Things just seem to keep coming full-circle for popular television, film and stage actor John Wesley Shipp. He’s back on the set of the popular television series “The Flash” again after 25 years. And he’ll return to acting on the live stage for the first time in 20 years this September in the Sandhills, cast in the Judson Theatre Company’s production of the classic play “Twelve Angry Men.”
Here, Shipp recounts his career and ties to North Carolina, which includes time shooting “Dawson’s Creek” in Wilmington, as well as his experience as a teen in the town of Wake Forest, which itself would come full-circle in a most remarkable way almost 30 years later.
ONC: How did it come together with Judson Theatre for you to appear in “Twelve Angry Men,” and what about the role appealed to you?
JWS: It actually came about through a friend of mine, Michael McAssey, who suggested it to me. He knew the artistic director at Judson and knew they were planning “Twelve Angry Men.” I love that play. I first saw it, first became aware of it, when I worked on it as a senior in high school in Louisville, Kentucky.
I think it’s such an important play. It goes to judgment, it goes to rationalization, it goes to the way we process information, the way we rush to judgment, either because it’s easy or it conforms to our preconceived notions. We let that overwhelm any rational consideration of the facts. How do we make decisions? Some of the jurors just want to get out of there. It’s hot, and they just want to get out, and all of a sudden, the process is not respected.
Judson has a very compact schedule. It will only take two weeks out of my shooting schedule for “The Flash,” so it works. But you have to hit the ground running because you only have five or seven days of rehearsals and then you’re life. It’s not normally the way I like to work—so it’s going to be interesting! A lot of it is going to have to be people just drilling it with me. I know the play very well, and that should help. I’m really excited about it!
How do you approach taking on a character and developing that character?
For “Twelve Angry Men,” I have a feeling that for my juror, I will bring as much of myself to it as I can. You personalize, and if there’s something you can’t quite relate to, you try to find something you can relate to, especially when the subject is as near and dear to my heart as this. I imagine somewhere my first thought was, he’s going to be something of a hot-brand. The role is usually played very cool, very rationally, so that we see a rational process, rather than one that’s based simply on passion. But I want to combine both. I want to get excited about the minutia on which this boy’s life hangs.
Did you enjoy your time in Wilmington, filming “Dawson’s Creek?”
It was a magical experience. People forget, at the beginning of “Dawson’s Creek,” no one had ever seen a show written in that way, where the kids weren’t written down to. The kids were dealing with alienation, the feelings of your parents breaking up, things like that. What I found so interesting about Wilmington was the beaches, as well as the beautiful old homes. The ghost tour—if you’re in a city that’s old enough to have ghosts, how fabulous is that? There’s a lot of cultures. And then there was this Hollywood-studio-meets-southeastern-coastal-town feeling we all had. I think for all of us, really, it’s a memory of a special and unique time.
You spent some of your growing up years in Wake Forest, and you had an experience there that impacted your life then and again years later. Talk about that time, growing up the son of a Baptist preacher.
In 1969, I was a sophomore in high school, and my sister was a senior. My sister and I always had a Christmas party in the parsonage where we were living. In ’69, the schools in Wake Forest had been partially integrated. Some of our friends were African-American. One of the classmates invited was the daughter of the chair of the board of deacons of the church. On the Wednesday before the party, the deacons held a meeting and said we couldn’t have the party. My dad says, “I can’t go home and tell my kids we’re all created equal in the sight of God, but that some of their friends aren’t welcome.”
As a result, during the party, there were eight bullets fired into the home, and we were all spared only because we were in the kitchen with the popcorn maker instead of in the living room. By the end of the weekend, my Dad was fired from the church and we were told to be out of town by sundown. As a result, we moved to Louisville, Kentucky, where my dad hired the first African-American associate pastor in the Southern Baptist Convention.
So that all sounds really morose and grim. But flash forward 30 years later to 1999. I’m playing the popular father on “Dawson’s Creek.” A girl who attends the by-now racially integrated Wake Forest-Rolesville High comes to be on the show. She learns about this story and ends up inviting me to speak at graduation. They invited my whole family. I told that story and then ended my remarks on a really hopeful note and got a standing ovation. The next day, dad was invited to preach at the First Baptist Church in Wake Forest, the mayor of the town gave a public apology and gave my parents the key to the city. It was just wonderful.
You were in the first television series of “The Flash” in the early 90s, and then in 2014, you found yourself on the set of the new “The Flash”…how was it to revisit that role after almost 25 years?
It was less strange to go back to it than to do it initially because the entertainment culture had changed dramatically in those 25 years. The first time, my thought was, “Am I going to be running around in tights?” It was right at the dawn of a new way of telling these stories for television. They spent $100,000 to build four of those suits I wore!
In 2014, we premiered our pilot in front of an oversold crowd, and 180,000 people took over San Diego for Comic-Con. The new generation is used to seeing all the actors in costumes. Everyone takes it seriously now. In 1990, I was worried if I was going to be taken seriously doing this role.
How did you choose acting as a career?
When I was in high school, and people were choosing their majors, I always felt lucky that I knew mine would be in the performing arts. I started piano at age 5. I went to Indiana University on a voice performance scholarship in the opera department. Eventually, for a variety of reasons, I switched my major to theater and minored in music. I eventually wound up in New York to continue theater studies. I’m the only person in America who went into acting because it was easier!
It’s always been a calling, and I’ve always been grateful that it’s been a calling and not an occupation. I don’t take any of it for granted. I don’t care whether it’s daytime TV or Shakespeare. It’s a story about human beings and there’s a reason that story is being told. Getting the audience to invest in the story—that’s a calling. But you also have to make sure it doesn’t become so important that it consumes you. So in that way, you have to make sure it’s just a job.
Some great advice I got one time was to show up and be of service. I really try to live my life that way and approach my work and career in that fashion. So if I’m working with actors when I come to North Carolina for “Twelve Angry Men” who are less experienced, it’s my job to make them comfortable.
Throughout your career, what have you enjoyed most about the craft of acting?
I enjoy trying to find the truth of the moment. There’s nothing more exciting to me than when you and your partners have realized that what you are creating is greater than the sum of its parts. If ever there was a play that invites that creativity, spirituality, and truth of the moment, so that audience isn’t breathing, and you’ve connected with them spiritually—it’s “Twelve Angry Men.” If you play the truth of what’s happening, and the acting goes out of it, that’s the reason to be an actor for me.
Do you enjoy performing in front of a live audience, and do you draw from the audience’s reaction?
Stage acting is something when it’s operating at its finest, it’s happening on an almost subconscious level. You have your focus right at the moment on stage, but you have a larger consciousness of what’s going on everywhere else. So that person who’s falling asleep in the third row can really knock you off your game! There’s a feeling that moves through a theater. Different audiences see completely different things.
You’ll notice that moments don’t always play the same–was it the mood the audience was in that day? Was it something that just occurred to you? That’s the wonderful thing about theater. You get to do it again and again and again. You also have that synergy that happens between actors and an audience that you don’t have on a sound stage.
Where’s home for you, and do you have any plans for slowing down?
I started my acting career in New York in the late ’70s, and then I moved to L.A. for 23 years. Now, I’m back in Manhattan, and I could not be happier. Coming back to New York is a decision I should have made a decade before I did. I think I feel at home here because it’s where I got started creatively. It felt like coming home. Every corner I go around in New York, there’s a memory waiting for me.
I’ll probably get right back to the regular shooting schedule, shooting “Flash” in Vancouver. I will probably be busy with comic book conventions, too. I try to do as many of those as my schedule allows because that’s how you connect with your audience.
What goals do you have for your second 50?
I know people have those lists, but I am constantly amazed by the freshness and variety of what presents itself to me. Who could have dreamed I would be going back to the franchise 25 years later that I got started with? My goal is to do rich and varied characters that hit audiences where they live. That’s the juice of my life. I want to keep showing up and making myself available to the one surprise after another that has been my life so far.
Any plans after “Twelve Angry Men,” for vacation or golf in the area?
Speaking of golf, my nephew, Benjamin Shipp, was just ranked the No. 1 high school golfer in the country! He’s going to N.C. State on a golf scholarship.
I don’t know yet if I’ll have time to spend there, but I hope so. North Carolina is one of the most beautiful states in the Union. If people have not been there, they really don’t know what Carolina blue really means—oh, that sky! I hope I have some time to stay and enjoy it!