Thursday, November 5, 2009

Portraying a Jersey Hero


Jon Seda is Sgt. John Basilone in HBO’s upcoming miniseries "The Pacific"

Jon Seda assembled his water-cooled machine gun as his fellow Marines slept in two-man tents in the South Pacific. Tomorrow, they would travel a couple miles to meet the Japanese army stationed beyond the brush.

But this was Queensland in 2007, not Guadalcanal in 1942, the soldiers were actors and the bullets weren’t real.

Seda, who grew up in Clifton, underwent two weeks of boot camp training in Australia to prepare for his role portraying World War II hero John Basilone in the HBO miniseries, “The Pacific,” set to debut in March.

“Basilone was an expert with the machine guns, so I had to learn them in and out: how to put them together, how they worked,” said Seda. “It gave us a sense of what these men went through. These Marines were out there for years and they were starving. They were undermanned and they didn’t have enough weapons.”

The training was run by the project’s military advisor, Capt. Dale Dye, who also worked on “Band of Brothers” and Saving Private Ryan.

This was a life-changing role for Seda, who got his first taste of acting by soliciting Herald News subscriptions door-to-door in Clifton when he was a teenager.

“We’d show up to the house and ring the bell, and I’d start with, ‘Hey, listen, I’m just one order away from having a potential to get a full scholarship for college,” he remembered during a telephone conversation from Los Angeles. “You’d get some sweet old lady and she just couldn’t not give you the order. Meanwhile, it’s just getting you an extra five dollars on your paycheck.”

Growing up on Sylvan Ave., the son of a pastor at Bethel Church in Passaic had no desire to enter the entertainment business.

Flipping through the 1988 Clifton High School yearbook, you won’t find Seda’s picture on the drama club page. But turn to the sports section, and you can’t miss him—carrying the pigskin as a running back on the gridiron, pinning an opponent on the wrestling mat or posing as a shortstop in the baseball team photo.

“I grew up wanting to be a sports star,” he said, adding that some of his best memories are of playing pick-up baseball games at Weaselbrook Park.

But after graduation, Seda got a reality check when he realized he wasn’t going to be the next Bo Jackson.

However, that didn’t mean he was done with athletics. “I was just running some odd jobs and ran into some boxers,” he recalled.

“I grew up watching a lot of fights next to my dad [Hector], and I went to Lou Costello’s gym in Paterson and started working out there. I really loved it, so I made that my goal to be a professional boxer.”

Seda went on to train at Dominic Bufano’s gym in Jersey City and ascended the amateur ranks until he finished second at the 1989 New Jersey Golden Gloves.

After three-and-a-half years in the ring, the Clifton native’s mother, Dharma, began to worry about her son’s safety, and attempted to distract him by signing him up for acting classes in Manhattan.

“I did it just to please my mom,” said Seda, who has two brothers and three sisters. “Sometimes, I didn’t even show up, but the teacher kept telling me she saw something really natural inside of me and wanted me to continue a career in acting.”

The instructor got him an audition for Gladiator, a boxing film released in 1992 that also featured James Marshall, Cuba Gooding Jr., Robert Loggia and Brian Dennehy.

“I went to a ‘cattle call’ in New York, which is like a thousand people on line, and I ended up getting a co-staring role in the film,” he recalled.

Seda, who was unloading trucks at Caldor in West Paterson on Rt. 46, working at a gym and ushering at the former Clifton Theater at the intersection of Clifton and Main Aves. to pull in just $250 a week at the time, hit a big payday when he landed the role, getting paid $40,000.

“I blew all that money on a nice new car that I drove around Clifton,” he laughed. “I got a Dodge Stealth before anyone else had one.”

After discovering he could make a living as an actor, Seda quit the ring.

“The truth was there was no guarantee in boxing that I would’ve made it,” he explained. “Even the greatest fighter could get hurt in one fight and then it’s over.

“I miss boxing, I really do. But I think it made my mom a lot happier.”

Seda made the right choice as he went on to appear in Carlito’s Way (1993) with Al Pacino and Sean Penn, Boys on the Side (1995) with Whoopi Goldberg and Drew Barrymore, Twelve Monkeys (1995) with Bruce Willis, Selena (1997) with Jennifer Lopez, and Bad Boys II (2003) with Martin Lawrence and Will Smith.

“I learned a lot from those guys,” Seda said. “Pacino, I just remember being on set, standing in the back and just kind of watching him work to get into his character. I kind of took down notes in my head as to how he would prepare.”

The former Mustang has also played parts on television in Ghost Whisperer, CSI: Miami and an Oct. 19 episode of House, during which he played an edgy cop from New Jersey whose family had a history of heart disease.

Whenever Seda gets cast as a police officer, he remembers the pointers he picked up from spending time with his good friend, Joe Genchi, a retired Clifton Police detective.

In preparation for his 1997-99 role as Det. Paul Falsone on NBC’s Homicide: Life on the Street, Seda spent some time on the job with Genchi.

“I played this Italian no-holds-barred, hot-headed guy and that’s kind of how Joe is,” the actor joked.

“He took me around the precinct and he would let me look at actual homicide files.”

“It’s rewarding to see that it paid off,” said Genchi, who laughed at the notion of being hot-headed. “He applied what he learned here and it enhances his characters to make them more realistic.”

But Seda said his biggest role to date is depicting U.S. Marine Corps Gunnery Sgt. John ‘Manila’ Basilone in a 10-part HBO miniseries from the creators of “Band of Brothers.”

“For me, portraying John Basilone for his home state ... I just felt an added responsibility on this one,” said Seda, who noted that the soldier’s death scene was ironically filmed on Feb. 19 this year.

“I had a script sent to me and I just really felt connected, and I was definitely meant to play this role.”

Seda auditioned in front of the miniseries’ producers, which included Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks.

“I was nervous, but it was more of nervous energy,” he said. “If you don’t tune them out, then you’re a nervous wreck because they’re icons.”

“The Pacific,” which also follows the lives of two other U.S. Marines, Robert Leckie and Eugene Sledge, began shooting in August 2007 and reportedly had the largest budget ever for HBO at $250 million.

“It’s just such an important story to be told,” said Seda, who moved from Maclean Rd. in Clifton to Los Angeles two-and-a-half years ago.

“It’s a voice for all those Marines that never got to let those at home know what they were really going through, and how heroic they were to help give us that freedom that we have and cherish.”
The miniseries is also a big stepping stone in the actor’s career.

“I think I’m at a point now where I don’t want to just do anything,” he said. “I want to have stuff where I’m able to really bring out the best in the characters.

“I’d also like to produce films and have my own production company, so I can bring some stuff back to Clifton.”