Brad Benedict talks Too Close to Home

If you have not been watching Brad Benedict on TLC’s Too Close to Home, you are missing out on some amazing work. Brad is a southern boy at heart with a lot of charm that will captivate you from his very first scene. A Georgia Bulldog thru and thru, Brad played tennis for the ‘Dawgs while studying finance before going off to conquer Hollywood.

He has made his acting chops known by being on shows like NCIS, Glee and Medium to name just a few and we can only predict that this is only the tip of the iceberg for Brad. Brad also has some experience playing the guitar and SCUBA diving. These may not seem like important skills when acting, but we could see him pulling off heists in a film where he has to be underwater to get the gold. Or maybe he is a guitar playing bandit in a western. Either way… we are very excited to see where Brad Benedict goes from here.

Wingman Magazine: The first season of Too Close to Home is coming to an end soon… can you give us a short synopsis of the show.

Brad Benedict: The show started with Annie up in Washington, D.C. to escape her past in Happy, Alabama. She has an affair with the President and is chased back homes for her own protection and to get away from it all. Once she get back to the trailer park world, drama ensues. While she is still trying to face the backlash from leaving Washington, D.C. and the scandal, she has to deal to with everything that is happening in the trailer park too. My character, JB is one of those bad things in a way that he is a racist, drug running, misogynistic, homophobic jerk who is causing a lot of problems. It’s a juicy drama that has a lot of twists and turns and a lot of fun. There are a lot of heavy and poignant moments in there as well. You should be able to get all your juice and then have moments that hit ya, “Too Close to Home.” (Laughs)

Wingman Magazine: At the end of first half of the season, JB goes off on his own a little bit. He turned to an even shadier lifestyle a little bit. Can you elaborate on that for us a little bit.

Brad Benedict: First of all, JB and the other residents of Happy, AL haven’t really lived an affluent lifestyle, they were always scraping by. In an effort to try and make things better for himself, his kids, his girlfriend Bonnie and her nieces and nephews, JB decides to run drugs in tractor trailer. That was the turning point in his life that he breaks in a really bad way. With that decision he gets the drugs that he has stolen and the bad guys come storming in and threaten him and his family. It happens in the real world, that once you hit your breaking point you do what you have to survive. With JB he is trying to regain power and some sort of control over his life, but turns darker and darker. He goes from running drugs to beating up the gay guys that go there from Washington, D.C. to almost killing women. It all came down to that he didn’t really have a father figure in his life and his father Dr. Alan was only really his stepfather, which was just learned. He was going through life without a guide. I hope that as the episodes go on and the layers pull back we will learn more about JB and behavior. A lot of his destructive behavior stems from desperation.

Wingman Magazine: With JB on the opposite side of the law, how did you approach that type of role and the psyche that it would take to become JB.

Brad Benedict:  (Chuckles) It’s scary that it’s a little bit easier to drop into than I thought it would be. I have typically played the nice guys or certainly not criminals. My first goal was to first understand his thoughts and ways to empathize with JB as a character. I thought that if I could do that, then I at least could act out his character with conviction and not question it while in the middle of a scene. While I don’t support his actions, I think I was able to go and create a story, his thought process and his thoughts and understand why he was doing it. From there, it was specific scene to scene when he interacts with different characters in different situations. Luckily I come from the south and have southern roots since I was raised in Georgia, not quite as rural as Happy, AL. I had some exposure to people in similar lifestyles, so I had seen people in the same types of situations. That is always helpful when you can draw on those personal experiences.

Wingman Magazine: You were a college athlete at UGA, degree in finance. How did you get involved in the arts and how did you make that transition and hard choice to do it?

Brad Benedict: From the time I was a little kid I always loved to being the center of attention. I was that three year old talking to the adults that thought I was part of the conversation. I loved to entertain, which can sometimes be a blessing and a curse depending on the situation. That whole feeling of loving to steal an audience made me want to do more of it. One day in high school I saw that there was going to be auditions for the spring musical. I had my mom come and check me out of school because I hadn’t prepared anything for my audition and we had to sing a song. (Laughing)  Literally on a whim I went home and brought in my car and played Desperado, which is I am sure what they were least expecting for a school musical audition. I ended up booking the lead role of Bye Bye Birdie. That experience was the first introduction into formal acting. I was on the road to play college tennis and ended up putting it on the back burner. I walked on to the UGA tennis team and was studying finance so there wasn’t a whole of time to do acting. There was a woman who was a friend of my dad’s visiting from LA and she told me about the business and thought maybe she would be able to help me. She ran a company that signed extras to be in TV commercials. I didn’t know what that meant and thought she was an Agent. I graduated from UGA early and had a job lined up on Wall Street and went out to pursue a career with this woman who I thought was my agent, when she wasn’t. I had already accepted the job with the banking firm in New York and the day before I was supposed to leave for that I couldn’t leave California. I had received my SAG card and had too much invested into it. It was eight and a half years when I got my own series when Tyler (Perry) cast me in Too Close to Home. I advise people to go for something at least once in life with no safety net and follow your dreams.

Wingman Magazine: As a Georgia Bulldog ( Go Dawgs) was it hard to think about playing a character who is from Alabama? Two obvious rivals in college sports.

Brad Benedict: (Laughs again)  No, no I don’t hold any grudges against the people of Alabama. But if we are talking college sports, football or whatever it may be then that is a little bit of a different story. I have a lot of love for my fellow southerners and it’s a great little niche that you can put yourself in with other people from our own area. When I went back home to Atlanta to shoot the show, after being in LA for nine years, you can definitely notice the southern hospitality. I do love it in LA, but it can be a little less inviting out in LA than it is in Atlanta.

WM: You have been on a lot of fantastic shows (Glee, NCIS, 2 Broke Girls, Medium) When you leave a project, what is one thing that you like to take from it and use it going forward?

Brad Benedict: There isn’t a specific thing that I take away from each project, but yeah absolutely. I always want to talk to the experienced guys on set. I remember when I was working on NCIS and I got to talk to Michael Weatherly and I got to picking his brain about his process. I like to do that on each different set if I am able to. Honestly, I ask for little nuggets and whatever they can give me will hopefully make me stronger. You never know what that could be, but I know guys like him, Nathan Fillion, Cory Monteith would be able to give some good nuggets of info.

WM: In this world of social media (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram), fans have never had this kind of access to the actors and actresses that they love, until now. How has it impacted you?

Brad Benedict: It’s a great way for someone like me to build a fanbase. I don’t think I have had a lot of fans until I was on Too Close to Home. It’s a great way to communicate and interact with people that you are thankful for. If people weren’t watching, there would literally be no television show of movie. I have tried to make a major effort to respond to as many people  as I can, and I feel like that invests the fans into coming back. I know that my character, JB is just a character but it’s been interesting to read some of the comments. Some of the comments have been how terrible JB is and how much they hated him and to kill him off. Then it changed over to not being JB, but Brad Benedict and said that I was really the embodiment of JB in the way he acts. It doesn’t really bother me because I know it’s just a role and that there is a lot of trolling out there. It’s good to show that I am a different human than JB and want to lift people’s spirits up and inspire them, which is why I wanted to become an actor.

Brad’s Twitter” @bradbenedict

Instagram: @bradbenedict

Facebook: /thebradbenedict