Photo Credit: JSquared Photography
Tim Matheson has a career that has spanned over six decades in film and television. Early roles include, “Window on Main Street,” followed by the main voice in the Hanna-Barbera cartoon, “Jonny Quest.” He would proceed to make appearances on shows such as, “Bonanza,” “The West Wing,” and “Hart of Dixie.” The actor can be seen in the NETFLIX series, “Virgin River,” as Vernon “Doc” Mullins, with the new season premiering on December 19th.
Matheson spoke with us about playing the role of Jonny Quest and why the cartoon series only lasted one season:
“It was groundbreaking. It had sort of a graphic style novel animation to it, which was very expensive. Part of the reason it was not renewed was because the budgets were so high, and the networks said, ‘We can’t afford it.'”
As we dove more into Matheson’s vast time in Hollywood, we got to speak about his new memoir, “Damn Glad to Meet You.” The book, which was released on November 12th, talks about his near seven decades working in the industry. He gave us some insight on how the book came to be/when the concept was first thought of:
“It started about, ‘Animal House.’ There was an alchemy between John Landis, Ivan Reitman, Harold Ramis, and Doug Kenney who was the founder of ‘National Lampoon’ and the writer of ‘Animal House’ and ‘Caddyshack.’ The way they worked together to circumvent the studio trying not to make this movie into getting it made the way they wanted to make it was remarkable. It was about this magical group of people who changed the course of comedy. That’s where the book started. I wrote about that and interviewed everyone at the time. The publisher then said, ‘This is great, but let’s talk about Lucy (Ball), Jackie Gleason, etc.’ I augmented that story, and that was how it grew into this. I used Rick Meyerowitz for the book cover who was also responsible for the poster of ‘Animal House.'”
One facet that I found interesting during our conversation was his story on auditioning for the role of Indiana Jones. The actor told us a real cool anecdote that he got from George Lucas at the time:
“I go in and have a meeting with George. He’s very shy but a lovely man. He’s just a brilliant director. He says, ‘In all honesty, you did the best test. It was a great test, but you’re just too young. You look too young.’ I go, ‘I know, George. I knew that coming in. I wish I didn’t look so young, but I am sure we will work together.’ I mean, how gracious was he to do that to a young actor and encourage me to keep going even though this did not work out.”
The full interview with Tim Matheson can be seen below as we dove more into his working alongside Lucille Ball, John Belushi, as well as the underrated comedy, “A Very Brady Sequel.”
“Damn Glad to Meet You” is available now where books are sold. Pick up a copy today!
Here’s the full interview:
