Jon Bernthal is living life at full throttle. The actor, even as he’s approaching 50, is at work this year in two superhero franchises, a hit TV show, this summer’s epic of all epics, The Odyssey—oh, and a Broadway play, doing eight shows a week. Our editor in chief, Michael Sebastian, sat down with Bernthal in between curtain times for a raw and honest discussion about life, work, family, and just what it is that drives him so damn hard. The result is a fascinating and revelatory portrait of a man in full. You can read it here.
—John Kenney, managing editor
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This year, he’s in everything: The Punisher, The Bear, Spider-Man: Brand New Day, The Odyssey, even goddamn Broadway. Wait until you hear what he does when he’s off the clock.
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The guy who plays the Punisher offers to make me a cup of tea. When I decline, Jon Bernthal, forty-nine, reaches for a square tin box and pops off the lid to reveal a pile of purple gummies. I am certain there’s weed in them. “Want one?” He asks, pushing the tin in front of me. I pause, eyeballing them. “They’re soft throat lozenges. Sugar-free. These fuckers are good, dude.” My throat is fine, but I oblige. Bernthal drops one in his mouth and leans back in his chair, assuming the position for a raw and honest talk about life.
An hour earlier, he met me inside the stage door at the August Wilson Theatre in Manhattan—where he’s starring in the Broadway adaptation of Dog Day Afternoon—dressed in blue jeans and an orange hoodie, an American flag on the left breast. Under the flag are the words “We Support the Troops.” He was shirtless beneath the sweatshirt, a tattoo on his left pectoral that says “Lil Bird,” his nickname for his wife, Erin, peeking out. He had the hood pulled over his head, which was already covered in a stocking cap. He wore what looked like wrestling shoes on his feet. They’re not wrestling shoes, although he did wear them to grapple with one of his sons earlier that day.
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Jesse Katz grew up with an eye always on the camera. His father, Andy, is a legendary photographer whose work includes long-term projects chronicling vineyards from Sassicaia in Tuscany to Chateau Margaux in Bourdeaux. That’s how the young Colorado-born Katz found himself at an early age among the most esteemed vines in the world.
“I’m 12 years old. We’re in Burgundy, and all of a sudden, glasses of wine start to show up in front of me,” remembers Katz, “I’m looking around wondering if I’m going to get in trouble with my parents. That was just kind of my first introduction to wine.”
In 2009, having become a winemaker himself, and after having worked at some of the most prestigious vineyards around the world, Katz opened Aperture Cellars, a winery in Healdsburg, California. Aperture, of course, was a nod to his father, whose photographs grace the labels.
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Karl Urban walks into the room like a goddamn movie star. Meticulously coiffed hair, a brown-green henley that highlights his shoulders, piercing eye contact when his reflective Ray-Bans come off—this is who greets me with a hand extended outward in a midtown hotel lobby one drizzling April afternoon. For a man jet-lagged and whose body clock is still on New Zealand time (it's approximately 5 a.m. in the actor's brain), Urban, a spring chicken at 53 years old, is up, alert, and feeling great.
His latest movie may not seem like new ground, but in Urban's view behind sunglasses, it's a new universe. Out last weekend was Mortal Kombat II, a big-budget sequel to the 2021 streaming hit adapted from the iconic '90s arcade games. In the new film, Urban takes charge as fan-favorite Johnny Cage, a has-been martial arts star who is thrust into the role of representing Earth in a tournament held by the gods. When we meet Cage in Mortal Kombat II, he's half-asleep behind a table at a crowded convention—an environment Urban is more than familiar with—moping about his bygone glory days.
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