of all of this lands with this idea that you have this latent impulse to investigate your ancestry. That was, you know, kind of incepted into you by, you know, whatever was going on. It doesn't even matter. Like, this is like this thing inside of you and you're driven, you know, towards a greater understanding of where you came from, without consciously understanding at the time that this is actually the skeleton key that is going to unlock everything that you're searching for in terms of healing yourself, understanding who you are, like, you know, confronting all of these conflicting identities and the confusion that that's causing you. Like, all of it

• 2:04:46Rich Roll?

  is on the other side of this kind of journey of discovery into the past.

• 2:04:52Speaker 00

  Yeah. And, and even then, after all that work, finding out the identity of the German, and then I have this realization when I'm in Armenia, that it just doesn't matter. Doesn't matter who, who the father was. It has no bearing on anything.

• 2:05:14Rich Roll?

  These are stories.

• 2:05:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:05:16Rich Roll?

  That we attach meaning to.

• 2:05:18Speaker 00

  The meaning of that, this story was, in the understanding of my illness and where it came from and the roots of it, my great-grandmother survived what she had to survive. So that she could wind up pregnant by this German and, and give birth to this baby alone that she believed God sent to her. I mean, it's the story of the immaculate conception in a way. A woman with a child without a father, who's the father? She believed God was the

• 2:06:01Speaker 00

  father. God sent her the baby to help her survive. And that baby, my grandmother, you know, dies at age 40, young, and was sick for half her life. Doesn't get to see my mother grow up.

• 2:06:19Rich Roll?

  Like lupus?

• 2:06:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, lupus and her hands were closing up the way that mine were, just covered in a skin rash, skin rashes, the point where she had to wear gloves in public, hats, the way that I was. And, and all of that happened to her heading into age 40, just like it did for me. And then in my darkest hour, I adopt this, this little dog that's been sleeping on my lap the whole time, who is like, an angel sent to me to make sure that I don't do something drastic, or that I have a reason, or I can shift from the role of patient, sick, sick patient, to caregiver, which is what you learn in AA, to get out of yourself, to go take care of somebody else, be of service, and you'll get out of

• 2:07:05Speaker 00

  your own head, you'll get out of your own illness. And the dog came to me the way that my grandmother was sent to, my great-grandmother. But then you have my mother, who's the third one in the line. And my mother suffers from these, you know, panic disorders from the time she was young. And I think it was her way of holding off that, you know, the shadow, whatever, whatever that, that, the disease, the thing coming for her. It was like, if I don't feel it fully, then it can't get me. But then that, there's aspects of that that play out in the rest of your life as well.

• 2:07:46Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that translates into not being able to make herself available to meet your emotional needs when you're young.

• 2:07:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:07:56Rich Roll?

  Like, not a lot of hugging, not a lot of nurturing.

• 2:08:00Speaker 00

  It was, yeah.

• 2:08:01Rich Roll?

  Out of self-preservation.

• 2:08:02Speaker 00

  Yeah. And, and, you know, and, and then he gets me. And, and, and I've, you know, I gave this speech at the, I'm a, I'm a board member at the Children of Armenia Fund, and I got involved. They, they asked me to, they, they, they offered to give me a humanitarian award at their 20th anniversary gala because of speaking up about the genocide on Finding Your Roots. That became this like really important TV episode for, for Armenians. And I kept getting stopped everywhere, like in airports, people were crying. And, I mean, it was like, led to all these conversations and, but I'd also hear from people, so you're only an eighth Armenian? You know, like, I'm not, or, I think it's so great how, how

• 2:08:47Speaker 00

  you're like born again Armenian, you're like discovering all of this and you're getting so involved. And it's like, I, my mother's more culturally Armenian than anything. So I grew up with, like, I, excuse me, you know, like, hi, you know. But what hit me was,

• 2:09:07Speaker 00

  the point is, is that I am Armenian. And what happened, happened for me to be here. And I carry a link to that ancient bloodline because of what they all went through. And

• 2:09:29Speaker 00

  in the final chapter of the book, it's called The Monarch, because, you know, my current AA sponsor, he was proofreading chapters for me as I was writing. And he gets it, he gets the whole thing. And, and he said something incredibly wise that stuck to me. He said, you know, monarch butterflies take four generations to migrate. And

• 2:09:56Speaker 00

  the first three fly as far as they can. And then it's the fourth one that gets there. And I feel like, you know, this, this book is me getting there and hopefully breaking that pattern. I, I know where it came from. I know what I carry with me. I know that it wasn't random. And I've grown to a place where

• 2:10:25Speaker 00

  I don't complain about it.

• 2:10:31Speaker 00

  Why not me? If I could do it. Now, if I die and I find out that I chose all of this for myself, I'm gonna be pissed off. And I'll never do this again. But having been when I went, having been through what I, what I went through. I'm glad I did. And I'm okay with it. And um. And I hope that. I hope that one day I have tangible proof that I have broken the chain because, you know, I have healthy children.

• 2:11:14Speaker 00

  That don't have to, don't have to think about this, or don't have to deal with any of this anymore. And, and I hope that the book provides. Provides the shove off. For thousands and thousands of boats. With people with, with nothing better to do. Then try to figure out where their own mystery illnesses started and came from. And try to find those answers the way that I did.

• 2:11:43Rich Roll?

  You talk about warrior mode. To me. There is no greater like battle to engage with as a warrior than to confront generations of trauma that you've inherited. And to overcome them, to heal them, to uh make peace with them. And to arrest that cycle and spare your children and the next generation from suffering what you had to like. That's the greatest gift that you could give your children.

• 2:12:24Rich Roll?

  And I think this relationship, like this understanding that. You did inherit like some of this. And we all do like, like in our epigenetics, like in a way that we can't quite make sense of. In our mitochondria, or whatever science can or can't tell us about the veracity of that. There is this somatic. Experience of truth that yes, they live inside of us. And for better or worse, and in your case, like the, the, the, the trauma of your ancestors is so severe. So severe.

• 2:13:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:13:05Rich Roll?

  And to the extent that maybe you just. Are inhabiting like a fraction of that, it's still enough. Like, what is the relationship of that to your alcoholism, to this autoimmune disease? And how do you, and, and to like grapple with that? Like that is, you know, that is a heroic act, like this is the crux of the hero's journey. Um, and to come out the other side, I mean, you still haven't really elaborated on the relationship with you confronting this and, and reckoning with it. And how that translated into like healing? Like you, you have overcome this illness that you described in such horrific fashion.

• 2:13:49Rich Roll?

  So help me understand that part of it. Cause there's all these mystical things and, and synchronicities with prayer cards and like, it's like God is talking to you throughout this whole thing.

• 2:14:00Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:14:01Rich Roll?

  I mean, it's, it's, it's wild, man.

• 2:14:03Speaker 00

  Yes, it is. Um, and, and um, so. You know. There was a day I woke up and I felt better. And I had no idea why. It was like a.

• 2:14:20Rich Roll?

  First of all, did you ever get a proper diagnosis?

• 2:14:23Speaker 00

  I mean, it was all dumping ground stuff. It was all like, you know, I mean. You know, I was grappling with what am I calling this colitis? Am I calling it Crohn's? Like, what are those? Because I've met a hundred people and all of them have different symptoms or different levels of severity and. It's, it's just, it's, it's a dumpster that they're throwing things into that they don't know how to explain. They don't know where they come from. They don't know how to treat them. Shogun's syndrome or, you know, sweet syndrome. You know, and, and then they're gonna send you off to a host, a handful of doctors that all aren't gonna communicate with each other.

• 2:15:06Speaker 00

  Other than you're in the, the results are in the central database. And every time you go in, they're gonna ask you, are you still allergic to this? Are you still taking this? Are you still, no, no, take it. Oh God, I've told that done this every time I go into the damn new office. They're compartmentalizing all of your issues. And nobody was looking at it holistically. There's, there's something in the control room inside of my body that's flipping switches. What is it? And where's the off switch? And how do we tell it to stop? And um. And so to me, it just didn't matter. Like I didn't, I didn't think of it in any of those terms or, or ways. It's how do I tell my body to stop attacking itself? How do I stop this?

• 2:15:51Speaker 00

  How do I stop the civil war? And um. You know, there was, there was a day that, that I woke up and I felt better and, and I, I, I had this funny feeling like I, I just felt different. Every time for, for seven years, I knew it was in there. I knew there was fighting going on. I knew that if I exerted myself at all, I was gonna get sick. Because it was taking soldiers from the autoimmune battlefield away to like build muscle in the gym, you know, or whatever. And, and, and if they took troops away, then I would get sick, I would collapse.

• 2:16:28Speaker 00

  And um, so I knew not to push, just, you know, um, and I woke up one day and felt like, I felt hungry. I haven't been hungry in a long time because I know if I eat, it's gonna cause pain and it's gonna cause blood. So it's like, why would you wanna eat? Cause you have to, it's like, okay, you know, and the dog would make me eat. She'd come over and make sure I was eating. Cause she wanted like snacks off the table, but still, you know, she would make sure I was eating. You have to eat, you have to eat now, you have to eat now, I didn't wanna, I woke up one day, I wanted to eat. The hell, it started with that. And then from there. Days started stringing together, weeks started stringing together. I felt like, okay, you're gonna start working out again.

• 2:17:12Speaker 00

  You're gonna work out now, you're gonna have to eat more. So far, so good. Okay, now let's work out and increase the intensity, see what happens. So far, so good. Months like that started happening. I knew like something's going on. I'm better, like I, I don't, I don't know how to explain it. It's gone, like it's gone, I'm telling you, it's, it's gone. And um. I was working out at home and I had YouTube on. And uh. You know, one video ended and another one started up and it was you talking to Gabor Maté. And I stopped because it was like everything I'm hearing is like, for me.

• 2:17:52Speaker 00

  Oh, and they're talking, you're talking about, you know, autoimmune disorder, you know, and, and talking about uh.

• 2:17:58Rich Roll?

  Spontaneous remission.

• 2:17:59Speaker 00

  Spontaneous remission is what I heard. And he starts describing. What happened to me? Like I couldn't explain why I felt better and then I did that, that, that, that. So I fumbled around in the dark and found the light switch. And I, I, I got on my phone and I looked up his Instagram page and followed and then DM'd. His daughter answered and said, uh, I know who you are and my dad will talk to you this afternoon. So I got on a call and talked to Gabor that day. And we talked about repression. Growing up and repressing those feelings of. Um, being emotionally intelligent or being, you know, shamed for being sensitive.

• 2:18:44Speaker 00

  Which, you know, an alcoholic, alcoholics, you, you are too sensitive, you probably should be less sensitive, but sensitivity is also the superpower. It's why there's so many great artists who are alcoholics, cause they're, they see things and feel things and do micro calculations in ways that most people can't, that are annoying to other people. People are annoyed when I know, I know the second their mood shifts. What happened right there? What'd you do? Get out of my head, stop, leave me alone, you know, like I'm the worst in relationships. Cause I know when someone's mood shifts, you know, my fiance is like, will you stop it, please? She has to get used to me. I know something's going on. Like three steps before she even knows something's happening.

• 2:19:24Rich Roll?

  That empathy that you described at the beginning.

• 2:19:28Speaker 00

  But you, you push that down, cause it's like, you know, you gotta be masculine or, you know, whatever that's seen as where if, you know, emotional intelligence is yin, aggression is masculine and they're just polar opposites and nothing's wrong or right or toxic or not. I'm not, you know, but. The idea that um, that when shame happened to me. I was like, oh, great. I don't ever have to be accused of being all these things that have been rattling around in my head ever again. I can just be that. And I'm gonna build this avatar and I'm gonna be that guy. But then people are gonna assume that I'm stupid. Because I've created this avatar and they're gonna talk to me in a way that isn't commensurate with the respect that I feel like I should deserve.

• 2:20:11Speaker 00

  And I see that they're doing it and I hate it and I can see it in real time and now I hate the whole thing. And I, and I, I think less of them for believing in the avatar because it was all fake anyway. Didn't you know that?

• 2:20:21Rich Roll?

  And you architected the whole thing.

• 2:20:23Speaker 00

  I know, and then I hate it. So it's like, now I have no one to blame but me. And um, and the illness tore the whole thing down. Took my body away. Took the whole thing down. All of it, the body, the career, the relationship, the public image, all of it, all of it was gone. You're nothing, you're nothing but a spirit housed in this shell and that's it. What are you gonna be? If you're alive next week? Which. Us sitting around this conference table up in the sky, we're not sure if you're going to be around next week. So what do you got, pal? You gonna surrender, you gonna let go and let us run the show? Or you wanna keep running it? What do you wanna do?

• 2:21:08Speaker 00

  And so talking to Gabor, it's like, oh yeah. I architected the whole thing. I, I, I repressed all of these parts of myself, compartmentalized, pushed things down, never spoke about how I felt. And I was angry. I was angry at God, I was angry at the universe, I was angry about, about why this was happening to me. I was not in acceptance. Um, I wanted my old life back, I wanted the next job, I wanted that thing that was gonna get me out of it. But what he said was that it all got kicked off, the healing got kicked off because of.

• 2:21:52Speaker 00

  At one point, the pain was so bad and I was in a hotel room trying to finish this movie. I was shooting in New Jersey called The Kill Room. And I had been in chronic pain for months and I was sweating and hemorrhaging blood again. And I thought I was gonna have to leave this movie and go to the emergency room. And I had the dog in the hotel with me.

• 2:22:17Speaker 00

  And, you know, my marriage was for the most part over at that point.

• 2:22:22Speaker 00

  You know, she wasn't available to even come and get the dog out of the hotel room so that I could, in case I needed to go to the hospital. I was alone, like alone with this dog in the room with the blood. This, I mean, it was like, what am I doing? And I called my doctors and they said, we need you to come back to LA. And what we're gonna do is we're gonna cut you open. We're gonna divert you back to the ostomy bag to give your system a break. So you stop bleeding.

• 2:22:51Speaker 00

  And like a career criminal who's hearing that we're gonna come and take you back to prison. No, you're not. They're like, what? I'm like, I'm not doing it.

• 2:23:04Speaker 00

  Well, you have to. No, I don't. I don't have to do anything. And I don't want to live that way. I'm not gonna do it again.

• 2:23:15Speaker 00

  They begged me. I said, no, and I hung up. And Gabor said that that was the moment that I took back my own agency. That all, the only agency I had left was over whether I could live or die. Like I was given this gift of life, which, mind you, I didn't do anything drastic. You know, there was a moment where I had to give my gun away. Right before I got the dog, I gave the gun away because I kept thinking about it. And just stuck it out.

• 2:23:44Speaker 00

  And I chose that, that I, regardless of what was going to happen to me, I, I, I, I wasn't gonna go back. And if I was gonna be dead, come and take me because I'm done with all this. Like I just had it. And that was really the final surrender where I let go of it all. And I somehow finished that movie, went back home to LA, crawled into a spare bedroom for three months, just heavily medicated. I want to be put on fentanyl patches. I was on opioids with acetaminophen to accelerate it. I was on a nerve medication for my neck that I took at night.

• 2:24:29Speaker 00

  I was getting THC tinctures, like nothing was breaking through. And it got to the point where I then had to take in like large doses of marijuana during the day because I thought I was, I just thought, I'm gonna die. I can't get comfortable. It's 24 hours a day. I'm awake all night trying to take these pain, I'm like out of my mind. I mean, I was going crazy, fentanyl pack. I mean, I'm like, the whole thing was just, it's like, what am I doing? Like this is the biggest waste. I can't do another movie because of look at what just happened. Like, so that's done. You're done as an actor. You're done leaving the house. Like you're, you're done finding five seconds where you're not in pain.

• 2:25:12Speaker 00

  And I told the doctors, no, I'm ready to die. Like hurry up. And after three months of being medicated, trying to get out of pain, I, I think there was something in the marijuana that broke through. And I think it bumped the record that was skipping, that pain record. It bumped it to the next song, the marijuana.

• 2:25:42Speaker 00

  And that's, I started feeling better incrementally. And then I woke up that day and felt like I want to eat. And then I knew I was done with the marijuana. So I had to get off of the marijuana, which I did. Then I had to start stretching out the fentanyl or the pain pills. Started stretching those out. Got off of those. Stretched out the fentanyl patches. Got off of those. Then stretched out the nerve medication. Got off of that, like just detox piece by piece by piece to get back to my baseline. And then, of course, my insurance company called and said, oh, now that you're feeling better, you're gonna have to choose between the two drugs that you're taking that may have been responsible for you feeling better.

• 2:26:27Speaker 00

  Now, I knew that that wasn't the drugs that made me feel better. But I definitely let them know what I think, thought about what they were saying. You know, oh, so finally, after seven years of brutal agonizing and excruciating pain, and I feel better now, finally.

• 2:26:43Speaker 00

  And now you're gonna make me do a Sophie's Choice of which drug I think may have been responsible? And you're gonna make me get off of one? I go, shame on you. I go, if I die, I will make sure that I leave in my will that there will be someone whose life goal, and I will leave them everything that I own, to try to take you down in court for killing me. I said, so I hope this is recorded. This conversation recorded? I heard that at the beginning of the conversation. I said, there's blood on your hands. So watch me. I'm gonna quit one of these drugs. Take me off of the pills, fine. I'll only do the other one. But I knew that was the reason why. But I wanted to put these people through because they're just, you know, they're not.

• 2:27:22Speaker 00

  How can you care?

• 2:27:25Speaker 00

  And I told all of this to Gabor. And he said, um, it sounds like you're living an authentic life. Finally.

• 2:27:34Speaker 00

  And as long as you continue to live authentically, I think you're gonna be okay.

• 2:27:39Speaker 00

  And then I met the shaman from Australia, Peter.

• 2:27:43Speaker 00

  Which is a whole other adventure.

• 2:27:46Rich Roll?

  And her breath work and all kinds of other, you know.

• 2:27:50Speaker 00

  Cause wild stuff.

• 2:27:51Rich Roll?

  Yeah, healing modalities.

• 2:27:53Speaker 00

  But your show was that light bulb that came on for me that made me perk up and, and, and, and, and realize why? Like, you know, because people ask me, my mother asked me like, what happened? Like, how did you get better? And at the time I didn't know. But, but after talking to Gabor, I, I know now, like I, I know he's right. And, um, and so it's, uh, it's fitting that, you know, to kick off the book press tour that, that I'm here with you because, you know, I mentioned, I mentioned that, that, that conversation in the book.

• 2:28:31Rich Roll?

  It's amazing to hear that. And, and moving for me, I mean, it's, it's helpful as a reminder to, as to like, why I do this, you know?

• 2:28:41Speaker 00

  You never know where the boomerang flies out to.

• 2:28:43Rich Roll?

  It's, it's kind of a, you know, a weirdly abstract job, you know? Well, I'm putting this transmission out there, but I'm sort of detached from how it's being received or, or how it's impacting people. So it's, it's like emotional for me to hear that. And it's reminding me of the first time that I met Gabor. Cause that episode was actually the second one. The first one, I saw him out in, it must've been, I'd have to look, but I would, I think it was probably 2014, maybe 2015. And he had come on my radar and I was like, I have to meet this guy. And I flew to Vancouver. Like I was still, you know, kind of a traveling salesman with microphones, you know, begging, borrowing and stealing, trying to convince people to come on the show.

• 2:29:29Rich Roll?

  And, and the only way I was gonna, you know, get him to do it was to like, go to him.

• 2:29:35Rich Roll?

  And I went to him and he did what I wanted him to do, which is to flip the equation around and, and basically like deconstruct me. And it was a version of like, listen, you know, you, I'm sure your, you know, parents are loving people and they did their best. But like, the truth of the matter is, is like, you have all of these needs that want unmet. You can't say that that is unrelated to the struggles that you've gone through in your life. And you need to like, look at this and heal this and make peace with this. Otherwise it's gonna continue to show up and drive aberrant behavior in your life. And that has proven to be true.

• 2:30:15Rich Roll?

  Like I, I was still, I wasn't ready to really, like it was the first time that I was being confronted with these ideas. And I, I don't think I was quite ready to really fully take that on.

• 2:30:30Rich Roll?

  But every day since then, I've thought about that. And I've done on this journey to like, really reckon with my past and, and, and heal this stuff because it shows up in my marriage and parent, and like, you know, you know how it just metastasizes? And it like, there's a, there's a like a yucky layer that covers everything until you really kind of like, look at this stuff and deal with it.

• 2:30:52Speaker 00

  Yeah. And that's, you know, going back to like sobriety.

• 2:30:56Rich Roll?

  And it's nothing, let me just say, sorry to interrupt you, but it's, but it's nothing like what you have had. You know, it's like a very minor version of like what you, your pain is your pain.

• 2:31:05Speaker 00

  Well, but I, but I hear you saying is that there's a series of knots in a rope. And I can't get these things untied. Like I don't understand it. And it's not one knot. You know, when I started writing the book or started meeting with publishers,

• 2:31:24Speaker 00

  sometimes people would say things to me like, you know, what are your, your four steps to getting over your autoimmune issues for, for other people out there? And I'm like, are you testing me to see if I'm gonna put the number four on a book cover? Uh, in terms of, and like, you know, hey, you know? And my answer was, I don't know. Like, I don't know what they are.

• 2:31:46Speaker 00

  Because I was at the beginning of writing the book. The book process for me was sorting through all of it and understanding what,

• 2:31:56Speaker 00

  what had to do with what. And, um, and then also like what's interesting and not interesting because people would say also to me like, you know, was writing the book therapeutic? And it's like, no, no, you're sitting there and writing about,

• 2:32:09Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:32:10Speaker 00

  Dead children in Armenia?

• 2:32:12Rich Roll?

  It's an exorcism.

• 2:32:13Speaker 00

  No, I don't want to do that, you know? Or like, it didn't, I had sorted through all the parental stuff when I went in a sobriety. Like I, you know, I did all of that. And this was connecting dots. This was also using a lifetime as a storyteller to adapt my own life, which is a strange process. And, but also coming to the realization that it did fall into the Cambellian circle. Weirdly, everything was like, oh, oh, oh, up, down, up, down. I meet Chewbacca and then I go and find Merlin and here's the lady of the lake. And I mean, it was like, oh, I find out my last name isn't my last name. Oh my God, I'm King Arthur. Oh, wait, I found the, I found the grail the second time. Wait, I'm Parsifal.

• 2:32:58Speaker 00

  Oh my God, you know, it was like, he just, it just goes, it's like, there's historical precedent for everything that I went through. From the conversation I have about Western dragons versus Eastern dragons as it relates to my disease, the understanding that, that I'm being introduced to the African Yoruba gods of my ancestors and becoming the physical embodiment of one of them. I mean, it was like, oh my God, like I, I wish Joseph Campbell was around because I, I just, I want to take him out to lunch and give him a hug. You know, um, but it's, um, you know, what part of what was responsible? Well, I don't know what part of what was responsible for me being sick. I think a lot of it.

• 2:33:42Speaker 00

  And I think that I had to confront each piece. I think Santa Rio was responsible for a piece of it. I think the side quests I was sent on by the Greek Orthodox Mother Superior was a piece of it. I think Jung is a piece. I think Campbell's a piece. I think, I think

• 2:34:06Speaker 00

  reading the Tibetan Book of the Dead to my friend in a coma and having him pass away. And that whole experience was a piece. I think Hindu ideas about choosing your parents or, you know, what goes on before, you know? I think the band Tool is a huge part of it. I think the song Parabola that I quote in the book. It's like, wait, how do they understand? Wait a minute, you know? And, um, the numbers of the universe and symbols that get repeated and symbology and numerology and all the things that they're in. I mean, I think that's a piece. I think there's so many,

• 2:34:46Speaker 00

  there's so much information that, that there was such a complex series of knots over time that it was like, I needed seven years to go back and untie every single one of them. And on that one August morning, after seven years of pain and suffering, I knew I had, somehow I untied the last knot. Well, I shouldn't say that. I still had a knot left that, that Peter helped me untie. There was a real, um,

• 2:35:17Speaker 00

  I don't know, there's a conversation to be had about spirits. And, um, I know I've talked, we talked about the physical scientific proof for, for generational trauma, but

• 2:35:28Speaker 00

  for my feeble human brain to think of it as there are ghosts in your family tree, in your ancestry that are screaming and they wanna, they wanna be heard. And they want to be understood. And until I went through some modicum of the suffering that they went through, in some cases, maybe even worse in, in one case or two, you know? But, um, until I understood that, how am I supposed to tell the story? Or how am I supposed to fully understand this? And then, and then now I'm in a position where it's like, well, okay, why did this happen to me?

• 2:36:12Speaker 00

  Well, I think that's where I'm at now. I'm starting to find, I'm going to find out. You did that podcast, you went and flew to Gabor's to talk to him. And then years later, here I am. And you helped me figure out my issues without even knowing that that was your path. And now I'm here and I don't know what happens after. I don't know who speaks to me after, or who I'm passing the baton to, or,

• 2:36:40Speaker 00

  you know, I, I, I met so many people dealing with so many, I mean, people are coming to me now and being like, you know, can I see Peter? Can I call them like just, Peter's a recluse. You're not going to talk to Peter, but it's okay. But you can talk to me and, um,

• 2:36:55Speaker 00

  it's just about the human experience. It's like, what the hell is going on here?

• 2:36:59Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I think to your point about the publisher saying, you know, like, what are the four ways you're going to cure your auto? You know, like wanting this, like really reductive solution based, like how to advise,

• 2:37:10Speaker 00

  Tell you so books.

• 2:37:11Rich Roll?

  Spin on this whole thing. What you're doing rightly is, is what we learn in the rooms of recovery, which is that we're not here to give advice. We're here to share, share our experience, strength and hope. And like, this is my story and take from it what you need to take from it and interpret it as you will, through the filter or lens of your, your unique set of life experiences and draw your conclusions as you will. And it's for, it's for, it's for the reader to decide what it means.

• 2:37:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:37:44Rich Roll?

  Cause you're just like, this is the story.

• 2:37:46Speaker 00

  And, and if, if I have to be rigorously honest about this, like I am so brutally honest in that book and raw because I don't know what part of that is going to be the key for somebody else. So, you know, there were also lots of notes and red lines through a lot of the body horror as I was writing, you know, from my editor. Like, do you need to keep talking about something popping in the mirror? Or, you know, whatever it all was and, uh,

• 2:38:19Rich Roll?

  But it's your willingness to go there. And, and it's a demonstration of the degree to which you're willing to be honest and open and vulnerable. And that's, we were talking about this earlier, like that's what's going to really engender trust in the reader and create that like connection to your story. And the more specific you are about the uniqueness of your story, the more ironically relatable it is for somebody else. It's that same thing. You go into, you go into a room, one of these rooms and you, and you see somebody get up to the podium and you're like, I, I have nothing in common with this person. And they share their story. The facts of their experience couldn't be more different than your own. And you can't believe how much you're relating

• 2:39:02Rich Roll?

  to the emotional experience of what they endured.

• 2:39:05Speaker 00

  Yeah. And I think selfishly or whatever, um, you know, I, I, I lived a closeted experience for 10 years. You know, I, I, um, I was closeted by the illness in a lot of ways. I, I, uh, there weren't a lot of people who knew what was going on with me. Definitely not the extent of what was going on with me.

• 2:39:27Speaker 00

  People that were close to me.

• 2:39:30Speaker 00

  And I, I was scared to talk about it. And I was, um, I didn't want to be labeled as a sick guy.

• 2:39:39Speaker 00

  You know, also before I got, you know, four years of health behind me and lots of, you know, healthy, great productions back under my belt. You know, I was afraid that, um, that I shouldn't act anymore in good conscience or good faith because, um, I was doing something, I was trying to get away with something that maybe I shouldn't be getting away with. And, um, you know, it, it was all fine while I was fighting through something. I mean, certainly people act when they're sick, people act when they're injured. I mean, okay. But, um, I think when the writing was on the wall, I realized, yeah, you probably, you're probably never going to do this again.

• 2:40:18Speaker 00

  So that all led to me, um, and I think also like some of the things that people were saying online and people, things people were saying in my face a lot. Led me to, to, to not really want to be a, you know, I, I, every conversation I had was small talk for like 10 years and it sucked. And so I think part of the book also, and the brutal honesty of the book too, is like,

• 2:40:46Speaker 00

  I want people to know who I am. You know, I think, uh, I'm lucky enough that, that as an artist, as a writer, as an actor, I, I get paid to explore myself and therefore explore the human condition. And the silver lining of all of this was I was given the most fucking insane story I've ever heard and it's mine. And so I didn't want to leave anything on the, on the floor, uh, when it came to this book.

• 2:41:16Rich Roll?

  Is it cathartic for you to share all of this today? To get it down on paper, one thing, and then to just kind of verbalize it?

• 2:41:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, I feel like, um,

• 2:41:29Speaker 00

  yeah, I had like,

• 2:41:32Speaker 00

  maybe the first real public conversation

• 2:41:36Speaker 00

  that I've ever had.

• 2:41:42Speaker 00

  I certainly,

• 2:41:45Speaker 00

  you know, after the workout, you, you saw one of my scars. And, uh,

• 2:41:54Speaker 00

  the camera's rolling and I showed you mine, you showed me yours. And, uh, that's certainly something that I never imagined happening. So, um, it's just who I am. And, uh, for better or worse, and, um,

• 2:42:15Speaker 00

  I, I, I wanted to, I think I wanted to avoid the human experience for a long time. I, I wanted to somehow like transcend the human experience and find some kind of golden ticket. It meant that I wouldn't feel the way that I felt my whole life before I found alcohol. And the way that I felt after I had to quit. And then the way that I felt when I was sick. And, um, and, and I think at its core. It, I'm supposed to have a human experience. I'm just supposed to be a human being. And, um, and, and as an artist, that's, that's your job. Your job isn't to, your job's not to be a superhero.

• 2:42:59Speaker 00

  Your job's to be a human being. And, um, you know, I'm okay with that.

• 2:43:08Rich Roll?

  It's an unreal story. It's beautifully told in the book. It's incredibly powerful. Uh, and I appreciate the trust, uh, that you've shown me and, and, and helping you tell it. You know, it's, it's, I think it's going to help a lot of people. You're entering a new phase of your life where you have the opportunity to be of service to so many people. Um, to take everything you've learned in recovery and apply that to people that don't struggle with substance abuse issues, but are reckoning with some version of what you've endured. Um, and so as we kind of wrap this up and close,

• 2:43:52Rich Roll?

  what is the message that you want to put out there to the person? Who's listening to this or watching and is in the midst of some version of your struggle? Confused, grappling with despair and hopelessness, getting gaslit by the medical system, the whole thing.

• 2:44:11Speaker 00

  Well, something, sometimes the best thing you can do is just do nothing. Meaning, don't do something drastic. I just never gave up and every time I got knocked down, I kept standing back up. I look at the sacrifice of my great grandmother. Survived the genocide, watched eight of her children murder in front of her, was shot and left her dead. While the ninth baby was supposed to be, supposed to starve in the crib and, uh, and then drowned in her escape across the Euphrates River. She went and, uh, you know, and then winds up pregnant in a, in a camp for survivors.

• 2:44:55Speaker 00

  And, uh, and then comes to America and is married off to an abusive man. And, uh, and then watched that 10th baby, my grandmother die in, in her arms. It's like, you know, why would you want to go on with this whole experiment? And what I've come to realize is that if everything happens all at once, and you do believe that, the time is this perception, then I'm simultaneously playing my part while she's playing hers. And this is just, you know, the cross of our family.

• 2:45:38Speaker 00

  And, um, my job was to make sure that her story didn't go unheard and that it wasn't for nothing. And to fully understand what it meant for her sacrifice in order for me to be here. And there were moments, believe me, where it was dark. There was no light whatsoever. And I didn't see a reason to go on. But because of what she went through, I realized I can't check out. I'm not allowed. If she didn't check out, who the hell am I to think I can? And, you know, I, I sit here on the other side of all of this. And I certainly didn't feel this way while I was going through it.

• 2:46:23Speaker 00

  But now that I'm on the other side, would I do it again? No. Was it worth it? Yes. Yes. And, um, yeah, you're right. You know, I, I, I can, I, I, I prayed that if I got through this, then I would somehow be transformed into something more useful, something stronger, something wiser. And, um, you know, I thought that turning 40 might've been the halfway mark, but maybe 50 is the halfway mark. Maybe I'm going to go 100.

• 2:46:56Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:46:56Speaker 00

  You never know. I mean, I look better than Wilford Brimley at 50. No offense, but.

• 2:47:02Rich Roll?

  Yeah. That bar is low, but, uh, yeah, go ahead.

• 2:47:05Speaker 00

  You know, so, um, I might have, I might have a lot more to go here. And it was a seven year cycle. It was, it was just a bad dream. It was one of the, one of the cycles and, um, and I'm through it. And now it's, it's time to really start living my life with purpose. And so I would say to people out there, I know it's hard to say like give into it or whatever, you know, but like, you gotta go through what you go, what you have to go through. You have to deal, you have to play those cards out that you got dealt. You don't have any other cards. And so try to play those cards the best that you can. Um, for me, it would have been a relief to be able to check out and die. But I didn't, that wasn't for me.

• 2:47:48Speaker 00

  But, um, you know, here I am on the other side of it and life's pretty damn good. I got to move back home.

• 2:47:58Rich Roll?

  Living in Pittsburgh.

• 2:47:59Speaker 00

  In Pittsburgh again. You know, the entertainment industry kind of moved.

• 2:48:02Rich Roll?

  A fiance, you got like, you know.

• 2:48:04Speaker 00

  A great fiance who loves me.

• 2:48:06Rich Roll?

  You got all these projects.

• 2:48:07Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:48:07Rich Roll?

  Work came back.

• 2:48:08Speaker 00

  One piece and yeah, I mean, I found out I love game show hosting and writing more. And I'm a chief creative officer at Dungeons and Dragons, which is the job that I wanted as a kid. And I get to do that and develop product with them. And then I have, you know.

• 2:48:23Rich Roll?

  We got bubbles here, like we went the whole, we've gone like three hours without even really addressing the fact that we've got, we've got bubbles. Your laugh. Who's behaved herself beautifully the whole time.

• 2:48:35Speaker 00

  Yeah, you did great.

• 2:48:38Rich Roll?

  Unreal, this symbiotic, uh, like healing relationship that you, that the two of you have with each other.

• 2:48:46Speaker 00

  Got to save a little dog. I would tell people, go get a dog if you're suffering. You know, um, that's another thing that got to be of service to this little, little monster.

• 2:48:59Rich Roll?

  There she is.

• 2:49:00Speaker 00

  What are you doing?

• 2:49:01Rich Roll?

  Well, it's been an absolute honor, dude. Uh, just unbelievable story, so powerful. Um, again, I appreciate you. I mean, we, dude, we, we like hung out like an entire day.

• 2:49:12Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:49:12Rich Roll?

  Like I, I just feel what a gift.

• 2:49:14Speaker 00

  It's a lot in common.

• 2:49:15Rich Roll?

  And, uh, and, and that you're giving to other people. The book is incredible stuff. Bloodlines available everywhere. And I, dude, I can't wait to see where you're going to take this and, and where this is going to lead you. It's really a remarkable journey.

• 2:49:29Speaker 00

  Thanks, man. Thanks for having me.

• 2:49:31Rich Roll?

  Yeah, thank you. Peace.