Hearing the name Jesse Bradford might bring a wave of nostalgia to a certain generation. In the early 2000s Bradford was the guitar-playing love interest of Kirsten Dunst’s character in “Bring it On” and the swimmer-stalker victim in “Swimfan.” And though his name might conjur some images of the past, Bradford is anything but yesterday’s news.
On the Crackle original series, “Sequestered,” about “a high-profile case involving the murder of a child who happens to be the son of the Governor of California,” Bradford plays Danny Ferman, the defense attorney “discovering that maybe something’s awry; maybe it’s a cover up,” according to the actor.
With the 12 jurors sequestered—put in isolation for the duration of the trial—the story unfolds and the truth comes out, proving that the case isn’t exactly black and white.
A working actor since the ’80s, Bradford chats with Backstage about what inspires him and what it’s like to working with an online streaming platform.
On working with the online streaming platform Crackle.
“I found it interesting to start down this path which is really the multi-platform Internet thing. I felt like we had a lot of freedom; they gave me a lot of freedom to improvise and have fun with what I was doing,” Bradford says. “I think that the thing that can happen with network television, sort of high-stakes, ratings-oriented television, is that you get a lot cooks in the kitchen sometimes and what some guy who’s tied up in the networks’ hierarchy thinks is all that matters and you have to do that.
“This whole Internet thing—it’s still a little loosey-goosey. People don’t know exactly what it is yet. The stakes aren’t as high yet, it’s a little more creative and experimental,” he adds. “I’m not saying that when I work on network television—or any project really—that I feel stifled creatively, but I feel like things are a little tighter around you versus looser around you. It’s still nice and loose with this Internet stuff. I felt very creatively open.”
On the differences between comedic and dramatic series.
Having starred on the NBC series “Guys with Kids” just a couple of years ago, Bradford is able to compare “Sequestered,” a suspense thriller, to acting on a comedy series. “With sitcom work you have to broadcast a little more—you have to be bigger; you have to make bigger, more kind of obvious, down the middle-type choices so that the audience laughs and so that the guy in the back row laughs,” he says. “That’s the difference to me—I think that the emotional access is a little more complicated and nuanced in dramatic work.”
On how he hones his acting skills.
Working in the industry for nearly 30 years, Bradford’s been fortunate enough to hone his skills on sets, but even outside of classes or training, there’s always work for an actor to do. “It’s [about] being a student of real life. It’s trying to study the world around you and study your own reactions to the world around you and kind of be making notes about it. I think I tend to live in sort of a meta state of existence where I’m always analyzing and analyzing whatever I’m going through at any given moment, and a lot of times I’ll reflect back on and go, Oh look at that—if I acted this way when that happened I might not have thought of that that way,” he explains.
“Say I was reading a script and a character had that happen to them, that character would probably react this way. But here I am in real life having this reaction in a similar scenario. So studying the world around you to grow your foundation as an actor.”
On what inspires him as an artist.
“Good writing. Really good writing,” says Bradford. “I like to say good dialogue is a million times easier to memorize than bad dialogue—difficult good dialogue, even if it’s difficult.
“Aaron Sorkin dialogue,” he adds, laughing, “is easier to memorize, even though it’s wildly complicated. It’s easier to memorize than some crappy, unimaginative [writing].”
On his advice for fellow actors.
“I feel like my only advice is kind of trite but I’m gonna say it anyway: You gotta go for it. If you’re young and you don’t have a world of responsibilities to worry about, if you have the opportunity and you have this dream and this opportunity to go try it out, don’t be afraid to fail,” he encourages. “Go ahead and do it. Go get out there. You’ll never look back when you’re 50 and say, ‘I shouldn’t have spent two years in L.A. trying to live my dream.’ You gotta go for it.”
“Sequestered” returns to Crackle with the second half of Season 1 on Oct. 14.
Reporting by James Pero.
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