E-mail a friendJoe Mantegna
airdate December 11, 2007
Joe Mantegna's background is in theater, much of it in association with writer-director David Mamet. The Tony-winning actor also conceived and co-wrote the play, Bleacher Bums, which was later produced for TV and earned him an Emmy. He transitioned to film and TV, with credits that include the upcoming feature, Witless Protection, CBS' Joan of Arcadia and The Starter Wife miniseries on the USA Network. The Chicago native is also the voice of The Simpsons' "Fat Tony." This season, Mantegna joined the cast of CBS' Criminal Minds.
Joe Mantegna
Tavis: Pleased to welcome Joe Mantegna to this program. The Emmy-nominated actor has enjoyed a successful career in film and television, and he's the newest cast member on the hit CBS drama "Criminal Minds." The show airs Wednesday nights at 9:00 p.m. Here now, a scene from "Criminal Minds."
[Clip]
Tavis: Nice to meet you.
Joe Mantegna: Nice to meet you.
Tavis: Glad to have you here.
Mantegna: Thank you.
Tavis: So we know you're in "Criminal Minds" now. Why'd you decide to do this, you new cast member, you.
Mantegna: Yeah, well, it was a dream come true, to tell you the truth. It really especially fit into my lifestyle right now. I've spent a lot of my career traveling all over the world with my wife and children, and I'm at a point now where I was really looking for something to kind of - hopefully, if I can find something like where I kind of stay home a little more often, get a role that I can really explore, enjoy doing it for hopefully a long period of time, that's really what I was looking for. And this show came along, and for me it was a perfect fit. I just love the people connected with it, and I love the show.
Tavis: I just read somewhere, speaking of your family, your daughter is playing in an episode coming up pretty soon?
Mantegna: I do, yeah, yeah. I think it'll be up sometime next week. My daughter, Gina, who's a wonderful actress in her own right, she was one of the leads in a film last year called "Unaccompanied Minors," it was a big Christmas movie for Warner Brothers. She's got a film coming out called "The Neighbor" with Matthew Modine, where she's billed above the title with Matthew Modine. And I'm thinking jeez, it took me about 25 years to get billed above the title. (Laughter) She's done it in her first 17, so she's doing all right. But she's a wonderful girl, wonderful actress, and I wish her well.
Tavis: How did you let her do this? You know the ups and downs of this business, and you didn't -
Mantegna: I do.
Tavis: Put your hand out, put your hand out - no, the other way.
Mantegna: Yes, oh, I see, I see, yes.
Tavis: How did you -
Mantegna: (Unintelligible) congratulate me or punish me.
Tavis: (Laughs) How did you let her do this, Joe?
Mantegna: You know what? I think because it was the way I was brought up. In other words, I knew all along that I would never push her into this business, but yet I would also never try to keep her out of it. My feeling was this is not for the faint of heart; it's true, for this business. So if you want it, you have to go get it. And I think right from early on, she realized this was something that she was attracted to.
She'd have to pursue it and basically through her own effort and through her own skill, talent, whatever, she'd have to go for it. And she's got the right attitude, and hopefully the same attitude that I've had, of, like, you take your job very, very seriously, but you don't take the business so serious that it makes you crazy or gets you wound up.
If you enjoy it and you really have a love for it, then go for it. And that's been my wife and my attitude toward her, and she's pursued it, and it's been great.
Tavis: So now I'll shake your hand.
Mantegna: There you go.
Tavis: Because I spanked you, and I'll shake it.
Mantegna: Thank you.
Tavis: Because it must feel good as a parent to see your daughter shine like this.
Mantegna: Well, it does, and also I sometimes think to myself, how did this happen or why did this happen? And then I think to myself, well, I suppose if I was a carpenter, why would I be surprised if my kid was around hammering nails and building things? She's been around this business all her life, as well as her sister. And so it's not a mystery to them, as it was to me.
For me, show business was a big surprise, the fact that I ever got involved in it. But for them, this is a world they grew up in. The people they see around the house every day are what many people would consider famous faces. So I think that takes away some of the fear factor of it and some of the intimidation factor.
Tavis: Did I hear you right, that you are surprised that you found your way into this business? Why so?
Mantegna: Well, I just think because it seemed like an unlikely direction to go, with my background. I grew up on the west side of Chicago, there was no trace of a show business kind of - there was no track to follow, in other words. For me saying at that time in my life that I think I'd like to be an actor, I might as well have said I would like to go land on the moon. It was like, an actor? What's that about? That wasn't even considered a career back then.
Tavis: So what pulled you in? How did it happen?
Mantegna: I think it just was one of those things where I tried out for a high school musical on a dare, didn't get cast, but the excitement of doing it, I knew at that instant I wanted to do this more than I wanted to do anything in my life. That's all I could say. And I haven't looked back since.
Tavis: That's an amazing story to hear from somebody who tried out on a dare and didn't make it. Now it's one thing if you had told me you had made it. I didn't expect you to say, "I didn't make it and I still got bit by the bug."
Mantegna: But I think that's it, and I think that in a way, that's what I tried to instill in my daughter and it follows through on that same theory, that if you realize that this is something that you want to go for, even in the face of failure, even in the face of whatever obstacles are thrown in your way, if you can still say to yourself, "No, I still want that, and in fact I'm going to try even harder because I didn't get what I hoped I would get," then maybe you've got a place in this business. That's what I mean by it not being for the faint of heart. If you let disappointment turn you aside, then perhaps this isn't the path you should be on.
Tavis: You have one of those names that is not always easy to spell and to pronounce correctly. You have one of those faces, though, that everybody knows. If you watch TV or go to the movies, you're one of those actors we all know if not by name, certainly by face. Does that bother you, or do you actually like that?
Mantegna: Well, I don't think it's either or. But my feeling is this is a very public profession, and my feeling is if that kind of thing bothers you, then maybe you should have picked - (laughter) that's an occupational hazard, so you should have picked a different occupation. So I would have to say 99.9 percent of the time, people are always very nice about it. They're flattering. In other words, if somebody wants to come up to me and say, "Oh, Mr. Mantegna, I really liked you in such-and-such," or whatever it may be, or asks for an autograph or just wants to say hello, why not? I'm in a public - we both are. We're in a very public profession, and that's part of it.
Tavis: To your point, every now and again, those persons who will walk up to me, 99 percent of the time, you're right, they're generally nice. But sometimes, certainly when you're on PBS or public radio, as I am, since they're a little smarter when they watch and listen to public TV and public radio, I hear about things that they don't like, things I said that were wrong, things I mispronounce.
When I screw up, I hear about it (laughter) because there's smart people watching public television and public radio. So do people walk up to you, to your point now, and tell you things that you don't really want to hear, or things that challenge characters that you played? You ever hear that kind of stuff?
Mantegna: Well of course, and every once in a while people will confuse fact with fiction. They'll start to confuse the role that you play with who you are.
Tavis: With who you are. (Laughs)
Mantegna: Sometimes you have to give them a little reminder of that. But for the most part, it's been pretty good and I really have no complaints in that direction.
Tavis: I want to circle back to "Criminal Minds." I don't even know how to describe them, but these science shows, these criminal shows, the science of criminality, if I can put it that way, these things are obviously very, very popular, as you well know. Were you a fan of watching these shows, any of them, before you got on "Criminal Minds?"
Mantegna: To be honest, not really. I dabbled I the -
Tavis: They're all over television.
Mantegna: Yeah, they're all over, you can't avoid it. But I have to say that once I got involved with this show and really jumped in obviously with both feet and really immersed myself in it totally, the one realization I came to is - and what I think helped set it apart and what makes it special is that we are portraying this real unit of the FBI, of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Washington. This behavioral analysis unit whose job it is to go out and try to in essence defeat serial killers, which is - and the analogy like we like to use on this show is that we are the last of the Knights of the Round Table and you figure the 21st century version of the evil dragon, what more than a serial killer would best exemplify evil in this world?
In other words, if you had to think of the personification of evil, somebody, for whatever reasons, whether it's due to whatever the reasons are, but somebody is involved in serial killing, serial murders, that's something that we as a sane society have to do our best to kind of curtail, to stop, to control. And so to be able to enter that world and for each week, and I think that's what makes the show so successful.
I think people have a curiosity about it, to see what these very intelligent people, just even to be in the FBI you have to be very qualified in many areas. So that these people have to pursue that kind of evil in the world is somewhat fascinating. And I think the writers and the producers and everybody, and the cast, obviously, everybody involved with the show take it very seriously and do a good job with it.
Tavis: What's fascinating for me, hopefully for most of us, what's fascinating for me is the mind itself - just the mind, doing a show like this that is so true to certain real-life stories, certain elements of real-life stories. You learn stuff on a show like this about the mind, about behavior?
Mantegna: Yeah. Yes, very much so, and there's a lot of research that gets done. And so when we put these shows on, it's not, like, just a figment of someone's imagination, or a writer's imagination of oh, this might happen if this happened. They really do a lot of that research, and so when we delve into that criminal mind, as the title depicts, it's based on a lot of fact, a lot of research, a lot of what really goes on, and it is very fascinating, because - and obviously the better that criminology is at that, the better chance we have at staying one step ahead of those who, as I said, for whatever reasons, to give them that twisted thing in their minds that causes them to do this antisocial behavior.
Tavis: He is the newest cast member on the hit TV show "Criminal Minds," Wednesday nights at 9:00 on CBS. He is, of course, Joe Mantegna. Nice to have you on the program.
Mantegna: Thank you, Tavis.
Tavis: Have fun on the show.
Mantegna: My pleasure.
Tavis: Good to see you.
Back to December 11, 2007